Summer with My Sisters (4 page)

D
aisy was wandering around the sunroom in the big old house on Willow Way. Her parents had bought the house back when Annabelle had been awarded the teaching position at Adams College, just before Poppy was born. Oliver’s career was already well established and since he could work from anywhere, they had pulled up stakes and made the journey from Massachusetts to Maine.

Built in 1912 by an architect known as a maverick (there was documentation of this in the Higginses’ study), the house had been called an architectural mishmash, a hodgepodge of styles, a dwelling of considerable charm, and an utter disaster. Whatever other people—some of them professional critics—chose to call it, everyone in the Higgins family loved its gables and eaves, its mix of stone and brick, its round and oval and square-shaped windows, and that was all that mattered.

Interestingly, the interior of the house was pretty simple, given the impression the exterior made on viewers. On the first floor there was a well-equipped kitchen large enough for an island with seating and a table where the family could eat dinner together. The living room was spacious and featured a massive stone fireplace. The table in the dining room could easily seat twelve people with room enough around the table for servants (if there were such people around) to pass easily behind the chairs. The study was the smallest room on the first floor, not counting a bathroom with a shower but no tub for bathing. Upstairs there were five bedrooms: the master bedroom, one each for the three sisters, and a guest room. A bathroom in the hall featured a whirlpool tub (Daisy had been very fond of that as a little girl). The bathroom attached to the master bedroom had a sort of antechamber large enough for a chaise, a tall cabinet for medicines and toiletries, and a safe in which the family’s important papers and jewelry were stored.

Most everyone agreed that the house’s best feature by far was the sunroom. The ceiling—soaring almost fifteen feet above the floor—was constructed of large glass panels framed in ironwork and reminiscent of Victorian conservatories. The walls, too, were largely glass, tall, broad panes interspersed by narrow panels of wood. The floor was laid with whitish stone tile the architect had purchased in Italy. Against the largest bit of wood paneled wall there stood a wood-burning stove that came in very handy during those long gray Maine winters. Naturally, plants of all varieties stood on tall stands or hunkered hugely around the room.

At one end of the sunroom sat a rectangular wrought iron table, just large enough for a family of five to enjoy having coffee there together, something the Higgins had done often. There was a bamboo couch with cushions upholstered in a cabbage rose print, and two armchairs, upholstered in a soothing mauve, were drawn up close to the stove. Three rocking chairs were grouped around a stand of ferns.

Against the only wall that was not almost entirely glass there stood a towering bookcase, filled with an assortment of works on art and politics and history. Hardcover copies of the four books Oliver Higgins had written and copies of the magazines and journals in which he had published scholarly articles occupied one entire shelf. And there were volumes upon volumes of crossword puzzle books, as well as stacks of conservation boxes in which Daisy’s father had kept crosswords he had collected from better newspapers. Occasionally, Oliver had been asked to set a crossword puzzle himself; the pay was always terrible, but he accepted for the fun of it. Daisy’s all-time favorite crossword was one her dad had written when she was in second grade; it was based on the theme of Greek mythology, with all those crazy gods and weird monsters. She had known all about Medusa and Hermes and the Cyclops before any of the other kids in her class had.

On impulse, Daisy opened one of the conservation boxes. Oliver Higgins was always challenging himself, always trying and most often succeeding in beating his last best time. His handwriting, so familiar to Daisy, caused tears to come to her eyes and she put the lid back on the box.

There were some relics of her father’s life she was better able to accept without breaking down. For example, she kept the dictionary he had liked best in her room now, as she did her father’s famous winter scarf, the one he had worn every year for as long as Daisy could remember. Heavy maroon silk on one side, the softest gray cashmere on the other. It still smelled of his favorite cologne. The scarf now resided in the bottom drawer of her dresser, safe from Poppy, who kept making noises about disposing of Oliver Higgins’s clothing. Not that Poppy would clear out his wardrobe without first asking her sisters to choose a keepsake, but Daisy was taking no chances. Whether she would ever actually wear the scarf, well . . .

Though the plants that filled the sunroom had been her mother’s responsibility—for the past three years they had been cared for by Violet—for Daisy, the room had always felt like her father’s place exclusively. From the first it had been his favorite room in the house and after her mother’s death he had spent more and more time there, even sleeping some nights on the couch. It was there that he listened to his prized recordings of classical music (he particularly favored Mozart) on old vinyl records and worked on his articles and presentations.

It was in the sunroom that he had died.

Daisy rubbed at her eyes. Those stupid lines kept popping into her head, try as she might to forget them. Her English class had studied
Hamlet
that spring, reading scenes aloud and then discussing them, and when one of her classmates, playing Ophelia, spoke those words about the character’s father, Polonius, Daisy had started to cry. It had been so embarrassing though no one had laughed and her teacher, Mr. Robbins, had helped her to the guidance counselor’s office where she spent the rest of the class period recovering. Not entirely recovering. She doubted that would ever happen. The problem was that there were so many reminders of her father—and her mother—in everyday life, not only here in the house but everywhere. She couldn’t walk down the dairy aisle in the supermarket without remembering how much her mother loved chocolate chip mint ice cream. She couldn’t drive past the miniature golf course in Wells without remembering all the summer evenings she and her father and Violet had gone there for a fiercely competitive game. She couldn’t pass a newspaper machine without remembering that her parents had had a subscription to the local paper, the
Portland Press Herald,
the
New York Times,
and the
Wall Street Journal.
(The subscriptions were still active, as if none of the sisters could bear to cancel them, though most days the papers went unread.) And if the reminders would always be present, everywhere you looked, the question became: How did you stop them from making you
feel
? How did you learn to ignore them?

Daisy walked over to a framed photo of her parents that had been taken in Paris; they had spent a few days in the City of Lights for their fifteenth anniversary. Annabelle was wearing a genuine Hermès scarf around her shoulders. Oliver, his arm around his wife’s waist, looked dashing in one of his custom blazers. That they were very much devoted to one another no one had ever doubted.

With a sigh, Daisy turned away from the photo. It had occurred to her before now that her father might have died of a broken heart. He had been so in love with his wife; perhaps he simply hadn’t been able to go on without her. And because Daisy had been closer to her father than her sisters were—she was sure of that; it was important to her to remember that—a part of her felt rejected and betrayed by his death. She hated feeling that way and she would never admit it to anyone. Her father hadn’t
asked
to die. Still, it was hard to feel at peace since he had gone. Instead, she felt constantly . . . agitated. Look at her now, wandering aimlessly. And she knew she was fighting Poppy more than she needed to, and over small things that didn’t merit the angry energy.

“We don’t refrigerate the butter,” Daisy had announced that morning when Poppy was cleaning up after breakfast.

“Since when?” Poppy had asked.

“Since, like, forever. You’ve been back home for months and you didn’t notice?”

Poppy had just shrugged. “Guess not. Well, now we’re going to refrigerate the butter.”

“Why do you always have to change things?” Daisy had demanded, tears threatening.

“Why do you always have to argue with everything I say?”

“You don’t have to stay here, you know. If you hate it so much.”

“If I don’t stay here, you and Violet would have to go into the foster care system. Is that what you want?”

“Is that a threat?”

Poppy had sighed. “Please, Daisy, stop fighting me. And I don’t hate it here. It’s just . . . Never mind. Here, look, I’m leaving the butter out.”

It had all been ridiculous, but little things meant a lot and establishing and maintaining an environment of constancy mattered to Daisy. It should matter to her older sister, too. It should.

Daisy flopped into one of the rocking chairs. The problem was that she wasn’t very good at hiding her feelings. Lately, she had seen Joel, her best friend, looking at her with concern when he thought she was unaware. Poor Joel. She didn’t mean to worry him. She was so lucky to have him in her life. Joel was a year ahead of her in school and when he graduated the following June he hoped to go to the University of Maine in Portland to study music. Joel was a gifted clarinet, saxophone, and flute player; interestingly, he was the first and only person in his extended family to have shown any musical talent at all. “I’m a mystery,” he joked. “A mystery wrapped in a riddle.” Daisy, who wasn’t at all bad on the clarinet and otherwise loved being a member of the jazz band, always felt so awed when Joel played a solo that she wondered how she had ever been allowed to play alongside him. And, though this had nothing to do with anything, Joel was seriously good-looking. He was tall but not too tall and his eyes were big and brown with lashes Daisy would have killed to have herself, and his hair was . . . It was fabulous, dark with a natural wave. Add to that the fact that he was super generous to the people he cared for and that made Joel the perfect guy. Unfortunately, Daisy was in love with him. Unfortunately, because Joel was gay.

Which was something else to feel sad about—not his being gay, but his not being interested in her as a girlfriend—when her mood took a nosedive. But what was she supposed to do about feeling sad? You couldn’t just will emotions away the way you could sometimes will away thoughts and whoever said that you could was lying. You just had to let feelings run their course and hope that someday they would tire themselves out entirely.

Daisy’s cell phone rang and she dug in the pocket of her jeans to retrieve it. It was Joel.

“I am
so
glad you called,” she said before he could say hello.

“Why’s that?” Joel asked.

“Because I’m sitting here brooding. Do you want to go do something? I have to get out of this house.”

“N
ow, this won’t hurt a bit. See?”

Carefully, Violet removed a dead leaf from one of the rosebushes with the secateurs her mother had given her right before she died. She was wearing the big floppy sun hat that had belonged to her mother and thick gardening gloves. Annabelle had worn knee pads when toiling in the dirt, but Violet, being young and supple, didn’t need them.

Grimace was stretched out at full length in the sun a yard or two away from the rosebushes, managing to look four or five feet long, like a thick, furry, black and white snake. Not that there was such a thing, but Violet liked to imagine there might be. Imagining things was so easy.

Like imagining what it would be like if she were able to perform miracles. What if she had been able to lay her hands on her sick parents and give them back the gift of good health? What if she could learn how to
will
people to be well? Not just the people she loved, like her sisters, but all people.

Violet sat back on her heels and studied the rosebush before her. To become a healer or a wise woman, a white witch, whatever you wanted it call it, Violet thought that you probably didn’t need a regular college education (though Poppy seemed to doubt this), but you would need an education in things like vision quests and the power of ritual song and dance and the various sorts of prayer spiritual people had perfected over the centuries. You would need to know the history of herbal remedies and bodywork practices and the healing power of gemstones and how the chakras worked. You would also need to know how the body was put together and for that maybe you did need a formal class in advanced biology or something like that. Violet made a mental note to investigate this.

Whatever sort of study it entailed, Violet was excited about the life that lay before her, working to help people be healthy and happy. She knew there were probably plenty of tricksters out there, but she wasn’t one of them. She knew without a doubt that she had what her father used to call “a line to the spiritual world” and she was determined to use it to bring happiness to others. Just because her own life had been pretty sad in the past few years didn’t mean that other people’s lives should be sad, too. She truly believed this.

“You believe in me, don’t you, Grimace?” she asked her feline friend.

Grimace yawned hugely, turning his face into that of a long, furry black and white demon (they might exist!), ears back, eyes slit, teeth bared. “I knew you did,” Violet told him.

“Hi!” It was Poppy, coming around the side of the house.

Violet got to her feet and waved. She hardly knew her oldest sister, but she had no problem in accepting Poppy as her legal guardian. She didn’t expect Poppy to replace her mother or her father. She didn’t think Poppy
wanted
to replace them. Daisy, though, was having a hard time dealing with the fact of Poppy’s being back home—let alone of her having moved into their parents’ bedroom and wearing their father’s watch. It was too bad. Violet didn’t like to see the people she loved stressed and unhappy, and not just because it made her stressed and unhappy, too.

“What are you doing?” Poppy asked.

“I’m tending these rosebushes. It can be hard to grow roses here in Maine. It’s so cold for so long. Mom found these types that seem to be okay though. See,” Violet said, pointing with her secateurs, “that one is an old-fashioned shrub rose. That one next to it is an English rose. It’s more delicate than the shrub rose, but it’s doing all right so far. We should get flowers in full bloom between mid-June and early July.”

“Wow. I guess I never paid much attention to what grows out here and when things bloom. Did Mom teach you everything you know about gardening?” Poppy asked.

“Some of it,” Violet said. “But I’ve been learning a lot on my own.”

“And doing a really good job by the looks of it.”

Violet smiled. “Thanks.”

“Look,” Poppy said, “I was thinking. Do you want to have a friend for a sleepover? We could have a fire in the fire pit and make s’mores. Rent a movie. Maybe even make pizza from scratch. I think I could handle that. And if I can’t we’ll call out.”

“No thank you,” Violet said quickly. Poppy’s offer had surprised her, not that she had ever thought her sister ungenerous. But the idea of having someone over to the house to spend the night with her in her private space had never once occurred to her. In fact, it sounded kind of horrible, though she knew it was a popular thing for girls her age to do.

“Well, you know you can invite your friends here any time, right?”

“Yes,” Violet said. “I know that I can. But I don’t have any friends.”

Poppy laughed. “Violet, you must have a friend or two.”

“There’s Sheila.”

“You really consider Sheila your friend?” Poppy asked, frowning as if the idea truly puzzled her.

“Yes,” Violet said. “And she considers me her friend, too.” She was sure of it, and just as sure that the idea of a sleepover hadn’t appealed to the thirteen-year-old Sheila, either.

“But Sheila’s in her late seventies,” Poppy said.

“I know.”

“How much can you possibly have in common?”

Violet didn’t know how to reply. It wasn’t so much that she and Sheila shared hobbies and stuff, it was just that . . . It was just that it was easy for them to hang out together.

“Didn’t Mom and Dad . . .” Poppy didn’t finish her question.

“Didn’t they what?”

Poppy shrugged. “I don’t know, didn’t they encourage you to make friends at school? Or at soccer practice or something?”

“No, why should they have?”
Mom and Dad knew who I was,
Violet added silently
. They let me be me.

“But aren’t you . . . Don’t you get lonely?”

Violet considered. “Sometimes I feel a bit lonely, but it passes pretty quickly. Anyway, I’m not lonely for a friend.”

“Then what do you feel lonely for?” Poppy asked gently.

For what used to be,
Violet thought. “Nothing,” she said. “It’s nothing to worry about.” She looked up at the sky. “It’s almost one o’clock. Time for Grimace’s lunch.”

“Can you really tell the time just by looking at the sky?”

“Pretty much. It’s not hard.”

Poppy laughed. “For some people, maybe. As for me, I’ll stick to my watch. Well, to Dad’s watch now.”

Violet and Poppy, herded closely by Grimace, walked toward the house. And as they went Violet wondered what she might do for Poppy and for Daisy, in terms of helping them to heal and be happy. Both of her sisters had done so much for her since their mother had died, sometimes sacrificing their own happiness for hers. Like Poppy’s coming back to live in Yorktide. And like Daisy’s habit of checking in on Violet before she herself went to bed. She would just nudge the door to Violet’s room open and peek quickly inside, but Violet had come to count on that small gesture of comfort. She hadn’t told Daisy how she felt about her visits; she had a strong feeling that Daisy, who didn’t like attention drawn to her, would be embarrassed.

Poppy reached the back door first and held it open for Grimace to race through and for Violet to follow at a more normal pace. “Thanks,” Violet said.

“What would you like for lunch? I could make you that tuna salad you like so much.” Poppy smiled. “At least, I could try.”

Yes,
Violet thought.
I owe my sisters so much. At the very least I can spare them any of my sadder thoughts.
“Sure,” she said. “That would be awesome.”