Summer with My Sisters (10 page)

“I
’ll grab us seats at that picnic table. You go in and order.”

“Right.” Daisy left Joel and went into The Clamshell, already crowded though it wasn’t quite noon. She got on the line to order. A few moments later she was facing the girl behind the order counter—a girl, she realized, she had already met.

“Hi,” Daisy said with a smile. “Remember me? I’m the one who almost knocked you into the toothpaste at the convenience store last week.”

“Oh,” the girl said. “Hi.” She didn’t return Daisy’s smile and she didn’t quite meet Daisy’s eye.

“I didn’t know you worked here. The Clamshell has the best fried clams in town. I’m Daisy, by the way.”

The girl didn’t reply immediately and for a moment Daisy wondered if she had said or done something wrong or stupid. Could the girl really be angry with her for being clumsy?

“I’m Evie.” The words came out as if reluctantly and the girl—Evie—looked down at her order pad. “What would you like?” she asked.

Daisy ordered and moved aside to wait for the food. And she noted that the girl—Evie—acted much the same way with the next customer in line, and with the one after that. Not rude, but definitely not friendly. Almost as if she didn’t want anyone to really notice her. Almost . . . furtive.

Well, that was awkward,
Daisy thought, when her order came up and she made her way out of the restaurant to where Joel waited for her. Maybe the girl behind the counter—Evie—was just one of those ridiculously shy people who wound up further isolating themselves by making the people around them feel uncomfortable. Whatever the case, Daisy wasn’t going to dwell on it.

“Do you know the girl who works behind the counter here?” she asked as she took a seat across from Joel at the redwood picnic table. “The kind of medium-height one with long, light brown hair?”

So much for not dwelling,
Daisy thought.

Joel shrugged and reached for a French fry. “No, should I?”

“No. It’s just that there’s something . . . something secretive about her. I don’t know what it is. I mean, we’ve hardly said ten words to each other so I don’t know what I’m basing this feeling on.”

“Feminine intuition, probably.”

“You’re not making fun of me I hope.”

“Not at all,” Joel protested. “You know I have great respect for all the stuff women do and feel that most men can’t seem to get their heads around.”

“I know. You’re not one of those dense men. Most times.”

“Thanks. I think. Hey, did you see that bit on the local news last night about the annual Gay Pride celebrations in Portland next weekend?”

Daisy, mouth full of clams, shook her head.

“We were eating dinner, me and my parents, and watching TV.” Joel half laughed. “The bit was only about a minute or so, really just a listing of events, the parade and parties and all that. But when it was over, I swear they looked at me like . . . I don’t know, almost like they were afraid.”

“Afraid!” Daisy exclaimed.

“I don’t mean afraid like you’re afraid of a guy with a gun. It’s just that sometimes my parents look at me as if they expect my head to pop off or something. I think they expect me to be weird. I don’t think they understand that being gay is just that—being gay, no big deal. Not strange or alien. Sometimes I’m tempted to do something outrageous, just to make them happy. Just to fulfill their expectations.”

“But what if it made them mad instead?” Daisy asked, eyeing the two remaining fried clams in the cardboard tray.

“It wouldn’t,” Joel said with conviction. “Not if it wasn’t something really terrible. My parents are good people, just . . . puzzled sometimes.”

“You’re not angry at them for being puzzled by you?” Daisy asked. She thought that she herself might be, if she were in Joel’s situation.

“No. I find it sort of funny.” Joel sighed dramatically. “What I
don’t
find funny is my sorry lack of a love life.”

“That guy who works at the ice-cream shop in Perkins Cove is gay. Not the old one, the young one.”

“So? Just because we’re both gay is no guarantee we’d like each other. Besides, he’s got blond hair. I’m not a big fan of blond guys.”

Daisy frowned. “Sorry. But there are other gay guys around. You’re bound to click with someone.”

“There are
hundreds
of gay guys around, especially in summer. Maybe thousands. It’s not that.”

“Then what is it?” Daisy asked. “You’re handsome and smart and talented. Why don’t you just ask someone out?”

“Why don’t
you
? You’re pretty and smart and talented.”

Daisy laughed. “Yeah, right. Who would go out with me?”

“Lots of guys. Maybe not most of the guys at our school—they’re so provincial!—but once you get to college you’ll be fine.”

“I doubt it! Anyway, there’s no one around now who I like. In that way, I mean, so it doesn’t matter if everyone at school is provincial.”

Joel sighed. “Why don’t we agree to drop this subject of dating until one of us gets totally swept off our feet? Okay? Otherwise it’s just way too stressful.”

“Deal. Are you going to eat those clams or . . .”

“Go ahead. I’m watching my figure.”

“What!” Daisy cried. “You’re fine the way you are!”

“It’s a joke, Daisy,” Joel explained, with wide eyes, as if he were talking to a child.

“Right.”

When they had finished lunch, Joel carried their tray to the trash can, dumped the contents inside, and stacked the tray on top. Daisy followed, glancing through the big front windows of The Clamshell on their way to the parking lot. That girl who worked behind the counter. Evie. Maybe she needed help of some sort; maybe she wasn’t shy at all but scared; maybe fear was making her seem secretive . . .

“Uh, Daisy?”

She looked for Joel, only to find him several feet behind her. “What?” she said.

“You walked past the car.”

Daisy laughed and walked back to Joel’s old black Volvo. “Daydreaming I guess.”

E
vie was curled up in the bed in Nico’s guestroom, Ben under her arm and a packet of chocolate chip cookies she had splurged on within easy reach. She had a pretty good idea that Nico wouldn’t be happy to learn that she was eating in bed so she was very careful about crumbs and made it a strict point to wash the sheets once a week. (There was a machine in the master bathroom.)

“Ben,” Evie said, reaching for another cookie. “Today was not a very good day.” There had been this one awful customer who had come in just when they opened at eleven to serve the early lunch crowd. His hair was all greasy and his T-shirt rode up over his big belly. He had started to complain about having to wait for his order almost as soon as Evie had put it in to the kitchen. She had tried to assure him that his food would be coming soon, but he had persisted in complaining and berating the “idiot kids” in the kitchen. His verbal abuse had almost driven Evie to tears. Finally, Billy had come out front and with one menacing look had silenced the troublemaker. “I believe,” Billy had said to the man, “that you owe this young lady an apology.” The man had reddened and muttered “Sorry” in Evie’s direction. Upsetting stuff like that didn’t happen often at The Clamshell, but when it did, Evie felt her aloneness and her vulnerability fiercely.

But then that girl, Daisy, had come in, right before noon. The girl who had bumped into her in the convenience store. There was something about her Evie liked; she seemed like an open and friendly person. But Evie had to be so careful. So much was at stake. And a real friendship wasn’t something Evie thought possible now. Not until . . . Not until things changed.

Kate Willow. She had been her last real friend. Evie had no idea what had been going on in Kate’s life since she had been sent away. . . . And yet, if it hadn’t been for Kate and her parents, Evie didn’t know how she would have survived those first weeks after the accident. Like, for example, the day of the funeral. Evie’s father was still in the hospital, still in danger of losing a leg, so Evie had gone to the funeral with Kate and her parents, sitting between Mr. and Mrs. Willow at the church and holding Mrs. Willow’s hand at the cemetery. Kate, she remembered, had lent her a sweater as it had been an unusually chilly day and Evie had arrived to stay at the Willows’ house with only one hastily packed suitcase.

The Willows had been so good to Evie in the weeks following Evelyn’s funeral, too, taking her to visit her father in the hospital (though she hated going; the place frightened her and she had nothing to say to her father) and making sure her clothes were clean for school. Mrs. Willow made her favorite meals and Mr. Willow took the girls to a crafts fair one afternoon. Both of Kate’s parents helped Evie with her homework. And even though she missed her mother terribly, though she missed her room and all of her things, Evie had started to think that she could stay with Kate’s family forever. Nothing more would have to change. She wouldn’t have to go back to live with her father. Maybe one day Mr. and Mrs. Willow would even adopt her.

Evie had been with Kate’s family for about six weeks when one afternoon she overheard her friend talking to her mother.

“She’s my friend and all,” Kate had said, “but it’s not like we can have a sleepover for the rest of our lives. I want my room back all to myself. She’s so sad all the time. It’s like I don’t know what to say to her anymore.”

Mrs. Willow had murmured something Evie couldn’t entirely catch, probably something meant to reassure her daughter that before long Evie would be back where she belonged. “Just try to be patient, Kate, okay? She’s been through something really traumatic.” That much Evie had heard.

Then her father had been sent home from the rehab facility where he had been sent upon release from the hospital and after a few days during which a visiting nurse and a social worker helped settle him in and make a few adjustments to render the house more accessible for a man in a wheelchair, Evie, too, was sent home. She met the visiting nurse. She met the social worker. She met the physical therapist. The house—what had once been her home—felt as if it were being invaded by strangers, and there was nothing she could do about it. But it wasn’t all bad. When those other people were there, Evie didn’t have to be alone with her father. She didn’t have to try and talk to him. And he didn’t have to try and talk to her.

After a while the professionals stopped coming by. Dan was improving nicely, they said. Physically, he was on the mend. He would be able to go back to the law firm before long. But not one of them had been able to see that emotionally, Dan was not improving at all. He was deteriorating.

As for Evie, it was so hard to walk through the rooms her mother had once walked through and to know she would never return to them. It had been so hard to see the crystal vase her mother had loved and the curtains she had chosen so carefully and the beautiful little oil painting one of her friends had given her and to know that Evelyn would never be able to appreciate or find pleasure in them again.

About a month after he had been sent home Evie’s father had made it known he didn’t have the energy to go through her mother’s clothing and personal items, so Evie had asked two neighbors who had offered to help. The afternoon before Mrs. Mallory and Mrs. Tribble were scheduled to come over, Evie had gone into her parents’ bedroom, hoping to find a few things of her mother’s she could keep, but after only a few minutes she had felt overwhelmed by sadness and had raced back into her own bedroom, slamming the door behind her. She had managed to take only her mother’s gold locket in the shape of a heart with a tiny diamond on the cover. Inside was a photo of her father and one of her. She considered throwing the photo of her father in the trash and decided not to.

During that awful time she had been so torn between wanting and needing her father’s love and comfort and hating him for what had happened to her mother. And then there was his foreignness. This man with the wheelchair and then the walker and then the cane, who was he? This man who never smiled and who could barely meet her eye when he spoke to her, was this her father? This man who barely managed to heat a frozen meal each night for their dinner, was
this
Dan?

Things began to fall apart slowly at first, then more rapidly. Evie grew embarrassed by her father’s decline. There was his appearance, for one. He grew so thin; he wasn’t eating and he was taking all those stupid pills. He shaved, but he never seemed to get all the stubble. He wore the same shirt three days in a row. His shoes were never shined. He couldn’t keep up with the house and yard work. Evie did her best, but her mother had always done the laundry and cleaned the kitchen and the bathrooms and Evie just didn’t know how. They had a housekeeper for a few months—Evie supposed her father had hired her, but maybe a social worker had taken care of it—but she had abruptly quit. Evie remembered the woman taking her hand on her last day, telling her to take care, looking at her so intently it had made Evie uncomfortable, like the housekeeper knew a dreadful secret about what was in store for Evie and her father, a secret she was forced to keep to herself.

And then there had come the day when her father had not gone in to work. He had not even gotten out of bed except to use the bathroom. It was the same the next day and the day after that. After an entire week of this nightmare of uncertainty, during which Evie felt constantly sick to her stomach, she had finally confronted her father.

“Why aren’t you at the office?” she asked, standing in the doorway of the bedroom he had once shared with her mother.

He was sitting on the edge of the bed, his hands folded between his knees. He was wearing a pair of stained sweatpants and a T-shirt that had once been white. “I lost my job,” he said.

Lost
it. Like he had put it down and forgotten where he had put it. Like it had fallen out of his pocket. Evie felt faint. She put a hand on the doorframe to steady herself.

“You were fired.”

“Essentially, yes.”

“You were taking those pills at the office.”

“No. I—”

“Are you looking for another job?” she demanded, the shock passing, being replaced by anger. “How will we get money?”
Who will hire him now? Who will trust him to be their lawyer?

Her father put his head down and did not reply.

“I hate you!” she cried and ran off to her own room. She took her mother’s locket from her jewelry box, opened it, removed the photo of her father, and threw it in the trash.

He hadn’t come after her. He hadn’t bothered to argue with her, to comfort her, to reason with her. He had lost himself, too.

After that, Evie began to withdraw from everybody, even Kate. She buried herself more deeply in her schoolwork. She searched every inch of the house for loose change. She went through her father’s pockets when he was asleep—which was most times—looking for a stray dollar bill. Whatever she found she stashed under her mattress. She knew things couldn’t go on like this forever and she wanted to be prepared. She hunted out a small photo of her mother and put it in the heart-shaped locket, across from the picture of herself.

And then, the day came when her father told her that he had lost the house, too. “I have nothing,” he said. His wife, his job, his house . . . and now, his daughter. He sent her away to live with relatives, her Aunt Joanne and Uncle Ron and their kids, people she had seen only once in her life and barely remembered (there had been some falling-out among the adults and then a halfhearted reconciliation, followed by a lapse into indifference), and while her aunt and uncle were nice enough her cousins hadn’t known what to do with this sad stranger now installed in their home. Alexa, who was a year older than Evie, was openly resentful of her presence. Craig, who was a year younger, mostly ignored her.

She would never forget the moment when her cousin Alexa told her that her father was sometimes homeless. Living on the streets, she had said. “What did you think would happen to him when you lost the house and he sent you to live with us? That he’d get some nice apartment and a new job and make back all the money he lost and then send for you?”

That was exactly what Evie had thought. Or, had hoped for, in spite of her hatred for her father. She had hoped that somehow, miraculously, they could start over together. Things wouldn’t be the same as they had been before the accident. But maybe they could be . . . okay.

Evie stuffed the last chocolate chip cookie into her mouth and put the empty packet on the bedside table. She tried not to dwell on the past—staying alive and safe was work enough—but sometimes the past just wouldn’t be ignored.

It was close to ten o’clock and Evie suddenly felt exhausted. She got out of bed and set about her nightly routine. She didn’t know why Nico didn’t have an alarm system. It seemed ridiculous for someone who lived alone in such a large house, even if the house wasn’t exactly located in a high crime area. There was always the possibility of a dishonest person passing through town . . .
Like me
, Evie thought.
I don’t want to be dishonest, but I have to be
.
Life has made me dishonest.

First, she made it a point to double check that all doors and windows in the house were locked, and all blinds and curtains closed. Then she pushed a heavy wooden chest against the front door as another precaution. (Luckily, the back door, accessible from the kitchen, was dead-bolted from the inside.) Finally, before going up to the bedroom Nico had told her she could use, she made certain that the light in the hallway leading to the staircase was turned on. Once back in the bedroom, she wedged a chair under the doorknob as the final bit of makeshift security and hugged Ben to her chest. Still, there was no guarantee of a sound sleep and sweet dreams.