Three Sisters

by Norma Fox Mazer

  The rain increased. Thunder rattled the windows. Could lightning strike through the panes? Pane. Pain. She held her stomach. Liz and Scott in the car … sitting close to each other. The windshield wipers frantically beating, rain tapping on the little roof. Liz had pulled over to wait out the storm … so cozy in the car … like a little house. They’d kiss. Kiss and kiss and kiss. Not one tiny, measly kiss that lasted only a single moment, but long kisses, kiss after kiss, their arms wound around each other, making love with the rain streaming down the windows.

  Twenty-five

  The rain streamed down Karen’s neck. “Tobi, come on, Tobi,” she screamed. Tobi was coming over the top of the last hill, on the heels of a tall, fat girl in tight purple shorts. Right beside Karen, her mother and Jason were screaming their heads off, too. The rain had started about halfway into the ten-mile run sponsored by the Muscular Dystrophy Association. “They’re raising funds for research,” Tobi had said. “Want to sponsor me? A dollar a mile.”

  “Muscular dystrophy? That doesn’t have anything to do with speech pathology,” her mother had said.

  “It’s a good cause,” Tobi had said. “And it’s about time I entered a race. I need a challenge.”

  “You need a challenge, sweetie, the way a frog needs a raincoat.”

  Tobi came in tenth in a field of one hundred fifty. “Not bad,” she said later, when the four of them stopped in the Drumlins Country Club for brunch. She was still wearing her running shorts, with a hooded sweat shirt pulled over her T-shirt. Her hair was curly from the rain, which had stopped as suddenly as it started.

  “Better than not bad, toots,” Jason said. “That’s great. Isn’t that great, Sylvia?”

  “I think so, Jason.” Karen’s mother nodded and smiled. Everyone was nodding and smiling at everyone else—at least Jason and her mother were doing their share. When Jason smiled he showed a gold tooth, which gave him the look of a pirate. Her mother’s smile struck Karen as a touch too big, a touch too sweet. She was trying, but maybe trying too hard, to show Tobi that she accepted Jason. Karen wondered who her mother was kidding. Tobi? Or herself?

  “Hey, how many people could even run ten miles?” Jason said.

  “At least a hundred and fifty,” Karen said.

  Jason snapped his fingers, laughed, pointed at her, as if she’d said something really clever.

  He was on his good behavior. Being a model person. Showing that he, too, could be a nice, ordinary human being. He had held the chair out for her mother, remembered Karen’s name, and said brunch was his treat and he recommended the strawberry waffles topped with whipped cream.

  But the strain of being ordinary and nice must have gotten to Jason. And the strain of smiling so much and being so bland must have kicked her mother over the edge. “How old are your children, Jason?” her mother suddenly said.

  “Fourteen and eleven, Sylvia.” He gleamed his gold tooth at her.

  “Fourteen and eleven,” she repeated. “And the fourteen year old is the—girl?”

  “Right.”

  Her mother looked down at her waffle, smiling bemusedly. “What does that remind me of? Oh, I know. Tobi, remember when you baby-sat for that Muselli girl? What was her name?”

  “You mean Lydia Muselli?” Tobi said. “What about her?”

  “Remember—it was so funny. They called you up for New Year’s Eve and asked you to baby-sit? You were about fourteen then, yourself. And when you came home, you just burst into my room and said, ‘Mom! I’m only two years older than Lydia and she’s four inches taller than I am and twice as smart, and I was supposed to be baby-sitting her!’”

  “I don’t remember that,” Tobi said.

  The tension at the table was so thick it could have been beaten and used as a whipped cream substitute. Except, Karen thought, feeling the real stuff gurgling in her stomach, tension probably tasted like rotten eggs.

  “No?” her mother said. “That’s funny. We decided maybe they had wanted Liz and gotten mixed up.”

  “I don’t remember any of that,” Tobi said. “What’s the point, anyway?”

  Karen glanced at Jason. He was leaning back, his arms crossed over his massive chest, his eyes on her mother, his lips and the side of his nose lifted in a mocking, knowing expression.

  “Just thinking about ages,” her mother said. “People’s ages. Just thinking,” she said quietly, “that when Jason’s daughter was born, you were all of four years old, Tobi. Just thinking how you and Karen used to play together and there’s—what?—something over three years between you? Actually closer to four years, isn’t it?”

  Tobi flushed as red as the moment she had crossed the finish line.

  “Tobi—Jason—” her mother said. “Have you two thought—”

  “We’ve thought, Mom. We’ve thought about lots of things, surprising as it may seem to you. I thought you told me—” She seemed to become inarticulate with rage and pushed back her chair.

  “Tobi—”

  “You told me! You said—oh, what’s the point! I can’t talk to you!”

  “Tobi, I’m just—”

  “Nooo!” She covered her ears.

  That was the moment when Karen noticed that tension smelled like rotten eggs, too.

  It was Jason who smoothed things over. He walked away from the table with Tobi, his arm around her shoulder. They stood by the window that looked out on the golf course, his head bent toward hers, talking.

  “Oh. Oh. Oh,” Karen’s mother said. She rubbed her forehead, laughed, although she looked ready to cry. “I’m stupid. Sometimes I’m stupid.”

  “Mom—”

  “What’s the matter with me, Karen?”

  “I guess you’re worried about Tobi.”

  “But I told myself, Don’t fight her! You don’t lock horns with Tobi. You’ve got to give her time. She’ll figure things out. I’m sure she’s going to see that he’s too old for her. Underneath she’s sensible, I know she is, she’s not self-destructive.”

  “I don’t like him, either,” Karen said.

  Her mother looked up. “Honestly, I don’t know what I feel about him, except he’s too old. Tobi’s just—she’s so tender,” her mother said intensely. “She acts tough, but underneath she’s so tender. I’m so afraid she’s going to be hurt.” She started crying, then stopped, wiping her eyes quickly as Tobi and Jason came toward the table.

  They sat down and somehow they all managed to make conversation until they’d finished eating.

  Later on, what stayed with Karen was the thought that when Tobi wanted something, she went out and did something about it. She fought for it. She made it happen.

  On the corner of Oak Street, a girl sat upright on a chair near tubs of cream and yellow daffodils. She was pale, her hair pulled sharply back behind her ears. A hand-lettered sign at her feet said DAFFYS. GIVE ONE TO SOMEONE YOU LOVE. She reminded Karen of Mary Poppins, the same narrow-eyed, critical glance. Any moment now she might rise straight up into the air, flowers in hand, casting one last, severe glance back at the mess on Earth.

  Karen bought a single daffodil with an orange center. When Scott opened the door, she would hand it to him. He would ask her in. Then she’d say, You kissed me. It meant something, I know it did.…

  The downstairs door was locked. She rattled the handle. The door to the other apartment sprang open, and a man with a halo of scruffy white hair looked out. “He ain’t home,” he said, going down the porch steps. “He’s working.”

  “Oh.”

  “He got a truck,” the man said, stopping at the foot of the steps. “If you see the truck, he’s here. If you don’t see it, he ain’t here.”

  “Yes,” she said.

  The man shook his head. “Dumb people,” he muttered, and he went off down the street, bandylegged, hopping like an old gnome.

  Karen went around to the back of the building. The neighborhood was quiet, slumberous in the heat. In the tiny backyard, someone had planted an equally tiny garden. She
went up the wooden staircase, past the first floor apartment to Scott’s back porch.

  The back door was also locked, but the window leading into the pantry opened on the first try. She wasn’t surprised. She hitched herself up onto the sill, balanced on her belly for a moment, then wriggled through. In the kitchen, Harold and Alfred launched themselves at the pantry door, barking halfway between threat and hope. “It’s me, boys.” She brushed off her knees.

  Hello! they barked. We knew it was you all the time. Hello, Karen!

  She closed the pantry window again. “Too bad you guys couldn’t open the door for me.”

  We would have if we could, they cried, their nails scratching fervently. When she opened the door, they jumped up on her, pawing her and kissing her face a thousand times in gratitude for her visit.

  “You’re welcome, think nothing of it. Now calm down.” She pushed them away and tried to adopt a severe tone. “Down. Sit. Stay.”

  They grinned and leaped into the air. Awww, Karen, you don’t mean it.

  She pushed Harold’s haunches down. “Now stay there.” He looked at her, abashed. She kissed him. Alfred immediately lay down on the floor. See how good I’m being! Kiss me, too!

  Karen took off her knapsack, put the daffodil in water, and combed her hair. She poured a glass of apple juice and drank it quickly.

  The living room was dim with the shades drawn. She sat on the floor, cross-legged. When Scott returned he would find her sitting there, studying; serious, sober, a tiny smile on her face at his surprise. How did you get in? he’d say. Magic! She’d snap her fingers. No, really, how did you? Oh, I flew down the chimney. Finally, she’d relent and tell him that he ought to keep the pantry window locked. He’d look rueful at first, then he’d laugh at her ingenuity and take out his key chain and hand her a key. Come anytime you want, Karen.

  The dogs lay down near her, panting. The coolness was an illusion. Waves of heat came in through an open window. She went into the kitchen and poured another glass of apple juice. All at once she had the irresistible feeling that, at that very moment, something extraordinary had happened to her, that she had taken an immense growth spurt, had grown in height, leaped up an inch, two inches, maybe three. She went into the bedroom and stared at herself in the long mirror. Slowly the wave of ecstatic power slid away. She leaned against the wall, chewing a strand of hair. From the corner of her eye, she glanced at Scott’s unmade bed. There, just beyond the edge of her vision, she saw him and Liz.…

  Twenty-six

  Karen was in the kitchen, sitting on the table, the door half shut, when she heard Scott coming in. The dogs ran to meet him. She picked up a magazine, a lit cigarette between her fingers. Her props.

  “Boys, behave! Harold … Alfred.…” She smiled stagily, turning the pages of the magazine. What was he doing in there? She put down the cigarette, then picked it up again. She was dying of thirst. “Okay, boys, let’s go. A quick run.” The thud of the door. The faint echo of feet and paws on the stairs.

  She hopped off the table, drank apple juice, then rushed into his room to check herself in the mirror. Her hair was long and loose today, held at the sides with barrettes. Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down thy golden hair, here comes the prince to climb up the beautiful ladder of hair and rescue you. Or was she Snow White, hands crossed meekly over her chest, lying in her crystal coffin, waiting for the prince to give her the kiss of life? No, no, no, she wasn’t lying around like a corpse, she was making things happen.

  She went back into the kitchen, sat down on the edge of the table, legs crossed, like somone in a story or a play, waiting for the action to begin, for the story to unfold. Waiting to find out what would happen. He’d come in, see her, his eyes would sparkle. Karen! You’re here! How wonderful. I’ve been thinking about you constantly.… He’d take her hands, kiss them, they’d dance through the rooms.…

  She heard him returning, talking to the dogs. “I suppose you guys are hungry now?”

  “Scott,” she said. Oh, how dry her throat was.

  There was a moment’s silence. “Somebody here?”

  “Scott. Me.”

  He padded in, stocking-footed, the dogs rollicking on either side of him. He was wearing baggy stained pants, a torn work shirt with the sleeves rolled up. There was a smear of dirt on his cheek. “Well … Karen. What are you doing here?”

  The dogs ran back and forth between them. She came to see us, Scott! She came to visit! Ain’t it great!

  “Quiet,” Scott said.

  She took the flower from the jar in the middle of the kitchen table. “This is for you.”

  He looked around the kitchen. Her sneakers on the floor. The empty apple juice bottle in the sink. The open cupboard door.

  “I bought this from the Mary Poppins girl on the corner.”

  “What are you doing here?”

  She slid off the table. “I came to see you.” She offered him the flower again. “Isn’t it beautiful? It reminded me of a poem we read in English. ‘Give me just one flower, please, because more is noisy.’”

  “That’s pretty, Karen.”

  “Aren’t you going to ask me how I got in?”

  “How’d you get in?”

  She smiled mysteriously. “Don’t you want to guess?”

  “No.”

  So cool. His voice so level, flat. A different Scott. Someone she didn’t know. As if that kiss on his bed had never been, as if the dogs, leaping up on them and slurping over their faces, had washed the kiss out of existence.

  She wanted to tell him, to shout in his face, You kissed me! “I came in through the pantry window.”

  He poured food from a bag into the dogs’ dishes. “Some places that’s called breaking and entering.” He took a carton of yogurt out of the refrigerator.

  Her scalp burned, two straight lines of fire, one on either side. “Why are you being so unfriendly? I thought we—have I done something really terrible?”

  “Oh, Karen.” He put down his spoon and looked at her, straight at her for the first time. “You know, you gave me kind of a shock. I’m not used to coming home and finding people sitting around my kitchen, smoking.”

  “And eating and reading your magazines. And drinking your apple juice. And taking off their sneakers!”

  His eyes softened. “You got it.”

  She moved closer to him. “I dreamed about you last night. We were picking up pennies together and you saw some money underneath a grating and you said, I don’t think we can get that, Karen.”

  She was talking fast, too fast.

  “It was real money, not just pennies, something like a thousand-dollar bill. We both wanted it. You were worried that we couldn’t reach it, but I kept saying, No, no, it’s a piece of cake, Scott! I was faking you out. I actually didn’t have the vaguest idea how we could get it.”

  He leaned on his hand. “Is that why you came over, to tell me your dream?”

  “Dreams are important. Did you ever dream about me?”

  “No,” he said, but she knew he was lying.

  “You know what dreaming about someone means, don’t you?”

  He scraped the bottom of the yogurt container. “I didn’t know it meant anything.” His voice was as empty as the yogurt carton, air surrounded by plastic, the kind of voice you might use for a stranger. “Well, I have things to do.” He left the kitchen.

  In a few minutes she heard the shower. She put on her sneakers, washed out the juice glass. I’m not used to finding people in my home.… Some places that’s called breaking and entering.… Cold, sarcastic stinker! Turning the charm on and off, like hot and cold taps. In a rage she sponged off the table, closed the magazine, jammed the empty apple juice jar into the garbage pail. There! Her foul, unwelcome presence was wiped out. She picked up her knapsack. “I’m going!”

  The bathroom door opened; Scott came out in a cloud of steam. He’d changed from his work clothes into clean, pressed pants.

  “I’m going now.”

  �
��Okay.” He walked with her into the living room, opened the door for her, waited for her to leave.

  She walked past him, her eyes filling. What had made him change? Where was the Scott who’d driven her around to look for jobs? Who’d hugged her and joked with her? Who’d talked about the future so reassuringly and played checkers like a demon? And kissed her. Yes, kissed her. Kissed her on the mouth.

  “I thought we were friends. You act like you hate me!” It was horrible. She didn’t want to cry and she couldn’t stop.

  “Karen, come on. Don’t do that.” He put his arm around her. “Don’t … come on, wipe your eyes. Do you have a tissue?”

  She tore away from him, wiped her face fiercely with the back of her hand. She wanted him to kiss her again, wanted it so badly. “Oh, why don’t you—” She stopped, lips pressed together. Her eyes kept leaking. “I want,” she began. “I want … I want.…” She held out her arms. “Kiss me. Will you kiss me?”

  He leaned away from her with a pained little smile. “Karen. Oh, now—Karen, you really can’t do this.”

  “Please.”

  She was so ashamed! Yet she was ready to beg him again. Please! Please! Please! He leaned toward her, looking—oh, she didn’t know what to call it! Sad. Sad.… She couldn’t think about it, couldn’t think about anything. His lips touched hers. She stood absolutely still. His lips on hers. His hand touching her face. Her eyelids swelling.

  The phone rang, sharp, shrill. She opened her eyes, looked straight into his eyes.

  Then he went into the kitchen. “Hello? Yah, I know … sorry … I just got held up a bit.…”

  She sat down on the floor in a stupor, her back against the couch. She heard him moving around. After a while he came back into the living room. “You’re still here?” The coldness again. The remote eyes. Scott, the trapeze artist. Whooooosh! He’s here. Whooooosh! He’s gone. Now you see him. Now you don’t.

  “Yes.…” She could hardly hear herself. “Still here.”

  “I have to go out now.”

  “Okay.”

  “Which means you have to go.”