Sistering

by Jennifer Quist

  Our tidal wave of truth-telling breaks and crashes. The room is doused cold.

  “My what?”

  Ashley drops Meaghan’s hair.

  Everyone looks at Heather. She’s a monster so she doesn’t back down but steps out in front of everything. She speaks softly, as if she means to be tender. But she still says, “Come on, Meaghan. You’re standing here telling us you’ve never had an abortion?”

  We each stay rooted to wherever we were when Ashley first said “abortion”—a word none of us has ever spoken in Meaghan’s presence. We’re locked in our tableau so long the neighbours might get bored and go back to their Sudoku. It’s so quiet in my living room we hear the little girls in the upstairs bedrooms talking to their dolls about dating and weddings. It’s so quiet we hear the click in Meaghan’s throat as she starts to speak.

  “I was only seventeen. Mum said it would be better.”

  Heather turns away in something like a slow, tortured pirouette. “I knew it.”

  “I can’t believe Mum told you guys.”

  “Mum didn’t have to tell us anything,” Heather says. “We are your sisters, Meaghan—the sisters you’re so much a part of you can’t hide things from us. At least, not something as big as a pregnancy, terminated or not. No one told us. But we knew. We’ve been mourning with you all along.” The monster’s voice cracks. “And you must have known that.”

  Suzanne lets go of her stomach. She stands and folds her arms around Meaghan’s neck. “Oh, my girl …”

  Meaghan bows her face into Suzanne’s shoulder, and sobs. It’s grief and pain, and it’s relief too—relief that this news isn’t the shock Meaghan dreaded it would be. We have known. She has not revealed herself to us. We have revealed ourselves to her.

  Like I keep telling Martin, part of what makes secrets so bad is that they don’t curb any hurt. Whatever we think our secrets are holding back, someday it’ll go flooding off in every direction—forward and backward like fruit punch spilled on a tabletop. It’ll spread out from the moment it’s shared, filling up the past with every ounce of red sticky agony that belonged there in the first place.

  Arms and tears and a little more quiet time are called for here. Pacing is vital in everything, our sisterhood too. We take our time until a slow, careful pace tugs us forward.

  With the heel of my hand, I swipe at my eyes and nose. I am going to speak into this quiet. I am not going to tell Meaghan that what happened to her when she was seventeen doesn’t matter. That would be cruel. I am not going to say we don’t feel the pain of it ourselves. That would be more cruel.

  All I say is, “Okay, okay.” I kiss Meaghan on the face. “Let’s fix what we can fix. Something easy, like, what are we going to do about the bridesmaid dresses?”

  Meaghan blows her nose and slides her smeared glasses back onto her face. “Dresses? I don’t want to talk about dresses. I want to talk about Riker. I think I might really have something with him, even though his mom is alive—”

  “Stop,” I say. “Stop playing dumb in-law games and go find the beard-guy, if that’s what you really want. Tell him you need a man with a real, living mother so you can be like your nasty old sisters after all.”

  “Or go back to mama’s-boy Ian,” Ashley says. “They’re both exactly the same when it comes to their moms. You can pick whichever one you want. Right, Suzanne?”

  Suzanne clears her throat. “Sure.”

  “But I’m having dinner with Ian’s mom tonight,” Meaghan says. “I’m supposed to be there in forty minutes. I have to decide.”

  “No, you don’t,” I interrupt. “We’ve given each other a hell of a lot to think about today and none of us is in any condition to be making big decisions.”

  Ashley’s nodding. “Yeah, just let it ride for a few days.”

  “But get away from these dresses. Your love of lime green is confounding your judgment,” Heather says. She spins Meaghan around, shoving her toward my front door as I mash Meaghan’s purse into her arms. It’s an awful handbag—cheap, wrinkly, pink like a goat’s stomach, and I’m always happy to get it out of my house.

  “Just go to Ian’s mom and act normal for now. Don’t promise them anything.” That’s what Heather says as she pushes Meaghan through the door and leans against it to close it.

  “She should stay with Ian,” Ashley says.

  I’m reaching for my zipper. “The fully-employed computer tech guy with the sweet high-rise condo? Oh, definitely.”

  “Ian, Riker, a single life,” Heather says, “whatever gets me out of this dress.”

  Meaghan

  [20]

  Ian’s mother is tall for a woman. She verges on a height that would be tall for a man. She might be taller than Ian himself. I’ve never stood them back-to-back and measured. It may take a few years, but his mom will outgrow Ian eventually.

  These are crazy thoughts, and I wobble my head to clear them away. Still, it’s true that somewhere in her late middle age, Ian’s mom surrendered her secondary female sex characteristics. They slipped away, leaving her voice low, her skin rough and fuzzy, her clothes hanging from her shoulders, skimming her body as if she’s made of coat hangers and pipe cleaners. She’s let them go without a defiant show of copper lipstick or dangly earrings or converting her whole wardrobe to floral prints. Right now, she’s dressed in a huge, un-dyed hemp blouse, and she’s standing with me, her future daughter-in-law, in the wet heat of an immaculate backyard greenhouse.

  I am exhausted. The dress fitting at Tina’s house was as draining as it was doomed. In this day of revelations, maybe Ian’s mom will pull the bobbed grey wig off her head, flip the last of the Kleenex out of her bra, and show me she’s actually Ian’s dad now, not his mother at all. It could happen. If it did, I’d have to pretend to be shocked.

  It’s possible that I will never be shocked again. Look at what just happened at Tina’s house. My sisters and I could confess anything to each other and none of us would ever say, “No, I can’t believe she did that—not her.” I could hear them accused of anything and I’d never throw myself in front of them saying, “No, she wouldn’t do that. She’s not capable of that. She’s not that kind of person.”

  Don’t misunderstand. I’d still throw myself in front of them. I’d just do it without a word.

  Anyways, evidence like that—character evidence—doesn’t mean much at the police station or in court or anywhere. I’ve never been to court or a police station, but that’s what Ewan tells us. Technically, good character evidence is supposed to help when people are in trouble, but practically, it doesn’t. And it shouldn’t. How could anyone give that kind of evidence in good faith? It’s when we get closest to each other that we see the tiny pores, the little gaps, the micro-chinks in our characters where anything could seep inside or leak right out—where anyone could shrink or swell to anything.

  None of this is what I want to be thinking as I stand in a tiny suburban greenhouse, pinching oregano leaves off twiggy plants and dropping them into an ice cube tray. Thoughts of my sisters will sap my strength, and thoughts of Kleenex in my future mother-in-law’s bra are just weird. What if this is the beginning of the obsession I need to cultivate if I want to be a good daughter-in-law, like Suzanne?

  But wait—my sisters say they’re all daughters-in-law now. They’ve ruined the game, trumped everything, flipped the board.

  “Get the bottom of each section covered with leaves,” Ian’s mom instructs me, “and we’ll fill the rest with olive oil and put them in the freezer. Then we’ll have fresh-frozen, pre-portioned herbs at our disposal all winter long.”

  “It’s perfect,” I say. And I mean it. I might like to grow up to be a tall, clean, brilliant man like Ian’s mom someday.

  My fingertips smell like oregano—casseroles and spaghetti sauces. When I sniff them I wish it was closer to dinnertime. Being hungry makes me think of Riker. E
ven inside the greenhouse, I wish I knew what my face looked like that afternoon at the video game store when Riker acknowledged his mom, right in front of me.

  “Are you tired today, dear?” Ian’s mom asks.

  I try to shake my head but the movement gets cramped in my neck, more like a twitch. “No—I mean, yes.”

  Ian’s mom laughs, but not unkindly. My awkwardness has always been darling to her.

  “I guess I’m hungry, more than anything,” I say.

  She is happy to explain that a good greenhouse is the very best place for hungry people. She plucks a pickle-sized cucumber off a vine covered in bristles almost like thorns. “Here,” she says. “Rub the little spines off the skin with the palm of your hand and eat this up. Go on. It’s delicious. Think of it as a juicy green candy bar. And it’s organic, so we don’t have to wash it.”

  “Perfect,” I say again. I bite into the fruit, remembering her telling me that, in the orthodox botanical sense, cucumbers are fruit, from the melon family to be precise.

  “Perfect,” Ian’s mom agrees. Something moves on the other side of the Plexiglas wall. “Oh, here comes our boy.”

  The view of him is warped and cloudy, but a man in a purple dress shirt and white tie is strolling across the lush, green lawn. Even through the plastic, I can tell his face, as always, is shorn smooth and red. It’s Ian.

  My stomach clenches against the warm cucumber. It’s no longer a vegetable or a melon. It’s not food at all. I can’t swallow any more of it without being sick all over the greenhouse.

  Ian’s mom is watching me. “Meaghan?”

  I have to get it out. I cup my hand around my mouth, bending over, spitting a mouthful of half-eaten cucumber into my palm. “I am so sorry.”

  I can be inside something, part of something, someone. I know that now. But it can’t happen here. I’m clawing at the metal clasp on the door, panicking, frantic to get out of the greenhouse before Ian comes in. “I’m sorry. Tell Ian—I’m sorry about everything.”

  He has come close enough to be standing right outside the greenhouse door. I shoulder past him, into the yard where I chuck the watery green mess from my hand into the long, thick grass growing against the plastic wall. Ian sees it fly. It’s disappeared into the grass. He keeps his eyes turned to where it’s landed.

  I stand panting, my arms folded, still spitting onto the ground. My saliva is thick, hanging in unbreakable elastic strings from my lower lip, like I’m a rare, evolutionarily ridiculous spider who coughs and dribbles out her web.

  I’m within arm’s reach of Ian, but he knows not to touch me anymore. His profile is all I can see of his face when I wipe my mouth and lift my head. And I can tell. I can tell he already knows.

  Riker must be startled when I come banging on his front door. I bash the wood with the fleshy heel of my hand. I mean for the knock to sound aggressive—not the kind of sound that could be ignored as the approach of fundraisers or white-shirted missionaries out after curfew. I wait on the concrete front step in a street full of split-level houses until Riker throws the deadbolt and flings open the door. There I am—wide-eyed, freaked out, speechless in a suburb.

  I don’t know it yet but Riker’s mom and his dad (who is also alive and well) are out at a junior league football game. They’re reliving his dad’s glory days, when he played for Scona in high school—tight pants and shoulder pads, sauntering across fields lumpy with night crawler mounds. I’ve heard Riker’s theory about how sports are just sweaty macho cosplay. Maybe he hasn’t explained it to his dad yet.

  Riker is home alone, exactly as I’d hoped, standing in the doorway with a can of his mom’s awful American light beer in his hand, holding it clumsily, as if she asked him to hang onto it while she went to the bathroom.

  He’s standing tall instead of slouching toward me, like he usually does. He plants his sock feet in the centre of the doorway. He wants to be cold to me. We’re enough alike for me to know there’s no way he’ll be able to maintain it. What he can do is be drunk, even if he’s just started his first beer of the night. I can’t tell how much he’s had. There’s an open can in his hand, his breath smells like alcohol, and he can invent the rest—the levity, the candour—if he needs to, he can exaggerate it. Don’t act like we haven’t all done it.

  “Meaghan, come on in,” he bawls. “Your timing is right on. My mom’s already out for the night, so we won’t have to go through our farce routine this time. You know, the one where I hide my mom from you, and you hide me from your fiancé, and—”

  “Riker,” I begin as I slip past him, coming into the house, closing the door behind myself.

  “But I’ll kind of miss the farce. You know what I mean? All that pretending—it was invigorating. You know, like we were actually important to each other—worth lying and shame and stuff.” He steps backward, slumps against the banister until he’s sitting on the bottom stair, gazing into the can in his hand.

  I make a funny, phony coughing sound and twist the doorknob against the small of my back. “Maybe I should come back another time.”

  “No. No, it’s awesome timing, like I said. Stay and tell me why you came.”

  Nothing I was thinking of saying to him while I was rooting through the Internet for his street address seems right now that he’s so loud and loose. Instead, I say, “I’ve almost beat the dance challenges from the game you sold Ian.”

  Riker sneers. “No you haven’t.”

  “Yes, I have,” I say, taking a step forward, clearing a space around myself. “Watch me.”

  Of course he’ll watch. I start to dance—jerky, stompy, bouncy—like a kid on one of those flashy, dance pad amusement park games. Everyone knows the only way to get through something as embarrassing as this is to own to it. I’m half-singing, half-humming a song while I hop and lurch in the front entryway of Riker’s mom’s house. All I really know of the words to the song is, “Pop that thang.”

  Riker mimes taking another swig from the beer can before he sets it down on the stairs and lolls to his feet. “Oh, I get it. It’s para-para,” he says. “Everybody loves para-para.”

  I stop dancing when he starts to sing. It doesn’t sound like English, except for the way he keeps saying “Party time” and “Feel the power.” The song gathers momentum, and he starts to dance along with it. His footwork is simple and clunky, like mine. He keeps his head motionless, his arms bending and unbending at the elbows, chopping through his personal space like he’s signalling a ship.

  I’m laughing. “You look like a cheerleader.”

  “Do I?”

  “No, actually.”

  “It’s just para-para. The point is precision and synchronization. Don’t you know para-para, Meaghan?”

  I’ve pressed myself against the wall, trying to stay clear of his choreography.

  He scoffs. “It’s Japanese nightclub line dancing. They do it in South Korea too.”

  “Oh. Of course.”

  “It doesn’t make any sense when just one person does it. You’re supposed to do para-para as a team, a perfectly harmonized team.” He’s starting the routine over again with a hearty, English “Party time!”

  “Okay, Riker. I get it.”

  He doesn’t stop. “Seriously, you should get your sisters together and form your own para-para team. Five is the perfect number for it. You’d need short skirts and some matching boots and a cute, catchy name for yourselves like ‘Everlastingly Girls’ or ‘Go Team Happies.’”

  He’s starting to sound like one of my brothers-in-law. It makes me comfortable and brave. I’ve watched Riker dance until I’m able to decode the rhythm well enough to safely cut into it. I hop forward, like a little girl joining a skipping game, pinning his arms to his sides with my own. He’s strong enough to break away, but he doesn’t.

  “No more,” I say. “Shh. No more bearded hipster para-para, okay?”
<
br />   “Huh?” he says as he stops moving between the margins of my arms.

  “No more dancing—please. I need to talk to you, Riker.”

  This close to him, I can see there’s no alcohol in his pupils. He knows it and stops pretending, starting to look scared instead. I keep my arms clamped around him as I begin to speak. “Your mom isn’t dead.”

  “Clearly.”

  “And your major in school wasn’t creative writing, was it?”

  He shakes his head. “No, it wasn’t. It’s Canadian History, the interwar period.”

  That explains the Dionne quintuplets trivia. “But, Riker,” I say, timidly now. “Like, your real name is Riker, isn’t it?”

  He smirks. “Yes. The weirdest parts of the story are always the true parts. I was really born in 1987, the year Jonathan Frakes got his big break on television. Riker was the name of his character—”

  “I know,” I interrupt. “Everyone knows. And Ian and I, we’re over.” I speak with my face so close to his my bottom lip touches the short, brown hair growing over his jaw as I form the final phoneme.

  It’s too much. He bends and kisses me.

  I hate first kisses. I’ve never told anyone, but it’s true. Every time, with every new person, I’m as clumsy and stupid as I was when I was fifteen. But Riker is careful and slow. He’s slightly afraid, greatly awed, and he’s worried I might taste too much of his mother’s bad beer in his mouth. So when his kiss comes, it arrives as a question, not an answer.

  I tip my face away from him. I want to make my answer with my voice. My hands cradle the back of his neck. And I tell him, “Yes.”

  Suzanne

  [21]

  We’re a bit sad when Meaghan moves out of Ian’s high-rise condo and into our parents’ place. The engagement is broken not only for her, but for all of us. Ian was supposed to have been our normal brother-in-law. He was going to be our boring brother-in-law—not the sound-bite speaking crime fighter, or the pretty-boy detoxifying dentist, or the slippery millionaire, or the craftsman hippie. He was going to be the brother-in-law with a happy childhood and a stuffy job none of us understood very well.