The Sister Season (22 page)

“He was only surprised for a
few minutes.”

E
lise didn’t expect Maya to come to the funeral. She figured her daughter would stay at the hospital by Will’s side, waiting for news on whether or not the cold had done any permanent damage.

Elise had cried herself to sleep the night before. The poor boys. Her poor daughter. She’d lost Bradley, almost lost her son. Tragedy upon tragedy, and what if she’d never manipulated the girls? What if she hadn’t been greedy about getting them all in the same house for Christmas? What if she’d told them the truth, that the funeral had always been set for the twenty-seventh? Would this have not happened? Would they have shown up last night, tired and jet-lagged and whole? Instead, her lie had brought them in early. A family had arrived five days ago, but only one of them—Molly—remained at the house this morning. A family damaged, depleted.

In this way she felt responsible for the things that had happened with Maya this week. And a loop of should-haves and might-haves and could-haves filled her brain all night long. She should have told the truth. She should have had the pond filled in years ago. She should have been watching the kids more closely. Not to even mention the biggest should-have of all, the one about the night Robert died—what she should have done that night—but she still wasn’t ready to face that one.

But whether she should have or not, she didn’t do any of those things, and that was the important part.

Out of habit, she rolled over to her left side to avoid Robert’s snoring in her face, then once again caught herself, remembering that he was gone. He wouldn’t ever be snoring in her face again. Or making her have sex during her period. Or smacking her for some perceived wrong. When would she stop forgetting this? When would it be just a normal fact of life that her husband was gone? She forced herself to turn over to her other side and look at his pillow. To touch the sheets on his side of the bed. She picked up the pillow and held it to her face, smelled it. It still smelled like him, and the scent stirred up feelings in her.

She missed him. As crazy as that sounded, she did. Not the mean bastard she’d been married to for so long, but the boy who’d wooed her with wood carvings and wildflowers plucked from their field and lavish dates where she felt like royalty. Had he been planning to bring that boy back? Was that what the necklace had been about? She wished she knew.

He had been good to her. For a long while, he’d been good to her.

But the drinking had started and the girls had been born and he’d been so stressed and angry all the time and he’d been bad to her. For an even longer while. So would it really have mattered if the pendant was an apology? She guessed not. There was such a thing as too little, too late, and she supposed Robert had passed that point long, long ago.

She pulled herself out of bed and took a quick shower, then dried her hair and slipped into a black dress, the same one she’d worn to her mom’s funeral years ago.

When she got to the kitchen, she was surprised to see Maya sitting at the table, erect and vacant-eyed, dressed in a beautiful black pantsuit neatly pressed and hugging her curves. She was sipping a coffee and staring out into space. Elise could hear Molly playing in the den, the Christmas tree rattling every so often.

“I wasn’t expecting you to be here,” Elise said, pouring her own coffee. “Surely you’re not going to the funeral today.”

Maya’s eyes barely shifted. She didn’t move. “My father died,” she said flatly. “I have to go.”

Elise joined her at the table. “Honey,” she began. “Will—”

“He’ll be fine for a couple of hours,” Maya interrupted, her eyes finally meeting her mom’s. “He’s sleeping anyway. They’ve got him on pain medication. His fingers are still hurting pretty bad. And his ear. The one that was pressed down on the ice.”

“What are the doctors saying?”

“That it’s possible he could lose some of his left pinkie and some of that ear. It’ll take a few weeks to know for sure.”

Elise nodded, sipped her coffee. It seemed horrible to her, how a little boy could be perfectly healthy one minute and losing fingers the next. But he was alive. At least he was still alive.

“We’re going back to Chicago tomorrow morning as planned. Bradley is already there, which is why he wasn’t answering last night. He was on a flight . . .” She trailed off, went back to her stare, but Elise noticed that her daughter was swallowing, and swallowing again. “I’ve got . . . an appointment . . . on Thursday, and now this, and Bradley’s already moving his things out . . . How am I ever going to do all of it by myself?”

“I’ll help you,” Elise said. “I’ll try to get a flight in the morning. So I can be there. Do what you need.”

Maya seemed to be struck by this offer. She shook her head. “I don’t know what I need anymore.”

Elise reached over and touched her daughter’s elbow. “I know, honey.”

Maya jerked her elbow away, pulling it to her side protectively. “No, you don’t know.” She leveled her gaze at her mom again. “Mom, my appointment is radiation treatment. I have breast cancer.”

Maya’s face began to crumple with grief, but all Elise could do was sit back in shock. Cancer? On top of everything else, Maya had cancer? How did she not know this? Why had no one told her? Forget everyone else—why hadn’t Maya told her?

“Oh, my God, Maya,” she whispered.

Maya blinked, her head making fast little shaking movements as she lifted her face upward to try to keep the tears from falling over her lower lids. She swallowed, took a deep breath, used the pads of her fingers to dab at the corners of her eyes, and gathered herself.

“I’ve lost everything,” she said. “I’m being punished and I don’t know why.”

“You haven’t lost everything,” Elise said, though she knew her words would fall on deaf ears. Of course Maya felt as though she’d lost everything. Wouldn’t she herself feel the same way? “You still have the kids. You have to be there for the kids.”

“What if I can’t? What if the cancer is worse than they think?”

Elise had no answer for that.

Last night, sitting in the uncomfortable vinyl hospital chairs, a jittery Julia had confided to Elise that Eli had been trying to commit suicide. Julia had wondered aloud if that was why he’d been on the ice, if this had been a suicide attempt and Will had just innocently gotten mixed up in it. Eli wasn’t talking and nobody knew exactly what had happened, but still Julia worried.

Elise had been dumbstruck that one of her grandchildren was contemplating killing himself, and even more dumbstruck that this was knowledge that one of her daughters had and hadn’t shared with her.

Now to find out that Maya had cancer . . . it was almost as if her wondering about her daughters had been answered. There were secrets. Tons of them. What more did her daughters keep unrevealed? What more were they sitting on? Keeping her out of? What other secrets would she discover?

And would they find out hers?

T
he funeral home was more crowded than Elise would have thought. She’d had no idea her husband had so many friends, although she had often, over the years, wondered if some of the old cronies that clogged up the funerals out there in the boonies were actually friends of Joe Dale and if he didn’t beg them to come out to make a good showing. A ministry to the hopelessly unloved, if you will.

Clem Hebert and his wife and the other ladies who’d taken them to dinner at Sharp’s were there, as were a couple of men she recognized as having helped Robert fix some fencing a few years ago. Others she recognized from in town but didn’t know their names. She supposed he knew some from poker games, some from restaurants or bars, and some from the farm store that he frequented. She supposed that no matter what brand of son of a bitch you were, you still gathered a handful of followers by the time you were sixty-seven years old.

Joe Dale greeted them at the front door with a smooth “Good afternoon, Elise, ladies,” and a small, contrite bow of the head perfected by years of handling the grieving. “Right this way.”

He led them into the little chapel room where Robert’s casket was, shining under the lights and surrounded by flowers and plants. She could see his forehead and nose poking out over the lip of the open casket and immediately felt woozy and as if she’d better sit down before she fell down.

“Mom? You okay?” Julia said softly, putting her hands on the small of Elise’s back. “You look a little wobbly.”

“I’m fine,” Elise said, trying to smile away the queasiness that had settled in. She glanced at her daughters.

Claire had appeared in the kitchen this morning in her Hollywood sunglasses and had not taken them off since. The doctor had checked her out and released her. He had not given her anything to help her sleep, to rest, and Elise doubted that she had done either of those things last night. In many ways, her youngest daughter seemed more distraught by what had happened than anyone else had.

Maya had sat down in the last pew, her arms and legs crossed primly, her gaze straight ahead.

“If you’d like to spend a few moments with the departed,” Joe Dale said, “you will have some time after all the guests leave.”

Elise nodded somberly, and as calmly as she could, she strode to the front of the room. She looked down into the casket. Gazed at him—at his tie, at the rouge on his cheeks—and tried to feel something, anything other than shame. And then she realized . . . she didn’t even really feel that.

She touched his lapel, smoothed it with her palm. “Oh, Robert,” she whispered. “I guess I should apologize. I do feel bad about the way it all ended. But I really do think I would do it again, that’s the thing.”

Soon Julia was standing next to her, her hand resting on the small of Elise’s back once again. “He looks like a wax figure,” Julia said. “Not that I expected him to look good or anything.”

“He looks so small in there, don’t you think?” Elise whispered. “He always had such big shoulders. But he looks like a little old man in there.”

“I don’t know, Mom. He looks the same size to me. Just not angry. Maybe that’s what’s throwing you off.”

Mourners started to file in, and Elise took her spot, with Julia, next to Robert’s casket, to shake hands and give hugs and thank people she barely knew or didn’t know at all for coming to join her in saying good-bye to her husband. Julia must have known almost nobody who came through the line, but she held her own. She was charming and poised, and Elise could see a side of her she had forgotten existed. They called her Queenie for a reason. Something had been off about Julia all week—now that Elise knew about Eli, she supposed that was what it was. But how her daughter could turn her charm on like flipping a switch she would never understand. She supposed it was Julia’s own defense mechanism, learned to help her survive Robert’s wrath.

Claire didn’t join them. She sat in the front pew, sunglasses on, with Molly on her lap, holding Eli’s hand. Elise couldn’t tell what her daughter was thinking and feeling behind those giant glasses, but she could see the hard set to her jaw and knew that she would not be joining the receiving line anytime soon.

If ever.

Sad organ music played and people clutched tissues and a group of old farmers chatted quietly, respectfully, in the back and a couple of children nosed through a cookie platter just outside the chapel door. After a while, the music stopped and once again Joe Dale appeared and took Elise by the elbow, leading her to the front pew, where she sat between Eli and Julia. Maya stayed in the back pew by herself.

“Welcome,” Joe Dale began, and Elise felt her eyes fill with tears. Not tears of sadness. Oh, no, those tears would come soon enough. Those tears would wash over her in a wave. Those tears would stretch back decades and would leave her raw and hollow and regretful.

These tears were different.

Robert was dead. Her husband of forty-seven years was gone. There was tinsel on the tree and poinsettias on the porch and nobody would get drunk and beat her tonight.

These were tears of relief.

T
he service was short, the preacher going on about shadows and valleys and all the typical funeral things.

Nobody who knew Robert rose to speak, so even his eulogy was stale and ordinary, and Elise couldn’t help but feel some amount of smug satisfaction that nobody was going to stand up and talk about Robert Yancey as if he were some sort of saint. It was bad enough to hear that he might be heaven-bound. If anyone deserved a short trip on a long escalator downward, it was that man.

So when the preacher began talking about Robert being someone who loved the outdoors and gathering over a good meal with good friends, until he got to the child of Christ part, it almost sounded like a dating ad. She wondered if he would also claim that her dearly departed husband enjoyed long walks on the beach and French poetry.

After the service, everyone filed out except Elise and her daughters. Even Eli had dutifully taken Molly to the cookie tray, both of them silent and looking wrung out. It was going to be a rough patch for poor Molly, her family broken, her brother and mother sick. And rough for Eli as well, Elise suspected. She hoped her daughters were prepared to be there for their children. That was where she’d always fallen down, in taking care of her daughters. In protecting them. She hadn’t done enough of it and she knew it. If she had a regret in this life, it was of not taking them away from their father, rather than not taking herself away from him.

“We’ll give you a few moments,” Joe Dale said, and left, closing the door behind him.

Elise dutifully went back to the casket, said an internal good-bye and stepped away.

Julia stepped up next, peered into the casket for a moment, then backed to her mom’s side. They looked out at Claire and Maya, who had both stayed in their spots at opposite ends of the chapel.

Maya simply shook her head no, slowly.

Claire stood, walked over to the casket, looked down, and said, “Fuck you,” then walked away. Elise was surprised that she didn’t feel scandalized by it. In fact, she felt a little triumphant.

The ground was soft and slushy. The snow had melted a good deal, and their high heels sank into the ground as they walked, all except for Maya, who seemed to know how to float above treacherous ground in her heels. Probably because she had worn them so much.

The wind had kicked up and they huddled against themselves as they traipsed to the grave site, hugging their coats tight around them, ducking their heads down into their collars. Julia lit a cigarette and smoked it on the way, then gave one each to Claire and Maya, who both took them gratefully.

They sat in folding chairs under a canopy that had been hastily erected, but did a nice job of keeping the wind out, and listened as the preacher read from the Bible and said more generic things that had nothing to do with the man who was Robert Yancey. The children hung in the back of the crowd, Molly twirling in circles, her little skirt fanning out around her delicately.

They sat in silence. They nodded their appreciation to the preacher. They nodded to Joe Dale. They stayed in their seats, shoulder touching shoulder, as everyone filed away.

It was done.

After everything, it was finally done.

And that was when Elise finally broke down, sitting with her daughters, remembering all the times the girls’ cries and pleas had broken her heart and she could do nothing about them but hope that they wouldn’t be horribly tainted for life at the hands of her husband. She sat with them now, three grown women who all held pain in their eyes. Who all had secrets and who kept their feelings and thoughts locked away.

She wanted them back. Not for Christmas, but forever. She wanted that relationship she’d never been able to forge with them, thanks to him. She wanted to be there for Maya as she nursed Will, and herself, back to health. She wanted to be there for Julia as she sought help for her son. She wanted to be there for Claire, who looked so haunted Elise wasn’t sure that it was only yesterday that haunted her. She wanted to be there for them at last.

She wanted to know them, and she wanted them to know her. She wanted to be rid of this secret that was making her act crazy and felt like a brick wall between her and her daughters. If she expected them to speak, she had to do so first.

“I did it,” she said at last, her voice creaky and small. She cleared her throat and repeated herself more forcefully. “I did it.”

“Did what?” Julia asked. She squeezed Elise’s hand.

“I killed him.”

There was a beat of silence, and then Claire leaned forward. “Holy shit, Mom,” she breathed. “What happened?”

“I’d had enough, and I wanted him gone,” Elise said. “So he’s gone.”

Claire stood, faced them. “What did you do?”

So, sitting in a folding chair next to the man’s fresh grave, Elise recounted to them how Robert had died that night.

She’d been in bed, reading, just like every night. Reading, and hoping he was drinking enough to pass out in his stupid recliner, just as he’d been doing lately. As much as it sickened her to wake up to the stench of his acrid breath barreling out of his body and stinking up the front room every morning, at least when he was passed out in the recliner he wasn’t terrorizing her in the bedroom.

She must have dozed off, because she remembered picking her book up off of her chest when she heard the
thunk
from down in the front room. It was a sound she recognized, like someone had sat up real quick in the recliner and knocked it back to sitting position. She opened her eyes and listened for more, hoping that he wasn’t coming to bed. He’d be angry that she’d fallen asleep with the lights on and wasted electricity.

But then she heard a cry, a kind of strangled
yargh
sound and a wheezy cough. And then her name, only it took him several tries to get it out. “El . . . Eli . . . Eli . . . El . . . Elise!”

She was scared. Was there an intruder in the house? A murderer? She strained to hear more, not moving a muscle for fear of drowning out an important noise such as footsteps climbing the stairs. But there didn’t appear to be the sound of any sort of struggle going on. Just Robert making those strange guttural noises and the squeak of his recliner moving around.

At last she got out of bed and crept downstairs.

“Robert?” she asked, and when he didn’t answer, walked into the front room with her heart in her throat, barely breathing because she was so frightened.

But she rounded the corner and saw him there, his face so red it was purple, both hands clutching his chest. He was holding his breath.

“Robert?” she asked again, coming into the room, startled. “What’s wrong?”

“Help,” he choked out, and he reached for her.

Without thinking, she ran for the phone in the den. She picked it up off its base and carried it into the front room, her finger hovering over the “9.”

When she came back in the room, she could see that his pain had only intensified. His cheeks bulged in fear and his fingers scrabbled at his chest. His breathing was coming out in raspy gulps. And looking at him, she realized she was looking at someone having a massive heart attack. If she didn’t get help for him, he could die. In fact, from the looks of things, he probably would die.

He looked so pathetic. So frightened. Practically pleading for mercy.

How many times had she pleaded for mercy and not gotten any from him?

How many times had she looked pathetic, been clutching at a body part in pain, been frightened and needy?

And how many times had he kicked her while she was down?

His bulging eyes seemed to take her in and know exactly what she was thinking, because they’d gotten a fearful look to them. He’d thrashed in the chair a bit as if to get up and grab the phone from her, and then he’d gone unconscious.

“I’m sorry, Robert,” she said, pulling the phone to her side. “You don’t deserve my help.”

She’d climbed the stairs back to her bedroom, taking the phone with her, and locked the bedroom door behind her. She never knew if he regained consciousness, if he died right then, or if he suffered for hours first.

They sat in stunned silence, their faces turned toward their father’s casket. Elise sniffled into a tissue, feeling miserable and responsible and as if her daughters would never again want anything to do with her. At last her secret was out. Nobody seemed to know what to say.

Then a sound from the end seat punctured the silence.

A snicker.

Elise, Claire, and Julia all turned, leaned forward, to look at Maya, whose shoulders were shaking. Elise’s eyes grew wide.

“I’m sorry,” Maya said, covering her mouth with one hand, but her giggles seeped out between her fingers. She tried to compose herself, cleared her throat, pressed her lips together. “You didn’t kill him, Mom. You’re not a murderer.” The other two daughters nodded in agreement.

“You can’t be held responsible for someone else’s heart attack,” Julia said.

“He died of natural causes,” Claire added. “Bacon killed him. Bacon and booze and a terrible temper.”

“Who’s to say the paramedics could have saved him anyway?” Maya said. “You let him go. You should have done it years ago.”

Maybe they were right. What if she hadn’t heard his cry that night? What if she’d slept just a fraction more soundly, or awakened two seconds more slowly? What if she’d searched for her slippers or stopped to tie her robe? What if the ambulance hadn’t arrived in time, if the CPR didn’t work, if he’d died on an operating table early the next morning? He would be no less dead, and she would be no more at fault.

She liked the way it sounded, that Robert was dead, but she didn’t kill him. She just . . . let him go.

He may have been the shy boy who’d carved that hummingbird box for her, the one who’d called her
beautifullest
, the one who’d promised to love and honor her. But he was also the one who’d pulled her hair, who’d pushed her down the stairs, sprained her wrist, sneered when she cried. He was the one who’d hurt her daughters—the people in this world she loved more than anything. He was the one who’d driven them away, made them lock up their hearts, made them forge secrets and keep them from her.

He needed to be let go. And she’d let him go.

There was a beat, and then Claire started laughing. “How surprised the old goat must have been when he ordered you to do something and you actually didn’t for a change.”

“But he was only surprised for a few minutes,” Maya said, then lost her composure again and joined her sister’s laughter, and even Julia’s mouth tipped up in a little smile. But abruptly Maya’s laughter turned to sobs, so gut-wrenching they sounded painful. “I’m sorry,” she said, “I’m sorry. I’m such a mess. I just . . . everything that’s happened . . . I’m scared . . .”

Claire rushed to Maya’s seat and knelt in front of her. She reached up and rubbed her sister’s arms, repeating, “It’s okay. It’s going to be okay, Maya.” Soon they were all sobbing again, and to Joe Dale they might have looked as if they would miss his friend Robert Yancey as much as he would. But they were mourning something much deeper. The loss of a father. Of a husband. Of sisters. The loss of their own childhood. The loss of so many years, spent up and wasted with pain and anger.

They had so many years’ worth of tears to cry.

Slowly, Elise pulled herself to standing and walked over to the casket, shining and pristine with a spray of red roses adorning the lid. She reached into her pocketbook and pulled out the necklace Molly had found in the Christmas tree branches, which she’d tucked in her purse at the last moment. She held it up and watched the pendant swivel at the end of its chain. Such a mystery, that necklace. But the man—there was no mystery about him. Even if he’d been trying to apologize with this gift—even if he’d been saying he wanted to start anew—Elise knew it wouldn’t have been long before she was nursing a broken bone, or a broken heart, a broken soul again.

The pendant, the mystery, it didn’t matter. The man was a monster, and she should have rid herself of him years ago.

She dangled the necklace over the casket. “I’m sorry, Robert,” she said. “It just doesn’t work that way. Too little, too late.” She opened her fingers and let the pendant fall. It landed on the casket with a rattle and slid over the side, down into the yawning grave below.

Julia stood, wrapped her arm around her mom, and pulled her close, leaned her head against Elise’s. “It’s okay, Mom,” she whispered. “We’re here. We’re all here.”