The Sister Season (23 page)

E
lise didn’t get to taking down the tree until after she’d gotten back from Chicago.

She’d flown home with Maya and the children two days after Robert’s funeral. By the time she got back, the Colorado blue spruce was brittle and browning. It no longer carried the smell that God intended. Her mother would have been frantic with worry. Would’ve been expecting it to spontaneously combust any minute.

Still, when she got home from Chicago, from the frenzy of heartache, during which she tried so helplessly to be there for her daughter who was grieving the loss of her marriage in between difficult doctor’s appointments, she left her bags by the front door and went straight to the spruce and stood in front of it, pondering her own heavy heart.

When Maya’s shock had worn off and the realization that her marriage was over had finally arrived, it hit her with such a force as to dissolve her. Elise’s daughter was empty, drifting about with wet eyelashes and a sunken look that suggested a part of her had disappeared with Bradley. She scarcely spoke, couldn’t do anything for the poor children, who seemed lost as well, couldn’t lift a finger without needing to go back to her dark bedroom and lie down for hours.

Elise tried her hardest to help out. She kept on top of Will’s pain pills and daily visits to the doctor, as the blood vessels in his fingers slowly repaired themselves. She sat with the children during Maya’s radiation appointments and played with them when their mother arrived home, tired and crabby. She took down the Christmas tree and helped the children open up all their new toys. She made sure the kids bathed and dressed and she arranged for them to spend some time with their father, who appeared to be living with a colleague just a few blocks away. She cooked dinners that nobody ate and vacuumed floors that nobody walked on.

Will was doing better every day, but Elise stayed on, tending to her daughter’s shattered life the way she’d tended to the farm as a child—a set of unwelcome, yet satisfying, chores to do. Nobody was waiting for her to come home. She could stay as long as she needed.

But after three days, a bald lady in a pink T-shirt came to the door, carrying a bag loaded with supplies. Cleaning supplies, comfort food, bottles of wine. The poor thing looked so shrunken, Elise stepped aside and ushered her in, taking the bag off her shoulder and carrying it to the kitchen for her.

“I’m so sorry I couldn’t get here sooner,” the lady said, following oh so slowly behind Elise. “I’ve been out of commission lately. But I’ve rallied once again . . .”

Maya, who had heard her friend’s voice, flew off the couch and into the kitchen, wailing like a siren and holding her arms out like a child. They fell into each other’s embrace, rocking and crying so that Elise knew it was time for her to go, time for her to let Maya’s friend take the reins.

Now, standing in front of the Colorado blue spruce, many of its needles under her feet on the floor, more sleet clicking against the windows, she felt very alone. But peacefully so.

“I suppose I’ll go ahead and take down the tinsel, Robert,” she said, even though she knew he wouldn’t answer.

She started to reach for a strand of silver, but her hand fell away. Instead, she leaned over and plugged in the lights, knowing, but not caring about, the danger of doing so on such a dry tree. She stood back admiring the twinkling lights for a moment, hands on hips, reflection on her face, and then eased herself down to the floor.

She lowered herself onto her back and scooted under the tree, looking up through the ornaments and the lights and the tinsel, and gave a sigh of relief.

December 24

One Year Later

C
laire was, of course, the first to arrive. Elise stood on the front porch, leaning forward onto her toes, arms wrapped around her shoulders against the wind. It was a cold day, but sunny. It had not snowed yet in Missouri, and, much to the chagrin of the white Christmas wishers, it was not going to snow anytime in the near future. Just icy cold and wind whipping across the plains, sinister and deadly.

Elise chuckled as her daughter tossed a fistful of crumpled bills over the cabdriver’s seat and pushed open her door . . . only to see Michael reach over the seat behind his new wife’s back, gather the bills and straighten them, then add one to them and hand them to the cabdriver with a handshake. He stepped out of the opposite side of the cab and came around next to Claire, picking up her beat-up backpack in one hand while carrying his duffel in the other.

They both wore sunglasses. They both wore jeans.

They both waved, almost in sync, to Elise as the cabbie backed away. Elise waved back.

They had been married only a few months. A Vegas wedding. They’d flown her in for the ceremony. Immediately Elise had liked Michael Bowman, finding him sweet and patient, the slow and easy side that Claire didn’t have and desperately needed. He gambled a little, teased his new mother-in-law a lot, and doted on Claire as if he’d been given a rare and precious gem to keep. And the most amazing thing? Claire let him. Sometimes it looked as if it might actually be painful for her youngest daughter, but grudgingly, she let him. She needed him. Elise could see it in her eyes, in the way she gripped his elbow when they walked side by side, in the way her fingers curled desperately around his when she said her vows. In the way she cried while saying them.

Claire loped up the sidewalk, crinkling her nose. “When are they ever going to take care of that shit smell?”

Elise laughed. “I don’t smell it.” She held her arms out and folded her daughter into them. She smelled Claire’s hair, kissed the top of her head. It still felt strange for her to make these gestures, but with big change comes discomfort. Her therapist had told her that, over and over again since Robert’s death. Elise understood, and she was willing to withstand the anxiety.

“Maya and Julia here yet?” Claire asked, unraveling herself from her mother’s arms and stepping up on the porch.

“Julia should be here any minute. Maya’s flight comes in tonight. Hi, Michael!” She quickly hugged her son-in-law as a greeting.

“Great to see you, Elise! What’s this rumor I hear about mulled wine?”

“It’s on the stove. Come on in.”

They had barely sat down when Julia and Eli arrived. Eli had gotten a haircut, Elise noticed, and his acne had gotten worse. The result was a face that was so angry with lesions it jumped out at you, looking throbbing and painful. He sat at the table next to his mom, his arms crossed and mouth shut, surly. He hadn’t changed much. To hear Julia tell it, in private, he had gotten worse after falling through the ice. He’d become almost inconsolable at times, suffering nightmares, begging for her to let him die, pressing knives to his throat at the dinner table, threatening to jump out of the car on the highway. She’d taken him to a psychiatrist, who’d hospitalized him, medicated him, then suggested he spend more time with Dusty, so Julia had clamped down on her own heart and sent her son to live with his dad. Slowly, he’d been making progress. Though they all figured he would never be that smiling, curious child again.

“Where’s Tai?” Elise asked once everyone got settled.

Julia looked somber. “His research project just couldn’t be put on hold. He stayed behind to work on it.”

“On Christmas Eve?”

Julia shrugged. “That’s exactly what the marriage counselor said.”

Elise frowned. Julia hadn’t mentioned marriage counseling before. Her daughters all still had some secrets, she supposed. They were working on that, but old habits die extremely hard. She would ask about the counseling later, when Eli wasn’t around, because she had resolved to test those habits, and those secrets, the day Robert died, and she wasn’t about to give up on her daughters now.

Later, Maya arrived with the kids . . . and Bradley. This was a surprise to no one. She’d warned everyone that they were giving it another shot.

“It’s tentative,” she’d told Elise on the phone. “I don’t know if I trust him completely, but I’m willing to give it a try. For the kids.”

Molly looked so much older, and Elise was taken aback at how much of a difference a year could make. At eight, the little girl was already wearing clear lip gloss and shoes with tiny, clicking heels. She looked like a miniature version of her mom, right down to the pinched expression and tense shoulders. Will padded along behind her, her little shadow, who eyed his surroundings warily, as if he might get hurt by making a wrong move. He’d managed not to lose any body parts to frostbite after all, but his nervousness showed the confidence that he’d lost in his fall through the ice, and Elise wondered if he’d gained a timidity that would follow him through life.

“We’re going to Jamaica after Christmas,” Molly announced to the room in her precise, somewhat aloof manner.

“Kingston,” Maya added, setting her suitcase on the kitchen floor with a huff. “We’re leaving straight from here on the twenty-eighth. Doctor says the relaxation will be good for me.”

There were some changes about Maya—the long hair clipped short, the lack of bangles snaking up her arms, the assertiveness, the sneakers. Elise figured Maya had entered a portion of her life where she would take no shit from anyone. She’d lost her husband for a time, she’d almost lost a child, she’d beaten cancer. She had been to the gates of hell, then had turned around and trudged back to reality with her shoulders squared. Nothing would scare her now. Nothing would beat her.

The girls began to chatter about Jamaica. About swimsuits and parasailing and beach volleyball. Claire talked about a trip she and Michael had made there. She made some suggestions and laughed over vacation dramas, and they all chatted over one another, sipping on mulled wine and hot chocolate and passing a plate of cookies back and forth between two poinsettias.

Elise stood by the stove and crossed her arms, looked out the window at the chicken coop she’d repainted and filled back in the fall. Tomorrow morning they would eat Essie’s and Maria’s and Chickie’s eggs for breakfast. They would slather biscuits with crab apple jelly from the crab apple tree in the front yard, jelly that she’d canned herself during the summer, along with beans and yams and jars and jars of homemade pickles.

She’d sold the back acreage, along with the pond and the soy field and the beehives, her daughter’s bloody foot trails outlining the boundary of what once belonged to distant aunts and uncles. She’d kept the barn and the pasture, and planned to buy a couple of cows in the spring. She’d kept the garden and had welcomed the sweaty, hard, backbreaking labor all summer long. She’d farmed enough vegetables to feed herself all winter, and enough to give to the new family that had filled in the pond and built a tidy farmhouse on the land. And she’d filled the chicken coop, her lovely birds her friends and confidantes.

She’d spent days finding, and cutting down, the perfect Colorado blue spruce and loading it up with lights and ornaments and fountains of tinsel. She’d been busy for weeks making plans with her daughters. This time they would come of their own accord. This time she would not need to lie to get them, and keep them, home. This time they would come and fill the floor beneath the tree with gaily wrapped gifts. With excited chatter. With warm meals and wine and “O Come, All Ye Faithful.”

This year they would have Christmas.

A CONVERSATION WITH JENNIFER SCOTT

Q.
The Sister Season
is set on a family farm outside Kansas City, Missouri. It’s such a real place and the details of the natural world are so lovingly observed, from the birdhouses nailed crookedly to the old trees to the ice freezing on the pond while the fish continue to swim among the reeds underneath. Why did you choose this setting? Have farms played a significant role in your life?

A. My parents owned a small piece of pastureland in rural Pleasant Hill, Missouri, when I was young. Across the road, a close family friend owned, and lived on, a small amount of farmland. Between the two families we had just enough space to house a few cows and chickens, a couple of geese and ducks, a barn cat or two, a large garden, a pond, and some fruit trees.

Growing up, I spent my Sundays on that land, helping to work in the garden, hanging out in the barn, wandering around the orchard, plinking the keys of an old upright in the living room, or churning ice cream on the back porch. It was hot and buggy, or dead and frozen over, there was no TV or any electronic entertainment, and there was usually work to be done.

But, for me, it was also a place of dreaming, and a place of great comfort. A place where I could tell myself stories, where I could jump and climb and sing at the top of my lungs. It was a source of comfort food and cozy Christmases, an outlet for my creative self. And, yes, it was also a place of dark corners and unforgiving seasons, and there seemed to be stories to imagine in every nook and cranny.

That farm became a part of me, a place I still mentally retreat to when I want an image of peace. I’ve always wanted to set a story on a version of that farm, and to me the setting of
The Sister Season
is almost a character unto itself—a very beloved character I’ve known my whole life.

Q. There are four different women we follow fairly closely in this book—the sisters Julia, Maya, and Claire, and their mother, Elise. You do a wonderful job portraying each woman in sympathetic, complicated ways, but were some of these female characters harder to write than others? Do you have a favorite among them?

A. Oddly, my answer to both questions is the same sister: Claire.

Claire was the hardest to write, because she was so closed off on the inside, yet had this outward image of being easy and carefree. In a way, Claire is the most tender of the three sisters, yet is inwardly the most impenetrable. This dichotomy of Claire’s personality made the writing of her story a bit of a difficult dance.

Yet at the same time I had the most hope for Claire. I related to her the easiest—the youngest sister, artsy and blithe on the outside but easily hurt and guarded within—and I trusted her. I knew that she was ultimately going to be the one to set healing in motion. If any of the sisters could push past the hurt and begin moving them all toward the future, I knew that sister would be Claire.

Q. Julia’s son, Eli, is given his own sections within the book, which you label “Attempts.” Why did you set him off this way? Why not weave his story into the book in chapter form the way you did with the women?

A. Eli’s story is set up as a mirror of what is going on with the women. He is continually attempting to give up, and is continually failing at it. There is always something standing in his way of completing that final death, and in the end it is love that keeps him alive.

The same thing is happening to his mother and aunts. They have tried to give up on one another, on their family. They have attempted their own sort of death—the death of the sister bond. But there is something standing in their way, something keeping them from successfully letting go. Just like with Eli, it is ultimately love that keeps their bond alive.

For this reason, I wanted to set Eli’s story apart from theirs. In a way, I felt like I was pausing to take a breath and to study their reflection in Eli. Overall,
The Sister Season
wasn’t about Eli at all—it was the three sisters’ story—but at times the two journeys were very close to one and the same.

Q. You also write fiction for young adults. How does writing for adults differ from writing for young adults? Is one more draining, or more rewarding, than the other?

A. Really, in terms of process, there isn’t much difference. I’m not even thinking so much about genre while I’m writing. I’m simply telling the story that wants to be told. Sometimes that story features women in their late twenties or early thirties and deals with marriage and aging parents and parenting struggles. Other times the story that wants to be told involves high school lockers and boyfriends and scandals at parties.

But in the end, they’re all stories about love and loss, conflict and friendship, the struggle to connect, and, ultimately, the great reward in gutting it out until that connection is made. Because of that, I see them as simply different sides of the same coin, and I love them equally.

Q. What’s next for you in your writing life?

A. The only thing I can say for certain is that I don’t know and I like it that way! I’m a big fan of trying new stories, new styles, new genres, and I never say no to a story that’s tickling the back of my brain, wanting to be heard, without at least giving it a try. Because of that, I’m always experimenting.

That said, I have special places in my heart for women’s fiction and young adult fiction, so I fully intend to continue writing in those genres for many, many years to come.