The Space Between Sisters

by Mary McNear

  “But you weren’t bored, were you?” Everett asked, bringing her back to herself.

  She smiled and shook her head. “No, of course not. Kyle wasn’t boring. He was just . . . stable. Steady.” Her voice trailed off and, in the silence, she felt it, that ache deep in her chest, somewhere behind her breastbone. It was a dull, empty, endless ache, an ache that was her missing Kyle, and everything that they had had together.

  “You know the rest of the story,” she said, when she felt like she couldn’t stand the ache anymore; when she felt like it was actually taking up the space she needed to breathe.

  He nodded. “Poppy told me. I hope that was all right.”

  She didn’t answer. She looked back out over the lake, and tried to pick out the lights from the cabins she knew were on the opposite shore.

  “It was . . . cancer, right?” he asked, gently.

  “Right. One spring—we’d just celebrated our second anniversary—he got this cough he just couldn’t shake, even after a couple of rounds of antibiotics. But we thought . . . well, it was tax season. He was overworked. He needed a vacation. His doctor, though, thought he needed a chest X-ray. And that was it. Well, that wasn’t it. There was a lot more after that. But that set everything in motion. That X-ray. And almost a year later . . .” She shook her head, still amazed by how fast, and at the same time how slowly, that year had gone. “It was lung cancer. He was only thirty. He’d never smoked a cigarette in his life. Go figure, huh?” She said this as an attempt at a bleak kind of humor she used sometimes to relieve the tension after she told people.

  Everett, though, didn’t say anything. Not even the two words people invariably said when she told them about her husband’s death. Instead, he looked at her, with his sleepy eyes, and shook his head, almost imperceptibly. And something moved across his face then, a shadow that might have been pain.

  “Have you ever . . . lost someone?” she asked him.

  But before he could answer her, her cell phone vibrated in her pocket. She sighed, pulled it out, and resisted the urge to throw it into the lake. Instead she read the text from Poppy.

  Poppy: Is he ever leaving???

  “I should probably get going,” Everett said, as if in response to the text, though there was no way he could have read it.

  “Okay. Come on. I’ll walk you to your car.”

  When she knocked on Poppy’s bedroom door, five minutes later, she heard a tentative “Come in.”

  “The coast is clear,” Win said, opening the door. Poppy was curled up on her bed with Sasquatch, eating lasagna.

  “Second piece,” Poppy said, indicating the plate. “I swear, Win, this is even better cold than it is hot.”

  Win came into the room holding the box Everett had left and stepped over the clothes that littered the floor.

  “Poppy, you didn’t need to barricade yourself in here,” she said, reaching her bed and sitting down on the edge of it. “Really. You would have had a nice time with us tonight. He’s . . . he’s easy to talk to.”

  Poppy eyed the box warily.

  “He brought this,” Win said, holding it out to her. “You left it in his car.”

  Poppy put her plate down and reached for it. She opened it up and poked around in it a little.

  “Love letters?” Win asked wryly.

  Poppy shook her head. “Unpaid bills,” she said with a sigh. And it was only then that Win remembered the talk they were supposed to have had that night.

  CHAPTER 8

  Poppy?”

  “Yes, Cassie?”

  “Can we take a break?”

  “Of course,” Poppy said, though their last “break” had ended only five minutes before. Being Cassie’s baton twirling tutor, she was quickly learning, involved remarkably little twirling. Mainly, their sessions were spent talking. Or, rather, Cassie spent them talking; Poppy spent them listening to Cassie talk.

  She didn’t mind, though. In fact, this was the third afternoon this week she’d driven over to Birch Tree Bait and spent a pleasant hour with Cassie on its wide, well shaded front porch, practicing arm rolls, chin rolls, and figure eights, and watching the activity ebb and flow around them. There was a mother buying a Fudgesicle for an already sticky toddler, a cranky older man coming in to replace a lost fishing license, and two boy scouts, in uniform, stocking up on flashlight batteries for an overnight camping trip. And now, in the lead up to the Fourth of July weekend, there was a change in tempo. Suddenly, it seemed as if everyone on the lake had their own list of urgently needed supplies: marshmallows, safety matches, paper cups, sparklers, fishing line, insect repellant, and, for one disappointed woman, a beach umbrella. (She was sent to the Butternut Variety Store for this.) Poppy couldn’t help but get caught up in the excitement, especially since everyone was talking about the upcoming fireworks display at the fairgrounds. This year, they claimed, would be the best year ever.

  Being here was a nice break from being at the cabin, Poppy thought, sitting down on the porch swing with Cassie. At the cabin, she was growing bored with her sunbathing regimen, and Win was increasingly irritated by her sloppiness. Well, that and something else. Win had finally figured out that Poppy was broke. Flat broke. And she’d reacted to this discovery with something less than sisterly understanding. And Poppy had reacted to Win’s reaction with a defensiveness that quickly gave way to contrition; all in all, a familiar cycle in their relationship.

  “I’m exhausted,” Cassie said now, with an exaggerated sigh, coming to sit on the porch swing beside Poppy. “I mean, my wrist is exhausted,” she corrected herself, and she held this pale, slender wrist out to Poppy for inspection.

  “It looks very tired,” Poppy said seriously. “Remember, Cassie, before you go to bed tonight, do the wrist exercises I showed you.” She did one of them now for Cassie’s benefit. “They’ll help with flexibility and strength.”

  “Uh-huh,” Cassie said, but she wasn’t really paying attention to her. She was using her small, sandaled feet to push off from the porch floor and set the swing in motion. Poppy lifted her feet up and held on to one of its chains, and when Cassie was satisfied that they were swinging high enough, she looked up at Poppy and said, with only a trace of her old shyness, “Guess what Janelle said yesterday?”

  “What?” Poppy asked, with genuine interest.

  And they were off. Or Cassie, rather, was off, since Poppy was only occasionally called upon to ask a question, or offer an opinion, or give advice. Cassie talked a little bit about her parents, and a little bit more about her brothers, but mainly, she talked about Janelle, her best friend, about Gia and Riley, the mean girls in her baton twirling class, and about Jackson, a boy in her kindergarten class who used to throw little rolled up bits of paper at her head during circle time. Janelle, especially, was a subject of unending fascination to Cassie. She might have seen a real ghost, her father kept tortoises for pets, and her mother had once thrown her bra on stage at a Trace Adkins concert. This last piece of information, Poppy thought, was not entirely appropriate for a six-year-old to know, but Cassie didn’t invest it with any lascivious intention, she merely presented it as a statement of fact.

  Today, though, Cassie skipped quickly over Janelle, Riley, and Gia, and wanted to talk, instead, about Jackson. “Why does he throw paper balls at me? Does he hate me?” she asked Poppy.

  “No, he doesn’t hate you,” Poppy said, neutrally. She was trying not to overstep any boundaries here. “It’s . . . more complicated than that.”

  Poppy waited for her to reject an answer that was really no answer at all, but instead she asked another question. “Why do grown-ups always use the word complicated?”

  Poppy laughed. This time, though, Cassie didn’t wait for an answer. “I’m thirsty,” she said, hopping off the swing and jogging over to the business’s front doors. “I’m going to get a Snapple. Do you want one, too?”

  “No, thank you,” Poppy said. Cassie ran into the store and Poppy gave the swing a little push of her own.
She was surprised, once again, by how much she enjoyed spending time with Cassie. She was adorable, of course, but it was more than that. She had an innocence about her, a sweetness, and a quality of being almost entirely unencumbered by the problems of the adult world. Whereas Poppy, at her age, was already worried about whether her parents would be able to pay the rent. Cassie’s dad, of course, was not even remotely like either of Poppy’s parents. And as she was thinking this, Birch Tree Bait’s front door swung open and Sam came out onto the porch.

  “That is one enthusiastic pupil you have there,” he said to Poppy.

  She smiled. She’d been wrong about Sam. He didn’t hold a grudge, and the initial iciness between them had thawed out nicely. In fact, the brief conversations they had before and after these tutoring sessions were the other reason why she liked coming here. “Actually, I think I’m having just as much fun as she is,” she told Sam now. “And her thumb toss is really progressing.”

  He looked at her blankly.

  “You have no idea what that is, do you?”

  “No.”

  “Well, you don’t need to know. But the thumb toss is one of the building blocks of twirling.”

  “I’ll take your word for it,” he said, with another smile, and Poppy had to admit that Win was right. Sam was good-looking; good-looking in a flannel shirt, blue jeans, and work boots kind of way. Oh, hell, whom was she kidding? He was good-looking in every kind of way. Tall and athletically built, he had a tan that, unlike hers, was not the kind you got from sunbathing, but from just being outside. It suited him, too. It made his eyes look bluer, and brought out the glints of copper in his brown hair.

  “I hope you know that you don’t have to come here this often,” he said, sitting down on the front porch’s railing. “Because as much as Cassie loves bragging to all of her friends about her new tutor, she’ll understand if you have other commitments.”

  “But I don’t,” Poppy said. “At least, not right now. That . . . that could change, though,” she added. No, that has to change, she reminded herself, because yesterday you had to borrow money from Win to buy hair elastics. “I think, actually, I’m going to start looking for a job,” she said, with more confidence than she actually felt. “Something just for the summer,” she added, quickly. “Something just to tide me over until . . .” Until what? She had no idea.

  Sam looked at her, speculatively. He seemed to be considering saying something, but then he changed his mind and looked away.

  “What?” Poppy asked, sitting up straighter on the swing.

  “Well, I might . . . I might have something here.”

  “Really?” And then, with a raised eyebrow, Poppy asked, “It doesn’t have anything to do with the worms, does it?”

  He laughed. “No, but it’s not much better. I need someone to help on the grocery side of the store. Justine—do you know who she is?”

  “The goth?”

  “Yes, that’s her. She usually covers the register, and when she has time, she does the stocking, too. But when we’re this busy, she can’t handle both. So this is the point in the summer when I hire someone else. It’s usually a college student, or even a responsible high school student, but it could be . . .” His voice trailed off. He seemed embarrassed.

  “Are you . . . are you offering me a job?”

  “Sort of. I mean, I don’t think it’s what you’re looking for,” he said, almost apologetically. “For one thing, it pays minimum wage.”

  “I’ll take it,” she said.

  He looked surprised. “There are no benefits,” he warned.

  “I’m your girl.”

  “There’s no security, either. As soon as things slow down, I’ll have to let you go.”

  “Don’t look any further than right here,” she said, pointing to herself.

  He seemed to consider this, then shrugged. “Yeah, okay. Why don’t you come in when we open tomorrow and we can take care of the paperwork, and then Justine can get you started before things get too crazy.”

  “Great,” she said brightly, giving the swing another little push. “One quick question, though.”

  “Yes?” Sam said, standing up to go.

  “I noticed you sell Red Vines.”

  “The licorice?”

  She nodded. “Do I get a discount on it?”

  “Well, that depends. How much of it are you planning on eating?” He looked amused.

  “Oh, only one package a day, at the most.”

  “Well, you can have that for free, then.”

  “And you said this job didn’t have any benefits,” Poppy said. But to herself, she wondered about taking a job that paid less than half what her last job had. This would seem to suggest her life was not moving in the right direction. On the other hand, she reasoned, she didn’t exactly have a lot of other options; a sad, but true fact of her life at the moment.

  Cassie reappeared now, sipping her Snapple. “Daddy, we’re practicing,” she said pointedly, sitting down on the swing beside Poppy.

  Sam smiled. “I’ll let you get to it then,” he said, and with a quick nod to Poppy, he left them on the porch.

  “Are you ready?” Poppy asked Cassie, indicating her baton.

  “I’m almost ready,” Cassie said, with the leisurely air of someone who still had another fourteen ounces of Snapple to consume. She smiled then, an impish smile. “Did I tell you that Janelle’s grandmother wears a wig?” she asked, leaning on the swing.

  “You did not,” Poppy said.

  “Well, do you know what happened to it the last time she visited Janelle’s family?”

  “No. I can’t wait to find out, though,” Poppy said. And she meant it.

  All right, Linc, back to work,” Sam said, stopping by the coffee counter where Linc was talking to Byron. “And Byron, back to doing whatever it is you do here all day.”

  “But there’s a lull now,” Linc protested lazily.

  “There won’t be for long,” Sam said, pouring himself an iced coffee. “In fact,” he said, “I just hired someone else to help out around here.”

  “Who?” Linc asked.

  “Poppy,” he said, casually, sloshing milk into his coffee. “You know who she is, right? The woman who’s been helping Cassie with her baton twirling.” He concentrated on stirring his coffee, but he still felt the look Byron and Linc exchanged with each other.

  “Uh, we know who she is, Sam,” Linc said, obviously amused.

  Sam looked at him sharply. “What? She needs a job, and we have one here.”

  “And you couldn’t find anyone less attractive to fill it?” Byron said, obviously working hard to keep a straight face.

  “Look, the point is not her attractiveness. The point is whether or not she can do the work, and I think she can.”

  There was another look between Linc and Byron.

  “Come on, there’s nothing happening here,” Sam said.

  “Well then,” Byron said, settling back on his stool and shaking out his newspaper. “We’ll have a front row seat to nothing happening, won’t we, Linc?”

  CHAPTER 9

  On the Fourth of July, Win invited her friend Mary Jane Carpenter to spend the day at the cabin with her and Poppy. Partly, she did this because she hadn’t seen that much of Mary Jane lately and she missed her. Mary Jane was a third grade teacher at the K–8 school in Butternut, and when Win had started teaching there two years ago, the two of them had bonded, almost immediately, over bad coffee and Girl Scout cookies in the teachers’ lounge. But partly, she’d invited Mary Jane over because two weeks into Poppy’s visit Win’s patience with her had already begun to fray, and she was hoping that Mary Jane would serve as a buffer between them. And Mary Jane, who was direct, friendly, and, above all else, cheerful, had done just that. Not only had the two sisters gotten along, they’d had fun together. The three of them had spent the whole day—which was warm and sunny, with just the right amount of breeziness—down at the dock, reading magazines, munching on egg salad sandwich
es, and floating in the big red-white-and-blue inner tubes Mary Jane had bought at a Fourth of July sale at the Butternut Variety Store.

  Now, with the late afternoon sunlight making pleasant, watery reflections on the knotted pine walls of her bedroom, Win was sitting on her bed, freshly showered, and wearing a cotton sundress that she hoped would be kind to her slightly sunburned back and shoulders.

  “Do you think I have chipmunk cheeks?” Mary Jane asked, turning to her. She was standing in front of Win’s dresser, studying herself, critically, in the mirror that hung above it. Looking in the mirror was what everyone did, eventually, if they spent enough time with Poppy, and the fact that Mary Jane, with her sturdy self-confidence, was not immune to this was strangely comforting to Win.

  “No,” Win said, though Mary Jane did, in fact, have chipmunk cheeks. Still, they were adorable. She was adorable. And Win told her she was adorable.

  Mary Jane smiled, a faintly preoccupied smile, and sat down, bounced down, really, on the bed beside Win. “I think I might be gay,” she announced without preamble.