Sisterland (5 page)

Our parents had met when our father, who lived in Omaha, traveled to St. Louis on business—he was then a salesman for a commercial carpet manufacturer—and my mother was working at the front desk of the Clayton hotel where his employer put him up. He stayed in the hotel for two nights, and on the second, he invited her to go with him to a French restaurant. Our mother never suggested that he outright lied during these
initial interactions, but she conveyed that he’d led her to believe he occupied a more senior position in the company than he did, and that he was more worldly than he turned out to be. (Of course, I thought later; he was trying to impress her.) Once a month for the next three months, my father returned to St. Louis to woo my mother—she was living with a roommate on Wydown Boulevard, and he stayed at the hotel—and on these trips they attended a Cardinals game, strolled in the Missouri Botanical Garden, and toured the Anheuser-Busch Brewery, where my mother purchased a tiny beer stein for her charm bracelet, an accessory that in elementary school Vi and I would fight to try on. On his third visit, my father arranged a ride in a hot-air balloon, an outing that so frightened my mother that they asked the pilot to land after just a few minutes. Back on earth, my father proposed, and my mother accepted. In Omaha, my father gave notice to his boss, moved to St. Louis, found a job as a salesman for a lighting fixture company, and married my mother in the late morning of September 5, 1974, at the St. Louis County Courts Building on Carondelet Avenue in Clayton. She wore a sleeveless twill dress with a pattern of interlocking green and black hexagons, and he wore a carnation boutonnière; they went out for a steak lunch afterward, and then they both returned to work.

Why did my mother make things unnecessarily hard? That’s the main question I ask myself in retrospect. Our lives weren’t glamorous, but they weren’t so bad; they were ordinary, and there are many worse ways to be. Though looking back, I see my father’s complicity, too. If I were to fault him for falling for my mother, I’d be wishing away my own existence. But I was fairly sure he proposed to my mother, perhaps without really knowing her, for a foolish if time-honored reason, which was that she was beautiful. In photographs from around the time they married, her straight blond hair is parted in the center and falls past her shoulders; her lips are thin but flirtatiously upturned; her cheekbones are high, her eyes big and blue, her lashes accentuated with mascara. She was five-five, the same height Vi and I eventually grew to, but outside of pregnancy, I don’t think she ever weighed more than a hundred and ten pounds. She favored snug blouses, dresses that cinched her small waist, jumpsuits with flared
pants. In a photo Vi and I especially liked, our mother stands in front of the Arch holding our father’s hand. She wears a belted orange wool jacket with an oversized collar and a matching orange beret; he has dark sideburns. Both of our parents are beaming.

That my mother turned out to be difficult as well as beautiful was likely a result of her upbringing. In Risco, she had grown up poor on a small farm, the third daughter in an extremely religious Baptist family, and after graduating from high school, she’d remained at home and gotten a job at a newly opened rice-processing facility twenty minutes away. For three years, she secretly saved money, and as soon as she could afford to, she and her friend Jeanine bought bus tickets to St. Louis; my mother carried with her a single suitcase containing her clothes, toothbrush, and Christmas records. Although St. Louis was just three hours north of Risco, neither of them had ever been, and most of what they knew, or thought they knew, about the city was that they shouldn’t go north of the Delmar Loop because that was where the black people lived.

Given that both the civil rights and the women’s rights movements seemed to have entirely bypassed my parents, I never understood why it was my father who joined my mother in St. Louis rather than my mother moving to Omaha; perhaps this decision reflected the more invested party in the relationship. My mother quit her job the day after they married, and they soon bought the house that would evolve from a source of pride to one of disappointment.

I was four years old the night I woke up screaming. Vi and I shared a room, and by the time our mother came to me, Vi was sitting up in her bed. In a dream, I had seen a house on fire, flames soaring and billowing from all the windows; the house was orange with light and terrifyingly alive.

Even after our mother’s arrival, I remained inconsolable. There was an impatience to the way our mother dealt with Vi and me that was surprisingly effective, implying as it did that whatever had upset us wasn’t important. But in this case, anything she could have said, any tone she used—it wouldn’t have mattered, because the house would still have been consumed by fire. I am sorry to say I remember this feeling well not only because
the image of the house was so vivid but also because that dread has returned regularly throughout my life, almost always when I awaken during the night: an anxious kind of certainty, an awareness of the world’s menaces that feels like a recognition of the truth, and an awareness of my own vulnerability—of everyone’s vulnerability.

As I continued shrieking, my father joined us, and I heard my mother tell him I’d had a nightmare. He sat on Vi’s bed; light from the hallway cut into our room. My mother, who had taken several minutes to decipher what I was trying to tell her, kept saying, “But if there was a fire, we’d smell smoke.”

“Should we sing a song?” my father asked. He began to hum, then to sing the words to “I See the Moon,” and Vi joined him. Our vulnerability continued to clutch at me; hearing their voices, it clutched at me in a different way. How could our parents protect Vi and me from anything? For the first time, I realized that there was no guarantee that they could protect themselves. But then, as my father and Vi sang, the familiarity of the lyrics was comforting. My mother pulled my covers up before she left, and my father stayed in the room; he continued singing until Vi and I were both asleep.

The next night, a house halfway down our block burned to the ground. My parents, Vi, and I were awakened by the sirens, and the flashing lights from the fire trucks and the police cars reflected on our walls. Though our parents didn’t let us go outside, our father went to confer with neighbors. Vi and I couldn’t see the fire because the house was on the same side of the street as ours, but I already knew what it looked like. The people who lived in the house were an older couple.

A few months later, we were eating a family dinner when Vi said, “Why does Aunt Erma’s heart hurt?” She asked this in a neutral tone rather than a distressed one, but our parents exchanged an alarmed look. Aunt Erma was actually our great-aunt, our paternal grandmother’s sister, and lived in Grand Island, Nebraska; we had met her perhaps three times in our lives.

“What do you mean, Vi?” my father asked.

“She fell down,” Vi said without emotion, and took another bite of pork roast.

That time, more than a week passed before my father’s mother called on a Sunday morning to say that her sister had died of a heart attack. I didn’t overhear my father on the phone, but he repeated the information to our mother when he came into the kitchen. Vi and I were playing Candy Land at the table while our mother washed the breakfast dishes.

It was Vi’s turn, and I was watching our father as he said, “It’s not just Daisy, then. It’s Violet who has the senses, too.”

Our mother’s expression when she turned to look at our father was sour. She was wearing yellow rubber gloves, cleaning a pan in which she’d cooked bacon, and she didn’t turn off the faucet. She said, “What do you suggest I do about it?”

Owen woke up from his afternoon nap before Rosie,
and I nursed him sitting on our living room couch. As I burped him afterward, the phone rang, and I knew without seeing the caller ID panel that it was Vi.

I set Owen on the floor with a little wooden car—he was just beginning to sit on his own—and when I answered, Vi said, “Courtney Wheeling is finally preggers, isn’t she? Which is a miracle because she’s so fucking skinny I can’t even believe she was getting her period.” This was generally the way it went when my sister and I fought. After a day or two, I’d call her and say, “I never realized until right now that coriander and cilantro are the same thing. Did you?” or she’d call me and say, “I’m looking out my window and there’s a totally perfect cobweb in the railing on my front steps. It’s like the platonic ideal of a cobweb.” Neither of us would formally apologize.

“Hank and Courtney haven’t told people yet, so don’t bring it up with them. She’s only eleven weeks along.” I hesitated before adding, “Do you really think there’ll be a huge earthquake?”

“No, but you know how I love attention. Yes, Daze, I do. I mean, sorry.” She sounded more serious. “But that’s what came through, loud and clear.”

“And how soon is soon? Tomorrow? Six months from now?”

She exhaled. “That part I’m not sure of.”

“But you’re confident it’s an earthquake and not something else, like a tornado? Or, I don’t know, a building being imploded?”

“No, it’s an earthquake. Especially after the one last night—it all feels connected. Anyway, I didn’t have a visualization. I just got the message.”

I could tell that we were perilously close to her mentioning the spiritual guide she believed was the source of such messages, whom she called Guardian. Vi usually didn’t bring up Guardian around me because she knew the topic made me uncomfortable, but surely if I was the one peppering Vi with questions, he was fair game.

I said, “If you get a sense about a specific date, will you tell me? Just with the kids, you know, I’d rather be prepared—”

“Of course.” Not only did Vi not gloat over her power, but she sounded kind, protective even, as if she’d never have considered anything else. Then she said, “Was it just me or did Courtney come off as completely uptight?” Adopting a British accent that sounded like neither Courtney nor an actual British person, Vi said, “ ‘Let me tell you about the statistics that my extensive research has uncovered. Did I mention I have two degrees from
Haaarvard
? And that I hate fat people?’ ”

“How did you end up getting interviewed?” I asked. “Did you call the station?”

“I thought they’d blow me off, but I was put right through to a producer. I probably should have brushed my hair this morning, huh?” Vi laughed. “But it all happened so quickly. One minute I was on the phone with the producer, and the next they had that girl standing in front of my house with a microphone. Did you notice her double D’s, by the way? I’m surprised those things fit inside the newsmobile.”

“Have you talked to Dad?”

“Not yet, so I assume he didn’t see it. Although doesn’t he usually watch Channel 5?”

That she hadn’t heard from him didn’t, in my opinion, mean he hadn’t seen it. “Wait,” I said. “Shouldn’t Dad be there to take you on your date?”

“Not till three.”

“Vi, what time do you think it is now?” My own watch said two fifty-two. “Have you taken a shower?”

“Shit, I didn’t realize how late it’d gotten.”

“Hold on,” I said quickly, and I heard Vi on the other end of the phone, pausing. “Wear your dark jeans and your black beaded V-neck shirt,” I said. “And those patent leather flats. Don’t wear Birkenstocks.”

After we’d gotten
Owen and Rosie down to sleep, Jeremy and I made a stir-fry for dinner; because we’d become accustomed to eating at five forty-five, dinner at eight o’clock felt almost European.

I poured sesame oil into a pan and used a knife to sweep onion pieces from the cutting board into the oil as Jeremy removed two beers from the refrigerator. He opened them both and passed a bottle to me—while nursing, I allowed myself one cup of coffee during the day and one beer per night—and he tapped his bottle against mine. “Cheers,” he said. “We survived another day.”

Thinking of Vi on television, I said, “Barely.” But it was nice to be in our bright kitchen together, nice to have Jeremy home from work and Rosie and Owen asleep, and I added, “No, you’re right.” I knew he’d watched the Channel 5 news segment online at his office, and I said, “So what’d you think of Vi and Courtney?”

“Your description was accurate. Probably not the finest hour for either of them.”

“Are you embarrassed to be married to me?” I’d thought I was making a joke, but aloud it didn’t sound like one.

“Of course not.” Jeremy leaned in and kissed my forehead. “I know you think Courtney came off well, but she was fuming because they edited her to look like she believes the New Madrid Seismic Zone is an active threat, and she doesn’t. She thinks it’s basically dead. Besides the fact that the New Madrid isn’t even where last night’s earthquake was—it was in the Wabash Valley.”

“Do you think Courtney will tell other people in your department that the psychic weirdo is your sister-in-law?”

“No, but who cares if she does? It was a three-minute piece in the middle of the day on the local news, and no offense to Vi or Courtney, but who
even watches that?” He reached out and took a slice of bell pepper. Then, because for him the topic was finished, he said, “How was Vi’s date?”

I rolled my eyes. “I haven’t heard yet.”

“Let’s say for the sake of argument that you’re right. She’s in no way attracted to women and is just dating them because it’s easier for her to find a girlfriend than a boyfriend. Here’s my question for you: So what?”

I was quiet for a few seconds—Jeremy had a point—then, rather lamely, I said, “I just think it’d be confusing to our dad. For someone from his generation, if she says, ‘I’m dating a woman. Oh, no, I’m not’—that’s a big deal. It’s kind of unfair to make him accept that and then to change her mind again.”

Jeremy took a sip of beer, watching me, and said, “Unfair to him or to you?” I didn’t answer, and he said, “Even if your identical twin turns out to be a lesbian, it doesn’t mean you’re secretly one, too.” He smiled. “Let’s hope. So I got asked to give a talk at Cornell.”

“When?” Quickly, I added, “That’s great.” It wasn’t at all great logistically—Jeremy hadn’t been out of town since Owen’s birth, and the idea of it didn’t thrill me—but because Cornell was where Jeremy had earned his PhD, I knew he’d be pleased by the invitation.