Sister

by A. Manette Ansay

  I sit up. I’m shaking so hard the bed shakes too.

  “I’m sorry,” she says. “I couldn’t sleep. I just wanted to look in on the baby.”

  “It’s OK,” I manage to say. The tree branch thumps the side of the house.

  She sits on the bed. “Listen to the wind. I hope the weather’s good for tomorrow.”

  “Could you pass me that water?” I say, and I take the glass, drink, water dribbling down my chin.

  “I must have really frightened you,” she says. “I’m so sorry.”

  “I’m all right.”

  “He’s such a beautiful baby,” she says. “he looks a lot like Adam, don’t you think?”

  “Sometimes.”

  She pats my hand. “Go back to sleep. I’ll see you in the morning.”

  But in the morning, I find a note in the kitchen; my mother has gone in to her office for a couple of hours. I fix myself toast and eat it, wandering from room to room with Joe balanced on my hip. I’s an overcast, windy day, and the house seems smaller, darker than I remember it. In the living room, I notice my mother has pulled the blanket off the piano, opened the cover to reveal the keys. Sly move, I think, but I finish my toast and sit down at the bench. My left hand is occupied with Joe; I attempt a C-major arpeggio with my right. I miss. Joe stiffens at the dissonant sound. I get his blanket from the kitchen, spread it out for him on the floor. He kicks happily and I go back to the piano, try the arpeggio again. I execute a chromatic scale. I feel my way through the beginning of a Chopin Prelude. Suddenly it’s almost noon, and my mother is standing in the doorway, listening.

  “That’s how you always were,” she says. “The world could have fallen down around you, and you wouldn’t even have noticed.”

  “How was work?” I say, trying to change the subject.

  “Busy,” she says. “Cindy Pace will be at the service.”

  “That’s nice.”

  “Look how the baby’s listening,” my mother says. And it’s true: Joe is wide-eyed, jerking the way he does when he’s excited. “Maybe he’s got your good ear.”

  “Or Sam’s,” I say, surprising myself.

  My mother sighs. “It doesn’t make any difference now to think of everything I’d do differently. But I wish I’d stood up to your father more when it came to Sam’s interest in things like this.” She lifts Joe into her arms, brushes her lips against the top of his head. “You could always escape if you had to. But Sam had nowhere to go.”

  “Neither did you.”

  “I had my work,” she says. Then, correcting herself, “Have it. And my faith, of course. That’s a comfort.” She hands Joe to me before I can say anything. “We better get ready for the service.”

  “Mom,” I say. “I’ve been thinking. Maybe I’d like the piano after all.”

  She looks at me curiously. “Really?”

  “Don’t give me a chance to change my mind.”

  “You know, I almost broke down and gave it away last year.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “I told you,” she says. “I promised your grandmother I’d keep it for you.”

  Sam will be buried at Saint Ignatius Cemetery; the service is set for two o’clock. Harv is driving down from his parish in Peshtigo to perform the ceremony. My mother and I arrive hopelessly early, but Auntie Thil is already there. She hugs me long and hard, exclaims over Joe, helps me negotiate him into his harness. The sky promises rain, and I button my jacket around us both. “It must feel strange to be back,” Auntie Thil says, but what’s strange is that it doesn’t. Looking past the stubble of the graves, I see the flat fields stretching mile after mile, and it occurs to me that this is the landscape of dreams, of nightmares in which you run as fast and as far as you can, only to discover you haven’t left the place you started from.

  “I sure hope the rain holds off,” my mother says as we start down the dirt service road that bisects the cemetery.

  “They had hail to the north,” Auntie Thil says.

  “That’s unusual for spring.”

  “Doesn’t it seem like the weather gets crazier every year?”

  “Along with the rest of the world.”

  They continue talking about the weather, seemingly oblivious to the gravestones all around us, and I remind myself that they come here all the time to tend the family plot. But when they stop to admire the wildflowers growing in the ditch, I walk on ahead. Already, I can see the new rectangular stone that belongs to Uncle Olaf. Auntie Thil’s name is etched beneath his, a blank space left for the date of her own death. And beside it is Sam’s wide-open grave, shadowed by a pile of rust-colored dirt. Coming closer, I see his coffin has already been lowered inside, white with gold trim, an other world star in that odd dirt sky. My eyes burn with sudden tears; I blink, look away. To the left are the spring flower beds around my aunts’ graves, and here is my grandfather’s plot, the only decoration a tiny American flag. My grandmother shares his headstone, of course, and I touch her name: Gretchen Anna Grussen, 1910-1994. I want to believe that she sees me, that she’s with Sam in the heaven she always described with absolute certainty. I wish her angels blowing trumpets, streets paved in gold. I wish her the faces of Mary and Elise, forever young and whole.

  Thunderheads hang on the horizon, and the light has that peculiar glassy quality that intensifies color, making the sky seem close enough to touch. When I look back down the service road, I see that my mother and Auntie Thil have started picking wild-flower bouquets. The irregular peaks of their conversation come to me on the damp gusts of wind. I wave, and they wave back, but they don’t make any move to join me. Other people are arriving now—mostly members of my mother’s prayer group, I suspect, plus a few people from A-1 Advertising. They carry umbrellas, glance nervously at the clouds. I recognize Cindy Pace; she smiles and nods to me, and I nod back. When I overhear one woman ask another, “So is Gordon going to be here?” I deliberately focus all my attention on Joe, making sure he’s warm enough, adjusting his harness. I’m not sure what my mother has told people; I don’t want to be the one they ask. My father wanted to come to the funeral, but he just isn’t able to travel anymore. Each year he grows more locked into routine, more terrified of crowds, sickness, disease. Yet, in a strange way, he’s grown closer to my mother and me. When we call, he picks up the phone, keeps us talking for hours. After Joe was born, I sent him a whole roll of pictures, and he actually wrote back, a letter filled with advice about electrical outlets and swallowed coins.

  When I look up again, Harv is walking briskly down the service road. He sees me and breaks into a clumsy run, his long robe tangling around his legs. “Careful,” I say as he bends down to hug me, and then I feel his body freeze, as he realizes the baby is between us.

  “Can I see?” he asks, and I unbutton my coat, trying to reveal as much of Joe’s face as I can. The bags beneath Harv’s eyes are the color of strong tea. I’ve heard from my mother how busy he has been, serving a combined parish of six hundred people, driving hundreds of miles each week throughout the rural townships north of Peshtigo.

  “My goodness, he’s a tiny thing,” Harv says, using the baby voice people adopt without even realizing it, and I love him for it. “How old is he?”

  “Three months, three weeks,” I say. “Mom was hoping he’d be born on Sam’s birthday, but he held out till the middle of January.”

  “Good for him,” Harv says. “It’s rotten to share a birthday.” He stares at me fondly, and I stare back. “So what’s it like?” he asks. “Having a baby, I mean. Being a parent and all that,” and I remember him asking me, long ago, So what is it like to lose your faith? His voice had been incredulous, almost reverent, eager for my answer. The way it is now.

  “It’s hard,” I say. “You never really know if you’re doing things right.”

  “Like serving God,” Harv says.

  “Not that bad,” I say. “Babies give you more concrete feedback.”

  But Harv doesn’t smile. “I envy
you,” he says. “I think I would have been good with kids. I sure would have been better at it than my dad was.”

  “Or mine,” I say.

  It’s almost two o’clock. Monica and Ray are walking toward us across the grass, towing children and assorted stuffed animals. “I guess I better let you mingle,” Harv says, and he kisses my cheek. “See you after the service, OK?” While he greets people, I intercept Monica, who introduces me to her boys, David and Donovan. Ray is carrying their third child, four-year-old Daisy, in his arms; she struggles to be put down. By now there are about two dozen people waiting by Sam’s grave, and when Harv takes his place beside it, everybody steps into a loose half-circle. Donovan asks me if he can hold Joe.

  “Later,” I tell him. “He’s sleeping now, OK?” The rush of disappointment sharpening his face makes me want to cry.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Monica tells me as Donovan hides against her hips. “He’s at that age when they take everything personally.”

  “And some never outgrow it, believe me,” says a woman standing with a teenage girl who has to be her daughter. The girl blushes, and I remember the exquisite embarrassment I felt at that age, pinned in the spotlight of this cruel, kindly laughter. My mother and Auntie Thil are finally coming to join us, and I desperately want them to hurry, I want this to be over, I can’t imagine waiting one moment longer. My mother has a handful of wild irises. She passes them to me; the stems are wet and pungent. I lift the flowers to my face, but the blossoms themselves have no scent.

  “Are you sure that baby’s warm enough?” Auntie Thil asks.

  “He’s fine.”

  “It’s a long day for such a small baby,” my mother says.

  “For kids too,” Auntie Thil says. David is hanging on Monica’s purse in the deliberate, dead-weight pose of a very bored child. Donovan has started to cry. Daisy has managed to slip off one shoe, and she stands, sock-footed, in the wet grass. “This isn’t going to work,” Ray says to Monica. “I’m taking them inside. We’ll meet you afterwards, OK?” She nods, wiping her hand across her forehead in an exaggerated gesture of relief, and he leads the children across the street toward the entrance to the church basement, where, already, volunteers from Ladies of the Altar have set up chairs, spread tables with paper tablecloths, counted scoops of Folgers into tall metal percolators.

  “It’s a long day for us all,” my mother says to no one in particular, and for the first time she looks down at Sam’s grave, at the bright white coffin, which I realize she must have chosen by herself. She removes her glasses, puts them back on. She frowns at the grass, frowns at the sky, fighting tears. Harv has been trying to catch her eye; now, at last, she looks at him, and he clears his throat, hushing us, begins. And still it doesn’t seem real, it doesn’t seem possible that Sam is really inside this clean white casket. Perhaps there’s been a mistake. Perhaps it’s somebody else inside, and the real Sam will reappear someday, as happy to see us as my mother always promised, eager to explain. Even now I want more answers than the concrete facts can offer. I want each door of my life to close behind me with a perfect, resonant click.

  I drop the irises into Sam’s grave and walk away from Harv’s words, passing between the rows of gravestones until I reach the edge of the fields. The long furrows are straight as an index finger, pointing at me, urgent, accusing. I lower myself down onto the damp grass and rock Joe to and fro. Gulls flutter like moths in the distance, fighting the wind, settling down to hunker close against the land. A white cat follows a fence line toward a secret distant point.

  After the service, we all walk over to the church and descend the echoing stairwell to the basement. The painted concrete floors have cracked from years of changing seasons. My mother and I stand at the base of the stairs, and a line of mourners forms around us. Suddenly I’m shaking hands with them all. They tell me that I’m looking like my mother. They ask if I still play the piano, and what’s my young one’s name? Joe wakes up, so I turn him around in his harness. People examine his hands, proclaim that he’s inherited my own long fingers.

  Eventually, everybody forms a new line in front of the percolators. They sweep my mother along with them, patting her shoulder, pressing her arm. Two long tables are laden with cakes and kuchens and tortes, as if these small, sweet things can somehow erase the bitter aftertaste of grief. Someone hands me a Hello Dolly, still warm from the pan, and when I bite into it obediently, I find that I am strangely comforted, a child slipped a lollipop after a fall. Licking my fingers, I take Joe over to the community playpen that’s been set up in the same corner since I was a little girl. Beside it there’s a new wicker stand for changing diapers, a sealed bucket marked WASTE, and a few battered toys in a cardboard box. I change him into one of the diapers I stuffed into my coat pocket before we left the house and powder him with cornstarch from a Ziploc Bag. There’s already one baby in the playpen, a little girl older than Joe. She chews on a pacifier, widens her eyes in a worried way when I lower him onto his back beside her. “Who’s your mother?” I say to her, wanting Joe to hear my voice and relax.

  “Jessica Blaunt,” Monica says, sitting down on the floor beside me. She balances a plate filled with brightly colored things: angel food cake with blue frosting, green finger Jell-O, fudge with rainbow sprinkles.

  “Jessica Blaunt?”

  “She used to be Jessica Hardy.”

  “Oh,” I say, but I don’t remember anyone by that name either.

  “So.” Monica tugs on one of Joe’s feet, then looks at me expectantly.

  “What?”

  “Inquiring minds want to know.”

  “Know what?”

  Monica rolls her eyes, then makes an exaggerated sign of the cross over Joe. “Are you going to baptize the little heathen or what?”

  “His parents are heathens,” I say, rubbing his firm, round stomach. “He comes from good heathen stock. Besides, Mom doesn’t care anymore. She hasn’t brought it up since they found Sam.”

  “She’s probably planning to baptize him herself. Or whisk him away to Father Van Dan on the sly, like my mom did with David. Didn’t you hear about that?”

  “No,” I say, scanning the room for my mother, but she’s out of earshot, helping Ray and Auntie Thil with the kids.

  “Well,” Monica says, lowering her voice, “Ray and me, we started going to this Bible church for a while, and when David was born, we decided we’d have him baptized at this big summer ceremony they have at the Waubedon River. My mom kept trying to talk us out of it, but then all of a sudden she seemed to accept it, and I thought it was great that she was respecting my beliefs. But things at the church started getting real intense—people speaking tongues, that kind of stuff—and we thought, no way, and came back to Saint Ignatius. It’s dull,” Monica says, “but at least you can understand what people are saying.” I laugh, and she laughs too. “Anyway, we called up Father Van Dan and asked if he would baptize David. What? he says. Once wasn’t good enough for you? And that’s when we find out that Mom took him to the church the first time she baby-sat.”

  “Well, my mom won’t be baby-sitting Joe,” I say.

  “You always did take this stuff too seriously,” Monica says. “You and Harv. Me, I’d just go ahead and do it. What’s the harm? Make your mother happy.”

  “It’s the principle of the thing.”

  “You and Harv,” she says again. “His principles get him in trouble, too. Did you know he got reprimanded by the archbishop? They say he’s too liberal, he should straighten out. He’s like you, he thinks women should be priests. He thinks gay people should get married”—she whispers the rest of her sentence—“and women should have a choice on abortion.”

  “What are you girls so hush-hush about?” my mother says, sitting down beside us. She has a plateful of food to share: more Hello Dollys, fruit cocktail torte, cookies, finger Jell-O. Her plaintive face says, Take this, and though I’m not hungry, I eat because I have to, because it would be wrong to say no. The
afternoon is passing, and now people are starting to leave. Harv touches Joe’s hair, hugs me goodbye; we both promise to be better about keeping in touch. Auntie Thil accepts a ride up the street from Monica and Ray. My mother and I wave them off before going back downstairs to help the volunteers clean up. We fold the paper tablecloths, wipe down the tables, sweep the vast expanse of floor, empty the percolators into the unisex toilet off the hall. When I return the trays and utensils to the kitchen, I see that nothing has changed here since I helped prepare and serve church suppers fifteen years ago. The trays are still kept on the shelving unit behind the door; the utensils go in the row of drawers along the sink. I feel as if I’ve become my own ghost, moving through the kitchen—bending, opening, stacking, straightening—trapped within this particular memory, destined to repeat myself forever.

  And then comes the awkward moment when every last thing has been cleaned and put away. The volunteers are tucked into their jackets. Joe senses the emptiness in the air and begins to fuss, a rasping, breathless sound. Still, my mother isn’t ready to go home. I walk him from one side of the basement to the other, while she chats too eagerly with the last volunteer, a woman in her early forties who listens and nods even as her feet take her backward, step by step, toward the stairwell. I offer Joe his pacifier; he spits it out so suddenly that it falls to the floor. “Shit,” I say beneath my breath, trying to pick it up without losing my balance, wishing I’d put him back in his harness so I wouldn’t have to worry about dropping him. Suddenly I’m missing Adam, who is strong enough to swing Joe high above his head, who will say, “Give me the baby,” at moments like these, when I’m not sure what to try next. I take Joe with me into the kitchen to wash off the pacifier, and the abrupt, familiar sound of running water temporarily calms him. This time, when I give him the pacifier, he takes it, keeps it, works his mouth over it. I am overwhelmed by an unreasonable sense of accomplishment. I do not want to leave this kitchen. I do not want to face my mother, to watch her return home yet again without my brother, this time without even a miracle to hope for. But when I come back out of the kitchen, she is standing in the middle of the concrete floor. Waiting. “Let’s go,” she says, briskly collecting her purse, her sweater. She wears her most private face.