The Moment Before (2 page)

Irish twins are siblings born within a year of each other. Sabine was born in September; I came along the following August. We started kindergarten the same year. Me: sucking my thumb, wetting my pants, not knowing the alphabet. Her: already reading, bossing the boys around, teacher’s pet. Free day care, my mom joked, delighted that I made the cut-off, by days, so she could get her realtor’s license and start selling high-end homes.

Nobody would have mistaken us for real twins.

Sabine’s big blue eyes and reddish-blond hair, she took after Dad’s side. The Scottish Wilsons, robust in every way. Storytellers, sports-minded, excellent at business. Sabine was a chip-off-the-old-jock—a true daughter of John Wilson, the ex-minor-league pitcher with a major-league heart. Prone to tantrums and public displays of affection.

In third grade, for Halloween, Sabine dressed up as Marge Simpson, and she made the boy she referred to as her
boyfriend
dress up as Homer. She practiced the voice, and had a different skit worked out with every stop on their trick-or-treat tour. The poor little Homer boyfriend couldn’t keep up. He handed his pillowcase and the few fun-sized candies to Sabine after the fifth house. A trick-or-treater tendering his resignation, just like that, in the face of such pressure. She wore you out, if you were her friend. There was always some next thing bubbling up in her head.

Mom called her
my manic-panic girl
. Me?
Brady-brooder
.

I take after the Italian Panapentos. Dark, Sicilian, Catholic. Mom’s side of the family, they keep their cards close to the chest. Olive-skinned, raven-eyed, surly and superstitious. My Nona paints in heavy oils. Still lifes. A bowl of peaches in the foreground, and if you look real close, there’s a skull behind the table, looming on a shelf. A Where’s Waldo sort of hidden death object. My grandparents are the type of Catholics who still eat fish every Friday. There’s a dead Jesus and last year’s palm frond nailed above their pushed together twin beds.

In case you’re wondering, I was left back that kindergarten year, after my eye started twitching.

Don’t get me wrong. I loved my sister. I never, not once, wished her dead.

After I leave Leonard Field’s office, heading to art, crunching scraps of crepe paper ribbon left over from a locker that was recently “birthdayed,” it hits me. The entire building, the whole culture of this enormous suburban public high school, deflated when Sabine died. I’m not making this up. Her energy was so strong, the lunch ladies named a dish for her. Sa-beans. It was after the cheering squad won state last year, my sister as Captain. The lunch ladies dyed the refried beans Greenmeadow green in her honor. They strung a banner across the hot food line—a poster-sized photo of Sabine doing her winning high-splits pyramid stunt. It sounds almost pornographic; the idea of students lining up under her crotch for their burritos, but, my sister transcended that sort of typecasting. You got the feeling, looking at the stretched out cheerleader grin on her face, that she could lift the entire football team over the goalpost with that smile.

Her boyfriend, Nick Avery, he all but dropped out after the accident. Class president, captain of the lacrosse team, the only guy in the whole school who could have possibly had a chance with my sister. They were beyond King and Queen of Prom. So beyond Class Couple. They had a Facebook page called
Beenick
with, like, over 1200 followers. High school paparazzi tagging Brangelina-esque pictures to their wall. Now, a sort of boyfriend widower, he wears black clothes Johnny Cash style, his squinty eyes covered by Versaces. His locker, which I pass now, is still decorated with the plastic flowers of a gypsy grave. As if she died here while in the middle of a kiss, there’s a snapshot of them making out, toddler alphabet magnets spelling RIP holding the photo in place.

The overhead fluorescent panels twitch. I hear the shushing of my coat against my legs and then the echoes of that shush. Greenmeadow is shaped like a capital E. A long hallway and three arms. Two stories of that. Art is in a modular trailer outside, and in order to get to it between classes, you have to go way down the last arm of the E, then out the only open door, where the ex-cop usually stands to make sure nobody is cutting class, or no disturbed, revenge-seeking shooters are trying to sneak in. Today, he’s not at his station; the door is ajar and unguarded.

I realize I could easily skip, and nobody would be the wiser. For all Ms. Bowerman knows, I’m still in Field’s office. I could, if I wanted, slip out the door, and down to Starbucks. Or, I could go back home. Or, I could hop the bus and go to the zoo. It’s a gorgeous day. One of those surprisingly warm early spring days that makes you feel like you cheated the calendar. The sky a sea of solid blue. If I walked up to the water tower, winding above Greenmeadow, I would see the white upside-down sugar cone that is Mt. Hood. Maybe I should skip the rest of school, the assembly, tonight’s art show and go—where?

An angle of sun slices into my face when I push open the door and step outside. For a second it seems like that blinding light at the end of the tunnel near-death-experience people speak of. And then, the weird thing that’s been happening lately, the sense that Sabine is hovering over me like a spy plane. Watching me. Judging me.
Go to class Brady
.
Don’t be such a little fuckup
. The modular art building sits off to my right, the edge of campus to the left.

Sabine:
Art
.

Me:
Freedom
.

Sabine:
You owe this to me; to them
.

Me:
I owe nothing; you’re the
one who bailed
.

Sabine:
I’d trade places with you in a heartbeat
.

Me:
Fine. Let’s rewind the clock and I’ll take a header to the gym floor and you can wander around this hellhole instead
.

Sabine:
That’s so unfair
.

Me:
Nobody said death was fair
.

I’m walking, walking, walking away from the direction I should walk if I’m going to art, having this insane conversation, hearing my sister like she’s right next to me, my eyes focused down at the purple of my sneakers, and a shadow cuts my path. The long blade of a shadow.

“Shit,” I hear being murmured from between two cars in the student parking lot.

Keep walking
, says Sabine.
Don’t look over there
.

I would keep walking if I had truly committed to skipping out on the Cupworth and the let’s-pretend-art’s-important assembly. But I’m still in limbo with it all. A text message looking for a turned on phone. The
shit
, the voice of it, is older than a high school student mixed with too young for the real world. It’s Connor Christopher smoking a bowl, crouched between the cars like he’s in Afghanistan surveying land mines. Even in his bent-over posture, he can’t disguise those long legs, that broad chest. Gym-worked arms half-covered in a button-down shirt rolled up at the sleeves. He’s baked.

Down the parking lot, coming out of a pickup truck with a Venti-sized Starbucks in his hand, is that geezer-cop-turned-high-school nark. I have two choices: stay where I am, out in the open and get popped by his mortar round, or duck down quick, crouch down next to Connor, in the trenches.
Face the music
, says Sabine.

I crouch. Half-crawl between the cars, one finger to my lips. “Garrison,” I mouth. Connor nods. We’re on the same team, all of the sudden. Comrades in the war against the war against drugs.

Connor tucks his pipe into his pocket. Slip-slides his butt to the asphalt, lets out a sigh. He’s not looking at me.

The skunky weed smell in the air between us. Lots of other stuff in the air between us. I’m counting to a hundred in my head, thinking that the coast will be clear by then, and I can pop back up. Shuffle my ass to art after all.
Good plan
, counsels my dead sister.

I’m at seventy-eight in my head, and Connor says, “Just so you know, I wasn’t stoned that day.”

My head jerks around all
Exorcist
and I take in his man-sized frame. His sandy-blond hair and green eyes. I could draw him, this boy, and make him a god. I’m getting a prize for a sketch I did of a man a quarter the specimen. This healthy, OK, gorgeous, perfectly proportioned chunk of boy. Out of my mouth comes, “Fuck. Off.”

Then, I stand up like there’re springs in my knees, brush the gravelly bits from my trench coat and leggings, and, without looking back at the loser, I stride off to class.

Mom is breathtakingly fragile in her couture costume. At forty-five she can still pull off a Betsey Johnson and not look like a total cougar. Since Sabine died, she’s gotten even more beautiful. A sort of widow look reminiscent of photos I’ve seen of First Lady Jackie Kennedy. Oversized sunglasses, the occasional silk headscarf. Grieving chic, that Sonia Panapento Wilson. And Dad? He looks like shit. He barely tucks in his shirts anymore. Stains on his clothes, a half-shaven face. His last haircut was for the memorial service. Mom tells him he needs to pull it together for tonight. She’s saying this from the guest bathroom while spritzing product into her hair.

“Don’t start, Sonia,” he mutters. He’s pawing through the collection of sports jackets in the hall closet, and he finally selects one, clears his throat, and sighs. Then there’s the sound of hangers falling off the rod. He’s become clumsy; he’s probably drunk. From the living room chair, where I’m still snuggled under Nona’s black and gray afghan, I call out, “You don’t have to go, you know.”

Dad whips around, his jacket hanging loosely on his diminished frame, a couple of choices of tie in his hands. “Brady, I wouldn’t miss this for the world.”

It’s their first public appearance since Sabine’s memorial. I can smell the whiskey on Dad’s breath all the way in the next room. The dark circles under his eyes, his greasy cowlick, people will wonder if he was the model for my prize-winning charcoal of the homeless guy. I wish the two of us could just stay home. Nap under this warm blanket and let gorgeous Mom accept the prize on my behalf. Didn’t some movie star do that once at the Oscars?

“Are you dressed yet, Brady?” calls the movie star in our house, who just happens to also be a first-gen Italian Princess.

Sigh.

“Brady, you better get a move on,” chimes Dad, examining the face of his watch under his cuff.

The fuzzy afghan is my shawl as I shuffle to my room. Everything’s a mess. On my bed are the choices: the same leggings I wore earlier with a sixties house dress meant for someone with twenty pounds more boob, a faux-Victorian gown, all lace and shimmer and high neck. Neither of these options feels right. They expect me to dress all weirdly artsy, of course. I have to look the part. A pair of black skinny jeans with an electric blue sweater dress. An Oregon Trail pioneer apron over Pleather pants. Converse sneakers, boys’ boxers, a unitard. The trench coat lies in a heap of outwear against my dresser. Ski pants? Maybe a tutu under a hand-knit car coat? Feeling shivery, I pull the Nona blanket tighter around me.

“We’re leaving in ten,” calls Mom.

My cell is charging on my desk and it’s beeping every three seconds with texts. Well-wishers. Frenemies. BFFs. When I scroll down the list, it’s mostly Martha. Dear Martha. She wants to sit next to me tonight, hold my hand. I don’t read through them, but I feel her boosting spirit. I see the X’s and O’s that fill the screen. If love flies through the air but the recipient isn’t actually paying attention, does it count?

Want to wear one of my dresses
?

It takes me a minute to understand what’s going on with that offer. More than a minute, actually, for the idea to penetrate.

The red Juicy with the back zip; you’d look stunning in that.

The thought of the trespass. Actually crossing that threshold. Butterflies hatch and flutter in my gut. I’ve only set foot in Sabine’s room once since her death.

The one I wore to Freshman Fling. I think it’d be the perfect fit.

The happiness in her voice. That same voice that led her tribe to cheering victory.

The black shawl and I creep out of my room minutes before the honk of the horn will announce takeoff. Under the shawl, I slink along in my slippers, and now I’m in front of her room. My hand on the brass knob, the click and whoosh of the door against carpet. The faint smell of Dolce & Gabbana perfume.

Inside, it’s like when Dorothy leaves black-and-white Kansas and enters Technicolor Oz. I want to freeze the moment and take it all in. Evening light bathes Sabine’s perfectly made bed and brightens up another Nona creation—a quilt, in various shades of rose. Three sets of pillows are stacked neatly, emerging from the headboard. An American Girl cheerleader doll rests against the center pillow, grassy-green pom-poms wedged into its tiny plastic hands.

How can I even touch this? My sister’s life.

On her dresser, a collection of five-by-sevens. Sabine and I, little girls in matching Easter dresses. The Greenmeadow cheerleaders in a pile, Sabine doing her famous splits down in front. The junior year winter formal shot—Nick and Sabine all fancied up, about to board the rented limo. She still had braces back then, so her smile is closed-lipped, but just as big as always, it spreads to the edges of her face. Nick’s hair is gelled into ridges, like someone took a wide-tooth comb through wet cement. His head is shaped like an urn. I’ve never understood why everyone thinks he’s hot.

In front of the five-by-sevens there’s a smaller photo of Sabine, Martha and I at our beach house one long-ago summer. Martha is French-braiding one side of my hair and Sabine is doing the other. There’s a caption on the photo in one of those Photoshoppy scripts, and it reads:
The Annual Brady Braiding Contest.
Funny, I’d forgotten all about that, the way Sabine and Martha would make anything into a competition, and most of the time, there I was, caught in the middle.

Sabine’s iPhone lays there, a paperweight on top of bereavement cards my parents still can’t bear to read. Her greeting,
This is Sabine. Give me a “G” and have a great day
. No promise of getting back to the caller. No instructions. Just an order. You
must
have a great day. I listen to her tell me that at least once every day. The sound of her voice making the blood from my heart mix with the blood in my belly. Not butterflies, exactly. Maybe moths.

“Brady.” from Mom, clackity-clacking against the slate floor foyer.

Thanks to Martha Hornbuckle and her post-mortem helper-bee activities, Sabine’s closet is color-coded. The scarlet dress she wants me to wear tonight is grouped with a bunch of fiery frocks. Everything from pale red to the deep purple of a fresh bruise. It’s there in the middle, encased in dry-cleaning plastic, this $300 dress she wore only once. I peel off the shawl, my sweats. I’m almost naked now, in my dead sister’s bedroom.

I look down at my flat chest. At the Freshman Fling dress. My boobs are ping pong balls. There’s no way.

Maybe there’s something in Sabine’s underwear drawer. Do I dare to? Closing my eyes, holding my breath, I yank open Sabine’s top dresser drawer. Her Victoria’s Secret lingerie. Piles of pink panties. My hand grazes the silky underthings, sifts through them, and then lands on one of her outgrown Wonderbras. The add-a-size pushup type. I adjust the straps—the fancy ribbon woven through it reminds me of the hair ribbons woven into our braids in that photograph of us. After I fasten the hooks, looking Sabine’s full-length mirror I don’t even recognize my boobs. Voila, magic, I’ve got a mini rack. It’s like someone airbrushed them on.

The front door opens and closes. In thirty seconds, I’ll hear the Ford Fusion purring in the driveway. Quickly, off goes the dry cleaning bag and on goes the dress. There in the mirror, reflected back, is someone I don’t recognize.

Sabine says,
Holy cow, Midget
.

Yep. Not bad. But the green hair, the heavy eyeliner, I need to soften my look. Again I pillage Sabine’s storehouse of girl things. Eye makeup remover, Maybelline Volum’ Express, some foundation to cover a zit. Lip gloss.

I spray a whiff of Dolce & Gabbana and slap at the air. Just the smell of her. It’s almost too much. The horn honks.

I grab Sabine’s hairbrush, slip on a pair of her platform sandals—which are the only thing of Sabine’s a bit too small for me—and with a fistful of my sister’s cosmetics, I’m out the door.

In the car, Dad and Mom are tense. They don’t look up or sideways when I scurry into the backseat; they don’t have a clue what I’m wearing. I could still be in my sweats for all they know. Lately, when they’re in the same place, my parents go robot. Their bodies get paralyzed around each other, eyes looking to the next thing. Dad mechanically swivels his head as we reverse. Sabine’s sad Volvo watches us back out the drive.

Mom says, “Are you OK to drive?”

The smell of whiskey. The smell of perfume. The smell of tension.

Dad says, “I’m fine.”

Mom says, “How long will this presentation go, do you think?”

Tonight’s ceremony is a fundraiser. Our art will be on display with price tags and little red stickers when a piece gets sold, just like in an actual gallery. Only, it isn’t a gallery. It’s the long spine of the “E” with balsawood and canvas screens set up to hide the lockers. Fake walls for the student art. Ms. Bowerman expects my homeless guy will fetch enough money for new sable brushes.

Like Mom, I wish the whole thing could be over lickety-split, but hearing her impatience, it feels like an ice cube shoved down my Wonderbra. My heart shrinks from the coldness.

“Few hours, tops,” I say, meanly.

“Have a hot date or something,” chuckles Dad, conjuring some of that ex-jock cockiness he’s usually known for.

Mom gives him the stinkeye, which I can see in the rearview.

“You can just drop me off,” I say. “No biggie.”

“Oh, Brady, Sweetie,” says Mom, lurching her gaze toward me, “I’m so pr— what the hell? Is that Sabine’s dress?”

The gloss wand between my thumb and fingers, gliding across my bottom lip, turns into a poison pen. Mom’s eyes go pinprick and she lasers me up, down, noting all my sister’s items in my hand, on my lap.

“Yeah,” I tell her. “It is.”

“What in the world?” Mom says.

Dad’s eyes are on the road, then in the rearview, on the road again. I see his corneas go glassy in the mirror.

“I think she wants me to wear it,” I murmur.

Mom clears some phlegm from her throat. “You should have asked.”

“Asked? Who? You?”

“Your father and I…” she starts, then switches gears. “It is ina
pprop
riate, Brady.”

I slide the gloss applicator back into its tube and look down at my newly formed cleavage, and mutter, “But, somehow it’s fine for you to dress like her.”

“That’s enough, Little Bird,” chimes Dad.

Robots united.

“If we weren’t already running late, I’d have us turn back, so you could change into your own clothes.” Mom is shaking. The hair on her arms lifted up all static electricity-ish.

Don’t cry, Midge. Hang tough
.

“I just don’t know what you were thinking is all. How many of Sabine’s things have you swooped in and grabbed? Like some v…”

Mom cut herself off before saying
vulture
.

“Sonia, let it go,” whisper-talks Dad. “This is Brady’s night.”

“It’s just so…insensitive.”

Dad changes the subject. “I was thinking we might go the beach house for this weekend. You know, for Easter? Get away from rainy old Portland?”

Given that the day has been record-breaking lovely for mid-April, I find this statement funny. But not quite funny ha-ha. “The beach, yeah. That would be good.”

“There’s no way I can get away now. I’ve got three listings. An open house coming up.”

“Sonia. It’s Easter for Chrissake. I think we need to get away as a family.”

Clearly, Dad’s been thinking about this for a while.

“So, tonight is spring-all-sorts-of-things-on-Sonia night, eh? What next, John, you want to adopt a Chinese baby?” My mother’s cruel asides are famous for the way they bump up against comical. Her tongue is quick—something she passed down to me. Our therapist says that’s at the heart of our trouble with each other. We’re too alike.

Dad pulls into the Greenmeadow parking lot, and we come to a stop near a patch of lawn adjoining the football stadium, a big G of freshly planted marigolds glows at us as we exit the car. It’s as warm as summer out, but breezy, and Sabine’s dress blows up a little, the hem grazing my thighs. The tickle of this feels like a secret I’m sharing with my sister, like back when we were little girls sneaking into each other’s rooms at night to munch on candy under the blankets.

Our school, which sits two miles east of the Portland boundary with high-tech Washington County, is known for those things every school wants to be known for: top test scores, winning sports teams and low dropout numbers. It’s also known as the school that had two suicides and an accidental death this year. Greenmeadow is ripe for one of those
60 Minutes
exposés where they uncover all the student stress and drug use. If my parents go forward with a lawsuit, it’ll take more than a Thursday night art auction to refill the Tupperware containers with studio clay.

Mom is preoccupied with the little rectangle of a phone in her hand. I can’t help it, but she’s driving me crazy, so I say, “Mom, will you just relax?”

She stops in her tracks, yoga-breathes a sigh out her nose. Dad and me and her, our diminished family in a cluster on the walkway, people have to step around us as we stand still and gaze at the weeping cherry blossoms on a nearby tree. “This isn’t easy for us, Little Bird,” says Dad, still focused on the tender, graceful branches. “We know how important, how huge, really, this honor is. Our daughter, the artist.”

“Thanks,” I manage, in robot-tone.

The building in front of us, it’s like going to a wrecking yard and witnessing the scrap metal of a fatal car crash. They were there, in the bleachers. One second their oldest daughter was twirling on the tops of fingertips, and the next, down on the polished gym floor, her skin the only thing holding her head on. Ribbons of red ooze out her ear, her nose, her mouth.

I was there, too. Hanging out with Desiree and Joni and Madison, all of us in a cluster at the far end of the bleachers—mad, because there’s this pressure to join in with rah-rah school spirit. We sat there, the group of us, sketching, journaling, doodling. Our pink and electric blue and emerald green hair. Our henna tattoos. Resentful, eye-rolling. Nobody knew what was about to happen. Especially me.