Sister (23 page)

Adam comes into the kitchen, stands behind me, presses his lips to my hair, and I cry harder because this feels so insincere,
these tears that he thinks he understands. Last night, after talking to Harv, I called my mother at Auntie Thil's, wincing at the cheery message on her answering machine:
Hi, it's Mathilde! So sorry to have missed you
!

“Mom?” I said. “Are you there? Pick up. Please, pick up.”

But no one did.

“Mom, please,” I said. “I'll try again later. Call me as soon as you can.” How I want to tell her that Sam was lost long before he disappeared. How I want to tell her what I could not tell my grandmother:
It was not your fault
.

How badly my mother wanted to work at the cannery with her sisters, but she was young, always too young.
Watch out what you want or you'll get it
, my grandmother said, but my mother stared after them longingly when they left the house, laughing and swinging their lunch pails. Summers they spent sorting vegetables, picking bad beans and stray leaves and dead field mice from a conveyor belt; in winter, they bottled the company's sweet fruit pop: cherry, orange, grape, lime. Mary, seventeen and known for her capable nature, supervised Elise and the other girls, warning them whenever the man they called The Company was coming by tugging her kerchief low on her forehead. It was noisy work, hot in the summer, cold in the winter, sticky with sugar and dust. The day of the fire, they went to work with scarves wrapped around their noses and hot potatoes tucked in their pockets to warm their hands. It had snowed six inches the day before, and another six inches stretched the faces of the clouds.
Keep warm
, the mothers murmured as they sent their daughters out to board the company pickup, which went from farm to farm, and because it was a Saturday, the bed of the truck was filled with teenage girls and women, huddled into the straw.

Keep warm
, mothers told their husbands and sons and younger daughters as they split up at the barns to do chores. The mothers milked, pressing their foreheads into the cows' warm sides, wondering about their daughters who must be standing on those awful
wet concrete floors by now, shivering under those high fans, which blew chill air across their shoulders. The mothers calculated again how much the family needed that little bit of money. The mothers worried over frostbitten toes and misshapen ears, poor circulation, wool. The mothers planned what they would fix that night for supper—thick meat stew over mashed potatoes, pepper-and-flour gravy, buttered beans, steaming tea laced with honey and a splash of lemon extract.
Lord God
, the mothers prayed,
keep them warm
.

S
am's burial must be delayed until after the ground thaws, and so it's May by the time I fly back to Wisconsin, my first trip home in more than ten years. Adam cannot come with me; spring is his busy time. For the past three weeks he's been working on an apartment complex going up south of Cobblestone. When the sun sets, the crew works by artificial light, and there are nights when he doesn't get home until midnight. Sometimes I'm up feeding the baby, and Adam stretches out on the floor beside the rocking chair, still wearing his dirty clothes. “I feel like we're the subjects of a sleep deprivation experiment,” he says. By seven-thirty, he'll be on his way back to the site; I'll have fed Joe at least once more before he goes. For me, the days and nights have blurred: the baby cries and I feed him; I sleep and the baby cries. He has colick, and there are times when nothing will comfort him. Then, I leave him wailing in his crib and walk out onto the deck, and I'll stand there for a long minute, breathing in the piney scent of the woods, before going back inside. And yet, when I drop him off at the sister's to go to Turkey Hill, it's everything I can do to leave him behind.

He screams all the way from Albany to Chicago, but by the
time we board the plane to Milwaukee, he gives up and sleeps until our descent. In the airport lobby, I see my mother first and though, of course, I'm expecting to see she has aged, I'm not prepared for how much she is starting to resemble my grandmother. Her hair is permed tight to her head and rinsed a uniform steely gray. She's eating an ice cream cone with the same unself-conscious enjoyment that used to annoy my father, embarrass Sam and me. “Mm!” she'd say, biting a piece of fruit, chewing a slice of meat, her eyes rolling blissfully, reverently. When she sees me, she extends the ice cream like a bouquet. “Try this,” she says—her first words to me, in person, since her visit to New York—and what can I do but take a big sloppy bite? Before I can object, she's given Joe some on the tip of her pinkie finger. “He won't know why,” she tells me, “but years from now, when he thinks of his grandma, he'll always remember something sweet.”

Driving home from the airport, she tells me she's putting the house on the market, she's found an apartment near her office in Sheboygan. “I guess I should be more nostalgic,” she says, “but now that I've made up my mind, I'm eager to get rid of it.” As we pull into the driveway, I see the exterior has been freshly painted, and all the old car parts and broken appliances are gone, leaving bald patches in the grass. Inside, I admire the new linoleum in the kitchen, the bright fixtures, the wood banister polished to a rich, glowing warmth. But the water still runs yellow in the bathrooms. The fruit trees have grown too old to bear; the barn finally collapsed last year. Sam's bedroom in the basement smells of mildew, and though my mother has replaced the carpet, it's already dark along the edges, slick with wet.

I feed Joe in the living room, sitting in the white wicker rocking chair that used to be in my bedroom. Half-packed boxes are scattered everywhere, and the walls are bare of photographs. Elise's piano occupies the space where the couch once was; the couch itself is gone. “The new place will be much smaller than this,” my mother says when I ask, and she shows me a picture of
the complex she'll be living in, her unit circled with red pen. “If you want any furniture, let me know.”

She glances at the piano. At various times, she's suggested moving it to New York, but I always say she should keep it. My grandmother gave it to me as an instrument, not an ornament, and I don't want to see it sitting in my house, day after day, a silent reproach. “Why not offer it to Monica?” I say.

“I promised your grandmother I'd keep it until you were ready to have it.”

“You did? When was this?”

“Oh, way back. Before you got married.”

“It's been longer than that since I've played. I've probably forgotten everything.”

I shift Joe to my other breast, and my mother watches, suddenly shy.

“You were the only one I breast-fed,” she says. “By the time Sam was born, the doctors had decided formula was better. Now they've changed their minds again. You can't imagine.” She shakes her head. “There I was, taking pills to dry up my milk, and Sam would be screaming his head off because he had to wait while I warmed the formula. It didn't make sense, that mother's milk wasn't good for babies. But I went along with it anyway.”

“Why?”

My mother sighs. “That's just how it was back then. When Doctor told you something, you did it. It was a different generation. We didn't question things the way you do today.”

I tense, waiting; it's the closest she's come to bringing up the baptism since Sam was found. But she says nothing more. Later, after supper, we play cards at the kitchen table, discussing everyone and everything but ourselves. It occurs to me that tomorrow is Sam's burial, and yet neither one of us is mentioning it. It's like something that happened years ago, distant as my father's leaving or my grandmother's death. We talk about the rising price of real estate, people moving in from as far away as Chicago, eager for
a country setting. “The broker says I can get one seventy-five for this place,” my mother says. “Can you believe it?”

“You're rich,” I say. “What are you going to do with all that money?”

“Some of it's your father's,” she says. “The rest—I don't know. I guess you'll inherit it at some point.”

“You should take a vacation. Go on a cruise.”

My mother makes a face.

“Or buy a sports car. Something red and sexy.”

She laughs. “Maybe I'll ship you that piano,” she says. “Whether you want it or not.”

“Not.”

“You might use it if you had it. Especially now, with Joe. It's nice for a child to grow up with music in the house.” We've drifted away from our card game, and now my mother turns her hand faceup on the table. “Well,” she says, and she stands, yawning. “Think about it. I'm going to turn in; how about you?”

I'll be sleeping in my old bedroom; my mother has set up the same bassinet that Sam and I once slept in. She brings me extra blankets, a glass of water for the nightstand. “Sleep well,” she says, but I don't. I'm restless with half-dreams, unable to get comfortable. The wind picks up. A tree branch thumps the side of the house like an irregular heartbeat. When Joe starts crying around midnight, I'm almost grateful. I change him, prop myself uncomfortably against the headboard to feed him. He's fussy; he won't take much. He cries off and on for an hour or so before, at last, he closes his eyes. I ease him back into the bassinet, lie down, and will myself to fall asleep. I'm almost there when I hear the floor creak beside my bed. Old houses, I tell myself. Wind. The floor creaks again. I think of Sam's friend sitting beside me on this very bed. The gleam of the knife. I open my eyes, and a low sound escapes from my mouth before I can stop it.

“Shh, it's all right,” my mother says.

I sit up. I'm shaking so hard the bed shakes too.

“I'm sorry,” she says. “I couldn't sleep. I just wanted to look in on the baby.”

“It's OK,” I manage to say. The tree branch thumps the side of the house.

She sits on the bed. “Listen to the wind. I hope the weather's good for tomorrow.”

“Could you pass me that water?” I say, and I take the glass, drink, water dribbling down my chin.

“I must have really frightened you,” she says. “I'm so sorry.”

“I'm all right.”

“He's such a beautiful baby,” she says. “he looks a lot like Adam, don't you think?”

“Sometimes.”

She pats my hand. “Go back to sleep. I'll see you in the morning.”

But in the morning, I find a note in the kitchen; my mother has gone in to her office for a couple of hours. I fix myself toast and eat it, wandering from room to room with Joe balanced on my hip. I's an overcast, windy day, and the house seems smaller, darker than I remember it. In the living room, I notice my mother has pulled the blanket off the piano, opened the cover to reveal the keys. Sly move, I think, but I finish my toast and sit down at the bench. My left hand is occupied with Joe; I attempt a C-major arpeggio with my right. I miss. Joe stiffens at the dissonant sound. I get his blanket from the kitchen, spread it out for him on the floor. He kicks happily and I go back to the piano, try the arpeggio again. I execute a chromatic scale. I feel my way through the beginning of a Chopin Prelude. Suddenly it's almost noon, and my mother is standing in the doorway, listening.

“That's how you always were,” she says. “The world could have fallen down around you, and you wouldn't even have noticed.”

“How was work?” I say, trying to change the subject.

“Busy,” she says. “Cindy Pace will be at the service.”

“That's nice.”

“Look how the baby's listening,” my mother says. And it's true: Joe is wide-eyed, jerking the way he does when he's excited. “Maybe he's got your good ear.”

“Or Sam's,” I say, surprising myself.

My mother sighs. “It doesn't make any difference now to think of everything I'd do differently. But I wish I'd stood up to your father more when it came to Sam's interest in things like this.” She lifts Joe into her arms, brushes her lips against the top of his head. “You could always escape if you had to. But Sam had nowhere to go.”

“Neither did you.”

“I had my work,” she says. Then, correcting herself, “Have it. And my faith, of course. That's a comfort.” She hands Joe to me before I can say anything. “We better get ready for the service.”

“Mom,” I say. “I've been thinking. Maybe I'd like the piano after all.”

She looks at me curiously. “Really?”

“Don't give me a chance to change my mind.”

“You know, I almost broke down and gave it away last year.”

“Why didn't you?”

“I told you,” she says. “I promised your grandmother I'd keep it for you.”

Sam will be buried at Saint Ignatius Cemetery; the service is set for two o'clock. Harv is driving down from his parish in Peshtigo to perform the ceremony. My mother and I arrive hopelessly early, but Auntie Thil is already there. She hugs me long and hard, exclaims over Joe, helps me negotiate him into his harness. The sky promises rain, and I button my jacket around us both. “It must feel strange to be back,” Auntie Thil says, but what's strange is that it doesn't. Looking past the stubble of the graves, I see the flat fields stretching mile after mile, and it occurs to me that this is the landscape of dreams, of nightmares in which
you run as fast and as far as you can, only to discover you haven't left the place you started from.

“I sure hope the rain holds off,” my mother says as we start down the dirt service road that bisects the cemetery.

“They had hail to the north,” Auntie Thil says.

“That's unusual for spring.”

“Doesn't it seem like the weather gets crazier every year?”

“Along with the rest of the world.”

They continue talking about the weather, seemingly oblivious to the gravestones all around us, and I remind myself that they come here all the time to tend the family plot. But when they stop to admire the wildflowers growing in the ditch, I walk on ahead. Already, I can see the new rectangular stone that belongs to Uncle Olaf. Auntie Thil's name is etched beneath his, a blank space left for the date of her own death. And beside it is Sam's wide-open grave, shadowed by a pile of rust-colored dirt. Coming closer, I see his coffin has already been lowered inside, white with gold trim, an other world star in that odd dirt sky. My eyes burn with sudden tears; I blink, look away. To the left are the spring flower beds around my aunts' graves, and here is my grandfather's plot, the only decoration a tiny American flag. My grandmother shares his headstone, of course, and I touch her name: Gretchen Anna Grussen, 1910-1994. I want to believe that she sees me, that she's with Sam in the heaven she always described with absolute certainty. I wish her angels blowing trumpets, streets paved in gold. I wish her the faces of Mary and Elise, forever young and whole.

Thunderheads hang on the horizon, and the light has that peculiar glassy quality that intensifies color, making the sky seem close enough to touch. When I look back down the service road, I see that my mother and Auntie Thil have started picking wild-flower bouquets. The irregular peaks of their conversation come to me on the damp gusts of wind. I wave, and they wave back, but they don't make any move to join me. Other people are arriving now—mostly members of my mother's prayer group, I sus
pect, plus a few people from A-1 Advertising. They carry umbrellas, glance nervously at the clouds. I recognize Cindy Pace; she smiles and nods to me, and I nod back. When I overhear one woman ask another, “So is Gordon going to be here?” I deliberately focus all my attention on Joe, making sure he's warm enough, adjusting his harness. I'm not sure what my mother has told people; I don't want to be the one they ask. My father wanted to come to the funeral, but he just isn't able to travel anymore. Each year he grows more locked into routine, more terrified of crowds, sickness, disease. Yet, in a strange way, he's grown closer to my mother and me. When we call, he picks up the phone, keeps us talking for hours. After Joe was born, I sent him a whole roll of pictures, and he actually wrote back, a letter filled with advice about electrical outlets and swallowed coins.

When I look up again, Harv is walking briskly down the service road. He sees me and breaks into a clumsy run, his long robe tangling around his legs. “Careful,” I say as he bends down to hug me, and then I feel his body freeze, as he realizes the baby is between us.

“Can I see?” he asks, and I unbutton my coat, trying to reveal as much of Joe's face as I can. The bags beneath Harv's eyes are the color of strong tea. I've heard from my mother how busy he has been, serving a combined parish of six hundred people, driving hundreds of miles each week throughout the rural townships north of Peshtigo.