Then I Met My Sister (10 page)

Seventeen

Sunday, June 13, 1993

Eve called me tonight after dinner. She said my mom had called her mom to tell her she was so glad we ran into each other at the gas station last night. Except that Eve was home all night watching a movie with her mom and sister.

Eve said she was sorry she’d blown my alibi, but I told her it was okay. Mom hadn’t believed me anyway. Then Eve wanted to know why I’d needed an excuse in the first place, and she got really quiet when I told her I’d met Chris at the park.

I felt like screaming, “Please stop judging me, Evie!”

Our friendship has been pretty much over since Spring Fling. Eve was stunned—STUNNED!—that Chris invited me. “You two have nothing in common!” she told me. Like it made no sense that someone as cute and cool as Chris could ever possibly be interested in me. Thanks, “friend.”

Eve didn’t get invited, so I asked her to come over and help me with my hair and nails before Chris picked me up. I wasn’t trying to rub it in that she didn’t have a date. I thought it would make her feel included. Anyway … she dissed me, and things have been awkward ever since. I started sitting with Jamie in the lunchroom while Eve sat at our old table reading a book. I keep telling myself it’s no biggie. Just because someone’s been your best friend for umpteen years doesn’t mean she needs to be your best friend the rest of your life, especially if she can’t even be happy for you during the most exciting time in your life. And Jamie’s so much fun! She never makes me feel judged.

Still …

I don’t know. It just felt really good to hear Eve’s voice when she called.

I set the journal aside, pick up the cell phone from my bedside table, and call Gibs.

“I know my dad’s secret,” I say, as soon as he answers.

He pauses.

“Yeah,” I say wearily. “It’s what you think it is. God. Men are so predictable.”

Gibs is still silent.

“An affair,” I clarify.

“Oh,” he says. “I’m sorry.”

“Shannon walked in on them. He was having some fling with the church secretary—God, how tacky is that?—and Shannon caught them kissing in the rectory.”

“Bummer,” Gibs says softly. “But … you sound okay.
Are
you okay?”

My eyes unexpectedly fill with tears, but I blink them back. “Yeah. Whatever.”

“That must have really done a number on Shannon,” Gibs says.

I nod. “I think it messed with her mind. I know everybody thought she had it all together, Gibs, but she was really naïve. You can read it in her words. It’s like she lived in a bubble, and when Dad popped it, she went from one extreme to the other—Miss Priss to Bad Ass in one fell swoop. But it was just an act. She was so sad and confused.”
I want to kill myself …

“It makes me so mad at Mom,” I add.

“At your mom?” Gibs says. “Why your mom?”

“I don’t know … At first, with the affair, I sympathized with her, especially after Aunt Nic told me how she went all ninja on the other woman when she saw her in the grocery store.”

“What?”

“Something about shoving an orange up her ass. Anyway, she was like this total mother bear, you know, ready to practically claw somebody’s eyes out to protect her family. So
that
was kinda cool. But …”

“But what?”

I shrug. “She treats Dad like dryer lint. She’s totally bossy and bitchy. She never pays any attention to him.”

“Maybe she paid him plenty of attention until he cheated on her,” Gibs observes.

I open my mouth to respond, but nothing comes out.

“So do your parents know you know?” Gibs asks.

I crinkle my nose. “
What
?”

“Your parents. Do they know you know about your dad’s affair?”

I laugh out loud. “God, no!”

“Why would it be so weird for them to know? I mean, they know Shannon knew, right?”

“That doesn’t mean anybody ever
talked
about it,” I say. “Shannon said it herself in the journal—my parents never talk about anything that matters.”

“But
you’re
the one not talking about it,” Gibs says.

I cluck my tongue impatiently. “Could
you
talk to your parents about something like this?”

“I don’t know,” Gibs muses. “I know my dad got a girl pregnant in medical school. We talk about that.”

I gasp. “Really? What happened to the girl?”

Gibs laughs. “She became my mother. I was the baby.”

I smile in spite of myself. I’ve only met Gibs’ parents in passing, but who would have guessed. “Still,” I say, “that turned out okay.”

“But your dad’s affair turned out okay, too. I mean, your folks are still married.”

Which makes sense, right? They
are
still married.

Only that doesn’t strike me as a success.

Eighteen

Monday, June 14, 1993

When I met with Dr. Deadhead last Monday, I gave him an earful about how Mom’s a control freak and Dad’s a hypocrite, but he didn’t want to talk about those things today. (And I have so much more to say!)

He asked me about my friends. I told him how Eve and I have drifted apart and how Jamie and I have gotten so close. He did that sneaky shrink thing of getting information without asking many questions, and the next thing I knew, I was telling him things that made him take lots of notes.

I know he’s thinking the same thing Mom thinks: Eve is Miss Perfect, Jamie is Trouble, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I HATE the way adults put people in tiny boxes: good, bad, smart, stupid, right, wrong. I spent most of my life believing them. Then I gave Miss Wrong a chance and found out she’s really fun. And Miss Right started to seem pretty judgmental.

So, Dr. Deadhead, why am I wrong for giving people the benefit of the doubt?

He said he didn’t think I was wrong, just maybe a little naïve.

But naïve is what I USED to be. I was naïve when I thought Mom could never be wrong, that Dad could never make a mistake. Dr. Deadhead asked if I could say these things to Mom; he wanted to call her in from the waiting room. I said okay, but when she joined us, I clammed up. She looked so tense, so expectant, like she was paying Dr. Deadhead all this money and now she was here to collect. “My daughter’s spent two hours with you; show me you’ve knocked some sense into her. Convince me you’ve made her perfect again.”

I broke out in a cold sweat. I couldn’t talk to her. I couldn’t even look at her. So I started crying instead.

I put the journal on my chest as I lie in bed and listen to Mom on the phone in her bedroom. She’s doing her dog-and-pony show for some hapless first-time house hunter. I’m catching only the tail end of the conversation, but I’ve heard it all before and already have the gist.

“Oh, it’s perfect for you!” she coos. “Totally adorable! You know, my husband and I couldn’t afford much when we first married, but wouldn’t you know, we stumbled across the cutest little fixer-upper bungalow, and I tell you, it was the most charming place I’ve ever lived! Oh, I had such fun making my own curtains and putting little flower boxes in the windowsills! That’s what this place reminds me of.”

Mom’s really good at her job. She sells lots of houses, really fancy ones in addition to the “fixer-upper bungalows” (read “shacks”). She doesn’t care if she’s selling something worth a million dollars or a fraction of that. She sees the potential in everything and helps other people see it, too. I gotta hand that to her.

Not that her success is any secret. Her face is on a dozen billboards throughout town
(Susanne Stetson holds the KEY to your HAPPINESS!)
, and half a dozen “Realtor of the Year” trophies are on the fireplace mantle. She used to drag me along on occasional open-house events, and I marveled at how long she could hold a fake smile.

I hear her hang up the phone and start another conversation.

“I have asked you a thousand times not to leave wet clothes in the dryer,” she tells Dad in a brittle voice. “They sour.”

Silence.

“Do you hear me, Randall? This is important!”

More silence.

I roll my eyes. How many of these kinds of conversations did Shannon overhear? I bet Mom made
her
head spin, too, with all her happy talk and fake smiles for the outside world, and all her nagging for Dad.

I pick the journal back up and read another entry.

Wednesday, June 16, 1993

Drum roll, please:

I SAVED A LIFE TODAY!

And on my very first day as a lifeguard!

I’d just gotten to the pool, and even from the parking lot I could tell something was up. I heard screaming, then started running. When I got through the gate, I saw people gathered at the baby pool. Mary Ellen, the lifeguard with the early shift, was standing in the pool trying to jerk something out of the water. Several people were crying, and someone yelled to me, “She’s stuck!”

That’s when I realized what was going on. A toddler’s hair was stuck in the drain of the baby pool, and Mary Ellen was trying to yank her free. Mary Ellen looked like she was going to puke. The yanking obviously wasn’t working, and the baby couldn’t survive long under water.

Long story about why I had scissors in my gym bag, but suffice it to say I’ll never go to a pool again without a pair. I grabbed my scissors, dropped my gym bag to the ground, ran to the baby pool, jumped in, cut the little girl’s hair and pulled her out of the water. She was already turning blue, so I laid her on the side of the pool and started doing CPR.

There must have been fifty people standing around me, either crying or screaming or yelling out instructions. The mom kept screaming, “Don’t hurt her, don’t hurt her!” But I tuned everybody out and concentrated on the little girl. After a few breaths and chest compressions, water started coming out of her mouth. I turned her to her side, and she almost immediately started coughing and crying. An ambulance showed up a few minutes later and took her to the hospital, just to be sure she was okay. The mom called later to thank me and tell me her little girl is fine. I told her I was just happy to help, and that she didn’t even have to pay me for the haircut!

I set the journal down for a second a take a deep breath. Wow. Even in midst of Shannon’s rebel act, she was still so … awesome. It’s always been easy for me to resent her trophies and awards. I never thought to actually admire them. I think about the Red Cross plaque that hangs on the Shannon Wall of Fame. Before, it was just one more item on an endless brag sheet. But now, it really
means
something. She learned CPR through that Red Cross course. She saved somebody’s life with it. God, I’ve been so snotty about Shannon all my life.

“You,” I tell myself out loud, “are an idiot.”

I keep reading.

Thursday, June 17, 1993

No life-saving at the pool today! In fact, today was downright boring, other than people walking over to tell me how stupendous I was yesterday. (Please, please … no autographs!)

One of those people was none other than Eve. She came to the pool and said she’d heard about what happened. At first it was kind of awkward, but then we loosened up and started talking and laughing like we used to. She asked me to come to her house after my shift ended. Her dad would grill burgers, her mom would pop popcorn and we could watch scary movies all night.

I told her sorry, it sounded great (it really kinda did!), but that Chris was meeting me after my shift. (I made her promise not to tell Mom.)

Anyway, I wish I’d taken her up on her offer, because OF COURSE Chris ended up having to help his dad fix a transmission on a truck. Or something like that. He promised he’d make it up to me, but here I sit, all alone with my journal and a killer sunburn, missing my sweetie and thinking that scary movies and popcorn don’t sound half bad.

I put the journal aside, pick up my cell phone and call Gibs.

“Hi,” he says.

“Hi. I’m gonna look up Shannon’s friend, Eve.”

Nineteen

Mothballs.

That’s what I’m smelling. Even on the front porch, the odor hits me like a locomotive. I smile quickly to make my crinkled nose less obvious as a plump, gray-haired lady opens the front door.

“Mrs. Brice? Hi. Thanks for letting me stop by. I know my call was totally out of the blue …”

Eve’s mother draws in a breath. “You look just like your sister,” she says, then blinks hard as her eyes moisten.

She leads me into the living room of the ranch-style house. A sofa with celery-green upholstery sits against one wall, an upright piano against another. Two faded armchairs sit stiffly to one side, like soldiers guarding the room. A lamp on an end table casts a golden glow on Mrs. Brice’s face as she guides me to the sofa and sits beside me. I smile at her, weakly. This lady is nice enough, but she seems so . . . ancient. No wonder Eve seems like such a priss in Shannon’s journal. Her mother is right out of schoolmarm central casting.

“You look
just like her
!” she repeats, putting her hand on my knee. I hear this a lot, but never quite like this. Mrs. Brice is acting like she’s seeing a ghost.

“Shannon was way prettier than me,” I say, then swallow hard and blush. Could I sound any more pathetic?

“No!” Mrs. Brice insists. “The resemblance is remarkable.”

I glance at the piano.

“Do you play?”

Mrs. Brice crinkles her brow, then nods vigorously. “Yes! And I teach. I taught Shannon!”

My throat catches. I knew Shannon played, but I never pictured her
learning
to play. My sister is always fully formed in my imagination. “You taught her here?” I ask.

Mrs. Brice nods and her eyes soften. “Right in this very room. Thursdays at four. I must have taught her for—goodness—seven years or so, at least until she started high school, maybe even a year or so after that. She was very good. She’d learned a Rachmaninoff piece by the time she was nine! She was so disciplined; I can see her now, staring at the keys so intently and playing with such passion. Truly, one of the most gifted students I’ve ever had.”

I stare at the piano bench, imagining my sister sitting there, poised and purposeful.

“And you?” Mrs. Brice says. “Do you play?”

My eyes stay planted on the piano bench for a long moment. “I took lessons for a couple of years, but … no.” I wonder why I didn’t take lessons from
her
. Maybe she’s wondering the same thing.

A silent moment lingers, then Mrs. Brice lays a hand on top of mine. “Your sister was a wonderful girl.”

My eyes lock with hers. “She and Eve were best friends, right?” I ask her.

She nods decisively and folds her hands primly in her lap. “Since second grade. Inseparable, those two. They were Brownies together, then Girl Scouts—always side by side throughout all their little clubs and activities.”

“But then they drifted apart,” I prod.

Mrs. Brice looks confused, then waves away the suggestion. “Why would you say that? They were always very close.”

I sigh. Do mothers know
anything
?

“I think they started to grow apart a few months before Shannon died,” I say tentatively. “Shannon started dating a guy Eve didn’t like.”

Mrs. Brice blushes and looks at her lap. “I think I did hear something about that.”

“From Eve? Did she talk about it?”

Mrs. Brice’s eyelids flutter. She looks … annoyed?

“Of course she talked about it,” she says defensively. “But their spat … it was nothing. They would have patched things up if …”

She intertwines her fingers.

“Honey, I don’t know exactly what you’re trying to find out,” she says after an awkward moment. “But there was no big drama involving their relationship. They were wonderful friends who went through a rough patch. That’s all. I’m sure Eve mentioned things to me here and there, but I wasn’t concerned.”

She shifts her weight to face me squarely. “Your sister may have gone through some growing pains—dating a fellow who wasn’t really right for her and whatnot—but that wasn’t
her
. It was clear to everybody who knew Shannon that she would be a wonderful success in life, even if she stumbled a little—just a little—along the way. I mean, my heavens, she was playing Rachmaninoff at nine!”

My eyes drift toward the sunlight streaming through a bay window.

“Did she ever talk about my mom?” I ask.

“
Talk
about her? Well, I suppose she did, but she and Eve were busy playing Barbies and practicing their cheers, not talking about their mothers. Besides, Shannon couldn’t tell me anything about your mother I didn’t already know. We were constantly doing things together. We were great friends.”

I eye Mrs. Brice guardedly. “Then why don’t you and Mom still see each other?”

She blushes. She begins to speak, but her voice catches and she starts over. “I feel terrible about that,” she says. “I did try to keep up with Susanne for a while after … after the accident … but I almost felt cruel being around her. Here was Eve, graduating from high school, moving on with her life … I would have felt like I was rubbing that in her face. Then, when you came along, I thought, ‘Perfect. Fresh start. Susanne gets to have all the joys of motherhood again.’ I didn’t want to intrude on that. I didn’t want to be a constant reminder of the past.”

She worries her necklace and looks out the window. “Like I said, I feel terrible.” She turns toward me. “How is your mother doing, Summer?”

“She’s okay … she’s fine. Did she and Shannon get along?”

Mrs. Brice’s eyes flash confusion. “Of
course,
Summer. They got along beautifully. Why wouldn’t they?”

It’s official—this woman is clueless.

“I guess every mother-daughter relationship has its challenges,” she continues. “But I never saw a problem in the world between those two. Oh, we had such fun together. We’d alternate houses for trick-or-treating, and we always made ornaments and cookies together at Christmas. Of course, we were always running the girls around to their various club meetings or fundraising projects. I think one was sleeping over at the other’s practically every weekend.”

I realize I have a faint smile.
This
is the Shannon my family keeps alive, the little girl making Christmas ornaments or having bake sales for cheerleading camp. But the thought of Shannon’s journal jolts me back to reality.

“So it must have been weird when Shannon and Eve stopped hanging out together.”

Now Mrs. Brice definitely looks annoyed. “They didn’t stop
hanging out
,” she says testily, using air quotes. “They were just getting older, staying busy. It was nothing. Why are you asking about this anyway, dear?”

My lashes flicker against the late-afternoon sunlight, which is getting harsher by the minute as it streams through the bay window. “She kept a journal the summer before she died.” I swallow hard. “I’m reading it.”

“Ah.” Mrs. Brice fingers her necklace again. “She wrote about her friendship with Eve?”

I nod. “Nothing bad,” I emphasize. “Eve’s great. I can tell by reading the journal.”

“Mmmmm,” Mrs. Brice says.

I pull a lock of hair behind my ear and sit up straighter. “Mrs. Brice, I’m sorry to pop up out of nowhere and ask you personal questions. I don’t mean to freak you out. I’m not implying there was some great mystery or something. I know friends can grow apart. I just …”

“Eve sang at her funeral,” Mrs. Brice says evenly, her chin jutting forward subtly. “They had
not
grown apart.”

My shoulders sink. “Right.”

A tense moment passes, then Mrs. Brice’s expression softens. She leans closer, her very pores smelling of mothballs. “Would you like to talk to Eve?”