The Sisters (34 page)

Were not the right Man on our side,

The Man of God’s own choosing.

Bertie and Wallace were gone. In her striving, she had lost them, to herself and to each other. And for all Mabel knew, no matter how much she might hope otherwise—that somehow Bertie had survived to have a family of her own—she herself might be the last there would ever be of the Fischer girls, singly responsible for ending the line.

Yes, if she faced the priest, she would have to admit how much her actions had cost those she loved best—and the priest again would nod and chastise her for having relied on her own mind, her own strength.

But what of Daisy?
she would ask. What of Paul and Daisy and Barry and Jenny and Nick and Ted—the family that had risen from the ashes? Could she then, would she, look into the priest’s black eyes and quote from the same hymn?

And though this world, with devils filled,

Should threaten to undo us;

We will not fear, for God hath willed

His truth to triumph through us.

One day, probably not so very long off, she would know the answer to Jenny’s question—whether there indeed was someone or something beyond this world that would hold her to account. And whether what she had done would be judged as right or ruin.

She turned to look at Moses, raising her eyes to meet his glare—an ancient assured that every human choice was reducible to ten imperatives. Didn’t he know that time eroded even stone? Behind her she could feel the gaze, less angry, of the angel in blue armor. Like Moses, he felt equally assured of truth, but he wasn’t talking.

From overhead, bright warmth fell on her head, pouring over her hair and down her shoulders like fiery water, drawing out the cold. She lifted her face to it. Above her, in the dome, was a skylight, blazing now like the bright wheel of the sun, surrounded by stars. She hadn’t noticed it before.

N
INETEEN

Words

April 1992

Newman, Indiana

BERTIE

Tuesday, 11:17
A.M.

T
HE VACUUM HOSE WAS CLOGGED
again. Bertie gave it an angry shake, even though she knew that would accomplish nothing. She’d have to get down on the floor to get the hose off and then use a bent hanger to push the clog through. Rainey would fuss when she got home, saying like she always did, “Mother, I’ve told you to leave those things to me,” but if she left it to Rainey, it wouldn’t get done for who knows how long and all that time the floor would still need sweeping.

In the kitchen, Bertie rooted through the junk drawer to find the screwdriver, the Phillips. As soon as her hand closed around it, she felt a sharp cold pain, then a tingle, shoot down her arm and into her fingers. She could see the screwdriver in her hand but couldn’t feel it, and though it looked like she had a good grip on it, the tool tumbled back into the drawer. Then the room started shifting this way and that, and everything around her—the stove, the refrigerator, all the cabinets—seemed suddenly larger, then smaller, then changing places, with the stove now behind her and the refrigerator on her left, the cabinets sailing near the ceiling.

Another pain sliced through her head and she staggered to where she thought the table was. A faint sense of hard metal touched her palms. With what felt like all her strength, she pulled that metal down and toward her until, very distantly, she heard what might be the scrape of chair legs across the linoleum.

Sitting in a chair now, or at least believing she was, Bertie patted all around the table with her nearly senseless hands to find the thing she needed, the thing she suddenly couldn’t name. When she found it, somehow she knew that part of the thing had to come near her face, and that, whether she could feel it or not, she had to press the glowing button that was first in line. From out of a deep hole came words, but she didn’t know what they meant. “Accounting. Rainey Brandt.”

“Rai-ee,” Bertie said. “Rrr ai.”

“Hello? Hello?”

Bertie tried again, but though she could feel her mouth working, no words came, only some thin, strained growl, like a dying animal. “Rrrry.”

“Mother?”

Was that her name? Her name? Someone calling her name?

“Mother, what is it? Mother, can you hear me?”

“Rry … ey.”

“I’m calling an ambulance,” the voice said. “Mother, I’m on my way.”

Tuesday, 5:45
P.M.

She could hear fine, so why was everyone around her yelling and banging pots together?

No, not pots. Not the echoing ring of pots that Lynn and Grace made on New Year’s Eve when they ran out to the porch to pretend they were in the ballroom where Guy Lombardo’s orchestra was playing “Auld Lang Syne.”

No, not pots. But loud banging—so loud it made her nervous.

Until she opened her eyes, Bertie hadn’t realized they’d been closed. She looked around as best she could, but it was too dim to see what things were, and she couldn’t quite work out how to turn her head. It was like one side of it was gone. Like one whole side of her body was gone. Maybe it was. Maybe she’d been in some crazy accident that would make the news, some accident that had cut her right in two. But that didn’t make sense. She’d be dead.

Some of the noise was voices. Bertie closed her eyes to concentrate on them, to pick out what they were saying. The harder she tried to listen to the voices, the weaker they got and the stronger smells seemed. Nasty smells, like cloth soaked in old pee. Like flowery and fruity alcohol poured all around to cover the pee. There were other smells, too, but fainter, like rusty blood and rubber dusted with baby powder.

She knew those smells. Those and the odor of feet and damp armpits and green beans boiled in tin—the same smells that used to smack into her every day when Hans was dying, those months when Rainey would drop her off in the morning at the main door of the hospital.

To one side of her, the side that was still there, Bertie felt a warm grip on her arm and a soft, pleasant kiss on her forehead.

“Mother, can you hear me?”

Bertie opened her eyes again and looked for the voice. Rainey’s face came into focus—tired, smudged with mascara, just a fleck of lipstick in one corner.

“Mother, you’re in the hospital. In the emergency room. We’re taking you up to your room as soon as it’s ready.”

Rainey—Rainey was her daughter. Rainey looked away, somewhere past where Bertie’s feet should be. “You’ve had a stroke, Mother.”

A stroke,
Bertie said.
Did you come after me? Did you fix the sweeper?
Bertie said all this, but the only sound she heard come out of her twisted, half-dead mouth was “Toh.”

Rainey’s hand tightened on Bertie’s arm. It hurt. “Mother, can you hear me?” Rainey said again. “Can you at least look at me?”

I am looking at you,
Bertie said with irritation.
Stop squeezing my arm so hard.

From the missing side of her, Bertie heard another voice—a woman’s, loud, confident, flat. “It’s too early still to tell if her speech will come back. Or any of the lost feeling. We’ll know more tomorrow.”

“Can she hear me?” Rainey asked the voice. “Her eyes are open.”

“Probably not,” the other voice said. “Maybe. It’s impossible to say. But keep talking to her. You never know.”

Wednesday, 1:25
P.M.

“Grandma?”

Bertie woke to a light pressure on her cheek that might have been a kiss. How strange it was, this feeling that was both faint and heavy, the way she imagined it must be for those lions she’d seen on television, after they’d been shot with tranquilizer darts—minds awake, bodies asleep.

Grace was leaning over the bed, wearing one of those funny necklaces she made back in the woods, where she lived with that good-for-nothing gray-headed man that wouldn’t marry her. Bertie had thought the necklaces were pretty once, before she got up close. From across the room, they looked like crocheted gold. When she got closer, she saw they were nothing but tiny metal rings—each one no bigger around than a peppercorn, linked together.

“How you doing, Grandma?”

Such an easy way about her Grace always had, able to talk to her just the way she might if she’d come in for Sunday lunch.

Bertie knew now what had happened, or at least what the doctors were saying. She’d had a stroke. She’d lost feeling on one side—but that was coming back. She’d lost her ability to speak, but so far that wasn’t coming back. Nobody seemed to know if it would.

Rainey was about to drive her out of her mind, the way she talked really loud and slow—even though Bertie’s hearing was fine. And the way Rainey talked to visitors, answering for her, so that after a minute whoever had come to see Bertie was visiting with Rainey. Rainey talked about her like she wasn’t there, her voice high and nervous, the sound of tears way down in her throat, all the time pacing like a cat.

Grace’s eyes were a little red around the rims, and when she turned just so, Bertie could see the last bit of a tear on one eyelash, but Grace smiled and talked on like Bertie was still Bertie, still Grandma.

“Now if you had to go and do this,” Grace teased, “I sure appreciate your waiting until after that big storm that came through. The roads up my way were so icy, I would have had to come in on skates.” Grace had pulled a chair all the way up and was resting her elbows on the bed. Nobody else would even have thought about bringing the chair so close. “And it’s too early to get my garden in, so there’s no worry there—well, the cabbage, the beets, and the carrots are already planted, but Ken can look after those all right. I’ll bring you half a dozen jars of pickled beets when I get them put up. You like sauerkraut, don’t you, Grandma? I’ve never tried making it, but I will if you like it.”

Blech!
Bertie said in her head.

Grace rocked back in her chair and laughed. “Well, I guess you told me!”

Barely, just barely, Bertie could feel her face sliding out of an expression of disgust and into a smile.

“It’s Mom that likes sauerkraut, isn’t it?” Grace leaned in again and stroked Bertie’s cheek with one finger. “I don’t suppose I could make it anyway. I can’t stand the taste of it, so how would I ever know if it had turned out?”

“Yohg,” Bertie said, feeling her face scrunch up again. How a person could eat that old sour stuff was beyond her. No way to tell when it went bad.

Grace gave Bertie’s shoulder a playful shove. “You and yogurt.”

“Is she talking to you?” Rainey appeared at the foot of the bed, a twisted Kleenex tight in one fist.

“We’re doing okay,” Grace said.

“So no talking yet.”

“Has Lynn been in to see you, Grandma?” While Grace watched Bertie for sign of an answer, Rainey snapped, “She has not.”

“She’s got an awful lot to do,” Grace said. “Maybe she had to be in court today.”

Her granddaughter’s voice was calm, but tired. This was an old story—the trouble between Lynn and Rainey—going on since Lynn was in college. No, before that—since the trial, at least. More times than she could count, Bertie had said to Grace, “I wish there was some way to make your mother see she’s the one who has to give up the fighting. She has to stop letting what’s done and gone upset her so.” Rainey would tell her, “I want loyalty. Just a little loyalty from my daughter. Is that too much to ask?” But Bertie knew it was.
Loyalty,
to Rainey, meant that Lynn would have to go back and unwalk roads she’d already walked.

Thursday, 6:20
A.M.

Bertie flailed her arms when the cold rush of the river splashed over her chest, up to her throat. Standing behind her, Mabel wound her arms tightly around her waist and clasped Bertie’s hands in her own.
I’m here,
Mabel whispered in her ear.
I’ve got you. I’ve got you, Bertie. Just hold on to me
. Their friend Wallace waved from the riverbank. In church last Sunday, when Bertie turned pale over the announcement that her baptism was scheduled for the next service, Wallace waited until all the people congratulating her had moved away and said,
Don’t you worry, little gal
. He cupped her cheek in his hand and her heart popped with joy.
I’ll be right there to dive in after you if you need me
. The preacher had come up just then, and Wallace’s ears turned pink around the edges.
Reverend Small hasn’t lost one yet,
he said, slipping away with a final grin at Bertie.

Wallace will save us,
Bertie said to Mabel, who laughed and said,
Don’t let the preacher hear you say that. He’ll toss us out as blasphemers
.