Summer with My Sisters (11 page)

F
reddie and Sheila lived in a charming post-and-beam house they had designed and built (with some professional help of course) back in the mid-eighties. It was a two-story structure with an enclosed porch on one side of the house and an open deck on the other. During the colder months the women ignored those areas in favor of the cozy central living area, complete with wood-burning stove, overstuffed couches, high-backed armchairs, and thick woolen rugs with patterns of maroon and gold and green. The two bedrooms were on the second floor; Poppy had seen the master bedroom only once, many years earlier, when Sheila was down with a nasty flu. Poppy had accompanied her mother to the house with a vat of homemade chicken soup and they had waved to the invalid from the door of her bedroom. Freddie hadn’t allowed them to get any closer.

“Hand me that vase, will you?” Sheila asked. “The yellow ceramic one on the second shelf.”

Poppy did. She and her sisters were at 14 Howard Lane for dinner, and while Daisy and Violet helped (or hindered) Freddie in the kitchen, Poppy was helping Sheila set the table in the section of the living space that served as a dining area. Poppy had always loved coming to this house. The feeling it projected was one of true peace and stability, and that, Poppy thought, was largely due to the lifetime’s accumulation of mementos of important events and souvenirs of travel and works of art carefully collected and photographs of people long gone but still loved. It always fascinated Poppy to see how the homes of two people who had lived together in harmony for many years—fifty-three, in Freddie and Sheila’s case—seemed to reflect the tastes and preferences of one many-sided person, a style that seemed to have grown naturally, organically over time, not a style imposed by one or the other person with a small, out-of-place piece that was a reluctant nod to the annoying whim of the other. She supposed her parents’ house appeared to others like Freddie and Sheila’s did to her, but as it was also her childhood home, she was too emotionally tied to every little bit of it to see anything at a critical, assessing distance.

“I do love a dinner party,” Sheila said, making a final adjustment to the purple irises she had arranged in the yellow vase. “I even enjoy the cleaning-up process. I even enjoy ironing all the linen napkins!”

Sheila was wearing a smartly tailored taupe linen pantsuit with navy espadrilles. Around her neck were multiple strands of highly polished silver beads. On her wrist were matching silver cuffs. On the ring finger of her left hand was a chunky gold band that Freddie had given her many anniversaries ago.

Poppy smiled. “Sheila, you’re the only one I know who can wear a suit at any time of the day or night, on any occasion, and make it look appropriate.”

“You can take the girl out of the city,” Sheila said.

“Don’t you ever regret leaving New York? I mean, it’s pretty much the opposite of Yorktide.”

“Not for a very long time,” Sheila admitted. “New York, after all, is just a place. To be sure, a wonderful place. But Freddie is a person. And I’ve always found that a person ranks much higher with me than a spot on a map.”

Poppy sighed. “I wonder,” she said, “if I’ll ever love someone enough to make a sacrifice like that.” Love someone at
all,
really. Oh, once she had been infatuated with a guy, back in high school. What was his name? And she had had her share of crushes; she recalled with some embarrassment how she had almost made a fool of herself over her French professor at Adams. (It was only after her mother, the man’s colleague, had told her about his devotion to his wife that Poppy’s ardor had waned.) And after college, there had been a few halfhearted relationships. But never
love
. Suddenly, Poppy wondered if she had been lazy in that aspect of her life, too. Had she neglected to develop her emotional life as she had neglected to develop a career? Or was cowardice at fault? Did she lack the
courage
to love?

“I don’t see it as a sacrifice,” Sheila was saying, and it took Poppy a moment to refocus on the conversation. “Oh, I did at one point, a few years into the relationship when Freddie and I were going through a rough patch. Self-pity took over I’m afraid. ‘Look at all I’ve done for you, I’ve given up my home, et cetera, et cetera, and what have I gotten in return?’ But I got past that fit of immaturity, I’m glad to say.”

Poppy smiled. “Then I wonder if I’ll ever be so mature.”

Sheila excused herself to see if Freddie needed help in the kitchen and Poppy finished setting the table. As she straightened silverware and refolded a napkin, she wondered what her parents might have sacrificed for each other over the course of their marriage. She had never been aware of any sense of discontent on the part of either of them. But then again, no one outside a relationship really knew what went on inside it. And Oliver and Annabelle had made it a point never to argue in front of their children, even about small things. Of course there must have been disagreements, but none that Poppy could call to mind ever knowing about. And for that, she was grateful.

“Time to eat,” Daisy announced, leading the rest of the group to the table.

“A nice, clichéd summer meal,” Freddie said, as they took their seats. “Lobsters, corn on the cob, coleslaw, salad, and strawberry shortcake for dessert. Sheila made the shortcake from scratch.”

“And I’ll whip the cream by hand,” Sheila added. “None of that artificial stuff from a can.”

“I actually like that stuff,” Daisy admitted, putting an ear of corn on her plate. “Dad used to like it, too. You know, sometimes I wonder if Dad would have preferred one of us die instead of Mom.”

“Daisy!” Poppy cried. “That’s an awful thing to say!”

Freddie agreed with her. “For God’s sake, Daisy, don’t be melodramatic,” she scolded. “The man had a bad heart. Biology. Science. Genetics. His father had a bad heart, too. Henry died when Oliver was only twenty-six. Nothing to do with romantic notions.”

Poppy looked at Violet. Daisy’s blurted comment didn’t seem to have disturbed her; she was aggressively cracking a lobster claw, a frown of concentration on her face.

“I wonder,” Daisy said now, “what Mom would have done if she had had boys. I mean, you can’t very well name a boy Rose or Lily, can you?”

My sister,
Poppy thought,
is determined to be perverse tonight.

Sheila laughed. “Not if you don’t want them to be cruelly teased, taunted, and beaten you don’t.”

“Oh, she probably would have gone with something like Sage,” Poppy suggested, wondering why she was contributing to such a silly discussion. “That’s not really a gender-specific name is it?”

“Thyme,” Violet said, looking up from her mostly destroyed lobster body. “Tarragon.”

Freddie shook her head. “I think your father would have had something to say about his son being named after anything in the plant kingdom!”

“Dad would have done anything Mom told him to do,” Daisy argued. “He
did
do everything she told him to do. Because he wanted to. Not because he was afraid of her. He loved her. Well, we all know that.”

“Not to change the subject,” Freddie said then, in her forceful and authoritative attorney tone. “But, I’m changing the subject. I hope you girls are keeping up with your reading this summer. One doesn’t want the brain to turn to mush.”

“I’ve got my crosswords,” Daisy said. “And I’m reading
War and Peace
. At least, I’m trying to. And I practice my clarinet every day. Well, every other day.”

“I practice my flute,” Violet announced. “And I’m reading the Arthurian legends for the first time. And I’m thinking about learning how to knit. Or maybe do macramé, like people did in the seventies. I saw something about it on the Internet. But I don’t know if Grimace will let me alone. All that string.”

“And what about you, Poppy?” Freddie asked. “Have you been challenging yourself intellectually?”

For a moment Poppy felt as if she were back in fourth grade, pinned under the eye of a particularly strict teacher. “Uh, no,” she said. “Not really. Sorry.”

“Don’t apologize to me. It’s your own self you’re hurting. You know, having finished your formal education doesn’t mean one is allowed to let the brain atrophy. Why don’t you take the opportunity of being on hiatus from work to read one of your father’s books?”

Poppy laughed. “I’m afraid I’m too dumb to read Dad’s work!” And the trouble was, she half believed that. Sometimes she wondered how a daughter of two such prominent people as Annabelle and Oliver Higgins could feel so lacking in skill and talent. Maybe, she thought, it was
because
they were so prominent that she felt so insignificant.

Freddie harrumphed. “No,” she said, “you most certainly are
not
too dumb. But you will need to apply yourself if you’re to follow his arguments. Your father was a rigorous thinker and he challenged his readers. The payoff, of course, is worth the effort.”

“That reminds me,” Poppy said suddenly. “I got something from Adams College today. An invitation to take Dad’s place on the committee that awards the scholarship in Mom’s name.”

“How wonderful,” Sheila said.

“Not really. How can I possibly accept? I’m totally out of my depth in the academic world.”

“You won’t be making decisions on your own,” Freddie pointed out. “You’ll be part of a committee. You can learn from the more senior members.”

“Who probably all have a PhD. Won’t they resent my being there? I’m just Oliver Higgins’s pretty daughter. I have no credentials.”

Freddie sighed. “How do you think you earn credentials? By showing up. By listening and asking questions.”

“But you’re Dad’s literary executor,” Poppy argued. “You have more right than I do to determine who deserves a scholarship in Mom’s name.”

“Poppy, one thing has nothing to do with the other. Anyway, I strongly advise you to accept the invitation.”

“Go ahead, Poppy.” Daisy grinned. “The worst that could happen is you totally embarrass yourself and will never be able to hold your head up in Yorktide again.”

“Adams College isn’t in Yorktide,” Violet pointed out, before Poppy could retort. “It’s in South Berwick.”

Sheila rose from the table. “If everyone is finished, I think I’ll bring out the dessert.”

Poppy rose with her. “Good idea,” she said. “I’ll help you clear. And no more talk about the scholarship committee, please.”

A
bout some things Violet Higgins felt very certain. About others, she felt less certain, like, for example, her current state of mind.

The dream, that awful dream that took place in a fantastical garden, had returned twice in the past ten days. In the third version, which had taken place the night before, her parents’ roles had been reversed. It was her father that Violet accidentally killed with a poison flower, and her mother who pursued her to the well. The demon was the same horrible character he had been in the first two versions of the nightmare.

Violet sat in the old armchair she had rescued from being thrown out and realized that even though she was in the haven that was her room, at that moment it didn’t feel like the safe and calming place she had created it to be. That was weird and upsetting, as was the fact that she had lied to Daisy when she had told her that she was not scared of death. Well, at one time she
hadn’t
been, but lately . . . Lately, the thought of Death with a capital letter seemed horrifying. Lately, a feeling of generalized apprehension seemed to creep over her at the most unlikely moments, not always but often, like when she was watering the rosebushes or reading from one of her favorite novels. Why should such usually pleasant activities suddenly cause—or be invaded by?—apprehension? Too often she found herself expecting something bad to happen, someone else to die, some unnamed tragedy to occur. Too often she felt
vulnerable,
and that was something she had never felt before. Never.

So the question was: Why was she suddenly not okay? Maybe, Violet thought now, she was suffering from delayed post-traumatic stress disorder. But she hadn’t even been with her father when he died and wasn’t PTSD caused by something horrible you had witnessed or experienced firsthand? True, she had been with her mother when
she
died, but her passing had been peaceful, and Dad and Daisy had been there, too.

Or maybe, Violet wondered, the cause of her distress was hormonal, all due to the phases of the moon and Diana, the goddess of nature and fertility and childbirth. She was still developing both physically and emotionally; her period still wasn’t regular. Maybe this—this disturbance—she felt was normal, but the trouble was that Violet wasn’t in the habit of sharing her fears and worries. She didn’t really know how it was done.

Violet glanced over at her bookcase, crammed with books she had been collecting since she had first learned to read at five years of age. Several of her books on astrology stated that a career in the field of medicine was a good choice for someone who was born under the sun sign of Pisces, so her own decision (if it could be called that and not a calling) to become a holistic healer someday made perfect sense. But now Violet wondered. Shouldn’t a good healer be able to heal herself first? If you were sick or troubled, how could you possibly make someone else well?

The night before, as Violet lay awake after the awful dream, the idea of going to a psychic had occurred to her. A good psychic might provide some useful insight into what was happening inside her, but getting to one wouldn’t be easy to manage. First, and most importantly, she didn’t
know
a genuine psychic and she didn’t know anyone who did. Surely word of mouth was very important in these matters. But even if she did manage to get the name of someone reputable there was the problem of getting there and back and of paying for her services. An even bigger problem was that Violet wasn’t sure Poppy would allow her to see a psychic; she wasn’t a believer as far as Violet could tell and she suspected that because her older sister was taking her role as guardian so seriously she might insist that Violet see a psychologist or a counselor instead and that was
not
what Violet wanted at all. It was not what she needed. She knew that.

For the first time since Poppy had come home to live with them on Willow Way Violet felt a tiny thread of resentment toward her sister. Her parents would have let her go to a psychic, she was sure of it. Her parents
got
her.

But maybe she shouldn’t assume that Poppy would object.... Violet hated to think or act unfairly and she suspected that she was guilty of unfairness now. She truly believed that Poppy and Daisy were there for her. The problem was that try as she might she couldn’t imagine turning to them for help or understanding. And the biggest problem with that was
why
she couldn’t imagine it, when imagining was usually so easy for her.

“I’m all confused,” Violet told Grimace, who had just woken from one of his many daily naps and was stretching magnificently. “I don’t like being confused.”

In response, Grimace leaped off the bed and clear across the room to land in Violet’s lap.