The Good Sister (16 page)

In college, she and Elizabeth once snatched Simone out of school—where she never seemed to learn much anyway—and took her
up into the Laguna Mountains, where five inches of snow had fallen, the local equivalent of a blizzard, closing roads to all
but vehicles like Elizabeth’s truck. Simone had never seen snow and bounced on the bench seat between them, excited as a five-year-old
though she must have been eleven or twelve at the time. For a sled they used a hubcap Elizabeth had found somewhere. On the
downhill Simone squealed so long and loud, that whole winter they’d called her Piglet.

For her fourteenth birthday they took her to LA to see a production of
The King and I,
and afterward she made them buy her a DVD of the movie. And because she wanted to watch it all the time, she was motivated
to finally learn how to use the DVD player BJ and Ellen had bought her the year before. After
The King and I
she begged to see any play that had words and music and learned the scores to all of them. She couldn’t memorize
the times tables but she could sing every song from
Phantom of the Opera.

She was ten and Roxanne was in college when Ellen could no longer ignore Simone’s mental impairment. For a while she dragged
Simone to doctors and specialists of all kinds who said variations on the same thing. Simone had neurologically impaired balance
and coordination and a borderline mental disability. In other words, her intelligence was subnormal. Later they added manic-depressive
to their diagnoses.

School had been a challenge requiring special classes and tutors in most subjects, but in due course Simone learned to read
and write and add a column of figures. Teachers passed her from grade to grade despite the gaps in her learning. Ellen and
BJ wouldn’t have it any other way. As far as Roxanne knew, her sister had never read a book from beginning to end, although
she devoured style and entertainment magazines and had subscriptions to eight or ten of them. Recipes, directions of any kind,
confused her. If she couldn’t do something right away, she didn’t want to take the time to learn. No one had any idea what
she would do with her life until she met Johnny Duran.

Behind Roxanne the screen door slammed shut, and Ty called out from the tiny bedroom they had made into a joint office.

“Hey,” he said, and taking hold of her hands, he pulled
her down onto his lap for a kiss, surprising her. He was using the computer; pictures of windows were on the screen.

“What are you working on?”

“Fenestration,” he said.

“Fena-what?”

“Windows for the addition.”

This, like the surprising kiss, was a good sign. Since Chicago they had stopped talking about the remodeling project.

“See these?” He indicated the windows on the computer screen. “They open out, they’re vinyl, double-paned with blinds between
the panes. Expensive as hell but I think we ought to go for broke on this addition. If we don’t we’ll regret it.”

“You’re not mad at me anymore?”

“I’ve been a bastard, Rox, and I’m sorry, I really am. The last month’s been a bitch, and then the weekend… I gave you a hard
time, didn’t I?”

“You’ve hardly even spoken to me. For weeks.”
And when you did you were barely civil or alert.
“You were mad because I didn’t go to Chicago. If I’d been there you would have gotten the job.”

“That might be true, but it doesn’t really matter because, bottom line, they were right, I didn’t want it that much. I’ve
been going over the whole business ever since I got the call and then this weekend, it was like the last puzzle piece fell
into place.”

She realized that he was going to tell her something important, something wonderful that would make her happy, make them both
happy; and then she would have to ruin a perfect night of reconciliation, a night they both needed, by running back to Simone’s.

She needed to say it and get the worst over with. “I’ve been at Simone’s and I’ve got to go back and babysit. She fired the
nanny.”

She waited for him to be angry. Instead he reached his arms around her waist and pulled her close. Against her body his heart
beat and his chest rose and fell. They breathed the same air and she could not distinguish the beat of his heart from her
own. In that moment she understood that she had already made the break with Simone. It would take time to convince her sister
of this, but the hardest part was over. She wanted to tell him this but stopped herself, aware that there had already been
too much talk of Simone in their house. He was a scientist and wanted proof of change. Well, she would give it to him.

“You don’t mind that I’m going?” She pulled back and looked into his eyes.

“Of course I mind.”

“Then what…?”

“You have to do it your way, Rox. I’ve been trying to force you to make this break with Simone for me. Because it’s what I
want. And I finally figured out that you’ve got
to want independence for
yourself
as much as I want it for you.”

Now was not the time to applaud his insight.

He said, “After the call came from Chicago, I couldn’t understand why I basically didn’t care.”

“You barely spoke to me. You were furious.”

“I thought that too but this weekend I realized I never really wanted to leave Salk.”

“The experiment—”

“It was a mess, but it’ll work next time. I’ve got a great team and the science is good. The main thing is, I realized that
Chicago would have been a big mistake.”

“Then why did we go through all this?”

“That’s what I kept asking myself last night. And then—bam!—it hit me. I wanted Chicago because I thought it would get you
away from Simone.”

“Oh, Ty, I’ll do it on my own. We don’t have to leave our home.”

“But you have to go away tonight.”

She nodded. “I do.”

“Call them up. She fired the nanny and forgot to hire a babysitter. So? Let her figure out how to solve the problem. It’s
not exactly Schrödinger’s Cat. I think even your sister’s got the brain power to figure it out.”

“I’ve got to do this my way, Ty.”

“I guess I just said that, didn’t I.”

“Stay awake for me, okay?”

“Don’t take too long. We don’t have forever, Roxanne.”

At bedtime Valli and Victoria demanded a story but were asleep before Hansel and Gretel discovered the witch’s cottage. Olivia
fussed and cried, twisting her small body left to right, arching her back like a gymnast. Roxanne walked the floor with her
until her digestion settled down, and she could lie back, propped on a pillow sucking her binky until she fell asleep. Merell
was still awake when Roxanne closed the nursery door. She popped up out of bed, talking nonstop.

“Just let me show you this one thing, okay? It’s really special. Okay? I promise I’ll go to bed after.” She crossed her heart.
“Anyway it doesn’t matter when I go to bed. It’s Tuesday and there’s no school until next week and besides sometimes I stay
up until midnight.”

“Not when I’m here you don’t.”

“Just fifteen minutes?”

Roxanne pointed to the face of her watch, trying not to smile. “Fifteen minutes and that’s the limit.”

Merell ran through the house and into the garage. Johnny had driven his Porsche to the dinner that night, and the two cars
remaining were both Simone’s, a black Cayenne van parked beside a big Mercedes sedan, also black, with darkly tinted windows.
They looked like mob transportation.

As if she were conducting a tour for visitors, Merell
said, “Daddy bought the Cayenne so Mommy could take us to the beach and the zoo and stuff, but she’s too nervous.” She ran
across the garage to a far door with a window in it. “I bet you didn’t even know we have two garages. It only got finished
three weeks ago. We aren’t supposed to go in so Daddy keeps it locked.”

A set of keys hung on a hook by the door, just beyond Merell’s reach when she stood on tiptoe. “We can look through the window,
though. It’s okay to do that.” She clicked a light switch, illuminating the second garage. “But we gotta remember to turn
the lights off when we go back because did you know lights make heat? This garage has a controlled temperature so it never
gets really hot or really cold. The air-conditioning makes it always exactly sixty-five degrees.”

The first thing Roxanne noticed, looking through the twelve-inch square of window, was how clean the new garage was. There
were no stacks of plastic bins full of old clothes and Christmas ornaments. No skis or surfboards bridged the rafters; no
open shelves cluttered with tools lined the garage perimeter. Near the back wall the garage floor was carpeted—pale blue—but
most of the expanse appeared to be polished hardwood on which five vintage automobiles were parked, lined up with their headlights
facing the back wall, the overhead lights blindingly reflected in their mirror-finished bodies.

Merell went on, telling Roxanne some things she knew but some that she didn’t. “Before he got the new garage,
Daddy kept his cars in a warehouse. I bet you never saw them, did you? Daddy said it wasn’t any fun when they were across
town, and besides he didn’t trust the man who owned the warehouse. He left the doors open. There’s gonna be a special air
filter so the air’ll be really pure and if any dust gets in on accident, there’s special, super-soft rags to clean them with.”
Merell waited a second for her words to sink in. “Mommy likes the yellow one best. Daddy let her drive it once when he first
got it. He calls it the Yellow Bird. Mommy says she’d be the happiest woman in the world if he’d give it to her but he says
it’s too valuable and she’d probably wreck it.”

A V8 yellow Camaro from the sixties and beside it a bullet-shaped, cherry-red Studebaker, probably ten or fifteen years older.

“The red one’s my favorite ’cuz it looks like a rocket ship. Daddy says it’s almost as old as Gramma Ellen and it still has
the paint it got from the factory.”

Next to the Studebaker was a silver-blue cloth-top roadster from the twenties: long and low, its fenders like breaking waves.
Parked beside it, looking humble, a woody station wagon, and against the far wall a black sedan.

“It used to belong to a really bad criminal,” Merell said, lowering her voice. “There’s bullet holes in the side of it, and
Daddy says that makes it more valuable. Vintage cars are an investment.” She looked up at Roxanne through her shaggy bangs.
“Do you know what ‘investment’ is?”

“You tell me.”

“It’s kind of like a savings account that gets bigger even though you don’t put any more money in it. Daddy says you should
have a lot of different investments in case something happens to one of them.”

Roxanne thought about the Johnny Duran who took the time to teach his nine-year-old daughter about investment strategy. She
thought about the Johnny who led his children on a follow-the-leader conga line. And she thought of that afternoon’s Johnny,
the contemptuous man she’d slapped because her sister wouldn’t or couldn’t or didn’t know she had the option.

“Which is your favorite car, Merell?”

Merell looked at her strangely. Roxanne realized her mistake.

“Silly me. You told me that, didn’t you. It’s the Studebaker.” She mussed Merell’s hair. “You have to forgive me, Sugar Pie.
It’s been a long day.”

Merell nodded sagely. “You’re worried because Mommy and Daddy had a fight, but it’s okay. They always make up when Mommy says
she’s sorry. Sometimes Daddy says she’s crazy and before the police came, Gramma Ellen said she ought to be in a hospital.
If she goes to the hospital who will take care of us? Mommy fired Franny and Daddy has to work and Gramma doesn’t like us
very much.”

“She likes you fine. But she’s not very good at showing it.”

Merell tugged on her bangs, staring down at her feet.
“I saw on TV about these kids who had to go to a foster home. What if that happens to us?”

“It won’t happen, Merell. I promise it won’t.”

Roxanne held her niece close, feeling under her hands the girl’s vulnerable framework. As often happened when she worked with
children, Roxanne experienced a painful empathy, a sense of what it meant to be a child in the modern world. Though childhood
had been brutal and dangerous at the dawn of human life, at least back then most threats were simple and easily understood:
starvation, injury, disease. A child like Merell was threatened by these but more powerfully by a vast menu of horrific possibilities:
drugs, gangs, murder, rape, pandemics, nuclear annihilation, and climate change, details of which were readily and luridly
available on the Internet and television. Children had always been powerless, but never more than now when, despite Merell’s
intelligence, she possessed nothing with which to defend herself.

“You’ll never be sent to a foster home, Merell, I promise you that. You’re surrounded by people who love you. Nothing bad
will happen to you or your sisters.”

E
llen had arranged to meet Dennis Dwight at the bar in the Mariposa Hotel in downtown La Jolla. She wanted to get there early
and have a drink to settle her schoolgirl nerves.

Before she knew BJ, Ellen had been more of a drinker than she was now. BJ had been abstemious by nature. A man who liked a
martini or two before dinner and wine and beer in moderate amounts, he made it clear that drunken women disgusted him. Eager
to please, Ellen had fitted herself into his way of living as she had once fit into Dale’s. It was hard now to recall that
earlier incarnation of herself, the woman who had drunk enough to black out and done something so terrible she could never
forgive herself.

But tonight she needed a drink to settle her nerves. She imagined that BJ would tell her there was nothing wrong with her
nerves, but it was easy for a good-looking, successful man like him to say that. A sixty-year-old
woman on a first date: she needed her head examined. Or a Valium. Short of those options, a martini would do the job. Dating
had been much simpler when she was a kid and knew the rules. Or thought she did. But in the world of cyberdating—
senior
cyberdating—she didn’t know if there was a timetable of appropriate behavior and expectations, a list of things one must
not say or assume. She had actually made a special trip to the bookstore in search of such a guide; and when she couldn’t
find one she was too embarrassed to ask a salesperson for assistance.