The Good Sister (6 page)

Without opening her eyes, Simone asked, “If you were a bird, what kind would you be?”

“Crows are smart and the black feathers are very chic. Plus they know everything that’s going on.”

“Sounds like Merell’s kind of bird.”

Roxanne mentioned the iridescent hummingbird she’d seen powering around the blossoms of the scarlet trumpet vine.

Simone said, “They seem fierce, don’t you think? And brave.” She rolled over on her stomach and rested her cheek on her folded
arms. “In my next life, I get to be brave and fierce.”

Victoria and Valli lost interest in leaves and stones and picked a few red hibiscuses for their mother. Simone showed them
how to split the stems and link them together to make a lei.

“Tell Franny to take you around the other side of the house. Those bushes are in bloom and you can pick them all. Your aunt
and I are telling secrets, none of your business.”

“What kind of secrets?” Valli asked.

“I like secrets,” Victoria said.

“And I like you,” Simone said, kissing her round cheek, flushed with sun. “But scram anyway.”

As soon as they turned their backs, Simone fell back again, groaning. “Was I like that, Roxanne? Was I that useless?”

Roxanne thought the twins could be irritating but were funny and sweet as well. She said so.

“You don’t have to live with them.” Simone brushed the pollen-laden stamen of a hibiscus blossom against her lip. “A hummingbird
spends the whole day with its nose in flowers, sucking up pollen and nectar. Sexy, huh?”

“No wonder you’re pregnant all the time.”

Simone looked at Roxanne with a wicked little smile. “Do you remember Shawn Hutton?”

Roxanne had a vague memory of a skinny boy with a peeling, sunburned nose who sometimes worked at his parents’ boat shop on
the Shelter Island marina.

“They had the most beautiful sailboat.” Simone rubbed a spray of peppercorns between her hands like a gambler warming the
dice. “The
Oriole
had berths for eight or ten people, and Shawn and I had sex on every one of them. More than once.”

“You’re lying. You’re making this up.”

“Scout’s honor.” Simone held up her hand and the pungent fragrance of pepper filled the air between them.

*       *       *

Until Simone met Johnny, she had never been happier than during those summer days when she sailed on the
Oriole,
a fifty-foot ketch painted black and yellow like the bird it was named for. Even now, ten years later, she imagined she could
feel the heat of the sun on her skin and smell the fresh varnish.

“The summer before I was a senior BJ decided that I needed more exercise.”

Without consulting Ellen he had enrolled Simone in
a sailing day camp and every morning he drove her to Shelter Island himself and in the evening he picked her up. It had come
as an astonishment to everyone that she enjoyed sailing.

“What I really loved was the reckless feeling you get when you’re flying over the water.”

“Maybe you should try skydiving.”

“Shawn was a junior instructor at the camp. He’d been around boats all his life so there was nothing he didn’t know.

“But he sure was funny-looking,” Simone said, remembering. “A scarecrow with turquoise eyes and a killer suntan.” She had
been his first girlfriend and he could not believe his luck. “The first time he put his hand under my blouse, I thought he’d
go off right then, he was so excited.”

“You were virgins together.”

Simone giggled.

She had been feeling miserable after yesterday’s scene at the swimming pool but telling the story of Shawn Hutton and seeing
Roxanne’s openmouthed amazement cheered her up a little. It was good to remember that once upon a time she’d been a wild girl,
that for one whole summer she had awakened every morning tingling with anticipation of the day ahead. Even her first months
as Johnny’s wife did not have the thrill of that summer.

“You weren’t a virgin?”

“Please.” Simone rolled her eyes. “Let me tell you, Rox,
I didn’t waste any time once I figured out what those shiny-hair vitamins you gave me really were—”

“You knew?”

“Shiny-hair vitamins?” Just saying it made Simone laugh. “I may be slow, but I’m not a complete idiot.”

Roxanne said, “Elizabeth got the prescription from her brother. The boys wouldn’t leave you alone. I was sure you’d get in
trouble. Does Johnny know?”

“You think he would have married me if he knew?”

“But how…?”

“Roxanne, it’s not that hard to fool a man who wants to be fooled.”

So there,
Simone thought with satisfaction.
Roxanne, you might be smarter’n me, but there’s still things you don’t know.

“What about STDs? You could have gotten AIDS.”

“Honest to God, Rox, I’m pretty sure the danger’s past.”

“I can’t even think about it…”

Simone wished she could stand up and dance in and around Roxanne’s appalled expression.

“Listen,” she said. “I was dumb as dirt back then. I thought STD was something you put in the gas tank to make a car run better.”

Roxanne didn’t believe her and then she did. They fell against each other laughing.

After a moment Simone said, “The guys liked me, Rox. I knew that from the time I was twelve or thirteen.”
Coming and going from the house at night, she had made sure Ellen and BJ never knew. “I was pretty and they didn’t care if
I was a whiz kid or not. Even the smart ones. And I always made them work for it but in the end… I was willing.”

And I was good at it,
she thought. It was like Johnny said. Her body was made for sex. And babies. Always babies.

Roxanne faced her, looking almost stern. “This doesn’t make sense, Simone. You hate water. You hated water when you were a
baby.”

“Salt water was different. I loved the taste of it, and it feels different on the skin, kind of thick and silky. And I always
wore a life jacket. Mr. Hutton wouldn’t let me off the dock without one.”

“Where was I when all this was going on?”

“You had your apartment then. Do you remember when I broke my collarbone?”

“Vaguely.”

You couldn’t be bothered with me. You and your best friend were having too much fun.

“We’d been out to the Coronado Islands. Mom and BJ let me go overnight because Shawn’s folks were there and some other people.”
Simone shook her head. “Mom was so naïve. Anyway, we were coming back and I was up toward the bow, standing up….”

She stopped, remembering moments of distilled joy on the
Oriole
. The pinprick of spray striking her face, her
stinging eyes, the taste of salt on her chapped lips and the hot, sticky feel of her skin.

“I know exactly what I was thinking when the accident happened. The night before Shawn and I had had this conversation, sitting
up on deck under the stars. We decided that after high school we’d hire on as crew on a sailboat. We didn’t care where we
went but we needed the practice so that someday we could buy our own boat and go live in the South Pacific. I knew there would
never be anything I liked better than flying over water, like at any minute I could take off and soar.”

“Sailing and sex and a broken collarbone.” Roxanne’s expression had gone from amazed to puzzled to almost upset.

With herself
, Simone thought.
She doesn’t like to think there’s anything about me that gets past her.

“I was standing there, thinking how happy I was, and then someone yelled my name and the next thing I knew the boom slammed
into me and I was in the water. And it was cold, really cold.” The
Oriole
flew by, her sails fat. “I couldn’t breathe or see anything. I suppose I would have drowned if it weren’t for Mr. Hutton
and that life jacket.”

“You were rescued.”

“Well, obviously.”

Looking back, Simone knew that she should have gone out again immediately, the next weekend. Even with a broken collarbone
she could have worked in the galley or polished the brightwork. Instead she had stayed home,
nursing her pain, feeling sorry for herself and thinking about icy water and sharks and the
Oriole
flying past. If she closed her eyes now she could see the way the name of the boat was written across the stern.

After her shoulder healed she wanted to sail again but by then it was too late.

“Mom went berserk when I mentioned it. She said I was almost killed. BJ went along with her, of course.”

And I didn’t fight for it. I didn’t rebel. They were afraid for me and pretty soon I was afraid too.

Time went by and after she and Johnny were married they leased a condo right on Mission Beach. The beach was gray and empty
and beautiful in the winter after the tourists retreated and the broad strand belonged to the seagulls and pelicans and people
bundled in parkas. Sometimes as she walked along the water’s edge, long walks from the estuary almost to Bird Rock, schools
of dolphins arced through the surf running parallel to shore as if they wanted to keep her company. In the beginning she had
watched the sailboats on the horizon but they made her sad so she stopped looking out to sea and focused instead on the million-trillion
grains of sand at her feet, feeling small and insignificant and safe.

Simone became pregnant and Johnny was ecstatic, even more so when the obstetrician and his nurse technician read the ultrasound
images and assured them that a boy was on the way. Merell’s birth shocked Simone into the deepest depression of her life.
Watching television one
afternoon she saw something that convinced her a mistake had been made in the hospital nursery: a distracted nurse had exchanged
her baby boy for someone’s girl. Johnny, her mother, and Roxanne dismissed her concern and blamed her mood on the blues, promising
her she would feel more like herself in a week or two. Her obstetrician, Dr. Wayne, told her it wasn’t unusual to have such
thoughts. He called it postpartum depression.

Merell left the Frisbee-throwing, and after grabbing two cookies and shoving them in the pocket of her shirt, she swung herself
up onto the first branch of the pepper tree, about five feet off the ground. She grabbed the branch above and hauled herself
higher.

Watching Merell climb, Simone’s breath caught in her throat. “Be careful,” she cried.

“Daddy says this is the best climbing tree in San Diego.”

“But if you break, I can’t put you back together.”

“I won’t break, Mommy. Promise.”

Merell was the kind of child who could do whatever she wanted. Climb trees, swim, ride a bike: it was all easy for her. Simone
tried to believe that she had given birth to such a strong and competent child, but in nine years she’d never been convinced.

She watched her daughter make her way up into the heart of the tree and thought of all the things she’d never done because
she was afraid of the risk or couldn’t figure them out or had no aptitude at all.

“D’you know, I’ve never even climbed a tree?”

Roxanne jumped to her feet. “Come on, then, there’s no time like the present.”

“Now? I’m pregnant.”

“Listen, if you could sail a boat, you can climb a tree. There’s nothing to be scared of. You’ll do great.” She held out her
hand. “I won’t let you fall. Never, Simone.”

“You promise?”

“I’ll hoist you up to the first branch. You can stay there, or go higher. Whatever you want.”

The branch was between five and six feet off the ground. Merell had been able to jump and swing herself onto it but Simone
could never manage that, so to give her a boost Roxanne made a stirrup of her laced fingers and, as Merell clapped and cheered
and the twins and Franny came running, Simone put her foot into her sister’s hands.

“Up you go!” Roxanne said. “Now swing your leg over…. That’s my girl.”

And there she was, astride the branch, stunned and shaking, looking down on the tops of the twins’ heads.

Merell called down from her perch eight feet above. “Grab hold and stand up. It’s easy, Mommy.”

Easy.

As much as she wanted to try, she wanted to be back on the ground; and while she thought about how it would feel to grab the
branch and stand, she was thinking at the same time of what it would be like to fall, no water
to soften the landing. She reached overhead. The rough pepper bark scratched her palms.

Just take a breath and pull yourself. Just do it, don’t think and whatever happens—

Valli clapped her hands.

“Higher and higher and higher,” Victoria demanded.

Merell cried, “Come up to me, Mommy.”

“Mommy can’t talk,” Valli said.

“Mommy’s crying.”

W
hen Roxanne got home Ty was on the deck staring out over the canyon. Down in Mission Valley there was gridlock on Interstate
8, an emergency vehicle and two cop cars on the shoulder, their lights flashing. The air was still and hot and smelled of
eucalyptus.

“I’d about given up on you.”

“We have to talk.”

He looked at his watch. “We can talk on the plane.”

“There’s time.”

“Not if you want to get a hamburger.”

“I’m not hungry, Ty. Can we sit down?”

He paused for a long moment, not taking his eyes off her; and though she wanted to hold his gaze, she couldn’t. Across the
canyon someone was playing a complicated set of piano scales, the pattern of notes repeating again and again in endless variation.
She looked down at the litter of bougainvillea bracts scattered across the deck like faded gold coins.

“I should sweep these up before we go,” she said.

“Just tell me what happened at Simone’s. That’s why you went over there. What did she say?”

“Same as the radio but I don’t believe her.”

She thought of Shawn Hutton and the other boys in Simone’s life and remembered what Simone had said about Johnny.
It’s not that hard to fool a man who wants to be fooled.
The same could be said of an older sister.

She forced herself to look at Ty, owing him that much at least. “I can’t just fly away as if it doesn’t matter.”