Are You Sitting Down? (26 page)

Instead,
I got up and moved over to the bed beside her.
I cradled her gently in my arms.
She took to my shoulder, pushing her face into my collar bone, and let go.
They were the tears she’d needed to cry for a long time while someone held her.

Clare

Recently, Ellen had let me
baby-sit
Robbie and Rachel for her.
I liked being called Aunt Clare.
I would always be older than them, someone they could look up to; and at last it felt like my own siblings had stopped looking down on me.
I would a
l
ways be their baby sister, but I hated being called the baby.
I rolled my eyes when Mom called me “baby girl.”
Her baby girl had a baby of her own now.

Keeping my niece and nephew helped me to realize I want
ed
to have at least one more child.
I wanted Jake to have a little brother or sister.
I’d do it right this time.
I’d get married and have a loving man by my side during the pregnancy.
We’d raise our kids together in a stable home, like Mom and Dad raised
me
.
Maybe he’d have a good job that could afford me to be a stay
-
at
-
home Mom.

I like
d
my independence for now.
But at the end of the day when it
wa
s just me and Jake going home to our tiny one be
d
room apartment above the old downtown drugstore, it still fel
t
like something
wa
s missing.
Even now, sitting here
o
n the floor beneath the tree, entertaining Robbie, Rachel, and Jake with Sebastian just fel
t
comforting.

“Do you ever want to have kids?”
I ask
ed
Sebastian.

“Who? Me?
I haven’t given it much thought.
I mean sure, I’d love to be a dad, but I don’t think I’m ready,” he said.

“I don’t think anyone is ever ready
to be a parent
.
There’s no way to be 100% prepared.
Look at me.”

“Yeah, but Jake was an accid
ent
—Sorry
!
I didn’t mean that.”

“It’s okay.
It’s not like I haven’t heard it before.”

“You’re a good mother, Sis.
I’m proud of you.”

“Thanks.”

Although Sebastian was not completely aware of how
I
got pregnant, he kn
e
w there was no Andre.
We
were only two years apart, closer in age than any of the kids, which meant Sebastian had graduated high school with the real Andre that
I
had a crush on.
Sebastian had never said anything, but
I
saw it in his eyes.
He may not have known the truth
—
no one did e
x
cept
me
—b
ut
I
knew he worried about
me
.

I
also knew something about Sebastian that he may or may not
have
know
n
.
Shelly, Lind’s roommate, had got a job at the diner where I worked as a waitress part time.
She started shor
t
ly after Lind died in Sebastian’s apartment.
After noticing my last name on the schedule, she asked me if I was related to S
e
bastian.
I lied and said no, but that I had read about him in the paper.
If she chose to talk bad about him, I’d set her up to get fired.
I thought any information she shared might be useful if Sebastian ended up in trouble.

It was all that she talked about for several shifts
when
we worked together.
I was the quiet type, so I let her spill her guts like the stupid ditsy blond ones love to do.
A lot of the regular patrons who she spoke to about it said nothing and just glared at her like she was an idiot.
They knew Sebastian was my brother.
I pretended not to hear her, but I was always liste
n
ing.

The diner was open 24 hours, but I never worked passed eight because of Jake’s sitter.
It was a slow night and my shift was about to end.
The tables were clean and prepped, and there wasn’t really anything to do so Shelly and I were just standing there until time to change shifts.
She asked me if I’d seen the paper that day.
I said no, knowing it was just her way of bringing up something about Lind or my brother.
Lind’s memorial service had been the day before.

“Did you get to see her
and say good-bye
?”
I asked.

“What do you mean?”

She looked at me
like I was bleeding out of my eyes.

“Was the memorial at the funeral home or at her pa
r
ent’s house?”
I asked, trying to explain myself.

“Oh!
No, it was just a get together at a friend’s house.
It’s what Lind would have wanted,” she said.

I somehow doubted a beer bash pool party at a friend’s house in honor of Lind counted as a memorial.

“That’s nice,” I said out of a lack of words, and my typical response to her pageant queen tone.

“Did you know they burned her?”
she asked.

“What?”

“Her parents had her cremated.”

“That’s nice.”

“You think so?”

“Sure, I want to be cremated too.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

“I wonder if they knew about the baby.”

“The baby?”
I asked, puzzled.

Shelly revealed to me that Lind was
about
eight
weeks
pre
g
nant
when she died
.
She was with Lind
when she
bought
a home pregnancy test.
Lind was not completely sure if the baby was Sebastian’s, but intended to tell him it was.
I had little symp
a
thy for a girl
, now dead,
who
had been
pregnant and still using illegal drugs.
Apparently, the words
drug use
and
pre
g
nancy
had not registered as a
bad combination
with Shelly
, or Lind
for that matter
.

Having
immediately
given up drugs, drinking, and smoking when I feared I was pregnant, I had certainly not been an angel but I did care enough about the well
-
being of my baby.
Find
ing
myself sitting in an abortion clinic contemplating the fate of a child
—

my child
—
sent me over the edge.
I need
ed
no further co
n
vincing that cleaning up my life
was the best
choice.

Somehow, I
convinced myself that the baby was not Sebastian’s, and
I
wanted to dismiss Shelly’s story as pure go
s
sip giving the turn of events.
For the most part, I chose not to tell Sebastian because the whole situation had been life chan
g
ing enough for him.
I had never met Lind, but
was pretty sure
she was a negative person.
I don’t know why members of the White family have a tendency to attract such people, and why the
result
is always horrific and
unbelievable
.
The outcome
a
l
ways
tends to be the secretive dirty laundry that curses
a
family and parades itself in the newspaper for the entire town to see.
Any therapist would be rich off our family alone.

“You still have the nightmares, don’t you?”
I asked Seba
s
tian.

“How did you know?”

He
was
surprised.

Everyone seem
ed
to forget that I was a user too.
By some means
,
me
having a baby wiped that from everyone’s memory.
I wish
ed
I could forget.

“I still have them too.”

“Lind is in every single one of
mine,” he said.

“It’s because no matter how sad and terrible, she’s r
e
sponsible for turning you around.
It’s like the last thing someone remembers in an accident before they lose consciou
s
ness.
It’s what haunts you the most.”