Two Sisters Times Two

by Jeffrey Anderson

4

  That morning Brooke had called in her hairdresser to try to do something with the “limp and dull mop” that was stuck to her skull. She even persuaded Effy—short for Evangeline, the daughter of their accountant—to try her hand at make-up after she finished the hair even though she wasn’t licensed in make-up and it was difficult getting the colors right in the shifting light around the bed. Dave corrected that problem by redirecting a couple of the track lights from illuminating paintings on the wall to focus on Brooke’s face propped against the headboard. The combined result was quite successful as Brooke’s hair had volume and sheen, all the more so when pressed forward by the pillows, and her skin had lost its gray cast and somehow managed to look warm without seeming artificial or layered on. Brooke spent the whole time Effy was packing up her tools and supplies cooing into the hand mirror and calling her hairdresser “a miracle worker.” When Dave appeared after she buzzed him on the intercom, he too expressed amazement, as much for Brooke’s bright smile and gleaming eyes as for the skin and hair surrounding those features. She called him over and whispered loud enough for Effy to hear, “Make sure and give her a big tip.” In the kitchen he gave her a hundred dollar bill plus a check for the home appointment. She tried to refuse the tip but he would have none of it.

  But then Jodie’s plane was late and Leah got stuck in traffic on their way back from the airport and it was time for her morphine and they’d still not arrived. She wanted to skip or at least delay this dose, but Dave thought that was a bad idea. As if to affirm his warning, her body was wracked by a spasm of pain that started at her core and moved outward in all directions in powerful waves. She looked at Dave with a desperate plea, the look incongruous with her made-up face and prissy hairdo. He got a single morphine tablet from the locked box he kept in the bathroom and placed it on her tongue then helped her wash it down by holding the cup of water to her lips. He sat next to the bed and held her cramped hand atop the covers and watched her face contorted in a grimace, her eyes tight shut. Then he began to count in his head. By the time he reached one hundred, her clenched jaw and the muscles in her neck had begun to loosen. At two hundred her face was totally relaxed, the fingers on her hand loose, and her eyes opened dreamily, smiled or so he thought in his direction. Had he kept on counting, by the time he’d reached three hundred he would have seen her in the now familiar peaceful and unmoving morphine trance, what Davey had impulsively called a “death sleep” when he first saw it earlier in the week, a phrase though accurate they both wished had not been uttered. That condition freed him to return to his other duties—in this case, making dinner for “the girls.” But he lingered beside his wife, his blank eyes gazing on her face in a trance of their own, numb and hopeless.

  When the girls finally arrived, Dave helped carry his daughters’ bags upstairs, depositing them in their respective childhood rooms. The women came up behind. Though Penni told the others to go on, Leah walked beside her and Jodie just behind as she took the steps one at a time, holding the handrail tightly and pulling her imbalanced body up the long flight. In the hall outside her room, Dave gave his pregnant daughter a long if heedful hug, leaning over so as not to press against her jutting belly. He then stepped around her to Jodie. She at first extended her hand in her standard greeting for her stepfather since she’d gone off to college. It was never intended as chilly (from her side anyway) so much as formal and safe, devoid of the fireworks she saved for her biological parents. But instead of taking her hand, Dave held his arms open before him, inviting her, calling her into fuller contact. And Jodie accepted, stepping into his loose embrace and returning it. She suddenly wanted to thank him for all he’d been and done across some thirty years of her life but didn’t know how. All she could do was squeeze him around his big waist, his belly not quite as far out as Penni’s but headed in that direction.

  After the girls had disappeared into their rooms, Dave whispered to Leah, “She’s out. She wanted so badly to stay up but couldn’t make it.”

  Leah nodded and said, “I’m sorry we got held up.” But secretly she was relieved. The girls would have a chance to meet their mother in her new state outside the scrutiny of Brooke’s ever observant and rapacious stare.

  And so they did about ten minutes later as Leah led them into the bedroom bathed in bright afternoon light despite the cloudy day.

  Leah said in normal volume, “Look who’s here!” to try to put the girls at ease—no need for silence or whispers. She’d already explained at the coffee shop and again upstairs that Brooke spent much of her day and all of her nights in a pain-free morphine daze that sometimes manifested itself in open-eyed incoherence or delusions but generally, as now, left her in peaceful unconscious. When she saw Brooke’s hair and face, she briefly forgot she wasn’t alone and raced forward. “You’re beautiful!” She bent over and kissed Brooke’s cool slack lips.

  By then Jodie and Penni were standing at the foot of the bed, their shoulders touching. Normally Penni was a couple inches taller than her sister; but between their shoes (Penni had on loose canvas flats, Jodie short boots with a modest heel) and Penni’s weighed down body, they were exactly the same height at that moment.

  Leah turned toward them. “While I was picking you up, she had her hairdresser come out. And she did her face too. Doesn’t she look great?”

  Neither daughter spoke.

  Leah managed a shallow chuckle. “Sorry. You didn’t see her before. She looks a lot better than she did.”

  Penni finally found her voice, about the same time her hand found Jodie’s so close at her side. “Her hair and face look fine, Aunt Leah. It’s just that she looks so—.” She hesitated, searching for the right word—or if not the right one, at least the best for the situation.

  “Still,” Jodie said in a low voice as if to herself.

  Neither daughter could remember seeing their mother still. Even if they caught her napping, which was rare, she seemed to be vibrating with latent energy, ready to pounce on them or the world in an instant.

  Leah scolded herself for the oversight, but what more could she have done to prepare them? “I’ve seen her a lot like this lately—this past week and last spring in Intensive Care. I guess I’ve gotten used to it.”

  To the girls looking from the foot of the bed, the head propped on the pillows seemed devoid of a body, with the bedcovers appearing almost flat on the mattress.

  “Does she still eat?” Penni asked.

  “Sometimes—lactose-free milkshakes, when she can hold them down. The morphine suppresses appetite along with everything else.”

  Without a word or sound, Jodie turned and left the room.

  Leah started to say something but swallowed the sound. She took two steps after her but paused alongside Penni.

  Penni said, “Go ahead. I’ll be O.K.”

  “You sure?”

  Her niece smiled. “I’ve got company,” she said, glancing down at the fetus hiding beneath her thin cotton smock and a couple layers of organic tissue.

  “Lucky you,” she said, not sure if she meant the words as a joke or in sincerity.

  “Yes.”

  Leah left the room, hoping Jodie had gone upstairs.

  Penni walked around to the side of the bed. She hesitated just a moment as she reached toward her mother’s hand on the bedspread. Then she completed the action, picked up the limp hand, raised her smock and laid the cool fingers on her warm skin just above the baby’s head and eyes and heart.