The Sister Season

by Scott, Jennifer

  And when he didn’t answer, only stared at his feet, she looked up at him, squinting through her burning eyes, and leveled the one accusation she wished she’d never allowed out of her mouth. You love her, don’t you?

  At first she thought he wouldn’t answer her at all, and that silence would really be all the answer she needed. All of her effort hadn’t been enough to keep the man she loved; her sister had him, and she hadn’t even ever needed to try. But eventually he did speak, shuffling miserably on the hardwood of their apartment bedroom.

  Maya, he’d said, and she could hear the reluctance in his voice. Eventually, she would take that reluctance and hold on to it like something dear. If he didn’t want to hurt her, maybe that meant that she hadn’t lost him entirely. Maybe it meant he still loved her a little. I can’t help the way I feel. I’ve . . . I’ve tried.

  He had kept talking, Maya remembered as Julia’s SUV curved around the baseball diamond and pointed toward the main drag, but what he’d said had bounced off of her like hail. Things about working it out. About being committed to the marriage. About moving away—away from the family, away from his dead-end job, away from Claire. And she had at first raged against this. Demanded better for herself than to be second fiddle to another woman. Beaten her breast and railed that she deserved a marriage where the love was effortless.

  But in the end, she’d just been so tired. Too worn down to fight him. Too committed to the dream of not just a marriage, but a marriage with this man, having children with this man, too unsure of her desirability to break free. She’d stayed because it was convenient. And it was hers. She would just have to work for it. Work harder than she ever had before. Work harder than she knew she could.

  Work harder than Claire.

  When they’d moved to Chicago, Maya felt as though a veil was lifted from her face. And when, a year later, she’d discovered she was pregnant, she felt as though she could, for the first time ever, see her life clearly. Bradley was not a philanderer. He wasn’t out screwing every flirt in a push-up bra. He had fallen in love with one woman. He hadn’t even meant to. He’d tried not to. And that woman was very far away.

  Well . . . at least that was what she had thought back then.

  God, but that was a long time ago. So much had happened since then. So much had happened just recently.

  And then to come back home . . . it almost felt as if God was trying to tell her something. As if God was trying to tell her to let Claire have him.

  “What do the kids want this year?” Elise asked, breaking the silence, and jarring Maya out of her memory.

  She shrugged. “They’re not picky. Anything that takes batteries or comes in boxes with a thousand tiny pieces.”

  Julia chuckled. “I remember Eli’s building-block stage. Stepping on one of those with bare feet in the middle of the night can make a grown man cry. Believe me, I’ve seen it.”

  “Molly’s into dolls. The smaller the accessories, the better. Will, on the other hand, is happy with a box. Sometimes I wish I could just skip the toys and buy him the cardboard boxes.”

  “Well, I remember some other little girl who loved her dolls and all their little brushes and shoes,” Elise said from the backseat. “I guess it’s true about the apple and the tree.”

  “You did love girly-girl stuff, Maya,” Julia teased. “You were forever doing those beauty salons in the bathroom, remember?”

  Maya grinned. She’d forgotten about that. “Do you remember the time I used food coloring for your makeup? You looked like a clown for a solid week.”

  “Oh, Lord, I remember that,” Elise interjected. “You ruined a set of towels that day.”

  Julia giggled again. “And I had to go to school looking like that. I was so mad at you.”

  “You think you were mad? Remember when she got the roller brush stuck in my hair so bad Mom had to cut it out?” Claire called from the backseat, and everyone in the car howled with laughter, even Maya, who was lost in the memory of little Claire running through the pasture, the roller brush bobbing out from her head at an odd angle, Elise chasing after her with a pair of scissors, Julia yelling at her mom that they were not supposed to run with scissors, Maya hiding behind the back porch, trembling with fear, sure she would be whipped but good when they finally got that hairbrush loose.

  “I damn near killed myself running after you that day. I was sure I was going to slip on a cow pie and end my life right then and there,” Elise was saying.

  Julia sounded breathless with laughter. “And you kept yelling at me over your shoulder, ‘Shut up, Queenie! Mind your business! You want me to come after you next?’”

  Suddenly the SUV hit a slick patch and slid, the back tire coming inches from catching the ledge of a ditch. All four women screamed, Maya grabbing for the handle above her window and clutching it with both hands, as Julia turned and turned the steering wheel trying to get the SUV back under control. They fishtailed, then overcompensated and fishtailed the other way, and back to the middle again before coming to a stop diagonally across both lanes of the road.

  For a moment there was only breathing to be heard. Maya’s heart pounded in her chest, her fingers tingling with adrenaline and her death grip on the handle. Thank God it was Christmas Eve day in a small town in a blizzard, she thought. Back home, that little mistake would have taken out half a dozen parked cars and a few moving ones. And perhaps a pedestrian or two.

  Nobody said anything, until the faraway telltale scraping of a plow came toward them.

  “Shit, that was close,” Julia finally breathed. She let off the brake and straightened out the SUV, creeping along in the direction they’d been going before they fishtailed.

  They went just long enough to get some distance, and Claire added in a low voice, “Good thing you weren’t carrying scissors, Mom, or we’d all been goners,” and just like that they were all giggling again.

  In some ways this was the most normal Maya had felt in . . . years maybe. These were the moments she longed for—the captured bits of time where things were so normal they were magical. Only now, after all that had happened, those were the moments that ultimately felt the bleakest to her. The normal moments, the trivial ones, would be the ones that would be missed the most if things took a turn for the worse.

  The thought dried up the laughter in her throat like salt on a slug, and by the time Julia had maneuvered into a parking space, Maya felt downright shitty again.

  “Well, I’m sure you all remember what Dad did when he came home and found that big chunk out of Claire’s hair,” she spat bitterly.

  “Maya, don’t,” Elise said.

  “Yeah, this is fun. Let’s not think about that kind of stuff right now. Not with him gone and . . . C’mon, it’s Christmas,” Julia added.

  But Maya couldn’t help it. How could they? She really wished she knew this trick that everyone else seemed to have mastered, the one where they could just shrug off bitterness and grief and filter their memories until all that came out in the end was shiny.

  How could they recall the hilarious scene of Julia chasing Elise chasing Claire through the pasture without remembering the thunder of their dad’s voice when he came home? The way he’d thrashed all three girls like rag dolls, spanking their bottoms so hard their cries of pain came out soundless. The way he’d taken all of their hairbrushes and toothbrushes and creams and tossed them into the trash barrel and burned them. The way they’d had to go to school with ratted hair and smelly breath for a full two weeks before he relented and let Elise buy them new things. It felt like a horror movie to Maya sometimes . . . and whenever it dawned on her that the horror movie was her life, it seemed all the more horrible. And she didn’t care how funny the rest of the story was, it would never be funny enough to wash away the horrible part. Never.

  “You’re right,” she said through tight lips, and tried to stretch them into what she hoped looke
d like a friendly smile. “We’ve got shopping to do.”

  She shouldered the passenger door open and plunged out into the parking lot, which had gotten covered over with heavy flakes. Her sisters and mom followed her, the four of them trekking through the falling snow, zipping their coats up to their chins, holding their hoods over their heads, squinting against the wind.

  Maya felt like she was encased in a blizzard—the one pelting her face and the one pelting her on the inside. She couldn’t help but watch Claire’s long, beautiful legs high-step across the lot, bronze against the white, like a supermodel’s. And she couldn’t help the feeling of coldness that swept through her. Perfect. Her sister was perfect. Without even trying.

  And she never would be.

  And a shopping trip wouldn’t make her that way.

  But it was all she had, so she slipped and slid over the snowy lot in her impractical heels and skinny jeans and plunged through the automatic front doors of the store.

  Good God, she thought as she shook the snow from her body onto the swampy mat in the entryway of the store. What craziness awaited her here?

  After a few moments of stomping and brushing and making the necessary brrr noises that accompany the shedding of snow, the women turned and surveyed the store. Maya hadn’t been in one of these types of stores in years. She was actually kind of nervous about it. What if she looked stupid? To look stupid in a place like this? Hello, insult, meet injury.

  She did what she always did when she felt self-conscious. She lifted her chin, swished her hair over one shoulder and then the other—this snow was not helping the frizz in her hair at all, by the way—pooched her lips in as hoity a look as she could muster, and plowed forward, as if she knew exactly what she was doing. She bought up cheap plastic junk in big-box stores every day, by God, or at least she looked like she did.

  She pulled a folded piece of notebook paper out of her coat pocket and smoothed it open. “I’ve got a list,” she said. “Mostly toys and candy. I shouldn’t be too long.”

  But Claire had already started off down the main aisle, ducking into a rack of workout clothes, and Julia had become engrossed by a bargain bin filled with tacky seasonal socks just a few steps away. Elise blinked and absently brushed her bangs away from her face, distractedly looking over Maya’s shoulder at the list.

  “We’ll all just meet back here, then, in about an hour?” she said, but Claire was long gone. “I’ll go with you,” Elise continued, placing her hand between Maya’s shoulder blades. “I want to get some things for the kids, too.”

  “You’ve already got things for them under the tree, Mom.”

  Elise waved Maya off. “Those were bought in a hurry. Besides, it’s not every day I get to have all of my grandkids in one house for Christmas.”

  True, Maya thought. It wasn’t every day her mother had all her grandkids in one house for . . . anything. She felt a tiny twinge of guilt. She knew that was partly her fault. If she’d just forgiven Claire, who knew what the family might be like today? But she brushed away the thought like the snowflakes she’d just shed. She didn’t have the luxury of thinking about history right now. She barely had the luxury of thinking about the future.

  The women spread out, the sheer space of the store bringing relief. It was easy to be alone there. It was easy to lose the others and have some space to think. To be silent and not feel as if that was a bad thing or as if someone would read something into it.

  Maya stormed the place as if she knew it by heart, because that was what she did best. The action made her feel better, made her feel in control. Elise trailed behind her pushing a shopping cart, which Maya filled without even really trying. A football here, a board game there, a scooter, a bottle of fancy bubble bath, slippers with cute little character faces on the toes. Candy canes and chocolates and rolls and rolls of wrapping paper. A little doll. A pack of cars. Cheap shit that she knew her kids would delight over in the morning, but would never look at again once they were back in their bedrooms in Chicago, but that didn’t matter. What mattered was Christmas. You never knew which Christmas would be your last one.

  Why couldn’t she get rid of those dismal thoughts? She had promised herself that she would leave them behind in Chicago. They weren’t healthy. They weren’t going to help matters at all.

  But little lipsticks and building blocks and a pair of flimsy pajamas that didn’t smell like sleep crotch would help. Those things would help tremendously.

  She knew that Bradley would balk when he saw all the things she’d bought. He’d complain about how they were never going to be able to get them back to Chicago. He’d question what would happen to the closetful of Christmas gifts that awaited the kids at home. He’d say they would get spoiled with this kind of behavior, and that would lead her to remember her dad and how he was always so damned worried that any measure of happiness would spoil his daughters, so he spent his every miserable day making sure they were decidedly unhappy, and she’d have to take painkillers and go to bed with a warm washcloth to cover her eyes like she’d taken to doing so often lately. But it would be worth it to see the looks on her kids’ faces tomorrow morning when they saw that Santa had arrived after all. That hope and magic still existed, by God.

  She was so busy shopping, so engrossed at a turning rack full of faux-leather wallets (finding something for Bradley in this place was going to be no easy task; she might as well get him something practical, if not ugly), she didn’t even notice that her mother had gone missing.

  “What do you think of this one?” she asked, holding out a black tri-fold that wasn’t too obviously plastic. When she got no answer, she turned, but found only the cart behind her. “Mom?” she called. No answer. “Mom?”

  She gave another look to the wallet, and then dropped it into the cart. She shrugged and moved behind it to push it, though she hadn’t pushed a cart in ages. Not even at the grocery store, where she always just carried a basket over her arm to pick up necessities. Her housekeeper, Tildy, did all the hard grocery shopping for her. Especially since the treatments had begun.

  She moved on, casting glances down every aisle that she passed, looking for Elise, while at the same time continuing her shopping. It was odd that her mom had just disappeared, but she wasn’t too worried—the woman wasn’t six years old, for Christ’s sake.

  But it wasn’t long before she was done and ready to go. She’d run across Julia, who had a cart full of things for her son as well, and then Claire, who carried two pair of yoga pants awkwardly over her arm as if so much fabric was weighing her down.

  “You seen Mom?” Maya asked, rolling up to each of them, and each, in turn, shook her head. “She just took off,” Maya mused, standing on her tiptoes to scan over the tops of the clothing racks for the sight of her mother’s silver hair. She was starting to grow alarmed.

  “Well, she couldn’t have gone anywhere,” Julia said. “I drove.”

  “Unless she got it in her head to walk somewhere,” Claire said. “You know, she’s been a little . . .”

  “Scattered, yes, suicidal, no,” Maya snapped. “She wouldn’t just take off walking down the highway in a snowstorm. That’s ridiculous.”

  Claire backed up a few steps, offense registering on her face. “Sorry. It was just a thought.”

  “Well, it wasn’t a helpful one,” Maya said.

  Claire pressed her lips together tightly, then nodded once and said, to Julia, “I’m going to go try these on.” Julia nodded back, wordless, and stared at the ground.

  “That was mean,” Julia mumbled after Claire got out of earshot. “She didn’t do anything.”

  Maya sighed. “Yes, I know. I’m a horrible sister. But can we concentrate on the more pressing issue at hand? Where has our mother disappeared to?”

  “Let’s check the seasonal section. Maybe she went . . . for more poinsettias.”

  The two sisters locked eyes
and snickered. The last thing their mom needed was more poinsettias. The laughter took the edge off and they pushed their carts, side by side, to the aisles where Christmas trees and ornaments were already being replaced by Valentine’s Day candies.

  They split up, each of them going up and down aisles and then meeting in the middle. No Elise.

  “Electronics?” Maya suggested, and they repeated the process there. And then in sporting goods. And then in grocery.

  And finally, just as Maya began to get a lump in her throat, imagining that maybe Claire had been right all along, she turned down an aisle in pharmacy and there was her mom, standing behind a cart loaded with pack upon pack of tinsel, clutching an armful of aftershaves to her chest.

  “Mom?” Maya said, then called to the next aisle, “Found her!”

  Elise didn’t look up, or even budge. She seemed deep in thought.

  “Mom?” Maya asked again, and put her hand on her mom’s shoulder. “Where were you?” Though one look in Elise’s cart answered that question. They must have just missed her in the seasonal aisle. But, dear God, why did anyone need that much tinsel? The tree was already overloaded with the tacky stuff as it was. “Mom? You okay?” Movement caught her eye, and Maya looked up to see Julia turning her cart down the aisle to join them, her eyebrows creased with worry.

  Elise seemed to startle, but her face relaxed when she saw Maya. “Oh, I’m sorry, honey. I guess I got wrapped up in trying to decide which aftershave to get your father this year. You know how picky he can be. Which one says ‘I’m sorry’ the most?”

  Maya swallowed against the lump in her throat. They’d all mentioned it—even Bradley had said something when they were alone in the bedroom the night before. Elise was acting unusual, and Maya wasn’t sure she could attribute all of it to losing a husband. Was it normal to forget he’d died before he was even buried? “What do you mean, ‘I’m sorry’?”