A Gift for My Sister: A Novel

by Ann Pearlman

Brooke leans back on her chaise and closes her eyes. Allie gets in the pool with Rachel and teaches her how to blow bubbles. Molly tries to teach Levy to swim. He holds onto the side of the pool and kicks his legs.

  So it’s just Brooke and me, on side-by-side chaises with a red and white striped umbrella between us. She says, out of the blue, “It doesn’t turn out like we think, does it? We try to do everything and juggle it all so we get bits and pieces of everything. Like me, the kids, my art, and my husband. Can’t keep all the balls in the air. Hell, I guess I wanted two complete, different lives.”

  I don’t say anything. I’m examining a ripple, just one. I watch how it bumps up and then sinks, and returns and then slowly bounces to the edge of the pool. “But none of the lives would turn out like we envision, anyway,” I say.

  Brooke releases a bitter chuckle. She wets her lips and tells me her husband had gone to a conference and stopped on the highway, one of those little gas-up places in Nowheresville with a McDonald’s and a gift store laden with souvenirs and packaged nuts and candy. He purchased cigarettes from the girl behind the counter. Brooke doesn’t sound angry. Only bewildered.

  “Now my husband hadn’t smoked for years, but he saw this girl and bought cigarettes from her and sat in his car smoking until she was off work, took her out, and made love to her. This eighteen-year-old girl. He came home to tell me . . . ,” her voice cracks, “that he was leaving us, quit his job. Hell, in less than a week he was gone for good. Moved to Illinois. Just like that. See? A revolution in a day.”

  I don’t say anything. She already knows my husband died.

  A few minutes later, I say, “He was only twenty-seven.” I say it as though I accept it.

  “I haven’t been with a man since then,” she tells the pool, “and that was over a year ago. Haven’t even talked to one, let alone been with one.”

  We open up about our lives with each other because we’re strangers and we’re both not sure what happened. So many different ways for everything to get shuffled. So many ways to fall from the ordinary.

  “It’s only been a year since he left,” I tell her.

  “It’s been an entire year and I haven’t even talked to a man alone,” she whispers. “I used to like sex. Like, hell, love it.”

  “Me, too.” I haven’t even thought of it, not once until Brooke brought it up. “He’s the only man I’ve been with. I wonder if I’ll ever be with another.”

  I guess nothing works out the way we expect. It’s always different. I don’t know if I say that out loud until Brooke says, “Yeah. Sometimes it works out better. I like being a mom more than I ever thought I would.”

  There are sparkles on the water like diamonds in the snow. I never saw that before, or maybe I did and didn’t realize it. I struggle to remember, and then I do. I noticed them long ago when Troy was diving.

  “When I was a girl, my dad used to take me to the Upper Peninsula to a cabin he had near Tahquamenon Falls. It was a cruddy cabin, slightly better than a tent. It didn’t have lights, just a woodburning stove. In the fall, he and his buddies used it for hunting. In the spring, he took me fishing.” Brooke sips from a can of Diet Coke and passes me one.

  “When we were up there, Dad used to say, ‘Brookey, this is my dream. See this forest, see this lake, see this? Imagine, cottages. Imagine, people coming to Brooke’s Lakeside Resort.’” Brooke chews on the inside of her mouth. “One spring day, I was getting dressed when my dad came back from loading the boat and he had two men with him. I figured they were friends of his. I was Molly’s age, I guess.” She shudders.

  “What did they want?”

  “They didn’t hurt us. My father shared our food with them . . . hot dogs and potato chips and Cheerios. One of ’em, with a fat stomach and missing a front tooth, played Go Fish with me. I beat him and his friend teased. ‘You let some little baby beat you, Tiger? Some teensy-weensy broad?’ ‘Shudup,’ he said. When Tiger stood up, he was a lot bigger, and the other one didn’t say anything more. It seemed, hummmm,” Brooke hunts for the words, “not usual, but not abnormal. My father was, I don’t know, fidgety. We didn’t even go fishing. I kept buggin’ him because it was gloomy and boring in the cabin, but we stayed inside all day. That night, I slept with my dad and the strangers slept in the bigger bed. And then the next day, my father drove them to a gas station. Filled up his car and handed them his money. A car, with a man and two women, waited for them.” Brooke falls silent.

  “What happened then?”

  “Nothing. We went home.” Brooke’s head sags, she inhales. “We didn’t go back up to the cabin after that. My mom never liked it anyway, so my father sold it. He and Mom built a new house outside of Paw Paw, where they still live.”

  “Who were the men?”

  “I think they’d escaped from a prison . . . and wanted a place to hide. Dad didn’t tell me what was going on until I was a teenager. Then he told me he was held at gunpoint, but I didn’t see guns. One kept his in a pocket, the other in his waistband. I think Dad told me then to teach me how dangerous the world is.”

  “Did it work?” I keep forgetting to eat and I notice how flat my stomach is.

  “Hell, no.” She frowns.

  I take a swig of the cold Coke and I feel it travel through my body. “Why’d you tell me that story?”

  “That incident stays in my mind. Hell, since Calvin left us, I keep thinking about it.”

  “I thought maybe there was a message in it.”

  “Me, too.” Brooke shakes her head. “But I haven’t figured it out yet. It depends on how I look at it, and I look at it in different ways at different times. Sometimes it tells me that people won’t hurt me. That’s when I was a kid. Sometimes it tells me that danger arrives stupidly guised, but is everywhere. You can’t foresee it, but you have to be alert. That’s when the kids were smaller. Now, I don’t know.” She chews on the inside of her lip. “I guess, it’s”—Brooke frowns—“things are not necessarily what they seem, but they can be exactly as they appear. We only have a piece of the puzzle and have to figure life with our one little piece. I keep trying to decipher signals that I was oblivious to. There must have been some sign that Calvin would leave us.” She shakes her head and whispers, “Hell, I didn’t even know he was unhappy.”

  “I brought the bacteria that killed Troy home by visiting my friend in the hospital.”

  “But you didn’t kill him,” she says. “You didn’t do anything wrong any more than I did. That’s the only thing I learned this year. Whatever it was that made this happen, it was inside him. It wasn’t that I was a bad wife, or lousy in bed. In fact he told me I was much better in bed than the eighteen-year-old. So it wasn’t that. Don’t know why the hell that’s even important. Guess it’s not.”

  “We just want control,” I say.

  “Exactly.” She blurts an ironic chuckle. “Even if we have to accept unwarranted guilt.”

  I try to interpret the lesson of Brooke’s story.

  Then she shrugs one shoulder and grabs the Coke, takes a sip, and rests it on a stomach toned from sit-ups or Pilates. “Well, we persist. That’s all. Like me and the kids survive in spite of Calvin’s demolition. Survive, hell, we even have fun. And I get to parent exactly how I want to. No compromising with his strict approach.”

  And then Tara, Aaron, T-Bone, Smoke, and Red Dog return, exhilarated by the view from the helicopter. “You’re not just surrounded by it,” Tara says, “you get to see it, see inside the gorge, and there’re enormously complicated peaks and valleys in it. It’s . . . intricate.”

  No one crowds my view of the pool. I’m stretched in my chaise immersed in the movement of a ripple, feeling more relaxed after talking with my new friend. Lansing is not that far away from Ann Arbor. We think alike, Brooke and I. Maybe my life isn’t over. I’m beginning a new one. I’m not aware of the sun on my body or the voices of my family . . . I guess they’re my family . . . bubbling and laughing about the canyon, about the next concert in Albuquerq
ue. Wouldn’t think a rap group would have a following there. I hear Brooke say the same thing. I’m vaguely aware that T-Bone flirts with her and I hear her guttural laugh off in the distance. If she wants sex, I’m sure T-Bone will oblige. There’s an ebb and flow of all their voices as though I’m listening through water. Allie talks with Smoke. I vaguely hear them behind my chaise. Levy plays with Aaron beside me. I pay little attention to anything but that ripple and how occasionally there’s a sparkle on it that sinks.

  So everyone is there.

  Rachel comes out of the pool. She grabs some shoestring potatoes and sips my Coke. She says, loud so everybody hears it, “I want Daddy.”

  Levy takes her hand and fastens her to Aaron, then stands somberly watching what will happen next.

  “No! My daddy.” Rachel jerks her hand away, and cries.

  Aaron hugs her. Levy hugs her.

  Then, Tara hugs her and Rachel wraps her arms around Tara’s neck and snuggles into her.

  I don’t want Tara to take care of Rachel when I should be doing it, but I’m so tired.

  I look away. But I know I have to do something. I get up and stride over to Tara.

  “Leave her alone,” I state. My neck throbs. “Don’t keep taking her from me.”

  What I’m saying and everything that happens next is kind of fuzzy. A series of events that seem to take place in a tunnel.

  “What are you talking about?” Tara’s caution seems patronizing. “I haven’t taken anything from you. I’m trying to help.”

  I scream. I know I scream only because my throat scrapes. “Mom. Troy. Calling him. Flirting with him. Sitting on his lap.”

  “Why are you hanging onto that? That was ten years ago. I was just a lonely kid.”

  Her condescending tone increases my fury. “Later, too. You two were always so close. And now Rachel. You’re trying to make her love you more.”

  “I’m just trying to be a good aunt,” she shouts. “Take care of her when you”—her face beet red as she shrieks you—“aren’t able to. Or won’t.”

  She’s in full rage. I’ve never seen her this angry.

  “How about you being thankful for what you still have instead of acting like you have nothing and the world’s come to an end. How about you pay some attention to your daughter, that baby you wanted so much. How about you quit pitying yourself.”

  Her out-of-control anger makes me feel victorious, so I flush with surging strength. I don’t know what I screech. Something about her life being easy. Something about how she goes her own way doing her own thing, ignoring everything and everybody else.

  She screams back, “Ignoring? Me ignoring? How ’bout you and Mom ignoring me? How about you ignoring your own daughter now?”

  And then I gasp as much air as I can and shout, “How would you like it if it was Aaron who died? How would you like that?”

  And just then, off in the distance, I hear Molly scream, “Help, help! Mister, help!”

  There’s a splash so abrupt and enormous it soaks me. The startling cold water on my sun-warmed, anger-flushed skin alerts me to look toward the pool.

  Aaron slaps his arms frantically in the water and then dives down, disappears. And brings up Rachel.

  He holds her high, swims with her, carries her above the water. Smoke helps them to the edge of the pool.

  They lay her on the cement.

  How did she get in the pool?

  She doesn’t move. She’s not moving.

  Her eyes are closed. Brooke tilts Rachel’s head, puts her ear to her mouth, pinches Rachel’s nostrils, presses her mouth to Rachel’s and breathes. Brooke lifts her head to check Rachel’s chest.

  No motion.

  I stand over her screaming while time speeds past.

  Levy’s cries seem to echo, to blurt off and on in some uncanny strobe.

  Why isn’t she moving? My chest heaves. I grab my hair and shake my head.

  Brooke forces air into Rachel’s mouth again. No movement. Rachel’s arms are outstretched, paler where her water wings covered her. What happened to her water wings?

  Smoke kneels beside Brooke, folds his hands over each other, and presses Rachel’s chest in several quick pulses.

  Oh no. Please, please. I shriek.

  Brooke opens Rachel’s mouth, blows into it. Then Smoke resumes pushing her chest.

  And again.

  Over and over. I watch Smoke’s huge hands bear down on her fragile torso, his fingers sheltering her ribs.

  Over and over. I watch Brooke blow air into her open mouth.

  Everything stops except Smoke pressing Rachel’s chest. And Brooke breathing into her mouth.

  Tara and I stand next to each other, watching Brooke and Smoke work on Rachel.

  Rachel lies, arms outstretched, her little lips open for Brooke’s air.

  She is motionless.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Blindly Killing Your Own Family

  Tara

  THE FIRST THING that happens is this: Allie says to me, in a whispery voice, her arms crossed over her chest with a pleased smile on her lips, “Look at your sister, she’s made a friend. She’s coming out of herself.”

  And sure enough, there’s Sky talking to a woman with wildly curling auburn hair and sunglasses and one of those bodies toned from scads of Pilates or yoga. Sky is turned toward her as they converse.

  “Her name is Brooke and she’s from Michigan, too. Isn’t that a coincidence?”

  Me, my mind is still reeling from the view from the helicopter, the canyon brushed with cloud shadows deepening its hues. The funny silence except for the helicopter’s blade slicing the air, the sense of hanging in the sky. I think I’ll try skydiving one day. I say that to Red Dog and we plan a trip to the dunes by Lake Michigan until Aaron frowns and says, “Not my Tara, not my Li’l Key, not my baby-mama. You too important to take that risk.” You can imagine how I feel, protected and annoyed, loved and disrespected all at once.

  So we all mill around, happy with our day and happy to be back together again. T-Bone notices Brooke’s knockout body and slides over to her, kneels down, stares into her eyes, and begins asking her questions as though she’s the only woman who has ever existed. I think then Sky goes back to watching the pool while we discuss what we want to eat for dinner, wondering what we can find in this town. Italian? Mexican? Chinese? Steak?

  “Pizza! Pizza!” squeals Levy.

  We’re a bit away from the canyon now, on the road home, on the road closer to Albuquerque, where we have a concert the day after tomorrow. We’re near Winslow, Arizona in a national chain motel, Quality Inn or Econo Lodge. I don’t even know. The earth is a reddish desert plain. I’m looking forward to the Albuquerque concert. Looking forward to painting my face orange and putting on my sexy clothes and being Li’l Key.

  I think of King’s proposition. I could become more famous, make more money. I could branch out and do a solo album, maybe. King could be a springboard to so much. In truth, lyrics keep buzzing in my head, I’m left I’m left I’m left missing myself, and this time the nascent song is about the shift that’s happening with Aaron.

  I hear a sweet, haunting melody to accompany it, a melancholy lilt surprisingly soft and gentle. I wonder if Aaron would feel threatened if I wrote and sang my own songs. Now, even my music is ours. I have no individual voice. Sing more, rap less. If I cross over, will he consider it a betrayal? Or is hip-hop dead and dying, and is that why King wants me to join him, needing my ease with the eclectic, classical, pop, and rap?

  Rachel announces she misses her daddy and Levy tries to share his, putting Rachel’s little hand into Aaron’s. His face is so serious, his lips gently together, his eyelashes shadowing his cheeks when he attaches Rachel to Aaron. He realizes how much love he has, me, his dad, Red Dog and Smoke, Sissy, and Mom. His big family. I’m so moved by my little guy’s generosity. I kiss and hug him. I hold Rachel, trying to comfort her, and she cuddles close to me. And then she walks away from me and plays with a li
ttle boy, must be Brooke’s kid.

  And then everything goes crazy.

  Sky jumps up from the chaise and starts screaming at me. “Leave my baby alone,” she shouts.

  I’m confused. “What are you talking about?” I try not to shout back. I try to keep my voice measured to deflect her rage, but my even tone seems to escalate her anger, as though my very attempt at composure enrages her.

  “Rachel. You’re trying to steal her from me. Make her love you more.” The veins stand out on Sky’s neck.

  “What? She’s your daughter, Sky.” I keep my voice even and calm, aware of her vulnerability so soon after Troy’s death.

  “You’ve taken everything from me.”

  “Everything? What are you talking about?” She was the one that had everything, got everything she wanted.

  “Just like you tried to take Troy, too.”

  “You can’t think that there was anything going on between Troy and me. He was my brother.”

  “But you,” her eyes are narrowed, “in your weird way worm yourself into everything and take it over. And now you have everything and I have nothing.”

  My heart pounds in my neck, my face heats with rage. “I’ve always been your scapegoat. You have Rachel. I’ve just been filling in because you are so”—I look for the word, but now I’m beyond anger, too—“irresponsible!” I scream back at her.

  “Don’t tell me about responsibility,” she taunts. “You’re so responsible?” she snorts. “Dragging your little son around with a rap band, where God-knows-what is going on. God knows what drugs he’s exposed to. What shit you are all using. You think I’m stupid? Or Mom? Or Troy? We all know. And my husband died. I’m trying to be responsible.”

  “You’re crazy.” Then I feel Levy’s arms wrapped around my leg.

  I see, as I whip my head around, the darkened fury on Aaron’s face, incensed she’s screaming at me in public and that she is accusing us. He contains his rage in clenched fists.

  “Don’t throw your B.S. on me,” I say.

  But she is blinded by anger, and can’t stop screaming accusations, “There’s a fine line between a rap crew and gangs. Drugs and wanton sex.”