The Language of Sisters: A Novel

by Amy Hatvany

“Could you try, please? I want to understand.” And I did want to. I thought if she could explain her feelings about having a daughter like Jenny, I might better understand what was happening with us now.

  Mom stared at the mantel above the fireplace. “I don’t regret having Jenny,” she began. “The only thing I regret … ” She trailed off and blinked away tears, then shook her dark head.

  Jenny sat quietly between us, looking off at some unknown point toward the kitchen entryway. I reached out a tentative hand over my sister’s lap, the tips of my fingers barely brushing our mother’s own in reassurance. I was desperate to hear what she might have to say. “What, Mom?”

  Her thin bottom lip trembled, and she lifted her chin to steady it. She turned to me, her face full of a pain I didn’t recognize, then finally spoke. “I regret not protecting her,” she said quickly, as though she couldn’t get the words out fast enough. Stunned, I opened my mouth to speak, but nothing came out.

  She stood up immediately, pinching the bridge of her nose. “I’ve got a terrible headache. I’m going to bed.”

  “But,” I began, reaching out to stop her from leaving. I had to know what she meant.

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” she said, jerking her body away from my reach. Talk about what? What hadn’t she protected Jenny from? The rape at Wellman? Dad’s angry fists? Or was my mother admitting she knew about what else he had done?

  “Good night,” she said resolutely, stepping purposefully past both her daughters. She strode down the hall to her room, slamming the door behind her, leaving me with more unanswered questions than I knew how to carry.

  • • •

  “Do you want to know the sex?” the technician inquired as she slowly rolled her instrument over my sister’s bare belly. Jenny lay stiffly on her back, hands clawed together nervously, unsure of what was happening to her. I had explained that we were going to see pictures of the baby in her tummy, to make sure it was healthy and happy, but as the technician helped me lay her down on the table in the darkened room, panic danced in Jenny’s eyes.

  I looked over to Dr. Fisher, who had what Nova said was the unusual policy of attending her high-risk patients’ ultrasounds. “What do you think?” I asked my sister, my hand gently stroking her dark hair back from her face. I looked into her eyes. “Should we find out if you’re having a girl or a boy?”

  Jenny’s gaze searched mine, and the word baby whispered through me. I smiled, a little surprised. Maybe she understood more than I thought. “I think we’d like to know.” I knew I wanted to.

  The technician maneuvered the wand over Jenny’s belly again. “I can’t give you a hundred-percent guarantee, but if you’ve bought any blue clothes you might want to return them. This baby is as girlie as she can be.”

  “See right there?” Dr. Fisher was pointing at the screen. “The golden arches, we call them. Labia.” She turned to the technician. “I can take it from here, Janet. Thank you.”

  After the technician left, Dr. Fisher helped me set Jenny upright and get her back into her wheelchair. My sister was groaning a bit, not unhappily so but simply emitting the low, constant sound I had begun to understand as her way of releasing stress.

  “So,” I said, “a girl. Is everything all right? Did she look normal?” The image on the screen had been only a blur of gray-and-black static to me, though seeing the fluttering heart sent tears to my eyes in the same manner hearing its beat had.

  “The baby looks fine,” Dr. Fisher said. “The only discrepancy is that the fetus is measuring at twenty-two weeks, and we’re pretty sure the pregnancy is at twenty-six weeks.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Just that she’s a little on the small side. We’ll keep an eye on it at our office visits.” She paused, considering something, then nodded to herself, as though she had made a decision. She turned her sharp brown eyes to me, probing. “You’re doing great with her, Nicole. How about with yourself?”

  “I’m fine,” I said, surprised by her show of concern. I wondered if I looked as worn-down as I felt. Then I laughed, thinking of Nova’s explanation of what the letters of “fine” stood for. I told the story to Dr. Fisher.

  “That sounds like Nova,” she said with an uncharacteristic grin. It lit up her entire face, and suddenly she appeared not only elegant, but very pretty. “I’ll have to teach it to my other patients.” She paused. “Have you called Social Services yet about placement for the baby?”

  Terrified she might ask me why I hadn’t taken care of this seemingly simple task, I lowered my head and shook it. “I can’t seem to pick up the phone.”

  “Are you considering keeping her?” Her tone revealed nothing of what she might think.

  Panic fluttered in my chest as I whispered my response. “Maybe.” I couldn’t believe the word as it passed over my lips, and yet there it’d been, waiting to be spoken.

  She seemed unfazed by this revelation. “Well, you have some time to decide.” She stood up and went to the door. “I’ll see you two next week, okay?”

  “Okay,” I said, trying to gather my rattled senses. “Um, thanks for coming, Dr. Fisher. I really appreciate it.”

  She waved in acknowledgment and then was gone. When Jenny and I were bundled into the car and I had started the drive home, something pulled me in a different direction, toward Nova’s house. We hadn’t seen her for a couple of days, and I was dying to tell someone who’d be as excited as I was about finding out Jenny was having a baby girl. I couldn’t believe the anticipatory thrill I felt in knowing. From the moment the technician had told us, my mind had been flooded with images of shopping for darling frilly, pink outfits and teensy-tiny black patent Mary Jane shoes. Visions of cradling this child in my arms overwhelmed me: nuzzling her the way Nova did with Layla; kissing her toes and the chubby rolls of her thighs; drinking in the sweet nectar of her breath. The strength and immediacy of these images shocked me; I had not had them before.

  I sighed, glanced over to Jenny, who was staring at me disconcertingly. “Your sister is losing it, Jen,” I told her. It wasn’t as if I would actually keep the baby, despite my shaky response to Dr. Fisher’s question. But as the knowing intensity of Jenny’s gaze moved over me, I shivered and returned my focus to the road ahead.

  The front door to Nova’s house was open, so after I managed to get Jenny up the stairs, I walked right inside, calling out for my friend. “Hello? It’s Nicole. Anybody home?” I heard a tittering explosion of laughter coming from the back bedroom as the door opened, and out stepped Garret, looking nothing like the man I had met the night of my first visit to Nova’s.

  He was bedecked in a pointed fairy hat, complete with a trailing pink veil. His lips were painted bright red to match the circles of rouge on his cheeks, and he wore a sweeping pink cape around his shoulders. He appeared a bit embarrassed when he saw me but still smiled, his lips greatly exaggerated by their makeup.

  “Hi,” he said. “I’ve been shanghaied into playing castle. Come on back.” The warm sound of his voice entered my bloodstream, and the temperate, early-summer air suddenly seemed unbearably hot.

  “Where’s Nova?” I inquired as I gently guided Jenny’s stilted steps down the hall to Rebecca’s bedroom. Lucy and Rebecca were also in costume, jumping on Rebecca’s bed and giggling ferociously.

  “She took the boys and Layla to the beach, so I’m watching the girls.” He swished his cape dramatically around his body. “Do you like my outfit? Lucy picked it out herself.”

  “Oh, it’s gorgeous,” I said, amused by his silliness. I backed Jenny up, carefully lowering her onto the cushions of the window seat.

  Garret moved toward us. “Here, let me help you.” He grabbed a couple of pillows from the bed and set them around Jenny, who was staring at his garish appearance with amazement. “How about you, Jenny? Do you like my outfit?”

  Jenny blinked deliberately, turning her head away in a coy movement, a delicious smile lighting up her face. Garret sat down next to
her, putting the cape between her fingers. “Here, feel. Isn’t it silky?”

  Lucy jumped off the bed and hopped over to her father. Her smooth cap of dark hair bounced haphazardly, a crooked rhinestone tiara nestled on the top of her head. She wore a long-sleeved lavender leotard with a bright orange, netted tutu. She patted Jenny’s other hand. “Hi, little girl. Do you want to play castle?” She paused, then looked at me, the green in her hazel eyes bright. “She says yes. Can I dress her up?”

  I stood back, shaking my head in amazement at this eloquent child. “Sure.”

  Garret retrieved the plastic makeup compact Lucy held in her little fingers. “Let Daddy help you, peanut. Why don’t you go find Jenny a hat?”

  “I’ll do it!” Rebecca cried out, and she and Lucy raced out the door and down the back stairs to the basement.

  “The costume trunk is downstairs in the playroom,” Garret said by way of explanation for their journey.

  “I see.” I smiled, then paused, unsure what to say next. I finally settled on a compliment. “You seem so comfortable with Jenny. Have you been around other handicapped people?”

  He nodded. “A kid in my neighborhood, growing up … ” He trailed off, remembering.

  There was a slight pause, neither of us knowing exactly what to say. Once again, I picked a compliment. “Lucy’s a great little girl.”

  “Thanks. She is pretty amazing. I can’t believe sometimes that I helped make her. That she came from me, you know?”

  “That must be amazing. I don’t have kids, so I guess I can’t know exactly how it feels, but I think you’re doing a great job with her.”

  His smile was slow as he pulled the fairy hat off his dark head. “And I think what you’re doing for your sister is great. Nova told me about your situation. I hope you don’t mind.”

  I shook my head. “Of course not. She told me a bit about yours, as well.”

  “So you asked about me, too, then?” he inquired, a flicker of something terribly exciting in his eyes. Something I hadn’t seen in a man’s eyes for a very long time. I flushed, crossed my arms over my chest, and looked down to the floor.

  “Well, yeah. I guess I did. Lucy was just so sweet … ”

  “Oh, so it was Lucy you were curious about?” He was teasing me, and I couldn’t believe how much I liked it. I switched to a safer subject.

  “So, Nova said you own a restaurant on Alki?”

  “Um-hmm. The Beach Basket.”

  “I’m a baker down in San Francisco. What kind of menu do you offer?”

  “It’s pretty eclectic. Seafood, pasta, sandwiches, salads. You name it, we’ve probably served it. We keep the entrées as healthy as possible, but I’m kind of a traditionalist when it comes to dessert. The more butter and cream you can stuff into a recipe, the better.”

  “I agree. Do you have a pastry chef?”

  “Are you asking me for a job?”

  “Are you always such a tease?” I countered, my stomach fluttering.

  “Most of the time. Do you like it?”

  “Some of the time.”

  He laughed. “You are Nova’s friend, aren’t you? Cut from the same fabric, I’d say.”

  “What kind of fabric is that?”

  “Intricately woven.” He directed his light brown eyes at me before finishing. “Beautiful.”

  Color rose to my face again, but fortunately the girls returned with Jenny’s costume and saved me from making a complete idiot of myself by weeping in gratitude at the compliment. I could not remember the last time Shane had told me I was beautiful when we weren’t about to have sex.

  I watched Garret as he used the tips of his fingers to gently apply blush to my sister’s pale cheeks and then adjust the purple jester’s hat the girls had brought for her to wear. Jenny gazed at him with a smile in her eyes, happily patting her fingers together as the girls danced around her and pretended to laugh at the jokes my sister was supposedly telling them. When Garret jumped up to dance around with them, waving his arms and legs like a goof, the girls dissolved into puddles of laughter on the floor. I giggled along with them, the relief I felt washing over me like a river.

  I tried to imagine Shane there, softly touching my sister’s cheek and dancing with abandon to entertain her, but I could not. Shane would be the man standing in the corner, arms crossed over his chest, looking upon Garret with amused disdain for so joyfully acting the fool. A month ago, I might have done the same. But there I stood, not quite believing the ease I felt with this man I barely knew. I had never met someone so sure of himself without it coming across as arrogance.

  Later, when Garret and Lucy had gone home and Nova sat with Jenny and me in her living room, I asked about him again. “Is he really that great, or is there some dark side I don’t know about?”

  “I know he’s a perfectionist when it comes to the restaurant, and boy howdy, the man can be stubborn when he thinks he’s right about something, but other than that I think what you see is what you get.” She twisted her soft body toward mine on the couch. “What are you thinking?”

  “I don’t know, exactly. It’s not like I need another complication in my life right now, but man, he’s a hard one to ignore.” I clapped my hands to the sides of my head. “I can’t believe I’m even thinking about this. I love Shane. I want to work it out with him. My life is with him.” Dropping my hands to my lap, I tried to mask my uncertainty with false-sounding conviction.

  “Your life is with you,” Nova said. “Whether you choose to live it with Shane is an option, not a requirement.”

  Slightly annoyed that once again she had insinuated my relationship with Shane might not work out, I wasn’t sure how to respond. I decided humor was my best defense. “That’s good advice,” I said teasingly. “Are you sure you aren’t the therapist?”

  “Yep. I just watch a lot of Oprah.”

  “What would Oprah say I should do?”

  “Pray, girlfriend. Oprah’d tell you to pray.”

  • • •

  Jenny was awake most of the night following her ultrasound; after getting up with her for the fifth time, I wondered if she, too, was excited about the news of her baby’s sex. When she finally drifted off into a deep sleep, around six a.m., I found that I couldn’t do the same, so I dressed and went into the kitchen to make a pot of coffee.

  After setting it to brew, I stepped into the living room and discovered that my mother was already awake. With the aid of the pale pink light of dawn that flowed through the front windows, I could see that dark circles bruised the soft flesh beneath her bloodshot eyes; her skin was taut and paler than usual. Her bare feet were tucked under her on the couch, and a full ashtray rested on the side table, evidence that she had been there awhile.

  Since her startling disclosure the other evening that she regretted not protecting Jenny, our interactions had been minimal. I was attempting to give her whatever space she might need in order to open up to me again, but it irked me to think that the tiny steps we had taken toward actually communicating might have been completely erased.

  I walked in quietly through the entryway from the kitchen, sitting down in the recliner across the room from her. She glanced at me briefly, green eyes exhausted as she took a final drag before snuffing her cigarette out.

  “Sorry,” she said shortly, referring to her smoking. After I’d found her in the kitchen that first night Jenny had cried, she had promised that she’d keep her habit outside, in consideration of Jenny’s baby.

  “It’s okay,” I said, pulling a rainbow-hued afghan from the back of my chair to cover my legs. It was already the first week of July, but the early mornings still felt chilly to my California-set internal thermometer. I looked at my mother and thought of what Nova had suggested, that I should try to see our situation as I would a client’s. What would I say to my mother if she had come to me for help? I started slowly. “You couldn’t sleep?”

  Mom shook her head and jutted her chin in the general direction of Jenny’s room. E
arplugs or not, she had obviously been distressed by her younger daughter’s cries. I wondered why, then, she couldn’t bring herself to come and comfort Jenny. She pulled her knees up to her chin and wrapped her arms around her shins, turning her gaze out the window to the gold-rimmed, puffy white clouds that served as buffer to the bright morning sun. I recognized this classic defensive position and realized how vulnerable my mother must be feeling. Maybe my training hadn’t been a waste, after all. “Jenny had an ultrasound yesterday,” I revealed. “She’s having a girl.”

  Mom’s expression brightened momentarily, her color perking up, but then it faded again without so much as a word. Her eyes looked glazed and distant; it struck me that she might be seriously depressed. “Is something bothering you?” I asked her carefully. “Do you want to talk?”

  In response to this question she stood up abruptly, grabbing the ashtray and looking at me warily. Her dark bob hung limp and tangled around her face. “No, Nicole, I don’t. I want to get ready for work.” She sounded as though this were the last thing she actually felt like doing.

  I sighed in defeat as she brushed past me down the hall to her bedroom. I pushed the recliner back so that I might rest a little before Jenny decided to wake for the day. As the water began to rumble through the pipes for Mom’s shower, I closed my tired eyes and considered the brief interaction that had just occurred. At least I knew I was right to quit practicing therapy. If I couldn’t get my own mother to open up to me, how could I have ever expected to get a complete stranger to?

  I curled up under the afghan, pulling it to my chin and holding it there with two tightly clenched fists. Maybe it was time to face the ugly truth that my mother and I might never heal the wounds between us, that I’d simply help Jenny through the pregnancy on my own, find placement for both her and the baby, then return to my life in San Francisco.

  If it was a life worth returning to, I thought sadly, opening my eyes as the sun’s long fingers touched my face. If it was a life I wanted to live at all.