A Gift for My Sister: A Novel

by Ann Pearlman

  I’m working on being the hero of my own life, and Aaron’s working on being egalitarian.

  After Thanksgiving, Aaron says, “We talked about buying a house and getting married after our tour. What do you think of aiming for that next year?”

  “It’s a good time to buy a house,” I say.

  “It’s a good time to get married,” he answers. “But it’s been a good time to get married.”

  It was me who tarried.

  Me and my fear of love and loss. I turn away and wipe the kitchen counter. I’d figured out what courage means. It means following my own meaning. My music is the easy part. I inhale, rinse the rag with warm water, start on sprinkling the sink with Comet, and scrub. And as I do it, I realize what I want is to be part of a family. Being comfortable and feeling accepted by a family is part of my meaning. It doesn’t have to be like my mom and dad. Not all men are like him.

  And more important, I’m not either.

  Prickles run up my arms.

  And just like that, some bravery has kicked in and some fear has evaporated.

  I put the cloth down and turn to Aaron. “Yes. It’s a good time to get married. Yes.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Cookie Party

  Sky

  EVERYTHING FALLS INTO place. It’s logistically simple, but emotionally complicated. I still wander around missing Troy and visiting the life we had. All my plans are down the drain. I don’t set out on a sentimental journey; it just happens. I drive to Trader Joe’s and pass Tappan Middle School, where Troy and I met; Burns Park, where we hung out; Buhr Swimming Pool, where I felt the first flush of attraction. The next day, I see the apartment we lived in during college. After a few times, the tears are replaced by happy memories.

  Mom’s friend Rosie comes through for me, and I have a part-time job. Rachel starts day care, and we’re in a cute apartment. I look at my sky painting and am reminded of the chance for contentment. I look at Troy’s ashes and light the candle beside them, touch his sweet face on our wedding picture, close my eyes and imagine that I’m in “my place,” my head nestled on his shoulder, his arm around me, my leg thrown over his. I tell him thank you for being in my life. Thank you for teaching me about love.

  I’m not walking along the edge of a cliff anymore. I’ve fallen into the abyss. And that’s had a paradoxical effect. Instead of tiptoeing, I disregard it. There’s nothing I, or anyone, can do about serendipity. Instead, a more casual attitude has given me a new freedom. I don’t refer to my iPhone to check my lists, I don’t go through all possible scenarios to make a decision. Troy would be so proud.

  In January, I’ll be part of a group studying for the Michigan bar; meanwhile I’m putting out feelers for a position in criminal law. I think I want to work for the public defender’s office. I can make a difference defending people who can’t afford a lawyer. I won’t make as much money, but I’ll do some good. I don’t want to help people fight over a tattered love. We have too many people—poor people, minorities—who have been in prison too long and the costs, financial and social, strangle all of us. I guess that’s what I learned on the long ride home.

  But sometimes I still wake up early, eyes wide. Not at 3:42. I sleep a little later but watch the numbers advance on my clock. Wait for Rachel to climb out of bed and cuddle with me. She feels comforted as we snuggle until the alarm rings. I make us breakfast, her lunch, and drive her to Child’s Place.

  “I want to go back to California. I miss Daddy,” she says one Saturday morning.

  “He’s not there. He’s in our minds and hearts. I miss him, too,” I tell her and pull her close.

  “I miss Levy and Tara and Aaron.”

  “And Allie and Smoke,” I add.

  Her back is toward me and she’s curled into a ball. I turn her around and pull her close.

  “Well, that we can fix. We can go see them.” I kiss her forehead.

  We drive into Detroit, go to Eastern Market, have lunch with Tara, Levy, Aaron, and Sissy, walk around the empty, lonely old city. Sometimes Tara, Aaron, and Levy come to our place and spend the night. We get up the next morning and go to the Kerrytown or the Natural History Museum.

  Unbelievably, Tara is my best friend.

  It’s been four and a half months since Troy died. I clock my progress.

  Sometimes, I laugh.

  Rachel and I take swimming lessons at the Y. Rachel can actually dog paddle across the kiddie pool. Maybe she’ll be a diver like Troy. Maybe she won’t, and that’s okay, too.

  I make a new friend. I met Paul at the gym in our apartment complex. He runs on the treadmill with the grace of a gazelle, no pain visible on his face. I watch TV while I work out on the elliptical, stealing glances in his direction. The ease with which he runs soothes me. He lives two apartments down from me. One night, Paul invites Rachel and me to have dinner with him. Beef bourguignon, homemade multi-grain bread, and an almond tart for dessert.

  “I didn’t expect this,” I say. “You’re a gourmet cook!”

  He shrugs. “I miss cooking for my partner. He left about a month ago.” So we hang out together, go to movies in the middle of the afternoon when Rachel is at day care and I don’t have to work. When he wants someone else to taste his great cooking, Rachel and I oblige. Lucky for him, she’s one of those kids who will try anything.

  My prayer for a baby “at any cost” didn’t make all this happen. I didn’t give Troy the germ that made him die. I’m not inevitably contagious and doomed to lose everyone I love. The fates or God aren’t out to get me.

  I stop at Gallup Park, where I watch a family spending a quiet afternoon together. A dad, a mom, and a girl a bit older than Rachel, maybe five, walk over the river on a footbridge, watching carp swim and cluster under it, hoping for bread crumbs. The daughter points at the fish. The father holds her up so she can see over the railing. The mom laughs and moves close, leaning over the edge.

  My anger rises. Why me? Why did I have to lose my beloved? And I hate them. Then hate myself for feeling such jealousy.

  I think about this as I drive Rachel to day care. She’s in the car seat behind me listening to a CD that was Tara’s. I drop Rachel off. Her backpack is slung over her narrow shoulders, and she swings a pink purse stuffed with a toy cell phone and rocks she’s picked up from around the flower beds. “Have a good day,” I call.

  She turns at the door and grins. “Bye, Mommy.”

  I drive around the school parking lot, looking for an exit. They’re building an addition, so a chain link fence separates various sections. The lot is muddy from a cold rain, a slightly ocher brown. I come to a fence, turn around in the mud, and try to find a way out of the lot. I move in the quagmire, hit chains, turn, and drive, only to arrive at another dead end. I consider plowing through the fence but don’t want additional hassles. I’m not surprised, frustrated, or panicked that I’m apparently trapped. I don’t know where I’m going to go when I get out anyway, as I don’t have work today.

  Finally, I make a left turn and find myself on a main street, pointed toward home.

  I pull into Kroger’s parking lot and stop to look at the selection of flowers. Poinsettias, amaryllis, gerberas, and tulips are on sale. I rest a bunch of red amaryllis and yellow tulips in my basket. My cart goes up and down the aisles, and I follow obediently behind it, guiding it and gazing at rows of food that have been boxed, canned, cubed, and wrapped in plastic.

  I place of jar of maple syrup, the real kind, next to the flowers and head for the express lane.

  As I place my goods on the conveyor belt, I notice the man in front of me. His dark hair snakes around the edges of his neck, giving him a slightly rough look. He feels my stare and turns, and his eyes slide up and down my body. I have forgotten the way a man’s eyes feel on me.

  Without thinking, I meet his gaze. His eyelashes are tangled in each other. My head tilts as I wait for him to make the next move.

  “Funny dinner,” he says.

  “The amaryllis
are the appetizer. Maple syrup for dessert.”

  His neck comes straight down from his ears and reminds me of someone, as does the awkward nature of the conversation.

  While I pay for my purchases, he stands there slowly putting his money in his wallet. His eyes stick to me as though I’m fascinating.

  He watches while I slide my card, punch in the required information, and sign the window with the plastic pen. He has managed to delay his departure until I’m ready, so we walk out together.

  “Need a lift?” I ask. A flutter inside me, like a butterfly wing that I refuse to crush, reminds me how to be with a man again.

  “Certainly.” Our bargain is sealed when he slides in close.

  I never tell him my name. He never tells me his. We scatter the amaryllis and tulips on his bed. We crush them with our bodies, grind the red and yellow pigments into his sheets. Rain drips outside his window, the gray haze in his room closes around us.

  We move rapidly together, thrashing on the flowers.

  When we finish, my heaviness is gone. “Thanks,” I say.

  His eyes are closed and there’s a smile on his lips. Warm and sleepy on the bed, already separate from me, and drifting back to his world. I lean over to kiss him. His lips are firm and curved under mine, motionless. He opens his eyes and pulls me to him. When I put my hand on the door knob to go, he says, “Funny how life happens.”

  But I know it doesn’t always keep on happening.

  I think of my mother and understand her relationship with Stephen and understand his lack of commitment to her, to us. She thought if she got married, she’d have my father back. And then Stephen never felt loved by her. “Goodbye,” I whisper to my fantasy as I walk down the stairs.

  Because, of course, I haven’t done any of that. All I did was stand in line and observe him put his wallet away. As if my hand slides into his pocket, I feel the curve of him. My hand is hot from him.

  He stared at me with interest and I was surprised anyone would see me as anything other than a widow, a mother. I have forgotten the woman part but he, and the feelings he stirred up, remind me.

  The soar of joy is so different from the blanket of sorrow and smear of shame and diminishment I’ve dragged around. I hold the feeling like a small flame lighting me up inside.

  Outside, I lift my face to cool rain. Tiny drops hit hard and then soften like a melting cloud. My car starts with a roar.

  At the next grocery, I march up the produce aisle. Purple grapes nestle each other. Oranges mound in tiers between shining red and citron apples. Deep red strawberries cluster like huge garnets. Their bright colors gleam more than semiprecious stones. Pineapple, bananas, kiwi, and papaya are more colorful, more perfect, more varied than King’s orange sapphires. Do we even recognize how precious this plenty is, up from the soil across miles and seas?

  I am blessed to be here. To have this. Didn’t David try to tell me? Didn’t Rachel’s near drowning remind me? Didn’t Smoke with his callused hands and soft soul prompt me? Didn’t Tara and Allie and the crew being there prove it to me? And didn’t the traffic stop, the Memphis museums, and the accident, all serendipity, all from out of the blue, end up changing the path I’m walking now?

  Tears wet my eyes.

  I guess I still make lists.

  I stop at Mom’s on the way home. Disney, Mom’s poodle, bounces excitedly to see me, wagging his tail as he brings me his stuffed froggy. Mom is right behind him, arms open, her white hair pulled back in a ponytail. Wearing black leggings and an off-the-shoulder lavender tunic, she brews us chamomile and stevia tea and puts a plate of almond cookies on the table. She sits across from me and, as always, waits for me to begin.

  I just talk while she leans one arm on the table, the other gently on top of it, her nails polished in a perfect French manicure. I want to explain how I’ve changed. I’ve forgiven her for something about which I had no right to be angry. “The temporary things . . . will I be wearing the right clothes for an interview appointment, will my hair be straight enough, my house neat enough, Rachel well behaved enough? . . . have gone by the way-side. I have a new vision. And less anxiety.”

  I stop, and she sips her tea, squeezes in some lemon. The clean scent pervades the room. Outside, the wind bends tree branches.

  “With each death there’s a gift. Maybe that’s your gift, recognizing what’s small and letting it go, no longer needing to plan far ahead in great detail.”

  “Maybe,” I agree. “But that gift isn’t worth the loss.”

  “No. Of course not.”

  I haven’t told her yet what I’ve come to say. “I understand you, too, in a different way. Understand Stephen. The need to not be alone with a kid.”

  She reaches out for me and covers my hand. “I didn’t know I needed understanding.” Her eyes shift and she stares lost in her own thoughts, and then she meets my gaze. “I get it. He seemed like a betrayal of your father and you. You’ve been angry all these years.”

  “Angry? That seems too intense a word.” Mostly I’ve resented Tara. Mostly I commandeered Mom in spite of her. Not to prevent them from being together, but because I couldn’t share.

  I start to tell Mom this, but before I can say it, she adds, “I’m glad you and Tara are doing so well. You seem as close as I always dreamed.”

  Mom knows without me saying it; besides, it’s enough that I understand. But then she says, “It’s been a revisit of my own horror, you going through this. Broke my heart for you and for me all over again.” Her eyes fill.

  “I guess I’ve been self-involved.” And then I meet her eyes. “So what was your gift?”

  She looks away from me, shifts in the chair, and glances toward the backyard. A cardinal picks at sunflower seeds in her feeder, a red flash of color in the monotone of tangled bare branches and beige grass. “It was a long, winding road for me. I distracted myself from seeing the gift. Now I see. I realized that I could have a rich life without a partner. And I could raise you, and then Tara, alone. But I fought against it.” She bites on the inside of her lip and says, “I thought I needed a man. It was a gift to realize I wanted one, would prefer to have a partner, but life can be full and rich without one. And I was strong enough to do it alone. Yes. That’s the gift. Learning my own strength.”

  “You taught me that, too, Mom. I understand the need for a partner so everything is shared, but I can raise Rachel alone.”

  “And part of the gift was that it gave us,” her finger draws a line between us, “an extra-special bond.”

  “Yes. It did.” And she holds my hand.

  I do other things that afternoon, too. I call the hospice and enroll in their next support group. Their telephone number has sat on my desk for almost a month. I avoided letting strangers help, hesitant to commit to the last letting-go in moving forward, but now I see how much they can help, and I want to be there for others.

  And I decide to have a cookie party, but it’s going to be different from Mom’s. And the first person I call is Brooke. She’s bringing Molly and Tyler. I’d told Paul about Mom’s cookie party and he was thrilled with the idea, so he’s coming. And Rachel, of course. Tara and Levy. And Tara invited Sandy and Robin, her old friends from high school, from before Aaron. I told Tara to invite any of the crew who want to cook and share cookies. She laughed and said, “I don’t think so.”

  Marissa, my old friend from middle school, is bringing her husband, Andy.

  “He has to bake cookies, too,” I tease.

  “Hey. His’ll be better than mine!”

  Jennifer is bringing her twins, Kevin and Karen, who are four.

  That’s fourteen people. Six children. And two guys. “Just cook the ones you love the most, but if you want to bake chocolate chips, you have to call everyone and tell them. Otherwise we might get eight batches of them.”

  I considered inviting Mom and Allie. But I don’t want to interfere with Mom’s cookie party. How many dozens of cookies can someone bake?

  I miss
Allie. So I call her up and we go to lunch at the Roadhouse on a Friday afternoon, a treat for both of us. She asks about work and my apartment. I tell her I’m having a cookie party and Brooke is coming, and Molly and Tyler, too. I tell her how much Rachel loves day care and knows all her colors and shapes.

  “You’re doing well, Sky. You know that, don’t you? I bet you’re even laughing now and again.”

  “Trying to. I’ll be part of a support group in January and have joined a study group for the bar.”

  “You eating? You’re still too thin. Way too thin.”

  I grab a bite of my spinach salad and exaggerate putting it in my mouth, and she laughs. But her head is tilted slightly, a sure sign that she waits for the rest of the answer. “I have to remind myself. Rachel helps because she says she’s hungry and demands her flavorite, which changes every week. Right now it’s baked Brie and caramelized pecans.”

  “Baked Brie?”

  I tell Allie about Paul.

  I’m eating ginger gelato when I ask her how she got over her father’s early death and then her husband leaving her for another woman.

  “I walked a fine line between retreating and getting back out into the world. True, you retreat to mourn. Meditate. Figure things out.” Allie leans toward me, her palms pressed on the table edge. “But you get out into the world to be reminded of wonderful people, passion, joy, and growth. If you retreat too much, you go into a shell and the mourning seeps to depression.” She shakes her head and her hair, wild and curly and gray, spirals around her head in its own excitement. “But if you get out there too quickly, you skip the mourning, and healing, and aren’t ready to make wise decisions.” She spoons some of the gelato and eats it.

  I listen and wait for her to continue.

  Her voice changes, becomes lower and quiet. “I’ve heard lots of stories in my thirty-plus years of doing therapy. When you hear entire lives, the whole span of decades, you become aware of how strong the human fighting spirit is, how resilient we are. We overcome unspeakable tragedies. Every family suffers. There’s no escaping.” She puts her spoon down and looks into my eyes. “Most of us go on, grow, change, rebuild. We interpret our own lives.”