“Do you remember our tea parties, Ken?” Her hair was down now, spilling over her shoulders and partway down her back. At seventeen she had been gawky and coltish. Clearly this beautiful creature had emerged during the Big Absence. While Kendra resembled Jimmy, Jamie was a Delacroix through and through. Riva’s parents had shown little interest in their granddaughters, but Kendra thought they had missed their best chance for a Mardi Gras queen when they ignored this one.
“I remember Kool-Aid at a wrought-iron table and graham crackers with our dolls,” Kendra said.
“You were pretty well beyond the age of dolls, but you were patient. I had a hundred to choose from. Every time Riva or Jimmy showed up, they had a doll under one arm.”
“They’re in storage,” Kendra said without thinking.
Jamie stopped at the end of the bed. “You’re serious?”
“You know me, Jamie. I plan for everything. Even the possibility you might have an address to send them to one day.”
Jamie’s eyes met hers; then she looked down at her daughters. “Girls, one day there’s going to be a lovely surprise in the mail.”
The girls were too busy waiting for Kendra to take their offerings to pay much attention. Kendra noted the enthusiasm, and reached for the plate and the glass. “I have never seen anything more welcome,” she told them.
“Three!” Alison jumped up and down. “Three cookies.”
“If you don’t open the cookies and lick off the filling, Alison will be unhappy,” Hannah said. “She is a creature of habit.”
Kendra set the tea on the bedside table and opened the first cookie, doing exactly as she’d been instructed. Alison vaulted onto the bed and threw her arms around her. Kendra pulled her onto her lap, careful to position her so she was not resting against her surgical scar.
“Would you like one?” she asked the little girl.
“Yours.”
Jamie interceded. “She’s had two already. Better not. It was the only way we could be sure the cookies would make their way to the bedside.”
Hannah scooted up on the bed, as well, perching on the end. “The tea has mint and sugar. Two teaspoons. Oh, lemon, too. We weren’t sure what you like in it. We decided on everything.”
“I love it that way.”
“Did you sleep?” Jamie asked. “Or were we too noisy?”
“I slept.”
“How do you feel? I mean in general.”
“I’m doing okay. I feel a little better every day.”
“I wanted to come sooner. I wanted to come right away, as soon as Riva got around to telling me what had happened. But I had exams.”
“Exams?”
“I’m in college. Hannah’s private school is on the same schedule. That’s why we were able to get away.”
This was news to Kendra. “I didn’t know.”
“I realize that.”
“It’s an odd sort of secret, isn’t it?”
“I’m studying architecture and interior design. I can’t decide what I want to do when I graduate, so I’m hedging my bets.”
Kendra was trying to process this. “You’re in Michigan? I noticed your plates.”
“Yes. Southfield.”
“For a while?”
“I’m halfway through my third year.”
Kendra realized the girls were waiting for her to taste the tea. She took a long slow sip and licked her lips. “I’ve never had better,” she told them.
“Down now,” Alison said, squirming, and Kendra helped her scoot off her lap.
“We’ll leave you alone,” Jamie said. “Is there anything else we can get you? I thought I’d make pasta for supper, if that’s all right.”
“You really don’t have to wait on me.”
“Okay. Do you like mushrooms?”
A plaintive tune answered before Kendra could. She recognized the Bangles’ “Walk Like an Egyptian,” and the source, a cell phone. Jamie pulled a small one out of her pocket and held it away to check the number.
“Tell you what,” Jamie said. “I’ll just stick the mushrooms on the side, and you can decide later.”
The entourage left, with Jamie speaking softly into the phone. The door closed behind them. Kendra realized she was tired all over again.
By the time the afternoon had waned and garlic was sizzling in a frying pan, Kendra had learned more about her sister. Jamie was an indulgent mother. Like Riva, she stroked and cuddled, and she gave in easily. Alison ate too many snacks, and Hannah made too many decisions.
Jamie was preoccupied, too, the way their own mother had been. As the afternoon droned on, she fielded four new phone calls, and each seemed to take more out of her. Hannah automatically took charge of her sister when “Egyptian” began to play. Jamie took the phone out of the room to conduct whatever business was so important.
Jamie smoked. To her credit, she did it outside, away from her daughters. She told Kendra she quit when she was pregnant with Alison but had started again recently.
“I smoke when I’m stressed,” she said. “It’s bad, I know. Don’t lecture.”
Alison fell asleep on the sofa in the late afternoon, too tired to keep her eyes open another minute. Kendra would have put her to bed hours before, tucked in with a story. Hannah occupied herself lining up stones on the edge of the porch until Kendra gave her a notebook and a collection of colored pencils. Jamie went for a walk, cell phone pressed to her ear.
Once dinner preparations were at hand and Alison awoke, cranky and hungry, things slid further downhill. Hannah complained that her mother had forgotten to bring Alison’s favorite blanket. She had reminded Jamie, and still Jamie had forgotten. Alison wanted to watch her favorite video and could not be persuaded that Aunt Kendra’s television did not come equipped to show it. Hannah wanted cheese and crackers, and the only cheese she liked was gone.
Jamie was beginning to look frazzled. “We threw everything in the van and took off the day finals ended. I’m sorry, but it’s hard to study and be organized. And we’re all tired from the drive. We’ll feel better tomorrow, and the girls and I will shop for something to entertain them.”
Kendra still hadn’t had a moment to talk privately with her sister, and she was beginning to doubt she would. Jamie did nothing to calm the atmosphere. When the girls whined, she tried to coax them out of it, roughhousing in the yard, or organizing a game of tag. She cuddled; she tickled; she never said no. She was the mistress of “maybe,” a word that only kept them guessing.
By the time they sat down to an excellent meal of sautéed chicken and peppers in homemade marinara sauce, the girls were too overwrought to eat. After three arguments that left Kendra more exhausted than she’d felt since the shooting, Jamie put down her fork.
“Okay, here’s what we’re going to do,” she told her daughters. “You’re going to take showers in Aunt Kendra’s bathroom. Then you’re getting into your pajamas and bed.”
“There is no bed,” Hannah said.
“We have our air mattresses, and we can sleep in here. Once you’re ready, you can listen to music until you fall asleep.”
“I not sleepy,” Alison said. “I sleeped already.”
Jamie’s cell phone sounded. “Sorry. I have to take this.” She got up and walked outside.
Kendra was afraid it was going to be a very long evening.
After the girls were bathed and settled, the food put away and the dishes washed, Kendra found her way to the front porch and settled into one of her new chairs. Jamie had refused to let her do a thing, but she was still as tired as if she had handled the evening’s chores by herself.
Darkness was creeping across the clearing when her sister finally joined her.
“Don’t say it,” Jamie warned.
Kendra rested her head on the back of her chair and waited for the stars to come out.
“Traveling is a disruption,” Jamie said. “They’ll settle in. I’m sorry they fell apart.”
“I was just remembering the way you always dissolved when Riva came to visit. I’m sorry. But that’s what came to mind.”
“Riva had no idea in the world what a child needed.”
Kendra knew when to stay silent.
“You don’t think
I
do, either,” Jamie said at last.
“I don’t know what to think. I didn’t even know about Alison until today. Suddenly you want my opinion?”
“I’m asking for it, yes.”
“Well, I know better than to give it.”
Jamie stood and walked to the edge of the porch. She pulled out a pack of cigarettes and a lighter, and lit up. She smoked a while before she spoke. “You’ve always been sure what’s best. For everybody. That’s why I ran away. You were so sure about my life, and I hated every decision you made for me.”
Kendra closed her eyes. She didn’t care about the stars anymore. “I kind of got that impression. Something about you disappearing the way you did. I got to pick up the pieces of my life while wondering if you were dead somewhere or in jail, or out on some street corner selling yourself or scoring drugs.”
“I’m sorry, Ken. I was a kid. A stupid, conflicted, irresponsible, rebellious kid. And there you were, not my mother but my sister, who thought you knew everything about what was best for me.”
“I had great role models. I just figured I would do everything differently from the way Jimmy and Riva did it, and I’d be fine.”
“None of it was your fault.”
“Oh? I’m off the hook? A moment ago it didn’t sound like it.”
“You’re angry at me. I understand that. You have a right to be.”
“You were a kid. I get that part. But you haven’t been a kid in a long time, damn it. Where have you been?”
Jamie finished her cigarette. She tossed it on the ground below, then went down the steps to make sure it was out. Back on the porch, she faced her sister. “I was ashamed. I was a mess. I don’t know how much lower I could have sunk without dying. It took Hannah to make me clean up my act. And it was slow work. I’ve had help along the way, but I didn’t want to face you until I was sure I could hold up my head.”
“And then there’s Alison.”
“I’m not sorry I had her, Ken. Don’t try to make me sorry.”
“Who is Alison’s father? Is he someone you’re with?”
“Someone I
was
with. He’s out of our lives now. The pregnancy wasn’t intentional. Fertility is one of my big talents. I was on the Pill. It didn’t matter.”
Kendra felt her insides knot in protest. “It’s a funny world.”
“Please believe me. I’m doing a good job with the girls. I want them. I love them. I work hard at being a mother. I didn’t give them reliable fathers, and they’ll pay the price for that, but I can give them the best mother in the world. Me.”
“Being a mother is hard work. It’s a lot more than wanting to be one.” The moment the words escaped, Kendra wished they hadn’t. She was angry at this sister who had stayed away, this sister who could give birth to beautiful children and treat them like playmates, this sister who had probably never, despite tonight’s disclaimers, given Kendra’s agony over losing her a moment’s thought.
Jamie tapped another cigarette out of her pack. Kendra saw that her hands were shaking.
“You’re so good at being a mother, Ken, why haven’t you given it a try? You’ve been married a while now, right? I don’t see any little ones running around the cabin. Or maybe your children wouldn’t run. Maybe they’d sit in the corner and read Dostoevsky, or design computer programs to keep the rest of us in line.”
Kendra thought of half a dozen replies. She’d already raised one child, thanks, and look what it had gotten her. She had a career that mattered more than two o’clock feedings. She had a husband who wanted to change the world, not diapers.
In the end, though, she told the truth. “I can’t have children. Riva saw to that.”
Jamie dropped the unlit cigarette on the floor and didn’t bother to retrieve it. “What are you talking about?”
“Isaac and I never really got around to trying. But I wanted children, and I thought eventually he would, as well. The possibility was always there. I got a lot of mileage off that, I guess. Knowing I could. That it was a matter of choice, a matter of getting my marriage to the right place. Then I was shot.”
Jamie came to sit beside her. “Were you injured so badly you won’t be able to get pregnant?”
“I had emergency surgery. To stop the bleeding and repair the damage. Two bullets. One exited, one didn’t. That one nicked my spinal cord. And once they could see what was going on, they found so much scar tissue and so many adhesions, the prognosis was clear. Between the old injuries and the new, I can never carry a child anywhere near to term.”
“What does Riva have to do with this?”
“I had appendicitis as a child. Do you remember?”
“Not really.”
“I guess you were just a baby. We were between nannies, and I was sick for a week. I kept telling Riva I didn’t feel well, and she said it was a silly bug, that I would be fine. She kissed me, then she went off to her parties. And finally, when my fever got so high I was delirious, the housekeeper rushed me to the hospital. My appendix had ruptured. I nearly didn’t make it.”
Jamie was silent.
“When I woke up after
this
surgery, Isaac told me what the doctor had found. Isaac said it didn’t mean anything—that we were lucky having children wasn’t a priority.”
“He sounds like a good man,” Jamie said.
“Or one without a heart. I’m not sure anymore. We haven’t talked about it since. As far as I know, it was a blip on his personal radar.”
“But not yours.”
“I don’t know what to think.”
Jamie got to her feet and walked a few steps to the railing, but she didn’t light another cigarette. “So here I come. Two children I didn’t plan for. I don’t set strict rules. I don’t always get them to bed on time or feed them the moment the first hunger pang hits. I roll around on the ground with them. I shout when I’m mad and hug them to death when I’m not. I’m not you. And if I were, I’d be asking myself why the world is so unfair.”
“I try to avoid that. It’s been hard today. I’m still angry at you. For a long time you were all I had. And you walked out on me. Now you’re back, toting precious cargo.” Kendra looked at Jamie, her lovely profile now a shadow against the soft light from the cabin window. “Why are you really here?”
Jamie reached over and touched Kendra’s arm. One brief, featherlight touch. “So we can both begin to heal.”