A cab pulls up to my home sometime around seven. Riley, who has been sitting by the front door for the past twenty-four hours, bursts outside shouting. She wears the charm bracelet her mother sent her, plus the one I gave her on the other wrist. “Mom!”
I give them a minute to be alone. This doesn’t mean I don’t furtively watch them through the living room window, standing back several feet so there’s no chance I’ll be spotted.
Becky swings her legs out of the cab, clad in a surprisingly pedestrian pair of sweats, a matching zip-up sweatshirt, her hair pulled back in a ponytail. Her face is scrubbed clean of makeup. Her face, so skeletal the last time I saw her, has filled out again. She clasps Riley to her, pulls back, cradles Riley’s face in her hands. An easy physical affection, so difficult for me to show. Riley says something and Becky throws back her head and laughs, a big easy guffaw that shows all of her wide, white teeth.
I stumble backward. I have to get away from the window.
In my bedroom, I sit on the bed with the door closed. I hear a noise like water churning, like the dishwasher is on, and I listen. It’s the sound of my own blood in my ears.
I reach for the phone. I can call Dara for a pep talk. Or my mother. Or even George. He’s had experience in dealing with slightly crazed, unstable people who want something you have. The image of Becky and Riley hugging outside burns in my mind. It might be me who wants something Becky has, not the other way around.
There is a knock. “Aunt Gal? My mother’s here,” Riley says from the other side, her voice the same placating tone my own mother uses. I hear her murmuring to Becky, probably telling her Aunt Gal has occasional fits, nothing to worry about.
I open the door.
My sister stands not two feet away from me. The whites of her eyes shine unblemished in the dim light, two hard-cooked Easter eggs. Her face dimples into a grin. “Gal!” She steps forward and hugs me.
I hug back, barely. She feels muscular and light. “Have you been working out?”
“The building where I lived had an indoor pool.” She steps back and twinkles at me. Positively glows.
“You must be exhausted,” I say. “You want to lie down?”
“No thanks. I slept on the plane.” Becky looks around the living room, at the photos of roses on the walls, the new pictures of Riley. Riley with her trebuchet. Riley at her summer job.
I stiffen. “Oh.”
“I didn’t take a pill,” Becky says. “I always fall asleep on planes. The altitude does it.”
“Good thing you’re not a pilot.” Riley has ceased following her mother around, but will not take her eyes from her. When Riley was a newborn, swaddled up in her bassinet or carrier or in another’s arms, she had done the same. Fixated on her mother with an intensity that surprised everyone who witnessed it, her small eyes trained on Becky as she moved about the room without her, as though she was willing her mother to return.
Riley offers to take her mother out to eat. “Would you like to come, Aunt Gal?” Riley says, after the fact. Hastily. She has forgotten me.
“You go ahead.” I wave them off. I don’t want to be the third wheel.
• • •
WHILE THEY ARE GONE, I get out my photo albums. Beginning with my childhood. Becky and I, so close together in age, so different. My moonfaced countenance peering from every photo is painful to see, the associated memories making it so. Becky grinning through childhood. Sticking out her tongue at me. Turning sullen and withdrawn by her eleventh birthday.
• • •
RILEY AND BECKY do not get home until much later, about eight o’clock. I look up from the television and its Hercule Poirot rerun. “You better get cleaned up and ready for bed, Riley,” I say calmly, though my insides dance and scream. “It’s a school night.”
Becky nods at her daughter, who stands reluctant at the door. “Go. Listen to Aunt Gal.”
“If you need us,” I say to Riley, “we’ll be out in the greenhouse.” I need to talk to Becky alone, where Riley cannot hear us. I cannot take this pussyfooting around one more minute. This pretense that we are adhering to all these social niceties. I am going to explode.
Two vertical lines appear between Riley’s brows as she looks from me to her mother, then back again. We both smile at her in unison, pretend we are two happy sisters, until at last Riley nods silently, retreats to the bathroom.
Becky follows me outside. The late October nights are cold, and I shiver a little in my thin cable-knit sweater, too hasty to grab a jacket.
A new moon casts dim watery light as we crunch across the gravel path. “You’ve done a lot with the place,” Becky observes. “All these roses. I haven’t been here since you bought it.”
“That long?”
“I got no invitation.”
My mother and father spent every Christmas with me, figuring that at least Becky had Riley, while I had no one at all. I had told Becky, when Riley was small, she could come along. “There was always a standing Christmas invitation.”
“There’s not enough room.”
“I would have given you my bed.”
Becky makes a noise like a disappointed field mouse. “Mom wouldn’t have allowed it.”
I switch on the greenhouse lights.
Becky stands blinking in the sudden brightness, walking down the aisle of roses. “This is impressive, Gal. A real operation you have going on here.”
“That’s what they tell me.” I feel suddenly proud, pleased at my sister’s compliment. I sit on the rolling stool as she makes her lap around, not bothering to give her the tour. Just watching.
She does seem clean, I have to admit. Her mind is the sharpest it’s been since she was pregnant with Riley. Not that I have seen her too often, I remind myself.
She gets back to me and sits on another stool. We are face to face, my height comfortable on the short stool, Becky looking somewhat crunched up, as though she is in a kindergarten classroom. “So,” she says.
“So,” I say.
I know what her next words will be before they’re out of her mouth. “I want Riley to come back with me.”
“Back to where?”
“San Francisco. I’m back home.”
I turn away, staring at the empty containers for the seedlings. Next month, these will be filled and planted with new seeds. Another cycle begun. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“I’m not.” Becky scoots closer to me. “Gal. I don’t take pills anymore. Not a drop of alcohol, either. Or pot.”
I move away.
“Gal, I’m clean. I’ve been clean. I’m good.” She looks down at her hands. “I’ve missed her. More than I knew I would.”
“Like you did when her father had her?” I can’t look at her or I will break. I put my hand on the wooden frame, feeling its splinters on my palm. “You haven’t been there for her for years.”
Becky says nothing, is silent for so long I swivel to see if she’s asleep. She is looking at me steadily, her eyes big and wide. “That is true,” she admits.
I stand. “You know what I don’t understand? How you, who has everything, all the health, intelligence, and looks anyone could ever need in three lifetimes, how you can just throw it all away.” My voice is loud but steady.
“Gal.” My sister swallows. “I know it was hard on you, but it was hard on me, too.”
“What was so hard on you? Not having anything wrong with you?” I cannot keep the sarcasm out. Becky, playing the victim. No more. I won’t have it.
“Your disease.” Becky stands now, moving away from me. “You always got whatever you wanted, no matter what it was. For Mom and Dad, you could do no wrong. Hell, if I wanted extra allowance, all I had to do was get you to ask. They’d say no to me but never to you.”
“And you gave me a cut.” I
smile, a little ashamed. My parents were so easy to manipulate, I couldn’t tell I was doing it. It was all I’d ever known.
Becky laughs bitterly. “Yeah. Me, I was left alone. I wasn’t sick, so it didn’t matter if no one came to my school concerts or took me to soccer practice. There was always next year.” A look of anguish passes over her. “Do you know how much time I spent alone, in front of the television, while you were at the hospital?”
I remember being jealous of my sister for getting to stay home, not having to go to the doctor every other day. “At least you weren’t in the hospital getting things cut out of you or poked into you,” I point out. “At least you got to grow up to be a normal size. Have a kid.”
Becky stares at me. “Do you know how much trouble I had to be to get any attention at all? Heck, when I fell out of that tree, all Mom said was, ‘Stop your whining. At least you’re going to get better.’”
“She did not say that.” I refuse to face the truth of her words. It still does not excuse what she did.
Becky sighs. “I’m paraphrasing.”
“Is that what your therapist told you to say?”
She blinks. “Gal. Don’t be hurtful.”
I press on. “It’s not hurtful. You can’t explain away messing up Riley’s childhood, Becky. It is your fault. No one else’s. You should see how far she’s come. You can’t throw it away again. Not now.”
“You think I don’t know that?” Her voice rises now. “You think I don’t understand how messed up I’ve been? I do. But I’ve got news. I can’t go back in time and fix it.” Her voice breaks. “All I can do is fix what I have. In the present.”
I look into my sister’s face, expecting to see tears. There are none. She has her head up high, her jaw set. Ready for extended battle.
“I am her legal guardian,” I say.
“I am her parent,” Becky says. “She is old enough to choose.”
I look around the greenhouse. The roses forming their hips, getting ready to give me their seeds. I think of all the hours Riley has spent in here working with me. I swallow. “Just so you know, I would have preferred to be a little bit bad when I was a kid, too.”
She smiles wistfully. “I know.”
I stand undecided. For the first time in many years, I want to hug my sister. Doing so feels like admitting something, my wrongness, my culpability. I have done nothing wrong. I never asked for any of this. But Becky stands there trembling, vulnerable. If I don’t, she might shatter.
I hug her.
43
THE NEXT DAY, MY HEAD IS CLOGGED WORSE THAN A SINK AT a beauty school, but I go to work anyway.
I stop by the doctor’s on the way home to get antibiotics. Dr. Blankenship shakes her head as she takes my blood, a task she used to leave for the nurse. “You need to take it easier, Gal.”
“If I took it any easier I’d have to give up living, Doc,” I say.
At home, I find Riley sitting at the dining table, doing homework. Becky reads a novel beside her, a Phillippa Gregory with a queen on it. “I didn’t know you liked to read, Becky.” I put my bags down beside the door.
“There’s a lot of downtime in my job.” Becky doesn’t look up. “I read two a week, at least. More when I was in Hong Kong.” She closes her book, smiles at her daughter. “I was lonely.”
I make no comment. Becky saying she is lonely is like the Earth saying it’s lonely when there are all those stars orbiting around it. But maybe that is apt, I think. Maybe she does drift, unconnected from anyone, everyone close but not touching her.
I take the first of my antibiotics with a glass of milk and a piece of bread, watching Riley and Becky from the kitchen.
If Riley leaves, I will be alone again. The thought does not cheer me. I go in the bedroom to lie down.
A bit later, Riley knocks on the door. She comes in and sits on the bed beside me, her weight making me slide over. “Don’t worry,” she says. “I already told her I’m not going.”
I blink. The expected relief I should feel at her statement does not come. I can think only of my sister, and my niece, their foreheads touching. “Are you sure about that?”
“You need me more than she does.” Riley flashes me a smile. “You’ve done so much for me.”
I struggle to sit up. “Wait a minute. This is not a tit-for-tat relationship, Riley. You are not obligated to me in any way.”
“I want to stay here and help you, Aunt Gal.”
I shake my head. “No.”
What I have known on some deeper level for some time becomes clear. This should not be the role of a sixteen-year-old. Caretaking. She should not have to worry about me and my sinus infections, or how I’m doing at overnight dialysis. Be responsible for me if I should fall ill. Think it’s her fault if I get depressed. This is not a good role for her, either. Riley is not my mother. She needs to be a kid for a little bit longer, before she grows up for real.
Besides, I admit, I might not make it for much longer.
I think of Becky out there alone, the prodigal mother returned. In some ways, my sister has always been alone, more than I have been during my whole life.
Riley is Becky’s daughter. Not mine. I love her like a daughter, but I cannot take her away from my sister. I cannot keep punishing Becky forever, not when she’s finally done what I wanted her to do. She has taken responsibility. Even if it terrifies me, the thought that Becky’s responsibility could be temporary. There’s no way to know if it will stick, no way to know except to let it play out.
I take a minute to find the right words. I inhale. “Riley, I love you. But I don’t think it’s great for you to be here, taking care of me like you’re the grown-up. It’s not right.”
I watch her face. She is listening.
“If you want to stay because you like it here, you like the school, you like the people, then I would love to have you stay with me.” I smile at her, squeeze her forearm. “But I don’t want you thinking you have to stay because of me. I will be just fine. You will not be letting me down. Okay?”
She nods, once.
“Think about it, Riley.”
She nods again. “I’m going back out to my mother.”
I lie back on the pillows.
• • •
ALL WEEK, I can see Riley’s answer building. Her bonding again with her mother. When she is at home, an almost-grown-up young lady of driving and dating age, she will not release her mother’s hand.
I wonder if this is how foster parents feel, giving the child back to their real parents, hoping against hope that the biological parents will step up the way they’re supposed to.
“How can you let that woman waltz back in and take her? After she threw her in your lap?” Dara demands of me during lunch on Tuesday. Dara and George and I sit outside, away from the others, a motley trio on a bench under a tree in the still-hot October afternoon.
Dara is so irked that she can’t open her chocolate milk carton properly, ripping it nearly in half. “How can Riley want to go back?”
“Because Becky is her mother,” I answer.
“Is she even clean?”
I nod. “I haven’t given her a blood test, Dara, but she says she is. She seems like she is. She looks healthy. Different.” As I speak, doubt wells inside anew. What am I sending Riley back into? “Riley’s old enough to decide what to do. I can’t ban her from living with her own mother.”
Dara finishes off her milk and throws the empty carton away. “I still don’t like it.”
“I have no choice, Dara.” I think my voice will break, but it holds. I take a deep breath from my abdomen. “I am far from liking it. But this decision isn’t mine.”
Dara shakes her head. “I have to go set up ceramics. I’ll see you later.” She strides away through the lunch crowd.
/>
“You’d think she was the one with the problem,” I observe.
“She cares.” George chews ruminatively on his sandwich. I know he is thinking of his own daughter, how his wife should have done what was best rather than what she felt like doing.
“Am I doing the right thing, George?” I ask suddenly. “Should I tell Riley to stay here for her own good?”
George leans on his elbows and regards me gravely. In the shade, he takes off his sunglasses. “If you fight your sister and Riley wants to go, it’ll make things worse. Let her go. She can always come back. You are her safe haven.”
I sigh. “I wish I had a guarantee.”
He laughs gently, puts his arm around me. The gesture is friendly, I think. His arm is as warm as a blanket on my shoulders. “There are no guarantees for anything, Gal. I thought you, of all people, knew that best.”
I sigh, take a sip of water. George does not move his arm.
The only comfort I have is this. No matter how many organs fail in my body, or what works or doesn’t work with the roses or with my friends and family, this moment will be the hardest thing I have ever had to do. This giving up of Riley.
The warning bell sounds. George reclaims his arm. With his other hand, he gently tweaks my nose. “You okay?”
I nod. Such a brotherly gesture, this nose tweaking. I am disappointed, but this is all I ever expected from him. A brotherly touch.
But then he holds my gaze longer than he needs to. “Gal.”
“Yes?” I brace myself for his asking me about ordering Bunsen burners, or Science Olympiad.
He clears his throat. “There’s a play about Marie Curie. Do you want to see it with me?”
“I’d love to.” I bend my head to let my hair hide the flush on my cheeks. “How much are tickets?”
He will burn a hole into me with those eyes. “No. Nothing. I’m paying.”
“You’re paying?” I’m confused. “I can’t let you do that.”
He laughs now, taking up my hand between his two large ones. “You can if it’s a date.”
The Care and Handling of Roses with Thorns Page 31