Henry's Sisters Read online

  ‘A Married But Unhappy website? I didn’t even know that websites like that existed,’ Janie said. ‘It would make a great beginning for a murder. Maybe a woman murderer – she went after cheating husbands and sliced off a ball.’

  ‘Please. I’m going to eat.’ I sat back in my chair. ‘So you’re going to find out who she is, what she is, her past, her secrets…’

  ‘Yep. I know she’s twenty-six. Parker’s forty-two. She’s thin, blonde hair, boobs the size of Kentucky. She knew she was cheating with a married father. He’s rich. He’s successful. He’s a fuck face. I hate her, I already know that.’

  ‘I hate her, too,’ Janie said.

  ‘Me too,’ I added. Everyone had to hate the woman who took away your sister’s husband. It was an unbreakable rule. ‘I would like to smoke her body over a fire and feed her to a cannibal. I never liked Parker.’

  ‘Me either,’ Janie said, shuddering. ‘Scumfuzz.’

  ‘Gee! What a surprise!’ Cecilia put a hand over her mouth, eyes open wide. ‘I’m simply shocked! Floored!’ She waved both hands. ‘When you both staged an “intervention” two months after we met and again two weeks before my wedding to – how did you say it? – knock some sense into my stupidity? That was a small clue. And, let’s see, Isabelle, for years you came to visit me at my house only when Parker wasn’t there.’

  ‘That’s because Parker’s insufferable.’

  Plus he’d made a pass at me. He was a little drunk about a year after the wedding, but drunks do what they want to do while drunk and use the drinking as an excuse.

  We were out on the deck and Cecilia went inside to bake him his favourite cookie, snickernoodle, because he’d told her to. Parker took a lurch towards me, a hand brushing my boob. Instead of apologising, he left his hand hanging in the air above my breast as if he was massaging it. ‘You’re beautiful, Isabelle. God almighty, you’re beautiful. I didn’t marry the beautiful sister, though. I married Cecilia. We lost out, big-time. Big-time. But it doesn’t have to stay that way. We can change this.’

  He moved forward to kiss me, his lips puckered, his tongue darting out an instant before his lips landed on mine.

  He slung an arm around my waist and hauled me in. I do not shock for long, but for a millisecond I did. When that millisecond was over, I shoved Parker, karate-kicked him in the chest, and flipped his legs, and he went right over the railing and landed on his head after torpedoing a rosebush.

  He passed out as soon as his head hit the ground and did not appear for an hour. He had scratches all over his face and a massive bump on his head.

  He caught me by my Porsche before I left. (That was my first Porsche. It was red. Fast. Slick.)

  ‘You bitch.’

  I laughed. ‘You make a pass at your wife’s sister, and yet I’m the bitch. Now this is what a bitch would do, so we’re clear what a bitch is.’ I slung my fist at his face so hard I cracked a bone in my hand, then got in my car and aimed it right at him. I swerved twice, trying to hit him (not really) and he had to scurry away, like a python with two legs.

  I drove to the hospital. Sent him the bill. I was never rebilled, so I think that was Parker’s way of keeping me quiet. I should have told Cecilia, but that is the problem with sisters and your relationship with them.

  You know them. You know how they’ll react.

  And I knew that Cecilia, at that point in her marriage, would have blamed me. As twins we have a lot of history. I was the pretty-slutty-valedictorian. She was the fat-athletic one. I had been accused by her on several occasions growing up of boyfriend-stealing (never, never true), so I couldn’t risk it.

  And Parker the Penis would have denied what happened. Cecilia would have believed me, in her gut, but she would have had to have believed Parker’s version because she loved him. She would have hated me for it. I couldn’t have her hating me, because I knew she needed me so she wouldn’t drown.

  Later I found out that Parker told her he tripped in their shed and landed on a propane tank to explain his injuries.

  ‘And you, Janie,’ Cecilia spat out, still angry, always angry, ‘you visited – infrequently – when you knew Parker wasn’t going to be there.’

  ‘I couldn’t be around Parker,’ Janie said, ‘because he made my skin feel like maggots were eating it. One time he shook my hand and I couldn’t use that hand for days. It felt unclean.’

  Parker had made a pass at Janie, too. It was about two years after the wedding. He came by her houseboat, shoved his body up against hers. She had responded by leading him out to her deck, smiling. He advanced. She shoved him into the river and stomped on his fingers when he tried to get back up on her deck.

  He swam to a neighbour’s dock, but Janie called the neighbour and told him that a burglar was slithering onto his property via the river, and the neighbour had come out swinging with a shovel. The next neighbour, who could see out of only one eye due to a war injury, had a gun and pointed it at Parker’s head, then shot three times into the river.

  The police were summoned, handcuffs were snapped.

  The usual.

  Their divorce was ongoing, messy, and horrible. Compare it to World War III on a micro-level.

  Cecilia blew air through her two front teeth. ‘I should hear the first report in a few days from the detective.’

  The waitress brought our food and beer.

  ‘Anything else?’ The waitress was sulking.

  ‘Ketchup. Hot sauce. Extra cream for the coffee, please,’ Cecilia said.

  The waitress rolled her eyes.

  ‘Hey, Beck’s daughter, rude one, try not to roll your goth-decorated eyes when your customers can see you. Get the stuff, wipe the bugger off your nose, and go harangue another fat person.’

  The waitress flounced off, then came back and dumped the stuff on the table.

  ‘Parker smiles at me now, with nauseating condescension, trying to convey that he feels sorry for the poor, fat ex-wife.’ Cecilia guzzled her beer. ‘He comes by, gets the kids, gives them a big hug, and in front of me raves about all the great things “the four of them, the family”’ – she again mimicked Parker’s voice – ‘are going to do every other weekend.’

  I wanted to break my brain on the table I hurt so bad for Cecilia.

  ‘I hate her even more now,’ Janie whispered. She separated the food on her plate from the other food. She tapped her fork four times. She shook the salt shaker four times over her omelette. ‘I’ll put her name in my next book. It’s Constance, right? I’ll give her a venereal disease, a pockmarked face, long earlobes, inverted nipples…’

  Cecilia leant towards Janie. ‘You know, Janie, I’d appreciate that.’

  ‘You would?’ Janie’s voice pitched in hope.

  ‘Yes, I would. You’re a vengeful sister and I don’t think I’ve ever thanked you for that.’

  ‘Oh!’ Janie dabbed at her eyes. ‘And you’re a strong Viking woman, a Valkyrie! No need to thank me!’

  ‘I love how you want violent things to happen to Parker.’

  ‘Of course I want violent things to happen to Parker, he hurt you! You’re my sister!’ Janie could not go on, choked with emotion.

  What a sap.

  Cecilia briefly held Janie’s hand and they shared a loving-violent moment together. ‘That reminds me.’ She bit down on two slices of bacon at once. ‘I had my review at school last week.’ She blushed. She coughed.

  ‘Why are you blushing?’ Janie asked.

  ‘I’m not blushing.’

  ‘Yes, you are,’ I said. ‘I can see it. I can feel it.’

  ‘I’m not.’

  ‘Who gave you the review?’ Janie asked. Her antennae were up and wiggling.

  ‘My principal, Dr Laurence Silverton.’

  She smiled when she said his name. Blushed more. It was as if she was caressing the words.

  ‘He’s the best principal ever at our school. Came from Los Angeles. He loves Oregon, the rain, the outdoors. Loves to ski and hike and bike.’
She paused, her eyes unfocused, a blush blooming on her cheeks. ‘He’s very tall. Kind of big. Not big like me. But big. Taller than me. Big guy.’

  ‘So he’s big?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes, he’s big.’ She sighed. ‘He’s nice. He’s the nicest man I’ve ever met.’ Her voice was awfully soft. So unlike Cecilia.

  That amused me. I winked at Janie.

  ‘How nice is he?’

  Cecilia didn’t even blink, off in her own world. ‘He’s sweet. We all love him. The teachers. The kids. I…’ She coughed. She sighed. ‘He’s so funny.’

  ‘How funny?’ I asked, I could barely contain my laughter.

  ‘He has a dry sense of humour. And he sees how things are. You know how most men are so dense? They can’t see beyond words? They never want to find out how you really are? Never want to touch anything resembling an emotion? You know how men see through you? He’s not like that. He’s deep.’

  ‘How deep?’ Janie said.

  Cecilia’s face got positively dreamy.

  Janie stifled a giggle.

  The giggle made Cecilia blink herself right out of her trance.

  She watched us watching her, our lips twitching as we tried to stifle those laughs.

  She sat up straighter and her expression tightened. ‘Dr Silverton is a professional. I respect him as a professional and, I believe, he respects me.’

  ‘Of course he does,’ Janie soothed.

  ‘Absolutely. A professional,’ I said, drinking my beer.

  ‘He’s a fine man.’

  ‘Yes, so fine,’ Janie drawled. ‘And big.’

  ‘Big. Very big,’ I inserted. ‘Not too big.’

  ‘Shut up, you two,’ Cecilia said. ‘Let’s change the damn subject.’

  ‘Oh, let’s not,’ I said.

  ‘I like this one!’ Janie piped up.

  Cecilia’s face got all snarly and vindictive again. ‘I’ve hired a private investigator on asshole’s girlfriend. We’ll see what comes up on that loose, amoral, plastic Barbie doll with a mind the size and substance of a testicle.’

  We would indeed.

  We went to a bookstore next, then explored 23rd Ave in northwest Portland, which is filled with specialty shops, a few bums who converse with themselves, moms with strollers, and little plastic horses tied to steel rings on the sidewalk that were used to tie up horses a hundred years ago.

  It is part of Portland’s funkiness.

  After fifteen minutes of aimlessness, Janie returned to the hospital. ‘Too much stimulus, too many cracks in the sidewalk, too many colours. I don’t like the geometries, it’s upsetting my “me” balance.’

  Cecilia and I entered a coffee shop and brought our coffees to a window seat.

  ‘How are you, Isabelle?’

  How was I? Not bad. Not good. ‘Holding. In a holding pattern. Like a jet that’s not headed in a nosedive to the ground, but one that’s thinking about it.’

  She didn’t like that answer. She cleared her throat. ‘How did it go there?’

  ‘Fine. It was splendid.’

  ‘No, tell me the truth.’

  I drank my coffee. ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’

  ‘I tell you everything.’

  ‘And I tell you everything I think you need to know. I’m better. That’s it.’

  ‘That’s not fair.’

  ‘What’s not fair? That you choose to share your life titbits with me, but I don’t want to analyse to death each detail of my life?’

  ‘Shit. You shut me out.’

  ‘Live with it, Cecilia. I am.’

  Sometimes things are so insanely private, you don’t even want to talk about them with yourself. Don’t talk about them, don’t wrestle with them, don’t let them run you over. Let it be.

  I thought Cecilia was going to fight it out, strangle it out of me, but, surprisingly, she didn’t. We had enough stress in this family. How much stress and tension can one family hold before it explodes or implodes? Must all problems be dissected? What does that help?

  Cecilia nodded and placed her hand over mine.

  Cecilia is not given to a lot of affection, so I was surprised.

  And touched.

  I thought I was going to choke and bawl and coffee would spurt out of my nose.

  She squeezed my hand and I squeezed back.

  And there we sat, in the window seat of a coffee shop, off a funky street in Portland, holding hands with a little plastic horse attached to a steel ring on the sidewalk.

  Sometimes that’s all you can do, I think. Hold hands. Because life gets so scary sometimes, so bleak, so cold, that you are beyond being able to be comforted by mere words.

  People probably thought we were gay, but I’d stopped worrying a long time ago what people thought of me, and so had Cecilia. Childhood had beat that right out of us.

  We held hands. We did not let go.

  ‘She’ll eventually be fine, back to her dancin’ and high kickin’ ways,’ the doctor told us after the operation.

  It was the Hispanic doctor, Dr Janns. When Momma had first met him she had asked him if he had had to spend his childhood picking berries in farmers’ fields.

  ‘No, I didn’t.’ He had shaken his head, gracious enough to let Momma’s inflammatory comment go. ‘My ol’ man was a career military man, tougher than nails, so we grew up all over the world. Like vagabonds. We didn’t ever pick berries. Too busy learning German or Spanish or Korean. New country, new language. My mom was a battle-axe.’ He swung his hand like an axe. ‘When we weren’t learning how to squawk and swear in the native tongue, hell if our mom wasn’t haulin’ us around by the ears to the opera and ballet. I prefer the ballet, myself. You?’

  Momma seemed surprised by this. ‘Oh. Well. Hmm.’

  I waited for her to change the subject. This man didn’t fit her profile, so she was stuck.

  ‘You look too young to be a doctor,’ she accused him. ‘Almost a child. Are you a child?’

  He grinned at her. He had a lot of perfect white teeth. ‘You look too young to have heart surgery, ma’am, you gorgeous queen, you movie star, you, so we’re gonna fix the ticker on up and kick ya right on outta here.’

  I saw the corners of Momma’s smile tip up.

  Dr Janns now grinned at us with those white teeth. ‘Your mom came through fine. She already told one of the male nurses that nursing wasn’t for men and asked if he was a sissy.’

  ‘Obviously the operation did not soften her disposition,’ I drawled.

  The doctor grinned. ‘Difficult operation, hard on the body. But then, we’re rippin’ people open, pumping the ol’ hearts for ’em and clampin’ ’em back up again. What can ya expect?’

  Sheesh.

  ‘I understand that her mother has dementia and you have a special-needs brother at home. She’ll stay here for a while, chill, relax, she’ll dig it, then we’ll send her to that movin’ and groovin’ retirement centre in Portland to recover and get back swingin’ again.’

  Janie snuffled. Cecilia got all teary but didn’t let a tear drop, not a one. She is not into weakness. Finds it appalling. I was relieved Momma was OK and relieved that I felt relieved. It made me feel more human to myself, as if I could still love a mother like Momma.

  ‘We’ve tried to get the dragon to go to the retirement centre, but she’s refused,’ I said.

  ‘The dragon will go,’ the doctor almost sang out.

  ‘Huh. You don’t know our dragon.’

  He hummed a happy song. ‘I told her that there were many healthy people there. Many healthy men. And there’s dancing and trips. I had no idea your mother was a dancer in her youth.’

  I cleared my throat, Cecilia made a sound between a whistle and a gasp, and Janie hummed.

  Yes, Momma had been a dancer. Of sorts.

  ‘So she agreed to go?’

  ‘Yes. Definitely. She’s a character. A free spirit. A warrior.’ He clenched his fist and raised it. ‘Awesome!’

  ‘That’s one way of pu
tting it,’ Cecilia said.

  ‘Any chance, doctor, that you sewed her mouth shut?’ I raised my eyebrows.

  Momma was still out cold when we went in to visit. For once in her life, she seemed tiny, barely a bump under the white sheets, the machines humming, the nurses and doctors in and out, the IV line a clear snake above her.

  We stared at our petite, silent momma, lost in our own thoughts.

  ‘She’s gonna be raving when she realises she’s not in her pink robe,’ I observed.

  ‘She’s going to have a fit because her make-up is smudged,’ Janie said, with worry.

  ‘She’s not going to like the food here,’ Cecilia said tiredly.

  I didn’t hesitate. ‘I’m thinking it’s time we returned to Trillium River.’

  ‘Shit, yes,’ Cecilia said. ‘I’m with you.’

  ‘Oh yes. Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go,’ Janie breathed. ‘The nurses can handle her and I know she’ll upset my spiritual balance if I’m here when she wakes up.’

  ‘Out we go,’ I said, turning.

  Janie was out the door first and into the hallway before I could say, ‘Escape, ladies, before the volcano wakes up and explodes.’

  She didn’t even bother smiling.

  Soon we were sailing by the gorge, our hair flying with the wind, like pinwheels, for once not trying to talk, our thoughts our own as they tilted and spun and finally settled into a pattern of peace as we headed back to Trillium River. Janie pulled out a Yo-Yo Ma CD from her bag and we floated along on the notes, pitching and diving and soaring.

  Three sisters.

  And Yo-Yo.

  CHAPTER SIX

  ‘I’m a practising Mormon now.’

  The silence at the table would have been complete if Cecilia had not stabbed her fork into the spinach ravioli with unnecessary force at her daughter, Kayla’s, announcement.

  It was a typical dinner at Grandma’s house with me, Cecilia, her girls Kayla and Riley, Henry, and Janie. Henry was wearing a shirt with Big Bird on it; Grandma was in her black pilot’s outfit, her goggles atop her head; and Velvet, the caregiver, was wearing a blue velvet dress.

  Kayla is fourteen, Riley is thirteen. They have the blonde hair of their mother and the brown eyes of their father. They are sharp as tacks. Kayla studies religions and has papered her room with pictures from National Geographic. Riley is obsessed with physics and reads science books for fun.