The Sister Season

by Scott, Jennifer

  She had to work to keep herself from laughing. Did her mom even realize who she was talking to? In her mind, her mother should have kicked his sorry ass to the curb years ago. Maybe even years before Claire was born. The bastard had never done anything right for her, or for them, and to say good-bye to him would’ve made for a short while of pain and a long while of happiness, instead of the other way around. Well. Claire assumed, anyway. She guessed you could never really predict whether your actions would cause pain or pleasure down the road, could you? She would have never guessed that letting Dr. Bowman into her apartment to check on her foot would lead to her sniffling into a quilt every night by a frozen-over pond in Missouri snowstorms.

  “It doesn’t really matter now, does it?” Claire said by way of avoiding saying what she really felt. “He’s gone either way.”

  “I suppose,” Elise said. “But he may not have . . . well, things might have been different if I had.”

  Claire shifted. “Well, sure they’d be different. That’s a given. But you shouldn’t beat yourself up over it, Mom. He’s gone. He’s never coming back. It doesn’t matter anymore.”

  “But you think I should have . . . let him go. You think it would have been all right to just . . . let him go.”

  Claire took a breath. “Yes,” she finally said, “I do.”

  Elise seemed to take it in, her hands still shaking as they rested in her lap, her teeth still working her bottom lip, which was starting to redden around the edges. “I do too,” she finally said.

  Claire got up and walked over to her mom. She eased down onto the floor in front of the recliner and put both hands on her mom’s knees. “Mom,” she said softly, “nobody ever blamed you for what he did. He did those things himself. You were just as much his victim as we were.”

  Elise patted Claire’s hands, tried on a smile and failed. “Thank you,” she said. “You girls were always so sweet to me. Even when I didn’t deserve it. Even now, when I don’t deserve it. I’m not as innocent as you think. And he left me that necklace. Why on earth would he do that, after all these years? I didn’t get him anything.”

  Claire noticed that her mom’s knees were shaking under her hands as well. “Mom? Are you okay?”

  Elise gathered herself up tall, but the action didn’t seem to have any real conviction to it. “Of course I am, dear. The funeral is tomorrow. It will all be over after that. I can forget . . . things . . . after he’s been buried.” She stared out into space for a moment—something she’d been doing more and more often—then turned to her daughter. “We need music, don’t you think?” Claire watched as her mom pulled herself out of the recliner and sauntered into the den as if what had just happened hadn’t been about ninety shades of freaky weird. Claire stayed on the floor, on her knees, listening to the rattle and shuffle of Elise digging out a CD, then a series of clicks, followed by Bing Crosby’s voice belting out “Winter Wonderland.”

  For a moment, Claire allowed herself to be flooded with memories. She recalled lying on the den floor as a little girl, scraps of paper spread out in front of her, listening to this song over and over again while she drew pictures and scribbled poems. Feeling like the whole world was a blanket that rested over her and like there was no time more special than Christmas. The time of miracles. The time of love and joy and hope. The time to rejoice.

  She could almost smell the lard melting. Could almost feel the birdseed running through her fingers as she helped mash the cooling fat and seed into a ball around a loop of rope that they would later hang from a tree. Almost heard Julia’s proper voice and smelled Maya’s perfume. Those memories were precious to her. The real gifts of Christmas. Too bad there were so few of them.

  For she could also remember her father coming in from the fields in the middle of it, angrily shutting off the music while harrumphing about them being “leisurely,” then going on to berate them until they cried and fled the kitchen.

  As it had so many times since she came home, her mind wandered to Michael. What did he think about Christmas music? She’d never asked. Would he allow her to play it? Allow their children to sprawl on the floor and dream while listening to it? Would he rent a Santa suit just to put the gifts under the tree on Christmas Eve, even if she was the only one who would see him do it? Would he drink too much at a party and get flirty, make her giggle and slap at his hands in public?

  For some reason she thought he would do all of those things. He would be merry, always merry. But she couldn’t guarantee that she would. She couldn’t guarantee anything about herself. She wasn’t sure she even knew who she was now, much less who she would be in the future. Who wanted to marry someone like that?

  After a while, she heard clanking of pans in the kitchen and she pulled herself off the floor, her knees cracking and popping as she stood. Twenty-eight was definitely not old, but she wasn’t getting any younger, that was for sure. If she kept turning down marriage proposals, next thing she knew she’d be an old maid.

  Did she really want to face a future alone?

  She started toward the kitchen, her full intention to help her mom make whatever it was she was fixing. But her feet turned, practically on their own, and she found herself slowly climbing the stairs instead, and walking down the hall to Maya’s room. All was quiet behind the door, but she could hear movement behind it.

  She knocked.

  “What?” Maya said tiredly from the other side. “If it’s you, Bradley, you need to leave.”

  Claire slowly, timidly, turned the doorknob and opened the door just a crack. “It’s me,” she said, peeking around the door with one eye.

  Maya, hovering over an open suitcase and clutching a shirt in her hands, rolled her eyes and sighed. “What do you want, Claire?”

  For a moment, Claire was transported back to her early teen years. Back when Maya had been a surly teenager, tiny and perky outside the house but a raging volcano inside it. Claire could think of a million times she’d stood at this very door, looking in on this very wallpaper with the little blue flowers and this very same dresser with the bottom drawer that always hung askew, getting the very same eye roll and sigh from her sister.

  She opened the door and let herself in, standing awkwardly in the doorway.

  “If you want him, he’s yours,” Maya said without looking up or missing a beat folding the shirt she was holding. “Congratulations.”

  “I never wanted him,” Claire said, even though she knew that was, technically, a little bit of a lie. But her crush on Bradley really was ancient history. The moment he touched her lips with his, the crush was gone. Evaporated. And that was the truth. She’d wanted him as a friend far more than she’d wanted him as anything else.

  Maya chuckled darkly. “Well, that makes two of us now. I hope the bitch gives him an STD.”

  Claire blanched. She knew this was something that worried Bradley.

  What if I bring home some sort of STD and make her sick? he’d fretted the night before. What if the cancer makes her more receptive to it or something? Can you still die from syphilis?

  You’re not using condoms? Claire had asked him and he’d ducked his head so low his face was in total shadows. Dude, that’s sick, she’d said, but honestly she’d been too caught up in her own drama—wishing too hard that he would just let her go outside to cry on her own for one stinking night—to really care. Now she worried on Maya’s behalf.

  “You should get tested,” she said.

  Maya dropped the folded shirt into the suitcase and picked up another, holding it still for a moment while she studied Claire with slitted eyes. “Why? Do you know something I don’t know? Who am I talking to? Of course you do.”

  Claire swallowed, shook her head. “Not at this point, no. Sounds like you know everything.”

  Maya studied her harder, let the shirt flop against her stomach. “You seem worried. Is it because you have an STD and you’ve
been sleeping with him?”

  Now it was Claire’s turn to roll her eyes and sigh. “No. I’ve told you a thousand times, I never slept with him. He kissed me, Maya. Ten years ago. That was all. I didn’t ask him to. I didn’t want him to. And nothing—not one thing—has happened since then.”

  Maya began folding again, only this time more angrily. “So what have you been doing sneaking around outside at night with my husband, then?”

  “We haven’t been sneaking out together. I’ve been going out to”—cry, regret, wish I’d never said good-bye to Michael—“clear my head. I have some things on my mind, believe it or not, that have nothing to do with you. And Bradley kept following me out there. I didn’t ask him to. And nothing ever happened between us.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “Bullshit!” Claire was getting angry now. Until this point she’d ridden Maya’s anger like it was something she’d somehow deserved, maybe because she hadn’t pushed away the kiss faster, maybe because she’d initially had a crush on him, maybe because she knew that he liked watching her and she let her vanity get in the way and ate it up rather than telling her sister about it. But that was so damn long ago and she was a kid then and by God, she deserved forgiveness for poor choices, even if none of those choices really had anything to do with the betrayal Maya had been feeling for the past ten years. “You have spent so many years being pissed at me for something he was doing with other people. Have you forgotten the condom you found? It wasn’t mine, and a part of you has always known that. He was sleeping with someone else. Someone from work. He has slept with dozens of women since you married him, Maya. And he’s sleeping with Molly’s dance teacher. But none of those people are me. You should be angry at them, Maya, not at me.”

  Maya slammed the shirt she was holding into the suitcase, then turned and walked right up to Claire. Claire was a full three inches taller than her sister, and Maya had kicked off her heels, a fact Claire noticed with a feeling something akin to shock when the top of Maya’s head barely reached the bridge of Claire’s nose. Maya never took off her heels.

  “Then what have you been doing outside with him all week?”

  “Talking to him. Listening to him talk, actually.”

  “About what?”

  “About . . . you.” Maya’s mouth snapped shut and Claire could have sworn she saw something flit across her sister’s face. Surprise? Fear? Triumph? She wasn’t sure. Her voice felt tiny and unsure, all of the anger seeping out of it as if she were a balloon pricked by a pin and drifting around the room, getting smaller, smaller. “About the cancer.”

  “Wonderful,” Maya said sarcastically, one hand on her hip. But her eyes looked wet and wide, as if she was frightened as she moved back toward the suitcase and reached in to straighten the shirts she’d placed in there.

  Claire followed her toward the bed, sat down next to the open suitcase. “He’s scared,” she said. “He’s scared of losing you.”

  Maya laughed. “Well, it’s a bit late for that, now, isn’t it? He’s lost me.”

  Claire nodded. “He’s scared for the kids to lose you. He says you’re the most amazing mom he’s ever seen. And I agree. I could never be as good a mom as you are.” Maya said nothing. Just kept folding. “And he said he was scared that he would lose you before he ever got the chance to be a good husband to you.”

  Maya tossed the shirt into the suitcase and picked up a pair of socks, folded them together, tossed them in on top of the clothes. “He had the chance. He had ten years of chances. He blew it.”

  “I agree,” Claire said. “But I just wanted you to know that. That we weren’t talking about me. We were talking about you.” She paused. “Are you going to have to do chemo?”

  Maya shook her head. “Just radiation.”

  Claire breathed a sigh of relief. “That’s good news, then.”

  “Really?” Maya shot her a death glare. “Good news?” She went back to her folding. “Well, I hope you never get the good news that you have cancer, little sister.”

  “I just meant that it was good that you wouldn’t have to have chemo. Why haven’t you told anyone? Why haven’t you at least told Mom?”

  “Because . . .” Maya paused, let her arms go slack. “Because telling people would make it more real. And because I didn’t want Bradley to see me as, I don’t know, flawed and broken. I didn’t want to give him an excuse to leave me.”

  Claire was quiet for a moment. How sad it must be to be Maya, to forever be afraid of being less than perfect. To hide herself away so nobody could see her human side. All this to hang on to a man who was never hers to hang on to. Not totally.

  “I’m scared, too, Maya,” Claire said. “I’m scared that you’ll never believe me. That you’ll never forgive me.”

  “This is probably the wrong day to ask me for that.”

  “When will there ever be a right day? I’ve been trying to get forgiveness for a decade.”

  Maya tossed a few more socks on top of the shirts and then zipped the bag closed. “Actually, you’ve been hiding out in California for a decade. I don’t recall any phone calls or e-mails or anything. You know, asking for forgiveness.”

  I shouldn’t have to ask for it, Claire thought. Because I didn’t do anything to deserve the blame in the first place. But instead she said, “I was hiding out from Dad and you know it.”

  “Partly. You were also sending a message: ‘Claire doesn’t need anyone.’”

  Claire had never thought about that before, but she knew Maya was right. She had been trying to prove she didn’t need anyone, hadn’t she? She’d been trying to prove that ever since she was a little girl toddling along after her big sisters just hoping for some attention, only to be yelled at to stop being a pest and go away. She’d been trying to prove that since the first time her father left a mark on her skin. She needed nobody. She was independent and they could all go fuck themselves for all she cared.

  She was still trying to prove it, wasn’t she? With Michael. By turning down the only man—the only person—who’d ever had a shot at really making her happy.

  “I was hurt. And angry.”

  “And spoiled and selfish too.”

  “That’s not fair, Maya. He never left you with black eyes.”

  Maya hefted the suitcase off the bed and set it on the floor, then picked up a child’s suitcase and zipped it open. “He never left you with a sprained wrist. He never pulled out your hair.”

  “Yes, actually, he did pull out my hair. More than once.”

  “Okay, well, this isn’t a contest, you know,” Maya said, her voice rising. “He beat us. All of us. So the hell what? Why does that matter now? We’re still alive and he’s dead and who gives a shit?”

  “I give a shit!” Claire shouted. “I give a shit because I can’t marry the man that I love. It matters a whole hell of a lot to me. Right now.”

  Maya’s eyes grew wide. “Well, that’s not my problem,” she said after a few minutes, but her voice was soft, sad.

  Claire’s heart sank. “Of course it isn’t,” she said. “And it isn’t your problem that your nephew is suicidal or that our mom is totally freaking losing it, either. Because poor Maya, her husband slept with someone else so the whole world is about your problem. Boo-hoo.”

  Maya scooped out a handful of clothes from the suitcase and laid them on the bed. She started to say something, then stopped. “What do you mean my nephew is suicidal? Eli?”

  “Never mind,” Claire said. “I shouldn’t have said anything.”

  “Yes, you should have. What’s going on?”

  “Nothing. And please don’t tell Julia I told. I swore I’d keep it to myself.” Secrets, she thought as she said it. We’re all so full of secrets.

  At first, Maya looked like she might be inclined to argue, but she simply took a breath, closed her mouth, nodded, and went back to work. Silence
stretched around them for several minutes.

  Finally, “What about you? Are you scared?” Claire asked.

  Maya continued working. Her movements were still angry, but her voice had softened somewhat. “Sometimes. When I think about the kids, I get a little sad. When I see how bad my friend Carla has gotten, I worry. Sometimes I wake up feeling like I’m being invaded, like I’m under attack, and I’m so helpless. That’s the worst part, I think. Being helpless.”

  “Is the prognosis good?”

  “As good as it can be, I guess.”

  “So the doctor thinks you’ll live.”

  “He would never say that. Lawsuit city.”

  There was more silence, only this time, Claire noticed, it was not entirely uncomfortable. This felt like one of those rare times when she was invited into one of her sisters’ bedrooms to listen to music and gossip about people from school, most of whom Claire didn’t even know, but it never mattered because she was getting entrance into a very special place. A sisterhood in the truest sense of the word.

  “Well, you look really good for—,” Claire began, but Maya shushed her when she heard a noise, something like a siren coming from outside.

  “That’s Molly,” she said, and both women rushed to the window, which looked out over the backyard and soy field and to the tree line and pond behind it. There, running across the snowy field, shrieking for her mother, Molly ran toward the house, stumbling every few steps as her boots slipped out from under her.

  Claire and Maya looked at each other, and Claire could instantly see the worry on her sister’s face. The screams ripping across the field weren’t normal. The kid sounded absolutely frantic. Something was definitely wrong. Without speaking a word, both women bolted from the window, raced down the stairs, and out the back door toward the crying child.

  “Molly?” Maya was calling as Claire sprinted past her toward the little girl. “Honey? What’s wrong?”

  “Will fell in!” Molly cried, panting, tears streaking her face. “Will and Eli together!”