As Close as Sisters

by Colleen Faulkner

  It wasn’t.

  I swallowed hard. Fought the nausea. I had taken my medication two hours ago. Sometimes it made me nauseated. But it wasn’t the cancer medication making me sick to my stomach right now; it was Buddy McCollister. Sergeant Buddy McCollister, Albany Beach Police Department.

  I wasn’t ready for this. I leaned against the doorframe. I thought I was, but I wasn’t. I couldn’t clean or make Janine’s bed. I wondered if I should start with my own room downstairs.

  I backed out the door, turning off the lights. But instead of going downstairs, I headed for the bedroom Lilly and I used to sleep in. I reached the bathroom. The door was open, the starfish shower curtain pulled back to expose the claw-foot bathtub and shower combination. I walked past the bathroom, past the next closed door. My hand was on the doorknob of our bedroom when I stopped. Something wasn’t right. I retraced my steps. I went back to the bathroom and reached around to turn on the light. Nothing was amiss, except that there was a towel hanging on the towel rack. We never left towels out when we closed up. Dust. Mildew. I didn’t know how long it had been since Janine or one of the others had been here, but we never left towels out or beds made. Maybe Janine had used the towel when she’d stopped by earlier in the week to turn on the hot water heater and the water. I fingered the turquoise towel. Was it damp? It couldn’t be. It had to just be the humidity.

  I caught a glimpse of my reflection in the old oval mirror over the sink. I barely recognized the woman looking back at me. I’d aged ten years in the last eighteen months. I was wearing a blue and green paisley head scarf—hippie style, not charwoman, mind you. I was wearing the silver starfish earrings my girls had given me and a green malachite pendant that hung beneath my thyroidectomy scar. Kind of classy.

  But anyone who looked at me could see the big C on my face. My reddish brown eyebrows are penciled in. My eyelashes are barely existent—just a few stubbles. But my freckles are still there, and I could still see my old self in my green eyes. My red hair was always my best feature; I’d worn it long my whole life. Until it started falling out, in clumps. Now I think my eyes are my best feature. The greens and blues in the scarf played them up nicely. Somehow, I found a smile for myself.

  I shut off the light and went back up the hall, passing Aurora’s room, to reach the one Lilly and I always shared, at the end of the hall. I pushed it open tentatively. I flipped on the light switch. No lights came on, which was weird. I walked to the nightstand and turned the switch on the lamp, which was draped with a pretty scarf. The light came on. I grabbed the scarf, gave it a shake, and returned it to the shade. The walls were pale teal. I painted them three summers ago. My single bed, next to Lilly’s, was new . . . new to me. Bought at a secondhand store and repainted the same summer. I loved my beach bed. It had a high headboard, and at the top was a carved, fluted seashell. I wished I could sleep in it tonight. Maybe I’d be the rebel for once and insist on sleeping here. But that wouldn’t be fair to Lilly, to make her listen to me wheeze all night. And it wouldn’t be fair to make one of the others sleep downstairs. In his room.

  I yanked the white chenille bedspread off my bed, revealing the bare mattress, and tossed it out the door. I’d wash tonight . . . or maybe in the morning. As I turned back, my toe hit something under the bed. Something soft, but with form.

  I lifted the dust ruffle and pulled out a navy rucksack. It looked like it had seen better days. It wasn’t mine. I opened the bag: T-shirts, jeans, a wide-toothed comb, a toothbrush. I dropped the bag on the floor, suddenly afraid. Was someone staying in the house? A vagrant maybe? It happened. People know most of the houses along this beach are only occupied during the summer.

  I listened carefully, wondering if I just heard something downstairs again. Water running?

  I was suddenly dry-mouthed. My heart was pounding. Where was my cell phone? Did I leave it on the car seat? In my handbag? Did I lay it down somewhere downstairs? I couldn’t remember. I always kept my cell phone with me . . . in case one of my daughters needed me. In case I needed to call 911. Because I’m dying.

  I patted the front pockets of my jeans that hung on my hips. No phone. My back pockets. No phone in the left . . . but in the right, a lump. I almost sighed I was so relieved. I stepped quietly into the hall. Listened.

  I didn’t hear a thing . . . except for my own labored breathing.

  I walked down the hall. Still nothing. I stopped at the top of the steps and listened, my iPhone poised. I was ready to dial 911.

  I heard nothing. I was beginning to wonder if I imagined the sounds. There was probably an explanation for the rucksack under my bed. I crept down the staircase. Down was easier than up.

  There was no one there. There was no homeless guy camping in the house, I told myself. That was silly. I’d just go out to the car, get the rest of the things, and lock up for the night.

  The final step at the bottom of the staircase squeaked. I froze. Nothing.

  I walked through the living room, past the downstairs bathroom, into the kitchen. My gaze went first to the back door in the laundry room. It was closed. I was so relieved that it took me a split second to realize I wasn’t alone in the kitchen.

  The dark figure, backlit by the sunlight filtering through the kitchen window, turned toward me. I almost dropped my phone as I started to thumb the numbers on the keypad. Then I saw her face. “Aurora!” I gasped. My hand went to my chest. My heart was pounding.

  She held open her arms, an amber bottle of beer in one hand. “Expecting someone else?”

  I laughed, but I wanted to cry. I hadn’t seen Aurora since April; she’d been out of the country. We talked on the phone, we Face-Timed occasionally, but it wasn’t the same thing. I’d missed her so much. Missed her strength, the enormous presence she brought to a room. I hurled myself into her arms.

  Everything would be all right now. I knew it in my heart’s core, “ay, in my heart of heart” (Shakespeare’s words, not mine). I could do anything if I had Aurora at my side. I could even die.

  She hugged me, and I held on to her tightly. I didn’t care that she was still wet from her swim. Her body was cool against my skin.

  “How are you, babe?” she murmured against my temple. Aurora was tall. Taller than me, taller than any of us. She was a six-foot blond Amazon. “You’re wasting away.”

  I didn’t tell her that weight loss was the one thing I secretly liked about having cancer. It was too embarrassing to admit, even to my best friends. “I’m okay.”

  She smelled of the ocean, briny and clean. “Yeah?” she asked, still hugging me against her wet body. She was wearing a red one-piece swimsuit she’d had since she was a lifeguard when we were in college. I couldn’t believe she could still fit in the suit. Almost more unbelievable was that she still had it, twenty-some years later. I didn’t get it. She could afford to buy a new swimsuit for every day of the year. She could buy a suit, wear it once, and toss it. Aurora is what my mother calls filthy rich; Mom speaks the phrase as if it’s something deplorable. I wouldn’t mind trying it. Especially now, with my timer about to go off.

  Aurora stepped back and tugged off her faded blue swim cap; long, shiny blond hair fell down her back. She tossed the cap on the counter. Her movements were graceful; everything was art with Aurora. She could have been a dancer.

  She cocked her head and pointed with the beer bottle. “What’s with the scarf?”

  My hand went to my head. It seemed like a silly question. I whispered, “I’m bald.” My gaze locked with hers. She had big, brown, expressive eyes. You didn’t expect brown eyes from a blonde.

  “Let me see.”

  I shook my head, feeling the contours of my skull beneath my fingertips. “No.”

  “Oh, come on. It’s me. You have to show me. You have to show us.” She pursed her perfectly pink, full lips. Natural. No Juvé-derm injections. “It’s not like you’re going to go around wearing a scarf day and night for the next month.”

  Honestly, I had considered it.r />
  For me, my baldness was the ultimate substantiation of my vulnerability. I didn’t want to be vulnerable anymore. I didn’t want to feel scared anymore. I wanted to feel like Aurora must feel every day of her life. Invincible.

  Aurora held my gaze for a long moment, then took a step toward me again. “Come on,” she whispered, covering the hand on my head with hers.

  I looked down at the floor.

  “Just a peek,” she cajoled, putting pressure on my hand. “I’ll tell you if it’s awful. You know I will.”

  True story, as my daughters would say. Aurora was the one who told me not to marry Jared; she said he’d be unfaithful. She told me not to major in literature in college because I would never become a writer that way. She also told me when it was time to start dyeing the gray in my red hair. And when to call it quits on the marriage she’d warned me against years before. And she never said, “I told you so.” Never once. I trusted Aurora. Above all things, she was honest. Even when it hurt.

  I let her push the scarf off the back of my head. I balled it in my fist and dropped my hand to my side. I felt like I was standing naked, with my C-section belly scar and deflated breasts in front of a stranger.

  Aurora looked at me, smiling. She rubbed her palm over my almost-shiny pate. “It’s already growing back in.”

  I tried to smile. I tried to be thankful. Whoopee. I may not be bald by the time I’m laid in my coffin.

  “I like it.” Aurora gave my head a final rub as if it were a genie lamp. “You have a nicely shaped head,” she added.

  I rolled my eyes. “Am I supposed to thank you for that?”

  She shrugged. Sipped her beer. The brown bottle was sweaty in her hand. I bet that if I opened the refrigerator, there would be half a case of Dogfish Head 60 Minute IPA inside. There wouldn’t be any food, beyond a hunk of aged cheese and some expensive bubbly water, but there would be plenty of microbrewed beer.

  “It’s coming in red. You know I’d give anything to naturally have hair the color of yours,” she said.

  She and I have had this discussion a million times over the years. She says she always wished she had a curvy body and auburn hair like me. I find that hard to believe. Who wouldn’t die to have her natural thinness and gorgeous blond hair? Okay . . . maybe not . . . die.

  Funny how your perspective changes.

  “What are you doing here already?” I slipped the scarf back on and adjusted it. I still had to go out to the car and get my things. I certainly wasn’t going to let the neighbors see my bald head. “You’re not supposed to be here until tomorrow.”

  I was a little disappointed I wouldn’t have time to myself now. When you’re dying, people tend to gang up on you. I feel like I’m never alone. My girls, my mom and dad, my neighbors, my colleagues, they want to surround me day and night. They don’t want me to be alone in my last hours, I suppose. And maybe I don’t either, but I would like to catch my breath once in a while. Maybe pee without someone knocking on the bathroom door and asking if I’m okay.

  “I was bored with the scene in Rome,” Aurora told me with a sigh only the truly privileged could emit. “I got here Monday.”

  So the towel in the bathroom was damp. I wondered why her rucksack was in my old bedroom rather than hers, and why she’d been sleeping in my bed without any sheets, but I didn’t ask. I found it interesting that Aurora had been here five days and there was no more evidence of her presence in the house than a damp towel and a tiny bag. No car. Who knows how she got here? (Probably hitchhiked. She did it all the time. So far, no Dean Koontz crazies have kidnapped her and held her underground in a beer barrel.) She was rich, but no one would ever know it. She was a vagabond. She rented out warehouses for studios, slept in hotels or on people’s couches. No fancy cars. Few jewels. No property. I had no clue what she did with her money.

  “Bored with the scene in Rome,” I repeated, walking over to the sink to open the window over it. The kitchen was stifling. I wondered how she’d stayed in the house for five days with the windows closed and the air-conditioning off, but I didn’t ask that, either. I was too preoccupied with the Rome pronouncement.

  I’ve never been to Rome; I’ll never go. We talked about taking a trip to Italy, together, the four us, but it never happened. It never will happen now, will it? I opened my arms wide, gesturing wildly with my final words, trying to understand her. “You were bored with Rome?”

  “I needed time alone. To think. I’ve got a new project simmering.” She tapped her temple and then downed the rest of the beer. “A commissioned work. An enormous chandelier piece. For the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.” She wrinkled her pert nose. “Or maybe it’s Chicago. I don’t remember what my agent said.”

  Aurora is an internationally celebrated sculptor. I mean she’s big, like cover of Juxtapoz magazine big. Her medium is metal, her tool of trade an oxyacetylene torch. She works in her studio in hot pants, a leather apron, and a welding mask that looks like a medieval torture device. Or some kind of crazy sex game mask. She creates enormous sculptures of mixed metals to stand in reception areas of corporate buildings and in parks. Her work amazes me and scares me a little. It’s beautiful and brilliant, but defies interpretation by my pea-sized librarian’s brain.

  “You’ve been sleeping here all week?” I asked. “You should have called me. Mia and Maura have already been down here with their father for two weeks. I’ve been sitting at home watching eight seasons of Dexter. I could have come sooner.”

  She didn’t answer me. She’s like that. She just doesn’t answer questions she doesn’t want to. She also hangs up without saying good-bye and goes to bed without a good night. I like to think it’s the artsy dreamer in her; my mother says she’s just plain rude. Can’t remember if I said this—Mom doesn’t like Aurora. Never has. When we were sixteen, Aurora was arrested for smoking weed in a Dunkin’ Donuts while drinking a latte. Not even in the bathroom. Right at the table. My mother decided I shouldn’t associate with Aurora anymore. She tried to forbid me to see her. It didn’t work.

  I’m doing it again. Digressing.

  “You just get here?” Aurora opened the cabinet under the sink and tossed the empty bottle into a bucket. It clinked against other bottles. Beer for sure. Probably a gin bottle, if she’s been here since Monday. “Stuff in your car?” she asked.

  “Yeah. You mind getting it?” I plopped down on a kitchen stool, chest tight. I took a couple of deep breaths. “I’ve got groceries and wine. I’ll make you dinner,” I called after her, but she was already on her way out the door.

  Aurora carried everything in. She put away the groceries and lined up the bottles of wine on the counter near the refrigerator. Our makeshift bar since the days when we had to acquire our alcohol illegally. She even took the pillows I brought from home and the black nylon case with my nebulizer to the bedroom. She grabbed a quick shower upstairs, but she was down in ten minutes. Speed showering; she couldn’t possibly have shaved.

  Aurora didn’t let me do anything but open a bottle of pinot grigio and pour a glass for each of us. We chatted while she made a veggie stir-fry. At first, we talked about unimportant stuff. Not unimportant, exactly. Everything is important to me now. But the stuff that isn’t emotionally charged. Even though we’re best friends, more than best friends, it always takes a little while, after we’ve been apart, to get warmed up.

  Aurora didn’t mention my cancer while she’d chopped vegetables, and I didn’t bring it up. It was nice. Almost as if I didn’t have cancer. At least for a few minutes. We talked about how my girls did in school this year, and I showed her their junior prom pictures on my iPhone. Aurora told me about a Portuguese sculptor she dated in Rome. I learned that his name was Fortunato and that he’d had a big wang. Her word, not mine.

  When the stir-fry was ready, we carried the plates, our glasses, and the bottle of wine (we were on our second glass by then) out onto the front porch. There was a cool breeze coming in off the ocean; there almost always was. I sat i
n a big Adirondack chair. My Adirondack. There were four of them lined along the front porch, one for each of us. Mine was bright green. Aurora’s was white.

  She refilled our glasses, and we both sat back to enjoy our dinner: asparagus, snow peas, hearts of palm, mushrooms, and zucchini, all in a thickened peppery vegetable broth.

  “Lilly texted earlier. She’ll be here by noon tomorrow,” I said.

  “She driving over alone”—Aurora stabbed a mushroom with the tines of her fork—“or is he bringing her?”

  He, meaning her husband. They’ve been married nine years, but Aurora doesn’t like Matthew any better now than when we met him. She finds him stuffy and boring. Aurora thinks he stifles Lilly. That he keeps her from reaching her full potential. I disagree. Not all of us can be famous, globe-trotting artists sleeping with the Fortunatos of the world. Some of us have to be librarians, cops, and in Lilly’s case, optometrists. I like Matt. He’s good to her. A hell of a lot better to her than her first husband was.

  “I assume she’s driving over herself.” Lilly lived in Annapolis. She and Matt, also an optometrist (they met at a convention), have an upscale office there. “And Janine will be here right after work tomorrow. No later than six, she said.”

  While we’re all equally close, I’m the administrator of the group. I’m the one who keeps everyone connected with texts, e-mails, and phone calls. I always make the arrangements when we get together. I coordinate arrival and departure times. I make the dinner reservations and settle minor disputes.

  Aurora set down her plate and reached for her glass. She’d barely touched her food. “We can talk about it if you want. Get the clumsiness out of the way.”

  I looked up from my plate, having no idea what she was talking about . . . for a second. Then I smiled. “You’re a funny one.”

  She looked at me from over the rim of her glass, tipped it, and drank. She was wearing a tight white T-shirt with something in Italian on it (I don’t speak Italian. I can manage a little conversational Español, but that’s it. I was always going to learn to speak Italian. Once I finished my doctorate in library science. Once Mia and Maura were older. Guess I put it off too long.) and a pair of baggy men’s athletic shorts. Her hair was still damp from her shower, her face bare of makeup.