Other Shepards

by Adele Griffin

  “And don’t tell about Carr’s.”

  “You already said. And why would I tell?” I try to bite back the snap in my voice, but I’m tired and distracted, thinking about how I should start digging into my French homework, which tonight means correcting the test I flunked.

  “Someone’s here,” Geneva whispers. I follow my sister’s gaze to the dining room window.

  “No, no one.”

  “Someone,” she insists. “A lady.”

  “Ooh, maybe it’s the mayor’s mistress,” I say. “Waiting for one last afternoon of illicit love.” But I watch the front windows as I jiggle my keys impatiently at the slide and dead bolt locks. A lady? The parents almost never have visitors. Certainly no one unexpected. I can tell from Geneva’s breathing that she’s curious, too.

  “Hello!” I make my voice brave, like a returning hunter, as we enter the house. “Who’s there?”

  “No one, just me. Annie. Annie the painter.”

  It was not fear, exactly, that stirred inside me when I heard her voice, although I have lived in New York City my entire life, and know its many terrible tales of intruders and muggers and worse. I probably should have spun right around and hustled both of us out into the safety of the street. But when my sister tugged at my elbow, stepping past me and walking through the swinging doors into the kitchen, I remember feeling mostly surprise. It was such a strange thing for her to do. And I wondered if Geneva had read my mind, and was trying to be the big sister for a change.

  The only thing I could think to do was to follow her.

  two

  annie

  “WHAT WAS YOUR FIRST impression?” my sister would ask me time and again after we had met Annie, and long after we stopped knowing her. “The first, number one thing that hit you?”

  “That she wasn’t a redhead,” I always answer. I associate the name Annie with the Little Orphan and the one of Green Gables. Both redheads.

  This Annie’s hair is brilliant blond and wispy, its pollen yellow tint reminding me of the baby picture of Mom that sits on Dad’s desk. Her complexion is bright; her forehead, nose, and chin are flushed, as if she has crept too close to a fire, and her pale, smoke-colored eyes regard my sister and me with steady attention.

  Geneva remembers thinking that Annie was floating. “She was holding her pencil like a wand, and she was wearing that light blue dress, and the sun was coming in behind her so I had to squint. But when she moved across the kitchen to us, it was like those fairies with the pulleys on their backs from when we saw A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Bleecker Street Theater. Or at least,” Geneva bites her lip, “that’s what I think I thought. The kitchen was full of sun. I couldn’t see.”

  Which is strange, because in my mind Annie wears a dark blue dress and the afternoon is overcast. The image is like a negative plate held over Geneva’s picture, and looking back, I can’t help but mistrust both versions of our memory.

  “Annie the painter?” I repeat. “A wall painter or a picture painter?”

  “Both. A picture on a wall,” Annie says. She reaches a hand to the messy knot of her upswept hair and untwists it. Saffron squiggles fall around her shoulders. “I’m painting the mural for your mom’s birthday. Some plants and leaves to look at and cheer her up while she slaves over a hot stove.” She points a finger at each of us. “Two Shepard sisters. But which is … ?”

  “That’s Geneva,” I say. “I’m Holland.”

  “Nobody slaves much in this house,” says Geneva. “Mostly we defrost.”

  “Speaking of, who wants a nice warming cup of coffee? My own blend. I’m taking a breather. What do you think of my sketches?” She nods to the kitchen table.

  Rolls of vellum paper clutter our table and banquette. The lazy Susan and napkin holder have been pushed aside to accommodate sketch paper and pencils. Several opened books display glossy photographs of landscape paintings and designs. The place mats are stacked on the floor. I suppress an urge to straighten the mess.

  “The parents don’t like us to drink coffee,” Geneva says, creeping toward the table. She bends over a book, her arms wound exaggeratedly behind her back to show she won’t touch it. Then she turns and looks at me, her teeth raking her bottom lip, waiting for me to set the situation right. “Do they know she’s here?” she whispers.

  “You’re sure my mom and dad know you’re here?” I ask as politely as I can. “I mean, that you’re here in our kitchen right now? Because I think they would have told us. It’s kind of, whatever, weird, finding a stranger in your own house.”

  “But it’s supposed to be a surprise. From your dad to your mom. Only, when you think about it, the mural is really from me to your mom, since I’m doing all the work. Now why don’t you two relax and take off those funny hats. Who wants coffee?”

  That’s when I notice the powerfully cozy coffee smell wafting through the kitchen. I never drink coffee, but this aroma is like a potion, thick and enticing.

  Annie opens a cupboard and pulls out two orange-striped coffee mugs, part of a set of Navajo earthenware we never use anymore. Geneva and I yank off our berets but otherwise remain motionless, watching Annie.

  She picks up the pot and pours coffee into mugs. “At least try it. It’s a special vanilla nutmeg blend that I invented myself. And I have a bag of cinnamon rolls. There was a day-old sale at My Favorite Muffin. Jack eats there all the time.”

  “Who’s Jack?” I ask.

  “Jack’s a friend of mine, an actor. In fact, he went out on an audition this morning, a television commercial for heartburn medicine. He was so funny, talking to himself in the mirror—‘I can’t believe all those years of summer stock for this’—but then he got more positive, which is just like Jack, telling himself how an actor’s life is not about shortcuts, but persistence and … you want milk?”

  We are transfixed, watching Annie bungle around our kitchen, rummaging for spoons and milk. She has a dancer’s body, long limbs as delicately hinged as Japanese brush strokes, but her movements are fidgety and graceless, as if she can’t figure out how she is centered. I decide the problem must be her old-fashioned cork-soled sandals, a style that not only looks uncomfortable but is too summery for the weather.

  She jerks to a stop at the kitchen counter and begins tunneling into a nylon knapsack that is flopped beside the sink. “In here somewhere, if you just hold on a minute.”

  Geneva looks at me and mouths, “Gun.” I shake my head and mouth, “No way.” Annie rummages and mumbles to herself, looking slightly demented, if not gun-toting.

  “Ask,” Geneva mouths. I shake my head.

  Geneva pulls in a quivering breath and squeaks, “Who are you? Are you a robber? I think now is a good time to call Dad or the authorities to find out—”

  With a triumphant “Aha!” Annie whips around, clutching a white paper bag. Geneva screams. It is her usual scream, a spine-scouring pitch that has roused me so many times in the middle of the night that upon hearing it now, I do not even flinch. Annie immediately drops her paper bag and matches Geneva with a scream of her own, although this noise seems more professional and military: a call to arms, a war whoop. Then she claps a hand to her mouth, spreading the fingers of her other hand to touch the pulse points of her neck, and she doubles over laughing. Her laugh is goofy, it sounds like hiccups. I smile. I can’t help it.

  “I see tomorrow’s headline of the Post: ‘Girls Attacked by Artist Bearing Pastries.’” Annie smiles and bends to retrieve the bag, which she opens and glides beneath Geneva’s nose. “Day-old cinnamon rolls. That’s all they are. See? Look, it’s no joke, I was officially contracted to come to the Shepard residence and create a spectacular mural worthy of your mother’s fifty-sixth birthday. I have all the information on me, somewhere.” She taps her forehead. “Most important is that it’s up here. Anyone will tell you the best plans are stored in the memory.”

  “Oh, sure,” I agree. The smell of coffee dries my throat and gurgles my stomach, and most of my concen
tration is focused on tasting it.

  “Clear off the table, and then we’ll sit down and take a load off. You can tell me which design ideas you like best. How obvious is it that I haven’t talked to a single solitary person in a while? I’m going crazy for company. I should have Jack’s job. I’d be good at heartburn commercials. ‘Oh, Mama, I love your sausage and anchovy pizza, but I sure hate the heartburn.’” Annie makes a sour face and touches her hand to her heart. Then her expression changes to coin-eyed surprise. “‘Cohrex? Never heard of it! But hey, I’ll try anything to get ridda this pain.’”

  I look at Geneva, ready to take my cue from her reaction. Annie’s day-old rolls and heartburn monologue might be too much for my sister. A classic Geneva move would be to run upstairs and slam her bedroom door, and I am half-waiting for it. Then I will have to apologize for my sister and spend the next hour coaxing Geneva back into a social mood in time for Mom’s birthday dinner. I make a bet. If Geneva stays, then you have to do all your French conjugations after dinner and not, absolutely not, leave them for last minute tomorrow morning.

  Geneva stands still for a moment, then picks up a mug of coffee, steps lightly to the kitchen table, and roosts on the edge of the banquette. Victorious, I jump to clear off the books.

  “There are plates above the stove, Annie, if you want to set the rolls on them. Where should I put your designs? We have half-and-half, too, in the side of the fridge, on the shelf with the jelly and mustard.” I’m chatty to hide my surprise. Geneva will stay. No running upstairs, no locked door. What a relief to avoid the usual scene.

  The three of us assemble naturally, as if we have always shared coffee and rolls after school. The old, well-grooved routines are blinked out in a moment: Geneva and me arriving home and treading upstairs to our separate bedrooms on the third floor, closing our doors and starting our homework or talking to friends on the telephone. Later, the muffled sounds of the parents home from work and checking the answering machine messages, then opening the mail in the living room.

  Annie settles back in her seat and sighs comfortably. “I took a tour earlier, and I saw all the kid portraits in the living room. Geneva is the one holding the doll, right? And you’re the one in the picture hat?”

  “Yeah, that’s us. Mr. Kintsler painted us. He’s a famous portrait painter. He even painted some presidents.”

  “He painted all of us,” Geneva adds.

  I give Geneva a warning look. “Our dad is old school friends with him, so Mr. Kintsler painted a portrait of each of us on our seventh birthdays. The sittings were so long. I remember Dad kept feeding me butterscotch candies so I’d stay still.”

  “Mmm, once I attempted painting a watercolor of my brothers. Believe me, I’d rather paint pumpkins or trees.”

  “Well, you could put a lot of trees on our walls for your mural,” I suggest. “Even a whole forest, like I saw in one of your books. Our kitchen’s pretty big. Don’t you think a forest would look cool, Geneva?”

  “Three of us are dead.”

  I knew she would do it. I hoped she wouldn’t, but she can never resist the drama. Geneva picks up her coffee and sips it long and slow, lowering her eyes to block out my reaction, letting the rising steam film her face. I could almost slap her. Instead I decide to steal her favorite story and tell it the wrong way. My way. I turn to Annie, who is staring at Geneva and probably trying to figure out what she just heard.

  “Our two brothers and our sister died before either of us were born,” I begin quickly, and Annie looks away from Geneva to give me her attention. “It’s very sad, obviously, except we never knew them. I mean, we wish they were alive, but not the way you would if you had real memories to miss them with.”

  “It was a terrible accident,” Geneva adds, attempting to rekindle the mood that I am working to squelch. “It was all over the newspapers.” Geneva usually finds a grim comfort in telling the tale of our family tragedy, as if by spreading the information she can temporarily redistribute its weight. Make it someone else’s horror, at least for a little while.

  “But it happened a really long time ago, before we were born, like I said,” I explain. “Eighteen years ago.”

  “During Christmas vacation,” Geneva adds. “A drunk driver crashed into their jeep. Kevin and John died instantly, but Elizabeth was in a coma for three days.”

  Annie allows a moment of respectful silence, then she shakes her head sadly and says, “Mmmph.”

  Over the years that Geneva and I have had to tell this story, we have witnessed hundreds of different reactions. We have seen faces clench into lines of pain, eyes that instantly wet in sympathy or glitter with curiosity or agitation. We have had people, sometimes strangers, buckle over us with crushing hugs and kisses. I usually dislike the reactions almost as much as I hate broadcasting the story, but now, suddenly faced with a stranger’s “mmmph,” I realize I have come to expect the sympathy, and its absence bothers me.

  “It’s horrible, we know it’s horrible for us,” I tell her encouragingly.

  “For you?” Annie asks.

  “Well, I mean, sure it is. But of course, especially for our mom and dad. Nothing could be worse for parents.”

  “It’s parents’ worst nightmare, having their kids die,” Geneva adds, a fact beyond dispute, as sure a comment as “it’s raining.”

  Still, Annie is silent. Geneva presses up bits of glazed cinnamon-roll sugar from the table onto her fingertip, then flicks the sugar onto her plate. Under the table, my feet tap impatiently. We are waiting for Annie to agree with us, but the length of her silence bewilders me, and I know Geneva must feel a little surprised, too.

  “True. Everyone feels awful for the parents,” Annie finally says with a shrug, and in a voice that is empty of emotion. “But it seems to me your mom and dad got a great second chance, right? Another start, blessed with two more kids. Lucky for them.”

  “I guess … but I don’t know,” I say. Her words make me twitchy, and I have to hold back an urge to laugh, although I don’t know what I find so funny. It is strange to think of the parents as blessed and lucky. People almost never describe them that way.

  “The parents had a whole family before us.” Geneva’s tone is quarrelsome, insistent on a little compassion. “They’ll never be truly happy again.”

  “Don’t forget, some people can’t have any children. That’s as sad a story as any,” Annie says in that same voice that contains nothing.

  “It’s not wrong or selfish for them to miss those other kids.” My eyes heat up in defense of the parents and the burden of our family loss. “They probably feel grateful for what they have and sad for what was taken from them.”

  Annie pushes aside her mug and leans toward the pile of sketches heaped on the floor. “I didn’t mean to upset you. It’s better to concentrate on the living, that’s all I meant,” she says. “The paintings of those other kids should be stored away if they always start conversations like this. You girls never even knew those kids, and they’ll never know you.”

  “The paintings have a right to be up,” I say. “You don’t get how it is, to be our family.”

  “True,” Annie answers. “So let’s consider this conversation closed.”

  After the initial shock, most people circle the story of the other Shepards like scuba divers exploring a sunken ship. They creep in slowly with cautious questions but soon become entranced by the tragedy, and so they dart farther and deeper, searching for details. How did it happen? A drunk driver was speeding and hit them. When? Late at night, Kevin was driving them back in his jeep from a clambake on the beach. Where were they? They were on vacation in Saint Germaine, an island in the Caribbean. Were your parents in the jeep? No, just one other kid. He survived. How old were they? Kevin was eighteen, John was sixteen, Elizabeth would have been fifteen the following week. Were they buried over there? No, the bodies were flown back home. They’re all buried together at our church, St. Luke-in-the-Fields. Is the drunk driver in prison now? He die
d in the crash, too.

  And so Annie’s lack of interest in the accident is baffling. It has to be a first.

  “Good,” I say to her now, “because Geneva and I don’t want to talk about this anymore. It’s very personal.” Stubborn, stupid words, but closing this conversation should be my job. Even if I sound like a dork.

  Annie holds up a sketch. “Let’s get back to business. What do you think of this one? Kind of an Impressionist style.” Penciled lines curl into tendrils of flowers and wild plants. The sketch is smudged, messy and wild. “Of course, there are other styles: Cretan, Etruscan, I think I have a book of paintings by Uccello around here somewhere. We need to pick an inspiring theme.”

  “How about someplace beautiful and far away, like Tahiti?” suggests Geneva. My eyes follow her fingers tracing raggedy pictures in the air. “Paint red and orange and yellow flowers. With snapdragons and lilies. And a parrot and … like that!” She raps her knuckles over a picture of a bird displayed in one of Annie’s books. “Only with more feathers.”

  “Good, great. Like Gauguin.” Annie nods in agreement. “You talk like a real artist.”

  I listen, surprised, as Geneva lifts off into a story of how she really likes art but not Mr. Tegal’s art class at school because he plans too many paper-cut collage projects, and she prefers paints. It’s common knowledge that Geneva is the artistic one of the two of us, but I have never heard my sister talk about school, or art, so energetically.

  “What’s your favorite medium—watercolor, acrylic, or oil?” Annie asks, which throws open the window of another conversation about oils, Andrew Wyeth, and the best way to get turpentine out of your hair. (Annie’s recommendation is to shampoo with white vinegar and a tablespoon of salt.) It is so rare, and so enjoyable, to hear Geneva talk to a stranger that I myself keep quiet.

  We finish our coffee, and Geneva and I tear the last cinnamon bun in half.

  “Oh, my gosh, look at the time!” Annie taps her watch and springs clumsily out of her chair. I am amazed that she hasn’t spilled or broken anything yet. “I better go. These sketches are for your dad to give your mom. Sort of as the birthday appetizer before the main dish. She decides what she likes best, and you can report back to me. You’ll help me out, right? See you, then.”