The Story Sisters

by Alice Hoffman

  They no longer believed in Arnelle. They were far too old for stories about faeries. They never spoke Arnish. It made them think of things they didn’t want to remember. Red leaves, rain, New Hampshire. They were already forgetting the words Elv had taught them and they could no longer recall if henaj meant wolf or dog, if nejimi meant hero or coward. In dire circumstances, however, their private vocabulary sometimes surfaced in a rush, surprising them. They had fleetingly whispered to each other in Arnish when they’d become lost at the airport upon arrival. And then again when Claire had stomach pains and thought she might be dying of appendicitis. They’d had a tearful panicked conversation in Arnish then, though what had befallen her turned out to be severe indigestion, nothing more.

  Although there were two beds in their grandmother’s spare bedroom, the sisters slept together. They were too old for this, but they didn’t care. They didn’t talk about the reason they shared a bed nor did they discuss their dreams. Each had her reasons. The tiger at the door. The boy on the edge of the bed. The shower of red leaves. The man saying, You know me; get in the car.

  In the last days of their vacation, their mother came to Paris to retrieve them and also to check in on her mother. Perhaps someone should have been checking on Annie. She didn’t look like herself anymore. She had lost more weight and wore her dark glasses most of the time to hide the circles under her eyes. While the girls were away, she’d suffered terrible bouts of insomnia, sitting up until morning, gazing into the backyard and wondering when it had gone wrong. She thought it was that day at the Plaza. The way Elv had looked at her when she’d been accused of masterminding the theft of the carriage horse.

  After Annie arrived in Paris, she was so tired she crawled into the second bed in the girls’ room and slept for seventeen hours. She curled up beneath a snowy linen coverlet, the same she’d used during summers here in Paris when she was a girl. There had been some talk about staying on in France when she was twelve or thirteen, but her father’s business was in New York and so they’d returned to Manhattan. Lately, Annie had become obsessed with the different life she might have had if they’d remained in Paris. The man she might have loved, the apartment where she might have lived, the daughters whose only language would have been French.

  The sisters sat by their mother’s bedside. Today, the light through the window was pink and clear. They were glad she was there. Ever since Elv went away, she had been too quiet. She forgot to go shopping or make dinner. The milk in the refrigerator was often sour, and Meg had taken to cleaning the house once a week. Sometimes Annie didn’t seem like their mother anymore. Now, for instance, she seemed like a little girl sleeping in the guest room bed. She was disappearing before their eyes. Meg made sure she was breathing; she held a mirror close to their mother’s mouth—she’d seen this done in an old movie. When the glass fogged up, the girls knew she was still alive.

  Natalia finally woke Annie from her long sleep, shaking her, calling her name, bringing her a cup of hot tea. She insisted they all go out for the day. They went to the Musée d’Orsay, where they thought they were enjoying themselves until they noticed Annie standing in front of Van Gogh’s self-portrait, crying. Annie excused herself and went off to the restroom. Claire was reminded of the black river Elv had once painted. She wished she had begged for it. She wished she had it right now.

  The rest of the weekend was better. The Story sisters took their mother to all the places they loved most: the ice cream stand, the bookstore, the Jardin du Luxembourg, the bench in front of Notre Dame, where they all sat together holding hands, and anyone who passed by would have thought they were happy. Annie slept through the night for the first time in ages under the white coverlet. She ate soft-boiled eggs. She painted her nails red, then polished the girls’ nails as well. On their last day in Paris, the sisters were in the kitchen cutting up pears for a tart. Their mother and grandmother were on the terrace having their morning coffee. Below, in the courtyard, two elderly tenants were arguing over whether or not a third could tie his bicycle to the now broken stone trough. Their mother laughed when one tenant called the other a stupid boot. Meg and Claire looked at each other. They could hear the clock over the stove, ticking. They could hear doves in the courtyard. They wanted this moment to last forever. The sunlight was orange. They had to remember that. Meg would make certain they did. She fetched a piece of paper and wrote down the word orange, then folded the paper in half. They could cut up pears and write down all of the colors of the light and listen to people laugh and smell the blooms on the chestnut tree and forget about the rest of the world. They wanted to stay in their grandmother’s apartment always, but instead they would have this memory of sitting in the kitchen, being happy.

  They flew home on Air France. They spoke French to the stewards, and their mother was proud of them and let them each have a glass of champagne. Claire felt dizzy and sick right before landing at JFK. She had to go to the restroom even though the seat belt signs were already switched on. Once there, she vomited into the horrible, messy toilet. She clung to the sink, stricken that she had imagined she was happy, or that she might even have a right to be. She must have been gone for a long time, because her mother came looking for her, worried.

  Annie tapped on the door. “Claire? Are you all right?”

  Claire opened the door.

  Annie touched her forehead. Burning hot. “Claire,” she said. “Darling.”

  “I’m fine,” Claire insisted. “Really. I am.” And then, before she could stop herself, she said, “Maybe I just miss her.”

  Claire would certainly miss her beloved grandmother, but that wasn’t who she was talking about and they both knew it.

  “I miss her too,” Annie said.

  They went back to their seats. They were closer to home than they’d thought, all the way across the Atlantic. They put their seat belts on, and after that they didn’t think about Paris anymore.

  ELV WAS FINALLY ready to see them. They didn’t have to coax or beg. She herself asked for the meeting. She wanted it right away. Sometimes Annie felt as though she had invented Elv, and all those years they’d spent together had been a fevered dream. It was decided that Alan and Annie would drive up separately. Neither wanted to be in the car with the other for five hours. Annie wore black slacks and a black sweater. She looked as though she were going to a funeral, so at the last moment she added a pink silk scarf, one the girls had convinced her to get at a tiny shop on the Rue de Tournon. Watching her get ready to go, Meg took out the piece of paper on which she’d written the word orange to remind herself of the day when the light had been so beautiful in their grandmother’s kitchen. She told her mother not to worry; she would make dinner for herself and Claire. She reminded Annie to be careful on the road, as though she were the mother. Then Meg sat down in the kitchen, worrying about what would happen next.

  As Annie drove along the highway, she thought of her three little girls helping her in the garden when they were small on a day when Natalia and her friend Madame Cohen were visiting. The older women had been perched on garden chairs, applauding every ripe tomato the girls picked. The girls had then gathered around Madame Cohen cross-legged in the grass and she told them that tomatoes were in the same family as belladonna, henbane—all poisonous, all associated with witches. “The fruit is so delicious,” she’d said as she held up a ripe Indian Orange to mato. “But the leaves can be lethal.”

  THEY MET WITH Elv in a carpeted therapy room. Alan and Annie were anxious, as though they were meeting someone for the very first time. Alan’s girlfriend, Cheryl, was waiting in the car for him. Alan had bought himself a Miata convertible, with room enough for two. He and Cheryl lived in a house on the west side of North Point Harbor, which they were now considering putting on the market. They were thinking of applying for positions out in the Hamptons. They had recently taken up sailing.

  “Frankly, I don’t see what good we can do here,” Alan said. Annie took that to mean he was done with the children and
their problems and that he wanted to get back to Cheryl. She really didn’t blame him for being defensive. She wasn’t even angry anymore. She had already decided that no matter what Alan thought, she was going to remain hopeful.

  “Elv wanted this meeting,” she said. “Let’s look toward the future.”

  The counselor was dressed casually in jeans and a black sweater. Miss Hagen told them she herself was a recovering substance abuser and that it was important to let go of the past and not be overly judgmental. Elv had made mistakes, she’d been an easy target for drug use—the sensitive child of divorce—but she was a lovely, intelligent girl, ready to start anew. Of course there were still issues. It would take time to build trust.

  When at last Elv came into the room, Annie had to will herself not to cry. Elv stared straight ahead as she sank into a chair. She had done something awful to her hair. It was shorn so that bits of her scalp showed through. She wore shapeless blue jeans and a sweatshirt. There was a new tattoo she’d tried to hide by bunching up her sweatshirt.

  “Hey,” Elv said to no one in particular, eyes downcast.

  “Let’s just sit in silence for a while,” Julie suggested. “That way we can get used to sharing the same space without hostility or aggression.”

  Alan and Annie shifted in their chairs. There was some sort of ruckus out in the hallway. Two students argued, calling each other asshole. Annie looked up at the same moment Elv did; for some reason they both laughed. It was probably nervous laughter, but it was laughter all the same. That was good.

  It was cold in the therapy room. Elv’s fingernails were bitten to the quick. She had picked up the habit of tapping her foot. She’d been begging for this meeting for the past two weeks, ever since she’d last seen Lorry, but her father was always too busy.

  “You cut your hair,” Annie said, genuinely shocked.

  “I look great, right?” Elv said. “Just kidding,” she added. She didn’t seem as angry as she had before. Her clothes were so baggy, they didn’t seem to belong to her.

  “Actually, it was part of the life skills management program. The staff made the decision to cut it.”

  “You mean as a punishment?” Annie was outraged.

  “It’s behavior management,” Alan said, correcting her.

  Elv’s eyes flitted over to her father. Annie remembered what they’d been told, not to expect too much.

  “People start to think about going home when they finish a year of school,” Julie said. “So it’s entirely appropriate for Elv to start coming to terms with that idea. This might be a perfect time for her to reconnect with her family. A move home could be very beneficial.”

  Alan interrupted. “Isn’t it a little early to think about that? This is our first meeting.”

  Elv was biting her nails. She tried to think about the woods, the pond, the way Lorry had held her, what the next part of the story might be. Did he find his dog alive or dead? Did he seek retribution or flee?

  “Well, I think we need to consider how well she’s been doing. Elv has been one of our best students,” Julie Hagen said proudly. “She excelled in her English class.”

  It was a bullshit class, but there was a wash of pride across Elv’s face. No one else had bothered to read anything even though they could choose whatever they wanted, even a comic book; they all sat silently. The other students looked at her, stunned, when she’d stood up and talked about the way Dimsdale represented all of the repressive factors in society, the people who judged you for all the things that had happened to you that you didn’t have any power over anyway, things like love and faith and tragedy. She actually sounded moved, as though she might cry.

  “Good. Then maybe she’s where she belongs,” Alan suggested. “This place has a great deal to offer a student.”

  “You shouldn’t have come,” Elv said to her father. “You don’t care what happens to me. You never did. I don’t even know why you bothered.”

  “Because you’re my daughter,” Alan said.

  “Am I? Where was I all summer when you were getting your stupid divorce?”

  “I don’t know why she’s bringing this up,” Alan said to the counselor. “It was over five years ago.”

  Miss Hagen said she could see they had a long way to go be fore they were communicating effectively. Everyone had the best intentions, but maybe this was enough time for their initial meeting. They could meet again next month.

  “I can’t wait till then,” Elv said, panic-stricken. Miss Hagen was trying to usher them out, but Elv urged her to continue the meeting. “I want to leave now,” she pleaded.

  When Miss Hagen opened the door, it was clear that the commotion in the hall had escalated and grown violent. Two heavy-set male counselors were holding down a tall, skinny boy. They had a blanket wrapped around him so he couldn’t struggle. The boy was screaming, but his cries were muffled. One of the counselors moved to sit on the boy’s back; he looked big enough to crush him.

  Miss Hagen quickly led the Storys back into the therapy room. Annie felt dizzy, stunned by what she’d seen. Is this how the staff treated a disturbance at Westfield? Alan was beside the counselor, asking to see Elv’s grades. As they went back inside the therapy room, Elv came up close to her mother, so close Annie could smell the industrial brown soap students used in the showers.

  “Please,” Elv whispered. She was so close Annie could feel the heat of her body. Her voice was small and reedy. She didn’t even sound like herself anymore. “Get me out of here. I’m begging you.”

  IN THE PARKING lot, Alan insisted they had to stick with the program; they had to commit to the Westfield philosophy in order for it to work. Annie watched him drive away with Cheryl, then she got in her car. She drove to the spot where the policeman had let her turn around, where she’d pulled over when there were snowdrifts and the woods were muffled and white. Now she could see blackflies drifting through the air. The leaves were pale green. Pools of shadows fell across the road. She thought of the boy in the hall, and of her daughter who didn’t sound like herself. She remembered standing in the yard with Elv, pointing out Orion and telling her a story in which a girl had finally woken after a hundred years’ sleep.

  Annie made a U-turn and went back. She headed directly for the administration office and signed the release papers. She did not wish to speak to any of the counselors or to the dean. Her mind was made up. It was that boy in the hallway and her daughter’s desperate plea. It was the way everything was spiraling forward in time, winter becoming spring in seconds, it seemed. Elv was in the front hall ten minutes after Julie informed her she was being released from Westfield. She was clearly delighted. To Annie’s surprise, Elv actually threw her arms around her, which was totally unexpected, then just as quickly Elv backed away. She had only one small backpack. She left everything else behind. Elv shifted the backpack over her shoulder. With her clipped hair she looked younger than her age. She glanced around the hallway.

  “No Dad?”

  “Nope,” Annie told her. “It’s just you and me.”

  That was fine with Elv. She didn’t care about the particulars. She just had to get out of Westfield. She didn’t say good-bye to anyone, although she left behind her copy of The Scarlet Letter for Miss Hagen. If she thought about the horses, it would be too sad, so she wasn’t going to think about them. She was wary as they walked out to the parking lot, yet joyful. She wanted to remember the moment of her release. She hoped the horses wouldn’t be waiting for her in the morning, banging against their stalls, looking out the rough doorway into the field.

  Elv was surprisingly polite in the car. At Westfield she’d learned it was best to speak only when spoken to. She’d learned a great deal there, as a matter of fact. She wouldn’t miss it, but it held certain memories that in their aftermath had changed everything, including who she was.

  “We’ll work everything out,” her mother was saying. Elv didn’t disagree. She gazed out the window; she couldn’t believe it was almost summer. She tried
not to let on how excited she was. She was seventeen and ready for the world, whether or not it was ready for her. She could actually feel things after all. That’s what Lorry had taught her.

  They stopped at a rest area for coffee and doughnuts. Elv excused herself, saying she had to go to the restroom; she’d be right back. She asked her mother for money to buy some Tampax—how could she say no to that request?—then went down the hall to call Lorry from a pay phone. Just hearing his voice made her swoon. She felt so much realer when she talked to him. “Baby,” he said. “Where are you?” Just those few words and she was undone. She, who had prided herself on her distance from all things human, was consumed by emotion. She’d been worried that he wouldn’t want her in the real world where there where so many distractions, so many other girls.

  She told him she was finally free. She whispered, “I’ll die if I don’t see you.”

  Lorry laughed. “I wouldn’t let that happen,” he told her. He sounded so sure of himself, so sure of them. When she hung up, Elv danced around even though people were looking at her. “Boo,” she said to a little boy who was watching her, brow furrowed. He laughed and said “Boo” right back. They grinned at each other until his mother grabbed his hand and led him away. Elv had nothing to worry about. Michael had said that among his friends Lorry was famous for getting bored with his girlfriends and turning them out. That wasn’t the case now. He still wanted her.

  When she went back to the coffee shop, Elv saw that her mother looked nervous. Annie hadn’t thought anything through; she’d acted on impulse and now here she was, drinking a tepid cup of decaf, waiting for her daughter. From a distance, as Elv approached down the hall, she appeared to be a complete stranger, with her clipped hair and her oversized sweatshirt, and the black rose tattoo there like a fresh wound. She had a new way of walking, light on her feet, looking to either side cautiously. She wore the sneakers everyone at Westfield was forced to wear. Slip-ons, no laces. They were the first things she planned to burn.