The Bird Sisters

by Rebecca Rasmussen

  Twiss ran into the house.

  “Bett!” she called. “Your letter finally came!”

  Bett was scrubbing down the linoleum in the kitchen, which Twiss’s mother had asked her to do (forgetting about Bett’s new nails—but Bett said, It’s all right, when Twiss’s mother remembered on her way out the door). She and Milly went to the general store to see if they could extend their credit line with another basket of Milly’s sugar cookies until next week when their father received his paycheck from the dairy, which was even smaller than when he’d worked at the golf course and which Twiss’s mother had trouble making work.

  When Twiss gave Bett the letter, Bett said, “It’s from Deadwater.”

  “That’s good, right?” Twiss said.

  Bett got up off her hands and knees. “If it were still June or July maybe. I’ve written my parents a letter every week since I’ve been here. This is the first one I’ve gotten back. The postman must feel sorry for me.”

  Bett took the letter upstairs with her and didn’t come back down.

  Twiss finished scrubbing the linoleum and then waxed it, too, because the silence in the house felt the same as it did the night she returned from the golf course, when she’d tossed her pillow at Milly and Milly had tossed it back and Twiss had fallen asleep thinking about the lonely look of the flag pin in the seventeenth hole. After Twiss was done with the kitchen floor, she moved on to the floor in the living room. The letter from Deadwater was a strong reminder that in a month Bett was going to go back there, a truth Twiss couldn’t scrub or wax away. In a fit of sadness and something else she couldn’t quite identify, she took Bett’s hip boots from the closet and hid them deep in the cellar where light didn’t reach. She couldn’t imagine spending almost a whole year without Bett. She just couldn’t.

  The morning dragged on and on, with Twiss watching the cuckoo clock and waiting for Bett to spring forth. She didn’t want to go up there without being invited, but at noon, after attempting to write a letter to Father Rice—Dear Father Rice, Why did you tell me that story and no one else? What is a Continental Divide?—she went up to her bedroom anyway.

  “It’s me,” she said to Bett, pressing her face against the door. “Can I come in?”

  “All right,” Bett said.

  When Twiss walked into the room, she found Bett sitting on her bed instead of on the SS Forest. “I feel braver over here,” Bett said.

  Twiss sat down beside her cousin. When she saw the wet spots on her pine needle pillow and on Bett’s cheeks, she said, “What’s wrong?”

  Bett touched the worn part of the letter. “Why did your mom marry your dad?”

  “I’m not really sure,” Twiss said. “She says for love, but she never says anything else.”

  “Didn’t your dad used to be an amazing golfer?”

  “He still is,” Twiss said.

  Bett smiled faintly. “My dad can catch a trout with his bare hands.”

  Twiss looked toward the window and the barn, her father. Ever since he took her to the course after it had closed, she’d lost the feeling of him watching over her and Milly, which made her wonder if he’d been watching over them at all.

  Bett let go of the letter. “My mom says she married my dad because he fried his own eggs in the morning. She says she’s divorcing him for the same reason.”

  “Your mom and dad are getting a divorce?” Twiss said.

  “I knew it since she sent me down here. I just didn’t know it officially.”

  All at once, Bett pulled Twiss to her. “I’m going to be all alone.”

  Although Twiss had seen Milly and her mother cry plenty of times, and although she’d cried a few times herself, seeing tears roll down Bett’s cheeks frightened her.

  “No, you’re not,” she said to Bett.

  Twiss stroked her cousin’s hair as softly as her calloused fingers could. Bett’s skin smelled of slightly soured milk and starch, which might have been off-putting to other people but wasn’t to Twiss. With her cheek, Twiss grazed her cousin’s shoulder and neck and the little blue vein that pulsed between them.

  “Everything’s going to be all right,” she said as gently as she could.

  Bett pulled back from Twiss a little. She looked at her a long while before she traced the freckles along the bridge of Twiss’s nose with her index finger.

  “You’ve got the Big Dipper on your face.”

  “I do?” Twiss said.

  “I almost believe you,” Bett said, her hands on her stomach. Quickly, before Twiss even knew what was happening, she pressed her lips against Twiss,’s which were chapped and a little bit sunburned.

  The two girls kept their eyes open and on each other; it was then that Twiss noticed the tiny dashes of green in her cousin’s brown eyes, which reminded her of crocuses peeking out from the earth uncertainly in April, the first evidence of spring. You are someone worth looking at, Twiss thought. She didn’t realize she was being kissed until the kiss was over.

  “If you were a boy,” Bett said, “I’d marry you right now.”

  Twiss touched her lips with the tips of her fingers, wondering about the tingling sensation at the corners of her mouth, the leaping of her heart against her ribs.

  Bett drew her fingers to her lips too. “Promise me you won’t tell anyone about my parents. You’re the only one I can stand knowing the truth.”

  After that, the two of them went back downstairs as if nothing had happened.

  Twiss wasn’t sure what had happened, only that she felt strangely happy, floaty even, when earlier she’d felt grumpy. Milly and her mother came back from town, and Bett helped them prepare a meatless lunch—Thank the Lord! she said in a voice as happy as anyone else’s.

  Twiss went out to the barn to ask her father for advice about her tonic. The fact of Bett’s lips pressed against her own made Twiss forget about what Bett had told her, the same way she’d forgotten about Father Rice and his stone.

  Selfish, she’d later think of her response and wish she’d done more to assure Bett that everything really was going to be all right. Maybe then it would have been.

  As it was, Twiss skipped all the way to the barn. Dr. Greene and Mrs. Collier, both long without a spouse (although for not much longer as fate would have it), were supposed to be bringing over a bag of medicinal roots as well as a few cases of Mrs. Collier’s Mason jars that afternoon. Mrs. Collier said she had better things to do than make jam now that Dr. Greene had taught her how to drive. She’d taught him how to knit.

  “You have to be careful,” Dr. Greene had said when Twiss told him she’d been thinking about using rhubarb leaves. “You don’t want to accidentally poison the entire town.”

  “I guess not,” Twiss had said.

  Mr. Stewart, Milly’s science teacher, had also offered advice. He’d brought over a glass beaker and a pair of safety glasses from the laboratory at school, as well as a sheet of paper filled up with equations.

  “Maybe you should show that to Milly,” Twiss had said. “She got an F because she wouldn’t dissect a sheep’s eye. I’d get an F even though I would.”

  “It was a brain,” Mr. Stewart said.

  “See?” Twiss said.

  Mr. Stewart folded his equations and put them back into the pocket of his pants. “Your sister may be the only one who doesn’t think I’m irrelevant.”

  “Milly doesn’t think anyone’s irrelevant,” Twiss said.

  Twiss knocked on the barn door.

  “Dad?” she said, just as her father came to it with Rust-O-Lonia in his hand. His arms were covered with sand and sweat. A wood chip was stuck to his cheek.

  “Bett says I have to put something secret in my tonic,” Twiss told him, which Bett had told her when she’d passed by the bathroom and saw Twiss dumping baking soda into the tub—People won’t want to pay for what they can mix up themselves. You’ve got to give them the impression of exclusivity, like, “If you don’t buy this, you won’t have a shot at happiness.”

 
“I’m making something too,” Twiss’s father said.

  Now was the time to ask what he’d been doing in the barn, but Twiss couldn’t. “Bett said people like secrets even though they say they don’t,” she said instead.

  “How old is your cousin?”

  “Eighteen,” Twiss said.

  “I’d have thought she was older than that,” her father said.

  “Why?” Twiss said.

  “For everything she understands.”

  “Like what?” Twiss said, thinking Bett’s mine!

  “She’s a really good listener,” her father said.

  “I haven’t noticed,” Twiss said, thinking You’re mine!

  Twiss was about to tell her father that Bett had broken whatever confidence they had and told her and Milly the story of Jester almost drowning in the river, when it occurred to Twiss that that might have been his aim. But why?

  “When it’s finished,” her father said, looking at Rust-O-Lonia and then over his shoulder at whatever he was making in the barn, “everything will be wonderful again.”

  Even though Twiss could have pushed past him and discovered what was going to make everything wonderful again, she didn’t want to have to take what wasn’t hers; she wanted to be invited in. That her father had invited Bett into the barn made Twiss wild with jealousy, although she was confused about who she was jealous of.

  “Bett has a bald spot on the back of her head,” she told her father.

  “Is that so?” her father said.

  “She has lice, too. When I changed her sheets, I saw them jumping all over her bed.”

  “It can’t be as bad as that,” her father said.

  “Her toenails curl under they’re so long.”

  “We should write to the Guinness Book of World Records.”

  “They break off,” Twiss said. “I doubt they’d get here in time.”

  Her father put down Rust-O-Lonia. “You’re greener than the greenest green.”

  “Bett thinks green is just a color,” Twiss said.

  “In Deadwater, it probably is,” her father said.

  Before Twiss could open her mouth again, her father latched on to her arms and spun her around like he used to when she was a little girl. “Who’s my little champion!”

  “Put me down!” Twiss said, although she clung to his back the way she’d seen Milly cling to Asa’s in the meadow. “I feel sick! I might throw up on your shoe!”

  Her father set her on the ground, but not immediately. He spun her around one more time. While he spun her, he sang, “There’s nothing as wonderful as spinning my daughter around on a summer afternoon” to the tune of “Paper Moon.”

  “Those aren’t the real words,” Twiss said.

  “They’re the only words I can think of right now,” her father said.

  Which made Twiss forgive him for the milk pail and for Jester—whatever he’d meant by telling that story. “I was just kidding about Bett and the bald spot and stuff,” she said. “She just got a pedicure. It’s supposed to be French.”

  “Your mother must be jealous,” her father said. “When I met her, she used to have perfect little pink seashell toenails.”

  “Now she has wolf feet,” Twiss said. “Every night, she tears up her sheets.”

  “You’re terrible,” her father said.

  He reached into the back pocket of his trousers and handed Twiss a note to give to her mother. This time, the note was folded several times and taped securely shut. It was written on light yellow writing paper instead of on a scoring card.

  “Don’t read this one,” he said to Twiss very seriously.

  “What does it say?” Twiss said.

  “It’s a secret,” her father said.

  “Then why don’t you give it to her yourself?”

  “Just promise me you won’t open it,” her father said.

  “I promise,” Twiss said.

  “Double promise,” her father said.

  “I promise.”

  Twiss set off toward the pond to look for her secret ingredient, but she stopped when she got to the place where the reeds came up to her waist, and the barn and house were shielded from her view. She’d never read her mother’s or father’s notes without Milly standing beside her to translate their words into words that were more hopeful, but Milly was busy standing in the kitchen drafting plans for her cake for the town fair. She’d said she wanted to win the twenty-five-dollar prize to help bring Father Rice back, but tractor sketches were strewn all over the kitchen table, along with bowls of bright green frosting and a miniature steering wheel she’d fashioned from a rope of black licorice.

  Plus, Milly’s face couldn’t hold a lie, even for twenty-five dollars.

  Earlier, she’d gone out to measure the backseat of the car.

  “Don’t forget to account for potholes,” Twiss had said as a joke.

  “You’re right,” Milly had said thankfully.

  Mrs. Bettle had brought over a twenty-pound sack of flour for Milly to experiment with once she’d learned of the contest. Mrs. Collier had brought the leftover sugar she used to use for canning. The crowning offer was a small bottle of liquor from Mr. Stewart, who claimed he’d fallen in love with a woman once over a forkful of Grand Marnier–infused frosting.

  “Estelle,” he said. “That was her name.”

  “What does it taste like?” Twiss said.

  “Oranges,” Mr. Stewart said.

  “What happened?” Milly said.

  “She didn’t like fossils as much as she thought she did,” Mr. Stewart said.

  “Mrs. Bettle’s not married,” Twiss said to Mr. Stewart. “I bet if you drank the bottle instead of putting it in a cake, you’d fall in love with her, too. She looks like an ottoman, but you don’t seem concerned with the more superficial qualities of women.”

  “Twiss,” Milly said.

  “Milly,” Twiss said.

  “She’s right,” Mr. Stewart said. “I’m too sentimental for my own good.”

  With her father’s note in her hand, Twiss sat in the reeds. She snapped one of them off and positioned it between her thumbs. She used to be able to play the entire national anthem on a single reed, but today the reed broke after only a few notes, although Oh, say can you see … was just enough to attract Kingsley, the grandfather of all the snapping turtles that lived in the pond. Twiss jumped up and away. She didn’t toy with Kingsley the way she did with the other turtles; unlike his female counterparts, Kingsley lunged for whole limbs, vital organs. He smirked the way Twiss imagined real kings did when they sentenced someone to death.

  Why had her father given her a note that didn’t look anything like the others? When had he gone into the house to get the yellow paper? The tape? The nerve? Twiss thought about what she could do, what she should do, which led her to another thought, and then another. No teacher had ever believed her when she claimed that the dog ate her homework, and she was certain her father wouldn’t believe it if she told him Kingsley ate his note, either. But Twiss offered it to Kingsley anyway, who snapped the words up quickly, but with no more interest than he paid a golf ball or a tin can. Then he dragged himself back to the pond.

  Maisie …

  Margaret …

  I love you …

  I hate you …

  What would her father have written? What came between love and hate, Maisie and Margaret? Twiss went back to the house to draft a new note. Since her father hadn’t written the note on old scoring paper, the message may have been more positive than the other ones. She didn’t know why, now, after so many notes, this one felt so crucial to the future of their family. Lately, her mother was less mournful when she gazed at the barn, as if, like Aunt Gertrude, she’d begun to figure out how to live without Twiss’s father. Dear Maisie, she wrote, forming the letters in the slanty way her father formed his, I miss your perfect little pink seashell toenails. Will you go to the fair with me? Love, Joe.

  After she perfected his handwriting, Twiss folded t
he note the way her father had and taped it closed. Then she went to the garden where Bett and her mother were pulling up carrots and potatoes and placing them in their aprons.

  “Dad said to give you this,” she said.

  “What is it?” her mother said.

  “How am I supposed to know?” Twiss said. “It’s taped shut.”

  She pulled a carrot from the earth and threw it in the grass before she stomped back into the house. But from the kitchen window she watched her mother turn away from Bett to read the note. Her mother held on to the note with one hand until she saw how securely it was taped. When she let go of the end of her apron so she could use her other hand to open it, the carrots and potatoes she’d gathered fell to the ground.

  “Are you all right?” Twiss heard Bett say.

  “Clumsy is all,” her mother said.

  Bett went back to pulling up carrots, Twiss blushed at the thought of her cousin’s lips on her own, and her mother opened the note. After her mother finished reading it, she folded it back up and tucked it into the pocket of her dress.

  She knows it’s not from him, Twiss thought. She’ll give me a turn with every belt in the house.

  But just before her mother went back to the carrots and the potatoes, back to whatever she and Bett were talking about before Twiss had interrupted them, her mother looked down at her soil-black feet and wiggled her toes.

  That afternoon, Twiss’s mother and Bett sat on the porch together with glasses of iced tea, looking at a book about French impressionists. (“I love the way he captures light,” her mother said, to which Bett said, “Was the world a better place back then?” to which her mother said, “The world was always a better place back then.”)

  “Even the lily pads look hopeful,” Bett said.

  “Serene, I think,” her mother said.

  “Is there a difference?” Bett said.

  Her mother placed her hand on Bett’s.

  “My God,” she said. “I’m going to be sad to see you go at the end of the month.”

  Bett didn’t say anything—she just kept staring at the lily pads, the yellows and greens and blues. Usually, she would have said something about lily pads in Deadwater, maybe how they ate frogs and insects that hopped onto them.