My Sister

by Michelle Adams

  ‘This OK?’ he asks as he pulls the keys from the ignition.

  ‘Yes,’ I say, and he nods his head, pleased with himself.

  We go inside, my hip not doing at all well with the steps after all the exercising. The smell of beer and wine floats past me, mixed with a lavender-scented wood polish. There is an acoustic mix on the stereo playing well-known rock songs: a woman singing ‘Losing My Religion’, followed by a poor rendition of U2’s ‘One’. Matt orders the drinks while I stake out a table and stretch out my left leg. He returns with two large glasses of straw-coloured wine and pulls out his chair. Before we have even exchanged a word, half of my wine has gone.

  ‘Needed that.’ I try to speak lightly, as if this whole situation is normal. To be here with a stranger at the best of times would be tough – I’m not really one for small talk – but today, on Sisters’ Day, it somehow seems even worse. I’m disappointed at how I allowed myself to believe that it might have been different, that maybe I would have spent the day with Elle talking about something worthwhile. That maybe by the end of it I would have been left with the truth.

  Matt eyes up my glass and the remaining wine. After a moment he picks up his own and gulps it back in an effort to catch up. ‘So, tell me. How come I never knew that Elle had a sister?’ He has a cheeky smile; he is confident that this is a safe subject between two strangers. I consider truth or lie, but realise that if I admit anything less than the truth, Elle will call me out on it later and I’ll look stupid.

  ‘Because she doesn’t, not really.’ He scrunches up his eyes, confused, and a deep line forms between his eyebrows. He says nothing, waiting for me to clarify, knowing that the safety net he thought he was in just fell apart. ‘We didn’t grow up together.’

  He appears relieved, nods along, all-knowing. ‘Divorce is hard. My parents too. Weekends with Dad, one holiday a year.’ He shakes his head like the part-time-parent memories are as bad as he could possibly imagine. He’s trying so hard to empathise with me, sharing the tough moments of his past. I could almost feel sorry for him, if it wasn’t all so ordinary. But I know that isn’t the whole story. People always keep something back. He leans in a little and the scent of his shampoo drifts across the table, a familiar smell. White Musk, the smell of my teenage years; it was what Elle used to steal for me to cover up the smell of cigarettes. ‘I wouldn’t choose it for my kids,’ he continues, ‘and I’ll never get divorced. No matter how hard it gets.’ He sips at the little bit of wine he has left. ‘That’s if I ever get married and have kids,’ he adds as an afterthought, and for a moment, just in the way his eye twitches, he seems terribly sad.

  ‘Actually, that’s not it. She lived with our parents. I didn’t. Our parents never got divorced. I lived with other family members from the time I was three years old.’ It feels good to hear it aloud. I think of all the times Antonio has told me that I will feel better once I get it off my chest, and see now that perhaps he was on to something.

  ‘Oh. That must have been hard.’ Matt is kind of lost, stumbling about in the dark, fiddling with the menu card on the table. But I can see there is fight there, a determination that all is not lost. He is wondering how he can still pull this back and make the next few hours bearable. ‘Siblings are really everything, though. I have a sister. Love her to bits.’ He rocks his head to the side, left and right as if his neck is a weighing scale. ‘My parents, not so much. They didn’t make the best choices. But me and my sister stuck together. Don’t know what I would have done without her.’ He smiles, I smile. We’re both smiling, and bizarrely, in spite of everything, I don’t feel so bad. But there are other memories buried in there that he hasn’t shared yet. I know that look, trying hard not to reveal so much of yourself that you scare people away. I like him even more because of the things he might be keeping hidden.

  ‘Maybe we should call Elle,’ I say, wanting to let him off the hook, change the subject. ‘Do you have her number?’

  He looks confused. ‘Don’t you have it?’

  ‘No, my phone is broken.’ I pull it out of my jacket pocket and show him, as if I need to prove myself.

  ‘Looks nasty,’ he says, tracing a finger over the cracked screen.

  ‘Can I use yours?’

  He passes it over. I sit with it in my hand. He directs his attention to my phone, wondering if it is salvageable. He is a fixer, just like Antonio. But after a moment he looks up, realises that I don’t know the number. I think maybe that’s not so weird. After all, who remembers telephone numbers nowadays?

  ‘Check the phonebook,’ he says. ‘I have her number stored in there.’

  I scroll the names, make the call without saying a word. When nobody answers, I slide his phone back over the table, avoiding the beer rings that have been left by a previous occupant. ‘Obviously still busy.’ I raise my eyebrows, realising again that he finds me funny. I smile, without trying, the realisation of which makes me smile more.

  ‘Let’s get another drink,’ I say as I swill the last of my wine down. Matt nods, jumps to his feet as if what I said was an instruction. He returns with two fresh glasses, and I see how the first has already touched him, wobbling down the steps from the bar, the whites of his eyes pink and glassy.

  ‘I think we should get something to eat, too,’ he announces, and I nod in agreement. He quickly settles on a steak with chips. I order a heavy pasta dish in the hope that it will be enough for the rest of the day so that I won’t have to suffer another meal in the dining room at the house. Until the food arrives we chat about the weather and how it has been a mild summer. He tells me about his work, even though I don’t ask, and it turns out he is a successful investment banker. He works with Greg, who I learn has a bit of a thing going with Elle. The food arrives, and he digs into his before I have even picked up my knife and fork.

  ‘So tell me more about you,’ I say, wondering if it sounds like I am flirting. He slices through the steak, takes a chunk of it in his mouth.

  ‘What do you want to know?’

  ‘Tell me more about your family.’

  He finishes swallowing, takes a sip of his wine. ‘Well, I don’t remember my parents together all that much. Dad was a good guy, but they couldn’t make it work. He claims that she was difficult and controlling; she claims the same. Said he was a womaniser.’ He shrugs his shoulders and gulps down more wine. Now I realise why he seems like such a good person. He doesn’t want to be like his father. Perhaps. ‘They are both great people, but not when they’re together. Like I said, they made some bad choices.’

  ‘What kind of bad choices?’

  He sets down his knife and fork, aligns them on his plate. He’s thinking about telling me, but something holds him back. I want to tell him that I won’t judge him. That I know what a shitty childhood feels like, and that I’ll understand. That was something Antonio could never fathom. But I keep quiet, and end up feeling guilty for having asked.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I say after the long silence, my cheeks flushing. ‘That was nosy. You don’t have to tell me anything.’

  ‘No, no,’ he says, flying into action. ‘It’s OK. It’s just, well, I’m always worried how it sounds.’ He allows himself a brief glance out of the window for courage before turning back to me. ‘I didn’t take their divorce all that well. Went a little out of control. I had to spend some time with a therapist. In a clinic.’

  I answer quickly so that he doesn’t have a chance to wonder if I’m uncomfortable. ‘Maybe that was one of their good choices. For you to get well.’

  His head drops before he turns away, gazing out of the window. He doesn’t offer anything more and instead fills his mouth with food.

  I change the subject. ‘So what about Elle? Have you known her for a long time?’ It is a risk, because in some ways I don’t want to know things about her. I know so much about her already, terrible things I wish I didn’t. Yet I can’t help myself, because there are whole years that passed by when we were apart.

  ‘A while.
A year maybe. I met her at a charity fund-raiser.’ He stops when I nearly spray him with wine, bringing my hand up to catch the drips that escape through my surprise. Charity? Elle? ‘You OK?’ he asks. When he is sure I am not about to choke, he continues. ‘It was about a year ago. A kid at the gym got cancer and needed to go to the States for treatment. Had some rare type of bone cancer.’

  ‘How old was he?’

  ‘I’m not sure.’ He shrugs. ‘Not more than eighteen, nineteen.’

  ‘Probably Ewing’s sarcoma.’ I might only put people to sleep for a living now, but there was a time when my knowledge was good.

  ‘That was it. I remember now. How do you know about that?’

  That’s when I realise I have given away another snippet from my life. No turning back now, I think, on this road of truth. ‘I’m a doctor.’

  ‘Oh,’ he says, glancing at the dodgy FEEL jumper and two near-empty wine glasses. For the first time, I feel judged. But there is no point in being angry about it. After all, he knows Elle, and that we share the same blood. ‘I didn’t realise. I thought—’

  ‘That I was like Elle?’ I finish on his behalf. ‘A bit empty?’ We both smile and I shake my head. ‘No. I am nothing like her,’ I say, aware that I don’t really believe that is true. We are alike, both craving the attention of those who make us feel good.

  ‘Anyway, that’s where I met her. She was heading up a cake stall of things she had made.’ That I doubt, remembering the cook and her salty eggs. I can imagine Elle standing over the woman in the kitchen, demanding and shouting out her orders. ‘Greg started fussing over her, had fancied her for ages. You know, it’s easy to be drawn in by Elle at first. She’s a bonnie wee lass.’

  ‘Yes, she is very pretty,’ I admit.

  ‘But it doesn’t take long to realise that there is more to her than that. And I don’t mean that in a good way. Oh!’ He palms at his face in despair. ‘I shouldn’t have said that. Being rude about your sister, yeah, way to go, Matt.’ He gives himself a sarcastic little cheer, raising his fists like he is a self-appointed champion jackass. I realise he is trying to impress me, and that I like it. ‘Anyway, she was cold for a long time with him. But that just drove him on. Then they started hanging out.’ He hangs his head, nibbles on an otherwise well-manicured thumb as if he is embarrassed to continue.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Your sister. She is kind of . . .’

  ‘Weird?’

  He shifts a bit, trying to get comfortable in his seat, before relenting. ‘Yeah, but also kind of scary. She sleeps around with people at the gym, runs hot one minute, cold the next. Drives like a total maniac. But Greg is an idiot, and he thinks there’s something between them. He is a total slut too, though. Oh, hang on, I didn’t mean that she is.’

  ‘Yes you did. It’s OK.’

  ‘It’s not just Greg that she has a thing with, you see. There are others, too.’

  ‘Yeah, I figured that out for myself.’

  He moves in close, leaning over the table to share a secret. He beckons me forward. ‘She had a thing with this other guy. He doesn’t go to the gym any more. They had a one-night stand, but it turned out that the guy had a girlfriend who also used to go to the gym. When it came out about his fling with Elle, it all kicked off.’

  ‘You mean his girlfriend found out and went crazy?’

  He leans in closer, his voice dropping to a whisper. ‘No. Elle went crazy. She kicked off with the girlfriend. Said he was hers and that she wouldn’t share. She ripped out a chunk of the girl’s hair.’ He pulls at his own hair and I imagine the poor girl defeated, lying on a yoga mat with the clump of hair on the floor at her side. But I can’t say I’m surprised. If I was prepared to consider whether Elle might have been responsible for our mother’s death, picking a fight with an unsuspecting girlfriend seems pretty mild. Her words from the day I ran from her ring in my head. I’ll fucking stick you with this, I promise you. I’ll fucking slaughter you if you go near him again. It was a moment when I had never needed her more, and when I had never needed more to get away. Attacking a girl at the gym doesn’t even register on Elle’s scale. ‘I warned Greg, but he said he knew she was crazy. That the crazy ones are the best.’

  ‘Well, I don’t know Elle all that well,’ I lie, ‘but I have always known she had problems.’

  He seems troubled by my lack of surprise. ‘So why do you still see her?’

  ‘I don’t. In fact I avoid her for this very reason. But our mother died a couple of days ago.’ He is visibly shocked, all slack-jawed and slit-eyed. He sits upright in his seat as if I have just told him the moon is orange and the sun is white. That, or somebody shoved a stick up his backside. ‘I came for the funeral.’

  ‘She just died?’

  ‘Yes.’ I can see his mind working overtime, trying to figure something out, like I have just put forth a convincing argument about the world being flat. ‘What? You look surprised.’

  ‘I am. Elle told me that her parents died years ago. In fact, now I come to think of it,’ he says, his cheeks flushing as he scratches at the back of his head, ‘she told me that her sister had died too.’

  There is silence for a while. I shake my head and know that he wishes he could take back what he has just said. ‘She’s a liar. Our mother died a few days ago. My father is still alive, and so am I.’

  He is grateful for my stoicism, grips on to it in order to help us move forward. ‘I’m sorry for your loss.’ He reaches over, touches my hand.

  ‘Thanks, but since I came here I’m struggling to see what it is that I have lost. I always hoped that one day I would return to my family home and find a family. At least find out why I was given away. But I’m not sure there was anything left for me to find. According to you, my sister labelled me as dead a few years back. And as far as my parents are concerned, I’ve been dead to them for even longer. Since I was three years old. Even now my father has hardly spoken to me.’ I nibble at my lip, and then at my already sore thumb. My hip starts to throb and I reach down, try to rub some heat into it. ‘They gave me nothing to lose,’ I say, pulling my hand away from his.

  ‘Don’t say that,’ he says, reaching further across, his fingers brushing against my forearm. ‘They gave you lots. That face, for one.’ He is smiling, really trying to make it all right. Like he just ripped my past away from me and is now responsible for giving it back.

  ‘Matt, they gave me away and kept Elle. I was never wanted by them, and I never will be.’ I pull my arm away again, link my fingers together and rest my chin on my hands. ‘Other than the truth about why they rejected me, I want nothing from them, or anybody else.’

  He tries not to look hurt as he returns his hand to his lap. ‘That can’t be true.’

  ‘Why not?’ I ask, my chin cocked forward like I’m ready for a fist fight.

  ‘Because we are our parents, Irini. We are what they make us, either by their presence or through their absence. Has a day gone by that you haven’t thought about them? I bet not. And when they die, there is a part of us that dies with them whether we spent our lives together or not. They take part of us back, the bit that always belonged to them and that we never realised was theirs to keep. When it’s gone, it leaves a space in us. It’s all right to be hurt by that, but you can’t deny it.’

  ‘That’s rubbish. They already created enough space in my life. Their death won’t change anything.’ As soon as I have said it, I want to take it back. It leaves me sounding needy, spiteful, hurt. I don’t want to be any of those things, and I suddenly wish Elle was here, just like all those times before when I have wished she was still around to make me feel wanted. ‘I just mean that nothing can change the past. They didn’t want me. It’s simple.’

  And then he says something that changes everything, like a light switch illuminating the darkest corners of my life. An eye suddenly open. Awake. ‘But for three years they did want you. They kept you, loved you, no doubt.’

  I think of my father’s face t
his morning, unable to look at me, ashamed. It might be the first time that I see there is another version of events apart from the one I have created. In my version of my life it was always about me and what I have lost. I never considered anybody else in this sad little story. I never assumed they didn’t have a choice. I never considered that maybe they had lost me just like I had lost them.

  ‘If I was you,’ Matt continues, ‘I wouldn’t be asking why they didn’t want me. I would be asking what happened to make them believe that after three years of being your parents, they couldn’t do it any more.’

  10

  When I was eight years old, Aunt Jemima decided to take me to Kiddiwinks, a parent/child club. She had been going there with her children for the last three years, but they had never taken me before. So it was a big day for us. For me. Out with the family instead of home with a sitter. They told me I was to behave. I was to be a good little girl and act like they had taught me. I wasn’t to cause trouble. That’s what adults tell kids who have a tendency to misbehave. And I had a tendency.

  That was what Miss McKenna had said at the parents’ evening the week before. The new school year had just started and I had been acting up, being disruptive, destroying other children’s work. It had come to a head when I planted a sharpened pencil into another girl’s hand. Straight through it went, like a knife through soft cheese. Margot Wolfe. I thought she was a precious little cow. She always looked too perfect. She had better clothes than me, a better bag than me, and her pencils were all new whereas mine had been sharpened down, things filtered out from my cousins’ belongings. I was the kid in hand-me-downs with snot slipping across my face. And I hated her for it.

  So when parents’ evening came, it was a big deal. I had to go too, and I was kind of excited because it was the first time I remember having to do something as a parent/child combo. I knew they weren’t my parents, but that didn’t matter. All the way there I was looking forward to it, and the bloody hole in Margot Wolfe’s hand was barely even a memory. I didn’t realise my behavioural issues were going to be discussed.