Sisters ... No Way!

by Siobhán Parkinson

  We all arrived at Lisa’s house a bit creased and squashed. I was back in my brown school shoes (I haven’t had the courage yet to tell Dad about losing one of my boots) with one of Ashling’s kilts, because my jeans got torn in the incident on the bus too, which I didn’t discover until the next morning, and it was too cold for one of my Lisbon dresses, and the only other thing I had was my school uniform or Mum’s tracksuit, neither of which was suitable for the occasion. I am going to have to get some more things to wear, but I hate spending money on clothes, as I am growing all the time at the moment, so it seems a bad investment. I have an economical streak. I think I get that from Dad. The kilt was a bit prissy on me, even though it is a short one, but it does a nice little swing when you walk, which I think is the effect of the pleating. I wouldn’t mind getting a skirt for Christmas.

  The christening was lovely. Fr Egan was there, and he blessed the baby (who is home now, and very, very tiny, but doing fine), and formally named her Sandra even though he couldn’t rechristen her, and there was champagne and little lumps of paté on soggy Ritz biscuits and cocktail sticks with cubes of cheddar and glacé cherries and grapes and olives skewered onto them. I can’t think why people do that. The combination of glacé cherries and cheese is revolting. Afterwards, we had christening cake and coffee. Alva wanted to have champagne, but her mother wouldn’t let her and she wailed, But I always have champagne, I love it. Which is of course a complete exaggeration. It just goes to show that if you let a kid like that have an inch she’ll take a mile.

  Lisa’s mother was dead proud of Sandra, and she walked around talking to all the guests with her all wrapped up in a little pink blanket. I think pink is putrid, especially when it is used to colour-code babies. The poor little creature is very red and her skin is a size too big, so that she looks like a scalded tomato, so all in all the shocking pink they make her wear doesn’t exactly suit her, but even so, you couldn’t help admiring the tiny little fingers, the way they curl around your finger, and sort of wave and wriggle, each one individually, as if they were alive, I mean alive in their own right. She has lots of hair, jet black, but it’s sort of glued together in places with cradle-cap (baby-crap Lisa calls it, which is a bit crude), and the wrinkles in the palms of her hands are really deep. She makes the most tremendous racket when she cries, like a smoke alarm. You wouldn’t believe a thing so small could make so much noise – though come to think of it, smoke alarms aren’t very big either – and she really throws her whole body into it. She looks like a prisoner trying to escape when you see the blanket heaving and churning with her all wrapped up inside it. The funny thing is, when that smoke alarm goes off, the one thing you want to do is stop the dreadful, penetrating noise it makes, but you don’t want to stop it just because it assaults your eardrums, you want to stop it because she really convinces you when she does it that she is in some sort of a serious predicament, and urgently needs adult attention.

  Sandra’s mother thrust her at me at one point in the proceedings, as I was the nearest person without a drink in my hand when the doorbell went. I think she didn’t want to take the baby out to the hall, as she is so tiny, and it’s draughty out there. They have to be extra careful with her. She weighed hardly anything, like a kitten in a nightdress, and she started to mewl in my arms – not her smoke alarm imitation, just sort of unhappy squeaks and squawks. Margaret came rushing over to me. I could see she was bursting to take Sandra from me, and she had the silliest smile on her face. I think she must be in the mushy stage. Anyway, she didn’t take the baby from me, but she showed me how to hoist her up on my shoulder and walk her around, giving her little rhythmic pats on the back. It was sort of sweet really. I suppose it reminded her in advance, if you see what I mean, of her own baby. It worked. Sandra stopped mewling and started making the softest little purring sounds you ever heard. Maybe she really is a sort of kitten baby.

  I had meant to keep a lookout for signs of dysfunctionality in Lisa’s parents’ marriage, but what with minding the baby and everything, I forgot all about it. I’m not sure what I expected to see anyway. The whole thing about the way they behave is that they present this façade of happiness and togetherness, and I don’t suppose there would be mounds of gin bottles in the back garden or anything like that. Sometimes I wonder if Lisa is not just making it all up, to get attention, but then I feel ashamed of thinking like that. Nobody really knows what goes on in other people’s families. Although what goes on in my family is all fairly public. A bit too public, for my taste – it is no fun knowing that the whole school knows your father knocked up one of the teachers and they had to get married, not to mention the indecent haste with which all this happened after your mother died. Still, I suppose those things are a bit of a nine days’ wonder, and I don’t hear all that much about it now, though they probably say things behind my back. I think old Gravyface giving Emma O’Mara a piece of his mind was a help. She keeps well out of my way anyway, thank the stars.

  Thursday 20th November

  There was a mysterious message on the fridge for me when I got home from school today. Margaret is one of these neurotically tidy people, and she has all these systems going. It’s quite nice to have a tidy house, but the systems drive me mad. I feel like sabotaging them sometimes, but then I catch sight of her sort of lugging herself around and I feel sorry for her. She’s a bit long in the tooth for coping with the stresses of a pregnancy, and I don’t suppose it would be very fair to start making things difficult for her. I can be a very tolerant and thoughtful person, although most people don’t seem to appreciate this.

  Anyway, one of these systems of hers has to do with phone messages. She has a little sticky pad by the phone in the hall, and by the one in their bedroom too, I think, and when anyone rings up for someone who is not there, whoever takes the call is supposed to write the message on one of the sticky slips and put it on the fridge. She has little magnets on the fridge too. They are not for holding the messages, as those are self-sticking. Instead, they are for dividing up the fridge door into areas. Each magnet is in the shape of a letter, and your initial is supposed to indicate your area, and all your messages are supposed to be left in the area under your initial. You have to sort of imagine that the fridge is divided up into columns, and each column is headed by a letter, all in alphabetical order of course (maybe Margaret could get a job advising graveyards about how to sort out their occupants). Ashling and Alva have the same initial, but they are in different colours. The only thing is, I can never remember which one is which, so if I have a message for either of them, I just leave it sort of hovering between their two columns. I think this irritates Margaret intensely, but she is working hard at not showing her irritation. I wish she would. A good fight would be great to clear the air. It gets a bit tense around here, with everyone being so nice to everyone else. Even Dad is on his best behaviour. It can’t go on like this. I mean, this is supposed to be a family, a home, but it’s like being on permanent guest terms with everyone else. It’s not clear who are the hosts and who are the guests in this situation, but I think that’s because we are all both at different times, or maybe even at the same time. It’s tricky.

  Anyway, there was this message for me, under my C magnet. I don’t know who took it. I can’t distinguish their handwritings yet. It just said a Dr Martin phoned for me, and left a number. Our doctor is called Marron. I wondered if somebody had mis-heard the name, but we are on very friendly terms with our doctor, after Mum’s illness, and if she did need to ring up, which I can’t imagine she would, she wouldn’t leave a message that Dr Marron rang, she’d say Nuala rang, and anyway, it wasn’t her number, because I checked in the book.

  I decided I wasn’t going to ring the number that had been left, until I had thought about it a bit more. I suppose it could be the PhD sort of doctor – we have one or two of those at school, but none of them is called Martin. I suppose the Martin could be a christian name?

  Friday 21st November

  Another
message on the fridge. This time, it said that Dr Martin was trying to get in touch with me about a ‘podiatric’ appointment. (Somebody can’t spell.) I began to get a bit concerned at this. Paediatrics has to do with babies and children. Is someone trying to be smart? Or is there some sort of mixup? Maybe it’s really for Margaret, something to do with the baby. Maybe I should just ring up the number and see. Or maybe there is something unpleasant going on here. I think I’ll try ringing the number, but I’ll ask Lisa to be with me when I do, in case it is some sort of pervert.

  Saturday 22nd November

  I went over to Lisa’s with the sticky slips from the fridge this morning. She is pretty sharp, and she always knows what area of the city a phone is in by the number. I’m hopeless at that sort of thing.

  I found Lisa feeding the baby. Her mother couldn’t manage breastfeeding with all the other children to attend to, as it would have meant going in and out to the hospital all the time. She needed to be fed every two hours in the beginning. That’s why she’s on the bottle, even though she is still so young.

  I told Lisa the story, and she was as puzzled as I was when I said some doctor had been ringing for me. To tell the truth, I had been beginning to get a bit worried. Maybe it wasn’t a hoax after all. Maybe it was some clinic, ringing to tell me I had something wrong with me. I had a blood test once when I had a bad bout of ‘flu and they wanted to be sure it wasn’t some mystery virus. I don’t remember ever getting the results. That was six months ago, but maybe they lost the sample and it’s just turned up.

  Anyway, when Lisa saw the second slip, she said, It’s not paediatric, you dolt, it’s podiatric. I know, I said, that must be just a spelling mistake. But apparently it wasn’t. I’m supposed to be the one who is good at English, but I didn’t know that there is a branch of medicine called podiatrics. Apparently it’s a sort of upmarket word for chiropody. Well, that wasn’t much help. I don’t have corns or bunions or an ingrown toenail, and I don’t suppose they would show up in a blood test anyway. Verrucas might, though.

  What was the doctor’s name again? asked Lisa, burping the baby. Martin, I said, Dr Martin. It was only when I said it aloud that it hit me. It hit Lisa too at the same moment. Doc Marten. Doc Marten boots! It had to be somebody who knew something about my lost boot. Oh my god, I thought, it’s Robbie. I started to shake. My heart started to thump wildly against my rib cage as if it wanted to get out of my body. My tongue grew an instant covering, like the sort of cover you can buy to put on a hot water bottle, thick and furry and dry.

  I don’t know why I jumped to the conclusion that it was Robbie. It could have been Imelda, for example. She might have been playing a joke. I snatched the slip of yellow paper from Lisa, and examined the number again. No, it wasn’t Imelda’s number, and I was pretty sure it wasn’t her office number either. I don’t know her office number offhand, but I’d recognise it if I saw it. It might have been the bus-driver. No, it couldn’t possibly be the bus-driver. He didn’t know my name, he didn’t even know I’d lost my shoe. It might have been Robbie’s friend. What’s his name? Gerry, Gerard, something like that. Just Ger, I think, yes, Ger. But how could it be Robbie anyway? He didn’t know my name any more than the bus-driver did. No, no, he did, he knew my first name. Well, that wouldn’t be much help, he wouldn’t be able to find me in the phone book under my first name.

  This looks like a lot of thinking on paper, but it only took me seconds to think it in my head, even with my heart leaping about in my chest and my fingers shaking. As I stood there, gaping at the phone number, I became vaguely aware that Lisa was saying something. It was like hearing somebody far away, on the other side of something big and soft, like a cottonwool mountain. What? I said. What? What?

  I said, repeated Lisa with exaggerated patience, laying the baby back in her crib – she had nodded off at this stage, and she looked perfectly sweet, her little eyelids all pale and blue-lined and her face puckered and relaxed at the same time. Babies are OK. I said, What does the phone number begin with?

  Four, I said, it starts with four. Four what? Four nine, I said, Four nine two. That’s a local number, she mused. Well, I should have known that. I mean, that’s what our number starts with, that’s what Lisa’s starts with too, but I wasn’t thinking very clearly.

  I realised Lisa didn’t know about Robbie. She’d heard the story about the Doc getting stuck in the bus doors. The whole class had heard that and we’d all had a good laugh about it. I’d been a minor celebrity on the strength of it for a good two days, class clown, that’s me, if I’m not fainting in algebra I’m beating up a fifth year or entertaining the masses with tales of my weekend adventures. Lisa’d made the connection all right, as soon as I said Dr Marten out loud, but she didn’t know about Robbie. So I told her. Oh my god, she said. He kissed you. And you’d never even met him before. Oh lord!

  I hadn’t told the story properly, obviously. I’d only told her the facts. She was seeing it as the next thing to rape, whereas it wasn’t like that at all, it was completely different. I hadn’t made her understand what it was like, that it was a gentle kiss, a sweet kiss, a loving kiss, a thrilling kiss, not ugly, not slobbery, not rough. A kiss can be a surprise and still not be an intrusion. It took a while to convince her, but when I did, she started to get all enthusiastic.

  Well, you’ll have to ring him, she said. He’s rung you twice, after all. He must be keen. My heart, which had calmed down a bit by now, started off again, at an even faster pace this time. Oh lord, I thought, if this is what love is like, I think I’d rather pass on it, there’s just too much stress involved. And suddenly I thought of Dad and his phonecalls to and from Margaret in the early days of their relationship, and I wondered if their hearts had raced like this too. I felt a moment of tenderness for the two of them, ringing each other up, furtively, nervously, uneasily, those first few times at least.

  Come on, said Lisa firmly. Let’s ring this podiatrician. Ask him does he do left shoes only.

  So I did. I rang the number, and a woman answered. I slammed the phone down immediately I heard her voice.

  Cop yourself on, said Lisa. It’s probably his mother.

  His mother?

  Yes, he probably has a mother. Most people do. Oops, sorry, Cindy.

  She squeezed my arm when she said that. I didn’t mind. I know she wasn’t being cruel. But still, I felt the tears starting in my eyes. I swallowed and thought about chocolate cake. That’s a little trick I’ve learned.

  I rang again. The woman answered again, her voice sharp, probably anticipating another slamdown. I… I… I’m sorry, I seem to have been cut off the last time, I started. The thing is, I don’t know if I have the right number, but I’m looking for…

  And then I stopped dead. I couldn’t tell his mother I was looking for a Dr Martin. She’d tell me I had a wrong number and hang up. Lisa snatched the phone from me. My tongue had grown its hot-water bottle cover again, and I couldn’t go on. …a friend, she said. His name is Robbie, she went on, bright and clear. I don’t know his second name, I’m afraid, but he gave me this number.

  Then she stopped talking. There was silence for several seconds. I couldn’t bear to ask her what was happening, when suddenly she thrust the phone at me, jamming it up against my ear, It’s him, she hissed, it’s Robbie.

  I swallowed the hot-water bottle cover and said, Hello?

  Hello? he said back.

  I recognised the voice at once.

  Oh, Robbie, it’s you, I said. I was afraid it might be Dr Martin.

  He laughed, and I was grinning so widely my face hurt. Lisa tiptoed away, a delighted grin on her face too. She needn’t have. We didn’t say much, but we arranged that he would call around tomorrow, to deliver my boot.

  Sunday 23rd November

  I think this has been the happiest day of my life. At least, the second half of it was happy. The morning was sheer agony, waiting for Robbie to come. I didn’t know whether I wanted him to come or not. Half of the time, I
was afraid he wouldn’t turn up, and the other half of the time I was afraid he would.

  We had made an arrangement for three o’clock. I couldn’t eat my lunch. Dad was all concern. He made me some tea and tucked me up with a rug on the sofa. My fingers were stiff with cold as I took the cup from him, and I could hardly move my feet, they had seized up. Dad decided I was coming down with flu and he lit a fire for me. I couldn’t tell him the truth. Nerves always make me cold. But anyway, I think he likes me to be sick. It gives him an excuse to be fatherly. Sometimes I think he finds it difficult, and I know he’s feeling dead guilty. Not that I would ever let him know I know. He deserves to feel guilty.

  Three o’clock came and went. No Robbie. He’s lost the address, I decided. Three-oh-five, he’s changed his mind. Three-ten, he’s met somebody else. Ashling was practising. I could hear the elephant moaning from her bedroom.

  At a quarter past three the front doorbell rang. The elephant stopped moaning. I’ll get it, called Ashling, glad of a chance to take a break, I’d say. I don’t know how she stands that noise. It’s like one of those jungle vet programmes they have on the television. It’ll be the milkman, I said to myself. It wasn’t the milkman – it couldn’t be, on a Sunday – it was the woman next door wanting to borrow a ladder. Ashling got it for her. I heard her dragging it around the side of the house. I bet the woman next door only wanted to get a look at the new stepfamily. She’s an awful old wagon really. I’m sure she was disappointed in Ashling, she’s so neatly dressed and well-behaved, like a doctor’s receptionist. Then Ashling came back in through the front door, and then the kitchen door slammed. The elephant started moaning again before too long.