Two Sisters Times Two

by Jeffrey Anderson

2

  Late that night Andrea was asleep in a sleeping bag laid out on the carpeted floor beside Leah’s bed.

  Leah had used her ample social grace to smooth Dave’s ruffled feathers and her nephews’ suspicions, introducing Andrea as Jodie’s friend and her acquaintance who had generously offered to help the family “during the girls’ required absence.” Brent said, “But we don’t need any help,” to which Leah replied, “In case we do.” Dave said, “She can stay in Jodie’s room.” Andrea answered, “Thank you, but I’ll sleep on the floor in Leah’s room.” When Dave started to protest, she’d said, “I’d be grateful for a sleeping bag if you have one handy.” She got two—one to sleep on, one to sleep in.

  The women had taken a few turns sitting with the unconscious and ghostly pale and shrunken Brooke—Leah in a chair close to the bed holding her sister’s hand, Andrea in a second chair within reach but to the side and slightly behind. Through the afternoon and evening, Leah had let Dave and the boys have their pick of times with Brooke. She didn’t want to seem like she was hoarding these last hours with her sister, and truth was she felt in many ways her sister was already gone. The day before, Momma and Father had made their last visit to their eldest daughter, brought up from their coastal cottage by Davey’s wife then driven back that evening. Leah had sat with them for an excruciating twenty minutes that seemed like twenty years as Momma laid her head beside Brooke’s on the same pillow and whispered unintelligible sounds to her comatose daughter and Father had sat off to one side weeping silent tears that trailed parallel lines across his furrowed cheeks and made two dark circles on either side of the collar of his golf shirt. After they’d left Brooke’s room and life, something deep inside Leah had given way; and she felt it was finished. So her several short stints with Andrea as silent companion were respectful but empty of emotion.

  Then in the wee hours of the morning, Leah had quietly climbed out of bed without turning on the light, slid on her robe and slippers, and stood silently over her niece’s partner stretched out on the floor.

  Though she’d not been touched or roused in any overt manner, Andrea sensed a presence and rolled over to see Leah’s shaded silhouette backlit by the dim glow of the bathroom’s nightlight. The shadow looked very tall and very still, and for a moment Andrea actually wondered if it were an apparition though, as Jodie constantly reminded her, she was the least superstitious person on earth.

  But when Leah saw Andrea’s full round face and the big dark circles that were her open eyes, she made two deliberate gestures—first pointing toward herself and waving toward the bedroom’s door, then pointing toward Andrea and motioning toward the bed’s mattress.

  Leah had warned Andrea before turning out the light that she’d remove her processors overnight and any communication would have to be by touch and signing. So Andrea, ever a light sleeper and instantly awake, immediately understood Leah’s meanings—I am going down to Brooke; you can sleep on the bed while I am gone. She nodded understanding of the silent communications from the dark cave of her sleeping bag.

  Leah then headed for the bedroom’s door, moving so silently and effortlessly that she might have been a ghost floating through the black air. The bedroom door opened then closed with a barely audible click.

  Andrea squirmed out of the cozy confines of the sleeping bag’s felt-lined recesses and stood in her plaid flannel pajama bottoms and a black long-sleeved t-shirt. But she wasn’t destined for the mattress’s cushioned sleep. She looked at her feet glowing white against the dark carpet. She’d not thought to pack slippers and wondered if she should dig some socks out of her overnight bag and pull them on. The floors downstairs were sure to be frigid. But she couldn’t risk taking the time. She headed out into the hall, barefoot and without a robe in her mismatched sleepwear. She vividly pictured the sleep lines on her face and the disarray of her ever-unruly curly hair. This wasn’t how she would have pictured herself on her first night in her lover’s parents’ house. But then maybe at age thirty-eight she’d given up on ever having a lover who would ask her to stay overnight at her parents’ house. So life gave you what it gave you and you took it, embraced it, held on—for dear life!—even if you looked a mess and the marble floors in the entry were freezing against your bare feet.

  She passed the hospice nurse coming out of Brooke’s room as she entered. Earlier that evening she’d silently bonded with this overnight nurse of approximately her age who, despite being tall and homely, had a spiritual presence and softness about her that was perfect for, or perhaps produced by, her vocation. A slight tightening around the eyes in the nurse’s silent glance told Andrea all she need to know—we’re close. She tilted her head toward the Windsor armchair positioned next to the door in another silent assurance—I’m here when you need me. Andrea nodded thanks.

  As she pushed the door shut behind her, Andrea saw Leah kneeling beside the head of the bed, up near where Brooke’s gray face and brown hair was receding into the white pillowcase. The bed was tall, and Leah needed to keep her torso ramrod straight to get her elbows atop the mattress. Her hands were not folded or pressed palm together but were moving in a rapid-fire, animated series of signs that Andrea couldn’t begin to decipher. From her position behind and to the side, she could see the muscles of Leah’s cheek and around her eye twitching in movements that surely complemented whatever it was her fingers and hands were saying. This exchange went on for some minutes, all without the slightest sound, not even the creak of a mattress spring or a floorboard. Andrea stood unmoving by the door.

  Leah stood suddenly in a single smooth motion, no wavering or clumsiness despite the long spell on her knees. She leaned over, pressed her face against the side of Brooke’s, kissed her sister’s hair, each eye, and tight drawn blue lips, then ran past Andrea, opened the door and fled down the hall, her robe billowing out behind her.

  Andrea stepped forward to check the patient. She looked the same as earlier in the evening. But behind her, sitting on the nightstand, the heart monitor was showing a silent flat line, the interval since last compression now ticking past five minutes on the digital readout.

  The nurse intercepted Andrea as she crossed the room.

  “Wake her husband and watch over him, please,” Andrea said in a quiet firm voice that seemed a shout after the prolonged silence. “Let him tell the boys.” Brent and Garrett were upstairs; Davey had gone home to sleep with his wife in their bed.

  The nurse nodded.

  Andrea turned toward the doorway.

  The nurse caught her hand and waited for her to look. “She’ll take it the hardest.”

  “I know. That’s why I’m here.” She hesitated then asked, “Would you pray for her, and for me?” Prayers were not something she’d practiced since childhood, and had never asked for.

  The nurse said simply, “Already done.”

  The room was still and appeared empty. Andrea closed the door and waited for her eyes to adjust to the darkness. One by one all the features she’d subconsciously memorized the evening before returned to view—the bed with nightstands to either side, the dresser and mirror and chair along one wall, an antique desk and chair on the wall opposite, next to the two doors, one leading into the bathroom with its nightlight’s silver glow, the other opening onto the darkness of the small walk-in. Leah was nowhere visible.

  Then Andrea heard the sobs, great waves of grief rising and falling out of the darkness, all the sadder and more tormented for being muffled in a hopeless attempt at restraint. She circled to the side of the bed opposite where the sleeping bags were spread out. She knelt on the carpet between the bed and the desk, then lay down flat on her stomach. She laid her head atop her right arm folded beneath. She faced the pitch-black cavern of space beneath the bed. She slowly extended her free hand into that cavern but stopped when her fingers felt the edge of Leah’s robe. Her hand would wait there, long as necessary, till Leah found it, made her way toward accepting its support.

  As she waited, wide awake, Andr
ea wondered how sobs felt in the absence of sound, how terrifying that void filled now with incomprehensible spasms of loss.