The Space Between Sisters (4 page)

A
fter Poppy went to her room, Win washed her face at the bathroom sink and thought about dismantling her “shrine” to her and Kyle.
Maybe,
she thought, cupping water in her hands and splashing it on her face. Maybe she'd put those things away. But then again, maybe she wouldn't. She turned the faucet off, and reached for a hand towel, looking in the mirror as she patted her face dry. The lighting in this bathroom was not flattering. She knew this from experience. Still, as she leaned closer now and scrutinized her reflection in the mirror, she found herself, in almost every way, wanting. What was wrong with her hair, for instance? She picked up a limp strand that had escaped from her ponytail and held it up for inspection. It was a color commonly referred to as dirty blond, but right now, it just looked dirty, though she had washed it that morning. And her eyes, which were an indeterminate shade of blue, were they always this puffy, or were they like this now because of her cat allergy? And what about her skin? She'd thought she had the beginnings of a summer tan, but under the fluorescent light fixture, her complexion had an unhealthy, almost greenish hue to it.

“And so it begins,” she muttered. Because it was almost impossible for her to be with her sister without doing this, without subjecting her appearance to this kind of merciless self-appraisal, and cataloguing all of her physical flaws with the same obsessiveness with which she organized her kitchen utensils.

Why did she even care now? she wondered, rubbing her face dry with the hand towel. Why did it even matter what she looked like when the only man she'd ever loved—a man who'd thought she was beautiful even on her worst day—was gone now? What difference did it make? Besides, in her more rational moments, Win knew she wasn't unattractive. She knew, in fact, she was per
fectly attractive. And if she hadn't had Poppy for a sister, if she hadn't been born exactly thirteen months after her, and spent her entire childhood linked, inextricably, to her in the minds of all of their friends, and neighbors, and classmates, she would probably have been more than satisfied with the way she looked.

But their parents, who were both attractive people in their own right, had outdone themselves when they'd produced Poppy. It was as if their first daughter had won some kind of genetic lottery, inheriting the very best physical traits either one of them had to offer. By the time Win arrived, a little over a year later, her family's genes had reverted back to type.

It wasn't that she didn't look like Poppy. She did. She looked enough like her for people to know, without being told, that they were sisters. But somehow, this made it worse. As one of Win's high school classmates had once remarked, with the casual cruelty of that age,
It's like Poppy's the designer handbag, Win, and you're the knockoff.

Win hung up the hand towel and took a box of Benadryl out of the medicine cabinet, then popped one of the capsules out of its foil packet, and washed it down with another scoop of water from the faucet. There, that should head off the sneezing fit she felt coming on. She put the Benadryl back on the shelf, but she was careful this time not to look in the mirror once she'd closed the cabinet. Instead, she left the bathroom, imagining she already felt an over-the-counter drowsiness setting in, and thinking, still, about Poppy's beauty. It wasn't fair of her to resent Poppy for it. She hadn't chosen it and, if she were to be believed, she couldn't even see it herself. Certainly, she was almost completely without vanity. Even in this age of relentless social media, she stood apart. Her Facebook profile was of her cat, and she had never, to Win's knowledge, taken a selfie. Her idea of getting ready for a night
out on the town was brushing her teeth, and the only thing she owned that was even close to makeup was a tube of ChapStick.

Win padded down the hallway, turning off lights as she went. No, she wouldn't resent Poppy's beauty, she decided, coming back into her bedroom. But she couldn't
help
resenting her irresponsibility; Poppy's life was, mysteriously enough, always on the verge of unraveling. And tonight, tonight was
classic
Poppy, though even by Poppy's standards it seemed over the top. No warning she was coming. No mention of bringing anyone, either. She'd just shown up, with a cat that shed his weight in fur every day, a “friend” whose last name she didn't know, and several cardboard boxes that contained the sum total of her life.

Win got into bed then pummeled her pillow into a more acceptable shape and snapped off the bedside table lamp, before flopping down with a finality that suggested anger rather than sleep. Was it fair, though, she wondered now, to blame Poppy for her irresponsibility when you considered the way she'd been raised? Win, of course,
responsible
Win, had been raised the same way, but this time, it was
she
who had been the outlier and Poppy who had been true to their family's form.

Their parents had met, gotten married, and produced two children in quick succession, and then, as far as Win could tell, had never done another conventional thing in their lives again. They weren't bad parents. They weren't abusive or neglectful—well, not
technically
neglectful—though Win sometimes thought that between her father's drinking and her mother's self-absorption, they had skirted dangerously close to it. But their attitude toward their children, most of the time, could best be described as one of mild surprise. As if, having brought them into this world, they forever after seemed to be asking, not unkindly,
What is it, exactly, that you two are doing here?

In fact, Win thought, tossing irritably in her bed, that was what their father had said to them one morning when he'd walked into the apartment and found them eating cereal at the kitchen table. Win couldn't remember how old she and Poppy were at the time, but they were young, young enough so that their feet didn't touch the floor, but dangled off the chipped, wooden chairs they sat in. It was a summer morning, and they were dressed in cotton nightgowns, spooning cornflakes into their mouths when their father let himself in through the front door and walked into the kitchen.

He didn't look too great. His clothes were askew, his hair was standing on end, and his eyes were bloodshot. Now, of course, Win knew this was the result of a night of hard drinking, but then she'd only thought he looked strange and a little wild. He started to walk past them, then stopped, came back, and stared at them. “What are you two doing here?” he asked, rubbing his eyes.

“We live here,” Poppy said, not skipping a beat. Win nodded in agreement.

“Right,” he said, as if just realizing this, and then he reached out and put a hand on each of their heads and gave them both a slightly unsteady pat. “You live here,” he said. “'Course you do.” And then he'd walked out of the kitchen. Still, Win thought, as she began to feel the tug of the Benadryl's chemical drowsiness, Poppy was twenty-nine. She was old enough to be responsible for her actions, despite her upbringing.
Wasn't she?

Win yawned. In recent years, she'd been prone to insomnia, but tonight she knew that wouldn't be a problem. She thought about their houseguest, Everett West. She hadn't had much of a chance to get to know him. He'd been so quiet during dinner, letting her and Poppy do most of the talking. And Poppy, who'd said she was exhausted, had insisted they all go to bed right after
dinner. She wondered now if Everett was asleep. And if not, what was he doing? She had no idea. He was still a stranger to her. Could still be, for all she knew, a serial killer. Should she lock her bedroom door? No, if Everett were inclined to murder her and Poppy, he'd had more than ample time to do so already.

Besides, he didn't look like a serial killer.
He looked like someone . . . someone with sleepy eyes, she decided, though she was so sleepy herself she could barely follow her own train of thought.
He has such sleepy eyes. Such nice eyes
. Not like her eyes. Her eyes felt itchy right now . . . so itchy.
That cat
. That cat would make her miserable. All summer long. Poppy would have to find someplace else for him, at least while she stayed here. And her last coherent thought, before she fell asleep was,
That's it,
Sasquatch is going.

A
couple of nights later, in another cabin on Butternut Lake—this one larger, and more cluttered, than Win's—Sam Boyd sat down at his dining room table and flipped open his laptop. He'd been trying to watch the same YouTube video all night, and every time he started to play it, he'd been interrupted.
“It's about damn time,”
he muttered, as the short commercial before the video finished, but in that same moment he caught sight of something out of the corner of his eye. He pressed “pause” and snapped his laptop shut.

“All right, who's still up?” he called out, glancing over at the stairs that led up to the cabin's second floor.

“It's me,” his son Hunter answered, shuffling into view.

“Lights out was fifteen minutes ago.”

“I know, but . . .” Hunter hesitated, and then edged down a few more stairs.

“This can't wait until morning?”

Hunter shook his head.

“Okay, let's hear it,” Sam said, itching to watch the video, but knowing that no self-respecting father would watch it in front of
his nine-year-old son. He waited while Hunter came down the rest of the stairs and then sidled up to him at the dining room table. “Now, what's this about?” Sam asked.

“Um . . .” Hunter scratched a mosquito bite on his arm.

“Stop scratching,” Sam said. Hunter stopped.

“It's about . . . the Fourth of July.”

Sam sighed. “Is it that time of year already?” he asked. By “that time of year” he meant the weeks leading up to the Fourth of July, during which his sons (Hunter, and Hunter's twin brother, Tim) began a series of tense negotiations with Sam over how many and what kinds of fireworks they could buy to commemorate a holiday which for them had very little to do with American independence and everything to do with blowing things up.

“Let me see that,” Sam said to Hunter now, noticing for the first time that his son was holding a notepad. Hunter handed it over and Sam studied the page it was open to, marveling at the unaccustomed neatness of his son's handwriting. Hunter had made two columns. The one on the right listed the names and desired quantities of each firework, and the one on the left listed their prices. At the bottom of the left-hand column was the sum total Hunter and Tim were proposing to spend on this venture.

“Does your math tutor know you can add this well?” Sam asked, looking up from the notepad.

Hunter smiled his familiar half smile.

“Is this all the money you two have saved?” Sam indicated the total in the bottom left corner.

Hunter nodded.

“How many weeks' allowance is that?”

Hunter considered this. “About six,” he said, finally.

“And you're sure this is how you want to spend it?”

Hunter nodded again. He wasn't much of a talker, this kid. Now Sam blew out a long breath, dropped the notepad on the table, and tipped his chair back. Hunter waited, and tried not to scratch his mosquito bite. He and his brother, Tim, were identical twins, but for the quarter sized birthmark on Hunter's neck. It had been years since Sam had needed it to tell his sons apart, but he knew that it had been a lifeline to all of the teachers, and coaches, and Scout leaders in his sons' lives. Otherwise, the two boys shared the same reddish-brown hair, the same bright blue eyes, and the same dusting of freckles across their cheeks and the bridges of their noses. Sam reached out now and tried to smooth down Hunter's hair, but it couldn't be done. It was a minefield of cowlicks. Still, it wouldn't hurt to get him and his brother a haircut before they saw their mother next weekend, Sam thought, and while he was at it, he might as well get them some new pajamas, too. The faded Minnesota Twins T-shirt and the tattered gym shorts that served as Hunter's sleepwear tonight barely covered his gangly arms and legs.

He gave his son's head a final rub and looked back down at the notepad. “What's this?” he asked, pointing to a firework Hunter had listed as “killer bee fountain.”

“Oh. That looks like a huge swarm of killer bees,” Hunter said, pantomiming a swarm. “Plus, it has one of the loudest whistles of any fountain firework.”

Sam smiled. Hunter had just said more to him than he ordinarily said to his father in a whole week. “Well, we wouldn't want to miss out on that one,” Sam said. “But remember, I'm going to have to run all of this by your mom, okay?”

“Okay,” Hunter said.

“Now, get to bed.” And then Sam added, in a slightly louder voice, “
Both
of you.”

“'Night Dad,” Tim called down, from where Sam knew he'd been waiting, just out of sight, at the top of the stairs.

“'Night Tim,” Sam called up. “And Hunter?” he said, before his other son could slink away.

“Yeah?”

“It's going to be a miracle if you and your brother reach adulthood with all ten of your fingers intact.”

“Probably,” Hunter agreed.

“Now, get out of here,” Sam said, good-naturedly, easing his laptop open again.

He clicked on play and then rubbed his eyes. He rested his elbows on the table, and leaned closer, squinting at the screen as the video began.

“Dad?”

He jumped.
“Christ,”
he mumbled, slamming his computer shut. “Cassie, you have
got
to stop sneaking up on me like that,” he said, turning to his six-year-old daughter, who was standing beside him.

“I'm sorry. I can't help it if I have quiet feet,” Cassie said, holding her hands behind her back and looking down at her bare feet. “I'll try to make them louder,” she added, marching them up and down in place.

“No, don't do that,” Sam said, softening. “If you do that, they'll be just like your brothers' feet, and we have enough people clomping around in this house as it is. What's wrong, sweetie? Are the boys keeping you awake?”

“Not the boys,” she said. She stopped marching, and balanced on one small, pale foot. “The girls.”

“The girls?”

“The girls in my baton twirling class. The
mean
girls. I told you about them, remember?”

“Riiight,”
he said, slowly, leaning back in his chair and trying to remember what the latest drama in baton twirling class had entailed. But it didn't matter. Cassie usually provided him with a recap anyway.

“I mean, I know Gia and Riley are ten years old,” she said now—pronouncing
ten
with the special reverence that only a six-year-old could give this age—“but they still act like they're so much better than me. And not just me. They're that way with
all
the six- and seven-year-olds. Do you know what Riley said to Tara today?” she asked, balancing on her other foot now.

“No. What did she say?”

“She said that Tara was
so
bad, she should stand in back at the recital, even though she knows six- and seven-year-olds have to stand in front. They
have
to. I mean, they're so short, if they didn't stand in front, nobody would see them.”

“That's true,” Sam said, reasonably, hoping to head this conversation off at the pass. “But I'm sure Riley didn't mean any harm in saying that.”

“But she
did,
” Cassie said, not to be dissuaded. “She
did
mean harm. She
always
means harm. She told Janelle that her knees are fat. I mean, it's not even her
fault
that her knees are fat. She said she got her knees from her mom. And she said that her mom's knees are not even fat. They're just dimpled. Which is a much nicer way of saying fat, don't you think?”

“I do,” Sam said, smiling.

“What were you doing on your computer?” Cassie asked, changing the subject.

“I was going to watch something.”

“A cat video?” Cassie asked, hopefully.

“No, not a cat video. Thanks to you, I think I've already seen all five million cat videos online,” Sam said, and he reached out
and tugged on one of the slightly messy pigtails he'd forgotten to take out of her hair before he'd tucked her into bed earlier. She looked so much like her mother right now, he thought, as she stood there, hopping from one foot to the other, the hem of her Cinderella nightgown not quite covering a scab on her right knee. She had her mother's light brown hair, and bluish-grey eyes, and her fair complexion, too, a complexion that was a lovely mingling of pinks and creams. But if there was no question that she was adorable there was also no question that she was exhausting, and when he said, “Cass, we'll watch a cat video tomorrow. But what do you say you get back into bed now?” He attached a small, silent prayer to his words.

Cassie, though, shrugged noncommittally, and Sam knew she didn't want to go to sleep. She could go to sleep
anytime
.
Now,
she wanted to talk. She
needed
to talk. And Sam had learned, from hard won experience, to let her do it. “All right, come here,” he said, patting his lap, and as she scrambled up into it, she began almost immediately to talk again about the mean girls in her baton twirling class, especially Riley, who had done far worse things, apparently, than accusing someone of having fat knees. And Sam listened, a little absently, and thought about Riley's father, whom he'd gone to high school with. He'd been a bully, too, the kind of guy who was always pushing smaller kids into lockers, or flicking wet towels at his teammates in the locker room after basketball practice. Sam considered telling his daughter about him now, but then decided against it. And it was just as well, because Cassie had already moved on to a different topic, which was the amount of money in her piggy bank—seven dollars and forty-seven cents—and how best to spend it. She'd seen some sparkly barrettes in the window at Butternut Drugs, she told Sam, and she really liked them, but Tara had the same bar
rettes, and the sparkly stuff on them had already rubbed off, so maybe she should buy a glass animal instead. Sam started to comment, but she changed the subject again. She'd lost a flip-flop today, she told him, it was white with blue polka dots, and she hadn't had time to look for it yet. Still, she listed now all the places it might be. Then she talked, for a little while, about the little ballerina that used to twirl around inside her jewelry box whenever she lifted the lid. She'd broken the ballerina off recently because she'd wanted to play with her, she explained,
outside
the jewelry box, but now she was sorry. She'd tried to put her back on her twirly thing, but she wouldn't stay on it, and Cassie was worried she might never be able to dance again.

There was more after this, about other things, but Sam lost the thread of it. He was remembering instead when he and Alicia had separated three years ago and he'd moved from Minneapolis to this cabin on Butternut Lake with Cassie, Hunter, and Tim. He'd grown up on the lake and although college, marriage, and a career had taken him away from it, he'd always imagined that one day he'd come back here to live. So when he and Alicia's marriage had ended, Sam had suggested that he and the kids move to Butternut and Alicia, after much soul searching, had agreed.

That first year after the divorce, though, there had been a lot of challenges for Sam. He'd been completely unnerved, for instance, by Cassie's nighttime monologues. He thought he knew how to parent his sons. He'd grown up in a family full of boys, and he assumed that the rules for raising them were pretty straightforward. They needed to be fed, and kept reasonably clean, and they needed someone—him, in this case—to basically hold a gun to their head every night while they did their homework. But if his sons seemed to him to be like sturdy houseplants, his daughter seemed more like a hothouse flower. And when he'd gone to
tuck her in that first night at the cabin, and she'd starting talking, and kept talking, he'd felt completely out of his depth. What if she asked him a question he couldn't answer? Or needed advice he couldn't give? But then he'd realized that it wasn't answers or advice she needed—it was something much simpler. She needed to be listened to, and that, at least, he knew he could do.

Now, though, Cassie's words, which had taken on a new urgency, broke into his thoughts. “Do you think that's true, Daddy?” she asked, looking up at him, intently.

“Oh, absolutely,” he said.

“You do?”
She looked alarmed.

“I'm . . . I'm sorry. What are we talking about?”

“About Janelle. About whether she saw a ghost or not.”

“Oh, no. Of course not. Ghosts aren't real, Cassie. You know that.”

“I
know.
I know,” she said, looking relieved. “I just forgot.” She looked thoughtful for a moment. “Do you know what I think?” she asked.

“What?”

“I think Janelle just has a really good imagination.”

He smiled, and kissed the top of her head. “I think so, too,” he said. “Now, is there any chance that you could put yourself back to bed?”

She shook her head solemnly.

“I didn't think so,” he said, with a barely audible sigh of resignation. “Let's go.” But he was back a few minutes later, after depositing her, firmly, into her bed, begging off reading another bedtime story, and promising her, once again, that ghosts were not real, and then checking her closet for her just to be sure they weren't, and finally leaving the hall light on in case they really might be. No sooner had he sat down in front of
his computer, though, than his cell phone rang.
“Oh, for God's sakes,”
he said under his breath, but when he saw the name on the incoming call he forgot to be irritated and hit the “talk” button instead.

“Are you still awake?” he asked, by way of saying “hello.”

“Awake?” she said. “I'm still at work.”

“Alicia, it's ten o'clock,” he protested.

“I know. But I have opening arguments tomorrow, and I need to go over them.”