The Language of Sisters

by Cathy Lamb

  “Well, we all love Hope and we’re all going to love the baby,” I said.

  “Yes, we are,” Ellie and Valerie said.

  “I wanted college for Hope, travel, a career. And now ...” JJ cried and we hugged her, a four-way hug.

  “She can still go to college,” I said.

  “It will be so much harder,” JJ said.

  “She can still travel,” Ellie said.

  “How? With a baby in her backpack?” JJ said.

  “She can still have an exciting career,” Valerie said.

  “Let’s be realistic. She’s a teenager having a baby,” JJ said. She rubbed her face. Exhausted. Devastated. “She’s a mother. She has no husband. It’s a wreck. The whole thing. A wreck.”

  Why pretend? Why be sickeningly positive, how irritating. Why try to gloss over it? We loved Hope, we would love the baby, but teenagers should not be pregnant.

  “Here, have another straight shot, JJ,” Ellie said. “I’ll drive you home.”

  Off in the distance I heard thunder. Of all nights, thunder, as if on cue.

  * * *

  There was a lot of talk about Hope that next week within the Kozlovsky family. Tearful phone calls with JJ. Phone calls with other members of our family. Shock. Disappointment. More tears.

  Jax was beside himself. “First he had to get his mind around his daughter having sex, his little girl having sex,” JJ said, slamming down a shot of whiskey at the bar at Svetlana’s Kitchen, “and now he has to get his mind around her being pregnant. His mind can’t get around that, so it’s about to combust.”

  My uncle Yuri and aunt Polina went to bed for the weekend, rocked off their feet. “First,” Uncle Yuri said to me, calling me from bed, “it is the friendship, Antonia. You have to be the friends. Then you ask the parents, can we date? If the parents say yes, then the date. Parents come, too. No kissing. Then the kissing if the person is right for you. Then you ask the parents, can I marry your daughter? If they say yes, then the engagement. Only kissing. Then the wedding. Families come together as one family. Then the babies. Everyone happy. This not right order.”

  My aunt Polina took the phone from Uncle Yuri. “Baby in the baker, that’s what they say here, right? A baby in the bun. She’s knock-knock, right? This baby too soon in the bun. I cannot believe. Antonia, how this happen?”

  But, as my father said at our next family gathering, a birthday party for my aunt Holly, where people were still reeling from the pregnancy, “All the babies—gifts. Some come earlier than we expect, no? But in this family, we love all the babies. We love Hope and we love the baby.” He clasped his hands together, then switched to Russian. “This is my final word for the family—for everyone—on this subject.”

  And so it was.

  Poor Hope, she of the excellent grades and a bright future, she who had followed all the rules except for when it came to her boyfriend, Macky Talbot, sitting right next to her. She burst into tears.

  Then the cousins started fighting over who was going to give her a baby shower.

  And so it was.

  We stopped the talking. Stopped the chatter. Let the shock go. These things happen. We are the Kozlovskys. We are a family. We are not perfect, have never tried to be, have never pretended to be.

  10

  Nick calls me about once a day. He wants to chat, say hello, see how I’m doing. Or he’ll text. Sometimes he’ll ask what I’m doing that night, or he’ll now and then suggest meeting downtown for a date, which I don’t accept, or he’ll ask about an article I’m writing, see how a meeting went that I had previously mentioned.

  I like talking to Nick. I like hearing what he’s doing—as much as he can tell me. Most of the time he’s the top guy running the undercover drug operation, which sounds mind-numbingly stressful to me, especially when he’s working to bring down the big guns where the busts end up in the paper.

  Sometimes he’s asked to help with a coworker’s operation. He buys, sells, and moves drugs and helps to facilitate, transport, and launder money to build cases against the drug dealers he works with. He’s on the ground working and sometimes in trucks and airplanes.

  Nick initially works with the smaller dealers, through a contact and introduction, often through an informer, then finds out who is above them, and above them. The goal is to get to the top of the drug pyramid and bring down the whole cartel, gang, or organization and send the whole lot to jail without any drug enforcement agents getting discovered, hurt, or killed beforehand.

  “They deal in misery,” Nick had told me. “That’s what they bring to everyone whose lives they ruin and to their families. My job is to break up the misery train.”

  When I think about the dangers inherent in his job I feel cold and sick, nauseated, and tired.

  But we like talking about other things in life, too—the weather, the dock and our friends there, what funny thing the Quackenbusches did that morning. We talk about movies. We talk about social and political issues, national and international issues. The conversations are interesting, challenging to my tired brain. He makes me think, because he’s so, so smart, quick, open-minded. He listens to me, he asks my opinion.

  And still, I push back, and don’t commit to him, to us.

  The first time that Nick and I got naked together, three months after I moved in, it didn’t go well. I was holding an ice pack to my face. He was coming out of his houseboat, I was walking into my tugboat.

  “What the hell happened?” He was ticked. He pulled off the ice pack and sucked in his breath when he saw the swelling and the bruise.

  “Nothing much. I went to a car accident, two jerks chasing each other, a couple shots fired. One car slammed into a tree, another into the side of a building downtown. I was there quick, as it happened right down the street and I was finishing up with a tiny shopping spree. Anyhow, one of the guys went running and ran smack into me and knocked me over.”

  “Damn, Toni.” He was upset, I could tell.

  “It’s nothing. My bags scattered, but I managed to save my new blue heels.”

  “It’s not nothing. That ... damn.” His jaw clenched.

  “It feels a lot better than it did before.”

  He shook his head. “Here, come to my house, please? I have soup from Katie’s Kitchen.”

  “Soup from Katie’s? What kind?”

  “Broccoli cheese. Potato with bacon. Clam chowder.”

  “Yum.”

  “Please, Toni. Come over.”

  It was hard to admit it, but having Nick take care of me was worth getting run into by a criminal. We ate the soup, the bread, the salad. We sat on his couch and watched a movie. It was a thriller, but no violence, about space and astronauts.

  When the movie was over, he turned and kissed me. I put my hand behind his head and pulled him closer. He was warm. He was sexy. He was a heck of a kisser.

  I had been lonely. I had been ruined. I had been in I’m-Trying-Hard-Not-To-Want-To-Die mode for almost two years, and Nick was the sexiest man I’d ever met. He had been kind from day one. He had been attentive, he had smiled that Nick smile, he had seemed interested in who I was as a woman and how I thought.

  I could not resist. I ran my hands up his shirt, and he took things from there. Everything was going well. My silky shirt was off, my lacy bra was off, I’d whipped off his T-shirt, and he was lying on top of me on his wide couch, kissing me until I couldn’t think, my chest against his. I wrapped my legs around his, and the tears came at that inopportune second. I didn’t even know what was on my face at first. A tight sob pierced the room. He lifted his head from my arched breast.

  “Baby, what’s wrong?”

  I couldn’t speak. I could only cry.

  I put my hands over my face. He pulled my hands away, gently, oh so gentle, kissed my mouth, and pulled me up and onto his lap while I cried. We did not have sex.

  I woke up at two in the morning, in his bedroom, my arms wrapped around him. I was absolutely mortified and humiliated. I peeled
myself away and snuck into his family room. I found my pants, but not my underwear, and pulled them on. I found my shirt but could not find my bra, and pulled that on, too. I was on all fours searching under the coffee table for both when he walked in.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I’m trying to find my bra.”

  “Here it is.” He reached behind a couch cushion.

  “Thank you.” I turned and peered under a side table, rear in the air.

  “What are you looking for?”

  “My underwear.”

  He found it under a pillow and handed it to me. The red lace looked tiny and overly feminine in his hands.

  I turned to leave.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Home.”

  “Why? Stay here. Let’s go back to bed.”

  “No. Thank you.” My voice sounded prim. Proper.

  “I’d like you to stay.”

  “I can’t, not tonight.” Formal. Tight.

  “Why can’t you stay? We don’t need to make love. I understand, Toni, I do. But I’d love to sleep with you, love to wake up with you.”

  “I’m cranky in the morning.”

  “I’ll make you coffee. You’ll feel better.”

  “I’ll have morning breath.”

  “Everyone does. Stay here, please.”

  “Nick, no. I’m a wreck and a mess and I can’t do this. I’m sorry about what happened.”

  “Don’t be. I’m sure not. I liked it.” He smiled that Nick smile, sure and friendly. “Until you cried, I meant.”

  “I don’t know what happened. I shouldn’t have cried. I ...” I threw my hands up. “I’m a head case.”

  “You’re not at all.”

  “I have to go. I’m sorry, Nick. I truly am.”

  He studied me. He wasn’t mad, I could tell. He was sad. “Okay, Toni. I’ll walk you home.”

  “I’m two doors down. You don’t need to do that.”

  “Yes, I do.”

  And he did.

  The next day I found chocolates on my doorstep.

  My first thought: He’s a kind man. My next thought: Daaaanngg. I’m in trouble.

  * * *

  Nick called me on my lunch break. I had snuck out to buy Lace, Satin, and Baubles lingerie. I told him what I bought.

  “Can’t wait to see it,” he said.

  “I’ll bring wine.”

  “I’ll make dinner. Let’s have dessert first.”

  “Always a smart move.”

  * * *

  When I got home from work, on my front porch were ten pairs of duck panties. I laughed, then went to Daisy’s houseboat to thank her. Cracked me up thinking of Georgie, aka Slash, buying them for me. Maybe I’d model those for Nick, too.

  * * *

  “There’s something I keep trying to remember, Toni,” he said.

  I juggled the phone. It was Sunday evening and I was in my bathtub eating peanut butter out of the jar with chocolate sticks. Nick had worn me out the night before.

  “It’s there. It’s right there, and I can’t bring it up.”

  “Is it the shadows again?” I put the chocolate sticks down.

  “Yes, the shadows, but it’s the screaming, too. I can hear it, but I can’t, too. It’s like ... it’s an echo. Everything is dark. I’m scared. I’m watching it, but I can only see it on the wall. It’s like it’s a movie, only I can’t see the movie. I am making no sense.”

  “Who was there? Do you remember anyone?”

  “I don’t know, Toni, but I think it was two people. I also think I knew someone named Lu Lu.”

  “Can you picture her?” I heard his anguish, his pain.

  “I don’t think so, but the name ... Maybe it was a dream. A very bad dream, but ...”

  “But what?”

  “But it doesn’t explain the other memories. The wood ducks, the blue box with the fancy lady on it, the garden, red toy trucks. Last night, in my dreams, a blue door kept opening. I think I lived in a house. I do. But then, what happened?”

  Never tell, Antonia, never, ever tell.

  “I had a home, so somehow my parents or whoever was raising me, my mother, they must have died or given me away to the orphanage.”

  “I’m so sorry, Dmitry.” In so many ways, I’m sorry, and I will fix this.

  My adopted brother, Dmitry, the brother who is haunted by memories he can’t latch onto, is twenty-eight years old, give or take a few months, or a year, and has blond curls. He is the only one of us with blond hair.

  He has light green eyes and he’s built like a cement truck. He played football in high school and made at least one touchdown each game.

  I heard my father say to my mother during one football game where Dmitry made two touchdowns, “That one fast kid we have, Svetlana.”

  My mother said, “Runs like the devil is after him.”

  “I think the devil after me, not him.”

  “Perhaps the devil after you and me, Alexei.”

  “We will have to run fast, too, Svetlana.”

  Maybe the devil was after me, too. That’s how a secret feels when you’re hiding it from someone else, when you know that you should tell the truth but you can’t or won’t.

  Long ago I had promised I wouldn’t. I would break that promise, but I would not do it now. Dmitry had to be home. He would feel as if he’d been run over by a bulldozer when I told him.

  I had only a piece of his truth, but it was enough to pull out the first string of the secret, which would start to unravel the rest. My parents would have to pull the rest of the strings.

  They adored Dmitry, but when we were growing up there was sometimes this inexplicable tension between Dmitry and my father. Dmitry, especially as a young boy, seemed to be afraid of him, he’d pull away, or he would see my father and then hide. It translated into some anger issues between them when he was a teen, though my father was unfailingly kind and loving.

  I thought, though, that how Dmitry felt about my father was rooted in the deep mystery of his past. It had to be. I could tell he was spiraling into that pervading sadness and aloneness again.

  “When are you coming home?”

  “Not yet, Toni. But soon. Did you get the embroidered shirt I sent you? I sent shirts to Valerie and Ellie, too.”

  “I did. We did. Thank you. We all wore them to our Pillow Talk night. Mama loved the paper flowers and Papa loved the Mexican wallet.”

  “Miss you. Love you.”

  “Love you, too. Try to sleep more, Dmitry, please.”

  “I’m trying. If the wood ducks, the blood, and the rocking horse that rocks on its own would get out of my head and my bed, it would be easier.”

  I didn’t have all the answers for him, but I knew about the blood, and I knew that Dmitry was struggling again with the depression that had followed him from Russia.

  I am a secret keeper. It’s wrong. I’m wrong. I was trying to outrun the devil and it wasn’t working.

  * * *

  “We need to do something daring, shake things up,” Ellie said. “It will help me get control of my nerves.”

  “But let’s not get arrested,” Valerie said. “Bad for my job.”

  “That only happened twice,” Ellie said, waving a hand. “Charges dropped.”

  “Three times,” I corrected her. It was the three of us at one of Ellie’s long tables for Pillow Talk. Around us were Ellie’s fabrics—silk, cotton, taffeta, velvet, satins. Lace was in colorful bins, and glass jelly jars and boxes of buttons and trinkets, ruffles and ribbons, sequins and beads, fabric paints and paintbrushes, were stacked on shelves.

  “Charges dropped,” Ellie repeated. “We were young. High school. College.”

  We were caught with alcohol, twice, underage. Perhaps once we were on the roof of the high school at two in the morning singing. Perhaps we were drinking with friends in the middle of a football field another time, streaking naked across the goal line at midnight. Our parents were not amused.

&n
bsp; “Although that one time I was twenty-one,” Ellie said.

  I rolled my eyes. All the Kozlovskys had been rounded up for a bar fight. What were we supposed to do? A drunk man hit on JJ, grabbed her, and she shattered a bottle against the bar and threatened him with the jagged edge. Things went from there. “What do you want to do?”

  “Something that will help me to feel how I used to feel,” Ellie said. “Something so that I feel courageous and strong, and not weak and gutless like I do when I have to use paper bags to breathe.”

  “I want to do something fun,” Valerie said. “I’m prosecuting a serial killer. His sick, scraggly relatives sit right behind him and want to put me on a stick and cook me over a fire. His brother has a bald head that is covered in tattoos. His uncle has a nose ring and looks like King Kong. His mother has a strong resemblance to a gargoyle. May they all disintegrate like dust and fly away.”

  “Are you worried about Ailani and Koa?” I asked, suddenly feeling cold, as I always did when she talked about this trial. Was it foreboding?

  Valerie stopped sewing. “The risk to them is small. It’s me they want, and when this trial is over, they’ll go away. Plus, different people—a cop, a detective—have talked to them. Made them know that they’re watching them, that we know who they are and we know they’re gunning for me.”

  “Awful,” Ellie said. “Is anyone else cold?”

  My hands shook, a freezing chill blasting through my body. This trial was not right. Something was off. “I’m cold.”

  “I’m cold, too,” Valerie said. “I get cold every time I think about those bat catchers.”

  To distract myself I studied the owl pillow I was working on. I was using seven different fabrics for the feathers. The owl’s face and body were made of felt. I’d attach googly eyes and sequins when I was done. A kid, in the hospital for whatever reason, would love it—I hoped.

  Valerie was making a pillow for a boy, with a rowboat in the center, with a kid reeling in an oversized green and yellow fish. She, too, would attach googly eyes and sequins. Ellie was making a pillow for a little girl, pinks and yellow, a ballerina in the center. She would attach pink and white gauze for the skirt.

  “So, what’s fun to do?” Valerie said.