The Secrets Sisters Keep

by Abby Drake

  “No!” Ellie shouted abruptly. “You must sleep in your own room!”

  Everyone halted, then all stared at Ellie.

  Babe laughed. “That room is too small for us.”

  Ellie wrung her hands the way she’d seen Amanda do. “But I’ve had it redone.”

  “Is it bigger?”

  “No.”

  “Well, then,” Babe added and took another step. “It’s too small.”

  “I said no!” Ellie screamed, because what choice did she have? She considered saying Carleen’s room was under construction or was being fumigated, or had been quarantined—anything she could muster. But sooner or later, they might learn otherwise. So Ellie stiffened her spine, squeezed her eyes shut, and quietly said, “You can’t use Carleen’s room because it’s for Carleen.”

  Silence.

  Then Ellie opened her eyes and saw her two sisters frozen in place, their eyes riveted, their faces pale. Wes, however, kept climbing. He no doubt didn’t know any better.

  “Uncle Edward invited Carleen,” Ellie added. “We don’t know if she’s coming.”

  “Why?” Babe asked. “Why did he invite her?”

  “He said she has changed. She’s married. Has kids. Teaches ninth-grade algebra.”

  “Ha!” Amanda chided. “She’ll come. If she’s a teacher, she most likely needs money.”

  “Look,” Ellie said, “Edward invited her, so it’s out of our hands. I think he wants us to reunite before, well, before he dies. You know?”

  “I thought you said he wasn’t dying,” Amanda snapped.

  “I said . . . oh, Lord, I don’t know what I said. But he’s seventy-five. He has to die sometime. In the meantime, we don’t even know if Carleen will be here. She didn’t reply.” Ellie was as flustered as she knew she must sound.

  “Well,” Babe said, hoisting her bag, her cheeks growing pink, her eyes turning to steel. “I hope everyone has a nice time. My husband and I will be leaving.” She glared up at Wes, who was on the landing halfway up the stairs. “We’re taking the next flight back to L.A.”

  “Babe . . . ,” Ellie said.

  “No!” Babe yelped as if she’d been wounded, which, of course, she had been, way back when.

  “Don’t stop her,” Amanda growled. “Let her run away. She does that so well.” She folded her arms and looked smug.

  “I did not run away!” Babe retorted. “I left this crazy family and made something of myself.”

  “Oh, right. You’re an actress. How could I forget?”

  It wasn’t the first time Ellie had heard that Amanda thought Babe’s career was shameful. Jealousy, Ellie suspected.

  “Good God,” Babe said. “You’re as much of a snot as you always were.”

  Amanda snorted and hoofed into the library.

  “By the way,” Babe called after her, “you look like hell!”

  “Babe . . .” Ellie tried to reason, but Babe dropped the suitcase, stomped across the stone floor, and charged out the front door.

  “Well,” Wes said from above, “I can see the family reunion is off to a great start.”

  They shouldn’t have come. She’d known it, she’d known it, she’d known it since Ellie’s phone call and the invitation.

  Babe should never have returned to New York, to this house, to this family. What had made her think things would have changed?

  Kicking off her shoes, not caring where they landed, she made her way from the driveway to the side of the house. She passed through the tall gate set in the thick hedges and ended up in the rose garden, which was as fragrant and lovely as when she’d been a kid. She tramped on the lawn as if it were a barrel of grapes and she, a vintner.

  “Bitch,” she muttered. “Amanda-Belle bitch.” She flopped on a bench tucked next to a trellis and wondered why Edward had been so unkind as to invite the one person Babe never wanted to see again. Ever.

  Carleen.

  Argh.

  Not Amanda, the bitch, but Carleen.

  Plucking a red rose, Babe lightly touched its soft petals. Arguing with Amanda was nothing new. Still, Babe supposed it wasn’t right to take out her frustration on her when Carleen was the culprit. Carleen, who had once been Babe’s idol, the sister closest to her in age, the one she’d emulated.

  Carleen, after all, had been the most vibrant. Her eyes had been big and green and framed with dark lashes; her posture had been straight, her aura, confident. Her hair had been a blend of auburn and copper, the colors of oak leaves in autumn. “Carleen’s our natural beauty,” their mother had often proclaimed. When Carleen was thirteen and Babe was ten, that type of comment had not bolstered Babe’s self-esteem.

  It might have been easier if Carleen had not used her “natural beauty” to her advantage.

  When Carleen was a freshman, she had a boyfriend named Louis. He was a junior, the star of the basketball team.

  “Take your sister with you,” Father had ordered Carleen when she was dressing for the winter carnival game.

  “No,” Carleen retorted, pulling on fuzzy leg warmers for which Babe would have given a whole year’s allowance. “Louis and I have a date.”

  “He’s playing basketball, you’re sitting in the bleachers. That’s not a date. Besides, your mother and I are going out. If you don’t take your sister, you will stay home and babysit her.”

  “Where’s Amanda?”

  Father hadn’t answered because he had given his orders, and he never liked it when Carleen sassed him back.

  Babe had hardly been able to contain her excitement. She’d scurried around the room that she shared with Carleen, looking for something that might make her look grown up and pretty. She hadn’t been to the high school before—seventh graders didn’t usually have the chance.

  Carleen shook a stern middle finger at her sister. “You’d better not ruin this for me.”

  Babe shook her head. “I won’t. I promise.” She opened another drawer and took out her Ride, Sally Ride T-shirt to put on over a black turtleneck.

  “No,” Carleen said with a big, huffy sigh. “You are not wearing that to the game.”

  It was Babe’s favorite shirt, the one Mother had bought her the summer before when the famous astronaut, Sally Ride, was the first American woman to go into space. “You girls can do anything,” Mother had said, “not like in my generation.” Babe loved the T-shirt and all that it stood for. She wore it on special occasions.

  She began to protest when Carleen tossed a pullover at her. It was pale blue and the neckline was torn in a Jennifer Beals, Flashdance sort of way. “Unreal,” Babe said, because she couldn’t believe Carleen would let her have something she prized.

  “Just wear it,” Carleen said, “and don’t embarrass me.”

  By the end of that school year Babe was into Carleen’s nail polish and eye makeup, though not when Mother was looking or when Father was home. Babe’s friends envied her for having the coolest sister on the face of the earth.

  Plucking a rose petal now, Babe let it float to the ground. Yes, she thought, Carleen had turned into the villain, not Amanda. She supposed she should apologize to Amanda.

  She stood up and walked toward the back of the house. That’s when she noticed the tent and the tables and several set-up people moving about on the lawn.

  Right, she thought. Two hundred guests are expected.

  Bypassing dozens of folding chairs that had been draped in fabric, Babe headed toward stacks of wooden cases labeled Dom Perignon. Maybe a bottle was already on ice and would make a suitable peace offering. Or maybe Babe should just drink it herself.

  Chapter Seven

  “I can’t believe you didn’t warn me,” Amanda bristled at Ellie after the two finally settled into the Hepplewhite wing chairs in the library and Wes said he’d go outside for a smoke and try to settle Babe down.

  “Edward asked me not to tell either of you,” Ellie said. “He was afraid you wouldn’t come.”

  “He was right about me. I mean, what does Car
leen plan to do? Show up after all this time, after all she did, and expect to collect a quarter of Edward’s fortune?”

  Which confirmed the real reason Amanda was there.

  Ellie smoothed a worn spot on the dark leather armrest. “Edward invited her, Amanda. Not the other way around.” She hated that it seemed she was defending Carleen.

  “How did he find her? Where does she live?”

  “I have no idea. He didn’t tell me.”

  Amanda stood up because she’d been seated all of maybe five minutes, a record of sorts when she was in such a state. She strode to the bookcase that held the nineteenth-century American collection, removed a thin volume of Hawthorne’s little-known Doctor Grimshawe’s Secret, and pushed the well-worn button on the back of the bookcase. The wall rotated forward, exposing a small room laden with racks of chilling wine. Years ago, Edward had selected the Hawthorne to conceal access to his own special secret. The girls—Carleen, actually—had discovered it when she was twelve and thought spying on their uncle was a rite of summer.

  “Well,” Amanda continued as she stepped into the narrow wine room, made a selection, then emerged with a bottle in hand, “I can’t believe you’ve allowed it, after all Carleen cost you.”

  For once, Amanda was not speaking of money, at least not overtly. Ellie knew she was referring to Paul, the quiet, kind man Ellie had married at a small evening ceremony at the Temple of Dendur inside the Met. Paul had been only an inch taller than Ellie’s five-foot-five, and his hips had been more narrow than hers, but his eyes had been soft brown and his smile had been kind and he’d loved her in a companionable way.

  Paul had been a librarian. He’d worked at the mammoth public landmark in midtown; she’d worked forty blocks north at a similar behemoth structure. They’d claimed that twenty-eight limestone stairs had brought them together—the identical number of steps that scaled from the sidewalks up to the front doors at both the library on Fifth Avenue and Forty-second Street and at the Met, uptown. Actually, they’d been introduced at a money management seminar one Saturday morning at the YMCA.

  “I’m not very good at handling money,” Paul had admitted during the breakout session.

  “Me either,” Ellie said, not wanting to reveal that Uncle Edward provided a financial cushion. “I do know I’ll never get rich as an historian.”

  “Or me as a librarian.”

  “But if that’s what we love doing, it’s what counts, isn’t it?”

  They decided it was. They also decided to skip the rest of the seminar and feast on coffee and Everything Bagels, throwing financial caution out the window to the pigeons in Central Park.

  Three months later they married. Their time together was pleasant and steady, sedated with books. He was a sweet lover, and Ellie enjoyed the closeness of him, his light scent of musty old books, the way he took off his glasses just before making love, then put them back on right after he climaxed, as if, for those moments, he did not need to see clearly, as if he allowed himself to become lost in the pleasure of her.

  For a wedding gift, Edward had given them cash for a honeymoon. “Go to Egypt,” he said to Ellie. “Just because you’re now a missus, doesn’t mean you should give up on your dreams.”

  Ellie and Paul put the money and a few travel brochures in a small brass box, promising each other they would honeymoon on the Nile when they could arrange month-long vacations.

  In the meantime, they were content to work, read, make frequent love, and listen to nascent poets at coffeehouses in the Village. Some people, including Ellie, might have said her life was not very exciting, but she did not need excitement. Growing up as the eldest of four sisters, she’d had excitement enough.

  But then came the blood and thunder Carleen had wrought.

  For a while, Paul withstood the cameras and the questions, and the media presence outside their apartment building. Ellie hoped that living among the masses in Manhattan would render them mere flecks in the multitude. But Edward Dalton was Edward Dalton, after all, and the lights of Broadway that followed him everywhere then followed his family. And Ellie was his niece, Carleen’s sister.

  One day, Paul packed up and left. He didn’t stop long enough to say he was sorry.

  Ellie now watched Amanda pour a large glass of Pinot Noir and reminded herself that Paul had made the right choice for himself. He’d been a smart man, after all.

  “Any other surprises?” Amanda asked. “Any other spurious creatures who’ve been invited?”

  It was not a good time to mention anyone else who might raise Amanda’s waxed eyebrows. “Please, Amanda. It’s Uncle Edward’s birthday. His party. Try to remember that.”

  Amanda took a long—too long—drink and set down her glass just as Babe swept into the library, her husband in tow, his sunglasses returned to the bridge of his nose. He smelled like a Cuban cigar.

  “I’m sorry, Amanda, but I loved her so much,” Babe announced as if she were in a movie and this was a new scene. “Carleen. I loved her so much when we were kids, I wanted to be just like her.”

  Ellie silently groaned.

  Amanda said, “God, can’t we change the subject?”

  “I agree,” Ellie said. “Let’s not make this weekend about her. For starters, we need to decide what to do about Uncle Edward. Should we cancel the party? Should we move it to Sunday?” She didn’t ask if they should call the police. They would all know that wouldn’t be wise.

  “Okay,” Babe said, “let’s talk about Edward and the party.”

  “And not Carleen,” Amanda added.

  “Right,” Ellie said. “Her name is off limits. Okay?”

  The others started to nod, just as the front doorbell rang.

  It seemed like an hour before one of the staff answered the door, another hour before they heard muffled voices, another before Amanda gushed out a sigh and said, “For God’s sake, it’s only Chandler and Chase.”

  The boys paraded into the library with perfect posture, shoulders back, chins up. They were attired in khakis and golf shirts, little clones of their father, and wore their hair in the latest short style that was favored by Choate Rosemary Hall. Introductions were made (Babe had never met her nephews!), and the air in the room finally gained momentum when Chase realized Wes McCall really was his uncle, though Amanda could tell by her younger son’s puckered brow that the man’s obvious age was a little surprising. He looked so much younger on-screen.

  Chase said it was awesomely cool to meet him, that he’d known they were related somehow but never dreamed they would meet, not really. Chase was such a sensitive boy that sometimes he made up for Chandler, who affected aloofness when he wasn’t impressed. At seventeen, aloofness might be popular, but Amanda knew the real reason was that Chandler was too much like her. Conversely, at thirteen, Chase was like Jonathan, more comfortable with life and with people. She wondered if his future would include adultery.

  “Where is your father?” she interrupted.

  “Tied up,” Chandler answered. As the older, more somber boy, he was often the designated mouthpiece. “He’ll be here in the morning.”

  Amanda turned back to her wine without comment.

  “Where’s Uncle Edward?” Chase asked because he adored him: last Christmas, Edward had taught him a few magic tricks. “Has he met Wes?”

  “We’re not sure where he is,” Ellie said. She followed with a condensed version about Edward making off with the rowboat. She didn’t mention the possibility of postponing the party or canceling it altogether.

  “Let’s go find him,” Chase said. “Maybe Wes can come with us! Did Uncle Edward leave the canoe?”

  Ellie nodded.

  “Don’t look at me,” Chandler said. “Three is too many in a canoe.”

  “Not where I come from,” Wes said, peeling off his glasses as if he were Superman and the library was a phone booth. No one commented that without his sunglasses his face looked as if it was time for more plastic.

  “Where are you from?�
� Chase asked.

  “British Columbia. I logged in more hours kayaking around Vancouver Island than I did sitting in school.”

  Even Chandler seemed roused by that.

  “Cool!” Chase cried. “Mom, can we go?”

  Amanda said, “By all means. It will give us time to get reacquainted with our long-lost sister.”

  Of course she meant Babe, but how could they all not think of Carleen?

  Chapter Eight

  The last time Carleen had been on a bus was when she’d left New York City on a Greyhound. She’d had a one-way ticket, the promise of a job in a costume factory, and paid-up tuition at UMass Boston.

  “Make something of yourself,” Uncle Edward had said. He’d refrained from kissing her good-bye at the station: he’d wrinkled his brow as if to say something more, then shaken his head and had left. That was the last time they had seen each other.

  Still, the bus had been more relaxing back then.

  Staring out the tinted window at the bus stop in Amherst, Massachusetts (not even a depot, merely a stop in the center of town, with tickets purchased inside a bookstore), Carleen knew it would have been easier if she’d have let Brian go with her. Instead, she watched as he crossed the town common, paused when he reached their eight-year-old Ford Explorer, turned back to the bus (a Peter Pan, not a Greyhound), and gave a big wave. Her husband was never embarrassed to show affection in public: he was always himself, delighted with life more often than not, delighted with her and with their two daughters. They lived on the other side of the hill from Emily Dickinson’s Amherst, in a place called Belchertown, famous not for its colleges but for its reservoir, the Quabbin, a pristine lake that had been formed in the 1930s when four towns had been flooded so the people in Boston could have clean drinking water. The act had been a political scandal. Carleen laughed when she heard the story: any scandal was worth laughing about, as long as it did not involve her. Besides, the name Belchertown was itself humorous, though she no longer laughed about it in public. She was not that Carleen anymore. She had tried very hard to rid the world of that caustic, inappropriate person.