The Space Between Sisters

by Mary McNear

  “Is he tired?” Win asked suddenly, glancing in the direction of the living room. “Everett, I mean. Is he tired from the drive? Or do his eyes always look like that?”

  “Like what?” Poppy asked, perplexed at the direction the conversation had taken.

  “You know, his eyes look kind of sleepy.”

  Poppy shook her head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’ve never noticed his eyes before. But I’m assuming this means it’s okay for him to be here now.”

  “It’s okay,” Win said.

  “And it’s okay for me to stay here?” Poppy asked.

  “Yes. You’re always welcome here, you know that,” Win said, but this was followed by an awkward pause. Win knew without having to be told that Poppy believed the cabin should belong to both of them. “But what’s, uh, what’s Everett going to do tonight?” she asked, returning to the matter at hand.

  “Oh,” Poppy said, her blue eyes widening with surprise. “I don’t know. I hadn’t really thought about it. Drive back to the city, I guess.”

  “At this time of night? He won’t get back until . . . two o’clock in the morning.”

  “Maybe he can get a motel room,” Poppy suggested.

  “Are you going to pay for it?”

  “No. He’s a big boy. He can pay for it himself.”

  “Poppy, that’s not the point,” Win said, shaking her head.

  “What is the point?”

  “The point is that he drove four and a half hours to get you here,” Win said, with forced patience. “You can’t just say ‘good night’ and push him out the door.”

  Now it was Poppy’s turn to look incredulous. “Win, two minutes ago you were afraid he was a serial killer, and now you’re worried I’ll hurt his feelings? And, just for the record, he didn’t do me that much of a favor. When I bumped into him this morning at that coffeehouse, and I asked him if he could drive me up here today, he said yes right away. He said he loved coming to this part of the state. You know, the north woods and all.”

  “Oh, that must be it, Poppy. He’s here for the flora and fauna,” Win said, amused in spite of herself. “He couldn’t possibly be interested in a gorgeous girl like you.” But Poppy—whose official position on her beauty was to refuse to acknowledge it—shrugged this off.

  “Besides,” she said to Win, “his cousin has a cabin an hour north of here, on Birch Lake. Starting next week, Everett’s going to be able to use it. He wants to get into the habit of doing this drive.”

  “All right. Whatever,” Win said, shifting gears. “Why don’t you two bring your stuff in from the car? You can have our old room,” she said, of the guest room she and Poppy had shared during summer vacations as children, “and Everett can have the couch, if he doesn’t mind.”

  “He doesn’t mind,” Poppy said, confidently.

  “Good,” Win said, warming now to the idea of having guests. “We can all have a late breakfast together tomorrow morning—I’ll make French toast—and after that, you’ll have time for a swim before you head back to the city. Unless you want to leave really early Monday morning to get back in time for work.”

  “Yeah, about that . . .” Poppy said. “Um, I’ve been meaning to talk to you about the whole work thing.”

  Win frowned. She didn’t like the way that sounded. “What happened to your job, Pops?”

  “What happened to it is that I don’t have it anymore.”

  “You were . . . fired?”

  “No,” Poppy said, offended. “I quit.”

  “Pops,” Win groaned. “Why?”

  “Because it was so unbelievably boring. I mean, have you ever been a receptionist before?” She pantomimed wearing a headset. “Hello, Johnson, Lewis, Lester and Grouper, how may I help you? I did that two hundred and fifty times a day. Can you imagine? Plus, one of the partners, Grouper”—she paused here to shudder—“was really starting to creep me out.”

  Win took a deep breath. Do not freak out, she counseled herself. Stay calm. You can’t kill Poppy. Not with someone else in the next room. She exhaled, slowly. “Just out of curiosity,” she asked, “did you find another job before you quit this one?”

  To Poppy’s credit, she answered this question with admirable directness. “No, I didn’t. And there’s something else, too.”

  “What’s that?” Win asked, a little weakly.

  “I’m subletting my apartment.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I can’t afford it, Win. No job, no paycheck. No paycheck, no money for rent. No money for rent, no apartment.”

  Win rubbed her temples. “No, I see the connection,” she said. “But you’re not . . . you’re not moving in with that guy you told me about, are you?”

  “Patrick?” Poppy said. “God no. No, he kept telling me he wanted to take our relationship to ‘the next level’ and I kept thinking, ‘Look, I don’t know what’s on that level, but I am not going to go there with you.’ So, yeah, he’s kind of out of the picture now.”

  “Okay, but . . .” And Win paused here, not really wanting to know the answer to this next question. “Where are you going to live now?”

  “Here?” Poppy asked, hopefully.

  “Poppy,” Win said, shaking her head. “Do you remember the last time we—”

  “Look, I know what you’re going to say. And I get it. I do. Before you say it, though, I want to ask you one question. One simple question.”

  There was more massaging of temples from Win. But Poppy, undiscouraged, pressed on. “What day is today?”

  “That’s your question?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s Saturday.”

  “No, what day of the month is it.”

  Win sighed. “It’s the twenty-first.”

  “It’s June twenty-first,” Poppy said, significantly. “Think about it, Win.”

  “It’s . . . the first day of summer?”

  “Yes,” Poppy said triumphantly. “Yes, yes, yes. It’s the first day of summer, and here I am. Here we are. At the cabin. At your cabin,” she added, quickly, “but still, the cabin where we spent every summer of our childhoods. Don’t you get it, Win?”

  “Not really.”

  “This is it, Win. This is our chance to have another summer together, on this lake, at this cabin, for the first time in thirteen years. I mean, I’m between jobs, and you’re on vacation, and—”

  “I wouldn’t call it a vacation—” Win interposed. She was a social studies teacher at the middle school in Butternut and she used summer break to plan for the year ahead.

  “All right, fine, you’re on a working vacation. The point is, you’re still going to have some free time, and now, you’re going to have it with me,” Poppy said, giving Win her most charming smile. “It’ll be fun. We’ll go canoeing, and we’ll go on picnics, and we’ll go raspberry picking. And skinny-dipping. There’s no age limit for that, is there? And that goes for making s’mores, too. Oh, and playing Monopoly. We can do that, and maybe, maybe, if you’re really nice, I’ll even let you have the thimble this time,” she said, of the Monopoly game piece they had battled over as children. “And Win, seriously, when was the last time we watched 13 Going on 30?” she asked of their favorite chick flick.

  Win chewed on her lower lip. “I don’t know,” she said. Because while she and Poppy had had fun together over the years, they’d had other things, too: hurtful words, screaming matches, slamming doors. And the six months they’d shared an apartment during Win’s last year of college came to mind now. Poppy had left a trail of wet towels, unwashed dishes, and unpaid bills in her wake—unpaid bills that, in the end, Win had paid for her. And she was always avoiding some lovelorn suitor, and worse, always carrying that godforsaken cat around with her.

  “Look, I really need this,” Poppy said, with an urgency that surprised Win. “I need a change. I need to figure things out. And, for some reason, I feel like . . . like this is the place I’m supposed to be right now,” she said, looking around the k
itchen. “Right here, with you, on Butternut Lake.” She smiled at Win, a little tremulously.

  “Oh, Pops, then of course you can stay,” Win said, with a rush of emotion.

  “Yay!” Poppy said, grabbing her and twirling her round. “You won’t regret it. I promise.”

  But as they were spinning around, something caught Poppy’s eye, and she stopped, mid-spin, and pointed at the cherry pitter, still sitting on the kitchen table. “Winona Robbins,” she said, with mock seriousness, “were you rearranging your kitchen drawers tonight?”

  “No,” Win lied.

  “No? Then where are the cherries?”

  Win didn’t answer.

  Poppy walked nonchalantly over to the kitchen table and picked up the cherry pitter. “So you don’t mind if I just put this . . . in here?” she asked, opening the top drawer.

  “Go right ahead,” Win said, and she couldn’t help but smile. No one had ever been able to tease her the way Poppy did.

  “Or what about . . . this drawer?” Poppy asked, opening up the bottom drawer. “Can I put it in here?” She dangled it over the drawer.

  Win started laughing. She couldn’t help it. This was the best thing about Poppy. This was what made everything else about her worth putting up with. She could always be counted on to make Win laugh. Laugh at life, yes, but even more importantly, laugh at herself. And suddenly, it seemed ridiculous to her that this was how she’d spent her night, at home, alone, rearranging her already perfectly arranged kitchen drawers.

  “I missed you, Pops,” she said, through her laughter.

  “I missed you, too,” Poppy said, giving Win a hug.

  Win hugged her back, hard. “And you’re right. We will have fun this summer. Stay, Pops. Stay as long as you want.” This would be good for Poppy, Win thought, but it would be good for her, too. Because for every night Win made a gourmet dinner for one, there was a night she ate a bowl of cereal leaning against the kitchen counter. And for every night she curled up on the couch after dinner to read an edifying novel, there was a night she ended up on her bed, tearfully perusing old photo albums until she fell asleep, in a soggy heap, on top of the covers.

  “We should let Mom and Dad know I’m here,” Poppy said, giving Win one final squeeze before she let go of her. “They’ll be happy we’re together.”

  “Oh, I got a postcard from Dad,” Win said. She plucked it out of a basket on the kitchen counter and handed it to Poppy. Their father, who was divorced from their mother, was a part-time carpenter, a part-time musician, and a full-time drinker who spent most of his time ricocheting around the country, going wherever his work or his drinking took him.

  “He sent me the same one,” Poppy said, studying the postcard. She flipped it over and read it. “Same wording, too.” She glanced over at Win. “Where, exactly, is Shelby, Montana?”

  Win shrugged. “Do you really think he’s found a regular gig playing in a bar there?” she asked Poppy, a little skeptically.

  “I think . . .” said Poppy, putting the postcard down. “I think that he’s probably got a regular gig sleeping with the woman who owns the bar. And I think she’ll probably keep him around until she gets tired of him. Or until he drinks her out of Jack Daniel’s.”

  “One or the other,” Win agreed, wishing Poppy wasn’t right, but knowing that, in all but the details, she probably was.

  “I got a phone call from Mom, though,” Poppy said, with artificial brightness. Their mother, like their father, could never be accused of being an overinvolved parent. But unlike their father, she was not a drinker. She was instead, as she’d explained to her daughters many times before, on a lifelong journey of self-realization, a journey that had not often included, when Poppy and Win were growing up, such mundane things as attending their orchestra performances, or school plays, or parent teacher conferences. Now she and her most recent boyfriend were living in a trailer outside Sedona, Arizona, and she was trying to get her new crystal business off the ground. “Apparently, selling dream catcher jars is much more competitive than she realized,” Poppy explained. “I guess Sedona’s a crowded market.”

  The two of them shared a look that spoke volumes about their respective relationships with their mother, and then Win remembered something. “Poppy, what about your friend?” she whispered. “We’ve just left him sitting out there this whole time.”

  “Oh, Everett hasn’t just been sitting out there,” Poppy said. “He’s been getting his ax out of his trunk so he can . . .” She used her hand to make a hacking motion at her neck.

  “Very funny,” Win said, and pushing through the kitchen’s swinging door she found Everett sitting, ax-less, on the living room couch.

  “Hey,” he said, standing up. “I hope you don’t mind . . .”

  “That you sat on my couch? No. I hope you don’t mind that you’ll be sleeping on it tonight,” Win said. There was a third bedroom at the cabin, one that their grandfather had turned into a study many years before, but Win knew, from experience, that the fold-out couch in it was almost comically painful to sleep on. Everett would do much better to bed down in the living room for the night. “Really, you’re welcome to stay,” she said, gesturing at the overstuffed couch. “Unless you decide to drive back, and I think it’s a little late for that, don’t you?”

  “Probably,” Everett agreed. “Especially since I don’t know these roads that well.” He pushed his light brown hair out of his light brown eyes. He looked both shy and sleepy at the same time.

  And Win, who soon discovered that Poppy and Everett hadn’t had dinner yet, started to make it for them while they unloaded the car. When the grilled cheese sandwiches were browning in the pan and the tomato soup was bubbling in the pot, she stuck her head out the kitchen door to check on their progress. Everett was carrying one of Poppy’s suitcases into the cabin, and looking at it, Win cringed reflexively. It was overpacked, bulging at the sides, and something—a bathrobe, she thought—was trailing out of it. Soon, she knew, that bathrobe would be flung, carelessly, over a piece of her furniture, most likely the living room couch. But just then, Win saw what Poppy was carrying into the cabin, and her jaw dropped.

  “Poppy, you didn’t bring him. You know I’m allergic to him,” she said, pointing at Sasquatch’s pet carrier.

  “Of course I bought him,” Poppy said, mystified. “What else was I supposed to do with him?”

  “Leave him with a friend?”

  “Win, I can’t leave him with someone else. You know that,” Poppy said, looking wounded.

  But Win was already heading back into the kitchen, and already convinced her eyes felt itchy.

  CHAPTER 3

  Win, I don’t need this many towels,” Poppy protested, as her sister filled her arms with towels from the cabin’s linen closet later that night. “Nobody needs this many towels.”

  “You never know,” Win said, adding another bath towel, hand towel and washcloth to the stack. She was in full bed-and-breakfast mode now, Poppy saw, and she made a mental note to suggest this career to Win if her teaching job ever fell through.

  “Now, what else do you need?” Win asked.

  “Nothing else. And stop treating me like I’m a guest. I’m your sister, remember?”

  “I remember,” Win said, giving the towels Poppy was holding a final pat and closing the closet door. “But what about your friend Everett?” she asked, lowering her voice, because they were in the hallway and Everett was no more than ten yards away from them, hunkered down on the living room couch she and Win had just made up for him. “Do you think he needs anything else?”

  “You mean other than the thirty-six towels you’ve already given him?” Poppy asked.

  Win nodded.

  “No, Win,” Poppy whispered. “We’ve already fed him and given him a place to sleep. He’s a man. He’s not that complicated. He doesn’t need anything else.”

  “All right, well, then what about your feline friend?” Win asked, with what was probably an unconscious wrink
ling of her nose.

  “Sasquatch? Come see,” Poppy said, leading her down the hallway to the open door to the guest room, where the cat in question could be seen lounging, luxuriously, on one of the twin beds. “Sasquatch,” Poppy announced, “has got the world by the tail.”

  “It certainly looks that way,” Win said, with a little sigh, and Poppy wondered, for the thousandth time, how her sister could be so immune to Sasquatch’s insouciant charm. But, alas, she was. Now, for instance, Win starting clearing her throat, and when Poppy asked her what was wrong she said, “Nothing. It just . . .” She rubbed her neck. “It just feels a little scratchy, that’s all.”

  “Are you going to be okay?” Poppy asked, with what she hoped was the appropriate amount of concern. Privately, she was of the opinion that Win exaggerated her cat allergy.

  “I’ll be fine,” Win said. “I’ll just take some Benadryl. But, Poppy . . . does he really have to stay here for the whole summer?”

  “Yes, Win. He really does,” Poppy said, feeling hurt all over again. “And I’ve already told you, I’ll stay on top of his shedding. I mean it. Girl Scout’s honor,” she added, raising her hand.

  “You were never a Girl Scout, Poppy.”

  “No, but you were. And you totally rocked that green sash with all the badges on it,” Poppy said, pulling her down the hallway so that they were standing outside the door to Win’s bedroom. “Now go to sleep,” she added, giving her sister an affectionate push in the direction of her bed. But as she was doing this, something in Win’s room caught her eye.

  “Win, you’re not still doing this, are you?” she asked, walking over to her sister’s dresser. She frowned as she examined the objects arranged on top of it. There was a photograph of Win and Kyle, taken at a Fourth of July parade, a set of ticket stubs from the Minnesota State Fair, and a paper coaster from Kieran’s, the little Irish pub down the street from the apartment they’d lived in after they’d gotten married. So she was still doing this, Poppy thought. Still arranging these little shrines to her marriage. A marriage that had now been over for longer than it had lasted.