She lowered herself onto her back and scooted under the tree, looking up through the ornaments and the lights and the tinsel, and gave a sigh of relief.
Epilogue
December 24
One Year Later
Claire was, of course, the first to arrive. Elise stood on the front porch, leaning forward onto her toes, arms wrapped around her shoulders against the wind. It was a cold day, but sunny. It had not snowed yet in Missouri, and, much to the chagrin of the white Christmas wishers, it was not going to snow anytime in the near future. Just icy cold and wind whipping across the plains, sinister and deadly.
Elise chuckled as her daughter tossed a fistful of crumpled bills over the cabdriver’s seat and pushed open her door . . . only to see Michael reach over the seat behind his new wife’s back, gather the bills and straighten them, then add one to them and hand them to the cabdriver with a handshake. He stepped out of the opposite side of the cab and came around next to Claire, picking up her beat-up backpack in one hand while carrying his duffel in the other.
They both wore sunglasses. They both wore jeans.
They both waved, almost in sync, to Elise as the cabbie backed away. Elise waved back.
They had been married only a few months. A Vegas wedding. They’d flown her in for the ceremony. Immediately Elise had liked Michael Bowman, finding him sweet and patient, the slow and easy side that Claire didn’t have and desperately needed. He gambled a little, teased his new mother-in-law a lot, and doted on Claire as if he’d been given a rare and precious gem to keep. And the most amazing thing? Claire let him. Sometimes it looked as if it might actually be painful for her youngest daughter, but grudgingly, she let him. She needed him. Elise could see it in her eyes, in the way she gripped his elbow when they walked side by side, in the way her fingers curled desperately around his when she said her vows. In the way she cried while saying them.
Claire loped up the sidewalk, crinkling her nose. “When are they ever going to take care of that shit smell?”
Elise laughed. “I don’t smell it.” She held her arms out and folded her daughter into them. She smelled Claire’s hair, kissed the top of her head. It still felt strange for her to make these gestures, but with big change comes discomfort. Her therapist had told her that, over and over again since Robert’s death. Elise understood, and she was willing to withstand the anxiety.
“Maya and Julia here yet?” Claire asked, unraveling herself from her mother’s arms and stepping up on the porch.
“Julia should be here any minute. Maya’s flight comes in tonight. Hi, Michael!” She quickly hugged her son-in-law as a greeting.
“Great to see you, Elise! What’s this rumor I hear about mulled wine?”
“It’s on the stove. Come on in.”
They had barely sat down when Julia and Eli arrived. Eli had gotten a haircut, Elise noticed, and his acne had gotten worse. The result was a face that was so angry with lesions it jumped out at you, looking throbbing and painful. He sat at the table next to his mom, his arms crossed and mouth shut, surly. He hadn’t changed much. To hear Julia tell it, in private, he had gotten worse after falling through the ice. He’d become almost inconsolable at times, suffering nightmares, begging for her to let him die, pressing knives to his throat at the dinner table, threatening to jump out of the car on the highway. She’d taken him to a psychiatrist, who’d hospitalized him, medicated him, then suggested he spend more time with Dusty, so Julia had clamped down on her own heart and sent her son to live with his dad. Slowly, he’d been making progress. Though they all figured he would never be that smiling, curious child again.
“Where’s Tai?” Elise asked once everyone got settled.
Julia looked somber. “His research project just couldn’t be put on hold. He stayed behind to work on it.”
“On Christmas Eve?”
Julia shrugged. “That’s exactly what the marriage counselor said.”
Elise frowned. Julia hadn’t mentioned marriage counseling before. Her daughters all still had some secrets, she supposed. They were working on that, but old habits die extremely hard. She would ask about the counseling later, when Eli wasn’t around, because she had resolved to test those habits, and those secrets, the day Robert died, and she wasn’t about to give up on her daughters now.
Later, Maya arrived with the kids . . . and Bradley. This was a surprise to no one. She’d warned everyone that they were giving it another shot.
“It’s tentative,” she’d told Elise on the phone. “I don’t know if I trust him completely, but I’m willing to give it a try. For the kids.”
Molly looked so much older, and Elise was taken aback at how much of a difference a year could make. At eight, the little girl was already wearing clear lip gloss and shoes with tiny, clicking heels. She looked like a miniature version of her mom, right down to the pinched expression and tense shoulders. Will padded along behind her, her little shadow, who eyed his surroundings warily, as if he might get hurt by making a wrong move. He’d managed not to lose any body parts to frostbite after all, but his nervousness showed the confidence that he’d lost in his fall through the ice, and Elise wondered if he’d gained a timidity that would follow him through life.
“We’re going to Jamaica after Christmas,” Molly announced to the room in her precise, somewhat aloof manner.
“Kingston,” Maya added, setting her suitcase on the kitchen floor with a huff. “We’re leaving straight from here on the twenty-eighth. Doctor says the relaxation will be good for me.”
There were some changes about Maya—the long hair clipped short, the lack of bangles snaking up her arms, the assertiveness, the sneakers. Elise figured Maya had entered a portion of her life where she would take no shit from anyone. She’d lost her husband for a time, she’d almost lost a child, she’d beaten cancer. She had been to the gates of hell, then had turned around and trudged back to reality with her shoulders squared. Nothing would scare her now. Nothing would beat her.
The girls began to chatter about Jamaica. About swimsuits and parasailing and beach volleyball. Claire talked about a trip she and Michael had made there. She made some suggestions and laughed over vacation dramas, and they all chatted over one another, sipping on mulled wine and hot chocolate and passing a plate of cookies back and forth between two poinsettias.
Elise stood by the stove and crossed her arms, looked out the window at the chicken coop she’d repainted and filled back in the fall. Tomorrow morning they would eat Essie’s and Maria’s and Chickie’s eggs for breakfast. They would slather biscuits with crab apple jelly from the crab apple tree in the front yard, jelly that she’d canned herself during the summer, along with beans and yams and jars and jars of homemade pickles.
She’d sold the back acreage, along with the pond and the soy field and the beehives, her daughter’s bloody foot trails outlining the boundary of what once belonged to distant aunts and uncles. She’d kept the barn and the pasture, and planned to buy a couple of cows in the spring. She’d kept the garden and had welcomed the sweaty, hard, backbreaking labor all summer long. She’d farmed enough vegetables to feed herself all winter, and enough to give to the new family that had filled in the pond and built a tidy farmhouse on the land. And she’d filled the chicken coop, her lovely birds her friends and confidantes.
She’d spent days finding, and cutting down, the perfect Colorado blue spruce and loading it up with lights and ornaments and fountains of tinsel. She’d been busy for weeks making plans with her daughters. This time they would come of their own accord. This time she would not need to lie to get them, and keep them, home. This time they would come and fill the floor beneath the tree with gaily wrapped gifts. With excited chatter. With warm meals and wine and “O Come, All Ye Faithful.”
This year they would have Christmas.
A CONVERSATION WITH JENNIFER SCOTT
Q. The Sister Season is set on a fami
ly farm outside Kansas City, Missouri. It’s such a real place and the details of the natural world are so lovingly observed, from the birdhouses nailed crookedly to the old trees to the ice freezing on the pond while the fish continue to swim among the reeds underneath. Why did you choose this setting? Have farms played a significant role in your life?
A. My parents owned a small piece of pastureland in rural Pleasant Hill, Missouri, when I was young. Across the road, a close family friend owned, and lived on, a small amount of farmland. Between the two families we had just enough space to house a few cows and chickens, a couple of geese and ducks, a barn cat or two, a large garden, a pond, and some fruit trees.
Growing up, I spent my Sundays on that land, helping to work in the garden, hanging out in the barn, wandering around the orchard, plinking the keys of an old upright in the living room, or churning ice cream on the back porch. It was hot and buggy, or dead and frozen over, there was no TV or any electronic entertainment, and there was usually work to be done.
But, for me, it was also a place of dreaming, and a place of great comfort. A place where I could tell myself stories, where I could jump and climb and sing at the top of my lungs. It was a source of comfort food and cozy Christmases, an outlet for my creative self. And, yes, it was also a place of dark corners and unforgiving seasons, and there seemed to be stories to imagine in every nook and cranny.
That farm became a part of me, a place I still mentally retreat to when I want an image of peace. I’ve always wanted to set a story on a version of that farm, and to me the setting of The Sister Season is almost a character unto itself—a very beloved character I’ve known my whole life.
Q. There are four different women we follow fairly closely in this book—the sisters Julia, Maya, and Claire, and their mother, Elise. You do a wonderful job portraying each woman in sympathetic, complicated ways, but were some of these female characters harder to write than others? Do you have a favorite among them?
A. Oddly, my answer to both questions is the same sister: Claire.
Claire was the hardest to write, because she was so closed off on the inside, yet had this outward image of being easy and carefree. In a way, Claire is the most tender of the three sisters, yet is inwardly the most impenetrable. This dichotomy of Claire’s personality made the writing of her story a bit of a difficult dance.
Yet at the same time I had the most hope for Claire. I related to her the easiest—the youngest sister, artsy and blithe on the outside but easily hurt and guarded within—and I trusted her. I knew that she was ultimately going to be the one to set healing in motion. If any of the sisters could push past the hurt and begin moving them all toward the future, I knew that sister would be Claire.
Q. Julia’s son, Eli, is given his own sections within the book, which you label “Attempts.” Why did you set him off this way? Why not weave his story into the book in chapter form the way you did with the women?
A. Eli’s story is set up as a mirror of what is going on with the women. He is continually attempting to give up, and is continually failing at it. There is always something standing in his way of completing that final death, and in the end it is love that keeps him alive.
The same thing is happening to his mother and aunts. They have tried to give up on one another, on their family. They have attempted their own sort of death—the death of the sister bond. But there is something standing in their way, something keeping them from successfully letting go. Just like with Eli, it is ultimately love that keeps their bond alive.
For this reason, I wanted to set Eli’s story apart from theirs. In a way, I felt like I was pausing to take a breath and to study their reflection in Eli. Overall, The Sister Season wasn’t about Eli at all—it was the three sisters’ story—but at times the two journeys were very close to one and the same.
Q. You also write fiction for young adults. How does writing for adults differ from writing for young adults? Is one more draining, or more rewarding, than the other?
A. Really, in terms of process, there isn’t much difference. I’m not even thinking so much about genre while I’m writing. I’m simply telling the story that wants to be told. Sometimes that story features women in their late twenties or early thirties and deals with marriage and aging parents and parenting struggles. Other times the story that wants to be told involves high school lockers and boyfriends and scandals at parties.
But in the end, they’re all stories about love and loss, conflict and friendship, the struggle to connect, and, ultimately, the great reward in gutting it out until that connection is made. Because of that, I see them as simply different sides of the same coin, and I love them equally.
Q. What’s next for you in your writing life?
A. The only thing I can say for certain is that I don’t know and I like it that way! I’m a big fan of trying new stories, new styles, new genres, and I never say no to a story that’s tickling the back of my brain, wanting to be heard, without at least giving it a try. Because of that, I’m always experimenting.
That said, I have special places in my heart for women’s fiction and young adult fiction, so I fully intend to continue writing in those genres for many, many years to come.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
1. Within this book a family comes together for two events—to bury a father and husband and to celebrate the holidays. Why do you suppose the author wanted to mingle these two events? What is gained, and lost, with this decision? Have you yourself had experiences where grief and joy were commingled?
2. The family’s reactions to both of these events are somewhat unexpected. Their feelings about gathering for the holidays seem ambivalent at best; it’s certainly not the typical joy-filled big family gathering. Likewise, their experience of Robert’s death is not primarily one of grief. As we learn more about the family’s history, does this make sense? Have you yourself experienced events—perhaps holidays—where your own feelings didn’t match what you were “supposed” to be feeling?
3. There are three sisters in this book, and in some ways their personalities seem determined by their birth order. Julia, the oldest, is a successful professor; Maya, the middle sister, struggles to define herself; and Claire, the youngest, is the rebellious free spirit. In your own life, where do you fall in birth order among your siblings and how do you think this shaped your personality—if at all? In what ways do the sisters, and you, buck the trend?
4. Elise has a complicated relationship with her daughters. When Claire arrives home Elise imagines hopping off the steps, wrapping her arms around her daughter and maybe even crying. But instead, “for reasons even she couldn’t understand, the idea of rushing into her daughter’s arms never translated into the actual motion of doing so.” Yet by the end of the book, when Claire arrives one year later, Elise “held her arms out and folded her daughter into them . . . It still felt strange for her to make these gestures, but with big change comes discomfort.” Do you agree with Elise? Does change bring discomfort? Have you shared her experience of doing one thing in your mind but another in reality? And what does her different reaction say about the ways her relationship with Claire has changed? The ways Elise has changed?
5. Throughout much of the book Elise carries what she feels is a terrible secret. When she reveals this secret, do you have the same reaction as her daughters? Do you fault her? Do you understand her? How does her handling of the gold locket reflect her feelings and play into her own character growth?
6. Each of the sisters is hiding something that she eventually shares with the others. What are these secrets and what does the sharing of them do for each sister? Why has this sharing taken so long? And what do you think this says about the nature of sisterhood—its fractures, its endurance?
7. You might say Claire makes one decision about her relationship with Robert (to end it), but the sisters make a different decision about their relationships with one another. How do we deci
de when to end relationships versus when to mend them?
8. Two of the women in this book are children, but they also have children of their own. How have Maya’s and Julia’s relationships with their parents influenced them as parents themselves?
9. Eli stands as the most articulate of the third generation of the family in this book. Would you say he’s a sympathetic character? In what ways is he central to the plot?
10. What role does the epilogue play in this story? One year later, is the family where you thought it would be? Are there unanswered questions—and if so, what do you imagine happens next?
11. Although The Sister Season deals with a family coming together for the holidays, the working title of this book was Solstice. What new context does this bring to the story?
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