The Other Sister, page 30
“Dad said I could come stay with him,” Robbie tells me. “Anytime.”
“Yes,” I agree. I do not ask when David said this. It does not matter. “If you need to go, you should go,” I tell him. Robin James Pendarves. My only child. His life flashes in front of my eyes and is gone. “I’d appreciate it if you’d give me a ride to Walt and Carla’s on your way.”
I speak like I would to a stranger, or one of my older relations. I can’t do anything else. I do not have a foundation for this. There are no habits or manners or masks to retreat behind. There isn’t even darkness left to me. Darkness requires that there be light somewhere.
“Okay,” says Robbie finally. “Come on.”
I climb into the Mustang’s passenger seat and buckle in. Robbie turns over the ignition and the radio, or streaming service, or whatever it is, blasts out…something. Very loud with a thudding bass that shakes the floorboards.
He shuts it off instantly.
“Sorry.” He mutters, and he puts the car in reverse.
We make the drive in silence. Robbie puts the top up without my having to ask. He punches a few buttons and gets a classical music station to fill the silence. He drives with a caution I am sure is exaggerated, coming to a full stop at every sign, and slowing down for each yellow light.
I am grateful. I am silent. I am so very sad.
Finally, we come to town, and he turns down Third Street, and into Walt and Carla’s drive. Robbie punches the button that unlocks the door. I climb out and face him. He’s leaving me now. He has nothing with him. I’ve given him nothing, haven’t packed or prepared anything. I have nothing that will help him. I never did.
“Mom,” he says. “There’s something you need to know. Something Aunt Geraldine told me.”
I am silent and I am still. Robbie speaks softly, steadily. His voice is hesitant, almost boyish. But there is nothing boyish in what he says, or what he is doing.
My son tells me about Geraldine’s past. A whole world of things she never told me. He is making a gift of it to me, even after all that I have done to him.
With these words, my son is choosing sides. He is giving me permission for what I have to do next.
I close the car door. Robbie drives away and I turn away. Neither one of us looks back.
3.
Walt and Carla live in a lovely old Victorian home complete with a wraparound porch and gingerbreading, the details highlighted in three different colors. It’s a lovingly preserved remnant from Whitestone’s glory days when the quarries and the timbering brought endless supplies of money. The curtains are drawn, but the light streams through onto the tidy lawn edged by yew bushes and roses. It could be a stage stetting for an old black-and-white movie. Something wholesome and hometown with plenty of happy endings to go around.
I don’t want to move. If I just stand here, maybe the happy ending will still happen. Maybe I’ll get to see it.
I imagine myself walking up those steps and ringing that bell. Carla will answer the door, and she will let me in, all quiet concern.
I’m sorry, I’ll say. I’m so sorry.
I’ll sit on their sofa and she’ll call Walt down from the upstairs.
I’m sorry. Walt. There’s something I have to tell you. Something I should have told you years ago.
You see, your father didn’t just disappear, into the lake, or thin air or anywhere else. My father killed him. Another one of his tidy domestic murders. It happened the night I ran away and almost died. That was why he left me and Geraldine with Aunt Trish for so long. He had to make sure that the body would stay gone, and that no one would look to blame him. He had to make sure he had our mother under control.
But if I tell them the truth, then I am trapped. Cornered by secrets exposed both too late and too soon.
I have to go on. I have to protect my son. He is not going to be able to keep quiet much longer. He is too angry. He thinks he understands his grandfather’s power. He does not, not really.
But I do.
I know that my father is friends with the sheriff, as well as the mayor, the town council, the bankers, and the owners of the remaining quarry. Many of them owe him money for one thing and another. He’s made sure of that. I know that sometime very soon, he will go into his friend’s office and close the door. He’ll have something to say. He’ll be very reluctant. It will pain him deeply, but he has to do this.
Which of us will it be?
I would have thought Geraldine. He might just be trying to put her at her ease, with his little confidences in the dark and his careful doling out of fresh pills. After all, it worked with our mother. Among the things I have learned over the years is that Dad is confident, but not terribly creative. Unless he’s pushed, he goes with what’s worked before. If he can lull Geraldine into a false sense of confidence, she’ll be right where she needs to be when they come for her.
It would serve her right.
The problem is, of course, it could be me he’s setting up. He could decide that Geraldine will be easier to keep hold of going forward. That I failed him one too many times. He could have found out why I brought her home. Walt, sitting in his bright living room with his wife, might already have told him.
And I know Dad has been preparing for the day I become a liability. He’s been telling people about me. He’s made sure they all know Marie is not just weak and obedient; Marie is crazy. Marie sees things. Marie hears things.
And I have to admit, it’s a very good story. It fits with who we are. Because my mother was crazy, my aunt was crazy, my sister, too. A whole houseful of crazy women. And one sane, sad man doomed to love us all. It has been so hard for Dad. All these years, all the work to keep us all together. All those cold nights making sure we didn’t ever stray or get ourselves into real trouble.
You need to let me take care of this, Marie, he said to me back then. We don’t want anybody putting two and two together and getting five, do we?
I feel my mother behind me, and I know exactly what I will do.
I just don’t have much time.
The idea of a kiss solving the princess’s problems is actually not that present in most of the original Household Tales. The Frog Prince, for example, does not receive even a reluctant kiss from his princess. Instead, she throws him against the wall.
Snow White is not kissed, either. She’s dropped out of the coffin by a careless servant, which jars that bit of apple out of her throat.
Sleeping Beauty is apparently somewhat more than kissed by her prince. In one of the earliest versions, she gives birth while she’s still asleep, and the baby sucks the poisoned spindle tip out of her finger.
Is there a moral of the story? Yes. It’s that real salvation is an inherently messy business.
—Out of the Woods: Musings on Fairy Tales in the Real World,
Dr. Geraldine Monroe
MARIE, NINETEEN YEARS OLD
STACEY B’S SANDWICHES AND STUFF
1.
“Please, Geraldine,” said Marie. “Just this once?”
They were in the living room. Marie sat on the edge of her chair. Geraldine sprawled on her back on the sofa, glowering. Marie held her breath. Geraldine had to agree. Everything depended on it. But she might say no, just because Marie needed it so much.
Geraldine, to everybody’s surprise, had scraped through high school. Marie was home from her second year of college and working for Dad in his new real estate office, just exactly like he had always planned she would. Geraldine was spending her summer…what was Geraldine doing? There were rumors, and Marie didn’t like any of them. Dad clearly didn’t, either. Most days began with a cold, tense enumeration of Geraldine’s faults. Most of them ended that way as well.
Mom slept through most of it.
“Fine,” Geraldine sighed toward the ceiling. “I’ll take her up to see Aunt Trish. That’s always good for two or three hours of screaming fights and make-up drinking afterward.”
“Oh, Geraldine, that’s not a good idea. You know how angry Dad gets when he finds out you and Mom have been talking to Aunt Trish.”
This was pure reflex. By now, it was next to impossible for Marie not to consider what their father might say and do. Marie herself had not been back to the ruined Rose House since…before. Since that time. But Geraldine knew going to the Rose House was the easiest way to upset Dad, so she did it every chance she got.
How can she stand it? But Geraldine had always been stronger. Marie couldn’t even let herself think about that time anymore, or what had taken them there. It was all mixed up in her head and she got sick every time she tried to sort it out for herself. The confusion was so frightening because it was so inexplicable. She knew what happened. Dad told everyone, he told her, and told her, and told her.
Aunt Trish had kidnapped them. She’d held them up there overnight. It only felt like a week. Marie had been sick most of the time, so she couldn’t remember properly, and then there was the fact that poor Pete went missing at the same time. She’d gotten upset and mixed up, that was all. But Dad knew what really happened.
In fact, Dad had spent a whole month afterward persuading all the people who mattered that it hadn’t been as bad as it looked. The girls were safe, he said. They were home. That was all he wanted. There was no need to press charges. Patricia Burnovich wasn’t actually dangerous. She was just confused. She needed understanding, that was all. It was up to the family to look out for her better.
He said that a lot.
At the same time, whenever Mom suggested she should go up to the house, Dad frowned. “It’s a bad idea. She gets so agitated. You might set her off, Stacey, and we don’t want that. I’ll handle it, all right?”
And Mom, bleary-eyed and pale-skinned, would look at him and leave the room. But she didn’t stop sneaking up there, with and without Geraldine. What did they think they were doing? Marie never knew. It wasn’t like it helped anything. It just made Dad angry. And then Geraldine would stay out all night, and Mom would lock herself in her bedroom, and Dad would shake his head and talk about all the work he had to do.
“I can’t manage them alone, Marie,” he whispered to her. “Things are about to break wide open for us, baby girl. I need you here to help. Everything’s about to change.”
That was something else he said a lot, but only to Marie. She and her father had grown closer than ever. Even now that she was in college, he was always driving up to see her. She never knew when he might drop in. When she was home on break, he hardly ever let her out of his sight. She was in the office with him, or in the house helping, or driving back and forth with him. That was wonderful, really. The other girls in the dorm teased her about it, but that, of course, was just because they envied her for having a father who loved her so much and protected her so lovingly. Even from her sister. He was very gentle with her about Geraldine, but he was firm, too. He had to be. Because Geraldine was a liar, just like Mom. Just like Aunt Trish.
And of course she believed him. Sometimes, when things got bad, Marie would lie awake, staring at the ceiling and repeating what he told her. Just to keep things straight. She still got confused sometimes, about what did and did not happen. Sometimes Dad had to set her straight about the little details. But that was all right. He understood her confusion and the reasons for it, and he was always there to help her.
That was why they had to do this now. Dad would be home any second.
Geraldine peered at Marie from underneath her fringe of dyed black hair. “You want me to do the job, Marie, you have to let me do it my way.”
“All right, all right,” Marie said quickly. “Just as long as you promise to keep her away until at least midnight.”
“What’s the big deal?”
“Nothing.” But the word rang hollow in Marie’s ears. “Dad has a business dinner tonight. He wants me there and I just, well, I thought he might want to bring the client back here afterward.”
“You think Dad’s gonna bring a client back here?” Geraldine made a rude noise. “You’re delusional.”
“I just want everything to be nice, in case. You know how Mom’s been lately.”
Mom had been getting more and more agitated. There were days when she stood in the yard and screamed at the sky. The one time she’d lurched into the road like she was begging the cars to come hit her. The time they’d caught her trying to batter down the door to the store, which was only opened during the summer and on weekends now.
“Delirium tremens,” said Dad quietly. “Well, Marie, it can’t be long now.”
Something sparked deep in Geraldine’s eyes. Marie felt like the air curdled around her.
“Yeah,” said Geraldine slowly. “I know exactly how Mom’s been. I’ll take care of her.”
“Thank you,” Marie said. Geraldine was up to something. It was all there, in her scarred face. Marie knew she should ask questions. In fact, Geraldine wanted Marie to ask. She was itching for it. But there wasn’t any time. Dad was going to be home any second, and then she would have to head to the office with him, and there was still so much to do.
Let Geraldine keep her secret, Marie told herself. After tonight, it wouldn’t matter. Dad was right. After tonight, everything was going to change for good.
“Alas, young queen, how ill you fare. If this thy mother only knew, it’s sure her heart would break in two.”
—“The Goose Girl” from Kinder und Hausmärchen Vol. 1,
Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, 1812
GERALDINE, PRESENT DAY
THE ROSE HOUSE
1.
It’s surprisingly easy to get out of bed in the morning. The only bad moment comes when I peel open my eyes, and the first thing I see is the little white pill sitting on the bedside table.
Just one, I hear Dad’s voice in my head as I pick it up. Just for now.
But that moment passes. I dress in the clothes left for me: stretch pants that I think are meant to be cropped, but go down over my ankles anyway, and a pale blue T-shirt. It’s probably oversized on Marie but just barely manages to fit me. I brush my hair and bundle it into a ponytail. I smell like smoke. I don’t think I’ll ever stop smelling like smoke. I hope I don’t. The smoke keeps the pain alive, and while the pain is alive, I’ll remember Tyler and I won’t lose my nerve.
Downstairs, Marie’s set up the full formal dining room for us, or at least the dining area. The dividing walls and swinging door were ripped out years ago. The china and the silver and the cloth napkins are all laid out on a glass table. The scents of bacon and coffee, sugar and butter fill the room. There’s a bowl of fresh strawberries next to what I assume is meant to be my place.
In the kitchen, my sister is busy beside the stove, a little frantic, like she always is when she’s in motion. She’s only cool when things are finished. She’s rebandaged her hand, but I can see the bloodstain on it as she reaches for the ladle to drizzle more batter into the waffle iron.
That’s never going to heal, Marie. But maybe it doesn’t matter.
“Oh! You’re up! Good morning!” she chirps, but her glance toward me is fleeting.
“Yeah,” I agree. “Can I help with anything?”
“No, no, I’ve got it. You just go relax. Oh, can you take in the coffee?”
“Sure.”
She flashes me a happy, vacant smile, and turns back to her waffle iron.
I take in the coffee, just in time to see Dad crossing the great room.
“Well!” he says as he surveys the breakfast spread, and me, in my Marie clothes. “What’s all this?”
“Breakfast, of course,” says Marie, bringing in the white platter heaped with fresh waffles. “I thought we could all use a good meal. I know you might not have time, Dad…”
He looks at the two of us. Tension thrums across the lines of our triangle. He meets my eyes and I put my hand up to cover my scar. It’s an old gesture, but it comes back so easily, it’s a little scary. From the corner of my eye I can see Marie, standing like some statue of June Cleaver, holding that plate of the steaming waffles as she watches us.
Dad notices, and I can only describe the look that crosses his face as wolfish. “Oh, no. For this, I’ll make the time.”
Dad slips easily into the chair at the head of the table. Marie takes her place at our father’s right hand. I’m at his left. I don’t remember the last time I sat with Dad when he was so visibly happy. He’s absolutely in control and absolutely certain of himself and everyone around him.
Including me. Well, why shouldn’t he be? I’ll bet he even checked my room on the way down to make sure the pill was gone. Idly I wonder if he ever kept count of the pills Mom was taking. I bet he did. Dad’s always been a detail kind of guy.
We keep busy passing fruit and bacon around on the good dishes. Dad still drowns his waffles in syrup, while Marie spoons a few discreet berries onto hers. I heap the remainder onto my pastry. Marie watches. She’s smiling. Just a little, but it reaches her eyes. Seeing us all gathered here, Marie is filled with sentiment as sweet as maple syrup. Her little family. I swear I even see a touch of pride.
Well, why shouldn’t she be proud? This is everything she’s worked for. I wonder what she’s going to look like, later, when it’s all over. I fork another strawberry into my mouth and let the juice spread across my tongue. I am eating without tasting anything. I am aware it’s all rich and that I’m too full, but I don’t stop. I feel like if I stop cramming something down, everything is just going to come bubbling out.
Finally, Dad pushes his plate away and reaches for the carafe to refill his cup. “I had a call from Gary Scrope this morning. About the fire,” he adds, as if either of us needed telling. He leans back in his chair, crossing his ankle over his knee.
I swallow my mouthful of waffle and fork in another. Marie is watching me, carefully. Like she’s not sure if I’ll burst out screaming or just break down sobbing.
