by Ann Pearlman
Ann Pearlman’s The Christmas Cookie Club enthralled readers everywhere with a heartwarming and touching story about the power of female friendship.
Now, in A Gift for My Sister, she once again explores the depth of the human heart, and this time it’s through the eyes of two sisters. Tara and Sky share a mother, but aside from that they seem to differ in almost every way. When a series of tragedies strikes, they must somehow come together in the face of heartbreak, dashed hopes, and demons of the past. The journey they embark on forces each woman to take a walk in the other’s shoes and examine what sisterhood really means to them. It’s a long road to understanding, and everyone who knows them hopes these two sisters can find a way back to each other.
ANN PEARLMAN, Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award nominee, is the author of Infidelity: A Memoir, The Christmas Cookie Club, and The Christmas Cookie Cookbook. She lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
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Praise for The Christmas Cookie Club
“This novel will satisfy anyone with a sweet tooth.
Bonus: each chapter includes cookie recipes.”—USA Today
“Humorous and heartbreaking.”—Library Journal
“Fans of literary sisterhood get their seasonal fix.”—Ledger-Enquirer (Columbus, GA)
A Gift for My Sister
ALSO BY ANN PEARLMAN
Keep the Home Fires Burning
Infidelity: A Love Story
Inside the Crips: Life Inside L.A.’s Most Notorious Gang
The Christmas Cookie Club
The Christmas Cookie Cookbook
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2012 by Ann Pearlman, LLC
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First Emily Bestler Books/Atria Books hardcover edition May 2012
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Pearlman, Ann.
A gift for my sister / Ann Pearlman.—1st Atria Books hardcover ed.
p. cm.
1. Families—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3616.E253G54 2012
813'.6—dc23
2012004137
ISBN 978-1-4391-5949-1
ISBN 978-1-4391-7138-7 (ebook)
For my family. All of our time together is a gift.
Contents
Chapter One: On the Verge - Sky
Chapter One: On the Verge - Tara
Chapter Two: A Changed Man - Sky
Chapter Two: A Changed Man - Tara
Chapter Three: Before I Was Alive, Where Was I? - Sky
Chapter Three: Before I Was Alive, Where Was I? - Tara
Chapter Four: Unpredictable - Tara
Chapter Four: Unpredictable - Sky
Chapter Five: The Long Road Home - Tara
Chapter Five: The Long Road Home - Sky
Chapter Six: All Through the Night - Tara
Chapter Six: All through the Night - Sky
Chapter Seven: Blindly Killing Your Own Family - Tara
Chapter Seven: Blindly Killing Your Own Family - Sky
Chapter Eight: Apple Doesn’t Fall Far - Tara
Chapter Eight: Apple Doesn’t Fall Far - Sky
Chapter Nine: The Connectedness of It All - Tara
Chapter Nine: The Connectedness of It All - Sky
Chapter Ten: Slightly Tarnished - Sky
Chapter Ten: Slightly Tarnished - Tara
Chapter Eleven: No Guarantees - Sky
Chapter Eleven: No Guarantees - Tara
Chapter Twelve: Cookie Party - Sky
Chapter Twelve: Cookie Party -Tara
Recipes
Acknowledgments
A Gift for My Sister
CHAPTER ONE
On the Verge
Sky
EVERY DAY WE walk a razor-thin line between the ordinary and the tragic.
That thought bolts me awake.
3:42. The green numbers on my clock blare. The rest of the room is dark. The numbers are a beacon in the black. Why do I wake at the same exact time every morning? 3:42. As though Mia’s death had implanted an internal alarm.
Troy is curled around his folded hands.
No sounds come from Rachel’s room.
The air-conditioning snaps on.
Some of us tiptoe, anxious about chasms on either side of the path we walk, and some of us skip along, ignoring them. And me? I thought if I walked a direct line with a firm destination in view, fulfilling each goal along the way, I’d be safe. Having a safety net was my plan to thwart lurking misfortune.
I felt as though it were my father’s fault for dying. What else does a child think when parents seem all-powerful?
My father’s death came at me from out of the blue like a peculiar and deadly snap of the fingers. One day he pulled me high on the swing, his arms stretched so I was above his head, singing “Fly, Sky. Fly,” and pushed hard so I could reach for a cloud with my toes. I saw the glint of the sun on his hair, the flash of red and yellow leaves in trees blurred by my speed. Or have I nourished the image so much, this last memory of my still-healthy father, that I added the trees I know so well from the park when all there was, really, was the sight of the sky and the feel of the wind licking me as I soared?
The next day, he entered the hospital.
A week later, he was dead.
I was seven.
He was thirty-four.
Mom tried to explain that he was still around me, and loving me. I watched her tongue tap her teeth and her lips move, but it didn’t make sense then.
It still doesn’t.
I was the only child in my class whose father was dead. The other kids ignored me as though it were contagious. I was the only kid I knew with a dead father until my freshman year of high school. Then, a kid’s dad died from a heart attack. He was absent from my algebra class for a week, which had the other kids whispering, and when he returned, he laughed at a joke as though things were ordinary. I knew that game, because even as a seven-year-old I had played it. If you pretend things are ordinary, maybe for a few minutes they will be. And sometimes, someti
mes—and this is both scary and exhilarating—it works.
And for a few minutes you forget you have a dead father.
3:45.
Anyway, I digress. I don’t know why I think about him every morning. I guess because his death was a startling change that twirled my life so fast it skipped to another path. Some things happen suddenly, and some you know are coming. Like death from cancer after a long battle. But I didn’t even get to prepare myself, I didn’t have the time to be scared. It just happened.
Bang.
I wonder how my life would have been different if my father had lived.
Number one way: Tara wouldn’t be my sister.
I’d probably have a different sister. Or a brother.
Tara was an embarrassing kid and then a rebellious teenager. She was so different from me. I guess that partly comes from having different fathers.
But what I really wonder about is Troy. I met Troy in eighth grade and we’ve been inseparable ever since. I read somewhere that girls without fathers are often sexual early and are promiscuous to fill a yearning for a man in their lives. I guess I was sexual early, but I’ve only been with one man. Troy. My best friend, soul mate, husband, and finally, at last, father of my baby.
I say “at last” because Troy and I, so perfect for each other, actually carry the same genetic flaw. As a result, each conception has a fifty percent chance of a deadly genetic disease, which led to three miscarriages and a stillbirth. A lot of deaths. I would have traded everything for a healthy baby. Just please, God, give me a healthy baby. Please. I begged as if you could make bargains with the future. I imagined parts of me I’d exchange, aspects of my life I’d cast away.
My pleas were answered. And I hadn’t lost anything. Because then, finally, there was Rachel in spite of it all. Rachel with my father’s gray eyes, as though a piece of him were a part of her. I look in her eyes and see him loving and watching me. Just like Mom promised. His eyes and the rasp of his beard are my most vivid memories, and sometimes, just sometimes, Troy’s face feels almost the same, but more gentle.
4:15.
Count your blessings. Troy turns toward me, pulling me to him, spooning me. I turn to him and, in the vague light from the window, I see his eyes shift and know he’s dreaming. Soon, I’ll hear the creak of Rachel’s crib springs as she stands up, holds on to the rails, and begins bouncing and calling, “Mommymommymommymommy. Daddydaddydaddydaddy.”
Since Mia died, I wake up early and try to make sense of it. The digital green lights flash on the clock. The house is quiet, as though I can figure out the answer to some question I haven’t asked in Troy and Rachel’s systematic breathing.
I’m okay. Troy’s okay. Rachel’s okay. I’m sad. That’s all. Life is unfair. So unfair.
But everyone knows that.
Lawyers especially. That’s what we try to counter, that’s our mission. To make life fair. To even the playing field. To redress grievances.
This is what happened: Mia was my closest girl friend, my BFF. We met in a tort study group at law school. She tried to get pregnant and I tried not to have dead babies. We struggled over case law and fertility and trained for a breast cancer marathon together. Troy and I and she and Marc, her husband, went camping in the Rocky Mountains and gambling in Las Vegas. We talked about opening up a law firm. Then she took drugs to stimulate ovulation and developed a cyst. While they were removing the cyst, she had a reaction to the anesthetic and went into a coma. She was brain dead. We watched appliances force air into her lungs, and drip fluids and nutrients into her arms.
Four days later, Marc unplugged her equipment. We held each other’s hands and cried.
There was an eerie silence when the machines stopped their breathing.
A lazy echo in the room. Then Mia was no more.
Twenty-six and dead.
That’s worse than thirty-four.
That was two and a half weeks ago.
Since then, I wake up with a bolt and try to figure it all out.
4:30.
Why does my life revolve around tragedy when I have so many blessings? Rachel. Troy. A job that I love. A boss who allows me to work part-time until Rachel is in preschool full-time.
When genetic testing results on Rachel were okay, I asked Mia, “You’re not going to be so sad about this for yourself that we won’t be friends anymore, are you?”
We had just finished running five miles on the beach. I was already slow from the extra weight of the pregnancy, and we were both breathless. She said, “I wish it were me, but if not me, I’m glad it’s you.” It was California winter. Not quite so many flowers. The impatiens sparse and pale. We had run along the beach, the breeze keeping us cool, and now we were walking through a marina that reflected the cloudless sky and a few palm trees.
“We can share her. You can come over anytime for a baby fix.”
“I’ll catch up to you. In a few months, these new drugs will work and we’ll be pushing strollers while we run.” I thought, Tara’s baby is six months older than Rachel, Mia’s might be six months younger. I like symmetry. That was more than two years ago.
It didn’t work out that way.
A week ago, Rachel jumped in a swimming pool for the first time and I reached for the phone to call Mia.
Then I remembered she was dead, and my arm fell limply to my side. I saw a woman in Nordstrom with hair streaked like hers and I called, “Mia!” And then blushed, embarrassed.
I miss her selfishly. I miss that she’s not here for me.
But, mostly, I just miss her. It’s as though I’m her missing her life. I try to explain it, but even Troy looks at me blankly. I feel sad, the way Mia would feel at not getting to live the rest of her own life. But she doesn’t know. She doesn’t even know she died. I mourn Mia as though I’m Mia mourning her own life. There. Does that say it? I mourn the loss of her years with Marc, the unborn babies, the fascinating cases she’ll never try, the great books she never read, the glorious food she didn’t get to eat, the places she never visited, the love not made. All of it.
My thoughts ramble and always come back to this point. How unfair it is for her.
4:45.
And then I fall asleep.
“Mommymommymommymommy,” Rachel calls.
6:01.
Rachel’s arms are stretched for me to pick her up. She jumps up and down in her crib, her mouth open, laughing at the sight of me. I feel the sweetness of baby warmth as I inhale her aroma. Her hair, so silky and fine, tickles my cheek.
I hug her tight to me, so tight, as though I can squeeze extra life into her and protect her from all harm.
“I love you, Mommy,” she says. “Eat granola?”
“Sure. With cherries and walnuts in it.”
“Yipppeeee.”
I stand her on her changing table and unbutton the crotch of her PJs. “Think you’re old enough for big-girl panties? Like Mommy wears? Want to try them?”
“Like Mommy?”
“Just like Mommy.” We’ve been preparing for this day, and she’s gone in her potty a few times.
“Yeah.” Her eyes widen and I reach down to the shelf and grab the pull-ups that have been waiting for her. I put them on her and lift her from the changing table.
“Okay. Let’s see you pull them down.” I know she can do this and she does.
“See, Mommy, no problem.”
“Okay, so when you have to go, tell Mommy and I’ll help you. Or just go on your own.”
“Eat now?”
She always wakes up starved. I carry her potty to the dining room with us. She walks down the stairs meeting the right foot with the left before proceeding to the next step. Rachel thinks about each step before she makes it. Jumping into the swimming pool into my waiting arms was uncharacteristic of her, as she is usually so cautious.
“You’re my little mermaid,” I’d said, laughing.
I make my own granola, roasting oatmeal with flaxseed, wheat germ, sunflower seeds drizzled with ho
ney or maple syrup, and cinnamon, mixed with water. Sometimes I add almond extract. Sometimes I add vanilla. I stir it every ten minutes for forty minutes while it roasts at 300 degrees. Before I eat it, I toss in fruits and nuts. I add chopped walnuts and cherries to Rachel’s bowl and then milk. On mine, I sprinkle slivered crystallized ginger and almonds.
I’m almost out of cherries and almonds. I add them to the grocery list in my iPhone notes. The note says: dish detergent, eggs, coffee, fabric softener, olive oil, cherries, almonds.
I hear Troy taking a shower.
Rachel delicately picks out the cherries and walnuts, one at a time. She places one in her mouth, concentrating as she consumes the flavor.
I take the opportunity to run upstairs and steal a few minutes with Troy. He’s just out of the shower, drying off. He looks up, surprised to see me.
I grab another towel from the rack and begin dabbing his back, slicked with water coursing around the bumps in his spine. When his back is dry, I stand on my tiptoes to kiss his shoulder. He turns me around and holds me close, his body warm and moist against me. The steamed mirror exposes a foggy image of us pressed together. Me in blue shorts and a yellow T-shirt, and his pinkish-beige length, the brown of his hair, like Rachel’s, fragments of colors blurred by condensation. He’s all one beautiful length and I fill with warmth every time I see him.
He gives me a kiss, slow and serious, enjoying the texture of my tongue and my lips. “I’ll be home early tonight,” he promises.
“I’ll be here,” I laugh.
I pull back to look at him, his face as dear and familiar as my own, as though he’s my mirror, another version of me. I kiss his nose. One of his ears is missing a piece at the tip, and his other ear has it. As though each ear is a puzzle of pieces that have been split. Rachel has that, too. I touch his ears and circle the shell of each of them, like a nautilus. I shake my head slowly, aware that having him in my life has been a miracle.
“Ah, darling,” he says, and his eyes close. “Maybe tonight you could get a babysitter and we can just check into a motel. We can have the whole evening together.”