Two Sisters Times Two

by Jeffrey Anderson

7

  That night Leah and her two nieces were sitting around Brooke and Dave’s breakfast table in the little breakfast nook off the kitchen with floor to ceiling windows on three sides looking out on a turquoise twilight fading at the edges to an indigo night. There was a near empty bottle of red wine and a completely empty pizza box from the neighborhood Pie Shoppe, a long-time favorite. The box had held a single large pie split evenly between Jodie’s favorite spinach and garlic with white sauce, Penni’s ham with pineapple and Leah’s Italian sausage and red pepper. It seemed odd to all three to be sitting in Brooke’s kitchen without Brooke gossiping away from the stove or giving them assignments or insisting on pouring more wine.

  Dave was at the hospital with Brooke and Leah’s aging parents who had made the long drive from the coast to check on their eldest daughter now that she was safely recovering. Leah had set them up in a handicapped accessible room (Momma had recently started using a walker due to peripheral neuropathy) at a hotel convenient to the hospital, then escorted them to the hospital room to see the subject of their visit. Once Dave arrived, Leah excused herself to “go look after the girls” who were back at the house. It was difficult for her to see her failing parents (Father had trouble finding words, a new trait that caused him great frustration) in a hospital room with her sister who had been so close to death. “Make sure they clean their rooms,” Brooke had yelled as Leah left, her bluster maybe tinged with regret at not being free to join them.

  While eating they’d avoided discussion of Brooke’s health, focusing instead on mundane details from their personal lives far from this house. But once the pizza was gone and the wine had soaked in and the day outside the window had gone almost completely dark, Brooke’s looming presence was unavoidable.

  “She looks a lot better than I expected,” Penni said.

  Leah nodded. “And a lot better than she did.”

  “After one of his consultations, Randall called me to say I needed to get down here. He didn’t say as much, but I could tell he thought they’d lost the battle.”

  Jodie gave Leah a puzzled look. “Was it that bad?”

  “One night, yes.”

  “And you didn’t tell me.”

  “You two talked?” Penni asked.

  “Texted,” Jodie corrected, though her gaze never left her aunt.

  “It was a calculated risk, Jodie. I could tell you to rush home only to have her recover later, or tell you to rush home only to arrive too late. Instead, I told you to stay put and wait for the right moment.”

  “When did you text?”

  Leah laughed nervously, facing first one niece then the other. “Jodie would text me in the middle of my overnight stays, and I responded.”

  “You initiated it after a few nights.”

  “I wanted to share the good news of your mother’s improvement.”

  “What about me?” Penni asked.

  “I knew Davey was keeping you informed, and you had Randall’s consultations.”

  “Davey didn’t call you?” Penni asked Jodie.

  “I maybe forgot to return his messages.”

  “Mom was in Intensive Care, Jodie!”

  “I’m here, aren’t I?”

  “Girls!” Leah said sharply.

  Both nieces looked at their aunt.

  Leah blushed. “Never thought I’d sound like your mother.”

  Penni reached across the table and cupped Leah’s hand loosely. “Sorry, Aunt Leah. I know you would have called if I needed an update. But I wish you had anyway. I got tired of Davey’s clinical summaries and terrified of what I assumed Randall was holding back.”

  Leah shrugged. “Davey told me he had it under control.”

  “Don’t ever listen to him,” Jodie said.

  “I tried my best.”

  “Thanks for being here, Aunt Leah,” Penni said. “Mom might not have made it without you.”

  “And thanks for protecting me,” Jodie said.

  The other two women looked at each other and laughed.

  “What?” Jodie asked.

  Penni looked from Leah to her sister. “Mom calls Aunt Leah ‘Jodie’s Guardian’.”

  “Since when?”

  “Since far back as I can remember,” Penni said.

  The sisters looked at Leah. “Since you were a toddler and started giving your mother fits.”

  “Glad to have someone watching over me.”

  “Always,” Leah affirmed.

  “What about me?” Penni asked.

  Jodie rolled her eyes. “Everyone watches over you.”

  “Not like that.”

  “You’ll always be well loved, Penni,” Leah said. “Speaking of which, how’s that baby doing?”

  “My fourteen-week fetus?”

  “Is that what you call it?”

  “That’s what they call it. I call her my baby.”

  “Her?”

  “Till I’m told otherwise.”

  “Be hell on him if he comes out to pink ribbons and bows.”

  “Thought you of all people would like gender-neutral,” Penni said.

  Jodie bristled. “I don’t know that ‘me of all people’ ever mentioned what I think on the subject of raising babies. And in any case, pink is not a neutral color. Try green or yellow.”

  Penni flinched. “I’m sorry. I only meant that you’ve always been so open-minded. But I won’t use pink. We’ll start off pastel green and go from there. O.K.?”

  Jodie glared back. “You don’t need my permission.”

  “I’m asking your support.”

  “Pastel green is good,” Jodie said without enthusiasm.

  Penni looked calmly at her sister across the table for a long time. Jodie stared back, but as if not seeing her, as if looking through her. Leah recognized Jodie’s retreat in that stare, her flight from family confrontation. But she thought Penni might cry and wondered if Jodie could remain gone in the face of such emotion.

  Penni’s eyes remained dry; and she eventually said in a quiet and neutral tone, “I think the reason I want it to be a girl is to find in her the love I always longed for from my sister.”

  Leah saw Jodie’s eyes flinch then retreat deeper inside herself. She saw Penni’s eyes begging for some response, any response.

  Penni added after long seconds of silence. “I know that’s wrong. A mother needs to give her child unconditional love, not look for her or him to fill some gap in her life. I trust I’ll come around to that view over the next six months.”

  “But in the meantime you decided to use your pregnancy as a convenient excuse to bash your sister,” Jodie growled.

  “Jodie!” Leah cried.

  Now tears did rise into Penni’s eyes. She blurted through her tears, “I’ll use my pregnancy and Mom’s illness and this opportunity to be alone together to tell my sister I love her and have loved her every minute since I saw her standing over my crib. And if that doesn’t meet with her approval then too bad for her.” She stood and rushed out of the kitchen.

  Jodie and Leah listened to her shoes cross the entry hall’s marble tiles and climb the stairs. In the quiet house, they could hear her run down the upstairs hall and into her bedroom and close the door. The carpet of her bedroom muffled any further movements but both women accurately envisioned Penni collapsing on the canopy bed from her youth and burying her face in her fluffy pillows and the crowd of stuffed animals Brooke kept arranged in a semicircle at the headboard.

  Leah took a deep breath and let it out as a long sigh. She stared at her remaining niece in silence.

  Jodie kept her eyes fixed on the ghost of Penni’s sudden exit, still fleeing in her mind past the prep island and the big refrigerator. Finally she released that vision and turned toward her aunt and the reproach she knew was waiting there. “I thought you were my guardian not my accuser.”

  “I am.”

  “Then why the ‘You should be ashamed’ look.”

  “Ashamed of what?”

  “Being cruel to my
little sister—again.”

  “How about being cruel to yourself?”

  “I’m not the one who ran away in tears.”

  “No?”

  “No, Leah! Penni’s the one upstairs bawling her eyes out!”

  “You fled years ago. You’ve been crying out so long you don’t even know it anymore.”

  Jodie considered these claims for several seconds before rising from the table, sliding her chair carefully back into place, then walking briskly across the kitchen and up the stairs, trailing Penni’s ghost of flight down the upstairs hall and past her sister’s room to her room at the far end. The sound of her footsteps ended at the carpet there, but then resumed a few seconds later as she retraced her steps along the hall, down the stairs, across the entry tile, then out the front door.

  After she heard the door open, Leah said in a whispered shout from her seat at the breakfast table, “Please don’t!”

  But the door shut anyway and the house was gripped by a new silence.

  Later, after several failed attempts to lose herself in the biography of Sylvia Plath she was reading and no response from Jodie to repeated text messages, Leah finally gave up waiting and readied for bed in the bath of her guest suite at the far end of the upstairs hall. Before retiring she emerged in her flannel robe to check Jodie’s room in hopes maybe she’d quietly snuck back in. But no—the room was empty and dark.

  She paused outside Penni’s door and knocked lightly.

  “Come in, Aunt Leah,” Penni said in firm clear voice.

  Leah opened the door and stepped into the large room painted in a pale apricot with matching carpet. The wood trim and furniture were all in a glossy white finish, and one wall was covered with large stencils of fantasy animals—unicorns, friendly dragons, anthropomorphic fish rising out of a turquoise sea. Penni had changed into her pajamas and was lying in her bed with a maternity magazine open on her lap. Her stuffed animals had been carefully arranged on the chair beside the bed. Leah finished surveying the room then said, “I don’t remember when I was last in here—ten years ago, maybe. But I don’t think it has changed a bit.”

  Penni laughed. “Mom doesn’t want to give up her baby. She’s had it repainted and the carpet replaced, but she went to great lengths to match the old colors exactly. It all seems a little weird for a girl who’s married now and expecting her own child. But truth is, I’m glad to have this room to come back to. It makes me feel safe.”

  “Like some things don’t change.”

  “Yeah, I guess.”

  “You’re lucky to have something like that.”

  “Till this visit I took it for granted. Now I’m terrified of losing it.”

  Leah desperately wanted to offer some words of reassurance but at that moment could not think of any. “Your father called to say he was spending the night in Brooke’s room.”

  “Why?”

  “He said she asked him to.”

  “But there’s no place to sleep.”

  Leah shrugged but couldn’t stifle her giggle.

  “Are you serious?” Penni said. “Do they allow conjugal visits in the hospital?”

  “Your mom will find a way.”

  “I don’t doubt that.”

  “A sure sign she’s getting back to normal.”

  “The surest.” She had a vision of illicit “conjugal visits” in Randall’s hospital—in available stockrooms or the residents’ cat-nap lounge, panting nurses interlocking with hidden-faced doctors.

  “At least we won’t have to explain Jodie’s absence to your father.”

  “He wouldn’t have noticed. When it comes to Jodie, Dad has always turned a blind eye.”

  “I should be so lucky.”

  “Don’t worry, Aunt Leah. She’ll be alright. She knows these streets like the back of her hand.”

  “It’s not what’s outside Jodie that I’m worried about.”

  Penni studied her aunt for a few seconds then said, “Please sit for a minute, Aunt Leah.” She gestured toward a Queen Anne’s chair at the foot of the bed. “You can set those dolls on the floor.”

  Leah did as directed, sliding the chair so she had a clear view of Penni lying in the bed. She sat, straight-backed and alert.

  “I’ve always known Jodie was your favorite,” Penni said. “I used to be jealous. Now I’m just glad Jodie has someone in the family to turn to. She needs you. Without you we might have lost touch with her long ago.”

  “It has never been easy for Jodie.”

  “Why?”

  Where to begin? Leah thought. “Her early years were full of change and major transitions. She was such a happy and adaptable child, we all thought she was doing fine. But maybe not. Then again, maybe that wasn’t it at all. Maybe she would’ve ended up on the outside no matter what her upbringing. Brooke was like that. Always had to do things her own way.”

  “But Mom ended up O.K.”

  “After a time, yes.” Leah considered all the upheavals and ghosts and scars that brief statement encompassed, not the least of which was Jodie herself. “Having all you kids to focus on helped.”

  “A calling to match her energies.”

  Leah grinned. “How did you become so perceptive?”

  Penni laughed. “Everyone thinks the baby of the family only takes attention. What no one tells you is that at the bottom of that food chain, you have to be a good observer to survive.”

  “Having a doting father and three doting brothers didn’t hurt.”

  “I guess. But it was Mom and Jodie I watched the closest, and needed the most. One out of two ain’t bad, I guess.”

  “More than some.”

  Penni’s face donned an atypical hardness. “Jodie has always had me. And she could’ve had Mom if she’d given her half a chance. Still could, but she’d better hurry up.”

  “For both their sakes,” Leah said.

  “Make it three.”

  Leah smiled. Her younger niece was surprising her at every turn. “Make it four.”

  “Now if you can just convince Jodie.”

  “We’re going to take a ride up to Richmond tomorrow, spend a couple days together. If she comes back.”

  “She’ll come back. Maybe a little worse for wear, but she always comes back.”

  “I’ll count on that. I didn’t know you’d be here when I suggested the trip to Jodie.”

  “That’s alright, Aunt Leah. I’ve got to get back to the daycare. And the last thing you and Jodie need is me tagging along.”

  Leah was suddenly deeply grateful to have such a stable and wise presence in the midst of their quaking lives, and she said so. “You’ve always been a wonderful person, Penni; but you’ve become an extraordinary mature and caring adult. Thank you for being the calm in the midst of our storm.”

  Penni smiled and lightly patted her still flat stomach hiding beneath the plush and frilly bedspread. “You can thank her after she comes out.”

  Leah stood, closed the two yards between them, and bent at the waist to kiss her niece on the forehead. “I’ll thank her then, and now.”

  Leah stood beside her bed debating in her mind whether to leave her processors on. On the one hand, she could only hear Jodie’s return, and ease her anxiety, if she left them on. On the other hand, she knew she wouldn’t be able to sleep if she kept them on, lying on her back facing the dark ceiling. In this silent debate she had a glimpse of the challenges that had faced Brooke in raising five children, especially the subject of her present anxiety, the headstrong Jodie. By comparison it had been so easy raising Jasper, who had been an obedient and even-tempered child who had grown into a smart and level-headed young man. Leah couldn’t help but wonder if her sister’s recent idiosyncrasies were the result of managing the stresses of parenthood, or if her children’s behaviors were reactions to their mother. She concluded without much analysis that their family dynamic was a product of both, a complex series of actions and reactions played out across seven egos. But in this mix she pictured Jodie at t
he center, ever dueling with Brooke for dominance of expression. She opted for sleep over awareness and removed her processors, trusting Penni’s assurance that Jodie would find her way safely home, on her own schedule and by her own volition.

  Yet in the middle of the night something roused her. It couldn’t have been a sound. Maybe it was a vibration in the floor or some subtle change in the light, though the room was near completely dark, barely lit by a faint silver glow creeping in around the windows’ shades. In a state not fully awake, Leah rose from her bed, padded across the room’s carpet to her door and out into the hall. In the absence of sound, all her other senses were more fully alert. She saw everything clearly despite the very faint light, felt the carpet’s individual fabric strands on her toes and the pads of her bare feet, the door knob’s intricate filigree on her fingers, the hall’s wood flooring grain and joinery, could smell the pizza box in the kitchen’s trash can beneath the sink, the taste of sausage on her tongue, the faint odor of burned dust from the gas furnace’s blower, the scent of lavender from the aerator Brooke had left in the half bath under the stairs.

  She turned the cool knob of Jodie’s door and eased it open. She immediately knew her niece was there from the scent in the room, a wonderful subtle earthiness that Leah stored in some obscure corner of her memory when snuggling Jodie as a toddler, still present these decades later. She stepped into the room and saw her niece’s muted silhouette on the bed, curled on its side and facing away. Leah was nearly awake by now but still guided by some hidden need. She walked across the room to the edge of the bed, found there enough room to hold her and a spare pillow waiting, and lay down beside her niece atop the covers. She rolled onto her side, leaving just a fraction of an inch between her body and Jodie’s, smelling Jodie’s hair, the faint whiff of her breath tainted by wine and beer and something else Leah couldn’t place. In a final desperate act of fulfillment, she extended her arm out over Jodie’s shoulder and slowly lowered it to rest there. She felt sudden profound gratitude and relief. Jasper’s image passed before her eyes in the gray dark before disappearing, replaced by Jodie’s all-enveloping scent and warmth. Now she could rest.

  Sometime near dawn Jodie woke. She recalled her prior night as in some fuzzy dream. After walking an old familiar loop that used to go through a sleazy neighborhood full of nocturnal intrigue but now took her past restored houses and prissy storefronts, all dark and empty this time of night, she’d pulled out her phone and dialed from memory the numbers of some long ago contacts. The first three numbers were no longer in service and the fourth yielded a message machine for a bakery. But the fifth reached Jason Terry—and yes he remembered who she was and yes he would like to get together. “When?” “Now?”

  He’d picked her up twenty minutes later. They’d driven to some old haunts—not everything in town had been gentrified—and engaged in some old amusements. No matter that he was married (“to an old friend of yours from school” though he spared them both her name) and father of two daughters in high school, he traded her two hits of X for the favor she’d always done better than anyone else and, as it turned out, still did—better than anyone else, that is (and he’d had a fair sampling in the years since, both before and mostly since his marriage), and helped along by the fast-acting drug. As of old, he’d dropped her off two blocks from her house—“Your parents still alive?”—and no kiss or parting good-bye. Despite the blurring effects of the X, she still felt dirty and used. But at least she’d lost her tension, and forgotten what it was that had sent her out into the night.

  She’d found her way back into the house by the back door and up the stairs and down the hall while deftly avoiding all the loose and creaky floorboards and collapsed into bed, letting the X perform its final good deed by sweeping her off into dreamless oblivion.

  Then she felt the hand curled up under her chin. She quickly inventoried her two hands. One was up under her face, slightly numb but unquestionably hers. The other was tucked between her knees in an old fetal repose she’d never quite been able to abandon. So whose hand was under her chin, whose arm over her shoulder? For a second she wondered if she and Jason had ended up in motel. It wouldn’t be the first time. But this hand was not rough and callused like Jason’s, the arm not fleshy and heavy.

  Then she knew, from some ancient scent or stillness or touch. “Leah?” she whispered.

  There was no response.

  “Aunt Leah,” she said, a little more firmly and louder.

  Still nothing.

  Then she recalled from her infancy how she’d communicated with Leah then, through all manner of subtle signs and gestures, no sound required. She eased out from under the arm then rolled over so she was facing her aunt.

  Leah opened her eyes and looked at Jodie without lifting her head off the pillow. She smiled sleepily in the gray light.

  Jodie smiled back. “Still watching over me,” she mouthed.

  Leah nodded and signed Always—a double loop with the hand that had been draped over Jodie’s shoulder, now freed.

  Jodie whispered, “Thanks.” Then she recalled her previous night’s petulance. “I’m sorry I left,” she mouthed, glad not to have to speak the sounds.

  Leah leaned forward and kissed her niece’s forehead in her surest sign of forgiveness.

  Jodie nodded contritely.

  Leah fixed her in a stare, all the more potent for the dim light and hour of day. “Stop running away,” she said aloud, trusting her sounds despite not hearing them.

  Though a frequent suggestion or command from various advisors, this rendition’s combination of Leah’s intense stare and the mechanical sounding words in this dim dawn light struck Jodie as never before. How much of her cherished self-expression had really been reactive, flight from confrontation and contingency? And why had it taken so long to discover the flaw, let alone correct it? She gazed a long time at Leah before nodding once and whispering “O.K.,” not sure of what she was committing to but sure it was right, somehow.

  Leah nodded.

  Then Jodie saw Leah was outside the covers, surely freezing in the cool room. She eased the bedspread, blanket, and sheet out from under Leah’s body, then held it up for Leah to slide under.

  Leah gestured toward the door—I should return to my room.

  “Please,” Jodie said.

  Leah swore she hear the word. She smiled—acquiescence and thanks—then slid under the covers.

  Jodie let them fall back in place, rolled over on her side, back to her aunt, and curled into her fetal repose.

  Leah slid her arm back over Jodie’s shoulder, her hand lightly up under her niece’s chin to where it could feel the pulse of her young and ardent heart.