The Alphabet Sisters (2 page)

She glanced up at Bett. “Not exactly the Corrs, were you?”

Bett laughed despite herself. “I bet they didn’t look that good when they were teenagers either.”

“I bet they did. Have you ever wondered if there’s a fourth Corr sister, a hideously ugly one they keep locked away?” Jessica looked at the photo again. “You’re not very alike, are you? Even apart from the appalling eye makeup and the different hair colors. Unless they’re wigs?”

“No, all our own work, I’m afraid.” Anna had straight black hair, Bett’s was dark brown, and Carrie’s dark blonde. She presumed her sisters’ hair colors hadn’t changed in three years. She’d find out soon enough. In less than two weeks, in fact. Her stomach gave a lurch.

The fax from Lola in South Australia had arrived at Bett’s work out of the blue, just the one line. If Bett didn’t come home for her eightieth birthday party, she would never talk to her again.

Bett had rung her immediately. “Lola, don’t do this to me, please,” she’d said, straight to the point as soon as her grandmother answered. “You know what it’ll be like.”

“Elizabeth Quinlan, stop being such a baby. You’re scared of seeing your sisters. So what? I’m nearly eighty, and I’ve got a lot more to be scared of than you have. I could die any moment. Now, hang up, book your ticket, and get here as soon as you can. I’ve got something I want you to do.”

Lola had obviously taken her extra-strength bossy tablets that day. “I can’t drop everything just like that, Lola. I’ve got a life here now.”

“And you’ve got a grandmother in Australia who has missed you very, very badly and wants to see you again.” Her voice had softened. “Please, Bett. Come home. For me.”

Bett had thought about it for two days, veering between excitement and dread at the idea. One image had kept coming to her. Lola, standing in front of the motel, beaming at her, waiting to give her a hug. In the end Bett had compromised. Yes, she would come back for the party, but it would be a lightning trip. She’d arrive in South Australia the day of the party and then leave as soon as possible afterward.

Lola hadn’t been at all pleased. “But I need you here for longer than that.”

“I can’t, Lola. I’ve got a life here,” she’d repeated firmly. It had been a strange sensation. She wasn’t used to standing up to her grandmother either.

Beside her, Jessica was going through the album again. “It’s a tricky one, that’s for sure. No wonder you’re so nervous. Your first meeting with your sisters and the happy couple in three years, all of you in the same motel, not to mention the added tension of a party …”

Bett nodded, waiting for her friend’s sound advice, the helpful comments.

Jessica shut the album with a snap. “I’d say it’s going to be ferocious.”

SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA

Anna Quinlan knew that outside the sun was shining. That less than a kilometer away the waters of Sydney Harbour were probably glinting in the sun, to a sound track of ferry horns, gull cries, and tourist-guide commentaries.

But it could have been the Sahara Desert outside. She’d been trapped inside this coffin of a recording studio for three hours now, trying to get the voice exactly right for a new range of kitchen sponges. She’d decided the client was not just from hell, but from somewhere much deeper, hotter and even more unpleasant.

She peered through the glass of the studio window again, counting to ten as she caught sight of him. He looked like a suit-wearing spotty child who surely couldn’t have driven himself to the studio today. He didn’t seem old enough. She snapped back to attention as Bob, the producer/technician, pressed the button on the intercom so his voice came into her headphones.

“Anna, Henry feels you are really getting there, but he wonders whether you could combine the laugh in your voice from that first take with the kind of bubbling tone you did on the one before that last one, and add a little more lightness to the whole thing.”

Henry leaned forward, speaking into the microphone as though he was an MC at a football-club presentation night. “Yes, loved that bubbly sound, Anna. Just perfect for our demographic. You don’t mind, do you?”

Mind? Mind that she had spent three hours saying one sentence in dozens of different voices? Mind that the preschooler in the suit had tried to describe the mind-set of a kitchen sponge—a kitchen sponge!—to her? “It’s determined, it’s energetic, it’s fun.…”

No, it’s not, Henry, she’d thought. It’s a three-inch square of detergent-soaked sponge with a scouring pad on one side that you do dishes with. It isn’t Russell Crowe.

She bit her tongue. Whatever you do, Anna, don’t let them see you’re upset. Keep cool, keep smiling, keep up the front. She’d learned that lesson after years of unsuccessful auditions for parts. No one wanted a moody actress. It was much better to be tagged as a thorough professional, even if it was sometimes mistaken for haughtiness. And at least Henry had definitely decided that the sponge was female. Today’s booking had been set up, canceled, then set up again while Henry, his advertising agency, and his market-research team argued over the best gender for their new sponge.

Anna looked at Bob for help. He was just chewing, as normal, and hitching up his trousers, unfazed, also as normal. She knew he didn’t care how long the client took. He charged an hourly rate.

Some of her frustration must have shown on her face. Bob took pity on her. He spoke again, surreptitiously inclining his head toward the client. “Anna, perhaps it would help if you visualized yourself in the sink, getting psyched up to help your housewife—sorry, homemaker—clean all those dirty dishes. And there’s one particularly greasy pot that’s going to need special energy, but you know it will be worth it to scrub like mad until every spot is gone.” Another barely noticeable nod at the client. “Whenever you’re ready. Tape’s running.”

It worked a treat. Staring through the glass, seeing her sharp bobbed hair and immaculate makeup reflected back at her, Anna imagined Henry evolving into a dirty, grease-spattered saucepan. She imagined herself as the sponge, leaping out of nowhere and scouring his face until every spot and blackhead had disappeared, shouting all the while in a voice that was a combination of Mary Poppins and kamikaze pilot. She leaned toward the microphone. “Let me at it! I’m the clean machine!”

Henry’s pimply face broke into a huge smile. “That’s it. Perfect. Thanks, Anna.”

She had just leaned down to her bag when his voice came in again. “But would you be able to do it one more time? I think it needs just a touch more softness, to convey the moisturizer we’ve included in the washing-up liquid.”

A
n hour later Anna was driving out of the studio carpark. The voice of the sponge was now lodged in her head, and she knew from experience it would stay there for the next few days or until a new character’s voice took its place. Last month her internal voice, her mind voice, had varied between a kitten stuck up a tree (for a cat food commercial), a warmhearted nurse in an old folks’ home (health insurance), and a cake waiting to be iced. That had taken three hours to get right, too, before Bob stepped in once again with her motivation. “Imagine you’re the cake, Anna, okay? You’re scared. You don’t know which brand of icing you’re about to be iced with but you sure as hell want it to be high quality. So we need a combination of fear and anticipation and …”

Her seven-year-old daughter, Ellen, loved it, of course. She treated Anna’s repertoire of voices like a human jukebox. Lying sleepily in bed listening to a good-night story, she’d pick and choose the voices. “Mum, can you read this one like the Zoomer Broom?” The Zoomer Broom featured in an animated TV commercial where the ordinary household broom metamorphosed into something Harry Potter could have used for Quidditch, babbling nonsensically all the while. Ellen’s other favorite was the ocean pie, a gurgly underwater voice.

Anna parked on the street across from the hospital, ten minutes late. Hurrying toward the lift, she composed her face, already hearing the disapproving tones from her neighbor, who had grudgingly agreed to collect Ellen after school and bring her here to the clinic for her latest appointment. The lift door opened, and Anna spied her little daughter in the distance, standing up on a chair near the nurses’ station, chatting to one of the staff. In the dozens of hospital visits since Ellen’s accident, she had gotten to know all the nurses very well. Anna tensed, as she always did when she remembered the trauma of those first months. She decided it was time Ellen had a good spoiling: she’d give her whatever she wanted for dinner, let her watch whatever video she wanted, and then read her all the stories she wanted, as well.

B
y nine o’clock Anna’s patience was wearing a little thin. Ellen had been alternately tearful and cranky all evening, insisting on pizza, then not eating any of it, and not settling on any one video but wanting to watch specific scenes out of five different ones. Anna had finally had enough, speaking more crossly than she intended, which set off the tears again. She then read two extra stories, purely out of guilt, hardly finding the energy for the different voices.

Ellen still wouldn’t settle, hopping in and out of bed. She stood in the doorway of the living room now, tears on her face. “Is Dad home yet?”

Anna kept her voice mild with effort. “No, darling, he’s not.”

“Where is he?”

“At work, I think.” She thought. She didn’t have a clue where Glenn was. He didn’t ring and tell her anymore if he was going to be late, or if he was going to be home at all, in fact.

“Can you read me another story, then?”

“Sweetheart, you’ve had enough stories. It’s time to sleep.”

“I can’t sleep. I’m scared again. I keep remembering.”

The doctor’s voice came into Anna’s mind. “There will be some post-traumatic stress and recurring fear, but it’s important you learn to listen without making too much of it. Children are children and very skilled at knowing which buttons to press.” So what was she supposed to do? Ignore Ellen’s tears? Tell her to get over it? Of course she couldn’t. She pulled herself up out of the deep sofa. “All right, Ellie. You hop back into bed and pick another story. I’ll be there in a moment.”

By the time Anna got to the bedroom, Ellen had changed her mind. “Can I have a tape instead? Can I hear Really-Great-Gran’s tape?”

“Again? You sure you don’t want a story tape?”

Ellen lay back and shook her head. Her dark hair fanned out on the pillow.

The tape had arrived from Lola more than two years earlier, with a note to Anna attached. “This is for you to play to Ellen. I’m still having no part of this nonsense between you and your sisters, but I’m not losing a great-granddaughter because of it. Please play her this tape so I’m not a shock each time she meets me.”

Anna put the tape in, then lay on the bed beside Ellen, stroking her hair back from her face as Lola’s voice filled the room. Her still strongly Irish-accented tones were clear and precise.

“Hello, Ellen. This is your great-grandmother speaking. Now, my little dote, I’ve been giving a lot of thought to what you should call me, and I think I’ve come up with the best solution. Your scoundrel of a mother started calling me Lola when she was just a child, and her two sisters followed suit, but you need a different name for me, I think. And not just Great-Grandmother. I’m much better than great. So, my darling, I would like you to call me Really-Great-Gran from now on. Okay?”

There was a pause on the tape.

“Are you listening, Ellen?” Lola asked.

“Yes,” Ellen answered sleepily beside Anna.

The voice on the tape continued. “Good girl. And are you happy with that? Happy to call me Really-Great-Gran?”

“Yes, Really-Great-Gran,” Ellen answered in the pause. She knew this ritual by heart.

“Good girl. Now, I’m going to tell you a few stories about your mother and your grandfather, but first I’m going to sing you one or two of my favorite songs. So settle back and relax.”

Relax? Anna bit her lip as Lola started warbling “Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree” in her falsetto voice. The last thing Lola’s voice would make you do is relax. She could clear a room in seconds. Ellen didn’t seem to mind. Lola could have been singing a sweetly tuned nursery rhyme, the way Ellen was reacting. Her lids were getting heavier by the second, her lips mouthing the words along with her great-grandmother’s slaughtered version. Anna smiled, remembering the song. It was one of the first ones Lola had taught Anna and her sisters. There’d been a row over who got to sing the high notes. Carrie had won, hadn’t she? Or was it Bett? It certainly hadn’t been her, cursed with as deep a singing voice as her speaking voice. She’d always sung the bass parts.

Lola reached a shrieking crescendo, then paused on the tape, as if expecting her performance to be followed by rapturous applause. “One of my favorites, Ellen, and one of your mum and aunts’ favorites, too. As is this one. Are you comfortable? Sing along with me, darling.”

As Lola embarked on “The Good Ship Lollipop” Anna glanced down. Ellen was fast asleep.

B
ack in the living room, Anna poured herself a glass of wine and pressed the TV remote control. She stared at the screen, trying to pick up the plot of the thriller, fighting the desolate feeling inside her that seemed to be rising closer to the surface each day. One phrase kept occurring to her.
I’m lonely.
Lonely. Yet she had friends in Sydney, didn’t she? People she could meet for coffee? And hadn’t there been joint friends, other couples who came over for dinner or who they met in restaurants occasionally? Not anymore. They had all slipped away the past year or so, like extras in a film, Anna thought, silently stealing away and leaving the main action to unfold. She couldn’t blame them. Who would want to be around to see how she and Glenn treated each other these days?

The TV program changed to advertisements, and Anna noticed without pleasure that it was her voice coming out of the mouth of the animated mobile phone on the screen. She’d done that one two years ago now, and here it was back again.

She put down the glass and rubbed her face with her hands. Who was she fooling? She didn’t want to talk to Glenn or any Sydney friends or colleagues. She wanted to talk to her sisters again. She wanted Carrie to sympathize with her. She wanted Bett to cheer her up with some madly melodramatic account of how bad her day had been. She wanted to tell them both how awful things had become with Glenn, especially since Ellen’s accident, but how wonderful Ellen herself had been, most of the time.