The Space Between Sisters

by Mary McNear

  “Well, you better tell that to Bret,” Win said. Bret was the man Mary Jane was going to marry in a month.

  “No, I don’t really think that,” Mary Jane said. “It’s just that all day today I couldn’t stop staring at your sister.”

  “Nobody can stop staring at her,” Win said, suddenly irritable.

  “Now they can stare at her at Birch Tree Bait,” Mary Jane pointed out.

  “Right,” Win said, rolling her eyes. “Where she’ll be taking bags of Cheetos out of boxes and placing them on shelves.”

  “A job is a job,” Mary Jane said. “Plenty of people would be happy to have one like that.”

  “I know.” Win sighed. “But is it wrong of me to want more for her?”

  “No,” Mary Jane said, frowning slightly. “I know what I would be doing, though, if I were her. I’d be modeling. Honestly, Win, she looks better than the models in the magazines we were reading today. Should I . . . suggest it to her?”

  “And you think you’d be the first person to ever do that?”

  “Probably not.”

  “Mary Jane, people have been suggesting that to her her whole life. And she’s always said the same thing. She doesn’t think she’d be good at it. Which is possible, I suppose. Apparently, there’s more to modeling than just sitting there and looking beautiful.”

  “It’s true,” Mary Jane said. “I watched the first nine seasons of America’s Next Top Model.”

  “Still, don’t you think it’s strange that she’s never even tried to do it before?” Win asked.

  “Yeah, kind of,” Mary Jane said. “Especially with her natural beauty.” She paused. “It is natural, isn’t it?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Does she dye her hair?”

  “Nope. That’s hers. Roots to tips,” Win said of Poppy’s gloriously blond hair.

  “What about her eyes?”

  “Those are hers, too,” Win joked, though she knew what Mary Jane meant. When they were in high school, there’d been a rumor circulating that Poppy’s brilliant blue eyes came to her courtesy of tinted contact lenses. It was, alas, not true.

  “What about . . . ?” Mary Jane asked, pointing down at the neckline of her own floral print sundress, where, even in a push-up bra, her breasts were still too small to create an impression of cleavage.

  “Oh, those are definitely real,” Win said. “I mean, if Poppy can’t even go to the trouble of wearing mascara, she’s not about to go to the trouble of getting breast implants.” Mary Jane nodded, thoughtfully, but Win was still preoccupied with the modeling question, and she told Mary Jane something about Poppy now that she’d never told anyone but Kyle before. “Do you want to know something weird?” she asked, and then she lowered her voice, even though she knew it wasn’t necessary. She could still hear the water from Poppy’s shower running.

  “What?”

  “I think the real reason Poppy’s never tried modeling,” Win said, “is because she doesn’t like having her picture taken. As in, dislikes it intensely.”

  Mary Jane’s eyes widened. “Why?”

  “I don’t know. I used to tease her about it, but I stopped. It only irritated her, and she wouldn’t admit it, anyway.”

  Mary Jane considered this. “Are there any pictures of her?”

  “From childhood, yes. But later, starting from when we were teenagers, very few. And most of those were taken at my wedding.” Even those, Win remembered, hadn’t come easily. She’d insisted that Poppy be in some of the group photos, and Poppy had submitted, though she’d submitted with the determined stoicism of someone who was about to have a root canal.

  “She must have pictures of herself with boyfriends, though,” Mary Jane said. “I mean, not all of them. But the serious ones, right?”

  “The serious ones? There haven’t been any serious ones.”

  “Okay, that really is weird,” Mary Jane said. “She’s older than we are. And she’s never had anyone special in her life?”

  “I’m not sure what you mean by special,” Win said, in a whisper, because she could hear that Poppy’s shower was over now. “She’s had boyfriends before, of course, but it’s like . . . it’s like even before a relationship has really begun, she’s already looking for a way out of it. And then she’s just”—she shrugged—“she’s just moving on to someone else.” She paused then, worried about how that sounded. “I don’t mean she sleeps around,” she clarified. “She doesn’t. She doesn’t have one-night stands, but she also doesn’t have long-term relationships. It’s a fear of intimacy, I think, of both kinds of intimacy. The emotional kind, and the other kind, too.” The truth, though, was she wasn’t even sure if she was right about all of this or not. Sex was one thing she and Poppy never discussed. Well, no, that wasn’t true. Win had discussed it with Poppy, especially when she was falling in love with Kyle. Poppy, though, had never returned her confidences. It was a subject about which she’d always been deliberately vague.

  She could tell Mary Jane wanted to pursue this further, but Win decided to change the subject, and asked Mary Jane instead for an update on her wedding planning. And then, while Mary Jane discussed, in great detail, the relative merits of salmon versus halibut for one of the main course options, Win stopped paying attention and thought about her sister. No, worried about her sister. If she’d been from a normal family, a functional family, she could have let her parents worry about Poppy. But, as it was, she had to worry about Poppy, and worry about her parents, too. There wasn’t a lot she could do for her mom and dad at this point, though. For better or for worse—mostly for worse—they were already following a path that neither one of them seemed capable of diverging from. Poppy was different. She had no path. She had no direction. Most people, Win thought, moved forwards, a few unlucky ones moved backwards, but Poppy, Poppy seemed to move sideways.

  Had she always been like that? Win wondered, picking at a loose thread on the patchwork quilt on her bed. No, she hadn’t. There’d been a time, in high school, when she’d been committed to something. She’d been a majorette in their high school marching band and she’d loved it. She’d been obsessed with it, in fact, obsessed to the point where the hours she’d spent practicing twirling at home in their cramped bedroom had driven Win crazy. But Poppy hadn’t just been twirling then, Win recalled. She’d been studying, too. Her grade point average had been high enough for her to apply to Penn State, which was famous for its marching band. And she’d had other interests, too, friends, and fashion, and drawing. But what had happened? Win tried to remember, but it was hard. She’d been so caught up in her own life then: school, babysitting, homework. At some point, though, Poppy had quit marching band, quit studying, quit . . . everything, it seemed, and had just started to drift. There was no other word for it. Except for a few instances—a short-lived relationship with a boyfriend everyone liked, a semester long stint at a community college—she’d been drifting ever since.

  Poppy had changed jobs more times than Win could remember. And it wasn’t that she got fired—she had a natural intelligence and picked things up quickly—it was that she got “bored” or “restless,” or decided it was “time to move on.” And the same thing happened with roommates and apartments. Win had lost track of all of the places Poppy had lived over the years, although she always stayed in the same general area of Minneapolis, the area they’d grown up in. Win had talked to her, tactfully, and then not so tactfully, over the years about all of these things. But Poppy, it seemed, was masterful at changing the subject, and equally masterful at avoiding any real introspection.

  “Do you agree?” Mary Jane asked now, breaking into Win’s thoughts.

  “About what?”

  “About the grilled asparagus?”

  “Oh, definitely,” Win said, and she was saved from having to say any more about this when Poppy tapped, lightly, on her half-open door.

  “Hey,” she said. She was wrapped in one towel, and her hair was wrapped in another one. “Can I borro
w your mascara?” she asked Win.

  “Since when do you wear mascara?”

  “Since now.” Poppy shrugged. “Unless you’d rather I not—”

  “Top drawer,” Win interrupted, pointing at her bureau.

  Poppy opened it and rummaged around in it, oblivious to the fact that Win’s makeup drawer’s classification system was as precise as her utensil drawers’. Finally, though, she pulled out the tube of mascara, unscrewed the wand, and, leaning closer to the mirror, brushed it on her eyelashes.

  Mary Jane looked meaningfully at Win.

  “Are you sure you don’t want to come with us, Win?” Poppy asked, standing back to study the effect.

  “I’m sure.” She’d told Poppy and Mary Jane that she wouldn’t be going with them tonight to the fairgrounds in Butternut for the annual Fourth of July picnic and fireworks. “I’m looking forward to a quiet night at home,” she reminded them.

  “Okay,” Poppy said. She leaned closer to the mirror and applied more mascara to her lashes, and Win felt a flicker of irritation at the way she brushed casually against an old postcard from Kyle that Win had recently propped up on the dresser top.

  “Sam’s driving Cassie and the twins down to his ex-wife’s this afternoon,” Poppy said nonchalantly, screwing the wand back into the tube, and putting the mascara back into the dresser drawer. “But he said he still might stop by the fairgrounds later.”

  Win sat up straighter on the bed. “Poppy, no,” she said, shaking her head.

  “No, what?” her sister asked, innocently.

  Win ignored the question. “Don’t even think about it. Really. I like Sam. He’s a nice guy. Just . . . just don’t.”

  “Win, calm down. It’s a harmless flirtation. That’s all.”

  “Well, it won’t be harmless for him. Trust me.”

  “God, you make it sound like I’m some black widow or something,” Poppy said, looking hurt.

  “You’re not. You just have a long history of skipping out on people.” Not to mention jobs. “And another thing, Pops,” Win said—using the nickname that, for some reason, she only used when she was feeling either affectionate or irritated with her sister—“this is a small town. Long after you’ve left here, I’ll still have to live with all of these people.” She looked at Mary Jane, hoping she would back her up on this, but her friend obviously considered herself a spectator here, and she was looking with fascination, from one of them to the other, as if she were watching a tennis match.

  “Look, I think you’re blowing this out of proportion,” Poppy said. “I just like flirting with him, that’s all. You’re the one who told me that half the single teachers at your school have a crush on him.”

  Mary Jane finally got involved now, nodding her head vigorously. “Actually, some of the married teachers have a crush on him, too,” she told Poppy.

  “Okay,” Win said, throwing up her hands, because now she was exasperated with both of them. “Do what you want, Pops. For the record, though, if things go south with you and Sam, and I have to find someplace other than Birch Tree Bait to make my emergency Ben & Jerry’s runs, I will never forgive you. Understood?”

  “Understood,” Poppy said breezily.

  Later, as Win said good-bye to the two of them on the cabin’s front porch—Mary Jane and Poppy were driving to the fairgrounds, where they’d meet up with Bret and some of his friends—Poppy pulled Win aside and said, firmly, “I want you to promise me that you won’t be reorganizing the linen closet or anything else like that tonight.”

  “I wasn’t planning on it,” Win said, though now that Poppy had mentioned the linen closet, she was tempted. The last time she’d gotten a towel out of it she’d noticed that the pale yellow towels were beginning to mix in with the pale green ones.

  “Well, even if you were, you might not have time to do it,” Poppy said with a sly smile.

  “What do you mean?” Win asked.

  “I got a text from Everett this afternoon. He’s at his cousin’s cabin on Birch Lake and he wanted to come by and drop something off.”

  “Poppy, how many more boxes did you leave in his car?”

  “None. It’s not a box. It’s a bottle of wine. He says he owes it to you from the last time he was here.”

  Win shook her head. “Poppy, he’s using that as an excuse to see you.”

  “I already told him I’m not going to be here.”

  “But I am?”

  Poppy nodded.

  Win frowned, feeling pensive. “What if he wants to wait for you to come back?”

  “Win, don’t overthink things. He’s bringing you a bottle of wine. Just take it and say ‘thank you.’ And, if you want bonus points for being polite . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “Ask him if he’d like to stay and drink it with you.”

  CHAPTER 10

  Win, it turned out, did Poppy one better: she invited Everett to stay and drink the bottle of wine with her, and, when they’d finished it, she invited him to stay a little longer and drink another bottle of wine with her. Of course, that bottle was the same one Poppy had bought at Birch Tree Bait and, as Win sat beside Everett on the boathouse roof, watching him open it, she felt compelled to say, “I can’t vouch for this one. I mean, look at it. It’s all dusty.”

  “That means it’s aged,” he pointed out.

  “Maybe,” Win said. “But I think there’s a difference between aged and old.” She didn’t really care whether the wine was any good or not, though. She was having too nice of a time.

  Everett finished uncorking the bottle, and Win held out the wineglasses for him. “You go first,” he said, after he’d filled them.

  “I don’t think so.”

  He shrugged good-naturedly, and took a drink from his. “Oh, my God,” he said, wincing. “This is really bad.”

  Win laughed. “Should we just . . . pour it out?” she asked, gesturing at the water beneath them.

  “That is the last thing we should do. I mean, this is obviously toxic,” he said, holding up the bottle. “If we pour it in the lake, we could upset the entire ecosystem. I think we’re just going to have to do the responsible thing and . . . drink it.”

  Win smiled and took a tentative sip from her own glass. She shuddered. “I thought I’d had bad wine before,” she said. “But I can see now it was just a lead-up to this.”

  “Sometimes, if you keep drinking it, it starts to taste better,” Everett said, taking a fairly decent sized slug from his glass.

  “Any better?” she asked.

  He shook his head. “Actually, no. I think it’s getting worse.”

  They laughed, and set their glasses aside. They didn’t need more wine, anyway. Nature promised to provide the entertainment tonight, since the sky, even by Butternut standards, was spectacular. Why did the stars look so much closer here than they did in the city? Win wondered, idly. There was less light pollution, of course, less air pollution, too. But still, their apparent closeness seemed to defy logic. Each star seemed so distinct against the inky blackness of the night that Win could remember, as a very young child, reaching her hand up to touch one and being disappointed to discover that she couldn’t reach it.

  “If we’d stayed up here for another hour the last time I came, is this what we would have seen?” Everett asked now, gesturing at the sky.

  Win nodded.

  “Why would anyone ever come down from here?”

  “I don’t know,” Win murmured, and she smiled as she remembered that during one childhood summer she’d told her grandfather, whom she’d adored, that she was going to move up onto the boathouse roof. And her grandfather, never one to discourage her dreams, had found just the right words to dissuade her, gently, from doing this. But he’d understood the desire behind it, and so, apparently, did Everett.

  She watched Everett, in profile, as he brushed his hair out of his eyes in what Win now knew was a habitual gesture. She wondered why he didn’t just get it cut but decided she was glad that he did
n’t. She liked it when he did this, liked it when he pushed aside his longish light brown hair and his sleepy light brown eyes came into view. Did his eyes always look so sleepy? she mused. Or did she only see him when he was tired? She almost asked him, but then she lost her nerve.

  Still, looking at him, she had to admit that her first assessment of him as “geeky-cute” hadn’t done him justice. He was just plain cute. No, he wasn’t cute, he was handsome, handsome in a low-key, pleasant, unobtrusive way that perfectly suited his personality. So why didn’t Poppy find him attractive? And, more than that, why didn’t she find him kind—which Win, intuitively, knew that he was—and funny, and easy to be with? God knows, Poppy could do worse. Poppy had done worse, she was sure of it. Like right now, for instance, with Sam. He was a great guy, as far as Win was concerned, but he was Poppy’s boss. She worked for him. And if that didn’t complicate things enough, he was divorced, with a very attractive ex-wife (Win had seen her at school functions) and three children who obviously demanded a lot of time and attention.

  She sighed softly, still awed by the crystalline beauty of the night. No more worrying about Poppy, she decided. She’d done enough of that for one day. And besides, if Poppy couldn’t see everything Everett had to offer, well, that was too bad for her. But what about . . . what about Everett? Was he waiting, even now, for Poppy to come home, waiting for her to give him some sign that she might be interested in him? She frowned, slightly, thinking about this. Poppy wouldn’t lead him on, but she wouldn’t necessarily give it to him straight, either. After all, she’d already told Win how much she hated giving the “let’s just be friends” speech, though by now she must surely have had the thing copyrighted. And, stealing another sideways glance at Everett, Win decided that he deserved better.

  “Everett?”

  “Yes?’ he said, turning to her.

  She bit her lip and tried to think of a way of saying this that would take the sting out of it, before deciding that there probably wasn’t one. “Everett,” she said, “this thing, with you and my sister, it’s . . . it’s probably not going to work. I don’t think she likes you that way.”