The Girls

by Lori Lansens

  Nick drove us home from the party, which is fine, though I have this funny feeling he’s helping us out because he expects something in return. We haven’t told him about the aneurysm or the prognosis, but we’re going to see Dr. Singh in Toronto more often, and Nick must see from the look of us that we’re not well, especially because Rose is getting so thin. I hope Nick’s not being nice to us because he expects something in return. He won’t be in our will. Not that I think Rose would want to put him in our will. Not that I know anything about what Rose wants to do.

  Rose looked really pretty for our birthday, and I was glad she’d gone to some trouble because usually you can expect to have to nag her to comb her hair and change her shirt. She was wearing her new cream blouse from the sidewalk sale, and she even put on some of the pink lipstick I gave her as a present. I was wrong about the color. It did not suit her, but she got so many compliments on it I bet she’ll want to wear it every day.

  That night, when we were in bed, Rose squeezed me and said, We made it. I felt her shiver and she was probably thinking what I was thinking, which is, Okay, what now, God? Only with Rose, she’d just leave the God part out. Then we touched each other’s earlobes to say I love you.

  Aunt Lovey and Uncle Stash used to say You to each other. Before he left for work in the morning he’d kiss Rose and me and say, Be good, my girls, then he’d hold his heart and look into Aunt Lovey’s eyes and say You. Just You. Sometimes she’d just smile and nod, and other times she’d do the same thing back. Hold her heart. Say You.

  I remember when we were kids asking my sister why Aunt Lovey and Uncle Stash never said I love you. Only—You. Rose got out the dictionary and made me look up the word “redundant.”

  Last night she told me she was proud of how much I’m writing on my yellow legal pads because I’ve filled two pads already and I’m starting on my third. That made me feel good and quite annoyed at the same time, because I don’t need her approval. But I do. You know?

  She said she was halfway done with her book, and she asked me how close I was to being done. I can tell she’s curious about what I’ve written, but she won’t ask.

  I’m not close to being finished at all. Or maybe I’m done right now. How the hell can you tell?

  Rose still wants to find Taylor. She sent an e-mail to our cousins in Hamtramck to find out what they know about the private adoption, but they said they don’t know anything. Uncle Yanno is the one who arranged it, but no one has seen or heard from him in years, and you can’t even ask the cousins about their father because they’ll bite your head off. Yanno left with another woman when Aunt Poppy lost her hair from the chemo. You wouldn’t have believed the cursing Uncle Stash did about that. Uncle Stash punched Uncle Yanno out one time that we know of.

  The only information we really have is that it was someone from the Ford Plant who adopted Taylor, and we’re not even sure that’s the truth, so Rose’s idea of trying to get Ford to put a personal plea in the newsletter is obviously a lame idea. Rose said, Then why don’t we get a private investigator to search for her like Aunt Lovey and Uncle Stash did to find Mary-Ann? Our birth mother.

  I was thinking, Our birth mother. Oh my God. Our birth mother?

  I looked at Rose in the reflection of the mirror and I could see she was serious and I realized that it hadn’t ever once occurred to her that there was no private investigator. And that the grave we visited was not our mother’s. I always thought it was just one of those things we thought about but didn’t talk about. I told her I think Aunt Lovey and Uncle Stash lied to us because we were obsessed with finding our real mother, and they thought they were doing the right thing. I wasn’t gonna say anything more, but she wanted me to, so I told Rose that I remember Aunt Lovey telling Uncle Stash we needed evidence. And closure. It wasn’t long after that Uncle Stash had the idea about hiring the private investigator.

  I can’t believe Rose never thought about the fact that our family could not afford to heat the second floor of the farmhouse, and there’s just no way Uncle Stash would have spent money on a private investigator unless there was some kind of guarantee. Then there’s the fact that the mysterious guy never came to the farm, and we never heard his voice on the phone. Supposedly he’d found a trail from Leaford that led straight to our mother in Toronto. According to this private investigator’s information, our mother was some perfect angel who worked in a bookstore and went to church and had a lot of things in common with Rose and me (like reading and writing and interest in the Neutral Indians—yeah, right) and conveniently died right after she had us. Her name was Mary-Ann instead of Elizabeth, and I figure that’s because it was the only gravestone Uncle Stash could find with a female Taylor who died shortly after our birth.

  Rose was really quiet after I said what I said. I told her she shouldn’t be mad at Uncle Stash and Aunt Lovey, and she said she wasn’t, but her reflection in the mirror was so sad I wished I’d never opened my mouth.

  Rose really brooded about that. She likes a good brood. She does. But I choose to be happy. Aunt Lovey used to joke with Rose that she got her broodiness from her Slovak side. (The joke is that we’re adopted, so we don’t actually have any Slovak blood—that we know of.)

  Later, when we were in bed, Rose talked about how she’d never in all this time considered that our mother might be alive, and how she needed some time with it. She wrote a lot of poems in that period. Then, after a few weeks, she brought up the idea of the private investigator again and said we should find Taylor and our birth mother and arrange for them to meet when we’re gone. (And she says I’m the dreamer?)

  I don’t know if it’s the aneurysm clouding Rose’s thinking or if I’m the crazy one. I think it’s a bad idea. If our mother is alive (and she probably is because she’d only be in her late forties), she knows who we are and could have had contact with us if she wanted. It’s not like she’s not gonna remember giving birth to craniopagus twins. Besides, if you wanted to know, one stroke of a computer key will tell you where we live. Everyone knows we’re all over the Internet.

  That night I dreamed that our mother and Taylor were eating blackberry jam in Mrs. Merkel’s kitchen.

  I woke up in the night because Rosie was crying. She said her head hurt really bad. I told her I was sorry. Then she said really quietly, so I knew she was serious, she said we should get two things of Tatranax and go. Just float off. Together. Right then in the night. She said let’s do it now, Ruby. We can hold each other. It won’t be scary.

  I started shaking. I couldn’t stop it. I didn’t cry or anything. I just couldn’t stop shaking. For the longest time. She kept saying, It’s okay, it’s okay, Ruby. She said she was just kidding, but she wasn’t.

  She wasn’t.

  Peevo

  Aunt Lovey drank only on special occasions, and then only a little white wine, but Uncle Stash liked to sip a beer or two every night—three if there was a sports event, four if his team was losing. Uncle Stash never used the English word for beer. “Bring me the peevo, Rose,” he’d call. He said that, compared to slivovitz or Becherovka, the alcohol content in beer was so low it wasn’t really drinking. The peevo he bought at the beer store, but the Becherovka Uncle Stash made himself from cloves and something that smelled like turpentine (so it was really faux Becherovka). He said Becherovka was a magic elixir, and he gave me a teaspoon for constipation if I promised not to tell Aunt Lovey (who favored glycerin suppositories and strained prunes). He wouldn’t let Ruby touch the stuff, though. It would have burned her to cinder. I think the Becherovka gave me a buzz. I know it moved my bowels. The night before Mother Darlensky came to Leaford, Uncle Stash drank half a bottle of the liquor, though I don’t believe it could cure his particular ill.

  THE OLD FARMHOUSE had been withering in the weeks leading up to Mother Darlensky’s visit, from the scrubbing and stress and the whispers and worry. Aunt Lovey scoured the wood floors raw. Ruby and I washed down the walls in the hall and sprayed Jean Naté on the burnt-orange carp
et in the den where the miserable old woman would be sleeping. Uncle Stash vacuumed the car and raked forty-six bags of leaves.

  It was October 31. Halloween, and Ruby and I were in our final year at Leaford Collegiate. (Halloween is a celebration that I fear and loathe, and one that my sister and I refused to participate in from the beginning.) Our bedroom in the old orange farmhouse on any given October morning was frosty, scented by corn husk and dry tobacco. But that Halloween morning, the day of Mother Darlensky’s arrival, we woke to find the room damp and musty smelling, like a day in late July. We made our way to the window, and looked outside to see Sherman Merkel, in short sleeves, swatting at the crows with his stable broom, beyond him a field of dark orange pumpkins waiting for carving knives and piecrusts—and vandals. There were flies in the windowsill, confused, like us, as to whether it was the middle of summer or end of fall.

  After dressing in our freshly ironed blouses and skirts, we went to the kitchen to find Aunt Lovey and Uncle Stash at opposite ends of the long pine table, something simmering between them. Aunt Lovey was wearing her coral lipstick, and Uncle Stash had used something slick to comb back his hair. He looked fairly ridiculous, and I wondered if that’s what Aunt Lovey was frowning about, until she said, “I’m putting my foot down, Stash. She can sit in the back with the girls.”

  “She’s old. It’s too hard to get in back,” Uncle Stash replied.

  “If you hadn’t noticed,” Aunt Lovey began, “your two daughters get in the back of that car nearly every day!”

  “It’s one day, Lovey.”

  “Exactly. It’s not too much to ask, Stash.”

  “It’s not too much to ask to you too!”

  Why Aunt Lovey was digging her heels in about the front seat was a mystery to me. Why Uncle Stash didn’t just give it up was incomprehensible. The gulf created by the enormous table didn’t help. They were still not speaking to each other by the time we arrived at the bus station. Ruby and I watched the bus arrive. I could feel my sister’s heart thudding when the doors were yanked open from within. But no one stepped off. Uncle Stash swallowed. Aunt Lovey looked somewhat relieved, hoping the old woman had changed her mind. After a longer moment, when still no one appeared, Uncle Stash went to investigate. He would tell us later how his mother was sitting pale and alarmed in her aisle seat while the driver tried to persuade her to leave. She’d looked up to see Uncle Stash, and smiled like a very young child.

  Ruby and I watched Uncle Stash, holding his mother’s two hands, help her down from the bus like a toddler not ready for stairs. She was puny and frail with hardly a hair. Her mouth was puckered. Her eyes were large and bewildered.

  Uncle Stash didn’t have to point Ruby and me out to his ailing mother. We were already the center of attention at the convenience store/gas station/bus depot. From the steps of the bus the old woman glanced our way. But she didn’t quite seem to focus. And she didn’t come close to a smile.

  Aunt Lovey stood back, waiting to be recognized, but Mother Darlensky was intent on watching her feet, inching forward on her tiny white sneakers. There were stains on the old woman’s blouse. And crinkles at the crotch of her polyester pants. Aunt Lovey took Mother Darlensky’s elbow and said, “You’re looking well, Mother Darlensky.”

  I almost laughed out loud.

  The old woman nodded but said nothing, and didn’t meet Aunt Lovey’s eyes. Ruby and I were relieved when Aunt Lovey opened the front door of the car and helped the frail woman inside, before climbing into the backseat on Ruby’s side. “I don’t think she knows me,” Aunt Lovey whispered, and the fact of not being recognized by her mother-in-law instantly disposed Aunt Lovey of her long-held resentment.

  “I give you the tour of Leaford, Mother,” Uncle Stash said.

  “Take me home,” Mother Darlensky said in Slovak.

  “I drive past Vanderhagen’s to show you my work.”

  “Home,” the old woman repeated.

  Uncle Stash turned the key in the ignition. Then he eased the car into gear and started out of the parking lot, saying, “We go the long way home. We have a good tour. You’ll see.” He drove toward downtown Chatham instead of heading home to Leaford.

  After a time Uncle Stash opened his mouth but I stopped him. “Shh,” I said. “She’s asleep.”

  A momentary glance at his sleeping mother, then Uncle Stash returned his focus to the road and stepped on the gas.

  As the car lurched forward Mother Darlensky’s head fell back. Her mouth cranked open. Her neck crooked left.

  Aunt Lovey leaned forward. “Mother Darlensky?”

  Uncle Stash could see something wasn’t right. He made a move to pull the car over, but didn’t.

  Aunt Lovey’s fingers searched for a pulse in the old woman’s neck.

  “Stash?” Aunt Lovey said, when he did not turn down the road that would have taken us to the nearby Chatham Hospital but began to drive down the country road instead.

  “Stash? Honey?”

  A certain graceful turkey vulture soaring through the sky caught Uncle Stash’s attention, and he slowed down to watch as it descended to pluck at some dead thing in a farmer’s field. Uncle Stash slid a cassette into the tape deck, and I held my breath as music filled the car and we drove the road along the river, the one that curves and loops and seems to flow back into itself, the way I do my sister, and life does death.

  Normally Aunt Lovey would have asked Uncle Stash to lower the volume. Instead she said, “Turn it up, hon. Turn it up a little.”

  We drove on past the river and headed for the bay, Ray Price crooning on the car stereo, Ruby sleepy from her Dramamine, me singing along (my sister says I have the singing voice of a male frog) to the songs I knew, Aunt Lovey sniffing into a handkerchief, deconstructing herself. Uncle Stash dry-eyed and silent, staring straight ahead. I wasn’t sure what Uncle Stash was doing. Was he showing his mother’s ghost our beautiful Baldoon? Was he unprepared to say good-bye? Or damned if she’d have the last word again?

  At the bay we stopped to watch the birds and the boats and the cottagers and the couples heading to the Lighthouse Restaurant for a nice fish dinner. Not one of them had a dead body in their car. I was sure of that.

  By the time the last song was playing on the tape, we had turned down Rural Route One, heading for home. Uncle Stash dropped Aunt Lovey and Ruby and me off at the laneway to the farmhouse, then stopped to light a pipe (the first and last that he would smoke inside the car) before he drove his mother’s body to St. Jude’s Hospital, to be pronounced dead on arrival by Dr. Richard Ruttle.

  The strangest thing about strange things is that they’re only strange when you hear about them or imagine them or think about them later, but never when you’re living them. (I believe I can speak about that with some authority.) And it was like that with Mother Darlensky. It did not seem strange to be driving around Baldoon County with the music on loud and the old woman’s corpse slumped in the front seat. At least not until Ruby and I were in bed that night, looking at the moon, pretending it was not Halloween.

  Uncle Stash must have felt chilled by it too, because when we woke up the next morning, Ruby and I counted eight empty bottles of peevo in the carton beside the fridge. Uncle Stash entered the kitchen looking old and announced that he was taking his mother’s ashes to his hometown of Grozovo, in Slovakia, to bury her in the hillside cemetery where his two older brothers rest.

  “But what about burying her beside your father in Windsor?” Ruby asked innocently.

  “She wants to go home, Ruby. I know.”

  “You don’t know that, Stash. The people in Ohio said there’s no will,” Aunt Lovey countered. “Besides, your mother and father had a joint plot. I saw it myself. I don’t think you need more evidence than that of what your mother wanted. Her side of the headstone is already engraved!”

  “She wants to go home, Lovey. That was her last word.”

  “But how do you know she didn’t mean our home?” Ruby asked.

  “Ho
w do you know she didn’t mean Windsor?” Aunt Lovey added. “She was married to your father for forty years, Stash. They raised three children together. Traveled halfway across the world to start a new life in a new country. Surely she’d want to spend eternity in the plot next to his.”

  “She wants to go home. She wants to go to Slovakia. To my brothers. That’s home. I know. I know.”

  A surprising thing for Uncle Stash to claim about a mother with whom he had little contact and for whom he had much contempt. And hurtful to Aunt Lovey, whose heart I thought he should have known best.

  “I think a wife should be buried with her husband,” Aunt Lovey said.

  “Hmm,” was all he said in response.

  Aunt Lovey continued to argue with Uncle Stash about his mother’s last wishes. It didn’t really matter what Mother Darlensky wanted, though. It was Uncle Stash who wanted to go home, and we all, even he, knew it.

  Deadlines & Writing

  I stumbled. We fell. I told Nick not to tell. Then I started crying and confessed that we are dying.

  This is my first day back at the computer after missing three straight days. I’m frustrated. It’s the evil aneurysm, of course. (The little bastard wants to ruin my life before he takes it. And my sister’s by proxy.)

  Dr. Singh thinks the terrible headaches will most certainly subside, or get worse, or disappear altogether. It could mean the eruption is imminent or it could be days or weeks or months, but most certainly not four months—we most certainly won’t be here for Christmas. I hate the way Singh says “most certainly,” as if he’s never wrong.

  My sister has been incredible throughout these days of pain. Quiet and uncomplaining. If she’s having headaches too, she has not said a word. I don’t know this Ruby at all, who urged a bendy straw to my lips when she saw I was parched. This Ruby who warned, “If you pee the bed, I’ll kill you, Rose Darlen.” This Ruby who finally said, “I don’t care if you hate me, I’m calling for help.”