The Sisters (11 page)

Mabel stood aside to let Daisy pass. “No school today?”

Daisy walked around the studio, hands behind her back, strolling from one grouping of photos to the next. She hadn’t looked at them when she was in with her father. “Sometimes I don’t go,” she said.

“What do you do those days?” Mabel closed the door, but she didn’t turn the sign around to
OPEN
.

“Library,” Daisy said.

Mabel settled herself on the stool behind the counter. “I used to do that myself,” she said. “Not skip school. I wasn’t able to finish school, but sometimes I’d make up a reason why I needed to leave work early, or I’d tell my stepfather that I had to work late. Half an hour here, half an hour there. I still don’t know how I managed to read as many books as I did.” Daisy was looking at her now, focused and intent. She almost nodded. Mabel added, “But never enough.”

When Daisy turned again to look at the photos, Mabel smiled to see her hair pulled up in a clumsy twist. “Your hair’s pretty that way,” she said. “I can help you fix it so the ends don’t come down.” She got off the stool and motioned for Daisy to take it.

While Daisy pulled out the pins, Mabel set the dressing tray on the counter. Loose, Daisy’s hair fell halfway down her back. Mabel drew the brush through in short, shallow strokes to find the tangles, which she picked out gently with her fingers.

“Why’d you quit school?” Daisy asked. She sat very still while Mabel worked, just like Bertie used to.

“I didn’t, exactly. When I finished eighth grade, I had to go to work.” She didn’t mention Jim Butcher. “We were poor.”

“Who’s in that picture?” Without moving her head the least bit, Daisy pointed over her shoulder to the wall behind Mabel.

“That’s Paul,” she said. “This was his studio. He taught me to use a camera.”

“He looks nice,” Daisy said. “I looked at him the whole time the other day.” She was quiet for a moment. “I don’t like having my picture taken.”

Mabel gathered Daisy’s hair in her hands, smoothing it into a silky rope. “Neither do I,” she said. “And neither did Paul. But photos are for other people. Isn’t there a picture of somebody you have that you wouldn’t give up?”

“I wish I had one of my mother.”

“Nobody ever took her picture?”

Daisy straightened on the stool, her back like marble. “All burned.”

Mabel fished through the dressing tray for pins and held out a few for Daisy to see. “These will hold better.” She started the twist and said, “I wish I had pictures of my parents, and especially of my sister.”

“I used to think I’d like to have a sister,” Daisy said, “but I don’t anymore. Does yours live here?”

“No.” Mabel lined her lips with hairpins to avoid saying more. For all she knew, Bertie might live in Chicago, or anywhere else. Or she might not live at all. When the letter marked
Deceased
had come back to her, she’d locked herself in her room for two days, cycling in and out of weeping, answering the door only at Paul’s urgent pounding and pleas to let him give her some soup. When she let him in, he didn’t pry, just sat quietly with her, patting her shoulder occasionally, seeing to it that she survived.

When she was calmer, she rubbed an eraser at the heavy pencil marks obscuring everything on the envelope but Bertie’s name, which she herself had written, and the words
Deceased
and
Return to Sender,
which at times struck her that Bertie had written, but after years of separation, she couldn’t be sure this was Bertie’s writing. Pressing away the black, blowing away the eraser fragments, she struggled to think of something else, but only two ideas, equally upsetting, rocked in her head: Bertie was dead; or Bertie wanted Mabel to think she was.

Whoever had obliterated the writing on the envelope had done it with such fervor that much of the paper had come off with the lead. She could make out that someone had forwarded the letter, but of that address, there were only fragments—a house number with a 3 in it, a few letters from the name of the city, and a ghostly
I
for the state—Iowa? Indiana? Illinois? No trace she could follow.

“So he didn’t like to have his picture made?” She’d almost forgotten Daisy, and that they’d been talking about Paul.

“Oh, no,” said Mabel, pushing in the first pin. “I had to sneak up on him.”

“Is that what you’re going to do to me?”

Mabel laughed. “Hardly sneaking. When I come on Saturday, you’ll know why I’m there.” Daisy’s head tilted forward, just a bit. “Have I made this too tight?”

Daisy shook her head.

“Don’t you want me to come, Daisy?”

The girl turned suddenly, the motion pulling her hair free from Mabel’s hands, unfurling the twist. Her eyes were urgent, the rims softly red, glistening with small tears. “I do. Say you will. Please.” Daisy’s hands wrapped around hers, pressing her fingers tight. “Please.”

Paul might have been standing right behind her, his sturdy kindness urging her to listen, to see. Mabel looked at Daisy, as if with his eyes. “Of course I will,” she said. “Of course I will.”

*   *   *

On Saturday, Mabel locked the studio nearly three-quarters of an hour before she needed to. The prints she’d made of Daisy were still in the darkroom cabinet, in an envelope marked only
D.
Boarding the bus, her feet barely touched the three steps up, as if her hurrying would make the driver go faster. She’d memorized the address but clutched the slip of paper Harker had given her, glancing at it over and over, mentally reciting the route so she wouldn’t miss the stop. She was on the corner, just half a block from Daisy’s father’s walk-up, by 1:20.

She hesitated a moment before she rang the bell, shifting the handle of her camera bag into her left hand, wondering idly about the red door flanked by concrete planters filled with daffodils. Harker was sure to answer and be angry that she was early, that she hadn’t phoned first. She would apologize for not calling, say she’d simply left early for fear of being late, but still he might turn her away. If he did, she wouldn’t know anything more than she knew now—not for certain. But if he let her in, and if she saw something—what would she do then?

Her eyes burned in the afternoon light. She’d barely slept since Thursday, lying in the dark, picking apart every detail she could remember about the day Daisy and Harker were in the studio, and about how different Daisy had been when she came in on her own. Maybe she was wrong. She wanted to be wrong. There could be all sorts of reasons for Daisy’s behavior, all sorts. Except Mabel couldn’t think of any. Still, there wasn’t any proof. Daisy hadn’t said a word. But then, Mabel knew very well that particular silence. What she couldn’t close out of her mind were the images she hadn’t caught with her camera: the barest flicker of a smile, that secretly triumphant expression of ownership Emerson Harker had let slip while he fanned Daisy’s hair over her shoulders—that, and what she had seen, or thought she had seen, reflected in the camera lens when she turned her back to adjust a light: Harker bending to kiss Daisy on her forehead, on the tip of her nose, on her lips—holding that kiss for one second, two, three, four.

Still no one answered the door. Should she ring again? Mabel leaned in and tried to listen, but she heard nothing except the street noise around her. She knocked lightly. In the window to her right, a curtain twitched. And then came the tumbling of a lock and Daisy stood in the open doorway. She was pale. A smear of hot-red lipstick sliced her cheek. Her white blouse puffed open where a button was missing, the snapped thread still in place, the ends waving from the cotton like frayed arms. Daisy pushed back some locks of hair that were matted to her neck, revealing pinkish bruises, like crushed roses. “He’s gone for cigarettes,” she said. “He’ll be back any minute.”

“Which way?”

Daisy pointed up the street. Her cuff was torn.

Mabel held out her hand. “Do you want to come with me?”

Daisy’s hand snapped into hers like a mate. With her other, she slammed the door, and they ran back the way Mabel had come, down the street, around the corner, block after block, ignoring the curious shouts of playing children. Mabel spotted a cab, hailed it, and they breathlessly tumbled in. “Union Station,” Mabel said, and minutes later when the driver turned to say the fare, Mabel shoved a bill at him, tossed her camera bag onto the sidewalk and pulled Daisy out behind her. People coming out of the station grumbled about courtesy and the wrong door as Mabel and Daisy knocked into them. They pushed their way toward the ticket windows, and only then did they stop, panting, to study the timetables.

“Does it matter where?” Mabel asked. Daisy shook her head. The big clock read 1:42. The train bound for Indianapolis left at 1:55. Just then, the boarding call crackled from the loudspeaker. At the nearest window, Mabel paid for their tickets and they hurried to the platform. Daisy started toward the open door of the car, but Mabel stopped her. She stroked a lock of hair, damp with sweat, from Daisy’s eyes and held the girl’s face in her hands. “Are you sure? Really sure? We do this, we can’t come back.”

Daisy nodded. “You know, don’t you?” Those shining eyes Mabel had noticed that first day in the studio, those eyes that had seemed to divine a place inside Daisy herself, now penetrated Mabel’s heart. “It happened to you.”

“Yes,” Mabel said, and took the girl, that brave girl, into her arms and held her tightly. “Never again, Daisy. Not ever.”

Daisy drew back, holding on to Mabel’s hands. She looked around at the scurrying crowd. The patina of studied calm slid from her face in favor of righteous resolve. “Did you change your name when you ran away?”

“I thought about it,” Mabel said. “But there was a part of me that hoped to be found.”

“I’ve already been found.”

Daisy flung her arms around Mabel’s waist and Mabel squeezed her hard. Gently releasing the embrace to slip out of her jacket, Mabel held it open to Daisy. “Here,” she said. “Wear this.” She wiped the lipstick from Daisy’s face with a handkerchief and kissed the girl’s damp cheek. “Better get on.”

Not until they were settled in their seats, Daisy nestled against her, weeping quietly, not until the train had rocked and rattled its way out of the station, out of the city, across the Indiana border, did Mabel allow her own tears to spill over. For a long while, she sat stroking Daisy’s hair, saying nothing. At last, Daisy sat up, her eyes red but dry. “Let’s make a new name,” she said. “A name that means us.”

Mabel wiped away her own tears. “Any ideas?”

Daisy smiled—such a beautiful smile. “Who do you miss most? From before?”

In fifteen years she hadn’t said the name out loud to anyone but Paul. Now she looked out the window, remembering how she and Wallace, on another train, had silently watched Juniper slip away. Mabel felt Daisy’s cool fingertips on her chin, softly turning her away from the past.

“Who?” Daisy persisted. “What one person would you have with you if you could?”

“My sister.” Mabel’s knotted throat released as she said it. “Bertie.”

“I’d want my mother,” Daisy said. “Her name was Ella.”

“Ella.” Mabel kissed Daisy’s forehead and hugged her close. “That’s lovely.”

Holding her hand flat before her like a sheet of paper, Daisy scribbled across it with her finger. “El … Elber … Bertel … Bertelle.” She looked up at Mabel, her face a sunrise. “Bertelle,” she said. “We’ll be the Bertelles.”

Daisy leapt to her feet and twirled in the small space before Mabel, her eyes full of fun. Placing a hand on the window to steady herself, she struck the pose of a sophisticate. “How do you do?” she said, extending her free hand to Mabel. “My name is Daisy Bertelle.”

“So happy to make your acquaintance, Miss Bertelle,” said Mabel, and, joining her hand with Daisy’s, she drew it to her cheek, kissed it, and held her arms open to her daughter.

S
IX

Independence Day

July 1947

Newman, Indiana

ALMA

I
N THE FRONT SEAT, MOTHER
was making a show of fanning herself with a road map she’d taken from the glove compartment, snapping it up and down, up and down, with short strokes that didn’t stir much air. “Bertie, just crack the window a little,” Daddy said, but Mother ignored him.

Alma leaned forward, forced to shout over the roar of wind from Rainey’s open window. “She doesn’t want to muss her hair, Daddy.” Alma glanced at her little sister to see if she’d taken the hint. Rainey was sprawled on the seat, pretending to be in a faint, her long hair whipping out the window, which she’d insisted on putting all the way down. By the time they got to Mr. and Mrs. Crisp’s house, Rainey’s hair would be positively filthy. Child or no, Rainey oughtn’t be allowed to behave this way, Alma thought, and, besides that, it simply wasn’t fair that Mother didn’t come to the defense of
her
hair the way she’d done for Mother’s. Alma was grateful she’d had the foresight to wear a light scarf, and she did have her compact mirror and comb, but it was still possible that one of the Crisps would see her before she had the chance to correct the damage. Mostly, she was afraid of Gordon’s mother’s response, for Mrs. Crisp always looked just like she’d stepped out of the hairdresser’s chair. But perhaps this afternoon Alma could win back any lost favor by asking Mrs. Crisp to share her secrets for looking fresh.