The September Sisters (16 page)

THE ONLY THING
worse than going to school after both Becky and my mother had disappeared, with my mother and father suspects of terrible things, was going there under those same conditions wearing an eye patch.

I must admit, even I thought I looked freakish. The patch was large and white, and it covered most of my left cheek as well as my eye. I pleaded with my father to let me stay home from school, but he wouldn’t let me. “The doctor said you would be just fine to go to school.”

“But it hurts,” I whined.

“Then I’ll get you a Tylenol.”

“I don’t want a Tylenol. I want to stay home.”

“Ab, stop whining.”

“I’m not whining,” I said, but I knew he was right, I was.

The strange thing was that people I thought had forgotten all about me came up to ask me what happened, if I was okay. When they talked to me, their eyes got shifty; they couldn’t look directly at me, and when I told them that I fell off a skateboard, they sort of nodded and walked away. I suppose I should’ve come up with a better story, something grandly daring that would’ve made me sound terrific. Falling off a skateboard was kind of lame; it’s not like you were that high up or anything.

At first I didn’t know what people were whispering about me; apparently they thought falling off a skateboard was lame too, so lame that someone invented a story that was circulating around the school first as a rumor, then as “the truth.” I didn’t know about it until Jocelyn said something to me the second morning in homeroom.

“What happened to you?” she asked.

I was surprised that she had actually talked to me, that she wasn’t ignoring me the way she had been for months. Lately she wouldn’t even turn her head to the side I sat on, out of fear, I guess, that I might look at her and start up a conversation. So it took me a minute to answer her.
“I fell off a skateboard,” I said.

“Really, Abby? Is that all?” I nodded. She stared at me, scrutinizing my face. I wondered if she was trying to remember her best friend, who was still inside me somewhere, underneath the eye patch and all. “Are you sure?”

“Yeah. I was there.” I didn’t mean to say it as rudely as I did, but I was already annoyed with her, and I didn’t really understand what she was getting at.

“Your father, he didn’t…do anything to you?”

“My father? He wasn’t even there when it happened.”

“Abby.”

“What?” I had this sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach, an inkling of what people had been whispering about me, that they’d somehow implicated my father in some terrible wrongdoing.

“Well, never mind then,” she said. “Just forget it.” She turned back to face front and fluffed her bangs a little bit and pretended that she’d never said a word to me in the first place.

I was already miserable, down a mother and temporarily down an eye, and the accusatory sound of her voice made me so mad that I suddenly realized I no longer wanted her friendship even if she had offered it.

I tapped her on the shoulder, a touch that made her jump, but she turned and faced me. “I can’t believe I ever thought you were my best friend,” I said.

She looked around, a little embarrassed, maybe because once I got angry my voice got louder. “Abby, don’t,” she said.

“Don’t worry,” I told her. “You’re not even worth it.” And then I was the one to turn away from her, to stop looking in her direction.

At lunch I asked Tommy if he’d heard what people were saying about me.

“I don’t know,” he said. “It’s nothing. It’s stupid really.”

“Just spit it out,” I told him. My patch was beginning to itch, and the stitched cut underneath it felt moist. I had the urge to rip it off, but I knew I couldn’t, so I sat there, twisting my hands, trying to keep them from doing something desperate.

He looked down at his food. “People think your father tried to kill you.” I started laughing. I knew it wasn’t funny, but there was nothing else for me to do but laugh. “What?” Tommy said. “What’s so funny?”

My laughing fit stopped as abruptly as it began, and
I suddenly felt myself sweating. “Where did you hear that?”

“Just some guys talking in my math class, that’s all. I don’t know if everyone thinks that.”

“They do,” I said, thinking about Jocelyn. “Of course they do. Why would anyone think my father would try to kill me?” It sounded so ridiculous, even as I said it. It sounded like some terrible, terrible TV movie.

“Well,” Tommy said. He still couldn’t look at me. He was shoveling his sandwich into his mouth. “I don’t know.”

“You do,” I said. “You’re not telling me everything.” He shook his head. “Tommy, come on. I thought I could trust you.”

“Fine,” he said. “But you won’t like it.”

“Do you think I like this?” I knew Tommy thought I was talking about the eye patch, but really I meant everything else.

“They’re saying that your father killed your sister and your mother, and then he went after you; only he screwed it up and only took out your eye instead.”

I put my hand up to touch the patch, to feel my eye moving underneath it. “Well, that’s stupid,” I said. “That’s so ridiculous.” He nodded. “My eye is fine. I just fell off a stupid skateboard.” I realized I was yelling, and I felt sort of
bad because it wasn’t his fault; I shouldn’t have been yelling at him for dumb things that other people were saying.

“I know. I was there.”

“I didn’t mean to yell at you. I’m sorry.”

We sat there in silence, finishing our lunches. I thought about how strange it was that Jocelyn, who’d known my family and me for years, would believe such a rumor. Suddenly I hated her and all the other kids at my school so much. I wanted all of them to feel pain the way I had over the last few months, and not the falling-off-the-skateboard-stitches kind of pain but the pain of losing people, the pain of being so completely misunderstood.

“When I was in Florida,” Tommy said, “people used to call me these awful names.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “Just because they could, I guess.”

I thought of that first day at lunch, when it was so obvious to me that Tommy’s skin was so much darker than everyone else’s at my school, and I wondered if it had been the same for him in Florida. “People are dumb,” I said.

“I used to get in fights over it. I’d get so angry.”

I nodded and pretended to look surprised (though it was
hard with only one visible eye). “How did you stop?” I began to wonder why things were different here, why he didn’t beat up the obnoxious boys who probably laughed at him in his gym class.

“It’s not worth it,” Tommy said. “I don’t care what they think. What does it matter anyway?” But he sounded hurt; his voice trembled a little bit.

“You’re right,” I told him. “None of the people here are worth anything. They don’t know anything.”

“I used to dream about running away,” Tommy said. “I’d think about getting on one of those fishing boats that docked in the harbor and stowing away in the bottom and just becoming a fisherman for the rest of my life or something.”

I tried to imagine Tommy as a fisherman, out on the sea all day, and he didn’t seem like he had it in him. “I couldn’t run from this,” I said. “Everything would still be so messed up, even if I could leave.”

“I know. I couldn’t really run either. Who can ever really run from anything?”

TWO WEEKS AFTER
she disappeared, my mother reappeared just as suddenly. She was sitting at the kitchen table one evening, smoking a cigarette, when my father and I walked in. He’d just picked me up at Mrs. Ramirez’s, and the two of us had gone to McDonald’s before going home. She was sitting there in the dark, at the kitchen table, the only light coming from the glow of her cigarette, barely noticeable at first.

I smelled her there before I saw her, the woodsy intoxicating scent of her cigarettes, something I was used to smelling out on the back patio in the spring, but not in the house. “It’s Mom,” I said to him as soon as we came in the front door. “She’s here.”

My father flipped on the lights and started walking toward the smell. I followed behind him, not sure yet if I was angry or would be happy to see her. “Elaine,” he said, when we both saw her sitting there, cigarette in hand. He sounded surprised, even though I’d already told him it was her. I’m not sure he let himself believe it until he actually saw her sitting there.

She nodded at him and then looked straight at me. “Abby,” she said, “don’t hate me.” Her voice sounded shaky, unfamiliar almost, and I didn’t know if I should go to her, so I didn’t; I hung back with my father. “I need a goddamn ashtray.”

She stood up and started rummaging around in the cupboards until she came back with an old clay bowl I’d made for her in elementary school. I don’t think it was supposed to be an ashtray, but it was kind of lopsided, so it didn’t quite work as a bowl either. “I know I shouldn’t be smoking in here,” she said, and she laughed a little as if this were something funny to her, something my father and I didn’t get. “I didn’t want you to worry.”

“Jesus, Elaine.” My father reached out for her shoulder, but she jerked away so quickly that it made me sad for him. “I didn’t know what to think.”

“Well, I’m not dead,” she said, “if that’s what you thought.”

I don’t know if my father thought that or not, but I felt my face turning red. I didn’t want her to know that I’d thought that, that I’d expected Kinney to tell us they’d found her body. The fact that I’d believed she was selfish enough to kill herself made me feel slightly ashamed.

“Maybe you should go upstairs,” my father said to me.

“Jim, calm down. I’m not going to do anything crazy. Here.” She patted the chair next to her. “Have a seat, sweetie.” I looked to my father first, because for some reason I felt I needed his permission to listen to her. I waited for him to nod at me before I sat down. “What did you do to your face?” She put her hand on my stitched-up cut, but I pulled away. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

She hadn’t hurt me. It didn’t hurt anymore, even though it looked ugly still. I just felt uncomfortable when she touched my face, and I pulled away from her the same way she’d just pulled away from my father. “It’s nothing,” I said. I didn’t want to tell her about Tommy’s skateboard because I thought she’d be instantly mad at me, she’d crush me with a
Didn’t I raise you better than that?
And then I was afraid I might yell back,
Well, where the hell were you anyway?

“Jim, you sit down too. I want to talk to both of you.” My father did as she asked. I realized this was the first time I’d ever seen my mother in charge, completely in control of the situation, my first indication that something drastic had changed in her since she’d left.

“Elaine,” my father said, “I could take you upstairs, put you to bed. We all could talk tomorrow.”

“Do I look like I need to go to bed?” she snapped. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to yell.” She ground the cigarette out in the bowl. Then she said, “Do you mind if I smoke?” My father shook his head, and she pulled another cigarette out of the pack and lit it. “I want to try to cut down,” she said, “quit altogether,”

“That’s good,” my father said. He smiled at her. It was an awful awkward moment between the two of them, where I felt like they both understood something that I never would.

“Anyway,” she said, “I can’t stay long.” My stomach sank when she said that. She hadn’t come back for good; she’d returned for only this fleeting moment of explanation, and then she’d leave again, flee from our lives. I wondered if things would’ve been different for us if Becky had returned for just this short amount of time, just to explain to us what
had happened to her and why.

I was surprised that my father didn’t say anything, didn’t try to stop her when she said she couldn’t stay long, but I guess he was afraid of sending her away again without an explanation.

“It’s no secret that I’ve been a mess,” she said. “This house.” She chuckled a little and tapped the cigarette in my bowl. I watched the ashes fall in there, and I tried to concentrate on them instead of her so I wouldn’t start crying. “I had to get out of here. It was suffocating me.”

“Elaine—”

“Don’t interrupt me,” she said. “I’m not finished, Jim.” She turned to look at me. “Abby, you know I love you, and I’m not leaving you. We’ll still see each other.”

I felt a small bubble of relief that she hadn’t forgotten me after all, but I felt sorry for my father. She hadn’t said she still loved him. When she singled me out, I realized that this really was the end of our family. Suddenly I didn’t even care that she was alive, that she sounded saner than she had in weeks.

“I’ve gotten an apartment down on Hardy.”

“An apartment?” He sounded as if he couldn’t understand the words. “On Hardy?” Hardy is this street that runs
between Pinesboro and Break Point, a town just on the edge of New Jersey. I knew exactly the apartments she was talking about. There is this large, tall building there that is older than most of the surrounding buildings and almost something of an eyesore. I couldn’t imagine my mother living there, a place where I imagined poor people and college students lived.

“It’s nothing terrific,” my mother said. “But it’s something different. A place to start over. When Garret’s daughter died, he said the only way he could get past it was to get away.”

“So that’s what this is about, Garret?”

“No,” my mother said. “It’s about me.” She sounded angrier than I’d heard her in a long time. She stood up and looked out the back window. “I can see her everywhere here, Jim.”

I thought of that expression, you know, “You can run, but you can’t hide.” I couldn’t imagine my mother forgetting about Becky, even in an apartment on Hardy, even away from my father and me. I wanted to tell my mother that, but I was a little afraid of her anger.

“I’ll want you to visit me, Ab, after I get settled.”

“What about Dad?” I said, and then instantly, I wished
I hadn’t. I was aware that the pain between them was private, something that was almost none of my business.

But she pretended I hadn’t even asked the question. “There’s this great little diner right down the street. I can take you there for breakfast on the weekend.” I didn’t want her to take me to a diner for breakfast; I wanted her to stay here and be my mother. It wasn’t much to ask of her, I didn’t think.

“Elaine,” my father said, “don’t you think you’re overreacting?”

She shook her head. “Oh, Jim,” she said. She walked over to him and touched his face. “You’re trying so hard, aren’t you?”

My father turned his head away; maybe because he didn’t want her touching him anymore. I didn’t understand how the ways they’d always touched each other could’ve vanished so quickly in these last few months, how Becky’s disappearance could’ve stolen them, the way it had stolen everything else familiar to me.

My mother stayed for less than an hour. Then she claimed she had to go home. It hurt me to hear her say that, to realize that our house wasn’t what she thought of as home. I know
it hurt my father too, because he couldn’t look at her when she was leaving.

I still don’t know exactly what she did for most of those two weeks she was missing. Hal Brewerstein traced her credit card and told my father that she had ended up in Pittsburgh. And she told me, just after she had moved into her apartment, that it was Garret who had driven her there and that she had gone to Pittsburgh to see Grandma Jacobson’s grave. My mother said that at the grave she’d felt Grandma’s presence; she believed her mother had actually spoken to her. “It was the strangest thing,” she says whenever she tells the story. “It was like I heard the sound of her voice coming off the wind. You know how distinct her voice was, Abby, so crackly and sharp, and she was telling me to save myself. Then I knew what I had to do.”

After that, I guess, she came back and got the apartment, and that’s when she started to realize that we must be worried about her. She claimed it really hadn’t occurred to her to call, that we would miss her, not the whole way to Pittsburgh, not the whole time there. “I must’ve been in some sort of daze,” she said; “otherwise I would’ve realized.” I believed her; I knew that she could’ve been so out of it that she would’ve forgotten us completely.

I am not sure what her relationship with Garret was then, and secretly I envisioned the two of them rolling around in bed together in one of those roadside turnpike motels. But I don’t know if that was true or not, or if Garret was only a friend to her, someone to listen to her, to understand her the way she felt my father and I couldn’t. All I knew was that Garret and his wife had split up a few years after their daughter’s death. Garret was unattached, even if my mother wasn’t. I thought that must mean something.