by Susan Juby
When I walked into the house, my mother was in the kitchen making coffee. Coffee is about the last thing my mother, who has the most threadbare nerves of anyone not currently being experimented upon in a lab, should have.
“Hello, Normandy,” said Sylvia from the living room. She has black hair with red accents, and aggressive eyewear. She used to run the horror division of a publishing company before she started representing writers and artists.
As always, I was happy to see her. She’s extremely un-suburban and charismatic and has this way of making you feel like you’re the only thing standing between her and death due to boredom.
“Hi, Sylvia.”
“Talk to me, Normandy. Tell me what you’re reading. I need the freshness of your young mind to clear my own suffocating cynicism and despair.”
Sylvia is in her forties. Now that I think about it, she’s probably about the same age as my parents. It’s odd. The difference between their forty and hers is the difference between a forty-year-old horse and a forty-year-old parrot. The horse is tottering around on its last legs, and the parrot looks the same as it ever did. My parents have this ground-down quality that is probably related to worrying about my sister. I also wonder if they’re exhausted by their never-ending wait for Keira to appreciate them or at least for their investment in her career to pay off, financially or otherwise.33 Sylvia, on the other hand, looks like she eats stress as an amuse-bouche and turns problems into cocktails. Or something like that.
The best thing about Sylvia is that she always asks my opinions about books and movies and music. I pretty much love her. She makes me wish I had an agent.
I sighed, like I wasn’t interested in being listened to.
“There’s this book called Auntie Mame. I found it at McGrew’s Second Hand.”
“Oh, my God! To read Auntie Mame for the first time. You lucky, lucky thing.”
I was disappointed she’d already read it, but trying to name a book Sylvia hadn’t already read was part of the fun. Lots of people say they read everything, but Sylvia really does.
“Have you finished it?”
“No. Too busy in school right now.”
“Ah,” said Sylvia. “You call me when you’re done with Mame. We’ll talk about it. The author, Patrick Dennis, had an amazing life. After selling millions of books, he left the writing life and became a butler. His employers had no idea who he was. Apparently he loved buttling.”
I made a mental note to look him up, and also to check whether buttling is a recognized verb.34
“What are you working on at the Art Farm?” she asked. The Art Farm is the name Keira gave to the G. P. Academy, with one part fondness to two parts disdain. I don’t think it ever occurred to my sister that some people need extra creative nurturing. She would have had mind-blowing artistic output no matter how she was raised.
I debated whether to tell her. Sylvia, for all her coolness, was in our house because of Keira. She was only there to see if Keira had snapped out of whatever state of suspended animation she’d fallen into.
I considered telling Sylvia about the Truth Commission. That was something that might catch her attention. It was just strange enough.
No, and no.
“Oh, you know. We’re doing oils in painting. We’re doing embroidery in traditional arts class. One of my friends is exploring small animal taxidermy.”
“Taxidermy? Really. How cutting-edge. It’s the hot thing in London right now, you know.”
I did not, but I wasn’t surprised. Dusk has a way of finding the edge of everything. She has some sort of trend-spotting instinct that I completely lack.
“English? Math? Computers? Science?” Sylvia asked. “What about those classes?”
“Oh, yeah, we’re doing those, too. I’m just telling you about the ones where I’m getting over a B.”
Of course, Keira never got a grade lower than an A and rarely lower than an A+, no matter what the subject.
“We’re also doing a creative nonfiction module in creative writing. I’m enjoying it,” I said, trying to keep Sylvia’s attention. She’d begun craning her head to catch a glimpse of Keira.
My mother came into the living room carrying a tray. She still had on her blue postal uniform pants and limp waterproof jacket. She set down the tray with two mugs of coffee, a carton of half-and-half, and a dish of sugar.
“I’m sorry, Sylvia. I can’t remember how you take your coffee.”
My mother can’t remember anything since Keira came home. As noted, we’d slipped into a new, more open way of living while my sister was at CIAD, doing the kinds of things that would make us look pathetic if they were shown in the Chronicles. For instance, my parents started socializing again with their few friends, such as the nice gay couple from Dad’s Diorama Club,35 and Mom’s only friend from work, a woman so glum, she makes my mom seem practically vivacious. And they’d started up with old hobbies that Keira had lampooned. My dad created reenactments of famous battle scenes using tiny, hand-painted models, and my mom handmade jigsaw puzzles. A few times I invited Dusk and Neil over, and even tried some minor alterations to my appearance, such as changing the direction of the part in my hair. No big deal to most people—daring in the extreme for someone who grew up under Keira’s magnifying glass. We made more noise and resumed doing some normal, everyday things.
Let me give you a specific, concrete visual36 example. As you know if you’ve read the Chronicles, the Earth mother’s37 hair looks like old rags. My real mother’s hair is quite limp, and not just because she’s a postal carrier and out in the elements all day.38 You see, Keira’s sensitive to noises, so no one in our house has ever used a hair dryer. But some people, like my mother, have fine hair and need a blowout for volume. About two months after Keira left for CIAD, my mom started blow-drying her hair. All of a sudden it looked cute. Lively. Full of body. Practically a L’Oréal commercial. The dryer disappeared the day Keira came home, and not just because the noise would bother her. I think my mom stopped blow-drying her hair because she remembered the spread in one Diana Chronicle that showed the Earth mother’s tragic attempts to curl her bangs, which, of course, was based on a real-life incident. My mom had been new to curling irons and her first attempts left her looking like she’d taped a sausage to her forehead.
The experiment should have been a fond family anecdote. Instead, it became a cruel joke in the Earth realm of the Chronicle. It inspired a Vermeer plotline in which the mother gets into a battle of the Grand Dames over who has the highest hair. The competition to create the most impressive edifice ends with the Vermeer mother’s enormous coiffure catching fire and burning down half the castle. Only Diana’s quick thinking saves them all from dying. The father is caught in a compromising position with some oranges and a scullery maid. Getting Flounder off her divan and down a staircase nearly cripples three knights.
All very funny, but I have to point out that it takes time to learn to curl hair, and a certain amount of privacy. That’s something we don’t have when my sister’s home. End result: none of us have styled hair. Living in our house is like being a reality television star against your will and without the requisite narcissistic personality. What would you do? Answer: as close to nothing as possible.
Back to the awkward coffee visit in the living room with my sister’s agent.
“This is perfect,” said Sylvia, smiling her crooked city smile. She lifted a mug to her lips and sipped politely.
My mother finally shrugged off her jacket and went to the hall closet beside the front door.
“So how are things going?” asked Sylvia.
“I think they’re going okay,” said my mother, still facing the closet. “Don’t you agree, Normandy?”
“Yeah,” I said, trying not to think about what my sister had told me in the dark. “Things are good.”
My mother sat down in the green chair, ea
sily the nicest piece of furniture in our house. Keira bought it before she left for CIAD. The chair was created by a famous German designer whose name sounds like something a school-yard bully calls you before delivering a beating. It cost about the same amount as Mrs. Dekker’s dually truck, and we probably shouldn’t sit in it because it might end up forming the basis of my parents’ retirement plan, but there are only so many seating options in the living room, which is pretty small.
My mother has a tendency to perch when she sits in the German chair, as though she’s worried there’s a hidden ejector button.
“Is Keira ready to speak to me yet?” asked Sylvia.
My mom and I exchanged glances. In another family, one of us might have gone to ask Keira if she’d like to come out and talk to Sylvia. But this was chez Pale.
“You know she loves you, Sylvia.” My mother’s hands clutched her knees. Her fingers looked raw. Her eczema had been acting up. “She just needs time.”
Sylvia put down her mug. “I feel terrible about this, and I don’t want to pressure her. But there is a financial issue at stake here. Keira’s financial future. My financial future. Perhaps your financial future. As you know, Keira’s main goal has always been to take care of you. She’s right on the cusp of being able to do that with this film deal. I don’t want to nag and I know I’m no longer Keira’s agent, but I negotiated the deal for the new Chronicle. So I have to represent her interests. It’s a year overdue. I know you’ve said she’s working on it. That early burn phase of a new work is intense. I want to respect that and I know you do, too. I just need you all to know that I’m here for you and for her. If you ever want to discuss anything.”
From anyone else this would have been four steps over the line, but Sylvia had been Keira’s agent since my sister was sixteen. She had been the person closest to Keira right up until the time Keira came home and stopped talking to nearly everyone.
Sylvia turned to look at me.
“Has she said anything to you, Normandy? What happened at school?”
I willed my blood to stop moving in my veins and my facial muscles to freeze. I’d made a promise. I wouldn’t repeat what she’d told me. It was a miracle that my older sister, after years of treating me like an inconvenience (or material), was opening up to me. Her trust made me feel respected, even if the “me” character in the Chronicles was a dud in every recognizable way. Discretion was all she’d asked. I had to show her that I was capable of that. Maybe she’d even redeem my character in the Chronicles if I proved myself worthy. I admit that part of me hoped she’d go back to school if I handled this situation right.
I shook my head. “No,” I said, the lie coming out clear and steady.
“She has to start talking. If we don’t know what happened, we can’t help her.”
My mother, her face even more drawn, said, “We have tried to talk to her, but she said she’s not ready. We’ve asked if she’d like a counselor, but she said no. She just wants to be left alone while she finishes the new book. She’s under a lot of pressure.”
Despite what my sister’s graphic novels may have insinuated, my parents are good people and hard workers. My mom, as I noted earlier, works for the Postal Service. In addition to carrying letters and packages, she carries all the weight and worries of the world. Okay, so in that regard the comics are true. She gives the impression that if one more letter-sized envelope is added to her sack, she’ll fall right over and die.
When my aunt called to tell us my grandmother had been diagnosed with terminal cancer, my mom got up and went to bed. She didn’t get up again for a week. My grandmother was sick for four months before she died, and I bet my mom spent half that time in bed. If she doesn’t collapse at bad news, she goes lightly hysterical. Then she collapses. (Other than that, she’s tops in a crisis.)
My dad works veg at Premium Foods. Again, that part of the Diana Chronicles is true. But he’s nothing like the dad in Vermeer. Yes, a few years ago he did have a short-lived affair with a checkout girl. He and my mom nearly split up over it. But that was a long time ago and they worked things out, even though it resulted in his ouster from the Diorama Club. He would never get it on with his first cousins, and we have no household staff for him to molest. He’s cheerful and wears an apron beautifully. He can help you pick the perfect pomegranate or pineapple, and his carrot arrangements are magazine quality.
Unfortunately, he’s not so skilled in the areas of common sense or practicality. That’s not me being critical. That’s experience talking. We are the proud owners of four vacuums, thanks to the charms of hyper-persuasive salespeople. We also have every cutting device known to humanity. In fact, our combined vacuum and knife holdings are worth serious money. I don’t even want to think what would happen to my dad if he had enough money to invest in a pyramid scheme.
One of my favorite writers is Flannery O’Connor—the way she turns the gimlet eye on various kinds of human frailty and stupidity and writes about scammers and serial killers and people with heads like cabbages. Flannery O’C didn’t shy away from even the sharpest truths. She would have had a field day with my parents. That said, she probably would have been kinder about them than my sister is in the Diana Chronicles.
If anyone really pressed my mother and father to do some full-contact parenting of my sister, they’d get completely overwhelmed and probably just buy another vacuum. I think Sylvia knew that, because she looked to me for answers.
“I know Keira’s working,” I said. “She’s in the closet practically every day.” I didn’t add that she also spent entire days MIA.
Sylvia’s face brightened. “That’s great news.” She handed me her card, just like she did every time she visited.39 “Where there’s work, there’s hope.”
I wasn’t so sure, but I smiled reassuringly anyway. It was the least I could do.
Bedtime Stories
That night, hours after Sylvia left and I’d gone to bed, Keira woke me up again.
“Norm,” whispered Keira. “Are you awake? You want to talk?”
She didn’t wait for me to answer. She slipped out of the closet and into my room, a mummy-shaped lump moving on whispering nylon feet.
“Come in,” I whispered, although she was already on my bed. My sister is very small.
“What did Sylvia say?” she asked.
I rolled onto my back and stared into the dark above my bed. “She just wanted to know how you are.”
“That’s so sweet. I just don’t feel ready to talk to her. There’s so much to deal with.”
“Yeah,” I whispered.
Keira lay down and I drew up my feet.
“Our last talk really helped me,” said my sister. “It helped me to realize that what happened wasn’t my fault.”
“Of course not,” I said. The mattress beneath me grew warmer. I read somewhere that if you put a frog in a hot pan, it will jump out. If you turn the heat up slowly, it will keep trying to adjust until it dies. As Keira resumed her story, my skin prickled in protest. I wondered how much heat I could stand.
My emotions turned end over end. Anxiety about what she was about to say got tangled up with happiness that she was talking to me, just like in the old days when she used to take me into her confidence. When I was a kid, I loved listening to my sister. Whenever I caught sight of her out in public, I felt a pride so sharp, it was painful. People paid attention to Keira, and she had this way of not noticing. Specialness was a particulate cloud that seemed to float around her.
One summer when we were both in grade school, my parents signed us up for an art camp. Keira was with the oldest kids. I was with the youngest. Our groups met in different rooms so I didn’t get to see her very often, but news of the extraordinary girl in the Picasso Blues spread even to us little ones in the Da Vinci Squad. The other campers talked about her in hushed voices. The camp leaders did, too.
“Keira Pale is you
r sister?” asked the Da Vinci Squad’s head counselor, a thin, faux-hawked college student home for the summer from Emily Carr University of Art and Design.
I nodded, feeling lucky that Keira was, in some way, mine.
“That must be intense,” he said. “Living with a genuine prodigy.”
I didn’t know what a prodigy was, but I loved the sound of the word and whispered it over and over to myself.
I even got a little bit popular at camp, a completely new experience, because everyone wanted to know all about my sister.
“Is it true she taught herself to draw like that?”
“Is it true that her first cartoon was published in the newspaper when she was only ten?”
“Yes,” I said proudly. “It’s all true.”
“I love her hair,” sighed one boy. “It’s like a painting.”
“I love her voice,” said a girl with too many braids in her fine hair. “It’s totally fascinating.”
My sister’s hair, which rose in a teeming mass, did look like a painting. As for her voice, people were always surprised that a body as small as hers could produce a voice with such a deep and intimate rasp. She always sounded like she was telling a secret. And her enormous brown eyes seemed to see things other eyes didn’t.
The best was when she actually spoke to you. She would sidle up and say, “What’s your favorite shade of green?” You’d want to give her the impression that you’d spent a lot of time considering the issue. No matter what your answer—the green of arbutus leaves, the green of your favorite gym shorts—she’d sigh and say, “Yes!” like she agreed with you absolutely. She made everyone feel like they’d just inspired her.
What a thing to inspire a real artist! A prodigy!