A Gift for My Sister: A Novel

by Ann Pearlman

  “He wanted you to live a full life, maybe even love again,” Tara repeats.

  I consider Troy’s words, and the woman who just died in front of me. “I’m glad I’m alive.” And for the first time in many weeks, I realize it’s true. “I wasn’t at first.” I have my next decision. “But my life is precious.”

  “Yes.” Tara says it slow, the s hanging between her teeth as though she’s saying at-last-thank-God-I’m-so-relieved all in that one little word. “None of us can decide that. Only you. Why do you think life is supposed to be predictable?”

  And then she answers her own question. “I guess for you it was, back before your dad died.”

  Tara continues, “By the time I was born, everything had already become unpredictable. I wasn’t supposed to fall in love with Aaron and become a rap singer. But I’ve learned to benefit from the unpredictable.”

  “Loved ones dying too young is predictable in my life. I thought I had a bad luck cloud over my head. Dad. Those babies. Mia. Troy. Then Rachel almost drowning. But David said something about just having this life and those breaths.” I shake my head, grab what’s left of my sugary coffee and sip it. “Thank you.”

  “Me?” Tara sounds surprised.

  Tears fill my eyes. “You love me.” I turn to her when I say it and feel her love for me. I let it in. I don’t simply recognize it. I so disregarded her, and she’s always been there. Like now. She rearranged her entire tour for me. I took her, having a sister, for granted. And she involved everyone, her whole life. Aaron, Smoke, T-Bone, and Red Dog, even though it made the tour more difficult. Especially for Smoke, who drove the U-Haul and then performed. Even Levy has been sweet to me. She stares out the front window watching for signs with a map in her lap, navigating our way home. Her face, in profile, is so clean with her upturned nose.

  “I love you.” I say it. I actually say it while watching the road that takes us home.

  “Huh?”

  “I’m glad you’re my sister. Thank you for helping me. I couldn’t have made this move without you and the crew and Allie. I’d be stuck in Venice immersed in sorrow, bringing Rachel down with me.” My hands clutch the wheel, and I stare at the road. The trees are bare and I recognize there’s been some snow. We’re close to home.

  Tara’s eyes float behind tears, but there’s a bright smile on her face so she looks like a child, like the girl sitting on top of Magic Mountain with the glowing lights playing over her cheeks. She was there for me, waiting for me to accept her. I see that now.

  “I thought I was just a pest.”

  “You’re that, too,” I laugh. “No, actually you’re not that anymore. You’ve grown out of that. You’ve grown up!” I laugh. “We both have.”

  “You think?” she laughs. “Oh no! We don’t want to do that. We’ll turn into Mom.”

  “That wouldn’t be so bad.” We say it together and laugh again. I thought I’d forgotten how.

  I swallow. “I guess I resented you—your very presence disrupting my cozy twosome with Mom. When I met Troy, it was back to being part of a twosome. Now”—I hadn’t thought of it before—“wow. It’s me and Rachel. Another twosome.”

  “Yeah. And she’s so sweet, so loving.”

  “So is Levy. And did you know, he has Mom’s smile?”

  “Of course.”

  “It’s funny to see it on his little brown boy face.”

  She laughs.

  I’m determined to not shut out all the remaining love around me anymore. I reach over to her arm and squeeze it.

  She squeezes my hand back and I ask, “What’re you going to do about King?”

  “I want Aaron. I’ve been scared to admit how much I love him. How attached I am. It hurts so bad to even think about losing him. I guess I’m more like you than I wanted to admit. If I do what I truly want, and the fates are with me, my life will be how I want. It’s not totally haphazard.”

  “What’s that have to do with King?”

  “I thought he could give us security. But the only security is self-dependence. And depending on him would have been at the expense of Aaron’s trust and security.”

  “Well, I’ve learned other people do help. But there’re no guarantees of forever. And maybe you’re right. Love, loss, mourning . . . it all goes together and is the best of our humanity.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  No Guarantees

  Tara

  WE UNLOAD SKY’S things from the U-Haul into a storage shed. We sleep in our tour bus in Mom’s driveway. The next morning, Mom makes us a breakfast of omelets and hash browns before we leave in the bus. Along the way we drop off Smoke, Red Dog, and T-Bone.

  Detroit looks even more bedraggled than it did when we left. Poor city. Abandoned and shattered, with her windows all around the ankles of her buildings like a lady who’s lost her clothes. Picked-over bones.

  The streets are almost empty. We find parking places everywhere, right in downtown near Comerica Park and Cobo Hall. No people walk the streets. Buildings seem blinded, with hundreds of windows shattered in random slivers. Two more houses are boarded up on our street. The garbage sits in piles. I’m glad it’s getting to be winter.

  We’re back to a ruined city with an almost ruined love.

  Standing on the corner is a woman with a sign that says YOU’RE NOT YOUR MIND’S KEEPER. She wears a Detroit Tigers baseball hat and baggy red and black plaid pants with Converse shoes.

  “What’s that sign mean?” I ask Aaron.

  “You don’t always know what you’re going to do next?” Aaron suggests.

  “Your body isn’t alive to feed your mind, it’ll go on regardless,” I suggest.

  “Your mind will think what it wants,” Aaron adds.

  “Is that true? Can’t we structure our minds, influence our feelings? What do you think?”

  “I think it means she’s crazy.”

  Home is still our little apartment with the Indian bedspreads and the silk flowers from my first recital. First thing, I hang the prism back in the window. And I feel glad it’s just the three of us, our little family, appreciating the quiet, the hum of our refrigerator and Mos Def softly playing. But I miss Sky and Rachel. And the crew. And of course Allie. Miss them and am glad to be away from them, both at once.

  Around the corner, Sissy is eager to see us and cook us her famous macaroni and cheese as a welcome-home feast. Levy rushes to her arms and buries his head between her breasts.

  A few days later, I talk with her about King. I trust Sissy’s wisdom, and she knows her son. I show her the key necklace. “Shoot. I’ll take that. Take all those orange stones out and make something else. A hand, maybe.”

  “I thought of that, too. Making something for Aaron and me. But I doubt he’d like that.” I consider giving it to Sissy, but Aaron would be reminded every time he saw the stones.

  “It’s beautiful.” When I turn it in my hand, the gems flash fire around the room. Just like my prism. “What a waste,” I say.

  Sissy looks at me hard, squinting her eyes the way she does when she’s sizing you up, trying to see through your skin to your thoughts.

  “I hoped we all three could work together, but King wants me on his own.”

  “I saw how he zeroed in on you at the L.A. concert.” She puts her palm on her knee and leans back, still watching. “It’s not about the necklace, Tara. You know that. And some man can’t be the door to what you want. All a man can do is love you, be family with you, help you fulfill your dreams. Aaron does that—you just afraid to see it. You got to be the hero of your own life.”

  I learned that a long time ago, back when I felt left out of my family and focused on my music to be involved in something, to give myself pleasure. Back then, nurturing my music was heroic enough. If I’m my own hero, what should I do about King?

  I run the possibilities through my mind one more time.

  I could buy the necklace from King. I could work for him and use the money to pay for it. But really, $30,000 would be p
ut to better use as a down payment. Sissy could use a new car. I don’t need bling. It’s tempting, but ultimately, just bling. Even the word says it’s unimportant.

  I don’t lust after King as a lover. He’s attractive, but I’m not attracted to him. He exists as an icon of his own formation. So smooth and polished, he isn’t authentic. I want a real man. I want Aaron. Only Aaron. Would I have artistic freedom with King? No, I see that now. He’d control me. But we could cut a groove or two. I imagine telling Aaron that one more time, very clearly. I want to work with him, not have sex with him. I’m not responsible for what’s in his mind about me.

  But I’ve already said that in several different ways. And now I don’t completely trust Aaron. He used the flirt strategy for revenge lickety-split, like I was a cheater, reminding me I’m replaceable. He said I don’t know how men think. Maybe the flirting was for his boys. Maybe it was to soothe his wounded pride. Maybe he thought it would make me more interested. All these maybes, when my reaction is to walk away. He gave his explanation, but I don’t know what to believe.

  See how I go round and round?

  I don’t want to be with a man like my father. I don’t want to be my father either.

  I know I’m taking a big risk in trying to re-create love and hope in a broken place. Letting the opportunity of King go in the hope that Aaron and I can be paramount again absent my own vacillation. Loving a man felt risky before we left on our tour, before Troy’s death, before King, before Aaron and I started our coldness to each other. And me, can I let all of Aaron’s instant flirtations go?

  I ask him, “We can go back to being us, if I send this shit back?” The necklace dangles from my fingers.

  “Quit dipping a toe in to test the waters,” Aaron says.

  He wants the power and he has it. But I know that if this all vanishes, I’ll be okay somehow. I won’t backtrack. If Sky can get through what she’s gone through, I can deal with this. After all, I didn’t know this good stuff was going to happen. I was just happy and busy doing my music.

  I know being my own hero requires courage. So I call King. I take a big breath of air and pray, I hope this works. His man answers and I say my name. He hands King the phone.

  “Well, Li’l Key, you’ve given me the honor of a call.” The sarcasm and surprise drip through the honey.

  “I can’t accept this necklace from you. I don’t want you for a lover, and this is a lover’s gesture.” I say it right like that and there’s dead silence on the other end.

  “How ’bout you buy it from me from one-third of what I’ll pay you for singing that ‘I’ll Miss You’ song at my concert at Cobo Hall in January. You won’t even have to leave home.”

  I’ve thought of this. I’ve thought of negotiating a deal for Aaron and me. I want to say—oh, how I want to, and I consider it one more time—“Okay, if Aaron can be on stage before or after me.”

  And then in my imagination, King responds, after a moment’s consideration, “If you and I sing a duet, too.”

  I’d tell him then, in my fantasy, because he knows that I can’t cut a deal without Aaron and the crew, “Let me get back to you. And thank you.”

  That’s what I had planned to do until Mom made me realize what a breach of Aaron’s trust that would be.

  In reality, sitting in our apartment, my keyboard humming and the sun squeezing through grimy smeared windows, I say, “I would love that. You don’t have any idea what a pleasure and thrill it would be to work with you. And the key necklace is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen, a totem. But more than that is my love for my family and . . .” I stop. Because what I want to say is that could have happened, but you screwed it up with the sexual stuff, the excessive present and the comments about exclusivity.

  “That necklace was to test your commitment. To be a star, your career has to be paramount, and I’m not willing to put my energy into someone who isn’t absolutely and totally committed. You have to be willing to sacrifice everything else. You weren’t.”

  I squeeze my eyes tight, because I know I’m slamming the door. “No. My family is important, too. So I won’t be able to work with you.”

  “Okay.” There’s no graciousness to that word. Just the harsh outward breath. For a minute, I think he’s hung up.

  “I’ll miss the wonderful opportunity, but I will still get to do my music, and that and my family are what’s important to me.”

  He doesn’t say anything.

  I’m left hanging, as though I need to draw a conclusion, as though he’s waiting for something else, maybe for me to start laughing and tell him this is all a joke because, of course, more than anything I want to sing with the wonderful King, want to do a duet with him, will do anything to keep this spectacular necklace he had made for me.

  “I am extremely honored, extremely touched and flattered by your offer.” My voice cracks. And then I ask for the address where I can send the necklace.

  At first he doesn’t give it to me, as though he’s considering telling me to throw it away. Which I have to admit would be difficult. And I can’t sell it. What would I do with the money? Give it to a charity, I decide. Give it to Aaron and make him make the decision. What do you do with tainted money?

  I’m exhausted from all the back and forth in my head surrounding these issues.

  I realize this is an unexpected turn of events for King. He’s used to getting things his way. But then, finally, he gives me the address.

  Later that night, after Aaron gets home, I tell him about the conversation. I display the necklace in its box and show him a note I have written King. It is simple. It says: Thank you so much for this beautiful gift. I am honored that you appreciate my music. Your continued regard warms my heart and encourages my aspirations. Thank you again.

  Then, while Aaron watches, I wrap it up and write out the address.

  “I’ll take it to UPS tomorrow,” I tell him. “Want to come?” I’m bending over backward to build trust.

  His eyes meet mine. His head tilts slightly as he gazes at me. I can’t read his expression. I’m unsure whether it’s relief or confidence. “We can stop there on the way to rehearsal. I want to go over a few songs for our Thanksgiving concert in Toledo.”

  I’m surprised he’s not making a bigger deal about it. In my fantasy, he would grab me and hold me, kiss me, and thank me. But he does none of that. It’s as if everything slides back to normal and the necklace never existed. Tomorrow we have rehearsal. And then he says, staring right at me, “I just want you. No other woman. It was difficult dealing with the bullshit from the homies, but I knew you hadn’t done anything.”

  Levy comes in from a nap, his hair all crazy, rubbing his eyes. He sees us and runs to us, his arms outstretched. Aaron picks him up and holds him, and I join in. The three of us are together, just like normal.

  That night I take a shower and Aaron watches from the bedroom while I smooth lotion on my legs and breasts. He gets out of bed and comes to me, grabs the bottle from my hand, and squeezes a mound of lotion into his palm. And then applies it to my back. His hand is warm, and slippery with the cool cream. “This is one of those places you can’t get yourself,” he says. “You need me.”

  I hear what he’s saying in the spaces and nuances.

  When I’m all slippery, he turns me around and caresses the lotion over my breasts, the nipples arching at his touch.

  It’s been too long.

  And then he kisses each tip, my eyelids, my nose and my mouth, picks me up in his arms, and carries me to our bed. We lie in bed and kiss, just kiss, for a long time, as though we have forever.

  Right before Thanksgiving, Sky finds a cute two-bedroom apartment around the corner from Mom’s house. It’s in a complex with a swimming pool and a workout room. Aaron, Mom, Smoke, Sky, and I move her things from the storage shed to her new place. Sky hangs the blue painting so it’s the first thing you see when you enter her apartment. And the first thing she sees in the morning when she leaves her bedroom. Whe
n she and Rachel eat breakfast, it’ll remind them of the wonders of the sky. The high chair is there, too. Smoke plays with the crazy bee toy on it. It spins and chimes and beeps. “Glad it still works,” he says.

  Troy’s ashes sit on her dresser still in their box. A candle beside them, his picture on the other side, one of their wedding. He’s behind her, his arms folded around her, his chin smooshing her veil.

  Sky looks so young, and that was just a few years ago.

  Two nights later, she invites us all for a potluck housewarming. The beige and purple furniture from the Venice Beach condo fit right in, adding a touch of California. Aaron makes Sissy’s rib recipe. Mom brings the Girl Scout stew that the three of us invented for a Brownie final dinner. I make Sissy’s Sock-It-to-Me cake. Levy brings Rachel a bowl of stones. A black stone that’s perfectly round from the Pacific, which we found while we were walking on the beach. And a round translucent dot of stone the size of a quarter. We bought an amethyst, with rows of purple spikes, at the museum. Smoke carries two drums. A little drum for Rachel and a bigger one for Sky—an ashika, he tells her. “Drumming is a way to catch the universal beat,” he says. “Your own heartbeat and the spin of the universe. That all helps when things press down on you.” He looks at her hard. “I’ll teach you dudes some beats if you want. Bring over my wife and daughter and the four of us can play.”

  They had serious talks during those hours down I-40, the long road home.

  ———

  Sky works part time with Mom’s friend Rosie. She does research and case writing for the other lawyers. Rosie’s baby is due next week, so Sky will be taking over completely in the new year until Rosie returns from maternity leave. Meanwhile, Sky is studying for the bar. Rachel is in day care on the days that Sky works. Strangely, it’s the day care that I attended when I was a kid. Some of the teachers even remember me and follow my career. All these years I thought no one was paying attention.

  Sky seems settled. Not healed, but in safe place to start to try.

  And me? I’m working on my own series of songs. When Aaron sees me, he suggests I use T-Bone to sing some of the lyrics with me. We harmonized well in “I’ll Miss You.” I must look surprised, because he adds, “We’re a crew. We need all our talents to succeed. Like building a car needs everybody’s input to make it run.”