The Space Between Sisters

by Mary McNear

  “But you didn’t read it?”

  She shook her head, guiltily.

  “Poppy. How could you be so rude? He drove you here.”

  “I know. I know. But I thought that was it. I thought that was the end of it. Then, today, when he tried to get in touch, I thought maybe I’d been wrong. And he wanted it to be, you know, something more.”

  “And you were surprised?”

  “Yes.”

  There was a knock on the front door, but neither of them moved. Finally, Win said, “Well, don’t just stand there. Let him in and ask him if he likes lasagna.”

  “Win, no. I can’t,” Poppy said, helplessly. “It’ll be awkward. I’ll have to give him the speech.”

  “What speech?”

  “You know, the one where you tell someone you just want to be friends with them?”

  Win sighed, exasperated. She didn’t know. She’d never had to give anyone that speech before. But for Poppy, obviously, it was different. She probably had it memorized by now. Everett knocked again.

  “Poppy, you can’t just ignore him,” Win said, lowering her voice. “He knows somebody’s home. I mean, my car is in the driveway.”

  “He knows you’re home,” Poppy said. “He doesn’t know I am. You can—”

  “No, I can’t. I won’t. I’ve been doing that for you my whole life, and I—”

  “Shhh,” Poppy said, holding a finger to her lips. They listened to the sound of Everett’s footsteps going back down the steps. “He’s going,” she whispered, with obvious relief.

  “No, he’s not. Not yet,” Win said. She started to leave the kitchen, then turned and said to Poppy, in a tone that brokered no compromise, “You, go to your room. Now. And don’t come out until I give you the all clear.” They left the kitchen together, Poppy scurrying down the hallway to her room and Win going to open the front door.

  “Everett!” she called out, right as he was getting into his car.

  “Oh, hey,” he said, getting out again. “You’re home.”

  “I’m home,” Win said, coming down the steps. “But Poppy’s not.”

  She steeled herself for his disappointment, but Everett seemed to take this news in stride. “Oh, that’s fine. I didn’t need to see her. It’s just, I left her a voice mail and a text—”

  “She’s really bad at checking her cell phone,” Win interrupted. “I’ve tried to get after her about it, but . . .”

  He shrugged. “That’s all right. I just wanted to tell her she left a box in my car.” He pointed to a shoebox beside the front door that Win hadn’t noticed. “I don’t know how we missed it that night. It was dark out, I guess. And the next morning . . .”

  “The next morning you left in a hurry,” Win finished for him. He’d been gone when she and Poppy had woken up. He’d left a note on top of his neatly folded bedding, thanking Win for the grilled cheese sandwich and wishing Poppy good luck with her move.

  “Oh, no, I wasn’t in a hurry,” Everett said now. “I’m just an early riser. Force of habit, I guess.” He pushed his hair out of his eyes, in a gesture that Win only now remembered.

  “Everett,” she said, almost gently. “You didn’t . . . you didn’t come all the way up here just to deliver that box, did you?”

  “No,” he said. “I’m on my way up to Birch Lake. It’s about an hour north of here.”

  “I’ve never been there,” Win said. “But I’ve heard about it. It’s supposed to be very pretty.”

  “It is. My cousin’s got a cabin there he’s letting me use for the rest of the summer. He and his wife have six-week-old twins, and I think all that rusticness isn’t as appealing as it used to be.” He smiled, a little shyly. “Anyway, it’s nice to get out of the city in the summertime.”

  “That’s true,” Win said, and then surprised herself by asking, “Have you had dinner yet?”

  “No,” Everett said. “I was going to get something up there.”

  “Have something here. I just took a lasagna out of the oven, and Poppy had to go out at the last minute. I’d hate for it to go to waste,” she said, one corner of her mouth quirking up mischievously at the thought of Poppy having to hide in her bedroom while she and Everett ate in the dining room.

  “Are you sure?” Everett said. “Because I’m starving. I’d love some lasagna.”

  “Good,” Win said. And after letting Everett into the cabin and pointing him in the direction of the dining room, she went into the kitchen, and texted Poppy, who texted her right back.

  Win: So, guess what? I invited your sleepy-eyed friend to dinner.

  Poppy: Whatttttt?

  Win: Don’t worry. I told him you were out. He won’t stay long.

  Poppy: So I have to stay in my room while you two eat??!!

  Win: Exactly. Check your voice mails next time.

  Poppy: But I’m hungry.

  Win: You’ll survive.

  Poppy: ☹

  Win put her cell phone back in her pocket, and started to open the bottle of wine that Poppy had bought, then changed her mind. She actually had another bottle of red wine—a nicer bottle, she was sure—in the cupboard. She took that out, and after a brief skirmish with the corkscrew, managed to get it open. When she came into the dining room, Everett was standing there, looking as if he didn’t know quite what to do with himself.

  “Thanks,” he said, again. He sat down, a little hesitantly, at the table.

  But his hesitancy vanished once he’d tried the food. “This is so good,” he said, of the lasagna. Win smiled and fiddled with her wineglass. She tried to think of something they could talk about. “So, how did you get into the web design business?” she asked him, finally, when the silence between them threatened to get awkward.

  “I grew up in rural Nebraska,” he said, “where my family owned a feed store. I started working there, part-time, when I was in high school. But I was never really interested in the feed side of the business. I was more interested in the advertising side of it. You know, the signage and the flyers and the circulars we used to design and print. I started doing those, at first, and then my senior year I designed a website for the business. A very basic website,” he added.

  “Still, your parents must have appreciated that,” Win said as she poured wine into his glass.

  “They did,” he said. He went on to tell her that his parents were thrilled when he chose to major in computer science at the University of Minnesota, but they were less thrilled when, after graduation, he opted not to find a job as a programmer but to get a second degree, this one in graphic design. Still, when he’d gone to work for a website design firm after graduation, and his first pro bono job had been for the family business—he’d completely redesigned and updated the feed store’s website—they’d stopped complaining. He’d liked his job, he told Win, but he liked his independence, too, and a couple of years ago, he’d struck out on his own. “There were some slow months in the beginning, months when I lived mainly on Kraft macaroni and cheese,” he admitted. “But lately, things have started to take off. I’ve gotten so busy I’ve had to turn down a couple of projects. Everyone keeps telling me to hire people and expand, but I like working for myself. It gives me the freedom to take on the smaller, quirkier projects I might not consider if I was trying to make payroll for anyone but myself. What about you?” he asked after Win served him a second helping of lasagna. “You’re a social studies teacher, aren’t you?”

  “Uh-huh. I teach seventh and eighth graders at the K-8 school here,” she said, watching with pleasure as he helped himself to more salad and garlic bread. It was fun to be cooking for someone other than herself.

  “That must be challenging sometimes,” Everett said. “Teaching twelve- and thirteen-year-olds. I mean, I remember being that age, and what I was thinking about in class most of the time wasn’t in my textbook.”

  “It can be challenging,” Win agreed, “but I love it. And, believe it or not, I’ve found ways to keep even thirteen-year-olds interested,” s
he said. She told Everett then about how, the winter before, she’d been teaching her seventh grade class about the American Revolution and she’d given her students a list of extra credit options they could choose from if they wanted to improve their grades. A group of boys in her class—none of whom were particularly good students—had chosen to make a movie for their project, and they’d worked exhaustively on it, writing the script, casting the actors, and scouting locations in Butternut that they hoped would resemble Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. The only problem, she told Everett, was that on the freezing cold day of filming, which she was present for, the student director insisted that the actors depicting the ragged, blanket draped colonial soldiers, actually go barefoot in the snow, as their historical counterparts had done.

  “I was dead set against it,” Win said. “I had visions of parents of frostbitten children suing the school district. But I did some quick research on how long it took to get frostbite at the current temperature, and I gave the director three minutes to film the barefoot scenes.”

  “Did that authenticity pay off?”

  “It did.” She smiled and sipped her wine. “The movie was a huge success. So many people wanted to see it, in fact, that we had to have a screening at the Butternut Community Center. The only fallout from it came from one of the mothers of a boy who’d played a soldier: the “blanket” he’d brought from home and gotten wet in the snow had actually been a valuable antique quilt.”

  “Did that lead to a lawsuit?” Everett asked, an amused expression on his face.

  “No. The school principal came to my rescue. He’s a big supporter of mine, and he calmed the mother down. He told her that ‘all great art comes at a price.’”

  “He’s right, you know,” Everett said. “I once went two days without sleep designing a website for a pest control company.”

  Win laughed and reached for the bottle of wine. It was almost empty. “We drank the whole bottle?” she asked him in amazement.

  “We did,” Everett said, with a seriousness that made her laugh again. “Actually,” he amended, “you drank most of it.”

  “That’s not like me at all,” she said.

  “Well, if it’s any consolation, I ate most of the lasagna. But that is like me.”

  Outside the dining room windows the sun had set, and the sky had shaded from pale pink to deep lavender. It was dusk, Win’s favorite time of day in the summer and, as far as she was concerned, there was only one place to be as evening turned into night at the cabin. “Are you afraid of heights?” she asked Everett.

  This is so cool,” he murmured. They were sitting on the edge of the boathouse roof, their feet dangling over the lake, which was twelve feet below them. In another half an hour, the sky and the water would be dark, but for now they both held the last vestiges of daylight within them, the sky a dark purple, the water a cobalt blue. A breeze blew then. It had the first hint of the night’s coolness in it, and it stirred the branches of the great northern pines, and sent diamond points of light dancing over the water.

  “It is pretty cool,” Win agreed. “You’re not nervous about being up here, are you?”

  “No. Should I be?”

  She shook her head. “The water’s deep enough here to jump into. I used to do it, too, when I was little, but only when my grandmother wasn’t watching.” She’d had to jump alone, though; Poppy was afraid of heights.

  And, as if on cue, her cell phone buzzed in her pocket. She slid it out. It was a text from Poppy.

  Poppy: What’s going on???

  Win: Everett and I are on the boathouse roof.

  Poppy: He’s been here forever. What have you been doing?

  Win: Eating. And talking.

  Poppy: I hope you saved me some lasagna.

  Win: Yep. It’s on the kitchen counter.

  Poppy: Good. I’m going to take some of it to my room. I’m so hungry I almost ate my slipper!!!

  Win: Maybe you still should.

  Poppy: ???

  Win: For being such a jerk to Everett, who, btw, is a really nice guy.

  Win put her phone back in her pocket. “Poppy,” she said, by way of explanation.

  Everett nodded, but he didn’t ask her when Poppy would be home, and she felt relieved. She hated lying. She hated playing games. And, right now, she hated Poppy, just a little, for putting her in a position tonight where she’d felt compelled to do both of these things. She didn’t know Everett very well, obviously, but she couldn’t help but feel he deserved better than being treated like this. She tried to think, now, of a tactful way of warning him off, or of giving him her own version of Poppy’s “speech,” but she decided against it. They were having too nice of an evening. Besides, he didn’t seem like an unintelligent person. He seemed, in fact, quite the opposite. He’d figure it out. To know Poppy, after all, was to know that, in some very fundamental way, she was unavailable. Out of reach. And not just out of reach to Everett, but to most of the people in her life. Even, sometimes, to Win.

  “How well do you know my sister?” she asked, casually.

  He shrugged. “Not that well. I used to see her every morning, though, at this coffeehouse in our neighborhood. She’d be there to get a latte; I’d be there to work. On my laptop, I mean. It was great. For the price of a cup of coffee, and all of the ones I could stuff in the tip jar, I’d have an office for the day.”

  She smiled. “I worked at a coffeehouse once, near the university. We used to call customers like you ‘squatters’ or, sometimes, ‘campers.’”

  He laughed. “That sounds about right. Did we drive you crazy?”

  “No, I didn’t mind people who stayed all day. In fact, on a slow day, it was nice to have them around. What I minded were those people who took their coffee so seriously you wanted to grab them and shake them and say, ‘It’s coffee. It’s hot and brown and caffeinated. Just drink it!’ But no, I had to answer questions like ‘Is this coffee shade grown?’ Or ‘Is it small batch roasted?’ Or, my personal favorite, ‘Were these beans harvested by indigenous peoples?’ I told them, honestly, ‘I have no idea; being a barista is not my calling in life. I’m just trying to earn enough money to get through school.’

  “Then there were those customers who were absolutely obsessive about the way you made their drinks,” she said, shaking her head at the memory. “And you knew, no matter how perfectly you made it, they were never going to be satisfied. This one guy, for instance . . .” But she caught herself, stopped, and looked away.

  “Was he a jerk?” he asked her.

  “He was a jerk. But he was also . . . he was also how I met my husband. My late husband,” she amended. “I’d just started working at this place, and this man—this jerk—came in and . . .” She stopped, suddenly self-conscious. “Do you really . . . want to hear this story?” she asked, unsure of herself.

  “I really do,” he said, with an easy smile.

  “Okay, well, as I said, I’d just started working at this place, and I’d had, like, fifteen minutes of training, and this guy comes in and orders something very complicated. You know, something with at least five qualifying adjectives, like ‘a decaf nonfat double vanilla latte with extra foam.’ Something like that. But when I make it for him, he’s not happy. The foam is wrong. It’s not . . . foamy enough. So I make it again. But now there’s something else wrong with it. So I make it one more time. And the line is getting longer, and he’s getting angrier, and I’m getting more flustered, and no one is helping me. It’s like everyone else who worked there has simultaneously gone on break. Finally, this guy says to me, ‘You know what? Forget it. You’re obviously incompetent. Just give me a cup of coffee. And I’m not paying for it.’ I give him the coffee, even though by now I’m practically crying, and he takes it and sits down at a table and starts having this really loud, really obnoxious cell phone conversation about what an idiot this woman who just served him a cup of coffee is. In the meantime, the guy who was in line behind him orders a drink, and I can tell he feels sorr
y for me. He orders something really easy to make, and he puts a five-dollar bill in the tip jar.

  “On his way out, though,” Win continued, “he trips, and he spills his drink all over the jerk, and all over the jerk’s designer suit and five-hundred-dollar shoes. How do I know they were five-hundred-dollar shoes? Because he starts screaming about them being ruined and, honestly, I thought he was going to throttle the guy who spilled the coffee on them. That guy keeps his cool, though. He apologizes, he offers to buy him a new cup of coffee, he offers to pay to have his suit dry-cleaned. But the other guy, the jerk, isn’t having any of it, and finally he just storms out of there. And the nice guy watches him go, and then he turns to me, and he winks at me, and he leaves. Just like that. So, the next day, when he comes back to see me, you know what I did?”

  “You married him?” Everett offered.

  She laughed. “Well, yes, eventually, but not that day. That day, I gave him my phone number. I mean, wouldn’t you have done the same thing?”

  “Um, no. Not as myself, but as you? Yeah. Probably.”

  She smiled, a little, and swung her dangling feet. “The thing I like so much about that story,” she said, softly, “is that when I got to know Kyle—that was his name, Kyle—I realized that what he’d done that day was totally out of character for him. He wasn’t some guy who went around spilling coffee on strangers. He wasn’t some . . . hothead. He was the opposite of that. He was logical. Rational. But he told me, later, that even though he didn’t know me yet that day, he couldn’t stand watching me be bullied.”

  They lapsed into a comfortable silence, until Everett said, quietly, “I’m guessing it was a happy marriage.”

  Win had been looking out over the dark water, but she turned to him and said, a little wistfully, “It was. It really was. There were a few skeptics, though, when we first got engaged. My sister was one of them.”

  He raised his eyebrows in a silent question.

  She shrugged. “Poppy thought that, at twenty-two, I was too young to get married. And even though she liked Kyle, a lot, she thought he was too serious. Too . . . settled. He was only twenty-seven when I met him, but he was already a certified public accountant. He already owned his own condominium. Already had a 401K plan, and life insurance, and a diversified stock portfolio. But Poppy, Poppy was not impressed. I remember once, she said, ‘Win, he’s such a grown-up,’ as if that was a bad thing. Which to her, it was. I mean, he was probably one of the first real grown-ups she’d ever met. God knows our parents didn’t act like grown-ups. They acted like a couple of kids.” A couple of spoiled, badly behaved kids, she almost added. “When we were growing up, they had no concept of how to provide stability, or anything even close to it. And for me, I think, that was part of the attraction of Kyle. When Poppy asked me, right before the wedding, ‘Aren’t you afraid you’re going to be bored?’ I said, ‘Poppy, don’t you get it? I want to be bored. I want to be bored out of my mind.’” She smiled now, remembering this conversation.