My Sisters And Me

by Lisa Dickenson

  ‘Okay. I’m going to say I’ll be at the house for two months so if and when she feels she wants to talk she can come over anytime. Sound good?’

  ‘Perfect.’

  Noelle’s fingers typed with lawyer-speed; she hit send and she sat back with her tea. Thirty seconds later, she checked the messenger app to see if Jenny had read the message yet. Thirty seconds after that, she checked again.

  This ritual continued throughout the afternoon, and deep into the evening.

  By the following morning, Jenny had read the message, Noelle could see that. But she hadn’t responded.

  On Noelle’s command, the sisters threw themselves into housework. Noelle worked tirelessly on the outside, while Emmy and Rae tackled paintwork in the kitchen/living room and the hallway. Their first week back in Maplewood rolled into their second, third and then fourth, the days getting a fraction shorter and the nights a degree colder, and still Jenny hadn’t responded.

  The three sisters were on the porch one morning admiring the way their arm muscles were starting to pop, already sweating from putting in a couple of hours of manual labour. Emmy and Rae felt permanently covered in paint flecks, while Noelle’s freckles had popped out and her skin was faintly tanned under her wildly messy top bun.

  ‘So, I think before I do any more, we’re going to need to go and buy the wood and replace this decking,’ Noelle was saying. ‘But it’s going to take all three of us to do that job.’

  This was not a job that appealed to Rae or Emmy, who crinkled their noses, simultaneously plotting about asking Jared and Gabbi if they’d fancy coming over for a please-rebuild-our-porch party.

  Then Rae spotted someone coming up the drive. ‘ERM, BYE,’ she said, retreating into the house and pulling Emmy with her.

  Noelle turned and squinted into the sunshine. There she was. It had been her at the side of the road, still with the same walk and the same hair.

  It had been a long time since Jenny had come around. The women met eyes and watched each other as they moved closer. Neither could prevent a small smile forming on their lips. There you are, Noelle thought. There was sweetness in the sadness – so much time had passed, but these two sets of eyes were now seeing each other again.

  ‘Jenny,’ she breathed.

  ‘Hi,’ Jenny said, after what felt like a decade. Actually, it really had been a decade.

  She looked the same. Better, actually. Noelle felt self-conscious, and tried to smooth down the frizz and wipe the sweat from her brow.

  ‘Thanks for coming,’ Noelle said, her voice shaking.

  ‘Thank you for inviting me. I saw you were back in town when you drove past me, and I wondered if we’d cross paths.’

  There was a distance between them that Noelle hadn’t expected. She’d thought Jenny would be angry, that she’d shout and cry and that then they’d never see each other again. She’d hoped it would be like time had never passed, but that Jenny was happy in her life and excited about rekindling a bond, if nothing more. She hadn’t expected this gap. It took everything not to leap forward and take Jenny’s face in her hands and kiss her again.

  ‘Can I get you a drink?’ Noelle asked, signalling towards the door.

  ‘I’ll have a tea, please,’ said Jenny, remaining on the spot, her hands folded in front of her. ‘Out here, if you don’t mind.’

  ‘You don’t want to come in?’ There was a sorrow in Noelle’s voice she couldn’t keep out.

  ‘Not this time.’ Jenny’s reserve softened a little. ‘I will, I’m sure – if you’re around for a while. But not quite yet.’

  Noelle nodded and went to go inside, then realised she didn’t know adult Jenny at all. ‘How do you take your tea?’ she asked.

  ‘Milk, no sugar, thanks.’

  When Noelle reached the kitchen, her sisters jumped up from where they too had been having a tea break.

  ‘Is she still here?’ Rae asked.

  ‘What’s happening, is everything okay?’ Emmy jumped in.

  ‘What did she say to you? What did you say to her?’

  Noelle pushed past them. ‘I’m making her tea, we’ll go from there.’ As the tea was brewing, Noelle turned back to her sisters. ‘She’s really mad. I don’t like it.’

  ‘But she’s here,’ Emmy reminded her. ‘And you did mess up, you’re not supposed to like it – but she’s willing to see you. The olive branch is out there. It might not be perfect, not everything gets to be perfect, but it’s going to be okay.’

  Noelle nodded, and armed with the mugs of tea she returned outside, where Jenny was sat on the porch.

  ‘I’m sorry if you fall through the porch or anything,’ Noelle said softly, as she sat down next to her. ‘The wood’s pretty rotten; we’re going to be replacing it soon.’

  Jenny raised an eyebrow. ‘That’s what you’re sorry for?’ But there was kindness in the eyes that looked back at Noelle over the tea mug.

  Noelle remembered back to that day. It was the middle of the summer before she and Jenny were due to go their separate ways to different universities. They’d been arguing more than usual – silly, bickery arguments on the surface about whether to stay together long-distance and who loved whom more. But it ran deeper. Noelle knew logically they should break up. She didn’t want the friendship to end, but she felt like she had to let Jenny off the chain she’d kept her on since their early teens. Her own sexuality was something that had caused gossip, and had created a barrier between her and the other kids at school. She had Jenny so she didn’t care… but sometimes, just sometimes, she did care. It would bother her, and then she felt responsible for Jenny’s happiness (or unhappiness) as well. She was in awe of Jenny, and she wanted her to be free and fly and maybe they’d come back to each other, but she didn’t want Jenny to resent her in the future because she was all she’d known.

  And in a tiny selfish corner of her heart that she tried to ignore, Noelle wanted the same thing – to be free to fly.

  But Jenny thought they should give long-distance a go. She was worried that if they lost their relationship they’d lose each other as friends, even though Noelle swore it wouldn’t happen.

  Noelle did what she did because she was afraid of the goodbyes. She was a coward under the guise of a free spirit, and on a hot August day, she left. She moved away to university early, leaving Jenny with a love note and a million well wishes, and a promise that this was an exciting time and if it was meant to be then they’d be together again soon. ‘I’ll see you in the Christmas holidays!’ she’d promised, with a smiley face. But when the Christmas holidays came around, Jenny didn’t – and Noelle was afraid again, but this time of a hello.

  ‘I’m sorry for being the worst type of person,’ Noelle said, looking into Jenny’s eyes and putting down her mug.

  ‘You weren’t the worst type of person, you were young. We were so young.’

  ‘I was old enough to know what would hurt. I stuck my fingers in my ears and told myself I didn’t know, but it’s weighed on me ever since, so it’s pretty safe to say I knew.’

  Jenny was silent for a while, before saying, ‘Do you remember why you did it?’

  ‘Because I thought I was right and that eventually you’d thank me for it,’ she winced. ‘I was so wrong to just leave. I really am sorry.’

  ‘Can I tell you about that day?’

  ‘Of course.’ Noelle didn’t want to hear it, but she had to woman-up and stop running away from the truth.

  Jenny swept her white-blonde hair back from her face and stared down the Lakes’ driveway. ‘I rode my bike over here really quickly, because I’d bought us a peace offering of a box of Feast ice creams as it was so hot. We’d fought the day before – again. They were in my rucksack and I was convinced they were going to melt and the chocolate would leak out everywhere, so I zoomed up your driveway. Your parents’ car was gone, which wasn’t unusual but I just remember it. I knocked on the door just as Rae was coming out – she was home for a day or two with her then-boyfriend.
I remember her looking surprised to see me. “You just missed her,” she said. Then she grabbed something from the hallway – it was a letter – and she said she had to dash but that you’d left me this.’

  Noelle shook her head. What had she done?

  ‘Then Rae winked, and said she hoped we’d given each other a good send-off, and off she went,’ Jenny continued. ‘Even your sister thought you’d said goodbye to me. I didn’t even know what she was talking about. Until I sat right here, on my own, and read your letter.’

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ Noelle whispered. How wrong and silly she had been, making decisions for other people, thinking she knew their hearts better than themselves.

  ‘You left without me. I know we were just kids at the time, really, but there was something about you – about us – that made sense and then suddenly it didn’t. I didn’t just lose my girlfriend, I lost my friend, my favourite person, the one person who got me.’ Jenny took a deep breath and smiled into the sunshine. ‘I forgive you, you don’t have to keep apologising, but it was nice to hear it once. You owe me a backpack though – those Feasts did melt everywhere.’

  ‘Consider it done… Thank you.’

  Standing up, Jenny left her mug of half-drunk tea on the porch. ‘I’m going to go for now. It was good to see you again, Noelle.’

  Noelle stood also, wanting to keep her here for just a little longer. ‘Do you want to stay a while? I want to find out about you, what you’ve been up to, what you do now.’

  ‘Another time,’ she said, firmly but fairly.

  ‘Okay,’ Noelle nodded, respecting her wishes. As Jenny retreated down the driveway with a wave, Noelle breathed in the September air, and a small feeling of lightness akin to the leaves that drifted about her.

  Tomorrow, October started. And tomorrow felt like it would be a brand-new day.

  Chapter 13

  ‘It’s got to be done. This week.’ Emmy stared at her sisters, waiting for one of them to volunteer. They were stood on the landing; all three bedroom doors wide open.

  ‘Can’t we leave it a little longer?’ asked Noelle, gazing with nostalgia into her sanctuary.

  ‘We can’t.’ Emmy shook her head. ‘It’s going to take us ages to clear everything out anyway, plus they’ll probably need an industrial-strength clean, and only then can we start getting the first coats on the wall. We’re already into month two.’

  ‘The carpets arrive on November the third. We do need all the painting done by then, really.’ Noelle succumbed.

  ‘What shall we do for Halloween?’ Rae changed the subject.

  ‘Don’t change the subject,’ said Emmy.

  ‘It’s a good point, though,’ she replied. ‘Let’s park that and come back to it. So, are we doing this separately or all hitting a room together?’

  ‘Separately,’ Emmy said, at the same time that Noelle said, ‘Together.’

  Rae and Emmy walked into their respective rooms, and Rae called out to Noelle, ‘You only want to do this together because your room’s a shithole.’

  Inside her bedroom, Emmy pushed aside the furniture ready for three piles: Keep, Charity Shop, Chuck. The Keep pile would be pretty small, she had no doubt.

  Plugging in her boombox, she lifted her big box of cassettes off the shelf for the last time. She selected one to listen to now – the Steptacular album – before dumping the rest of the box on to the chuck pile. Apparently, charity shops rarely even take cassettes nowadays, and it wasn’t like she had a tape player up in Oxford to listen to any of these.

  Except… she opened the box back up. Better to have a quick check, just to make sure she had any favourites digitised on her iTunes. Wow, the hours she must have put in, making these mix tapes by recording songs off the radio.

  But they had to go. There was no point in hanging on to things from her past, when all it would do would remind her of it.

  Emmy wandered around the room collecting up things to put in the piles, and by track three (‘Love’s Got a Hold on My Heart’), as predicted, the Keep pile consisted of just the ‘Girl Power’ crop top, one Baby-Sitters Club book and a maths revision guide. It was a cool revision guide – full colour – you never know when a bad boy like that might come in handy in the future. Same with the Baby-Sitters Club book. The other piles were overflowing.

  Rae wandered into the bedroom holding some cigarettes. ‘Check this out, how high do you think I’d get if I smoked these? They’re probably poison now, they must be at least fifteen years old, if not more! Woah – tell me that isn’t a mountain of stuff you’re getting rid of?’

  ‘Yep, that pile can all go to charity, and that lot can all go to the tip.’

  Rae sat down on the floor, uninvited, and began rifling through the piles. ‘Noooo, you can’t get rid of your Mr Blobby puppet! You loved Mr Blobby! Check out your Magic Eye book, Noelle could never do these…’

  ‘Hello,’ Noelle said, coming in the room, her hair inexplicably crimped and bejewelled with butterfly clips. She sat next to Rae. ‘Are we doing Emmy’s room first? Goodie. Oh, look at these Backstreet Boys dolls.’

  ‘That’s Westlife,’ Emmy corrected her. There was no getting rid of her nosy sisters now.

  ‘You’re really giving all this stuff to charity?’ asked Rae. ‘Don’t you want to keep some?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because they’re memories.’

  ‘No, they’re not. Memories are in my head. This is just stuff, and I clearly don’t need any of it because I’d have taken it away with me before.’

  ‘But —’

  ‘Rae.’ There was a reason Emmy had wanted to do this in peace, and that reason was shaped like sisters. If Emmy wanted to have closure on a tough time in her life, she needed to purge herself of all the stuff that kept bringing it back. Who knows, maybe after all this she’d start to enjoy coming home again? ‘You stick to your journey down memory lane, and let me stick to mine.’

  But Rae wasn’t giving up. ‘You’re demolishing your memory lane. You’re pretending it never existed.’

  ‘I’ve just grown up – maybe you need to do the same, and stop parading about in black eyeliner like you think it’s 1998 again.’

  Rae was loving this eyeliner, and loving getting reacquainted with herself, so her sister could just shut up right now. ‘I’m not afraid of who I was, and neither should you be. Don’t you think it would kill the fourteen-year-old Emmy to know that grown-up Emmy was siding with her bullies? Thinking she was pathetic and a loser and weak. Don’t you like who you’ve become at all?’

  ‘Yes, I do like who I’ve become, that’s the point. I worked hard to move away from who I used to be.’

  ‘But who you used to be shaped who you are today. Of course you’re not exactly the same, everything changes, apart from Noelle perhaps. But stop bashing the girl who showed you the stars and shared her story books with you and cried with you at night, because she’s already got nobody on her side – you have to stand by her. Let her in. Like her.’

  Noelle wanted to point out that she had changed a little. She no longer felt the need to make decisions for other people. Also, she was a lawyer now, which she wasn’t when she was little. But this wasn’t about her at the moment.

  Emmy let Rae’s words sink in. She had no comeback. Was she really siding with the bullies by not being on Team Emmy? She fiddled with the corners of her Baby-Sitters Club book, which was tattered and faded through love.

  The doorbell rang, interrupting their thoughts with its deep and eerie jangle. ‘We should change that bell,’ said Rae, hauling herself up. ‘I’ll get it, it’s probably Gabbi, she said she’d drop over her pressure washer later today. I can’t believe I’m even saying “Gabbi” and “pressure washer” in the same sentence. Maybe I should give her one of these cigarettes.’

  Rae swung open the front door, but rather than being faced with Gabbi, she was faced with a large hamper. From behind the hamper out popped a teenage girl with dyed black hair, piercings up her ear, and the t
ype of dry, crooked grin you’d see on your favourite comedienne.

  ‘Surprise! You are the recipient of a gift hamper from The Wooden Café,’ she smirked, holding out the basket.

  Rae took it, peering inside at the paper-wrapped powdery pancake mix, the bottle of maple syrup, two vacuum-packed bags of bacon and various other treats. ‘Thanks – who sent this?’

  ‘I did,’ the teenager answered, gazing up at the house. ‘It’s from me. Your house is lit.’

  ‘Thank you…? Who are you?’

  ‘I’m Bonnie. Big fan.’ She stuck her hand out.

  Emmy called down from upstairs. ‘Rae, who is it?’

  ‘I don’t really know,’ she called back up. ‘Big fan of who?’

  ‘You guys. “The Lake sisters”. You’re talk of the town, you know. Everyone’s all “whaaaat, the sisters are baaaack?”’

  Noelle and Emmy appeared at the door behind Rae. ‘You work at The Wooden Café,’ Emmy said, then clocked the gift basket. ‘You’re a waitress there, right?’

  ‘Gotta earn the cash in between the classes. So you’re doing up your house, huh? Did you uncover anything weird yet?’ She peered past them into the house. ‘I heard it’s like that old Blair Witch movie out the back of your house.’

  Rae spoke to her sisters. ‘She brought us a gift basket. She says we’re the talk of the town.’

  Bonnie nodded. ‘You’re like, famous. At least your home is. There’s a whole Facebook page about it and about all the spooky shit that’s happened here over the years. Can I get a snapchat with you?’

  ‘A what?’ said Emmy.

  ‘A snapchat,’ snapped Rae. ‘Come on, saddo. It’s that app where people add filters, like, dog tongues and things to their face.’

  ‘… They what?’

  Rae turned back to Bonnie. ‘Do you want to come in?’

  ‘Yeah, I do!’ Bonnie bounded in like a puppy who’d just been let off the leash. ‘Cool chicken,’ she remarked as Vicky crossed her path.

  Emmy was hissing at Rae, ‘I don’t think we should let teenage strangers into our home. What if she lets off a firework? What if she claims we assaulted her? This could all be part of a prank.’