Henry's Sisters (3 page)

‘How the hell should I know?’ Cecilia said, doughnut sugar spewing out of her mouth. ‘She’s got dementia. Henry didn’t like the caregiver because he said she resembled a gecko. He ran away and hid in the shed under a trash can and the police had to come. Momma said the woman smelt like mothballs and death.’

‘She didn’t smell,’ I protested. ‘She was a nice lady. She was from Maine.’

‘Maine Schmaine. They hated her. Momma told her she reminded her of Jack the Ripper, only with boobs. The caregiver asked me if Momma was insane, too.’ Cecilia flung her head back, stared at the ceiling, and threw her arms up as if asking for deliverance.

Momma wasn’t crazy. She was, however, a nutcase.

‘Jack the Ripper?’ Janie moaned. ‘There is no correlation, none. Jack the Ripper was a killer in England who tore
out—’

‘We know who Jack the Ripper was,’ Cecilia fumed. She picked up another doughnut. ‘Let me lay it on the line, you two. I’m exhausted. I’ve had it. I’m not sleeping at night.’ Tears filled her blueberry eyes, then started soaking her red face. ‘I go from teaching kindergarteners, to the girls – they both have problems I haven’t told you about – I help
her
out, handle Henry and Grandma…’

She put her hands over her face and started making these choking, gasping, snorting sounds as great gobs of tears rolled down. It about ripped my heart in two. ‘I can’t take it anymore. The lawyers are fighting, and Parker and that…that…
slut…
’

Janie started crying, too. She always cries when one of us cries. Gentle, innocent heart. Killer on the
keyboard, but she hates to see anyone in pain. I got up and put
an arm around Cecilia.

‘I can’t take her anymore.’ She sniffled and coughed and snorted again and I pulled her in close for a hug. ‘And I can’t… I can’t…’

‘You can’t what?’ we asked.

‘I can’t…’

She waved the doughnut. ‘I can’t stop eating.’ She mumbled. ‘I hate myself for it. I’m getting so fat, I can hardly walk. I can’t tie my shoes. My blood pressure is as high as Venus and my cholesterol reading shows I have butter in my veins. The other day I was in my car and a boy oinked at me.’

I wanted to tie the boy up by his heels, attach him to a boom on a crane, and swing him around until his intestines slid out.

‘Oh, oh! Bommarito hug!’ Janie weeped out.

We did a three-way hug, our foreheads together. Cecilia smelt like doughnut. Janie smelt like fear. I smelt like a person who had too many regrets.

‘OK,’ I whispered, feeling myself spiralling into a deep chasm of doom. ‘OK. I’ll come.’

Janie leant against me and whimpered, ‘Me too, Cecilia.’

Cecilia abruptly snapped her head up, away from our forehead powwow; wiped the tears from her face; and left our warm, snuggly, sisterly hug. Her face entirely composed, she grabbed her purse on her way out, waddling quite quickly.

‘Good. Glad to hear it. See you two at the house,’ she ordered, no sign of the tears or unhappiness in her voice at all. She grabbed another doughnut. ‘I’ll let her know you’re coming. She’ll be frickin’ delighted.’

The door slammed behind her.

I sank to the ground. So did Janie. She put her head on my stomach.

‘She duped us again, didn’t she?’ I asked. ‘
Duped us
.’

‘She manipulated our vulnerability. Our compassion and our womanhood. And we rehearsed this, Isabelle,’ Janie whimpered. ‘Our answer was no.’

‘No, no, no – that was our answer.’

‘I need my embroidery,’ Janie whined. ‘I need my embroidery.’

Shit.
Double shit
.

On the way home I got stuck in a traffic jam. Since I was on my motorcycle, I was happy it had stopped raining. When we were near the accident, we came to a complete halt to let the oncoming traffic go by. There were a couple of police cars, a fire truck, and an ambulance. An old blue truck had smashed into a light post and the beat-up camper trailer the driver was hauling was on its side. The light post now resembled the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

‘What happened?’ I asked a police officer who wandered over to chat about what a great motorcycle I had.

‘The driver was high. Probably meth. He’s going to court next week for distributing the stuff. His truck flew through the air with the greatest of ease. Like a bird. Like a torpedo. Like an idiot.’ He shook his head. ‘What an idiot.’

The driver was not strapped in, so he went through his windshield. Because he was high as a kite and relaxed, he would live, which was somewhat unfortunate considering the long criminal record he had. He was the oldest son of an old, snobby family in the city.

‘Spoilt brat,’ the police officer muttered. ‘Grow kids up rich and they never turn out. Make ’em work, and you’ll teach ’em how to live and respect other people.’

As the tow trucks came, I stared at that trailer and shuddered.

It was a carbon copy of the one we’d lived in years ago.

The darkness pulled at me again, inch by inch, the hole waiting nearby. I had to stare at the trees on the side of the road and breathe.

She had been beyond desperate. But it was the trailer that had caused all the screaming. And the blood. All that blood.

Blood everywhere.

Once I got past the accident, I rode so fast on my bike I got a ticket.

‘Nice bike,’ the red-haired officer told me who pulled me over. ‘Who you running from so fast?’

Myself, I wanted to say.

I’m running from myself.

But I’m not quick enough to get rid of me.

Momma lives in the Queen Anne Victorian home she grew up in before she rebelled and left right after high school but not before smashing my grandma Stella’s mother’s crystal punch bowl. She lives there with Grandma Stella, and our younger brother, Henry. Cecilia lives up the road on several acres about five minutes away.

The Queen Anne is situated a little outside the town of Trillium River, which nestles along the Columbia River on the Oregon side.

Trillium River changes each time I’m there. When we arrived in high school, traumatised and exhausted, it was small and dumpy. Now there are art galleries, cafés, coffee shops, bookstores, a gourmet ice-cream shop, and a classy tattoo parlour named The Painted Vein. There’s also world-class windsurfing, skiing on Mt Hood, and nature fanatics can get high on nature.

Surrounding the town are orchards and farmland. My grandma’s Queen Anne home, sitting on five acres, amidst a vast expanse of perfectly green lawn, can best be described as cakelike. Why? Because it reminds me of a blue cake.

Built in 1899, it’s four thousand square feet and light blue with white trim and white shutters, lacy lattice, a gabled roof, a huge wraparound covered porch on the main floor with an attached gazebo, a tower that Grandma visits often to ‘hide her secrets,’ and a sunroom filled with wicker furniture and walls of windows.

Inside there are nooks and crannies, two bay windows with window seats, built-in bookshelves and built-in china cabinets. The rooms are large and airy, with stained-glass windows in the living room and perfectly preserved antiques.

Two clematis, one with pink flowers and one with white, wind their way up and around the porch like no one’s business.

I drove up on my motorcycle, with Janie behind me driving her silver Porsche. We would return to Portland soon and get my black Porsche. I had to have my motorcycle for mental escape.

Grandma’s Queen Anne is the most charming home I’ve ever seen. Inside it smells like fresh-baked bread, vanilla, cinnamon, and history.

Our family’s history.

I wanted to turn my bike and peel on out of there, one wheel up in the air.

Janie and I stood in front of the house together like soldiers before a battle, though we did not have any grenades or assault rifles with us.

The wind swirled around, like it was welcoming us home, fun and frolicking…mysterious.

I have never forgotten the wind here.

To me, the wind has always seemed like a person, with all the mood swings and rampaging, out-of-control emotions that we have. Sometimes it’s angry and whips around corners, sometimes it ruffles the river as it hurries towards the ocean, sometimes it puffs on by, gentle, caressing.

‘The wind never stops,’ Janie said, in wonder. ‘Never.’

She grabbed my hand, pulsing it with her fingers. She does this when she gets nervous. She’ll squeeze my hand four times, then pause, squeeze it four times, pause again. She gasped a little. Coughed. Breathed in. Breathed out.

‘I feel faint,’ I said. ‘I may need a one-night stand.’ Sometimes I try to humour myself when things are particularly bleak.

‘I need to tap and count,’ she replied. ‘In fact, I think I’ll pause for a sec and count the roof tiles.’

At that second, the door flew open and a man came sprinting out, legs pumping, arms waving. He was wearing a straw hat over brown curls, blue shorts, and a T-shirt that said ABC. His white shoes had Velcro straps. He had a tummy, he wasn’t as tall as me, his eyes tilted, and his smile beamed, as usual.

He put his arms out wide as he hurtled towards us, screaming and laughing.

‘They here! They here!’ he shouted. His hat flipped off into that wind.

We knew what would happen.

‘Now, Henry, no tackling us!’ Janie said, so kind, because she loves Henry, but she backed away, hands up.

‘Be gentle, Henry,’ I said. ‘Give us a nice, gentle hug. Gentle!’ I love Henry, but I backed up, too, sticking close to Janie.

Henry was not to be stopped.

Within two seconds, Janie and I were splat on the grass, tackled by our happy, mentally disabled brother who was on top of us, laughing.

‘You home!’ he announced, giving us both a kiss. ‘You home for Henry! Yeah, yeah.
H-E-N-R-Y-H-E-N-R-Y
!’

I gave Henry a kiss on the forehead and said, ‘I love you, my brother, Henry.’

Henry giggled. ‘I love you, my sister, Is.’

Janie kissed both of his cheeks. We hugged him as my love for Henry walloped me hard.

I heard Janie counting out loud. Soon we would be with our momma, a tricky sorceress; our grandma, who thought she was Amelia Earhart; and our sister, Cecilia, who has a hurricane for a personality.

Honest to God, Henry is the only normal person in our family.

The only one.

A long wooden farm table slouched in the middle of the stunning, country-style kitchen Janie had paid to have remodelled so she could assuage the guilt she felt for not living here in the nuthouse with the viper.

A vase of flowers, purples and pinks, in a clear, curving glass vase sat on the table. On the windowsill was a collection of old, colourful glass bottles, the sunlight shimmering right through them. A set of french doors let in that ever-present, meandering wind.

Cecilia hugged both of us, bear-hug tight, then stood to my right, a sister-soldier in the battle against Momma/The Viper.

Momma did not bother to stand from where she was sitting at the table cracking walnuts when Janie and I entered. She said, almost melodically, ‘Henry, darling, would you please go and pick me a bouquet of flowers? You’re the only one who can do it right.’

‘Yeah! OK dokay, Momma!’ Henry grabbed some scissors, blew us a kiss, then jump jump jumped out the door. ‘I bring the sisters in, now I get the flowers. I be right back!’

To get a full picture of Momma, blend together an older, blonde Scarlett O’Hara and the steely coldness of the Queen of England. Except Scarlett and the Queen were not conceived on the banks of the Columbia River, which is how Momma got her name.

River Bommarito has ash-blonde hair that curves into a stylish bell to her shoulders. When we were younger, it was either elegantly brushed or wedged onto her head. The wedging happened if she was spending days or weeks in bed, her depression getting the best of her, as she screamed at us to
get the hell out
.

One day, for some mysterious reason, after she’d moulted, decayed, and sunk deeper into her own emotional pit, she’d get up, shower, apply her make-up, slip on a dress and heels, and it was like her depression never happened.

She’d get another job, usually a soul-shredding one, or her old boss would take her back because she made him so much money, and that was that. No explanation, no apology, no thanks to the three young daughters in the house for keeping things together while she dissolved into an almost-catatonic state.

No family meeting to discuss the trauma we’d recently lived through. The traumas became family secrets, never discussed or let out of the locked box.

Fortunately, after we sisters moved away, and Momma got older and the very same Grandma Momma she had once called, to her face, ‘a wrinkled, mean hag-monster,’ slipped and slid into dementia, she rarely took to her bed.

Maybe Momma was hoping to enjoy as many sane days as she could before Grandma’s dementia caught up with her through the gene pool. Or maybe, because she was no longer in dire emotional and financial straits, she didn’t get depressed.

Or maybe she took drugs. She’d told us she didn’t take medication, but I wasn’t sure about that. Not sure at all.

Next to me Janie started counting, her fingertips meeting as she muttered each number. ‘One…two…three…four…’

I stuck my chin up a fraction of an inch.

Cecilia whispered, ‘Speak, witch.’

Momma glared at us, like we were larvae, then stood, carefully placing the walnut cracker on the table and swishing her hands together to get rid of any nut residue, her intense gaze never leaving ours.

‘So, the impossible girls have finally returned to help. Guilt has finally got the best of you after years of neglecting this family, hasn’t it?’ River is tiny like a ballerina and has the same eyes as Janie, bright green, but River’s eyes are a murky sea with a light on all the time behind the irises. ‘I’ve changed my mind. Throw out those pink letters I sent you. I’ve decided that we don’t need your help.’

Ah. So it would be this way. We grew up with her demands, her retractions, the guilt trips, righteous self-anger. I know what she is, and isn’t, but when I’m with her I can get things all screwed up, as if my head is in a blender and the blender is turned on to ‘grind’. ‘Momma, you’re going in for open-heart surgery. We got your letters, we came, we want to help you.’

‘I can handle it myself. Your presence here is no longer needed.’ Her green eyes shot tiny emerald-tipped daggers at us. We were bad larvae, she told us without saying a word. Bad larvae.

‘One…two…three…four…’ Janie whimpered.

‘You can’t do it all, Momma. You can’t take care of Grandma and Henry and the bakery and yourself.’

‘Cecilia can do it. Cecilia can help with Henry. She can move into this house and watch him and she can keep an eye on Grandma.’ She adjusted the starched white collar of her shirt. She wore a light pink sweater over it, pearl earrings, and beige slacks. Understated elegance. Prim and proper. ‘Cecilia has always been here for me.’

I glanced at Cecilia and felt my chest get all tight and emotional, if a chest can get emotional. The emotional toll for being ‘there’ for Momma had about puréed poor Cecilia.

‘Cecilia works as a kindergarten teacher, Momma. She has two kids. She has other problems, you know that.’ For example, she has to figure out a way to fillet Parker.

‘Cecilia is always the daughter who has come through for me and she will again. She can do anything. Anything.’

I felt my throat tighten, like it was shrinking.
Cecilia is always the daughter who has come through for me
. I told myself to buck up. Tears never helped a situation. Never. What were they worth? Nothing.

‘I’ve taught her everything she knows about the bakery and she’ll carry on. It won’t be the River Way, but Cecilia will do her best.’

I closed my eyes to smother my temper. Momma always did this, played one daughter against the other. You probably think that I hate Cecilia for this favouritism. That would be entirely wrong. I feel sorry for Cecilia. Momma might declare that Cecilia is her favourite, but it’s kind of like being the favourite of the devil’s assistant.

‘You are a separate person. You can control how you react to her,’ muttered Janie. ‘Breathe deeply.’

I heard her breathe deeply, then make a humming sound as she exhaled. ‘Set a boundary.
Believe
in the boundary.’

‘You and Janie came to help?’ Momma arched a perfectly plucked brow. ‘Perhaps Janie will teach all of us to count?’

‘Momma, stop it, that is not nice,’ Cecilia interrupted. ‘Janie is here, isn’t she?’

I could tell she was petrified at the thought of me and Janie bolting out the door. She knew she couldn’t handle teaching and her kids and Grandma and Henry and the bakery. Who could?

No one.

‘Janie’s here, yes,’ Momma mused, cupping the bottom of her perfect hair. ‘But I don’t understand how someone who can write bestselling novels from a houseboat in Portland can’t make time for her momma.’

Janie took a gaspy breath. ‘I do make time for you, Momma.’

‘No, you don’t, young lady.
You
.
Do
.
Not
. Too busy being famous for your momma.’

I heard Janie mutter to herself, ‘Janie, you can’t change her, you can only change your reaction to her.’

‘Must you mutter to yourself?’ Momma snapped. ‘I told you not to do that aeons ago. Stand up straight, and what on earth are you wearing? Do you want to be frumpy and old? Why are you wearing flat brown shoes? And where did you get that dress? From a farmer’s wife? Why do you have grey in your hair? I’m your
mother
and I don’t let any grey show in my hair.’

She crossed her hands in front of her. ‘Grey is for old women. It’s for women who don’t care about their appearance anymore. You girls are only in your thirties, but…you’re getting old, Janie, I can tell. You should be working to retain your youth, not diving into middle age.’

‘Momma!’ Cecilia and I protested.

Janie muttered beside me, her voice teary. ‘She’s a hurt, deranged woman. You need to be strong. Rise above her pettiness.’

‘Stop that muttering this instant!’ Momma lashed out.

‘OK, Momma, OK,’ I said, putting my hand out towards her and stepping in front of Janie.

Janie whimpered and said to herself, ‘You are separate from her. She cannot hurt you if you don’t let her. Breathhhheee…’

How many times had I done this? How many times had Cecilia? Physically stepped in front of Janie to shield her from Momma? We were all her personal dartboards, but Momma’s remarks always aimed especially sharp at Janie. Probably because Janie wouldn’t fight back. I would. Sometimes Cecilia did. But not Janie. She crumpled.

‘Humph.’ Momma’s attention, diverted from Janie, turned on me. ‘I see you’re still wearing your hair in hundreds of little braids, Isabelle. Why is that? You’re not a black person, are you?’

Cecilia murmured, ‘And the witch speaks…’

‘I don’t believe I’m an African-American, Momma, unless there’s something you want to tell me?’

‘Black people braid their hair. Are you black? No, you’re not. It is unbecoming on you. It is tacky. It is classless.’

‘Actually, my braids are cool.’ I met her gaze, shoulders back. In my work, I had faced down murderous warlords, scary men with mirrored glasses and guns; escaped from rioting, delirious mobs; and hidden behind tanks to avoid grenades. I could handle my momma.

Probably.

‘Cool?’ She rapped her perfectly polished red nails on the table. ‘Cool? You remind me of a hippie who might have camped out at Woodstock in the 1960s. Do you never wear a bra?’

‘Not today. I needed to feel loose today, like I wasn’t suffocating.’