by Hilary Sloin
“They gave me Anne Frank as a topic,” Francesca stated quickly.
Isabella watched her sister with newfound envy. They seemed to have traded places. Francesca was writing papers on Anne Frank (as if she couldn’t in three sentences explain what that was about) and flitting along the edges of the living room, while she, Isabella, exhausted her mental reserves just trying to stop the room from spinning.
Vivian returned from the bathroom, her smile again cemented on her face. “Okay,” she said. “What did I miss?”
“We were just discussing Francesca’s paper.” Alfonse sat on one of the couches that was covered in thick, crunchy plastic and located in the back of the living room. Evelyn kept her long living room divided into two sections. The front housed the TV and an older, gold couch covered in a threadbare white sheet, with an olive-colored afghan she’d knitted herself always tossed over one of the cushions. Two ladderback chairs were pushed against the wall. The window was covered in a drab shutter through which the light slid in at interesting angles. Francesca liked to sit in its path and study the contrast of lines on her pant legs and hands.
“What, specifically, was your paper about?” Isabella asked menacingly.
“The relationship between Anne Frank and her sister,” Francesca said, knowing how bad it sounded. She scooted up close to the TV and pulled out the little power button, then studied the tiny dot exploding from the center of the concave glass. She turned it off, waited a few moments, turned it on again. Again, she watched the light grow.
“Do you think the teacher knew about me? And that was why she picked that topic?” Isabella postulated.
“Probably,” said Francesca.
“Definitely,” said Vivian, protective of her poor, sodden daughter, too exceptional to function in the pedestrian world.
Francesca removed a ballpoint pen from her back pocket and absentmindedly began to darken a doodle on her knee. Alfonse came up behind her.
“Look at that,” he cocked his head and chewed a caramel, examining the inky sprawl on Francesca’s knee, his mouth full of candy. “Is that a good idea? Drawing on your pants?”
Francesca drew one line after another, on a slant, coloring a Navajo pattern along the bottom of a teepee. She’d been drawing Navajo designs ever since learning about the various Indian tribes of the West in history class.
“What does it mean?” asked Alfonse.
Francesca ignored him.
“What did you write about Anne’s relationship to her sister?” Isabella demanded.
“Well,” Francesca cleared her throat. “I theorized . . .”
“Oooh, big word—” Alfonse mussed Francesca’s hair and laughed.
“. . . that part of what caused Anne to act like a brat was that no one saw her for herself. She was always seen in comparison to her older sister.”
“Her sister was the brat!” Isabella sat up.
“That’s your opinion.”
“What are you, nuts? Anne Frank was a genius!”
“Like one can’t be both.” Francesca tilted her head in perfect concentration.
“Where are you getting your information?” demanded Isabella.
“Bella, everyone is entitled to an opinion,” said Alfonse.
“There’s room for both sisters to be geniuses,” said Vivian, feeling ridiculous. She knew full well Francesca was no genius, but to not go along with these ridiculous conversations was to favor one child over the other and she had vowed not to do this. She patted Isabella’s sweaty head, looking down at the ruins of a beautiful fortress, a felled forest. Isabella’s failure was her failure, too. She didn’t know why this was so, but it was. They were both desperate to return to how things had been before that night when all was lost with one celebratory sip of champagne.
“Supper!” Evelyn called.
A basket of challah was set in the middle of the table. A brick of margarine softened in the butter tray next to a bowl of steaming kasha varnishkas. In another bowl were roasted potatoes smothered in margarine. At the opposite end of the table a plate was piled with asparagus that had been cooked so thoroughly it could be sucked with a straw. At center, in a rectangular Pyrex dish, a brisket luxuriated in dark, orange fluid, translucent pearl onions floating alongside.
“Bravo, Mama!” pronounced Alfonse upon tasting the brisket.
“What’s the matter with her?” Evelyn jutted her chin toward Isabella, whose head was dipping dangerously close to her plate.
Isabella lifted her head and forced open her eyes. She surveyed herself. “What,” she said.
“Nothing, sweetie. We were remarking how pretty you are,” Vivian winked.
“Yeah, right,” said Bella, looking down at the baggy Yale sweatshirt given to her by Vivian long ago when the prestigious school had seemed her destiny. The treads of her brown corduroys were worn to the dull, flat fabric. Her hair was greasy, her skin pale and yellow.
“You’re a very pretty girl.” Vivian cut a piece of tender brisket with the side of her fork.
“And so is Francesca,” added Alfonse.
Francesca looked at him like he was psychotic.
“It’s true!” he cried. “Isn’t it?”
“Francesca’s got her own style,” Evelyn winked at her granddaughter.
“You people are crazy!” Isabella ranted. “Look at us. We’re ugly. A couple of ugly chicks. A couple of ugly white chicks sitting around—”
“That’s enough!” interrupted Vivian.
Isabella looked down at her plate of food, smelled the sweet and sour tang of brisket. She pushed it away. “I feel sick,” she said.
“Oh Jesus. Not again. I just had the carpet cleaned—” Evelyn threw her hands in the air.
“I need to lie down.” Isabella held onto the table to steady herself. She waddled across the bumpy carpet to the sofa and collapsed onto her side, the springs creaking beneath her weight.
“That girl smells like a distillery,” said Evelyn. “She got that from your people, Alfonse.”
“My people? We don’t drink. Just a little wine with dinner.”
“Well, our people don’t drink. Everyone knows that,” said Evelyn, dipping a piece of challah in the greasy sauce.
“Francesca, go sit with your sister,” Vivian said. “Now.”
Francesca shoved her chair back, sighed audibly, and threw her napkin roughly onto the table, just missing the brisket pan. Capitalizing on the opportunity to appear put-upon and mistreated, she escaped happily into the stillness of the living room, and snapped on the television.
Vivian tore the cellophane sheath from a new pack of Larks, unfolded the foil corner, and slammed the pack on the edge of the table until a stick broke free.
“How can you smoke those?” Evelyn lit a True Blue. “What happened to the low tars?”
“Research shows it’s all the same.” She turned her body away and pulled the ashtray inches closer.
Evelyn spotted a stain on Isabella’s unused knife, snatched it up, and breathed on it several times. She rubbed it furiously with her linen napkin. “What’s she doing? Messing up my furniture?” She strained her head but could see nothing beyond the threshold connecting the two rooms.
“She’s not messing up your furniture. She’s not a dog.”
“Thank God I left the sheet on.” Evelyn took a long drag from her cigarette. “Didn’t I warn you this would happen?”
“Yes, you did, Ma,” said Vivian. “Every single week for three years you’ve reminded me that I’m a lousy mother. Just in case I forget for a minute.” She stood and pushed her chair back, crashing it against the wall.
“I never said that! Don’t be so sensitive.” Evelyn waved the comment away. Alfonse stood up, plate in hand. “I said I was joking. Sit down!” She glared at him.
“Don’t order him around like he’s Daddy,” Vivian snapped. She put her hand to her head, overwhelmed by a sharp pain. Slowly, she moved into the living room and sat at the foot of the couch, lifting Isabella�
��s leaden legs to slip her lap beneath them. She patted the limp ankles, then rested her fingers over them. Her eyes met Francesca’s and she winked. She heard Evelyn sigh and felt—immediately, profoundly—guilty. What have I done to feel guilty about? she asked herself. But the answer didn’t matter. She didn’t need to do anything. She was guilty. Some things just were so.
Chapter Eight
At age 18, Isabella’s raison d’être was suicide. Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton had upstaged Anne Frank in her gallery of suffering. She cackled inwardly at the dark sarcasm of their words, their penetrating portrayals of human existence as a series of cleverly gift-wrapped torture devices—motherhood, marriage, life. These women understood. They understood that it was only a matter of time until the female genius ended it all: Life was not a viable option.
Still, she knew that to thrust herself from the second-story window in her bedroom onto the soft grass would be foolish, might leave her crippled, her brain furiously intact. Pills and vodka were a possibility, but the idea of choking on her own vomit was . . . unappealing. Head in the oven was impractical since the stove was electric and she did not want to burn. Her grandmother had a gas stove, but she never visited her grandmother and this seemed a rude reason to call. She thought of provoking Francesca into murdering her (she detected aggression under her sister’s resigned surface), but though they weren’t close, she didn’t want her sister, for whom things were finally looking up, to spend the rest of her life in jail.
Some people overdosed on aspirin, by all accounts a gruesome death—cerebral hemorrhaging that lasted up to twelve hours before, bloodied and convulsive, you expire. Hanging was out of the question; she could not bear the sound of her neck snapping. (Just the thought of it made her knees cave in.) She could not imagine where she’d find a needle to pump air into her veins, and, even if she did, how horrible, inflating herself like a leaky tire. Her only option seemed to be the old car-running-in-the-garage routine. For this she’d have to wait until both her parents were out for a prolonged period. Perhaps while her mother was at the grocery store, her father at work. Fortunately, the blue Mustang still convalesced in the garage. Sometimes on Sundays her father did things to it: wiped it down, revved the motor, changed the oil, occasionally filled the tank with gas, but it never actually moved.
She liked the carbon monoxide scenario. It was romantic, metaphorical: running car with nowhere to go, symbolizing her inability to escape the boundless agony of her life. Her backup plan was the sleeping pills/vodka/plastic bag over the head method, though people had been known to wake in the night and claw themselves free, ruled by some inverted instinct that left them half-witted and at the mercy of the very people they’d hoped to avoid.
She eagerly awaited her monthly copy of Born to Die, “a newsletter by and for those who know death is their destiny,” which arrived in a brown paper envelope with no return address. The publication featured excerpts from a forthcoming book by iconoclastic California psychiatrist Dr. Earl Mervins, a self-proclaimed expert in the holistic treatment of depressive disorders. Dr. Mervins claimed that some of his patients, having failed every attempt to chase off depression the old-fashioned way, had induced their own deaths through guided meditation. Isabella returned again and again to the story of Graham Wilson (excerpted below), used to illustrate Mervins’ cutting-edge approach.
Today I met “Graham,” a young man who lives at home with his two parents and older sister. At age 22, he is handsome in a plain, willowy way, with fair skin and light hair, an unshaved face. He wears ragtag clothes and tries very hard to smile, though that pathetic simper seems only to make him appear sadder. He sleeps in his boyhood room with its NY Mets and Barbarella posters, lava light, matted black animal rug with a fake panther’s head.
Graham has tried it all: slit wrists, pills, carbon monoxide, hanging from a light fixture (the ceiling gave way, sending plaster and Graham crashing to the ground). Each time, no matter how carefully he timed the suicide, something interfered, usually one of his well-meaning family members. He claims he no longer feels alive, that his spirit “long ago evacuated the premises.” And who can blame it?
Graham spends all day, every day sitting silently at the kitchen table, eating only when he cannot stand the hunger anymore. He speaks to no one. His parents and sister treat him like a piece of furniture, which, he says, furthers his despair. He recounted one incident in which his sister was talking on the telephone. Long accustomed to his lifeless ubiquity, she told the other party to hold on while she found a cigarette, then draped the receiver over Graham’s shoulder to free up her hands so she could search the pockets of her coat!28
Isabella made the page soggy with tears. She looked away from the newsletter, out across the backyard, rocked back and forth in her chair, picturing the boy’s sister—long red nails, red lipstick, a low-cut shirt, smoking slim cigarettes, leaning on poor Graham as if he were a counter. She wiped her dripping nose and continued reading.
When I arrived today, Graham explained how he had given away all of his possessions. Materialism, he said, kept him bound to the unholy world. I sat with his family for a long time, explaining Graham’s decision, and how it was, in a sense, the only treatment for his “allergy to life.”29 Thus we began Step One: letting go.
After 29 days, Graham finally drifted like a cloud into the next world, eyes closed, serenity softening his face. His parents told me they’d never seen him look so happy.30
Isabella folded the newsletter and stared out at the green lawn. Sappho, the neighbors’ golden retriever, barked at a child walking by. Vivian knocked on the door. She shoved the newsletter under her mattress and tried to erase any sort of intent from her face, replacing it with a vacuous gaze.
“Pumpkin,” Vivian called, “Mrs. Noonan is on the phone.”
The agent called weekly, hoping for news of a burgeoning project.
“I have nothing,” said Isabella.
Later, Vivian knocked again.
“Honey? Lunch.”
Isabella heard her stomach grumbling as it had been doing more and more forcefully, for hours. Even Graham Wilson ate when he couldn’t stand it any longer. And food was the only thing left in life from which Isabella exacted pleasure.
“Come in,” she said.
Vivian pushed open the door with her shoulder, her face just a blur beyond the tray containing a small plate and a glass of milk. “Magic tuna, sweetie!” Her back was rounded from strain, her hair graying in parentheses at the front of her head. She walked to the window, smoothed Isabella’s oily locks. “How about you and me go for a walk?”
“You and I,” said Isabella, staring resolutely at the backyard. She prayed for the strength to resist the tuna fish. She reminded herself of the larger picture, how one sandwich would set her back days.
But oh, how she loved magic tuna. And she could no longer stand the empty, boiling hunger. She watched her mother slink noiselessly out of the room, and the moment she heard the clasp on the door engage, she flew out of her rocking chair, snatched the sandwich off the tiny cake plate, and devoured it, swallowing all thoughts of how she was, at that very moment, prolonging her suffering. The tuna was on seeded rye bread, her favorite, perfectly seasoned with mayonnaise and paprika, the celery adding a dependable crunch. She tossed her head back, closed her eyes, and chewed slowly, her taste buds deceiving her into feeling happy.
She drank the glass of milk, wiped her upper lip, and found she felt energized, in need of activity. She skated in white socks along the white floor, peered out the window at the same scene she’d been looking at her entire life: flat grass and flowers, the edge of the neighbors’ deck, old Mrs. Weinstein’s wheelchair folded against her garage.
Since Graham had given away his possessions to free himself from the trappings of life, Isabella decided she would do the same. She walked down the hall to her sister’s bedroom and knocked. After several seconds, Francesca opened the door, her head arched beneath two thickly padded headphones. The
spiral cord was stretched to its limit, connecting her to the record player in the corner.
“What?” she shouted over the music.
“Take them off,” Isabella mouthed, tugging on the curly cord. Francesca removed the headphones and held them at her side. Tinny music emanated from the speakers.
“I wonder if you want anything. Of mine,” Isabella said.
Francesca rolled her eyes and put her headphones back on. She turned away from her sister, but did not close the door.
“Wait. Wait.” Isabella climbed the stairs and followed her sister into the dark, low room. Things had changed in there. On the walls were a series of Francesca’s odd finger paintings. Isabella still couldn’t figure out what all the fuss was about; anyone, it seemed to her, could smear paint across a sheet of shiny paper. But could her sister write a poem? Just one! Never mind thirty-six! Never mind sustaining the voice of an authentic, internationally celebrated hero.
Another wall was smattered with charcoal sketches. A few depicted the neighbor’s dog (sort of), though most were of Lisa Sinsong, recognizable immediately by her wide forehead and confused, obdurate expression. In one drawing a chess piece with a face stood beside the neighbor’s dog.
Isabella pointed to it. “Weird.” While clearly Francesca was becoming increasingly peculiar (who knew it was possible?), at the same time, she seemed capable of communicating something necessary, something urgent that was rattling around in her brain. Isabella recognized this ability at once and envied it. She wondered if talent and the gift for self-expression had fled her own messy mind and taken refuge in her sister’s. After all, they lived in such proximity. Perhaps—she found herself staring at Francesca’s head—it was less cluttered in there.
“What do you want, Bella? I’m working.”
“You’re working?” Isabella laughed. “On what?”
“On my work.” On the bed, a large sketchpad was opened. Another picture of Lisa Sinsong.