The Good Sister (28 page)

“Rachel, my sweet girl.” He rubs his hand along my shoulder.

He has not called me his sweet girl in forever. I lie still, waiting to hear more.

“I got here as soon as I could. I'm sorry it took me so long.”

My response is to keep breathing, in, out, in, out. It's all I can think to do.

“How are you feeling?”

Something about his tone wakes me up a little. “Like shit.”

He laughs. “That's my girl.”

When he pushes the pillow aside from my face, I let him, and I can see he's been crying. His eyes are red and puffy, the way they were at Sarah's funeral.

I wonder how much he knows now, but that's not a question I have the energy to ask or even wonder for long.

“I'm going to stay here tonight. I can sleep here in your room, or downstairs on the couch, wherever you'd like, okay?”

This idea, of my dad sleeping here to watch over me, more than anything else that has happened since the day Sarah died, levels me. Would knock me down flat if I weren't already lying in bed.

I feel so much grief I can hardly catch my breath to brace for it. I let out a strange, desperate sound as it hits me.

He rubs my shoulder some more. “Does that mean you want me downstairs?” he says in his signature wry tone, so much sweeter than I deserve.

“No,” I manage to choke out.

“You want me to sleep in your room?”

The state of my throat, closed off to words now, forces me to nod yes.

“Good.” He sits there for a while, not saying anything. Then: “I'm going downstairs to find some tea. Can I make a cup for you too?”

I nod again, and I feel his weight disappear from the side of the bed. His footsteps trail out my bedroom door and down the stairs. I guess he left my door open because a few minutes later I don't hear anything but sense the presence of someone in the hallway.

It's Asha, I guess, because who else would it be? I don't have the energy to look, but whoever it is keeps standing there, so finally I peer over my pillow, and I see my sister standing in the doorway, her arms crossed, her eyes hollow and tired looking.

“Hi,” she says, but doesn't step inside.

I guess she's waiting for an invitation. I can't remember the last time I allowed Asha to set foot in my bedroom, but when I look back at the past ten years, during which we went from being sisters to enemies, I can't quite imagine what she did that was so awful. I know she didn't deserve to be shut out. Maybe I did, but not her.

“You can come in.”

I remember now how she acted at the hospital—concerned, protective—and I wonder if she's always been that way and I just never noticed.

I wonder who she is. And who I am, this strange, new postapocalyptic creature who can't get out of bed.

Pushing myself up onto my pillows, I sit up with a great effort and wrap my arms over my chest, draw my knees up close. Asha sits down on the part of the bed that's empty now. She grabs a throw pillow and leans back against it, making herself at home.

Then she says nothing, and I am so grateful to have her there, silent, not trying to turn this into some kind of fucking lesson or sisterly moment or whatever.

I slide my cold, bare feet down until they are wedged under her hip, using her to warm them, something I haven't done in more years than I can count. She says nothing about this selfish, little intimacy I've offered, only closes her eyes and takes a deep breath, as if she's settling in for a nap.

I stare out the window into the darkness, at the shadow of a tree branch swaying in the wind. I can't see stars from this angle, only the darkened hillside and the horizon just above it, which is shadowed by clouds that reflect moonlight.

This reminds me of the last time I looked at the sky, in the early morning with Krishna, the sun rising and me a weak, slithery thing only wanting darkness. But Krishna is the opposite of darkness, I understand now. He is light, kindness, hope. It sounds dumb, but it's true.

“Have you ever met someone who seemed too good for the world?” I ask Asha.

“Sarah,” she says without a moment's hesitation.

I think of the car wreck, the dead guy, Sarah's secret, but I know in the end, Asha is right. Sarah had a goodness in her that maybe started getting rubbed away by all the world's rough edges, but it was there, blinding sometimes and often more than this younger sister could bear.

And Krishna, coming into my life just as Sarah left it—I wonder if it has something to do with my universe trying to find a new balance. Trying to fill the dark corner left by Sarah's absence.

“There's someone I'd like you to meet sometime,” I say. “He kind of reminds me of Sarah. I think you'll like him.”

Asha looks over at me, frowning a little. “Who is it?”

“Just a friend.” The phrase feels strange on my lips. “He teaches meditation at the Buddhist center.”

“Oh.”

“I'm not dating him,” I say, thinking this will lend weight to his relevance in our lives.

“Where did you meet him?”

“Outside the coffee shop after work one day.”

The way he arrived in my life, I almost wonder if Sarah put him there to save me from myself, but I don't say this out loud. Crazy to think, but nothing anymore is what I used to think it was, so why not?

“I even went to the meditation center with him.” I want to make it clear to Asha that I'm not as predictable as I used to be, that maybe some part of me is worth believing in.

“To meditate?” I can tell she's trying not to sound too disbelieving.

“Yeah. It was kind of … cool, I guess. I should probably go more—I mean, I will go. If you ever want to go with me…”

“To meditate?” she says more carefully, as if talking to a crazy person who might stab her with a fork if she makes the wrong move.

“Yeah.”

“Okay.” Half her mouth curves into a smile, as if she finally accepts that I'm serious and not deranged. “Why not.”

I wonder where Krishna is, what he's doing, what he will say if I tell him about my suicide attempt.

No, not if.

When I tell him.

I will definitely tell him, not for sympathy, but for some sense of light. It will be like shining a light in the dark places, making that slithery, hidden part of myself retreat, maybe for good.

“I'm sorry we shut you out,” Asha says into the quiet.

“Who shut me out?”

“Me and Sarah. I mean, if we ever did, I'm sorry. I think sometimes we were just this whole world, the two of us, and you were left on the outside.”

I blink at this. Shouldn't I be the one apologizing? Hadn't I just been thinking about how I'd shut out Asha for all these years?

“I just … Sometimes I think you got kind of forgotten by everyone, and it wasn't fair, you know?”

This idea, what is and isn't fair, almost makes me laugh. Since when was anything fair, aside from cookies divided equally among kindergartners?

I open my mouth and say the first thing I can think of. “Sarah would have wanted us to forget about all that, don't you think? She would want us to get over it and try to, like, get along, right?”

“Yeah,” Asha whispers. “She'd like that.”

So I think that's what I will do. I will get over it, whatever
it
is, and I'll try to lead the life Sarah should have been alive to see.

Hope, a feeling I barely know, creeps up on tiny mouse feet.

Forty-Two

Asha

Big changes are afoot in the Kinsey household. Instead of us giving up our childhood home, Ravi has decided to move in with us. He says it's past time he started taking a more active role in our lives, and for once I believe he means it. Well, I believed it when he started moving his stuff in and sleeping in Lena's old bedroom as of last week. He's even talking to the owner of the house about us buying it after all these years of us paying rent and pretending we're above responsibilities like home ownership.

Lena has moved most of her stuff out and into Ron's house, where she is living now, and other than the awkwardness of the situation, I think this is an improvement.

No more fights with Lena, and Ravi has instituted family dinner nights. He also doesn't allow me to sleep at Sin's house, so all of a sudden I'm home at dinnertime and required to cook two nights a week. After much eye rolling from me and Rachel both, we are getting used to the routine. I am learning to cook, and I make the two things I now know how to make—pasta primavera and spaghetti carbonara. Ravi talks to us about our days, and because he's home all the time with his consulting work and isn't out dating anyone, there is no getting anything past him.

Rachel is still Rachel, but I think she is trying to be better. Three weeks since she OD'd, and she has been ridiculously nice to me, considering. Ravi bought her an old beater Honda that she can drive to and from work, since she's taken a job at a Buddhist meditation center, of all places. The car has gone a long way toward winning her over, and I think being around all those Buddhists is mellowing her out a bit.

School is out as of yesterday. I somehow made it to the end of the semester without failing any of my classes. I got straight courtesy D's, but whatever. I guess I'm grateful.

Lately, I'm starting to think the thing we should all be trying to be isn't happy or entertained or excited or whatever. It's grateful. For everything.

Summertime, and the living is easy.

Not exactly, but Sin has planned a beach day for us, and we are best friends again. Just like before.

Sort of.

We have just pulled Jess's van into a parking spot in front of the tennis courts in Bolinas, and Sin is rummaging around in the back gathering a picnic basket and blanket and stuff while I stare out at the sea. It no longer looks as ominous to me as it did a month ago. Now it's just the Pacific again, as dangerous and beautiful as it ever was.

Same as it ever was.

This is my first time here since visiting the spot where Sarah died, and I am beginning to feel a nagging sense of … something.

A little bit of truth trying to work its way into my consciousness.

“Hold this,” Sin says, snapping me back into the real world.

I turn my attention to him and he is handing me a large beach towel. I'm not sure we've ever gone anywhere so well equipped as we are today.

I take the towel and he shuts the van.

He is looking at me so strangely, I start to feel panic rising in my chest. He's going to tell me something awful.

“What?”

He frowns but says nothing, a line forming between his eyebrows that I've never noticed before.

“Nothing, just … Let's find a spot so we can put all this crap down.”

We trudge toward the beach access, down a concrete ramp with graffiti-covered walls, and out into the sand. To the left, the beach is dotted with couples and families who've staked out spaces, and after about fifty feet of walking south, we find a suitable spot and plop all the stuff down.

I struggle to spread out the blanket so we can sit on it, but the wind has other ideas. Finally Sin intervenes and puts the basket on one end so we can pin down the other corners with ourselves and a pair of shoes.

“Okay, that's about all I've got in me. I need a nap now.” I lie back on the blanket and cover my face with my arms, letting the sound of the crashing waves fill my head. For a few minutes, I think of nothing else.

Then Sin nudges me with his foot.

I peek at him from under my forearm. “What?”

He gives me that weird look again, like he has something to say.

It's been weeks now since I've given any thought to Tristan, I realize. He's just faded away, like a craving for some junk food I no longer like once I've had my fill. So I don't think Sin could possibly be mad at me about Tristan anymore.

“Let's walk,” Sin finally says.

Oh, God. Not the walk. Anything but the walk.

“Is something wrong?”

Instead of looking at me, he looks out at the horizon, that place where ocean meets sky. A ship, mysterious and unreachable in the distance, is the only object visible besides the sky and the ocean.

“Not exactly.” He takes my hand in his.

He pulls me forward, toward Bolinas Lagoon and the view of Stinson Beach that always makes me feel like I'm looking across at another reality. Bolinas is the hidden beach, the hippie beach, the grungy, graffiti-tagged, naked-surfing beach, while Stinson is the clean, perfect Marin County getaway for city people looking to escape the fog and have a day in the sun. The two are separated by a narrow channel of water and yet are worlds apart.

I let him lead me, and then I catch up so that we are walking side by side, hand in hand. This is not the first time we've held hands, but this time it feels different.

This time, I know my feelings for Sin aren't as simple as they are for any other friend.

My eyes well up with tears that are in no way due to the light wind buffeting us. Pampas grass juts out from the hillside, swaying and looking far prettier than the destructive invasive species it is. I sometimes wish I hadn't taken science classes so that I could just look at things and think they're pretty and that's it. Sort of how I feel about my relationship with Sin. I wish I could just not understand it. Just think it's great and that's it. No complications, no deeper veins of complicated emotion.

Up ahead, someone has built a sort of tepee out of driftwood bleached almost white from the sun. It is set back near the hillside, protected from the surf and the high tide. Sin leads me to it, and we crawl inside. The pieces of wood that form the walls leave gaps, but it is still a cozy little place with a view straight out to the sea from its doorway.

We sit cross-legged inside and say nothing for a minute.

Then Sin says, “Do you remember when we met?”

Of course I do. Freshman year, first day of school. “Ms. Godby's class,” I say. “You were sitting in the aisle across from me, and you told me you liked my shoes.”