Other Shepards

by Adele Griffin

  “Don’t worry about it, Mom.”

  “Thank you, really, Holland, I don’t know where I’d be. Now would you put Mrs. Just back on?”

  I pass the phone to Mrs. Just as Geneva uncurls and squirms off the cot. She knows she has won. “I’ll meet you outside,” she informs me, her voice no more than a puff of triumph as she sweeps out the door. I wait for Mrs. Just to finish the call. She hangs up in a huff, obviously annoyed.

  “Your mom told me to go ahead and write up the excuse notes for Sister Nuella.”

  “Thanks, Mrs. Just. I’ll stop off in homeroom to tell Mrs. Garcia we’re going, and to get my assignments.”

  “Know what I think?” Mrs. Just’s expression is severe, and she presses her hand over her heart as if she is about to start angrily reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. I wait, listening. “I think Missie’s got your whole family wrapped around her little finger. You’re a good girl, Holland. You’re never in here moaning for aspirins or sick notes or going on about cramps. But look at you, pulled out of school because your sister’s having another fit, and your mom knows someone’s got to take care of her. It’s plain as pie to me that all Missie needs is a good spanking. She wouldn’t be allowed to play the little queenie in my house, I’m telling you now. I’m saying that in my home, playing possum’d last under three seconds—”

  “You’re right, you’re right,” I say. It’s all I know to say to a speech I’ve heard too many times before. “But still, I’d better go.”

  I collect my things from homeroom and meet Geneva outside. She greets me with a feeble smirk.

  “Mom is going to pack you off to a special school,” I say. “A school for the seriously disturbed and spoiled.” Geneva starts walking, ignoring me.

  “By the way, I’m going back to Ambrose, after I drop you off. This is ridiculous. Mom either should have come for you herself or made you stay in school. I’m not your service bureau of transportation.” I kick a discarded apple core into her path. “There, there’s some more litter to throw away, since you’re so interested in the environment lately.”

  “Fruit is biodegradable,” she says. “Get the facts.”

  I clench my hands, I want to pull out her hair so badly. It is too much, sometimes, always being the older one, the unpaid baby-sitter and nursemaid for a thankless little sister.

  We keep silent until we turn onto our street. Geneva picks up speed, her purposeful walk turning into a brisk skip, and her throat catches in a small, pleased sound. I look at her, mystified by the smile that transfixes her face, then the jackrabbiting bounds that carry her through the home stretch to our front door. I don’t understand what could get her so animated.

  And then, at once, I do.

  five

  geneva and annie

  “GIRLS!” WE STOP AT the echo of her voice, a hollow boomerang down the walled alley. Annie’s hair blows sideways across her face in a tangled puff as she leans dangerously far out the kitchen window. “What brings you two out of school?”

  “We knew you’d be here!” Geneva runs around to the front of the house and jets inside the front door. I follow her into the kitchen. Annie already is pulling down the coffee mugs. “Who’s sick?” she asks. “Neither of you looks it.”

  “We’re having a hooky day,” Geneva gloats.

  “Everybody needs one sometime,” Annie says, her smile untroubled, although I can’t imagine what she must think of my delinquent sister.

  “You’re supposed to have a stomachache,” I reprimand her. “Otherwise I’m calling Mom.” I look at Annie. “Maybe I should phone her anyway,” I say. “Since you’re here, would you mind keeping an eye on Geneva while I go back to school?” My question is matter-of-fact, but my body does not make any effort to move me to the phone in the front hall.

  “If she doesn’t mind helping me,” Annie says. Geneva has already kicked off her shoes and is paging through the art books. “Coffee before you set out again, weary traveler?” Annie’s eyes are two gentle lights shining over her mug. I notice that her makeup is more smeared than yesterday, she wears the same strappy shoes and linen blazer, and the messy knot of her hair is lopsided, as if she might have spent last night sleeping on a park bench. She smells nice, though, like crayons or chalk.

  “A little mess is legal as long as there’s no evidence of dirt,” Mom once said to me in a conversation about straightening up my bedroom. That is Annie today. Messy not dirty.

  She pours out a mug, which I accept. I had not felt weary until she used the word; maybe the coffee will pep me up. Except that Annie’s blend seems to work an opposite effect—its smell and taste are mellow, and thoughts of returning to school begin to tumble away from me.

  “I was planning to go downtown after I finished priming,” Annie tells us. “If you girls want to join me, I’d be glad for the company.”

  “We aren’t allowed to wander around the city without permission,” I explain in as polite a voice as I know. Geneva gives me a black look.

  “I’m supervising, remember, so I grant permission,” Annie says. “I grew up in this city, and I was queen of the baby-sitters here for years. It was how I made all my clothes money. My mom hated my taste in clothes. She wanted to dress me like a doll, I guess since I was her only girl, but I wanted cool stuff like velour pants and satin ice-skate skirts, and my mom refused to buy it. She would say things like, ‘Clothing that disintegrates in two weeks’ time isn’t worth the hanger it’s hung on.’”

  I smile and nod; it sounds just like something Mom would say.

  “Our mom never buys us velour or satin anything,” Geneva says admiringly. “Even if it’s on a one-day, seventy-five-percent-off sale at Macy’s.”

  “You’ll find any costume you want at the thrift stores.”

  “But today is a school day,” I say. “Maybe we shouldn’t go downtown, where everyone can see us not being in school.”

  “Believe me, no one will care, as long as you act reasonably mature,” Annie says. “And you both look too old to do the really idiotic kid stuff, like drink bleach or hide granola in the VCR. I baby-sat a girl once who did that. It was trouble, because her big brother, Marty, was a karate video addict. After she messed up the video machine with granola, there was nothing for Marty to watch.

  “He was eight years old, and I had to get him addicted to the soap operas, which took a pretty good trick. You know how you instantly get an eight-year-old boy addicted to soap operas?” Annie looks at us, savoring the moment. “Tell him that it’s all really happening, all real life, in the apartment upstairs!” Annie laughs her hiccuping laugh, and I exhale a sigh of appreciation. You don’t hear a good baby-sitting trick every day.

  Under the table, Geneva gives my shoe a gentle kick. I look over at her and nod, and she grins. She knows how much I want to hand Annie the controls of the day. Why wouldn’t I? It’d be more fun than other versions of this morning, trying to memorize irregular French verbs or holding Geneva’s hand in the nurse’s station.

  We finish breakfast and then go up to our rooms to change into jeans and sweatshirts, “slop-around clothes,” as Annie instructs. After changing, Geneva dashes back to the kitchen, but I detour through the second floor, drifting into rooms. The grandfather clock in the den chimes ten elegant, muted strokes, but time feels enchanted, as if this particular morning has been scooped up from the precise march of minutes and hours of a normal school day.

  I follow the carpet runner, betting myself. If you can walk on the balls of your feet into every room on the second floor without losing balance, then Mom will let you and Geneva stay home from school with Annie the whole day.

  Our townhouse is tall and narrow, a three-story stack of dark rooms, some of which have no real function and are referred to with vague names such as “the sitting room,” “the yellow room,” or “the Korean chest room.” This last room, at the far end of the second-floor stairs, was where Elizabeth slept. At the other end of the hall stand Kevin and John’s old bedrooms, fa
cing each other across the landing, the bathroom and linen closet between them.

  I bounce through John’s room, then Kevin’s, my toes spread and crooked like a bird’s for balance. Both rooms are arranged into informal studies, with bookshelves and armchairs, but since all of us prefer using the downstairs den, which has the computer and television, the rooms are dusty with disuse. When I sneeze, my heels almost drop to the floor; I recover just in time. I look at the ceiling, to the triangle of Kevin’s Greek alphabet Delta he painted up there when he got into his top choice fraternity. “A guy’s guy” is how Brett always describes Kevin. An athlete, a daredevil, a leader. “Not much of a student but a lot of fun.” John was quieter, but Brett said he could imitate sounds: bird calls, the crash of thunder, anything. It helped him out for practical jokes. “They loved a good joke, those two,” Brett told me. “John was brainy and Kevin was bold. And Elizabeth knew how to laugh off both of ’em.”

  It is nearly impossible to imagine those types of people living in this silent house.

  I glide on the balls of my feet, ankles cracking with my unaccustomed shift of weight, into the Korean chest room, where there is no Korean chest because five or six years ago Mom gave it away to my Uncle Nelson as a Christmas present, “so that he’d stop embarrassing both of us with all that obscene hinting.”

  Elizabeth’s desk is the only piece of the room that has remained the same from the time she lived here. I tiptoe toward it. More than any photo or anecdote, this desk, with its surface of baby blue painted wood, imprinted with a Led Zeppelin sticker and scratchwork heart bearing the initials E. S. + W. J., makes me feel close to the sister I never knew.

  When Mom shipped out the Korean chest, she impulsively had the room freshly wallpapered in a green pattern that looks like battle lines of asparagus, and carpeted with a cream-of-tomato red rug. She then bought a pull-out futon, moving it into the space the chest had occupied. “Now you girls can have guests sleep over in here,” she explained, answering the question Geneva and I had been silently asking during those weeks of frantic redecorating. “It’s very modern and charming now.”

  “Friends to lure onto the spooky second floor of 176 Waverly,” Geneva had said smirking.

  “If you can stay the whole night you get a bag of gold,” I added. “Mom must have got her redecorating idea straight from Dr. Bushnell. He’s always saying how we have to move away from the other Shepards. Maybe this is Mom’s way of moving.”

  It’s hard to leave behind the other family though, especially since their story is common knowledge in our school. Elizabeth herself was a student at Ambrose, so there are teachers who remember her, and returning alumnae seem to feel duty bound to tell me about how they knew Elizabeth in some small way.

  There is even the annually given Elizabeth A. Shepard plaque for Excellence in Tennis and Sportsmanship. Mom presents it every year at the school’s seventh grade commencement. I won it last year, although it probably should have gone to Moira Radcovich. I play a decent game of tennis, but nothing special. Mom had hugged me on stage, in front of the entire sixth, seventh, and eighth grades. It had been a horrible day, not only because I was completely unprepared for Mom’s outburst of Ick, but because every single clapping hand in that auditorium knew the same thing: those Shepards are still kind of a mess.

  “Holland, what are you doing?” Geneva hollers from the kitchen, which is just beneath Elizabeth’s room. “I hear you bumping around up there! We’re starting to talk about painting.”

  “Coming!” The scent of coffee is powerful, drifting up through the vent. They must be brewing another pot.

  The top of Elizabeth’s desk is furry with dust. I trace long, swirling letters through it, bravely spelling out Louis Littlebird. Each L rolls deliciously through its loops into a name hard and bright as a spring sky. I let myself stare a moment, then squeak my fingers over the words, swatting dust up into the air, which makes me sneeze, lose balance, and take flight, just as the phone rings. I run downstairs and pick it up in the den.

  “Holland? You sound out of breath.”

  “I was running.”

  “How’s your sister?”

  “Better since she got her way.”

  I imagine Mom on the other end of the line, a silver button earring in one hand while the other cups the mouthpiece. “I can be home by eleven, I think, if Lucy can cover my phone.”

  “Don’t worry about us. When we got home—” Then I stop. If I remind her that Annie is painting here this morning, Mom might send me back to Ambrose. “When we got home,” I repeat, more slowly, working out the lie, “Geneva said she felt better, and we’re going back to school after lunch.”

  “Really?”

  “She said she wanted to start the day over. She was never that sick, it was mostly a temper tantrum.”

  Mom exhales through her nose, a sound like wind through leaves. “And you’ll call me if the plan changes? Because I really don’t want you missing school, Holland.”

  “Don’t worry about us, Mom. I’ll take care of everything.”

  “Well, all right.” Mom sounds uncertain. “If you’re sure. Call if you need me.”

  “Bye, Mom.”

  The bad aftertaste of deceit lingers in my mouth after I hang up the phone. I run into the kitchen; maybe a cup of Annie’s coffee will smooth it over.

  “A couple of things everyone should know about painting a mural,” Annie is saying as I join them. She and my sister sit cross-legged on the kitchen floor. Geneva’s face is rapt with concentration.

  “Sit down,” Geneva says, “and listen.”

  “This is actually a low-intensity bleach, which cleans the walls of any impurities.” Annie knocks her hand on a large metal pail beside her. “So don’t drink it. There are rags here as well, so today we’ll just scrub, scrub, scrub, then go over the walls with a flat finish, standard undercoat, which is like priming your canvas before you begin your masterpiece. Boring, but it has to be done. These are roller brushes, so it shouldn’t take too long.

  “Now, since we’re going with Geneva’s fabulous birds of paradise theme, I’ll draw up the final sketches. The sketches are called thumbnails, and they’ll be our blueprint. Then we make an outline on the wall using chalk, which is thicker than pencil and erases easily with water if you mess up. Painting is the last step. Since we’re doing all our detail in oil, we have to be sure we like the outline, because oil never completely dries, so it’s harder to adjust than chalk. Questions?”

  Geneva’s hand shoots up. “How long will it last?”

  “It’ll last until you decide to paint over it.”

  “No, I mean, how long will it take? To paint the kitchen?”

  “A couple of weeks, maybe? We won’t rush it.”

  “If we never finish it, then do you stay with us for always?” asks Geneva.

  Annie’s smile illuminates her face. “Sorry. Like any job, there’s a beginning and an end,” she says. “Okay, enough talk.” She claps her hands. We rise.

  “I’ll get my radio,” Geneva volunteers. She jumps out of the kitchen and hits the stairs running, probably petrified to lose one precious moment with Annie.

  “It’s like you put her under a spell,” I say quietly as I rip one of the old pillowcases Annie tosses me.

  “You really care about your sister,” she says. “That’s important. I don’t know anything about having a sister. You girls are so close, I can feel the crackle in the air between you.”

  “Annie, are you some kind of counselor?” I ask. “Did my dad hire you to help with Geneva?”

  “Just a painter. Like I said,” Annie answers cheerfully. “I’m here to spruce up this kitchen, give you something new to look at. But you don’t have to stay here. Go back to school now, if you like.”

  “If you don’t mind, I think I’ll stay. To keep an eye on Geneva.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “What’s fair enough?” Geneva appears, her portable radio in hand.

  “I
t’s fair enough to guess that Holland must have a boyfriend by now, hmm?”

  “How’d you know?” Geneva exclaims. “He litters.”

  “What’s his name?” Annie asks.

  “Louis Littlebird.”

  “He’s in ninth grade and he wears a leather jacket like in Grease.”

  “Quiet, Geneva.”

  “How long have you been seeing him?” Annie asks me.

  “I’m not. I saw him wrestle, once. But that wasn’t like a date or anything.”

  “You should invite him over here to help paint. That’s not like a date or anything, either.”

  “No, I don’t think so.” The idea. How out of touch.

  “Mom would despise him,” Geneva interjects. “She wouldn’t let him come over. He looks like he’d steal things.”

  “Moms are supposed to dislike boyfriends,” says Annie. “The good ones, anyway. It’s the law.”

  “Is that guy, the actor, is he your boyfriend?” Geneva asks.

  “We have a relationship,” Annie answers with a wink. “But that’s between us.”

  The walls are horribly dirty. We find wash pails under the sink and fill them with warm water and bleach. Then we get to work.

  “I adore water,” Geneva announces after a while. She wrings out her rag over the pail and stares into the dingy water. “Especially the sound of waves. Down the shore is my favorite place in the whole wide world.”

  “Ever seen the beaches in the Caribbean? Now that’s gorgeous.” Annie sighs. “Romantic.”

  “No, but we go to Cape May in New Jersey for a couple of weeks every August,” I say. “We’ve only been outside the United States once, to France, when I was eight. Dad won a science award, and we went to the banquet and ceremony and stuff.”

  “I got food poisoning from a bad periwinkle,” Geneva says. “That’s all I remember about France.”