My Sister

by Michelle Adams

  ‘I wanted to get you a gift,’ I tried weakly, but my defence only angered her more. She jumped out of her seat, grabbed me by the wrist and pulled me up. I lost my footing and fell to the floor, sauce all over my face, pieces of burger trailing behind me. She stumbled as I fell, almost landing on top of me. A boy laughed, and for a second I thought she was going to attack him. He shut up as she got close, at which point she turned back to me, looking down at me as I covered my face with my hands. She pulled me by my left foot out into the street, and my hip swelled instantly in pain. Shards of mirror scraped against my head.

  She unbuttoned the skirt and threw it at me. It slapped me in the face, catching my cheek, leaving a red welt that buzzed hot as fire. A crowd gathered, like I had seen happen at school when a fight was about to go down. But nobody chanted, and they all just seemed to be looking on, feeling sorry for me. I could hear the words Bison and Peg Leg going around in my head like the Robert Kneel incident had never even happened.

  ‘You’re so fucking stupid,’ she shouted. ‘You don’t do that. What if they find out? Huh? Did you think of that?’ She was leaning over me. Somebody suggested she calm down, but Elle turned, shoved them out of the way. ‘They’ll think I put you up to it, and that’ll only make things worse. Something else that she’ll say is my fault. Another fucking reason to hate me, and again it’ll all be because of you!’ She kicked me once, right on my hip where the scar was, before saying, ‘You better hope Aunt Jemima and Uncle Marcus don’t find out, because if they do, they’ll get rid of you too, and then there will be nobody left that wants you. Then there’ll be nothing left for you anywhere.’

  Somebody helped me up after she left, and a kind lady wiped the remnants of the burger from my face and clothes. I’d got my act together by the time I returned to the library. Aunt Jemima asked what had happened to my cheek, and I said a book fell off a shelf and hit me. She said I always had been clumsy. Later she asked if I had finished Romeo and Juliet. I had told her that I was working my way through Shakespeare’s tragedies.

  I wouldn’t have gone back to the library the next Saturday if Aunt Jemima hadn’t insisted upon it. But she did, saying it was really helping with my schoolwork and attitude. That my behaviour was getting so much better. So she watched me walk in, and as soon as I got through the doors, I saw Elle sitting there waiting for me. She motioned for me to sit down.

  ‘I could tell them what you did, you know that, right? They’d believe me, because I know you better than anybody now. They’d say you were just like me and get rid of you. You’d lose me, too.’ She sat back in the chair, folded her arms. ‘Is that what you want?’

  ‘No,’ I mumbled. My hip was in agony, as if it could sense the very threat of her. ‘Please don’t tell. I won’t do it again.’ I felt my shoulders curling in, my throat aching as I desperately tried not to cry.

  She stood up, walked around to my side of the table and put her arm around me. ‘OK, I’ll keep quiet. But don’t you dare fuck up any more.’ And then she took a pinch of my arm between her fingers and twisted. I winced, and felt her cheek curl up into a smile next to mine. ‘Otherwise it’s all over. Without me, you’d have nobody left for you anywhere.’

  17

  My father doesn’t wait to see me collapse. By that time he is already crossing the road, running towards the Enchanted Swan. I feel like I have lost things that were barely mine all over again. The closer I get to the truth, the more it seems to hurt. I bring my knees out from underneath me, brush away the mud and wipe the tears from my cheeks. That’s when I realise I am sitting on top of a grave.

  The headstone is small, white marble, half covered in moss. It reads, You live on in her. Nothing else. I stagger to my feet, take a quick pace back, stepping on somebody else’s final resting place. Before I know it, one stray foot has landed in the mud on top of my mother’s. I am in a carpet of graves, so I hotfoot through as fast as I can and run for the house. When I reach it, my hip complaining, my cheeks and armpits sweaty, it is by sheer luck that I find the back door left unlocked. I dart through the house, no more fear of stumbling upon my mother’s dead body, weaving through the corridors until I arrive at a study, the same one in which I saw my father on the first night. A desk made of solid oak sits before me. No computer. But there is a telephone, so I call Antonio, desperate to go home.

  ‘Antonio,’ I say, my voice still fragile from the tears.

  ‘Oh, it’s you. I thought you wouldn’t call. I thought it was over.’ He sighs, his voice shaking in the same way as mine. Is he crying too? ‘Grazie a Dio!’

  ‘I need you to book me on the next flight home.’ I take a seat in the green leather chair, twiddle the telephone cord between my fingers. I look down at the desk, not wanting any more details of this place, or this life. ‘I have to leave. Now!’

  ‘You are crying. It was the funeral today, right?’

  I nod as if he can see me. ‘It’s finished. Everything is over; there’s nothing left for me in this place,’ I say, my voice slowly coming under control as I wipe my tears. ‘But I learnt something here. Something important.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘That my mother did want me. It was my father that didn’t, and he still doesn’t. But there was a reason, I just don’t know what. He isn’t angry with me for being here. He is sad. He said I open up old wounds and that I should leave while I still can. I know it has something to do with Elle because she as good as told me so, but I don’t know what.’ There is silence for a moment. I will him to say something, but then realise there is nothing he could say that would suffice. Then, just as he takes a breath, he finds it.

  ‘Mio amore.’ My love.

  I can hear his relief on the end of the line. His breathing has deepened, the worry in his voice replaced by love. I think back to that sad little bag he packed with his clothes, and how far away it all seems.

  I always thought that because I supported him and enabled him to stay in his crappy waiter’s job in an effort to gain restaurant experience, life with me was too much to give up. Failing to leave even after I refused him a child felt like proof of that. That life was easier with me. But what I realise now is that life would be easier without me. It is not easy to love a person who is cold, or who always shuts you out. It is not easy to stick around when you want so much more than they are prepared to give. Yet he did. ‘I need to get home as soon as possible,’ I tell him. Perhaps there is something there that can be saved.

  I hear him shuffling along in his sloppy slippers, the sound of the computer waking up. ‘Just a minute,’ he says, the ruffle of his chin against the receiver. The keys click as his fingers strike them, entering the search. ‘There is only one more flight today. Hang on, let me open it up. It’s at 9.45 p.m. You will arrive at 11.15. Is that OK?’

  ‘It’s fine. Book it.’ The relief is instant, knowing I will be away from here soon. I glance out of the window while he makes the booking, towards the well-maintained lawn. Today there is a table out there, a few sad-looking refreshments on top for those who choose to return to the house.

  ‘That’s it. Booked. Shall I email you the reference?’

  ‘No, read it out to me. I don’t have my phone, so I’ll check in at the desk.’ He reads out the number and I write it down on a notepad embossed with my father’s initials.

  ‘What will you do between now and then?’ he asks.

  ‘I will get my things together and call a taxi. The sooner I leave, the—’ I don’t finish my sentence, because I spot something half-slipping out from a cupboard next to the desk. A face. A face I recognise.

  ‘Rini?’

  ‘The better,’ I finish. ‘The sooner the better.’ I reach down and pick up the photograph. The face of my mother stares back. It could be me, looking back in time. We are so alike, no wonder Miss Endicott felt compelled to ask if I had family in Horton. Must have been like seeing a ghost when I turned up.

  ‘Rini, are you all right?’

  ‘Yes,’ I say, not e
ven sure if I know the real answer to that question.

  I open the door to the cupboard and find a row of old blue photograph albums, lined up in date order. One of them has fallen over; I stand it up to see the spine, which reads 1978. I finger my way along the rest and find that three from the sequence are missing: 1984, 1985 and 1986. I flop to the floor with the phone balanced on my shoulder and leaf through the fragile pages of 1978, old glue falling away like dust. The faces of history gaze back at me.

  ‘What is it?’ I hear Antonio say.

  ‘Nothing,’ I reply as I close the album. ‘I think they are coming back. Let me go and get ready. We’ll talk later, before the flight.’

  I hang up and reopen the album at the desk. It shows my parents in their younger days. Outside the Louvre before the pyramid was built. Boating on a gondola in what I assume is Venice. Happy, unlined faces, free from anguish and pain. Our happiest times were in youth, when our family was young, when our memories were fresh. There are empty white spaces in the album where images once sat but have since been lost. Then a picture of them with a baby. Their firstborn. Must be Elle.

  I grab another album, 1983, the year after I was born. I run my fingers along the faded gold lettering, then open the cover. The first image is of Elle standing at a table with a birthday cake on top of it. The fondant glistens and the candles flare bright, blurring the image. I count five flickering flames. There are other children at her side, but there is distance between her and them. Not one of them is smiling, and in fact, one is crying, his arms raised in the air, asking to be taken away. I push aside the thought that it means something.

  I turn the pages, image after image of a growing family. Then it is me and Elle together. Elle running along chasing a dog, the one that she would later kill, me in the background on a push-along tricycle. Bright yellow seat, curls cascading over my chubby face. I flick to the next photo. It is the same wintry scene, a white sky, frost on the ground. Only this time I am on the floor, pushed from my tricycle by the looks of things. Elle is snatching it away from me, and the dog is jumping in the background. I smile at the idea of us together, just being a family. Domesticity, something I never experienced. Not first hand, anyway. I only saw it as an observer, a watcher from the sidelines. But here in this image, with my face red from the cold, my eyes wet with tears because my sister has stolen my tricycle, I see the normality of family. We were that, once. I turn the page, hoping the story continues overleaf, but the sleeve is blank. The next picture has been lost.

  I hear the front door open. I push the album back in the cupboard and make it into the corridor before anybody sees me slip the fallen picture of my mother up my sleeve. It is Frank who arrives first, and I breathe a sigh of relief.

  ‘Irini. We were wondering where you went.’

  ‘I left early. Can you please take me to the airport?’

  ‘You are leaving already?’ He looks back towards the front door, expecting company.

  ‘It’s for the best. Really it is.’ He nods as if he understands. ‘In the next ten minutes?’

  His shoulders drop with disappointment, and I know he is about to let me down. ‘I’m sorry, Irini, but that won’t be possible. In a couple of hours, once the wake is finished, is fine, but if I leave now, Mr Harringford will string me up. Today of all days.’ He takes a step closer. ‘Anyway, you should stay. It wouldn’t be right to leave now.’

  Embarrassed, I reluctantly agree, and soon enough the house fills with guests. What’s a couple more hours? Elle has stopped crying, and is now playing hostess. She has Joyce running back and forth in uncomfortable court shoes. I look down at my pumps and wish guiltily that she was wearing them instead of me. There is tea and coffee, champagne, sherry, whisky. Anything you want, as if we have arrived at Willy Wonka’s. I knock back a couple of whiskies, linger on an old Queen Anne chair in the corner of the drawing room. The hit from the alcohol is fast because I haven’t eaten anything for almost twenty-four hours. Feels good, too. But still, in the hope of staying clear-headed, I stand up, pick up a cocktail stick of cheese and pineapple, quickly followed by a square of quiche Lorraine.

  It seems nobody is interested in talking to me. And I am grateful, because their sly over-the-shoulder glances are enough to unsettle me. I remember that Elle told me everybody would know who I am, and I realise she was right. How could they not when I look so much like the woman they are here to mourn? So I slip into the study and grab the flight-booking details, which I left there in my haste, before retreating to my bedroom, whisky in hand, to wait out the last couple of hours.

  I set the tumbler on the bedside table and shove anything of mine into my bag, including the image of my mother that I took from the study, and the sherry, which I have decided doesn’t need to be returned. They owe me something, and since it is difficult to give back a whole life, I settle on the remainder of a bottle and mark off part of the debt as paid. I slide the framed butterflies into the top of my bag. But now that everything is packed, the room seems a little more dead than it was before. Like I am being removed twice over.

  I hear the creak of the stairs, followed by the rattling of the door handle. I do up the zip and turn around just as the door opens.

  ‘Frank tells me that you want to leave,’ Elle stutters as she inches through.

  ‘Yes.’ I’m less unnerved by her now, and I can’t feel her like before. ‘I’m ready to go home. Back to my life.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Tonight. Plus you should know I’ll be changing my number tomorrow. This time, don’t search for me.’ I need a clean start, another chance at life away from her. ‘I can’t play these games with you any more, Elle.’ I sit down on the edge of the bed, close to tears, spurred on by Dutch courage. I look at her for the first time since she arrived. ‘We have nothing left to say to each other.’

  I have spent my life believing that it was here that I belonged. Now that I know that isn’t true, I have to get away. I have to stop dreaming of what this house and these people could once have been. I have what I needed from the past. My mother wanted me all along, just like I used to wish for. Anything else is superfluous, Elle included. I’ll trade knowing the rest for a future, one where I can look back and say that perhaps I don’t understand everything that happened, but I can accept it was done for love. Learning any more than that is a risk. I can settle for what I know now.

  ‘You really mean that, don’t you?’ She looks visibly deflated. ‘You said that once before, remember?’ She sits down next to me, my bag between us.

  ‘I’m sure I said it many times, Elle.’ I am calm, the tears stemmed. I feel like something is over.

  ‘But you used to say it without meaning it.’ She huddles inside a big black cardigan that she has thrown over the slick dress she wore to the funeral. I can hear Joyce downstairs in the kitchen, my father’s voice bidding farewell to the final mourners. ‘There was only one other time when you actually meant it.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘When I killed my dog. After that, you said you didn’t want to see me again.’

  I think back to the satisfaction I felt when I overheard Aunt Jemima on the telephone only months after our failed reunion, telling my father how he had to expect this kind of thing from Elle. That he should never have allowed her to be around animals. How pleased I was that my parents’ lives were falling apart, all because of Elle and one dead dog.

  ‘Did you really kick it to death?’

  ‘No. I stamped on it and cut it open.’

  To hear it from her own lips, so matter-of-fact, is as scary as it is exhilarating. It really happened, I think. ‘I was pleased you killed that dog because I thought you had managed to upset our parents.’

  ‘Good, because I did it for you. Aunt Jemima had moved house and they wouldn’t let me see you again. I did it to upset them. Afterwards she wanted to send me away again so the doctors could try to fix me, but he wouldn’t allow it. Not after what happened the time before.’ She stops for a moment
and glances at the window, stares off into the distance. ‘Shame for you, really. You might have got your wish if they had. Her too.’

  ‘What time before? What wish? What are you talking about?’

  ‘In the mental home. The nut house,’ she says, rapping her knuckles against her temple. ‘They have drugs that make you say stuff that you would normally keep secret.’ She fiddles a piece of dirt out from underneath her bitten fingernail. ‘They got it all down on record the first time I was in there, before our parents could get me back. Lucky what happened to me really. For me, at least. Not so good for you, I suppose, but otherwise I’m not sure they would have ever let me out.’

  ‘You’re not making any sense to me, Elle.’ I think I am past caring. ‘Except for the fact that you really did kill the dog. I always wondered.’

  ‘Yes, of course I did. But you knew that already. That’s why you told Aunt Jemima that you didn’t want to see me again. That’s what they told me, anyway.’

  ‘I don’t remember.’

  ‘Could be another one of their lies. That’s what I always hoped. When I found you a few years later, you did seem pleased to see me. Maybe they were lying after all.’ What I realise is that she always needed me to want her just as much as I needed her to want me. She turns to me and grips my arms. Tightly to the extent that it hurts. But it is not anger on her face, it’s desperation. ‘Stay.’

  I shake my head. ‘I have to leave.’

  ‘But not yet you don’t. If you really mean it, about never wanting to see me again, just do one more thing for me. I need you, Rini. We just buried my mother. I feel so alone. Let’s go out together now. A quick drink somewhere nearby. It’s still early.’

  ‘I have a flight to catch.’

  ‘The place I’m thinking of is ever so close. We can get back here, grab your things, and still be at the airport on time. I promise. We’ll say goodbye there.’ She tries a smile, unable to hide how she really feels, which makes me pity her for the first time in my life. She leans into me, strokes my face. ‘It will be exciting; like Hollywood or something.’ She is nearly crying when she says it.