Three Sisters (11 page)

“Hello,” her mother said. “You found it all right.” Karen looked up. There was Scott, his hand on Liz’s shoulder, smiling around, at her mother, at her. She hadn’t even seen him approach. He wore a light blue shirt, blue and gray striped tie. Karen stared at him, stunned, half of her still in that big white loft with the skylight.

“Hello, Mrs. Freed. Happy anniversary,” Scott said. He sat down next to Liz.

A few minutes later her father and grandmother showed up. Her father a little rumpled, his shirt creased, his tie loosened, but her grandmother, as usual, elegant in a soft brimmed hat, a velvet dress with a jeweled flower spray brooch at her neck.

“Grandma, you look beautiful. You could be a model,” Liz said.

“Thank you, sweetheart.”

“You all look beautiful,” her father said.

“Daddy, how courtly.”

Her father looked around the table, humming and polishing the top of his head, that little bald patch—no wonder it was so shiny. “So we’re gathered here to celebrate our anniversary. Imagine that. Twenty-three years.”

“And your birthday, Arnold,” Grandma said. “A little late, I might add.” His birthday had passed the week before.

“Twenty-three years, that’s really something,” Scott said. “That’s really special.” Liz and he were holding hands.

“Well, if you two make it official, a real engagement, you could have a shot at something just as good. Not that I’m saying it’s easy to make a good marriage and keep it going.”

“Hear, hear,” her mother murmured.

“You need patience and you have to know how to compromise. Anything good isn’t come by easily,” he ended. A long speech for her father.

The talk went here and there, what her mother called chitchat. Karen was thinking her own thoughts, or maybe not thinking at all, just feeling things. She

and Scott happened to be sitting directly across from each other. She only had to stretch her leg to touch his foot with hers. In a movie she’d seen, a man and a woman who were each married to someone else had carried on practically an entire love affair beneath a dinner table, and with a dozen other people present. They’d touched each other, given each other little nudges and pats; their hands had talked a special sign language. And all the time, above the table, they carried on normally, talking and laughing with the other people.

Suddenly Liz said, “Karen? Your face is all red.” Boom! It was as if a piece of the ceiling had dropped into the middle of the table. All talk stopped. Five pairs of eyes turned on her. Karen’s face is red! What can be the matter! “Maybe you’re getting sick?” Liz said, and she reached across the table to touch Karen’s forehead.

“Don’t!” Karen jerked away. She was horrified. Liz was treating her like a five-year-old. She pushed away from the table.

“Karen?” her mother said after her. “Are you all right?”

Yes! No! Leave me alone! In her haste, she bumped into a table. Were they all still watching? In the women’s room she locked the door, shoved her wrists under the cold water, splashed her cheeks and her lips. What’s the matter, Karen? Your face is all red. Tears of rage gathered behind her eyes. She slapped her hands against the side of the basin, slapped them again and again, stinging them, bruising them.

When she came back, the waiter was at the table with the bottle of wine wrapped in a napkin. Her mother glanced at her, but to her relief no one said

anything. The waiter poured wine into a glass and handed it to her father. He raised his eyebrows at her mother and said, “You want to do it, Syl?” Karen’s mother laughed; she sipped the wine and nodded. “Very nice.” The waiter, smiling, filled the rest of the glasses.

“Here’s to twenty-three more years,” her father said, holding up his glass.

“No, Arnie, let’s not toast until everyone’s here. Tobi—”

“We’ll make more and better toasts when Tobi comes. Right now I’m toasting us. Twenty-three terrific years.”

“They haven’t been bad,” her mother said.

“That’s the best you can do?”

“They’ve been pretty good.” She kissed him.

Eighteen

When Tobi finally showed up, she was in jeans and running sneakers, a scarf tied around her forehead. Not dressed for a party at all. “We waited for you—” Karen began, and her mother pushed out a chair, but Tobi held up her hand.

“I’m not staying. I just came to say, Mom and Dad, congratulations on your anniversary, but if you can’t invite Jason, who is my friend, to this party, then I don’t want to be part of it, either.”

Karen’s face flushed as if she’d said those words, as if she were the one so upset and upsetting everyone else. Tobi was brave. Wonderful!

“Tobi—” Her mother half rose. “Please, we’re all here. We want you with us.”

“No!”

“Tobi, sit down,” her grandmother said, puffing up like a rooster. “What is this nonsense?”

“Mother,” her father said, “this is between—”

“At least Grandma’s not a hypocrite,” Tobi cut in. “You guys don’t even try to know Jason. You’re

just prejudiced against him because of his age. That is so narrow-minded.”

Karen glanced at Scott. He had moved his chair slightly back, slightly away, as if to say, Don’t mind me, I know I’m not part of this.

“Jason is outside now?” her father said. “He’s here?”

“Yes. He drove me. I wasn’t even going to show up! But he said I shouldn’t do that to you. That’s the kind of man he is. He wasn’t invited, but he’s not small-minded.”

There was a short silence. “Well … since he is here,” her mother said, “why don’t we ask him to join us?”

Tobi quivered like a wound-up spring. “Oh, no! Oh, no! Last minute invitation? I’m not doing that to Jason.” Her eyes filled. “Oh, damn—” And she was gone.

Karen went after her, running between the tables and catching up to Tobi in the entrance. She was on her way out. “Tobi!”

She paused, half in, half out. “What do you want, Karen? Did they send you after me?”

“No, Tobi! Don’t you think I can make up my own mind? I think you’re right, Jason should have been invited.”

Tobi’s eyes were bright with tears. “Thanks, Karen, at least somebody in this family—”

“Tobes—”

Tobi waited.

“I just—” She shook her head. “I mean, I—” She knew what she wanted to say. I admire you, I think it’s wonderful the way you do things. You make up your mind what’s right and stick to it. But

it was easier to think than say. And just then, anyway, Liz came rushing up.

“Tobi.” She put her arm around her sister, closed the door, took over the situation. “Come on, kiddo, get Jason and come back to the table. Do you want me to get Jason? Listen—it’s their anniversary.”

“Liz, no.”

“Mom’s really upset, Tobi, she feels terrible about this whole thing.”

Tobi grimaced. “You always take Mom’s part.”

“Come on,” Liz coaxed, “don’t be stiff-necked. What’s it going to get you?”

“She’s not stiff-necked,” Karen broke in. “Tobi’s got principles.”

Tobi opened the big wooden door. The air smelled faintly of spices. The three of them stood together in the doorway. “No, it would be so insulting to ask Jason now.”

“She’s not coming back?” Karen’s mother said when she and Liz returned to the table. Karen thought she looked ready to cry.

“You spoil your girls,” Grandma said. “I told you that a long time ago, Sylvia.”

“Why don’t we order?” Liz opened the oversized red menu. “Who knows Indian food? Mom, you’re the resource person here, what are chapatties? They sound like cowboy boots.”

“It’s a kind of Indian bread,” Karen’s father said. They buzzed back and forth about what to order. Her father began a story about one of his patients whose fillings were receiving UFO reports. Her mother laughed, but still looked downhearted.

Karen’s shoes were pinching her and she slipped them off. Why did they have to pretend? What was

so great about carrying on as if nothing were wrong? Something was wrong! This was a family gathering and Tobi wasn’t with them. Karen looked at Scott. He wasn’t taken in by all the false jolliness! He sat there soberly, studying the menu, quiet, not saying anything.

The dinner seemed to go on interminably. Tobi was right about one thing—Grandma was no hypocrite. She had two more remarks to deliver herself of, and she did. “Everything is too spicy,” she announced in the middle of everyone else’s praising the delicious food. “I’ve eaten in Indian restaurants far superior to this one.” And after that, “I still don’t understand Tobi’s disgraceful performance.”

Her father drove her grandmother home; Karen went with her mother. She got in the car, buckled her seat belt. Scott and Liz were standing by the VW, their hands on each other’s shoulders. Karen closed her eyes. The whole evening had been awful, her family was awful, she hated them all, she didn’t leave out a one of them. Liz’s reaching across the table to touch her forehead… Grandma’s brusque pronouncements … the mess with Tobi. Awful. Awful. Her mother started the car; it jerked forward. As they turned out of the parking lot, Karen looked back. What had she expected to see? Scott walking away from Liz? Liz yelling at Scott? Something unreal like that. What she saw was Scott and Liz kissing, their arms around each other so tightly they looked like one person.

Nineteen

Two things happened right after that, just days later. They didn’t have anything to do with each other, except that they happened on the same day. They were both sort of shameful and awful, only the first thing was worse for Karen and the second for Tobi.

Tuesday morning Karen was rummaging in Liz’s bureau for a pair of underpants. She’d waited for Liz to go into the shower. She might be wary of being around Liz, but she still liked wearing her underpants, which were a small miracle, always looking good, silky sweet colors of pink and soft green, no rips, no mends, no tears. Whereas, by some evil chance, Karen’s underpants seemed to metamorphose into a totally ratty state only days after she brought them home from the store.

She took a pair of green underpants. Then she noticed a T-shirt folded in the corner. Why did she pick it up? Why that one? Why not another one? Did she know what she’d see? She shook it

out. Blue, with the Hammar and Sawyer logo printed across the front. She couldn’t remember ever seeing it before.

She took it. She took the T-shirt. She walked out of the room with it tucked under her arm. She went down the hall, past the bathroom, the sound of the shower, past her parents’ room, into her room and closed the door. She sniffed the T-shirt like a cat. Had Scott worn it, then given it to Liz? It smelled only of fresh laundering, soapy and that warm smell of die dryer. She crumpled the T-shirt into the back of her closet, her heart beating like a thief s. She was a thief. She had stolen Liz’s T-shirt. Or had she borrowed it, like the underpants? No, she had stolen it.

Later, when she and Tobi left the house, Tobi asked Karen if she wanted to come to a showing of Jason’s sculptures at the college after school today. “It’s an opening, a big event. Are you interested?”

“Is Liz coming?” Her voice was too bright, false, a thief s voice.

“No, she’s working. And I’m not asking Mom, you can count on that.”

They stood at the bus stop together. “Yes, I’d like to.”

“Good.” Tobi squeezed her arm.

Karen met her sister at the college library and they walked over to the Emma Farrington Gallery together. Today it was given over to Jason’s sculptures in metal, wood, plastic, and even paper. A small crowd of people moved through the gallery. There was a table with a punch bowl, plates of cookies.

“Jase is somewhere around here,” Tobi said.

“I never saw so many beards in one room,” Karen said.

“Faculty.”

The gallery had half walls dividing it into several smaller rooms. Tobi went off to look for Jason, and Karen walked around, pausing in front of each sculpture and reading the little printed white cards. “Gayle, 1984.” That in front of a small, contorted piece of wood. “Mysteries.” Three brass plates strung one above the other on a copper pipe. People passed in front of the pieces, whispering respectfully, cupping their hands in their chins, nodding, murmuring.

A man behind her said, “Buy him now,” and a woman answered, “I give him five years and then the cover of Time.”

Karen’s ears pricked up. So they thought Jason was going to be famous, too. She kept trying to eavesdrop, to pick up a clue that would tell her what she was supposed to feel about Jason’s sculptures. Mostly she felt bewildered and bored. Then she turned a corner and received a shock. An enormous piece of rough hewn stone thrust itself toward the ceiling. Not the marble she had imagined Jason rappeling up, but some kind of granite, gray with red and blue threads. It was both noisy and quiet. It was rough, crude, and yet made everything else in the gallery laughable—the plates of cookies, the whispering people, Jason’s other works. It was as if a piece of a mountain had burst through the window, demanding to be noticed and yet left alone. She walked around it happily. The card on the base read, “Voices From The Other World,” and reading it, Karen experienced another little burst of pleasure

centered right in her belly, as if she’d known that was what it was called. It couldn’t be called anything else.

Tobi came back. Karen grabbed her arm. “Look at this! Look at this!”

“I know.” Tobi caressed the granite. “Now do you understand?”

They went into an adjoining room. Jason was there, looming over a little cluster of women. “You need someone to take the daily burdens off your shoulders,” a woman in a lavender jump suit was saying. She smiled modestly, as if she were ready instantly to offer herself in the role of burden-taker.

“Jason.” Tobi raised her hand. Jason looked up; his glance slid from Tobi to Karen, then away. “Well, I’m thirsty,” he said to Lavender Jump Suit. “I’m heading for the refreshments. Anybody got anything to spike them with?” The women, like bodyguards or maybe a harem, closed around him as he walked out of the room, his desert boots clanking over the tile floor.

Tobi stood there for a moment, pale as paper. Karen moved close to her. “Tobi—”

“Don’t say anything.”