Sisters One, Two, Three

by Nancy Star

  “I work on it every day,” Charlie boasted. “Wait till you see how deep it is.”

  Solly tousled his hair. “You got another shovel? I can help you get there faster.”

  “I’m helping,” Callie piped up. “We dig by the dunes. So the tide won’t wash it away.” She was proud to know this. “But I’d rather go to the Cut. Will you take me?”

  “Sure,” Solly said, having no idea.

  When they caught up to Glory, Callie reported that her father was going to help Charlie dig to China, and after that, he was taking her to the Cut.

  “Don’t encourage them,” Glory said, and when Solly moved toward the driver’s side, she blocked him. “I’m the driver here.”

  Their father laid the umbrella across the laps of the backseaters, pointy end sticking out the window, and slid into the death seat. “This is nice. For once the scenery I get to see.”

  The car barreled along, and Ginger stared into the creases on her father’s neck. Until now, she didn’t know a neck could look unhappy. Her mother’s neck was covered by a hat lifted off one of the iron pegs on the front porch. Somehow the hat managed to look unhappy too.

  When they got to the house, everyone hurried in to change for the beach. By the time Ginger squeezed into her tight suit and rejoined her siblings, her mother was waiting by the car, lipstick back to red, a straight gash across her face.

  “Solly? Are you coming? What is he doing in there?” When he emerged, winded, Glory took in his paisley swim trunks and white terry-cloth robe and winced before turning away.

  “Are we bringing food?” Mimi asked as she got in the car. “Yesterday I starved to death,” she told her father. “Yesterday, lunch was fudge.”

  Glory drove, hands tight on the wheel. “Take a good look at her, Solly. Does Sarah Bernhardt seem like she’s starving to you?”

  It took a very long time to get to the beach, and when Glory pulled into the lot, Charlie looked out the window and said, “This isn’t where we go.”

  “He means this isn’t the beach where he’s digging to China,” Mimi translated.

  “It’s a beach, isn’t it?” Glory got out of the car and dropped her keys in her purse. “There’s plenty of sand. Dig away.” She pulled a lounge chair out of the trunk and started walking.

  “We’ll start a new hole,” Solly said. “Maybe dig to Japan for a change. I know people in Japan. And won’t they be surprised to see us pop out of the ground.”

  “That’s okay,” Charlie said. “I don’t have to dig.”

  Glory sat in her lounge chair, hat low on her head, eyes closed. Mimi asked her father to come in the water with her.

  “Who could say no to that?” He pulled off his shirt, revealing a torso white as bone, a dark patch of curly hair running in a line down his chest from his neck to his trunks.

  Glory looked up. Her voice sounded calm, almost sleepy. “You can’t do that.”

  “Why not? You need some kind of license to swim here?”

  “You need eyes, Solly. What do you think that red flag is for?” She pointed to the flag they’d passed as they walked in. “Red means rough seas. There’s no swimming in rough seas.”

  Solly looked at the ocean. “This they call rough? At Jones Beach, this is calm.”

  “Well, this isn’t Jones Beach. They have riptides here, and the lifeguards don’t like it when people drown in riptides.” She closed her eyes to make him disappear.

  Solly had not come all this way to fight. He shrugged and moved on to the next task, getting the blanket ready. He had a system for this which he’d been perfecting for years. He methodically transported a big scoop of sand to each corner, mounding it just so to keep the blanket anchored. When he was finished, he stood up and clapped his hands to get rid of the excess dust.

  Glory lurched up and brushed herself off. “Why do you have to send a sandstorm in everyone’s face? Next time use rocks, like a normal person.”

  The day continued like a rock slide, downhill, and no one knew how to stop it. Glory’s hat stayed low on her head, her mouth a flat red line, her eyes opened no more than a slit while Solly, clumsy as a bear, concentrated on rotating on the blanket—side, belly, side, front, side, belly, side, back—to get an even tan. At some point, he groaned his way back upright, got his transistor radio and earplug, and lay down, adjusting a pair of white eyecups so that the thin plastic strip sat straight across his nose. “Ahh.” Finally, he was content.

  Mimi kneeled beside him. “Can I sit by the water if I promise not to go in?”

  Solly lifted up an eyecup. “Sure. Sit wherever you want.”

  Glory watched Mimi dart to the water. “You’re letting her go alone?” Before Solly could defend himself, Ginger, Charlie, and Callie raced off to join their sister.

  When the ocean presented a red-bellied jellyfish at Callie’s feet, like a present, she jumped up and sat down closer to Charlie.

  Mimi teased her. “Hey, Callie Claire. Do you know what makes a jellyfish stomach red?”

  Charlie answered as he investigated. “Blood.” He looked at his sisters. “I wonder whose.”

  Although they hadn’t gone in the water, the tide had washed over their feet. Ginger examined herself—toes, heel, ankles—to see if she’d been stung. “Blood’s not mine. Check if it’s yours.”

  Everyone checked, but the blood wasn’t from them. They stared at the waves crashing against rocks, sea spray shooting in the air. No one else was in the water that they could see.

  “Maybe someone went out too far,” Mimi guessed. “Maybe they crashed into the rocks. Maybe they’re floating in the water now, eyes wide-open.” She got up, grabbed the carcass of a horseshoe crab, scooped up the jellyfish, and tossed it so that it bounced off Callie’s foot. “Did you know jellyfish can sting even when they’re dead?”

  Callie screamed and sprinted to the blanket, crying.

  “Sorry,” Mimi said quietly. They all turned and watched from a distance as Callie told her mother what just happened. When Callie finished, Glory stood up and started walking toward the path to the car.

  When they got to the blanket, Solly was already packing up. “We’ll come back tomorrow. Everyone will feel better tomorrow.”

  They were silent in the car, silent when they stopped to pick up pizza, silent in the living room where they sat, paper plates on their laps, eating dinner while Solly fumbled with the TV antenna.

  “You’re wasting your time,” Glory said. “It doesn’t work.”

  The snowy picture on the screen turned from blizzard to nor’easter. Ginger made out ghostly images of people, three of them, running down an alley.

  “It’s The Mod Squad,” Mimi said. “That blob over there is Peggy Lipton.”

  “No it’s not,” Charlie said. “It’s Linc.”

  “I’m living in a lunatic asylum,” Glory said, and then, even though it was only eight o’clock, she stood and added, “I’m going to bed.”

  In the morning, as they sat eating breakfast, a steady drizzle of rain hitting the window, Solly told them a headache had come in the night. “Like a train wreck, your mother said it’s exploding. So she’s going to sleep in. But if we keep quiet, maybe leave the house for a while, by lunchtime she’ll be good as new.” As for what they should do now, he was at a loss.

  They pitched in, coming up with ideas. First stop was the library. After that they went to town. Next came the carousel, and when they’d had enough of that, it was time for lunch. After lunch came ice cream. And in between it all, Solly stopped at pay phones to check on how the headache was progressing.

  The rain stopped but the reports stayed grim. “It’s like a vice,” he said after they went to look at the swans. “Like knives stabbing her eyes,” he said after they went on a pony ride. “Like an atom bomb,” he said after they finished dinner. They were eating their second ice cream of the day when Charlie asked, “Can we go to the beach even though it’s night?”

  “Why not?” came their father’s surpri
sing reply. He took a long time consulting the map in the glove compartment before he picked their destination. “South Beach, it is.”

  They passed a small grocery store on the way and Mimi suggested they stop to buy flashlights, like the ones they used to come home from Jungle Beach. Ginger was in the front seat so she couldn’t give her sister a warning kick, but it didn’t matter. Solly heard nothing in the remark about Jungle Beach to give him pause. “Excellent idea,” was all he had to say.

  By the time they pulled into the South Beach lot, the sun was on the horizon. Minutes later the ocean turned invisible, save for an occasional flash of white from the breakers. Because Callie thought the night beach was scary, Solly carried her up to the nearby lifeguard stand, where, he promised, no monsters could get her. When Mimi asked him if she could put her feet in the water, another surprise. “Why not?”

  They stood at the water’s edge, mist tickling their faces, and looked up at the stars. Mimi said, “Maybe we should make wishes.”

  Ginger wished first, that their mother’s headache would go away. Charlie wished next, that in the morning they could go home to New Jersey. Mimi changed her mind about the whole enterprise. “Wishes don’t work.”

  They trudged back to the lifeguard stand, the top invisible in the dark, and Charlie pointed his flashlight. Solly called out, “Watch the eyes.”

  “We want to go home,” Ginger yelled up and her father said, “Okay.”

  “I want to jump off before we go,” Mimi shouted and another, “Okay,” came back.

  Mimi scrambled up the ladder with Charlie right behind her, both of them aware that at any moment permission might be rescinded.

  It happened fast. One second Charlie and Mimi were arguing about who would jump first, and the next second there was a yell and a thud and Charlie was facedown on the ground right next to where Ginger stood. She waited for him to move but he didn’t. Kneeling in the dark, she reached for the closest body part, his foot, and shook it. “Charlie?”

  Her father clambered down the ladder, a noise like a sea lion coming from deep within his chest. She saw the flashlight lying in the sand and turned it on, the beam hitting Charlie’s face. “Quit it,” he said and sat up.

  “Oy.” Solly raced over. “You all right?”

  Charlie nodded. “Except my arm. I can’t move my arm.”

  The doctor at the hospital explained this was because his arm was broken.

  When they got to the house, they scattered like vapor. They were in their bedrooms when Solly called upstairs. “Charlie. Your mother wants to see you.”

  The three sisters changed into their pajamas. Callie didn’t want to be by herself, so Ginger let her slide into her bed, sandy feet and all. They lay silent for what seemed like a very long time before they heard their brother’s footsteps climbing the stairs. He stopped in the doorway. “She’s not mad. It’s okay.”

  By the time they got up the next day, their father was gone.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Glory’s favorite den chair moved with her to the Meadows, but though Ginger placed it next to the window, with its view of a small garden, Glory preferred to look the other way, out through her propped-open door into the hall. “Yoo-hoo!” she called to someone shuffling by. “Come and say hello. Don’t be a stranger.”

  Her adjustment had been surprisingly easy, something Ginger attributed to the upgrade from full-time companion to full-time audience. “All the girls here love me,” Glory reported, and Ginger understood all the girls meant nurses, aides, social workers, kitchen staff, lady hairdresser, lady doctor, and lady activity director. The activity director, Brooke, who’d been trying to start a theater group for years, loved her most of all.

  “Brooke’s a worrier like you,” Glory said. “Told me it’s impossible to put on plays on account of there’s hardly any men. I told her we had hardly any men when they were alive and we managed.”

  “Yes,” Ginger said, and then realized her mother hadn’t asked a question.

  Over dinner she told Richard this was happening a lot. “I zone out. I might look like I’m listening, but really I’m completely caught up in thinking about what I’m going to say when Glory finally remembers to ask about Julia.”

  “You’re doing it again,” Richard told her. “Making a problem where there isn’t one.”

  Ginger felt the sting of blame in Richard’s tone. He never said it outright, but she got the message. Julia’s departure was her fault. While she conceded this was partly—even mostly—true, she would not take all the blame. They were supposed to be a team. And being a team meant what happened was on both of them.

  “The fact is,” he went on, “your mother would be thrilled to know Julia’s out there trying to start a career as a performer. The family tradition continues.”

  Why did Richard not get that the family tradition was exactly the problem? Seeing Julia go was like seeing Callie leave all over again. And career? “Is that what you think Julia’s doing? Starting a career?”

  “I would say Julia is trying to live her life.”

  She didn’t have it in her to argue anymore. The fights were too frequent now. Julia’s departure seemed to have gotten into the bedrock of their marriage, finding cracks she’d never noticed before. How had she missed Richard’s tendency to minimize things? And was she to understand her cautious nature had been irking him for years?

  That night was the first of what soon became their new routine. Ginger woke around three to the sound of Richard leaving their bed to sleep on the couch. In the morning, he defended his change of location. It was because of how she reacted to his snoring, all the jiggling and poking in the ribs to get him to turn over. It bordered on violence.

  “This?” She gave him a gentle shove. “This is violent?”

  Richard seemed to have settled on silence as his preferred mode of communication, so it wasn’t a surprise that silence was his answer now.

  When he finally raised the idea of a break—just for a few nights at the Marriott downtown so they could both cool off—Ginger surprised them both by not trying to talk him out of it. Maybe a cooling-off period was what they needed. Maybe after a few days apart they would be able to talk things through without Richard accusing her of worrying Julia right out of the house or her firing back that Julia wouldn’t have left at all if Richard had given Ginger a chance to help figure out a response with him, as a team.

  Now, in addition to worrying about what to say if Glory asked where Julia was, she worried about what to say if Glory asked, Where’s Richard?

  As it turned out, neither topic was of interest to her. All conversation with Glory now revolved around her newly formed theater group. As Glory promised, the lack of men was not a problem. But the lack of people who could memorize lines was. “I finally figured it out,” she boasted to Ginger one day. “We’re going to specialize. Theater of the Absurd.”

  The excitement of the move to the Meadows fired up the faulty connections in Glory’s brain, but not for long. Soon she was back to addled. One morning, an aide found her at the elevators, asking a visitor for help getting to the kitchen. The next day, a man found her in the parking lot, confused about where she’d left her car. After the first fall, it was clear she needed more care. Because there were no openings in the dementia unit, she was moved, temporarily, to a small room in the long-term wing.

  Ginger stopped by every day after school to take care of whatever needed doing. She tidied up the odd things that appeared on her mother’s night table, one day a small white box of chocolates—from whom?—another day a stuffed bear. She reviewed medication with the on-duty nurse and then, linking arms, took her mother for strolls, to the crafts center, to the library, to the chair yoga room. At the end of her visit, she’d deposit her in the lounge where a rotation of movies with Constance Bennett, Myrna Loy, and Cary Grant played on the TV in an endless loop.

  But as soon as Ginger got back in her car, her thoughts would return to Julia, recalculating how long sin
ce she’d left—today it was four weeks—and wondering whether there’d be a postcard waiting in the mail when she got home. So far none had come, but every day she hoped a card was waiting. Some days magical thinking took hold and she hoped Julia would borrow a phone and send a text. So far: no card, no text, no magic, no luck.

  At work she was focused, as always, applying healing salves to wounds, assessing pustules on rashes, taking notes during mandatory meetings about the new core curriculum, or helping to organize group gifts for the Spanish teacher’s baby shower. But in her rare free moments, if there were no meetings to attend and no children to be seen, her mind would track back to Julia, always to Julia, wondering how she was.

  To get through her days, she sacrificed her nights. No longer did she rotate like a rotisserie chicken in bed, hoping sleep would claim her. Now, when she woke with a start, no matter the time, her brain scrambling to locate the reason for her sense of high alert and distress, she’d get up and go to the computer. Google Earth—really all of the web—was her new best friend and her most vicious enemy. If she was in a hopeful mood, she would travel, virtually, through the streets of Portland. Streets with lovely names like Spring and Pleasant and Pine. Streets that sounded smart, like Oxford, or homey, like Kellogg. Zooming in on backyard swing sets and zooming out to study the neighborhood grid, sometimes a sense of ease would come over her because surely nothing bad could happen at the corner of Diamond and Pearl.

  Other nights, when she woke anxious, she’d follow the cursor to Middle Street, to the squat red bricks of the Portland Police Headquarters or to the courthouse, where she’d examine the building so closely she could make out which windows had air-conditioner units and which units were reinforced with plywood planks. She’d check the online news after that to learn in real time about car accidents, assaults, and fires. Google Earth would then take her there, to the very spot where the incident occurred, so she could search, block by block, irrationally—these weren’t webcams—for signs of Julia or Nick or their no-air-bag car.