The Alphabet Sisters

by Monica McInerney

  When she awoke the next morning, wild and reckless Bett was long gone, leaving ashamed and hungover Bett lying there naked beside him. She lifted his arm from her waist, moved away, trying not to make any noise. “Don’t wake up. Please don’t wake up,” she prayed, edging out of the room, into the living room, gathering her clothes, bag, and jacket, dressing, then slipping out quickly. She didn’t leave a note. It was a big city. They never had to see each other again.

  Back home she’d taken to her bed for the rest of the day. By nightfall she’d been desperate to talk to someone about it. Too shy to tell her flatmate, unable to ring her sisters, she’d called Lola and told her everything. As she sketched the story, moments kept coming back to her, making her nearly yelp aloud in embarrassment. Oh, God. Had she really cried in his arms? Another shudder as she remembered insisting on kissing him. Insisting on having sex with him. She’d felt it in her body all day, a warm kind of ache, between her legs, on her skin. Memories that would have been sensual, pleasant, if they hadn’t made her want to howl in shame.

  Lola had been nonjudgmental. “Perhaps it was better that it was someone you knew, not a complete stranger. Did you use contraception?”

  “Yes. Yes, we did.”

  “Do you want to see him again?”

  “Of course I don’t. How could I face him?” Then she’d started crying. “I’m unhappy, Lola. That’s not me. I don’t do things like that. I don’t know what’s happening to me.”

  “Bett, it was a one-night stand, not a mass murder. Keep it in perspective. Do you want to come back home?”

  “I can’t.”

  “You can. You’d get used to seeing Carrie and Matthew together.”

  “Lola, I don’t want to see Carrie and Matthew together. I don’t want everyone watching me to see how I react, people talking about me behind my back.”

  “This is such a scandal people would be talking about it in front of your back, believe me. Darling, have you lost your sense of humor somewhere? Come on, it’s a broken romance. Millions of people have those every day.”

  “But I never wanted to be like millions of other people. And I’m sick of making a mess of things.” The words started tumbling out of her. “I wanted to be fearless and do something wonderful and splendid and remarkable, and I haven’t and I don’t think I ever will. I’m scared all the time, Lola.”

  “Scared of what?”

  “Of being embarrassed. Of making a fool of myself.”

  “You’ll have to be more specific. Everyone is scared of those things. You need to be clearer with me, darling.”

  Bett only had to think for a moment. “I’m scared of loads of things. Of being on my own.” Of sex, whether she did it properly or not. But she didn’t want to tell Lola that. She thought of other things instead. “I’m scared of seeing my body in mirrors in changing rooms in clothes shops, and snooty shop assistants making fun of me.” She managed to laugh. “I’m scared of stupid things, too. Like eating oysters. Reverse parking. Airplanes. Mobile phones …”

  “Is that all? I thought you were scared about serious things.”

  “They’re serious to me.”

  “But you can overcome all of them. You know the saying, Bett. You have to face your fears.”

  “Where do I start? Make a list? Tick them off?”

  “Leave it with me. For now, get into your pajamas, go to bed, and have an early night. Don’t have a drink. Be patient. And calm down.”

  The first decree had arrived exactly three days later. Just a postcard, addressed to Bett, with one line in the center.

  Eat an oyster.

  That’s all it said. For a moment she thought it was a new marketing ploy, targeting people one by one. Then she recognized the handwriting. Lola’s. She phoned her. “What do you mean, eat an oyster?”

  “You’re scared of them. So face them. Go and eat one. Then write to me—don’t phone me—and tell me how you got on.”

  She did it. She hated it but she did it nevertheless. Her report to Lola was also sent on a postcard. I went to a seafood restaurant last night with my flatmate Yvonne. She ordered oysters, and I ate one. It was the most disgusting thing I have ever eaten, like swallowing a salty slug that has been lying in water in the sun and gone bad. It took three glasses of wine to get the taste out of my mouth.

  The reply came by return post. Good, brave girl.

  For the next four weeks the one-line postcards arrived like clockwork. Go to the theater on your own. Go out to dinner on your own. Each time, Bett took on the task, and wrote home to tell Lola exactly what had happened. A week later, another card would arrive. Good, brave girl, with another task set beside it.

  Then a surprising one arrived.

  Go and live overseas.

  She phoned Lola immediately. “That’s a bit of a jump, isn’t it? From oysters to overseas?”

  “I’ve been leading up to it. I’ve been pushing you to go for years. The money is burning a hole in my pocket.”

  Lola had given each of the girls a return airfare to the place of their choice for their twenty-fifth birthday. Anna had gone to America for an acting course. Glenn had followed her out and proposed to her as they took a horse and carriage ride around Central Park. “Blech, so tacky,” Carrie had said. “Bet he had the carriage driver playing violin as well.” Carrie had headed off on a round-Asia trip, which then turned into a year away. But between study and work, Bett had never found time to leave Australia. “I can’t take it from you, Lola.”

  “Don’t give me that nonsense. Your sisters took it gladly, and so should you. And I’ll throw in some spending money as well. Let’s call it the interest I’ve earned on the capital because you’ve taken so long to decide to take it.”

  “You can’t afford it either, Lola.”

  “Darling, you haven’t the faintest idea whether I am poorhouse material or a very rich old lady, and I’m not going to tell you. Just take it and run. I was going to leave you this money in my will. I might as well give it to you now, so I can see how you spend it.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Why not? Are you scared?”

  Bett laughed. “Yes, I am actually.”

  “Of what? The flight? Moving to a new country?”

  “All of that.”

  “You know the best way to deal with that.”

  And so it had happened. Bett finally agreed to accept the fare, and two weeks after that conversation found herself in Dublin.

  It had been hard at first. She’d brought herself to Ireland, not a new improved fearless model. The first month she stayed in a youth hostel in the center of Dublin. She’d been worried she would be the oldest person there and was surprised when no one cared what age she was. With an Irish passport courtesy of Lola, she set off looking for work in newspapers, before realizing that was the old her. She had imaginary conversations with Lola. “What do you like?” “Music. Writing.” “Can you combine the two?” She discovered she could, by getting a job behind the bar in one of Dublin’s many music venues and writing the occasional review of the gigs for music newspapers, websites, and magazines.

  She found a flatshare on the North Circular Road, near the Phoenix Park, sharing a four-story redbrick terraced house with young Irish students, Nigerians, Asians, Romanians, their friendship confined to nods and hellos on the steep steps leading up to the red-painted front door. She walked to work through the fruit markets, dodging delivery trucks, stepping over cabbages, kiwi fruit, sometimes even mangoes squashed onto cobblestones.

  She started living a strange upside-down life, working in the nighttime, sleeping in the daytime, seeing as many as ten live bands a week in the venue she worked in. She made friends with other bar staff, the sound engineers, the woman who took the money at the door. Just as the late nights started to lose their appeal, a chance conversation with Karl over the bar while one of his early signings played to an empty room led to a move to London and the job in his record company. It had been exciting, leaving one new c
ity for another. She’d felt brave, adventurous, free.…

  But then she had started to miss things, too. Being free meant being unconnected, untethered. Which was fine when she was happy. But not when things were uncertain, when out of the blue she would find herself longing for conversations with Anna—and even with Carrie. She discovered a horoscope Web site, and read their signs each day, trying to guess what might be happening in their lives. Walking through a department store one afternoon she smelled a familiar perfume and was overwhelmed by a feeling of missing Anna. She asked for a sample. For the rest of the day Bett felt oddly comforted that Anna was nearby.

  There’d been only one communication between them in the three years, when Lola told her about Ellen being attacked. Bett had been shocked by the news. That same night she sent Anna a card, brief, to the point, telling her how sad she was to hear about Ellen. She heard nothing back. After that, there hadn’t been another opportunity. Not until the excuse of the eightieth birthday party had arrived.

  Images of Anna and Carrie came to mind now. Things weren’t as she’d expected with them. Anna wasn’t as snooty or as aloof as the imaginary Anna she had been carrying in her mind all these years. And Carrie wasn’t as smug or self-satisfied as she’d expected either. In fact, they both seemed … what? Bett wondered. Normal? Familiar? Even a little troubled?

  The phone rang, making her jump. She ran out to the reception desk. “Valley View Motel. Can I help you?”

  “What are you doing, darling?” It was Lola.

  “Looking over the songs,” Bett improvised. “Where are you?”

  “In my room. I could see you staring out the function room window, and I wondered if you needed any help.”

  “No, I’m fine. I’m finished for today, I think. I know enough for the auditions tomorrow anyway.”

  “Good girl. Come and talk to me, would you? And would you bring the outfit you’re going to wear to work tomorrow and let me have a look at it?”

  Bett laughed. “Lola, that’s very sweet of you but it’s a part-time job, not my first day at school.”

  “I know. But first impressions can count. You want to be feeling good when you go in there, meeting people you haven’t seen for a few years.”

  “I saw Rebecca last week.”

  “Indulge me, darling.”

  Ten minutes later she was in Lola’s room, carrying what she’d chosen to wear to the newspaper office in the morning. It was a vintage skirt, dark-red silk, which she planned to wear with a simple white shirt. Her shoes were good. Italian leather, stylish but still very comfortable.

  Lola put her head to one side and looked for a moment like a bright-eyed bird. “Just about exactly right, I think. You have learned something while you’ve been away. Earrings?”

  Bett held up the pair she planned to wear. They were also dark red, made from old glass beads. She’d found them at a Dublin market stall.

  “Very nice. More to the point, how do you feel in the whole outfit?”

  “Good, I think.”

  “That’s more important. And remember you are Bett who is thirty-two, who has been living in Dublin and London, who has eaten an oyster and gone to the theater on her own, among many other brave things. Remember all that tomorrow.”

  Bett smiled. “Why? Is someone planning on springing This Is Your Life on me?”

  “I just want you to feel good about yourself, no matter what happens, no matter who you meet.”

  Bett softened. Lola knew there would be people at the office from three years ago when the whole business with Carrie and Matthew had blown up. “Why do you do it, Lola?”

  “Do what?”

  “Put up with us. All of us. How can you be bothered?”

  “Because I love you. And because I love making you do as I tell you. So you’ll keep the chin up tomorrow, no matter what? Promise me?”

  “I promise you.”

  Lola gave a contented sigh and lay back on her bed. “I never thought I’d say it but one of the bonuses of being an elderly decrepit old bag of bones like I am is that no one pays any attention to the way you look. You’re just some old woman, not some thin woman or fat woman or ugly woman or beautiful woman. You’re just old.”

  “And does that bother you?” Bett asked as she returned her skirt to the hanger. “Do you miss things about being young?”

  “Of course, but I can’t change it. I am old. On my last legs, probably, the clock ticking away as we speak.”

  “Stop that, you old ghoul.” Bett sat down beside Lola on the bed. It was always a treat to have her to herself. “Do you ever think about it, though, Lola? Are you scared of dying?”

  “Why? Are you about to try to kill me?”

  “No, not tonight. I like you tonight. But do you think about it?”

  “Of course I do. Most people do. That’s why you have to try to fill up each day as much as you can, in case it’s your last day.”

  “But if you truly lived life like that, you’d never go to work, would you? Or wash dishes. Or sweep floors. Because you wouldn’t want to spend your last day on earth doing boring things like that.”

  “Exactly. Which is why I don’t let a day go past without having a gin and tonic. No point rationing it out, in case the day I choose not to have one is the day I die. And think how much work I’ll save the embalmer, from all the gin I’ve consumed over the years. I’m sure I’m half embalmed as it is.”

  “You are getting more appalling every year.”

  Lola gave a happy smile. “Yes, I know.”

  Bett picked up Lola’s left hand and started moving her wedding ring around, the way she had done since she was a little girl and she and Lola were talking like this. She knew every twist of gold. “Do you still miss Edward, Lola?”

  “He’s been gone sixty years, Bett. You get used to anything after that length of time.”

  “What was he like? What were the two of you like together?”

  “Why are you interested so suddenly?”

  Bett put down Lola’s hand and smoothed the bedcover, idly noting a tiny cigarette burn on one corner. Guests always did ignore the sign about no smoking in bed. “I was thinking about it last night. That we have been coming to you for years with every detail about every little aspect of our lives, moaning and groaning, and maybe it’s your turn to talk, and ours to listen. I was thinking about your slide show, those photos you had of Ireland and the early days. I want you to know that if you feel like reminiscing about those days, about Edward, what it was like when you and Dad started running the guesthouses and all of that, or if there is anything else you want to talk about, I’m here, okay?”

  Lola burst out laughing. She reached up to touch the curly head beside her. “Darling, thank you very much. If anything comes up I’ll be sure to call you.”

  “I mean it, Lola.”

  “And I do, too.”

  In the kitchen of her house, Carrie glanced up at the clock. Nearly ten o’clock. He should be here any moment. She checked her appearance again, smoothed down her dress, straightened the knives and forks on the table. She was nervous, she realized. Of her own husband.

  Of her estranged husband, to be accurate.

  She went out onto the veranda. The paddocks all around the house were dark for as far as she could see. In the daytime she liked the peace and quiet. In the nighttime, without Matthew, it gave her the creeps. She jumped at the sound of a bird in the gum trees behind the house, then jumped again at a rustle in the agapanthus lining the driveway. It was a hot evening, but she still shivered.

  She longed for a return of the days when the very sight of the house would give her a lift. She and Matthew had spent months searching for their ideal home. They had agreed on everything—they wanted an old-style, stone house, with a full return veranda, preferably with open fireplaces for those cold Clare winter nights. They wanted just a small block of land, perhaps an acre or two. Ideally, they would find a house that already had the major renovations done—all the plumbing and r
ewiring. And they wanted at least three bedrooms.

  “Four,” she’d said.

  “You want three children?” he’d laughed.

  “At least,” she’d said airily. “And as soon as possible.”

  “Not too soon.”

  She should have picked up the hints then, shouldn’t she? But no, she’d chosen to ignore him, to go on making plans, picking out nursery colors, before they even had a nursery, let alone a baby.…

  They’d found this house by accident. One weekend Matthew had collected her from the motel after work, and for a change they’d gone for a drive rather than heading back to the small unit they were renting. They’d taken one of the dirt roads just to the south of the town, winding up between the vineyards. And there it had been. A hand-painted FOR SALE sign at the end of a track leading up to an old stone house. They’d driven straight up and found the owners inside—a pair of middle-aged hippies, there was no other way to describe them. They’d been living in the Valley for the past two years but had decided to head north to the tropical heat and rainforests of Queensland. They hadn’t listed the house with any real estate agents, preferring to let the buyer find them, they’d earnestly explained. Matthew and Carrie had been squeezing each other’s hands underneath the table. The house had almost everything they had been looking for—the original stone work, the veranda, the slate floors. It had been rewired, and the plumbing was in reasonable condition. The main problem had been the colors the walls had been painted, tangerine and purple, swirls of this and that. “I think they studied at the Marijuana School of Interior Decoration,” Matthew had whispered as they toured around. But it hadn’t put them off. They’d made an offer the next day. Two months later they’d moved in.

  Carrie forced herself to stay outside now, leaning against the veranda post she’d painted herself, waiting for the sound of his car. He’d been surprised at her call that afternoon, she knew that. No wonder, considering what she had shouted at him last time they had spoken, several weeks ago now. “It’s over, Matthew. We’re finished. Can’t you see that?”