Two Sisters Times Two

by Jeffrey Anderson

6

  That night in bed Jodie was in bad shape. She craved a hit of anything—ludes, X, coke, crack, ox, perc: it didn’t matter what, anything to take the edge off. Her symptoms were all psychological—her body was clean, had been since the wedding. But that was small consolation. Her spirit demons were always worse than her body’s cravings, rapacious and relentless. How do you think she got here in the first place? And in more than twenty years of battling those demons, she’d still not fully figured them out, had mainly held them at bay by avoiding the circumstances that triggered their appearance.

  But this weekend there was no chance for such avoidance, and she’d known it was coming since the day Leah’d called. She’d thought of packing some relief but chose not to take the chance with airport security the way it was. She’d considered sneaking out of the house in Atlanta to try to score, but how stupid was that?—call a taxi from a vacant lot in Leah and Whitfield’s upscale neighborhood and ask him or her to drive me to the nearest street corner dealer that might be miles away in a seedy section of town? Yeah, right. She even did a quick troll of the truckstop when they pulled off the highway for gas and did find a glazed hooker by the restrooms, but she was looking to score—her body in exchange for crank—not sell. The girl’s hollow cheeks and dead eyes haunted Jodie the rest of the way to the beach; but the image had somehow, in the perverse logic of a former junkie’s mind, only heightened her desperation, her need to score, to have a backstop at the ready for whatever was coming.

  And now here it was and here she was—in bed in the dark room in the dark and silent cottage miles from anything and no way to get there, with her sister sleeping ten feet away and her mother and aunt just down the hall. She felt like the whole universe was pressing down on her chest and that it would explode out the top of her head. She was sweating despite the cool room; her throat was dry; her temples throbbed. She forced herself to concentrate on the sound of Penni’s rhythmic breathing to be sure she was asleep, then rose as quietly as she could and slipped out of the bedroom and made her way down the hall toward the bathroom, the thin silver glow of its nightlight like a beacon.

  She closed and locked the door behind her. Her fingers brushed the light switch but didn’t throw it on. She couldn’t possibly withstand the sudden glare and what it might show in the mirror. The nightlight’s few watts of glow provided all the light she’d need. The shadow that was her body moved across the mirror to the linen closet at the far end of the room. She opened its door and reached up to feel for her toiletries kit hidden behind the towels on the top shelf. She grabbed its handle and pulled the kit down and set it on the vanity. She unzipped its top and reached in and felt beneath her razor and shaving gel and shampoo and conditioner to the slick triangular-shaped bottle hidden at the bottom. Though she could’ve seen what she was doing, she did it all by feel, with her eyes closed, as if denying even to herself that any of this was really happening. The sealed bottle held a week’s supply of night-time cough medicine. In a last-ditch summoning of her high-school freshman days, she’d grabbed a bottle of the cough medicine at the truckstop and managed to hide it from Aunt Leah under a big bag of cotton balls bought at the same time till she got it into her toiletries kit.

  Though she assumed they’d long since removed the good stuff from this brand of over-the-counter medicine, the scent was the same as she cracked open the seal and took off the top. That smell alone calmed her breathing and slowed her heart rate. She raised the bottle to her lips and took a long draught. The syrup tasted the same and had the same effect of tugging her eyeballs backwards into her skull after she swallowed the burning liquid. She took another swallow then another then another. Then the bottle was empty.

  She put the top back on and carefully buried it again at the bottom of the kit. She felt the plastic seal tape on the counter and tucked it into her kit. She felt all around the countertop to be sure she wasn’t forgetting something. Then she opened her eyes to look but saw only her ghostly reflection in the mirror’s glow. She quickly zipped up the kit and returned it to its hiding place behind the towels on the top shelf and quietly closed the linen closet door, then opened the bathroom door, careful to ease off the lock tab and avoid any noise.

  She was halfway back to their bedroom when the medicine, quickly passing through her empty stomach’s lining and into her bloodstream, began to flood her senses. She felt dizzy, there was a rushing sound in her ears, and what little she could see in the dim light grew suddenly blurred. She wavered and thought she’d faint and grabbed the nearest hand hold—the newel post on the stairs leading up to the widow’s walk. That anchor steadied her through the initial onslaught of the drug, and her spinning head slowed then stopped.

  But she was afraid to let go of the post, afraid to try to complete her walk down the hall and through the bedroom to her bed, afraid she’d wake Penni and Penni would wake Mom and then there’d be hell to pay. Jodie, what the hell did you think you were doing! Or, worse, the silent turning of her back in rejection and dismissal. That might be more than she could handle right now.

  But she couldn’t stay here. What if someone came out to use the bathroom and found her passed out in the hall—more alarms, more drama, more disappointment. The stairs before her, their lower half visible in the nightlight before disappearing into darkness, offered an alternative. But she’d have to work fast, before her legs and her consciousness gave way. Clutching the railing with a life-or-death grip, she mounted those steps one at a time, pausing briefly at each step to steady herself before tackling the next. She expected at some point to pass into darkness as she rose, but that never happened. Light from somewhere guided her way. It even seemed she could see more clearly as she approached the top. Was that some result of the medicine?

  At the door at the head of the stairs, she could clearly see the brass knob and matching deadbolt lever, shining in that hidden light. She unlocked the deadbolt and turned the knob and the door freely swung open away from her. She stepped out into the night.

  And what a rush! The clear sky’s infinite stars leapt toward her and wrapped themselves around in a dizzying twirl. The peaceful lapping of the surf became arms enfolding her, easing her downward. The gentle breeze—warmer than during the day, out of the southwest, coming off the land rather than the sea—swirled around her, completing the seduction, fulfilling her wish.

  She pushed the door shut behind and surrendered to the stars, the sea, the wind, collapsed to the wood decking, leaned against the open railing’s pickets, laid her head on her arm, and slept.

  Leah lay on her back in the bed listening to her sister’s slow and rhythmic breathing, each loop punctuated by a high-pitched whistle that might’ve been a sigh or a moan or a whine or a giggle but was presumably just compressed air being forced through a partially blocked nasal passage. In another time, that sound from the sleeping Brooke might’ve produced a swell of contentment and reassurance in Leah, an unwitting affirmation of life and vitality in the one she’d known the longest and the best. But on this night the faint whistle made Brooke’s breathing sound thin and frail—vulnerable to any disturbance, subject to suspension.

  Last night after their bedtime talk in the dark, Leah had removed her processors before realizing that in all of their childhood nights together she’d never heard the sound of Brooke’s unconscious breathing. She had many times held her hand just above Brooke’s slack mouth to feel her sister’s sleeping exhalations wash over her fingertips. Once, Brooke’s eyes flashed open and she grabbed that hand, scaring Leah—she couldn’t have been more than six—so bad she wet her pajamas. Leah’s fear turned to embarrassment as Brooke laughed so hard she looked like she’d pee her pajamas. But then that embarrassment turned to relief as Momma opened the door to ask what was going on and Brooke had deftly covered for her sister’s accident and later helped her change her pajama bottoms and the sheet. That incident didn’t keep Leah from monitoring her sister’s sleeping breaths frequently in the years following. Her instinctive need to k
now Brooke was alive exceeded her fear of being caught checking. But from that day forward, she’d always braced herself against Brooke’s sudden rousing. The funny thing is, it never happened again. Brooke always slept all the way through Leah’s vigils, her gentle breaths a dependable wellspring of solace till Leah’s suspended arm would tire and she’d roll over and return to sleep.

  But she’d never heard that breathing. She’d heard very few sleeping breaths in the years since she’d got her implants, as she always took the processors off before going to bed. But in the first months after the surgery, as her brain struggled to decode the strange and unsettling static flowing in through her ears, she’d sneak into Jasper’s room after he’d fallen asleep and listen to his unconscious breathing. That gentle rhythm was a manageable dose of sound for her mind to process, and came to be a source of joy and wonder and calm. In the years since she’d heard Whitfield snoring many times, nights when she would read in bed beside him (that racket made her appreciate how fortunate she was to be able to remove her processors and turn off his gurgling chorus), and often listened to the wheezing of their chronically congested bulldog Orion sleeping in his dog bed in the den.

  But never Brooke. So when they’d retired this night and said their “good-nights” (that too was new, for them both), she’d left her implants in. And it wasn’t long before Brooke’s rhythmic breathing and faint whistling filled the room and her head. Though she’d hoped the sound would reassure her—an affirmation of life, stored for future recollection—it only did the opposite, deepened the dark pool of sadness and fear swelling in her heart. She could end the noise, like Whitfield’s snoring, by simply lifting her external processors off the implants’ magnets. But she knew that action wouldn’t erase the sound, or its disquiet, from her heart. Like Jasper’s soft whispers of childhood trust and innocence, Brooke’s sighing whistles would be with her from now on.

  Then she heard the creaking of the hall’s wood flooring, then the nearly inaudible click of the latch closing on the bathroom door. She knew it was Jodie. She didn’t know how she knew; she just knew. Those faint sounds were followed by some minutes of silence, as she blocked out Brooke’s breathing (or had it stopped?) and listened intently for further hints from beyond their bedroom door. She was, as always since the first time she’d laid eyes on her first-born niece in the Currituck County Hospital’s nursery, worried about Jodie—all the more so today, as Jodie’s uncharacteristic good cheer seemed, to Leah at least, thin and desperate, hinting at an inner struggle and foretelling, as it always did in Jodie, a crash.

  After a few minutes, the bathroom’s door eased open—another near-silent latch click, a hinge squeaking ever so slightly—and the floorboards creaked again. Only this time the creaking didn’t progress down the hall toward the far bedroom. It rose. How could that be? Was she leaning against the walls? Climbing them? Then Leah remembered—the stairs to the widow’s walk. She followed Jodie’s halting progress up those stairs. The cottage seemed well-built, but nothing is so well built as to keep third-floor stairs from creaking. And each tread offered forth its own signature note to the dark. There was a pause at the top, then another door swinging open, then the sound of the outdoors rushing into the hall, filling the house for seconds, maybe minutes. How loud were these noises? How was anyone else in the house still asleep?

  Then the door shut, and everything grew instantly still.

  Leah waited for her own heart to slow and quiet. Gradually the sound of her thumping heart was replaced by the sound of Brooke’s rhythmic breathing—slow and measured as before but the frail whistle gone. Leah held frozen in place, she couldn’t have said how long. Five minutes? Ten? Fifteen? There was no clock on the nightstand, she didn’t have a watch, and she’d certainly not turn on her phone with its deafening activation jingle and blinding screen’s light. So she waited in darkness accompanied by the new yet now somehow eternal sound of her sister’s sleeping breaths, praying that the widow’s walk door would open, the stairs creak in reverse, the floorboards down the hall, the far bedroom door open then close, and she could take off her processors and go to sleep. Beneath her surface anxieties she wondered at how the rest of the world dealt with this profusion of nocturnal noises, was secretly grateful for the oblivion of nighttime silence and the freedom from worry it granted.

  But not tonight. As her eyes grew heavy, she feared she might doze off; and Jodie was still out there on the widow’s walk. A sudden panic gripped her—had Jodie fallen over the edge? If not, might she? There’d been no loud noises of a fall, but who could say? She might’ve missed something—a cry, a plea. She needed to go. She needed to save her niece.

  She rose from the bed as quietly as she could. The room was cold and she pulled the bed’s quilted throw over her shoulders. She could see well enough—but how? starlight through the windows? some light reflected off the sand or water?—to move confidently but still moved cautiously to avoid making any noise and waking Brooke. She eased their door open then shut it behind. The hall was relatively well lit by the bathroom’s nightlight and she moved more quickly now though still with her softest footsteps. She’d never known how much noise houses could make in the night! She moved up the stairs, almost running now, her bare feet feeling the rough nosing of every other tread. At the top, she eased the door open a crack, checked the knob to make sure it wouldn’t lock behind her, then pushed the door open further.

  Halfway open the door bumped against something. In the strange outdoor light, a silver luminescence combining the reflection of stars and surf and sand, she could see Jodie’s body laid out on the deck. She quickly stepped over her body, pushed the door shut to give her more room, then knelt down to Jodie’s face. She laid her cheek against Jodie’s mouth and was relieved beyond expressing to feel her niece’s warm breath wash over her cold skin. She looked up at those innumerable stars, so bright and persistent from this lofty perch and in this darkest of settings, and offered a quick and audible thanks that began as an animal’s low moan and ended as a sigh.

  Then she rolled to the side and sat against the railing. It felt solid and safe. And reaching beneath Jodie’s shoulders, she eased her niece’s upper body into her lap then pulled the quilt to cover them both. Jodie roused and said something unintelligible into Leah’s chest, then nuzzled her face down into Leah’s stomach and fell back asleep. Leah lightly brushed her niece’s soft hair beneath the blanket. Only then did she become aware that there was sound in this darkness too, the rhythmic lap then retreat of the surf, the world’s inhalation and exhalation, strong and sure.

  Penni heard Jodie leave the bedroom. She figured she was just going to the bathroom and rolled over to go back to sleep.

  She couldn’t say how much time had passed when she woke again and rolled onto her back. She knew within seconds that she was alone in the room. She considered rising to check on her sister. But the room was cold, the night dark, and who knows where Jodie might be or what she was doing or if she’d appreciate her little sister’s intrusion. This last thought was what kept Penni in her warm bed. She felt more than recalled the disappointment and sometimes shame of her many childhood searches for her older sister. Most times she couldn’t find her; and the few times she did, she was greeted with a frown and the exclamation “What are you doing here?” or “Are you spying on me?” She’d not repeat that mistake tonight, risk riling her sister and perhaps rousing the rest of the cottage’s occupants.

  Instead, her mind and very soon thereafter her body found consolation in summoning Randall. She closed her eyes and discovered first his scent, the fragrance of his face highlighted by the menthol of his shaving cream, the coconut oil of his conditioner, the rich earthiness from his neck down along his arms and flanks, the whiff of hand sanitizer around his well-trimmed nails and between his fingers. Those fingers then began to caress her and it was no longer smell but touch that claimed her full awareness. That touch began at her lips, the moisture from the tip of her tongue then descended ever so slowly
and patiently to her breasts, circled her tender and alive nipples, first the left then the right, lingered there. Then began a meander over her taut stomach, circled atop the new and gentle rising that wasn’t so much sensitive as surprising, still fresh with hope and promise.

  Then that touch moved below. She was by then panting beneath Randall’s intoxicating embrace, swaying in tandem with his thrust and rhythm, every nerve ending in her body in tune with his—side to side, back and forth. There was no separation between them. They were one flesh, one spirit. She would remain here forever. She was safe, she was fulfilled, she was ecstatically happy.

  Then the inward pressure burst forth in brilliant light. She screamed or thought she did. She collapsed onto the mattress.

  She opened her eyes. She was alone in the still darkness but didn’t care. She rolled to her stomach, pressed her face into the damp pillow, and slept.

  Brooke heard Jodie, heard Leah, heard Penni. It was her fate to know everything about those in her charge, and her obligation to do something about it—keep them safe, make them happy.

  But not tonight. The grinding in her lower abdomen was all she could manage, more vicious than ever, almost too much to bear. She tried to calm herself with deep breaths, tried to will the pain away. But it didn’t work. The fire couldn’t be damped; it could barely be controlled. It was all she could do to keep from screaming.

  And all about, her loved ones needed her; but she couldn’t rise to help. Worst of all, she knew it would be this way here on out. That understanding was more painful than the wholesale rebellion of her body.