The Good Sister

by Drusilla Campbell

  Ahead of them Valli and Victoria tried to imitate Merell’s perfect cartwheels in the grass. In their red and blue shorts and bright T-shirts they looked like three flowers tossed about in a hurly-burly wind.

  “Sometimes I think it would be nice to live here all the time. Everyone seems happier, you know? But the road gets closed in wintertime. We couldn’t even hire a plow.” Simone watched her daughters, smiling. “He thinks the kids’ll want to bring their friends here in the summertime, have dances and sailboat races. He’s even got plans for a couple of tennis courts off to the side. He calls tennis and sailing ‘elite’ sports.” She giggled, hugged Roxanne, and whispered, “You know those Ralph Lauren ads? That’s how Johnny wants to live.”

  Arm in arm they swung down the lawn to a shoulder-high stone wall that bordered the cliff thirty feet above the lake. Leaning on the wall, they looked over. Below, at the foot of steps cut into the granite, there was a floating dock with a small sailboat and dinghy tied to it.

  “You have a boat, Simone. Why don’t you sail here?”

  “I don’t like it.”

  “Why not? Sailing’s just sailing, isn’t it? Wind, water. What’s missing?”

  “I don’t like fresh water,” Simone said. “Salt water kind of lifts you up and it slips on your skin, feels kind of thicker. I feel safe around salt water.”

  “So why have a sailboat up here?”

  “Merell’s going to sailing camp next summer and whatever she does, the twins’ll copy.”

  “That’s your opportunity, isn’t it? The two of you could go together.”

  “Yeah, but the camp’s up here.”

  “It doesn’t have to be. You could do it together down at Shelter Island.”

  “Stop organizing me, Rox!” Simone punched her sister in the shoulder hard enough to hurt. “What I told you about sailing? I never would have mentioned it if I knew you’d harp on it. That time is past for me now.”

  “Simone, you’re not even thirty years old. You can do anything you want.” Roxanne rubbed her shoulder. “You should take kickboxing.”

  “It’s not just the water. It’s what’s down there. Underneath.”

  The lake was too choppy to see anything below the surface.

  “You know what Merell was telling you, about how the lake got built? Well, before the engineers came, there used to be a steep valley here with a river at the bottom and a little town and when they made the dam the water just covered it all over but it’s still down there.” She shuddered. “Creeps me out.”

  Valli ran up to them. She had thrown off her shoes. Grabbing Simone’s hand, she cried, “Twirl, Mommy, twirl.”

  Simone stepped out of her sandals. “Remember how we used to do this? Come on, Rox, it’s fun.”

  On hot days after Roxanne picked Simone up from the babysitter after school, they walked up the hill to the neighborhood park to play in the sprinklers, wearing shorts and rubber thong sandals that kids in Roxanne’s school called go-aheads. As they did now, they had held hands and turned in circles, leaning out with their heads tilted back so all they could see was the spinning sky. Now the ground tipped and turned beneath them, and overhead the clouds and sun circled in dizzy pursuit. They twirled until they fell on their backs, groaning. Overhead the clouds chased across the enamel-blue sky, plump as gilded dumplings. Under the sun’s yellow eye the earth rose to meet the sky and the sky filled the lake with blue and gold.

  Lying on the grass, Roxanne felt ill but happy, laughing, thinking, This is why I have a sister, with a sister I never have to stop being a kid.

  Valli sat up. “Let’s do it again.”

  Simone moaned. “I forgot I’m pregnant. I never should have… I think I’m going to barf.” She lay back again, laughing. “Did you make a wish? You gotta close your eyes when you fall and make a wish before you open them.”

  “You always make up new rules,” Roxanne said.

  Simone sat up and pulled a twin into her lap. “What did you wish for, Victoria?”

  “Ice cream for dinner.”

  “Me too,” cried Valli. “I wished first.”

  “And I wished the same thing!” Simone cried and got to her feet. She pulled Victoria up after her and pointed her in the direction of the house. “I declare this the Ice Cream Vacation. We’ll have ice cream with every meal.”

  “And snacks!” Valli cried.

  Simone yelled, “Ice cream vitamins!” and shoved Victoria up the lawn. “Tell Nanny Franny I said we’re having ice cream before dinner. Two scoops each.”

  Victoria ran up the grass with Valli after her.

  The wind rose, playing the pines like oboes; and the dumpling clouds became pillows and featherbeds bolstered by the mountaintops. Sun and wind chopped the water into a million bits and pieces of gold. Below the cliff, the dinghy banged the hull of the sailboat.

  Merell had disappeared.

  “She’s got all these hiding places. Everywhere we go, she finds a hideout, but especially up here. She’s never satisfied unless someone’s looking for her.”

  * * *

  Merell had decided that having an aunt was one of the best things ever. Especially an aunt with a big rompy dog who liked to chase after balls and sniff around the wildest parts of the compound. After several hours outside he came into the cottage and flopped down in front of the fireplace. Two minutes later he was snoring and twitching in his dreams.

  Aunt Roxanne played Monopoly and really tried to win, and she listened and asked questions when Merell talked about all the stuff she was going to do when she grew up. Like go to China and sail a boat to Hawaii by herself. Aunt Roxanne’s questions made Merell think about details, like why did she want to go to China and when was she going to learn how to sail.

  Her mother was livelier when Aunt Roxanne was around. She talked more and laughed, and there wasn’t a meany-man anywhere.

  Aunt Roxanne and Nanny Franny laughed as they made lunch and Mommy did a jigsaw puzzle with the twins and for once there wasn’t any yelling or hitting. Lunch was Merell’s favorite: tuna with mayonnaise and lettuce and French fries cooked in the oven. And sodas, which they never had at home. While Franny got the lunch set up, Aunt Roxanne changed Baby Olivia’s diapers and talked to her in a silly squeaky voice that made Olivia laugh and Merell’s stomach feel warm. After lunch Aunt Roxanne asked Merell to give her a tour of the compound. The twins wanted to come along but Franny said they were too rambunctious and if they didn’t settle down she was going to tie them to a post.

  On the west side of the house there was a play yard and in it was the playhouse Merell shared with the twins. It had a pointed roof and a chimney and a pretend fireplace. Sometimes they imagined it was a school and Merell was the teacher.

  “The twins can’t even count.”

  They walked beyond the playhouse to the big piece of land where Daddy was going to build the tennis courts next summer. Chowder raced among the trees, and Merell talked and Aunt Roxanne didn’t tell her to be quiet.

  Merell asked, “Do you have a best friend?”

  “Sure. You know Elizabeth.”

  She would have liked it if Aunt Roxanne said that she, Merell, was her best friend; but she knew this was a silly wish.

  “Does she sleep over sometimes?”

  “Not anymore, but we used to share an apartment.”

  This sounded wonderful to Merell. “Do you tell her secrets?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “What kind of secrets?”

  “I don’t remember any of them so they must not have been very important.”

  They leaned against the wall at the edge of the cliff, their arms folded on the cold stone.

  “Our house was in a magazine,” Merell said. “Daddy has a copy of it in his study.” She laughed, thinking how silly one of the skinny models looked standing on the roof in a long purple dress. “Daddy says we’re not to call it a house. It’s a cottage and all the land around it? That’s the compound.”

  The sky w
as dark with clouds now and the wind blew hard. In the middle of the lake a pair of kayaks fought their way against the wind.

  “If they sink they’ll go down to Vermillion. That’s the town under the water. Daddy says there was this old man who lived there and when the engineers came and told him he had to go or he’d be drowned, he said he didn’t care. So they just left him. With his dog and a mule. Their bones are all down at the bottom.” Merell stared at the water. “I don’t like to think about him. About drowning.”

  Roxanne took her hand.

  Merell said, “If I tell you a secret, will you promise not to tell anyone? Cross your heart?”

  All day long she had been thinking about the promise she had made to Gramma Ellen, feeling it in her head like one of Mommy’s meany-men. She had not wanted to promise in the first place, and wished that instead she’d been brave enough to walk away, out of the room to one of her hiding places until everyone forgot about what happened at the pool, although she was afraid that wouldn’t be for years and years. It was a weary thing to carry an important secret alone.

  “Merell, the thing about a secret is, once you share it with someone, it’s not really a secret anymore.”

  Merell scuffed the toe of her sneaker into the lawn so hard she dug up a divot of grass. She held her breath and wished hard that Aunt Roxanne would change her mind and promise not to tell. But a teacher hardly ever changed her mind about anything, even if she was an aunt.

  “There are caves down by the dock. Wanna go see ’em?”

  “I’m not crazy about caves, Merell. They make me nervous.” Aunt Roxanne looked up at the sky. “Besides, I think we’re going to get some rain.”

  Merell took her hand and gently squeezed it. “It’s safe.”

  She explained that in the spring when the snow at higher elevations melted, the creeks overflowed and runoff dug rivulets down the hillsides and the level of the lake rose. In the summertime it retreated as water was regularly released to irrigate the farms in the San Joaquin Valley. By Labor Day the water line was several feet below where it had been in the spring.

  “Last time we came up here the cave was almost out of the water but I still couldn’t climb in. Now I bet I can. Want to?”

  “We should go inside, Merell.”

  Merell knew that she would be a grown-up someday, but she understood it the same way she understood that a man had once stood on the moon. It was both true and impossible at the same time. To be a grown-up she would have to get bigger and learn things and that would be good, but she would also have to give things up. She never wanted to become a person who was afraid to explore.

  To the southwest, needles of lightning threaded the storm clouds and the growl of thunder reverberated off the mountain peaks.

  Nor did she want to grow up if it meant being worried about getting wet in the rain. Daddy called mountain rainstorms gully washers, and Merell knew they could come on fast. Even so, she wanted to stay where she was in the whip of the wind, lightning dancing about her, daring her to be afraid. The air was electric with possibilities. At any second something thrilling might happen.

  She couldn’t see the kayakers anymore, but near the far shore a sailboat struggled to reach land. There might be children aboard. They’d be scared and Merell knew what it was to be frightened. Not the fun kind of scared like storms and caves; the deep-down scared that made her feel like her legs wouldn’t hold her up anymore.

  It was good she hadn’t told her secret. Bad things would happen if she did.

  * * *

  By nightfall the lake was socked in under a low ceiling of blue-black clouds, and a cold wind ripped at the trees and rattled the shingles and shutters. Aldo brought in candles and hurricane lamps and laid wood in the two fireplaces in the great room and the one in the big bedroom upstairs. Johnny still wasn’t home when the downpour began.

  At dinner Simone picked at the plate of lasagna and salad Franny set before her. Afterward, the twins begged her to play Monopoly and dragged her to a chair. Each time the play came around to her she seemed surprised and stared at the dice as if she didn’t know what to do with them.

  Roxanne guessed she’d taken a pill of some kind.

  Simone went upstairs and an hour later Johnny came through the door dripping rain and tracking mud. The twins squealed when they heard him in the mudroom. He had brought with him a gallon of rocky road ice cream and served the Monopoly athletes huge, bone-chilling portions, their third or fourth of the day but Simone had declared it an ice cream weekend and so it was. Johnny entertained with details of the horseback ride he’d taken to somewhere called Goose Lake, about the ducklings he’d seen and the bear scat and getting caught in the rain and how the lightning was so close it singed his eyeballs.

  Johnny’s love for his daughters was like an adjustment to the thermostat they all felt and responded to. He sat at the table with Baby Olivia squirming in his arms and his three older girls arranged around him, each starry-eyed with adoration. He smiled and teased, and when Olivia began to cry, instead of handing her off to Franny he hoisted her onto his shoulders and told the girls to form a line behind him. They played follow the leader around the downstairs: kick to the right, kick to the left, jump, tag the sideboard, and turn around. With squeals and laughter and shenanigans they traipsed from room to room, Franny and Roxanne bringing up the rear, Olivia wailing.

  Late that night, like a well-loved child tucked up in a warm bed under the eaves, safe from the elements and content to drift in a half sleep, Roxanne wished Ty were there with her and then remembered they weren’t getting along and for a while she worried that she should have stayed in San Diego that weekend, in case he needed her. Her thoughts wandered while the rain drowned out other sounds in the house. She thought about the scene in the great room and about her stepfather, BJ Vadis, a large, burly man with a thick shock of silver-gray hair and piercing blue eyes under bushy brows that moved up and down to punctuate his sentences. A sober Scandinavian without much humor in him but loving and generous in his fashion, he had adored Ellen and been kind to Roxanne and Simone.

  Roxanne didn’t think he’d ever cavorted like Johnny. Cavorting just wasn’t in his nature.

  Roxanne had no particular memories of BJ before she was ten or eleven, when he began to distinguish himself as someone important to her mother. With one memorable exception, they never ate a meal alone together. Shortly after the party to announce Simone’s and Johnny’s engagement, BJ invited Roxanne to dine with him at Rainwater’s, an expensive steak house favored by conservatives in the business community. At the time Roxanne shared an apartment with Elizabeth and was paying off school loans and credit card debt, trying to save for the down payment on a house. Filet mignon was a rare treat.

  “Glad you could come, Roxy,” he said, sounding like he meant it. He pulled out her chair. “I thought maybe those students of yours mighta wore you out.”

  The students at Balboa Middle School did wear her out, but they entertained and stimulated her too. It had been her good fortune to find the work she loved early in life. That night she had talked for a while about the challenges posed by a classroom crowded with more than thirty boys and girls deep in puberty.

  “You deserve hazard pay for that job. And a martini? One’s not gonna make you tipsy.”

  They talked about Simone and Johnny.

  Roxanne said, “I like him.”

  “Do you suppose there was ever anyone who did not like Johnny Duran?” BJ pulled the olive off the toothpick with his teeth. “Your mom’s happy, although between you and me and Old Blue Eyes, I think she was hoping for someone with a title.”

  Roxanne laughed, though it seemed a little dangerous to be out in public with BJ making fun of Ellen.

  “He’s going to be a very rich man someday. I talked to a couple fellas I know, builders like Johnny, and they say he’s a man to watch.”

  Roxanne had only one reservation. “It’ll be a big life. I wonder how she’ll manage.” It wasn’t ne
cessary to explain what she meant.

  “We talked about that. I told him the same thing you would. You’ll always be there to help her out, make sure she doesn’t get overwhelmed.”

  Roxanne remembered her reaction to his words, the impulse that rushed into her making her want to stand up and walk out of Rainwater’s. She’d never do it but the urge was there and powerful enough to make her hands shake. When had she become a tool to be handed around as needed?

  “Johnny knows she’s young and got a delicate disposition. He promises he’ll take it easy, bring her along slow.” BJ leaned back, resting his forearms comfortably along the arms of the chair. “And what’s gonna be so hard for her anyway? It doesn’t take many brains to give a party. All she’ll have to do is hire the right people, and you and Ellen can help her do that. And what pretty girl doesn’t like to buy a new party dress?”

  Roxanne had wondered how much BJ actually knew about Simone, what he guessed or had been told. Her mother had insulated him from the worst of her moods; and if he noticed that she often missed school and stayed in her room for days at a time, he never commented to Roxanne.

  BJ pulled an envelope out of his lapel. He laid it on the white tablecloth beside her wineglass. “You can open this now or later. Your choice.”

  “What is it?”

  “Take a look if you’re curious.”

  She slit the envelope with her knife and drew out a check written on BJ’s private account.

  “This is our little secret, okay?” He reached across the table and took her hand. “You’re a good girl, Roxy.”

  She looked at the check, counted the zeros.

  “I don’t understand.”

  BJ beamed, enjoying her confusion.

  “Why’re you giving me this?”

  “Let me ask you something, honey. Your mother and me have gotten along pretty good over these years, wouldn’t you say? Not too many fights, not a lot of noise? But just so you know, I didn’t always agree with her.” He toyed with the stem of his glass. “But when we met, she’d been through some rough times so I was inclined to cut her some slack. I was right out of the military and back then I had a pretty rigid view of married life. I just figured if I brought home the paycheck it was Ellen’s job to manage the house and you kids. I didn’t object to women’s lib, I just didn’t think it’d ever apply on my watch.” He snorted softly and shook his head. “Well, I sure was wrong about that. Your mom’s a crackerjack, was from the git-go.” He grinned at Roxanne. “That woman could sell the Brooklyn Bridge.