by Deborah Reed
Vivvie freed more splinters, lowered her lips close to his palm, and blew the slivers from his skin.
“Thank you,” he said.
Vivvie nodded and continued digging.
“How’s their mother doing?” Wink asked.
Vivvie’s hand slipped, Wink jerked, and a drop of blood gelled in his palm.
“You’re dangerous,” he said with a smile. “First the snake and now me.”
She placed his hand on his lap, handed him the needle, and stood. “I’ll grab a tissue,” she said.
“Well. All right.”
The bathroom mirror revealed what a sight she was—mussed hair, smudged mascara, the lack of sleep around her eyes. She swiped beneath her lashes, ran her fingers like a comb across her scalp, leaned closer, and applied sheer gloss to her dry lips. She studied the reflection of her trembling hand. “My daughter is dying,” she whispered, watching herself say it like watching a movie, a scene with the sole purpose of making her cry. She didn’t cry.
She came back with peroxide and no tissue. She stopped in the middle of the room, intent on retrieving the box of Kleenex, but was held in place by Wink’s smile. A moment passed and still she remained, as did he, smiling without asking anything of her, and another beat until it began to feel as if she’d meant to stop there all along and show off a new dress, offer him a drink so he could say, “Well, sure, darlin’, there’s nothing I’d love more.”
But that wasn’t it at all. What had really stopped her was seeing Wink from a distance, sitting in the same spot Jackson used to sit, the same place she found him months after his diagnosis, his legs already shaky, headed toward decline. He apologized for having been given such a bad break. Wasn’t that what Lou Gehrig had called it? A bad break? But now that they knew what was coming he wished more than anything for a clean break. When she started to question what he meant, he said, “Please, Viv. Don’t make me say it.” Then he stared at her with a foreboding, a humiliation so deep it chased his tears back down his throat with such force that Vivvie felt her own airway squeeze shut. She understood that she would find him hanging in the shed. Or a bullet in his brain, or maybe he could get a hold of some pills, but find him she would—dead, in short order, no two ways around it. He was going to leave her. One way or another he’d be out of there long before they were ready, so what was the point in waiting for him to turn to stone? These were the cards they’d been dealt, he said, and the only question now was how they were going to be played. Were those final months of humiliation a reason to keep him around? Was it better for their daughters to remember him as a suffering, twisted animal unable to speak, sending Vivvie into crying jags, trying her patience and goodwill? Was there some point to saving him for the sole purpose of watching him die? “Tell me, Viv. Is waiting until our love no longer resembles itself, and then dying, going to serve some higher good?”
If she hadn’t been robbed of her ability to speak she would have told him in that moment that she loved him more than all their days put together, loved him with a new kind of love, moonshine and lifeblood, pure and wholehearted, so intoxicating it made her weak.
Outside, the coffee-can ashtray banged against the house and rolled away. The harsh scrape of metal on concrete set Vivvie’s teeth on edge.
TWENTY
THE YOUNG MAN AT THE information desk had assured Elin that her sister was no longer in the ICU, and hadn’t been for days. Her room was on the second floor now, where a plump, creamy-faced nurse, nearly half Elin’s age, sat like a lifeguard atop a stool behind the nurses’ station as if refusing them entry to the beach. She gazed at Elin, Averlee, and Quincy, standing in order of height on the other side of her station, and for a moment there was nothing but the buzz of fluorescent lights hanging low above their heads.
Elin gripped the counter. When she had mentioned going to the hospital to see their mother it was as if the girls had been awakened by a loud noise, stunned and animated, and then overjoyed to find themselves in the midst of some kind of celebration. “Please,” Elin said to the nurse. “Her own children aren’t on the ‘no visitation list,’ are they?”
The young woman shook her head and a trace of glittery bronze blush caught the light.
“Well,” Elin said. “I can’t very well send them down the hall to their mother by themselves.” She sighed, ran her fingers through her hair, and crossed her arms, becoming her mother just then—the harried mood, the inability to suffer fools gladly, a sudden show of rudeness. She rubbed her temples.
“I could take them for you,” the nurse offered, though her pinched stare gave her away.
“You’re busy,” Elin said.
“Yes. Very.”
Averlee strained over the counter, her chin just inches above it. “Then pretend you never saw us,” she said.
Elin gestured an empty palm toward her niece, her eyes still trained on the nurse, on the small grin the nurse seemed unable to contain.
Halfway to the hospital Averlee had asked to change into her new clothes. Elin had told her yes, of course, in the bathroom when they arrived, but now she’d forgotten the clothes in the car, and here stood Averlee, the frayed hem of her yellow shirt hanging loose, an eyesore, a judgment against her, or perhaps in her favor…
“Room 218,” the nurse said. “But you didn’t hear it from me.”
Elin rested her hands lightly on the girls’ shoulders as they walked down the hall, anxiety braiding her steps toward the unknown, and then toward the known, which felt a whole lot worse; all those old, pigheaded arguments now filling her with guilt, her hands on her sister’s daughters, her sister/their mother, the person at whom Elin had hurled insults for years. She fought off the worming in her chest, the bile headed for her throat. It was one thing to bicker like siblings, all the shoving, bullying, competition. But something else, something sinister and base to wrap an ugly lie in a truth, to place it inside her sister’s childhood heart where it could not escape, where it could only grow as she grew, Kate’s own life’s blood feeding it all the days of her existence.
The white buzz of fluorescent lighting penetrated Elin’s skull, the long hallway zinging a tinselly white. She stopped at the water fountain, pulled her migraine prescription from her purse, and swallowed a pill. She came up for air, water dribbling her lip, orange bottle in hand, the girls watching her with a reserved kind of horror.
“Just one,” Elin said, panting, wiping her mouth. “I get these headaches.”
The girls pulled together like magnets.
Elin stuffed the bottle in her purse, peeled the girls’ hands apart, closed them inside her own, and didn’t let go until she rapped on door 218. She leaned her ear in but heard nothing. She pried the door open, slowly, like a thief.
Inside, the blinds were drawn, giving the L-shaped room a gloomy, brownish hue. The air smelled of green peas and coffee from an untouched tray on a stand at the end of the bed, the rest hidden around the corner. Steam rose from the white plastic cup. Before Elin could make a move, a teenage girl, a candy striper, if that’s what they were still called, rushed in and grabbed the tray. “Sorry,” she said. “I didn’t realize she’s only liquids.” She disappeared and the smell faded to something yeasty, sour, dead.
The quiet room held a dense, droning weight, as if someone had just passed away, or was about to, and Elin recalled her mother’s white catatonic face at her father’s funeral, her lips slack with red lipstick she never wore. She didn’t speak that day, didn’t even cry. When she finally opened her mouth it was as if her vocal chords had been wrung between two fists, squeezing out the brightest tones, leaving behind an unpleasant brassy dullness that remained there to this day.
Elin stepped forward, peered around the corner, and covered her mouth. She’d entered the wrong room. A cadaverous-looking prop rested nearly upright in the adjustable bed. This was not her sister.
But Averlee was already touching the pale blue arm, the skin nearly see-through, a series of deep bruises on the back of her h
and near the IV. “Momma,” she said. “It’s Ave.”
“Me, too,” Quincy said, moving beside her.
Elin’s eyes continued to absorb what her mind could not fully comprehend.
Kate’s head lolled toward her daughters, one eye peeling open, a twitchy smile sparking, fading, her bony chest beneath the neatly turned sheet rising and falling in wheezy, panicky, birdlike breaths. A whimper seeped from a throat so thin her small skull appeared large by comparison, her neck a loosely gathered knot at the base of a balloon.
Elin swallowed what felt like a cottony cloth down her throat.
Quincy patted her mother’s shoulder. Again a flash of smile, chest fluttering, the whimper more pronounced.
“Girls?” Elin whispered. The room dilated with heat, a cool glaze of sweat peppered Elin’s forehead. “I think she might need to rest.”
Then a wet, sucking sound as Kate slurped at drool, coughed and moaned, her head barely slumping opposite now, toward Elin, her lids opened just enough.
Her inky eyes gripped Elin’s skin like fingernails, gouging, and then giving her a good, hard shake. It wasn’t madness, pain, or even anger that appeared to seize Kate. It was the look of affection, of generosity puncturing Elin’s flesh.
Kate slurped, eyes blazing.
Should anything happen to me, who would look after my girls? What had Elin told her on the phone? You disappear and then ask such stupid, shithead questions.
Elin pulled a chair to the bed and sat, searching for words, any she could think of, rubbing her thighs but the sweat on her palms would not disappear. “So… I guess you wanted me to come,” she finally said. “I’m sorry it took so long. I had to read between the lines.”
Kate’s throat jerked with laughter, and it was laughter, even as it sounded like a weary cat’s mewl. Kate was laughing, and Elin laughed, too, but only a little, unsure if she had it right. Unsure if the joke wasn’t actually on her.
Then Kate’s laughter turned to coughing, choking, gasping.
Elin stood. “Is this normal? Is she okay?”
The look of despair in Averlee’s face held no surprise, and Elin understood this was their life, their mother in varying stages of how she lay here today, though only last week she could speak well enough to phone Elin about the day at the beach, to pose the question about if something should happen to her, who would look after her girls. If something should happen to her. Christ.
Kate quieted, lids closed, a small grin pinned to the corner of her mouth.
Elin placed her palm on Kate’s chest. Air moved weakly beneath the breastbone, and Elin withdrew her hand quickly, more from the reeling memory of a young sister on the beach than from the woman in the bed.
She turned and headed for the door, motioning for Averlee to follow. “Quincy, I need you to sit in that chair and keep an eye on your mom while I talk to your sister in the hallway.”
Averlee started to speak. Elin held a finger to her lips. “We don’t want to keep waking her.” She gestured to the chair. “Two minutes, Quincy. I promise. You’re big enough. You are.”
Quincy’s eyes narrowed and glistened in the dull light, like those of a wild animal about to bolt. But instead she crawled into the chair, glanced at her mother, at Elin, and then Averlee, who kept watch on her until the door closed behind them.
“We don’t have a lot of time,” Elin said. “I need to know what’s wrong with your mom so I can help her.”
“I don’t know.”
“How long has she been like this?”
“A long time.”
“How long is long? A year, a month?”
“Kind of since preschool, I think.”
Elin calculated backward. “Like, four years?”
Averlee shrugged, her eyes starting to well as if she had done something wrong. Elin softened her voice. “How long has she been really bad like this?”
“Mostly since Christmas.”
“Christmas?”
“I guess so.”
“Does she see a doctor?”
“Sometimes.”
“Does she work?”
“Not anymore.”
“How have you been living?”
Averlee didn’t seem to understand the question.
“If your mom doesn’t work, how does she take care of you, buy you clothes and food and stuff?”
Averlee shrugged. “The checks.”
“What checks?”
Averlee shrugged again. “In the mail.”
“Who sends them?” she asked, but she already knew. “What sickness does she have? Does it have a name?”
“I don’t know any of that stuff.”
Elin covered her eyes from the lights. “Can she walk?”
“Not anymore.”
“Jesus. Do you all live with someone else besides your mom?”
“No.”
“Then how did she manage? Was there anyone helping you?”
“The people from the center.”
Elin dropped her hand and slowly opened her eyes to the pain.
“What center?”
Averlee shrugged. “The center. They clean the house and get us stuff we need. They help her take a bath.”
“Who are they?”
“People from the center.”
“But what is it?”
Averlee dug her face into a frown.
“Oh, dear God. All right. You mean to tell me you really don’t know what’s wrong with her, I mean, she’s never talked to you about how sick she is? She never said anything the night you had to call the ambulance?”
A spark of recollection seemed to flash across Averlee’s face. She shook her head no.
“What did she tell you?”
“Nothing.”
“That’s not true.”
“I already told you what she said.”
“What did you tell me?”
“She said you like secrets.”
“That’s what she told you. That night?”
Averlee tightened her lips into something hard, practiced. She looked behind Elin as if someone were coming toward them.
Elin gripped her hair at the roots. The hallway was empty. “Come with me,” she said.
When they returned to the room Quincy was standing near the bed in front of the chair, holding Kate’s hand.
“Did she wake up?” Elin asked softly.
“Did she talk?” Averlee asked from the other side of the bed.
Tears spilled down Quincy’s cheek.
“Great. See what you did?” Averlee said to Elin.
Kate lay undisturbed, even as Averlee’s voice rose.
“What I did?” Elin asked.
“You made me go in the hall.”
“I just needed to ask…” Oh, what was the point? Elin lowered herself, exhausted and heavy, into the chair. She gently pulled Quincy onto her lap, wiped her tears with her palm, her cheek warm and soft as damp velvet. Elin wrapped her arms around her, closed her eyes, and drew in the scent of Quincy’s strawberry shampoo.
Her eyes sprang open, her hands already reaching toward her sister. She secured the blanket at Kate’s shoulder, accidentally brushing her collarbone, as cold and pointed as if unearthed from the ground. She tucked the covers along the length of her arm. Elin had never shown her sister such simple kindness. The one act of selflessness she’d offered her at the beach that day had haunted her ever since.
Kate’s lids bobbed, eyes still wet and blazing with a heat already extinguished from the rest of her, even as her face appeared ice-bound, giving nothing away.
Elin brushed her sister’s wrist bone, the back of her hand white and cold and smooth as marble, and it was then that Elin understood what was ravaging Kate’s body. Not the name, but where it came from, and the fact that it ran through her sister’s blood, and if Kate’s blood, then her own, too.
The air bristled with cruelty. Her father’s arms, too weak to be trusted, her mother’s rising panic as he swung Kate one last time in the au
tumn sun.
TWENTY-ONE
THEIR MOTHER USED TO SAY they were nothing but sharp elbows. Nothing but quick tempers parceled into little bikinis. Nothing but house apes, or big-eyed Kewpies. When she said “big-eyed Kewpies” they knew they weren’t in trouble. Not really.
But that day at the beach, when Kate and Elin were ten and eleven years old, their mother hadn’t said much at all, reclined in her aluminum-frame chair, round-shouldered and silent, smoking and reading in the shade of her straw hat.
Elin and Kate weren’t speaking either. Not after what Elin had said to her in the car.
Kate was busy shaping sand into a castle, her mouth an open pant beneath strings of wet hair. Elin glared at her through wavy bangs in need of trimming, wishing herself home, sketching in her notebook on the knotty-pine sleeping porch that Saturday afternoon, wishing they had never come to the beach.
“‘How to Avoid Harmful Stress,’ by J. D. Ratcliff,” her mother read out loud from her magazine. She laughed a little and flipped the page.
Elin drove her toes into cooler sand. She tugged the vane of a gull’s lost feather, carefully, the translucent barbs about to split like lips opening in slow motion. But then a hand swooped past her face and the feather disappeared.
Kate skewered the feather into a mound, humming to herself, packing sand around the pearly stem.
A burst of wind swept off the ocean and the air smelled of fish, of salt and seaweed baking in the sun, and then of Kate’s fruity shampoo as her hair lifted beneath Elin’s nose. The wind turned back with the scent of steamed hot dogs from the Snack Shack where the road T-boned the beach. Seagulls floated in circles, squawking as if to let Elin know to stop, do nothing, there were plenty more feathers to go around. She wanted this day to be over. Her skin tight, itchy, and hot, every crease in her body lined with clumps of gristly sand.
Her mother sighed and lit another cigarette. Baby oil had seeped into her calves, her skin a coated sheen of plastic-looking hide. She pecked her magazine and clicked her tongue. Ash fell into the spine. “Come on, girls. It’s time to get this stuff picked up and get on home.” She tossed the magazine into her bag, stood, and gestured her cigarette at the yellow buckets and Fresca cans at their backs. She glanced at her own things—chair, beach bag, baby oil screwed into the sand. “Easier said than done,” she said, and Elin didn’t know if she was talking to them or the magazine.