The Alphabet Sisters

by Monica McInerney

  Anna looked at Bob for help. He was just chewing, as normal, and hitching up his trousers, unfazed, also as normal. She knew he didn’t care how long the client took. He charged an hourly rate.

  Some of her frustration must have shown on her face. Bob took pity on her. He spoke again, surreptitiously inclining his head toward the client. “Anna, perhaps it would help if you visualized yourself in the sink, getting psyched up to help your housewife—sorry, homemaker—clean all those dirty dishes. And there’s one particularly greasy pot that’s going to need special energy, but you know it will be worth it to scrub like mad until every spot is gone.” Another barely noticeable nod at the client. “Whenever you’re ready. Tape’s running.”

  It worked a treat. Staring through the glass, seeing her sharp bobbed hair and immaculate makeup reflected back at her, Anna imagined Henry evolving into a dirty, grease-spattered saucepan. She imagined herself as the sponge, leaping out of nowhere and scouring his face until every spot and blackhead had disappeared, shouting all the while in a voice that was a combination of Mary Poppins and kamikaze pilot. She leaned toward the microphone. “Let me at it! I’m the clean machine!”

  Henry’s pimply face broke into a huge smile. “That’s it. Perfect. Thanks, Anna.”

  She had just leaned down to her bag when his voice came in again. “But would you be able to do it one more time? I think it needs just a touch more softness, to convey the moisturizer we’ve included in the washing-up liquid.”

  An hour later Anna was driving out of the studio carpark. The voice of the sponge was now lodged in her head, and she knew from experience it would stay there for the next few days or until a new character’s voice took its place. Last month her internal voice, her mind voice, had varied between a kitten stuck up a tree (for a cat food commercial), a warmhearted nurse in an old folks’ home (health insurance), and a cake waiting to be iced. That had taken three hours to get right, too, before Bob stepped in once again with her motivation. “Imagine you’re the cake, Anna, okay? You’re scared. You don’t know which brand of icing you’re about to be iced with but you sure as hell want it to be high quality. So we need a combination of fear and anticipation and …”

  Her seven-year-old daughter, Ellen, loved it, of course. She treated Anna’s repertoire of voices like a human jukebox. Lying sleepily in bed listening to a good-night story, she’d pick and choose the voices. “Mum, can you read this one like the Zoomer Broom?” The Zoomer Broom featured in an animated TV commercial where the ordinary household broom metamorphosed into something Harry Potter could have used for Quidditch, babbling nonsensically all the while. Ellen’s other favorite was the ocean pie, a gurgly underwater voice.

  Anna parked on the street across from the hospital, ten minutes late. Hurrying toward the lift, she composed her face, already hearing the disapproving tones from her neighbor, who had grudgingly agreed to collect Ellen after school and bring her here to the clinic for her latest appointment. The lift door opened, and Anna spied her little daughter in the distance, standing up on a chair near the nurses’ station, chatting to one of the staff. In the dozens of hospital visits since Ellen’s accident, she had gotten to know all the nurses very well. Anna tensed, as she always did when she remembered the trauma of those first months. She decided it was time Ellen had a good spoiling: she’d give her whatever she wanted for dinner, let her watch whatever video she wanted, and then read her all the stories she wanted, as well.

  By nine o’clock Anna’s patience was wearing a little thin. Ellen had been alternately tearful and cranky all evening, insisting on pizza, then not eating any of it, and not settling on any one video but wanting to watch specific scenes out of five different ones. Anna had finally had enough, speaking more crossly than she intended, which set off the tears again. She then read two extra stories, purely out of guilt, hardly finding the energy for the different voices.

  Ellen still wouldn’t settle, hopping in and out of bed. She stood in the doorway of the living room now, tears on her face. “Is Dad home yet?”

  Anna kept her voice mild with effort. “No, darling, he’s not.”

  “Where is he?”

  “At work, I think.” She thought. She didn’t have a clue where Glenn was. He didn’t ring and tell her anymore if he was going to be late, or if he was going to be home at all, in fact.

  “Can you read me another story, then?”

  “Sweetheart, you’ve had enough stories. It’s time to sleep.”

  “I can’t sleep. I’m scared again. I keep remembering.”

  The doctor’s voice came into Anna’s mind. “There will be some post-traumatic stress and recurring fear, but it’s important you learn to listen without making too much of it. Children are children and very skilled at knowing which buttons to press.” So what was she supposed to do? Ignore Ellen’s tears? Tell her to get over it? Of course she couldn’t. She pulled herself up out of the deep sofa. “All right, Ellie. You hop back into bed and pick another story. I’ll be there in a moment.”

  By the time Anna got to the bedroom, Ellen had changed her mind. “Can I have a tape instead? Can I hear Really-Great-Gran’s tape?”

  “Again? You sure you don’t want a story tape?”

  Ellen lay back and shook her head. Her dark hair fanned out on the pillow.

  The tape had arrived from Lola more than two years earlier, with a note to Anna attached. “This is for you to play to Ellen. I’m still having no part of this nonsense between you and your sisters, but I’m not losing a great-granddaughter because of it. Please play her this tape so I’m not a shock each time she meets me.”

  Anna put the tape in, then lay on the bed beside Ellen, stroking her hair back from her face as Lola’s voice filled the room. Her still strongly Irish-accented tones were clear and precise.

  “Hello, Ellen. This is your great-grandmother speaking. Now, my little dote, I’ve been giving a lot of thought to what you should call me, and I think I’ve come up with the best solution. Your scoundrel of a mother started calling me Lola when she was just a child, and her two sisters followed suit, but you need a different name for me, I think. And not just Great-Grandmother. I’m much better than great. So, my darling, I would like you to call me Really-Great-Gran from now on. Okay?”

  There was a pause on the tape.

  “Are you listening, Ellen?” Lola asked.

  “Yes,” Ellen answered sleepily beside Anna.

  The voice on the tape continued. “Good girl. And are you happy with that? Happy to call me Really-Great-Gran?”

  “Yes, Really-Great-Gran,” Ellen answered in the pause. She knew this ritual by heart.

  “Good girl. Now, I’m going to tell you a few stories about your mother and your grandfather, but first I’m going to sing you one or two of my favorite songs. So settle back and relax.”

  Relax? Anna bit her lip as Lola started warbling “Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree” in her falsetto voice. The last thing Lola’s voice would make you do is relax. She could clear a room in seconds. Ellen didn’t seem to mind. Lola could have been singing a sweetly tuned nursery rhyme, the way Ellen was reacting. Her lids were getting heavier by the second, her lips mouthing the words along with her great-grandmother’s slaughtered version. Anna smiled, remembering the song. It was one of the first ones Lola had taught Anna and her sisters. There’d been a row over who got to sing the high notes. Carrie had won, hadn’t she? Or was it Bett? It certainly hadn’t been her, cursed with as deep a singing voice as her speaking voice. She’d always sung the bass parts.

  Lola reached a shrieking crescendo, then paused on the tape, as if expecting her performance to be followed by rapturous applause. “One of my favorites, Ellen, and one of your mum and aunts’ favorites, too. As is this one. Are you comfortable? Sing along with me, darling.”

  As Lola embarked on “The Good Ship Lollipop” Anna glanced down. Ellen was fast asleep.

  Back in the living room, Anna poured herself a glass of wine and pressed the TV rem
ote control. She stared at the screen, trying to pick up the plot of the thriller, fighting the desolate feeling inside her that seemed to be rising closer to the surface each day. One phrase kept occurring to her. I’m lonely. Lonely. Yet she had friends in Sydney, didn’t she? People she could meet for coffee? And hadn’t there been joint friends, other couples who came over for dinner or who they met in restaurants occasionally? Not anymore. They had all slipped away the past year or so, like extras in a film, Anna thought, silently stealing away and leaving the main action to unfold. She couldn’t blame them. Who would want to be around to see how she and Glenn treated each other these days?

  The TV program changed to advertisements, and Anna noticed without pleasure that it was her voice coming out of the mouth of the animated mobile phone on the screen. She’d done that one two years ago now, and here it was back again.

  She put down the glass and rubbed her face with her hands. Who was she fooling? She didn’t want to talk to Glenn or any Sydney friends or colleagues. She wanted to talk to her sisters again. She wanted Carrie to sympathize with her. She wanted Bett to cheer her up with some madly melodramatic account of how bad her day had been. She wanted to tell them both how awful things had become with Glenn, especially since Ellen’s accident, but how wonderful Ellen herself had been, most of the time.

  She could ring her mother or father at the motel, but she’d never really confided in either of them. It had always been too hard to get the timing right. They’d be either in the kitchen cooking for houseguests, or out in the bar, or doing the accounts, or any of the hundred things both of them always seemed to be doing. She could ring Lola, but lately those calls hadn’t been having the calming effect they used to. For the first year or two after the big fight, Lola had been understanding, trying to see each of their points of view, as she always had. Understanding had turned to exasperation. “This is ludicrous. I’m ashamed of the three of you, carrying on like this.” She’d tried the frosty approach for a while. “I’m not talking to any of you while you persist in this ridiculous carry-on.” But then Lola had missed their phone calls, too. “Just because I’m talking to you doesn’t mean I’ve forgiven any of you.” But for the past six months there had been silence on the subject. Perhaps she’d realized, as Anna herself slowly had, that that was that. It had gone on too long now for things to change.

  A scream on the TV made Anna jump. A young blonde detective was being chased down a dark street by two men in suits, her face in close-up, fear-stricken. “Oh, shush, would you,” Anna said aloud. “You’re just acting, for God’s sake.” She put the remote control on the shelf under the coffee table. As she did she noticed the mail in a pile, wrapped inside the free local newspaper. How long had that been there? She picked it up and checked the date—more than two weeks old. How many times had she asked Glenn not to leave the mail there? Is this what it had come to? Each of them deliberately doing the things they knew most annoyed the other?

  She flicked through the bundle. Bills. Advertising material. A fund-raising letter from Ellen’s school. And a thick cream envelope. She turned it over, recognizing the handwriting immediately. Puzzled, she tore it open. It was an invitation. She read it again. No, not an invitation. A summons.

  CLARE VALLEY, SOUTH AUSTRALIA

  Lola Quinlan turned her gaze away from the vineyards visible through the window of the Valley View Motel dining room and back to the table where her youngest granddaughter was sulkily folding serviettes. “Did I tell you what happened in the charity shop this morning, Carrie? A young woman, around about your age, perhaps a bit older, came in and said, ‘Could I try on that dress in the window?’ And I said, ‘Yes, of course, but I’d much rather you used the changing room.’ ”

  Carrie didn’t smile or look up. “You’ve been telling that one for years, Lola.”

  “Good jokes never die, you know. What did the zero say to the eight? Nice belt.” She glanced at the elegant gold watch on her thin wrist and stood up. “Time for Days of Our Lives. I’m not going to offer you any help because you’re doing such a marvelous job of it yourself. And you know how important I think it is for you young people to see a job through from start to finish.”

  Carrie ignored her, not looking up as her grandmother came closer.

  “Carrie, are you ignoring me?”

  The younger woman kept her head down.

  “That’s fine, but don’t frown like that, darling. It’s very bad for the skin. If you’re going to sulk, at least do it with a smile on your face. Or try doing those exercises I showed you, the ones that firm your chin. See, like this.” Lola started grimacing, stretching her lips sideways, then into a tight pout; out, then in again. “Twenty of those a day and it’s like a gym workout for your face, so I read. A little alarming for any passersby, but that’s the price we pay for endless beauty, isn’t it?”

  Carrie started to smile.

  “That’s more like it,” Lola said. “And I know what you’re thinking, and, yes, I am a wizened interfering old bag of bones and quite happy to be like that.” She leaned over and kissed her granddaughter on the top of the head. At five feet nine inches, her posture still excellent, Lola towered over Carrie. “But I still love you, you know.”

  “If you really loved me, you wouldn’t have—”

  “Yes, I would have.” Lola collected her handbag. “Will you be staying on for dinner tonight? Thursday, schnitzel night.”

  “No, I’ll go home, I think.”

  “How are those renovations going?”

  Carrie and her husband had bought an old farmhouse several kilometers south of the Valley View Motel the year before. “Fine. Slowly.”

  Lola was watching her. “And how is Matthew, Carrie?”

  Carrie turned back to the serviettes. “He’s fine. Up to his eyes in sheep manure and vet magazines as usual. You know the sort of thing.”

  “You’re getting on all right, are you?”

  “Yes, thanks.”

  “Really?”

  Lola was like a human sniffer dog, Carrie thought, still not looking up. Line up a row of people and she’d sniff out each of their problems instantly. Not this time, though, Carrie decided. The days of confiding in her grandmother were well and truly over. “Really. It’s a bed of roses, in fact.”

  “Rubbish. No marriage is a bed of roses. That at least was one of the positive things about Edward dying so young. We might have missed out on the good times, but we missed out on some of the bad, boring times as well.” Lola was amazed, as always, at how easily the lies about her husband tripped off her tongue. “Tell me, do you ever get bored with Matthew, Carrie?”

  “Tell me, do you ever think you’re overstepping the mark with your questions, Lola?”

  “Oh, good Lord, yes. But people are usually so shocked, they’ve answered me before they’ve had time to think twice. Do you know what I found out this morning? That Mrs. Kennedy is stepping out with her son-in-law’s father at the moment. Talk about keeping it in the family. Having a grand old time, she told me.”

  Carrie felt a rush of combined affection and annoyance, her usual reaction to Lola’s behavior. “That’s the only reason you’re still working in that charity shop, isn’t it? It’s nothing to do with helping the poor or keeping yourself busy.”

  Lola made an elegant gesture with her hand. “If people choose to tell me things, there’s nothing I can do about it. I see it as my gift to society: helping people unburden themselves of their problems.”

  “Digging the dirt on them, you mean.”

  “I noticed you changed the subject, by the way. Don’t think that’s the end of it.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Oh, I think you do. Now, then, I must be off. I’m going to call on your mother in the kitchen and beg some afternoon tea. I really do have the perfect setup for an old lady, don’t I? A son and daughter-in-law with their own motel and restaurant and a granddaughter who is the sweetest in the world.” Lola gave Carrie anot
her kiss, then swept out of the room, leaving a faint trace of expensive perfume behind her.

  Alone in the dining room once again, Carrie worked quietly until she had folded the last of the serviettes. With a loud sigh, she leaned back in her chair. One hundred paper swans surrounded her. This time in two days the room would be transformed for a wedding reception, the paper swans swimming elegantly up and down the rows of long tables. She’d already strung up the fairy lights the bride had requested. She’d ordered the special candles from Adelaide, and they were due to arrive any moment. The bridal arch had proved tricky for a week or so. It would all come together, though. She’d done it enough times to be sure of that.

  She sat back and flicked at one of the paper swans with her finger. It toppled, falling against the swan beside it, which also toppled. Within moments a whole row of them had fallen, domino-style. She could have jumped up and stopped them but instead watched idly as the last dozen or so flipped and rolled onto the unswept floor.

  She didn’t care. At that moment she was sick of it all. She was sick of her job. She was sick of the motel. She was sick of the fact people made such a mess while they were eating that they needed serviettes in the first place. She was feeling especially sick about her grandmother wanting to throw a birthday party for herself and insisting that Bett and Anna attend.

  “But why, Lola? Why now? It’ll ruin everything,” Carrie had said that morning, hoping she wasn’t giving too much away. “All that tension.”

  “I’ve given you all three years to sort it out, and you haven’t even got to the starting gate. So I’m taking charge once and for all. I’ve written to both of them as well. Insisted they come or else. So they will, I know.”