Henry's Sisters

by Cathy Lamb

  We sisters worked at the bakery. Momma stayed with Henry and Grandma. Velvet helped with both. Dad came over after work to visit and baked up his incredible treats at the bakery. We insisted on paying him. He declined. We insisted. He declined again.

  ‘My greatest happiness is to be with you all in the bakery. Allow me to have that happiness,’ he said with a gentle smile. ‘My time there is a gift. A gift for me.’

  Momma and Dad made crepes for the whole family one Saturday morning. They swung in the porch swing. I wouldn’t say that Momma was doing well. She was a wreck, anxious, shaky, and, as always, hysteria was brewing, but Dad visibly, clearly, steadied her.

  Janie and I were hired out to handle a number of weddings, and as brides are not famous for their forgiving natures if their cakes don’t turn up, we couldn’t stop working.

  For a wedding for two eighty-year-olds, we asked them if they wanted a traditional cake with layers and flowers.

  ‘Hell no,’ the bride creaked out. ‘I had that at my first wedding. I stayed married for fifteen years to that monster. Flowers on wedding cakes still make me feel like my face is in a headlock. Now, can’t you girls come up with something more original? Come along, now! Don’t be old fogies!’ She prodded me in the knee with her cane, then Janie.

  ‘I’ll be damned if I’ll conform to tradition,’ the groom growled, who had been married to his first wife for fifty-one years until she died of a heart attack on a hang glider in Italy five years ago. His fiancée was her sister. ‘Bah! Not for me. Boring! Restrictive! Put your thinking caps on!’

  Well, we girls put our thinking caps on with the bride and groom and came up with a rather splendid idea based on a gift the two lovebirds had planned for the family.

  ‘This’ll knock their socks off,’ the groom cackled.

  ‘It’ll be a honeymoon no one forgets,’ the bride creaked out. She prodded me in the knee with her cane again, then Janie. ‘A humdinger.’

  It was an immediate-family-only wedding. The bride and groom invited their children – who were all first cousins – and their children’s spouses and the grandkids and a passel of little great-grandkids, out to their sprawling-view home near the gorge on Saturday morning. They told their family the wedding was on Thursday evening but had them come five days early for family time.

  The families noisily arrived on the dot at ten in the morning on Saturday. (The groom, Clarence, insisted on promptness. He had not been in the military for nothin’. ‘Be on time or don’t come at all!’)

  By twelve the minister had arrived, and Clarence and his bride, June, were no longer officially living in sin. Since Clarence had ‘no patience for little, pretty food,’ he insisted the caterers serve steak and potatoes on two long tables on the huge deck.

  They were a boisterous, laughing group, clearly delighted to be together and loving that June and Clarence had played a joke on them and got married earlier than they’d said.

  At the appointed time, with great fanfare, I brought the wedding cake out, a giant white cruise ship.

  I must say Janie and I were proud of this particular genius. The cake was strawberry flavoured – June’s favourite – the icing white, little windows were formed with slices of liquorice, gumdrops outlined the rails, the ‘pool’ was filled with blue icing, and the lounge chairs made from chocolate.

  That noisy family clapped and cheered. Clarence and June put their arms around me, then kissed right in front of my face. I struggled not to drop the cake.

  But we weren’t done.

  I put the cruise ship cake in the middle of the table, then Janie and I delivered to each person a box made out of frozen chocolate. The lid of the box had a ship’s anchor drawn on it with black icing.

  ‘Don’t you be eating your boxes yet,’ Clarence growled. ‘Don’t even touch them.’

  When everyone had their box (no touching), June creaked out, ‘Here we go, kids! Now, no screaming! Open your box!’

  Inside of each box, Janie had written this note, on instruction from Clarence: ‘Congratulations! You are coming with us on our honeymoon, a seven-day cruise in the Caribbean! We’re leaving in one hour. Get moving.’

  Pandemonium.

  And there was screaming, too.

  The bride and groom for another wedding wanted a traditional cake.

  The young bride, with a tattoo of a cobra on her chest, wanted all chocolate.

  The young groom ran a hand over his shaved head, then scratched his left pit. ‘I’m sick of chocolate. It gives me hives. One time I got a hive on my ass. You want that on our honeymoon? A hivey ass? My mother wants lemon.’

  ‘What kind of flavour is lemon for a cake, we wanna make the guests sick or somethin’?’ the bride whined, the cobra squiggling.

  We offered to do each layer a different flavour. Neither one of them liked that idea. ‘Then it’d be a schizo cake,’ the bride said. ‘Like his brother. Schizo.’

  ‘My brother isn’t as schizo as your aunt. God. She should be committed to a Looney Tune place.’

  We offered champagne cake as an alternative. They didn’t like that idea, either.

  ‘You drink champagne, you don’t eat it,’ snarled the bride, ‘and my parents said if your family wants to guzzle champagne, they’re footin’ the bill.’

  ‘My family’s not gonna guzzle champagne. They like beer, and your family better get a keg.’

  We offered white cake.

  ‘We got a nice, white virgin cake,’ the groom muttered. ‘Virgin, get it?’

  We asked about the colours of the flowers and they couldn’t agree on that, either. The bride told the groom that he was ‘so sick rigid, don’t you care what I want for my own wedding cake?’ and the groom sulked and said, ‘It’s my wedding, too, although your mother wouldn’t know that.’

  The bride defended her mother and said that at least her mother had bought a nice dress to wear and wasn’t going to resemble a blue tent. To which the groom almost choked on his tongue and said he would control his mother and her tent if the bride could control her drunken brother.

  Her brother was not a drunk, she insisted, but the groom made him nervous so he drank more and what about his sister who was Miss Goody Two-Shoes with that weird smile stuck on her face like glue? Talk about an overdose of Prozac! How in hell was she supposed to handle having to spend all the damn holidays for the rest of her life with that bitch?

  She’s a bitch? the groom asked. What about you?

  No, I’m not a bitch, you’re a control freak with a remote control stuck up your ass.

  And we stopped things right there.

  Janie said, her hands gently patting theirs, ‘Are you two sure you want to get married?’

  The bride and the groom gaped at Janie, seriously baffled, as if she had told them there were three-headed aliens from Pluto under the table.

  ‘Hell, yes,’ the bride said, her cobra swaying. ‘Why would you think we don’t want to get married? We’re here, aren’t we?’

  ‘Jeez. I thought you guys sold cakes.’ The groom scratched his pit again. ‘What are you, bakery psychologists or somethin’? She’s my woman!’

  ‘He’s my dude!’ the bride said, completely flummoxed by our question. ‘My dude!’

  They shared a tongue-wielding kiss.

  No, I thought tiredly, we’re not bakery psychologists.

  But businesswomen we were, and we got the full payment, non-refundable, up front.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  ‘Parker lost his job,’ Cecilia told me as we squirted cake batter into giant cupcake moulds for our überpopular heavenly cupcakes.

  I stopped the squirting.

  ‘His boss told him he was disgusted with his professional performance since the divorce and even more disgusted with his personal life. He told Parker he was running a family-friendly business for family-friendly people. He told Parker it was totally inappropriate for Constance to appear in a shirt unbuttoned to her waist and a miniskirt at the family picnic.’ She
squirted. ‘The girls told me.’

  ‘Well,’ I said, adding a touch of sanctimoniousness to my tone. ‘Parker may not have a job but at least he has Constance and her love.’

  ‘And his Corvette. Don’t forget the midlife crisis car.’

  ‘And a big-screen TV.’

  ‘Nope,’ Cecilia said, squirting again. ‘Constance threw a chair at it and broke it when they had a fight. No big screen anymore. Poor Parker.’

  ‘Yes, poor, poor Parker.’

  We were quiet for a second and then we both burst. The hilarity could not be contained.

  We laughed all day.

  During the weekend, I grabbed my camera and slung it around my neck. It felt so…right. Like I’d refound a piece of myself.

  I took photos of Henry with Amelia flying, Henry with Cecilia’s daughters standing on their heads. Henry with Janie and Cecilia and me, and Henry with Momma and Dad. I took photos of Henry with his friends, especially Lytle and Velvet, the seniors, Father Mike and Janice, and Paula Jay and the dogs and cats.

  I took photos of our whole family together on the porch.

  And I felt myself coming back to me.

  On a windy, blustery night, Henry woke up and vomited on himself.

  His wail, his pathetic, sad wail, woke all of us up and had us sprinting into his bedroom at a dead run, but it was Henry’s crying, his choked, broken crying, that bowled us over.

  ‘He’s asleep,’ I told Momma, Janie, and Velvet about two hours later. ‘Finally.’

  Henry had had his health problems over the years and vomit was the only thing that could get him really upset. ‘I hate throw up,’ he always said. ‘Make me sick.’

  Momma was sitting at the kitchen table with her shaking hands wrapped around her coffee cup. She’d tipped in Kahlúa to steady her nerves. I poured a cup of coffee and added Kahlúa myself. I drank it rather quickly.

  When we were growing up Momma rarely drank, but when times were bleak, when we were evicted, or Henry was in the hospital again, or when there was no money and no food, she’d pull a bottle out of the back of the pantry and have a glass. Our love of Kahlúa was one thing we shared.

  It was raining outside, grey, heavy, cloudy, windy. ‘How are you, Momma?’ I asked.

  She didn’t answer at first, and Janie and I braced ourselves.

  ‘How do you think I am?’ She stared at me with empty eyes. ‘The chemo is making my already-sick son more sick.’

  Velvet patted Momma’s back, poured her a little more coffee, and tipped in a wee more Kahlúa. ‘Take a breath now, love. Settle your feathers…’

  ‘He is on chemo because he has cancer.’ I saw her body start to shake.

  ‘He has a cancer that is incurable.’ A splatter of rain hit the windows.

  Janie tapped the table, put her hands in her lap, twirled her thumbs four times, and tapped the table again.

  ‘The chemotherapy will not save him.’

  I pulled my sweatshirt closer around me. Cold. So cold.

  ‘My son will die, maybe in pain that we cannot control.’

  I felt my whole body ache. Throb. Ache again.

  ‘How do you think I am, dammit?’ she shouted as she swept her arm across the table. The coffee cups, the creamer, the sugar bowl, and the Kahlúa bottle plummeted to the floor and shattered. She stood up, her whole body trembling. ‘How do you think I am? I am in hell. I am in total, complete hell.’ She lifted the table up with both hands and slammed it back down. ‘Dammit!’

  ‘Momma, please. Calm down,’ I said. I stood up.

  ‘River,’ Velvet said, ‘let’s you and I, sugar, have some of my lemonade…’

  ‘Calm down?’ Momma hissed. ‘Calm down? How can I calm down? are you stupid, Isabelle? Are you?’

  I knew Momma was devastated. I knew her heart was breaking in two. But the word stupid still hurt, always had.

  ‘My only son is being eaten, eaten, by cancer. I am going to grow old, without Henry, without my son. I will not be able to watch him run around like a plane. I will not be able to see him in church. I will not be able to hug him and hold him, and take him to the animal shelter, nothing. Nothing!’

  I closed my eyes. I was exhausted to my bones, crushed emotionally, and did not think I could take one more ounce of free-ranging pain in my life.

  ‘I love that boy, and you know what?’ She squeezed her head with her hands. ‘When he dies, I will have nothing. I will have nothing at all. Nothing.’

  She fell back into her chair, sobbing.

  At first I couldn’t move. Neither could Janie or Velvet.

  Her searing pain hit first, but I couldn’t help feeling this utter, selfish desolation. Momma had said when Henry died she would have nothing. Nothing. Nothing from stupid Isabelle.

  What about me and Janie and Cecilia? Weren’t we something to her? Weren’t we something? Didn’t she know that she wasn’t the only one grieving?

  I heard my voice, in the midst of that wave of despair, attacking her. I hated myself, then, but decades of smashed-down anger does not always erupt at the most appropriate of times. ‘What about us, Momma? What about us?’

  ‘What about you?’ Momma said. ‘This isn’t about you, Isabelle, it’s about my son!’

  ‘And our brother!’ Janie said, her face mottled. ‘What are we to you, Momma? Nothing? You say that when Henry dies you’ll have nothing? I’m here. Cecilia’s here. Isabelle is here. You’ve always treated us like nothing, Momma. Is that how you feel?’

  Momma tilted her pale face up.

  ‘Tell us!’ I screamed at her. ‘We have done everything we could for you, Momma. Everything. You’ve rarely hugged us. Do you realise that? You’ve hugged Henry. You’ve rarely told us you loved us, ever. You’ve told Henry you love him. Is Henry the only person you love? We’re nothing?’

  Her face was stricken.

  ‘We’re your daughters!’ Janie shouted, her face flushed, hands clenched at her sides. ‘You have criticised me my whole life. Nothing I have ever done is good enough. You can’t stand my books. You think I’m strange. I embarrass you. No one will ever want to marry me. I’m odd. I’m frumpy. You can’t stand my tapping and counting. Well, you know what, Momma? I can’t stand being with you, Momma. You make me nervous. I can’t stand you.’

  Momma’s mouth open and shut. For once, wordless.

  ‘You know what’s the saddest? Do you, Momma?’ I hugged my arms around myself and my loneliness. ‘Do you? All we ever wanted was for you to love us. That’s it. We wanted you to love us, hug us. It never happened. So tell me, Momma. Do you love us or are we nothing?’

  ‘My son is sick—’ she shouted.

  ‘We know!’ Janie and I shouted back.

  ‘What do you want from me?’ she spat out. ‘What?’

  ‘Maybe we want you to tell us that we’re something,’ I said, my breathing heavy. ‘That you love us. Maybe that’s all it is. But you can’t do that, can you?’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sakes!’

  I felt my insides crumble. Momma could not even say those three words.

  ‘Well, Momma, when Henry’s gone, we’ll be gone,’ Janie said, her face a rigid, red mask. ‘You’ll be happy then, won’t you? Then you won’t have any “nothings” around you anymore. You can have your home and your flying mother and we nothings – I think you said you raised a fat girl, a slut, and a wacko – we nothings will let you die and rot and decay and do whatever else it is that mean people like you do, all by yourself.’

  ‘Don’t speak to me like that, Janie Bommarito, don’t threaten me!’ Momma said, eyes flashing.

  My anger soared and dipped and crash-landed. ‘You don’t get it, do you? You’ll never get it, Momma.’

  She never would. I had always known that.

  Truth, in your face, though, is hard to take.

  Janie turned and stumbled outside, heading towards the willow tree.

  I followed her out.

  ‘I’m never having kids,’ Janie said later that
night when we were in bed in my room. We’d finished off a half gallon of chocolate ice cream and a bag of popcorn. ‘I’d be a terrible mother.’

  ‘You’d be a great mother,’ I told her, licking the spoon. ‘Your kids would know how to count before they were one. And tap. And worry.’

  She elbowed me. I chuckled.

  ‘I’d love to see the stories they’d write in first grade,’ I said. ‘They’d probably be scary enough to stand their teacher’s hair on end.’

  ‘I would teach them about love and serenity and peace and the delicate balance of our planet—’

  ‘And how to hang someone without getting caught.’

  ‘Stop it, Isabelle.’ She pulled a pillow towards her chest. ‘What about you? Do you think you’ll have kids?’

  ‘No.’ That was a fact.

  ‘You can’t be sure about that—’

  ‘Yes, Janie, I can.’ That ol’ pain blasted me in the stomach. Right about where I would have held a baby.

  ‘Why?’ She turned towards me, putting two flowered journals and a book on how to hypnotise yourself on the bedspread.

  ‘Because, Janie, as you know, I do not have a real healthy sex history. I would label my behaviour as semi-suicidal.’

  That was the truth. I had been reckless, unguarded, a loose cannon. I could almost feel my veins and arteries clenching with pain as I spoke. I had never told Janie, or Cecilia, this one devastating…thing. ‘I got a disease years ago.’ I choked up. I could hardly say it out loud. ‘I’m healthy now, but I can’t have kids.’

  Silence.

  More silence.

  ‘Never. I can’t have kids.’ The pain of that statement seemed to engulf my every cell.

  We didn’t move for a minute, then Janie did what only the best sisters know how to do: hug, and don’t ask questions. ‘I’m sorry, Isabelle, I’m really, really sorry.’

  ‘Me too,’ I whispered. ‘Me too.’

  She wiped one lone tear off my cheek.

  We slept like spoons that night, me and my sister, and she rocked me when my body shuddered with grief. The area where a baby might have been, but never would be now, felt empty and lost.