“What does it look like I’m doing?”
“Relining the cabinets.”
“Bingo. You were always the smart one.”
“It’s half past eleven.”
“So?”
She steps down from the stool, trying to hide the half-empty wine bottle on the counter.
“Have you had anything to eat?” I ask, trying to gauge the effect of two glasses of wine.
“Yeah, a piece of cheese.”
“You want me to call for take-out?”
“It’s too late,” she says.
“Want me to make something?”
“I just want to get this done. You can tell she’s been sick by the condition of these cabinets. I bet she hasn’t relined them in two years. She never used to let things get this bad.”
The crumpled, torn paper on the floor doesn’t look so bad to me. A few blemishes, a ring here and there, certainly not the grease-smeared, dust-coated mess you’d assume from my sister’s comments.
“Is that some type of criticism?” I ask.
She looks up, clearly perplexed.
“I mean, are you saying if I’d only paid a little more attention to the shelf paper I would have realized she was sick and could have gotten her to the doctor earlier, on time, before it was too late?”
“No. Of course not. No criticism intended. For God’s sake…” She reaches for the bottle and pours another glass of wine without offering any. “Why would you think that…What do you…Why do you hate me so much?”
What kind of question is that?
I don’t hate her. How could I hate my little sister? My buddy, my pal, the one person on earth who knows things about me that would still smart and sting if she were to fling them in my face. Which, remarkably, she hasn’t, despite numerous provocations, still protecting me, God knows why, never mocking me, knowing how deep a wound she would inflict just by reminding me…
…that I would creep down the hallway and crawl into her bed after another bloody nightmare roused me from a deep sleep.
…that I kept silent, allowing her to take the blame for the ruined lipstick, knowing the consequences would be far more severe if it were ever discovered it had been me that smeared it across my mouth.
…that I would talk Randall Jarvis into pulling down his pants and letting Gina and me touch his thing whenever we played General Hospital.
… that the real reason Billy Cunningham split my lip was because I tried to kiss him on the mouth.
How could I hate the woman who once was such a tough little kid, who spat when my mouth was dry from fear, punching and swinging when I was unable to make a fist, screaming and cursing when I choked on the words. Don’t cry, Andy, she would console me as she prepared for battle, grabbing a brick, a bat, a board, her arms flailing, threatening to draw blood from the Billy Cunninghams and Richard Tricketts, never backing down when they taunted her with names like Fatty, Blimpie, Whale Girl.
Fuck you, she shouted at our tormentors. Fuck you, assholes.
No one, she insisted as our mother pinched her mouth with her thumb and forefinger, threatening to insert a bar of Fels-Naptha laundry soap if she didn’t confess who taught her such terrible, terrible words. Brave little Gina, always standing up for the men in her life, her foul-mouthed daddy and me.
Of course I don’t hate you, baby sister. If I did, I’d free you to tell the world all my dirty little secrets.
She finally gets around to offering me a glass of wine, which I decline, getting a beer instead. I let her question drift away, refusing to answer. I go out on the porch for a smoke, leaving her to her cabinets. But she follows me, using the excuse she’d like a cigarette too. I remind her she quit (not to preserve her pulmonary functions but to halt the erosion of the fine skin around her face and eyes).
“Why do you have to be such a prick?” she asks. “What have I ever done to you?”
She thinks she deserves an explanation why I refuse to acknowledge the bond that existed between us before I erected a barrier more permanent than the Berlin Wall. Truth is, I’m straining to think of some way to respond, a bone to throw her, some reason that justifies my slow intractable retreat over the decades. I could tell her I resent her for outgrowing me.
Do you remember when no one was more fun or fascinating than me, your older brother, whose vivid imagination cast you as Robin to my Batman, Becky Thatcher to my Tom Sawyer, Joe to my Frank Hardy (and, yes, I’ll admit it to you but no one else, sometimes Ethel to my Lucy or Mary Ann to my Ginger)?
I could blame her for losing her baby fat and growing into a beauty, for making friends with the girls who’d taunted her when she was big and clumsy, not simply forgiving them, but sharing her secrets and confiding her dreams in them.
When did you realize you wanted a brother like their brothers instead of one who was interested in your crushes and jealousies and rivalries?
But both of those ring a bit a hollow. They’re excuses, neither of them completely true. Anyway, my impatient little sister would never understand concepts like erosion and accretion and evolution. She needs a moment, an instant that changed everything, a gunshot, an explosion, a confrontation, the Big Bang. She needs a wound we can lance so we can move on with the healing. Except I can’t think of any single cruel act she’s ever perpetrated that deserves such unrelenting hostility. Well, maybe one.
“You are such a faggot,” I say.
“What?” she asks, taken back, her suspicions confirmed. I have lost my mind.
“Not you. Me,” I say.
“What are you talking about?”
“You are such a faggot.”
“You aren’t making sense. Sometimes I think you’re crazy,” she says, her voice getting in pitch for the argument that’s beginning. This is the stuff she’s made for. In ten minutes, she wants us sobbing, collapsing in each other’s arms, competing in contriteness for all our past mistakes, pledging undying fealty.
I repeat the mantra again, frustrating any attempts at quick angry retorts. She needs to serve and volley. I keep hitting junk balls, soft lobs she can’t swing at.
“What’s your point? I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Yes, you do.”
“No. I do not.”
I search for a few facts for backdrop, but my recall betrays me, coming up short. All I can retrieve is a stray moment, isolated, stripped of context. I’m standing at the open refrigerator door, poking around loosely wrapped moldy cheese, disgusted, whining, probably squealing, and sounding like a bratty little girl.
You are such a faggot, my sister, behind me, says.
I hid my face in the ketchup bottles and milk containers until she walked away. Five little words that branded me, irrevocably. How old was she? Who knows? I can’t remember anything else about that day, not the month, not the year, not if it was summer or winter, not if it was dark or light. All that survives is that one blazing minute, seared into my memory, the act of betrayal, the sharp kick in the guts, completely unexpected, by my loyal ally, the girl who had always put her thick orthopedic saddle shoes to good use, bruising the shins of our enemies.
I should have pulled my head out of that refrigerator and punched or slapped her, taking a lesson from her book. One gesture to ensure she would never forget what she did to me that day. Some violent act to teach her the consequences of turning against me, abandoning me, leaving me with nothing left to rely on but the benevolent protection of my mother. But I let her walk away with her bowl of chocolate ice cream, and today she has no recollection of this life-changing event. It’s as lost to her as a single grain of sand tossed back on the beach, indistinguishable and irretrievable.
“I don’t know what you are talking about. I really don’t.”
“Yes, you do,” I repeat, halfhearted, unwilling to concede the insignificance of the remark.
“How old was I?” she asks.
“Old enough. I can’t remember. Ten. Eleven. Twelve. I don’t know. It doesn’t matter
.”
“So you hate me because of some stupid remark I made twenty-five years ago. Do you think I even knew what the word meant at that age? Maybe you did. Remember, you were the smart one.”
She pours the last of the wine into her glass, drains it, and opens another bottle. I anticipate a head-on assault, a blistering attack, anything but unconditional surrender.
“I give up. You win. I don’t care anymore. How many times have I tried to reach out to you? For years, I blamed that wife of yours. Oh, sorry. I forgot. We’re not supposed to mention the perfect Alice. I guess I can tell you now I never liked her, hated the way you were when you were with her, the two of you in your own little world, laughing over some private joke you thought everyone else was too stupid to get. I suppose I should feel sorry for her now for putting up with you all those years. You’re a coldhearted bastard, you know that, don’t you?”
Yes, Gina, I know that.
I’ve got a hole where my heart used to be.
“You wouldn’t understand” is my feeble response. I could ask her how she would have felt if I had called her a fatty or teased her about peeing her pants. But I know that I did—many times—and she’s either forgotten or forgiven the careless cruelties of childhood.
“You’re right,” she says, stubbing out her cigarette. “I don’t understand, you asshole.”
But you’d understand even less if I followed you back to the kitchen and tried to explain that I don’t hate you. You’re being punished for all those things you know about me that I want to forget, for having a front-row seat to all the humiliations, usually self-inflicted, I endured. Sorry, Regina, I hate that little boy you loved and you’re collateral damage. You try to talk to me about your sad little son, thinking I’ll understand, maybe offer some insight or at least some friendly support. Why would you think I have any insight into that pathetic kid? Don’t you remember your wedding day, how you confronted me about my reprehensible behavior, not understanding how or why I could be so mean to Randall Jarvis? He’d gotten shamefully drunk, reeling from my cruel remark, intended to wound.
“Come on, he’s rich. He’s famous. He’s a big boy,” I said, defending myself.
“Yeah, but he remembers what it meant to be the little boy he was back then,” she said, the one and only time she went for the kill. “Obviously, you’ve forgotten.”
Not if you won’t let me, Regina. And you’re not getting another chance, I think, retreating to the sofa and my television, remote control in hand, ready to crank up the volume in the all-too-likely event my sister has some further afterthought she feels compelled to share.
Help!
“Gina!” I scream, jumping to my feet, forgetting until it’s too late the hole in my hip.
“What? What?” she shouts, panicking, running in from the kitchen and stopping dead in her tracks to gasp at the unexpected sight of the Fab Four cutting up on the Alpine slopes in their goofy cloaks and funny hats.
“Oh my God,” she says.
We’ve seen it a dozen times. A hundred. Maybe a thousand. No, a million!
“Oh, Paul,” she says, swooning like a little girl again.
I love cable. Thank God there’s plenty of beer and wine in the house. It’s a Beatles marathon. After Help!, A Hard Day’s Night.
“It’s the better movie.”
“It’s black and white,” she argues.
“So?”
“Why couldn’t they have made it in color?”
“Black and white is better. It’s more expressive.”
“No, it’s not.”
“Yes, it is. Color is too literal.”
“Oh just shut up. I love this song,” she says, still insisting, despite the visual evidence otherwise, it’s Paul, not John, singing lead vocals on “If I Fell.”
“I do too,” I say, not wanting to argue.
Suddenly it’s four in the morning and I’m up in the attic, tearing through boxes, not bothering to reseal them when I don’t find what I’m looking for. I won’t be deterred. I know they’re up here somewhere.
“Ta-dah!” I shout.
“Did you find them?”
“Yep.”
And, praise God, they aren’t warped after decades of hibernation in this sweatbox of an attic. Leave it to my mother to pack them so tightly, so expertly, that moisture and heat hasn’t destroyed them. I have a moment of drunken insight. This is what she preserved them for. Tonight.
My sister and I argue over which record to play first. Finally we compromise and drop a stack on the spindle.
“Oh, God, do you remember…”
As my mother would say, no pun intended, we sound like a broken record.
Do you remember this?
Do you remember that?
Do you remember him?
Do you remember her?
And so the night passes, nothing resolved, nothing settled. But for a few hours, we blast Rubber Soul and Revolver loud enough to wake the dead and stay pleasantly smashed and I am the ten-year-old she loved and she is eight and I can love her back and all the years of polite estrangement still lie in the future.
Cancellation Policy
By noon the heat will be blistering. The county’s on crisis alert. The scorched earth is a fire hazard and Smokey the Bear has orders to arrest anyone tossing a lit butt to the ground. The Department of Public Works is rationing water and the drought guidelines recommend flushing only “when necessary.” I turn the dial to news radio. The death toll is nineteen and rising. Luxury imports speed by me in the passing lane, tinted windows protecting their pampered passengers from the intense sun, while some poor old lady suffocates in an airless room because she can’t afford a cheap electric fan. Robin Hood ought to loot the aisles of Kmart and Wal-Mart and bring relief to the needy and deserving.
The overnight low was a record ninety-four degrees. My sister has summoned her husband from Florida and they’ve moved to the best hotel in Charlotte: twenty-four-hour room service and fresh towels and bed linen feel more like necessities than extravagances under current conditions. Alone now in my mother’s house, I turned off the thermostat and let the Monument to Heat and Air bake all day in the sun. I couldn’t sleep, tossing and turning on my stripped bed. I’m exhausted and fight the urge to doze at the wheel. Exhaust fumes caress my face and carbon and sulfur char my nostrils and throat. My bare legs are branded with grill marks, seared by the vinyl upholstery. I could close the car windows and crank up the air, but the heat is a respite from interminable waiting with no end in sight. The vigil goes on. I don’t measure time in days and weeks, but by hot and cold.
I park the car and enter the deep freeze of the hospital. The frigid air creeps into my loose shorts. The cold keeps me awake. My phone is vibrating. I don’t recognize the number. Sabotaged! My counselor is calling from his cell. I tell him I just arrived at the hospital and can’t talk. Surprise, surprise! He’s at the hospital too, only three floors away. He insists that I meet him. Now.
“You did get my message, didn’t you?” he asks, bounding out of the elevator as if it’s a matter of some urgency.
“Yes. I did.”
Hello, Andy. It’s Matt McGinley. I’m sorry for the short notice but I need to reschedule Friday’s appointment. I know this is a difficult time for you, so please call me. Perhaps we can find some time before my flight on Thursday. I’m back late Saturday morning. I can do Saturday afternoon or evening. I can even try for Sunday. Call me.
“Why didn’t you call?” he asks.
“I forgot.”
He looks skeptical.
“Four times? I’ve tried you four times since Monday afternoon.”
“Seriously, Matt. I forgot. I just plain forgot.”
He tries to put his arm around my shoulder, but I push him away.
“Sorry, sorry,” I say. “I don’t need to start crying.”
“Nothing wrong with that.”
“Not now. Not here.”
“Here” is the harshly lit Cri
tical Care Unit, a place designed for observation and expediency, not privacy. I ask why he’s chasing after me. He says he was in the hospital anyway. There’d been a little problem with one of his admissions to the psych unit. I thank him for taking the time to check on me, tell him he shouldn’t have bothered. He should go back to the psych ward, the kid’s problems seem more important.
“No. Not more important, just more emergent,” he says.
Little does he know.
“Why did you cancel?” I ask.
“I told you. I need to go out of town. It was unexpected.”
“Where are you going?”
“Washington.”
“Why?”
He’s clearly uncomfortable being questioned.
“We can talk about that when I get back. If it’s necessary.”
“I think it’s necessary.”
“It may not be.”
“Is it an emergency?”
“No. It’s not an emergency.”
“Then why couldn’t you have planned ahead?” I’m surprised by how shrill I sound. “You know you’ve violated the cancellation policy, don’t you? Payment in full for cancellations with less than forty-eight hours’ notice. I’m enforcing it. It’s only fair. Here’s my price. You have to tell me why you’re going. Tell me what’s so—how did you say it?—important but not emergent. You cancelled too late. Now you have to pay.”
“Andy, I gave you plenty of notice and tried to reschedule.”
“I’m a very busy man, Matt. Can’t you see that? Take a look around. You think I don’t have anything better to do than sit around and watch the monitors? Hey, nurse, what’s a flat line mean? Well, maybe you’re right. Maybe I don’t have anything better to do. That doesn’t mean I’m not very busy.”
This time he forces me to accept the arm around my shoulder.
“Come on,” he says. “I can take a later flight.”
He knows the shortest route to the nondenominational chapel where the anxious can seek comfort in the Crucifix, the Star of David, or the Crescent Moon. Hindus are shit out of luck. The room is spartan and austere and feels about as devotional as an interfaith public service announcement on late-night television.
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