The Second Sister (13 page)

As I loaded the bags into the trunk, sniffling, my cheeks getting wet with a mixture of cold and hot drops, it occurred to me that I wasn't nearly as immune to the sting of a perfectly placed barb as I used to be.

Chapter 21

I
n the following days, it felt like my life had abruptly shifted into low gear. The minutes, hours, and days plodded by without distraction or diversion. There was nothing to do but get through them as best I could.

I spent a lot of time thinking about Alice, of course. And my parents too. I spent one whole afternoon sitting in the middle of the living room floor, surrounded by family photo albums. Some of the pictures made me smile. Some made me angry. Some made me cry. Not just because they were gone and I alone am left, but there was some of that. And regrets. Plenty of those. Especially when I found Alice's sketchbooks and started looking through them.

There were the pictures of animals in them, of course, drawn in colored pencils. But there were also a number of landscapes that I recognized as scenes around northern Door County—Kangaroo Lake, the Cana Island lighthouse, the docks in Bailey's Harbor, the sod rooftop of Al Johnson's restaurant with its population of grass-munching goats, a particular rock formation and cluster of trees on the lakeshore near the north end of our property, the steps outside the library.

Most of the scenes were just that—drawings of scenery, executed in charcoal—but quite a few of them included people; really just one person, a girl.

At certain angles, especially from the side, the girl in the drawings actually looked a little like me. But not quite. Her eyes were wider set and her nose was definitely shorter than mine. She had a full lower lip, and in the sketches that showed her smiling, two perfect dimples indented her apple-round cheeks.

Another thing that struck me as odd was that even though the age of the girl in those drawings varied widely—in one she was barely more than a baby, pushing up from the ground with her bottom in the air, as though preparing to take some unsteady steps after a tumble; in another she was teetering on the edge of puberty, a slim shadow on her T-shirt indicating the swelling of barely there breasts; in another drawing she was a teenager, looking straight ahead, as if posing for the picture, with a challenging expression that, if you looked a little closer, didn't quite cover the uncertainty in her eyes—it was definitely the same person in each picture.

Who could it be? Until I found the sketchbook, I'd never known that Alice had any interest in drawing anything besides animals. And the intimacy of the drawings, the way Alice captured not just the physical presence but the emotional complexity of the girl, made me feel like this was someone she not only knew well, but cared about. This girl was important to Alice.

I looked through all the pages of the sketchbook, front and back, to see if she'd written any notes that might give a clue about the girl's identity, but didn't find anything. I wasn't really surprised.

After the accident, writing was difficult for Alice. Even on birthday and Christmas cards, she seldom wrote anything more than her signature, which was as painful and cramped looking as her drawings were lucid and free—just another of the many incongruities that a temporary lack of oxygen had inflicted on my sister's brain.

I searched through the papers on her desk, hoping to come up with a letter to or from the girl, a note, a photograph—but, once again, I came up empty-handed. The only way I could find out who that girl was would have been to ask Alice, but that door was closed forever.

As one day melted into another I became more conscious of what forever meant, of all the explanations and conversations that could have passed between us if I'd just listened a little harder, read between the lines, asked more questions. Now I was left with nothing but questions. And time. I was finding it hard to fill. Overnight I'd gone from never enough hours in the day to far too many.

I spent a lot of time checking my phone for texts or e-mails, wishing that there would be some kind of transition emergency and that somebody, anybody, would call upon my services to deal with it. I called Jenna and Joe a couple of times, just to check in with the real world, but they were both distracted and busy, so I didn't talk for long. I know how irritating it is when some civilian calls wanting to chat when you're trying to work. Joe didn't try coaxing me to take a job with his firm again. He knew I'd be going back to work for Ryland the second I could escape Wisconsin. We both knew that. Why talk about it?

I thought about Peter a couple of times, too, wondering if he would call to follow up about Thanksgiving. But he didn't, and I soon dismissed his invitation as one of those things people say but don't really mean, the way old acquaintances meet on the street sometimes and hug and coo and promise to “do lunch” but never actually do, just trying to be nice. Or look nice. I understood. Happens all the time. I've done it myself, more than once.

It didn't matter. Barney and I would be all right on our own. I'd roast a chicken, make a salad, mash some sweet potatoes, and buy a pie from the bakery. After dinner I'd build a fire in the fireplace and we'd watch football and play Yahtzee. It'd be fine with just the two of us, cozy. And very quiet.

Aside from calling people who didn't have time to talk and thinking about people who might have called but didn't, I also spent a good chunk of time trying to coax Dave to come out from under the sofa and eat. I was really starting to get worried about that cat.

On Wednesday, I spent one full hour on my stomach, peering under the little fabric flap on the sofa at two neon green eyes, trying to reason with him. When that didn't work, I opened a can of tuna. He did eat a little, but only when he thought I wasn't looking. When he saw me watching him, he zipped back into his couch cave. Still, it was progress. I was pretty sure that he wasn't sick, just sad, lonely, and confused. Well, that made two of us.

Other highlights of the week included a visit to the library to check out a “definitive” biography of Eleanor Roosevelt that I'd always promised myself I'd find time to read someday and several bracing walks along the lakeshore. The book was a disappointment, too big and too dry, but the walks were nice.

Though many of the trees were already bare, the colors of the remaining leaves were so vivid. I'd almost forgotten how beautiful fall was on the peninsula, when the clean and crisp November air made everything look somehow more vibrant, and how bright the sun shone on your face even as your exhaled breath froze into a frosty vapor.

But those bright autumn days wouldn't be around for long. Soon the trees would be gray skeletons and it would be too cold for long walks. An icy crust was already beginning to form along the edges of the shoreline. Before long the sparkling waters of the bay would be filled with ice, not so much that it would freeze completely, but enough that ice breakers would be required so that fishing boats could get in and out of port over the winter. And when the snow came—and, really, it was surprising that it hadn't arrived already—the whole world would be soft, muffled, and still, wrapped in a cocoon of white until spring.

When I was little, I couldn't wait for that first snowfall, but not now. Snow, I was sure, would only make me feel more isolated, though it was hard to imagine feeling more cut off than I already did.

I kept telling myself that it was only for a few weeks and then I'd be able to pick up my life right where I'd left off, except with a half million dollars in my pocket, but it was hard to make myself believe it. I can't explain why, but I felt like my world had undergone a permanent shift. It would have helped if Tom had called, even once, to ask for my help or opinion.

It was silly to think that he should. The man was about to become the leader of the free world; he had a few things on his mind. And it wasn't like we'd been talking frequently before the election anyway. But the way he'd spoken to me on the morning of the funeral had made me think that was about to change. He wanted me to work for him, obviously, but I'd allowed myself to believe that he
needed
me. Of course, that was exactly what he wanted me to think. He could be very convincing when he put his mind to it. No one knew that better than me.

Why not? He is a politician. Convincing people, finding consensus, and winning the argument is his job. That's leadership. It was one of the qualities I'd first recognized and admired in him. But it didn't feel quite so admirable when it was turned on me. Sometimes it felt a lot like manipulation.

But that was only in my weaker moments. The problem was that, as the week wore on, my weaker moments occurred more frequently and lasted longer. Some of that, I realized, was pure fatigue.

My sister-imposed exile should have been a perfect chance to replenish my overdrawn sleep account, but it was impossible to get much rest on that sofa bed when I was spending the whole night rolling around, trying to find a halfway-comfortable position. Desperate for even one decent night's sleep, I tried putting the mattress on the floor, but it was so thin and the floor was so cold that I barely slept at all.

After that, I decided to finally bite the bullet and move into Alice's room. Jenna's suggestion to move the furniture, change the bedding, and make the space my own made sense. But two steps through the bedroom door, I stopped. Rearranging the furniture wasn't going to make this room mine. It would always be Alice's room. I could never banish my sister from this space, and I didn't want to.

But maybe we could share.

I opened my suitcase on the bed and carried my clothes into the closet, moving Alice's things aside to make space for mine. Then I did the same with the dresser, packing Alice's underwear, pajamas, tops, and pants tightly into the big bottom drawer, leaving the two smaller ones on top for my use. At some point, I supposed I should donate Alice's clothes to charity, but not yet.

While clearing out a drawer in the nightstand, I found one of Alice's unfinished quilting projects, a table runner with blue and green tulips. She'd been quilting it by hand. I remembered the other thing that Jenna had said, about how hobbies could relieve stress. As long as I was stuck here, maybe I should give quilting a try. It would keep me busy and it might be nice to make a quilt for my new place in DC.

I knew there was no point in trying to finish what Alice had started. I'd never be able to match those tiny little stitches that outlined each flower and seam. But maybe I could try something simpler.

I carried the unfinished runner down the hall to my childhood bedroom, now Alice's sewing room, and opened the big white armoire where she kept her quilting supplies. There was so much fabric inside, yard upon yard of it. What had she ever planned to do with all of it? But there were some really pretty greens. Maybe I would use some of those. Alice wouldn't mind. If anything, I suspect she'd have liked the idea.

The sewing machine stood in a maple cabinet in the corner, an old Singer that had once belonged to Mom. I didn't remember her ever using it. But I did recall Alice telling me a long time ago, maybe a couple of years after she dropped out of college, about taking it to Mr. Bjork, who fixed vacuum cleaners, lawn mowers, and snow blowers to augment his social security. He'd tuned up the old machine and, according to Alice, it worked fine after that. I didn't know how to use the machine or the strange collection of rulers and tools that I found stowed on shelves of the closet, but I could learn. That is, if I could find some kind of instruction books to tell me what to do. Surely Alice had some hidden away somewhere.

I moved things around in the closet, looking at the backs of shelves with no luck. A couple of promising-looking cardboard boxes only yielded more material, most of it pretty hideous—that must have been where she stored the ugly fabric.

Continuing the search, I lifted up a big piece of spattered canvas that looked like it had been used as a paint cloth and found the trunk.

Actually, it was a hope chest, not a trunk. It dated from the 1930s and had belonged to my great-grandmother, a chest of yellowish wood—some kind of pine, I remember Mom telling me—and lined with cedar to keep away moths that might eat into the bed and kitchen linens that young girls sewed or embroidered and stowed away until their weddings back in the day, back when the possibility of marriage to a good man usually marked the summit of female ambition. Seems kind of ridiculous now, but as a family heirloom it was sweet.

I liked to think about my great-grandma at the age of ten, or twelve, or sweet sixteen, diligently stitching linens that would be used for years to come, then folding them carefully and laying them in the chest as a down payment on the life she hoped to have and the family that, at that time, existed only in her mind.

I knelt down on the floor, fumbled with the latch, and lifted the lid.

The chest was filled with quilts, two big stacks of them, made with vivid fabrics of scarlet, amethyst, indigo, aubergine, and dozens of other hues. The colors were bright and fresh. The white or ivory backgrounds were crisp and unblemished. When I ran my hand across the patchwork star of red and blue, the fabrics felt perfectly smooth, but a little stiff, the way new clothes feel before the first washing.

These clearly weren't antiques. Alice must have made these quilts. As many as there were, she must have spent years accumulating them. Yet they looked and felt brand-new, as if they'd been folded up and hidden away the moment she'd completed them, carefully kept for the day when they might finally be needed, just the way our great-grandmother had stored her precious creations away when she was younger, protecting them safely in this very chest until the hoped-for husband should finally appear.

I pulled out the red and blue star quilt, unfolded it to see a border of stacked blue triangles, looked at the center section again, and realized that there was a secondary pattern of stars within the stars, subtle but distinct, that drew my eye and invited me to examine it still more carefully and search for other patterns that might emerge. It really was a beautiful quilt.