The Orphan Sister (10 page)

“No,” said the woman. She held out her credit card, like a threat.
Take this and nothing else matters.

“No,” I said. “You didn’t look for her for three weeks.”

Pony barked.

“You’ll have to come back later.”

“I cannot accept this,” she spat. “You are not entitled to judge me.”

I started to feel not just annoyance, not just a mild flush of anger, but an explosive rage. The kind of rage I hadn’t felt since my father and I had fought about my switching out of premed, since I’d watched my mother pack my father’s suitcase for yet another trip, folding his shirts with a mechanical expertise, never questioning how much time he dedicated to his research, his work, his extracurriculars. This woman thought she could cavalierly lose and find her dog, leave the responsibility to the nanny and the volunteers at the shelter. She probably bought the dog just to show off—giant-breed owners either really loved dogs or were especially vain and thought of them as unusual accessories. I couldn’t see this woman, whose heels were thin enough to sew with, walking Pony. I couldn’t see her remembering to feed her dog since she clearly rarely ate herself. How dare she, how dare people expect other people to simply fuel their lives, to flock around them in adoration or be off with the will of a waved hand. I knew that feeling, of trying to live up to impossible expectations. If I wasn’t going to be a doctor, couldn’t I still be
enough?
How dare people not respect the other people—or animals—they’d brought into their lives?

“
Out,
” I said, and Pony yelped.

The woman’s face contorted, and she reached for her cell phone like a weapon.

“We’re back!” called the shelter manager.

I loosed Pony’s shelter lead. There were things I couldn’t control. Many, many things I couldn’t control.

At home, I threw down Pony’s lead, which I’d been gripping since I slammed my way out of the shelter. I wasn’t a rageful person, usually. Sometimes impulsive, and certainly I had moments of temper. Ella circled around me, wagging and sniffing, wanting reassurance that I wouldn’t forsake her for the dogs whose scents I’d conveyed home on my clothes. Ella stuck her nose on me, wet spots of claim.

Ferdinand had adored helping me walk my dogs. Maybe we shouldn’t have split up. I was thinking about people peeling off from me like faster runners. When we broke up, I thought I’d outrun Ferdinand, but now I wasn’t so sure. I remembered the last of Us, standing outside the college library. I was wishing I didn’t have to smell the cigarettes of the smokers, and that maybe it would be okay to be alone for a while.

Feet had yelled at me, “You are selfish, girl.” His Spanish accent made him half-appealing, half-menacing.

“Ferdinand,” I’d said, thinking
the bull.
“It’s not just me—you don’t trust me—I can’t trust you, you read my journal—”

“These are small things,” he said, kicking a wall as if he could punish cinder blocks. “It is you who is unwilling to ever wholly—” He paused, searching for the English. “Hold a hand.”

Maybe that was true, at least with Ferdinand.

My sisters held my hands just by being in the same room, and I only had two hands, so maybe what Ferdinand meant was just that I was full. But in fact I was empty—empty from losing Cameron, empty now at one side, Olivia swept off in the wave of my
father’s departure. If I worried only about losing someone, I might never notice who was standing with me.

I wasn’t just going to wait for information to fall upon me like a burning bush. I checked my e-mail. Two spams.

I looked at the Princeton website where my grade would be posted. Nothing.

I checked my e-mail. Nothing.

I picked up my phone and put it back down. Checked my cell phone. Nothing.

I checked my e-mail. Nothing.

Why was it my father could make everything too quiet and too loud all at once? I couldn’t stand the buzzing in my head, waiting to learn something, waiting for something to unspool.

“Want to hold my hand, Ella?” I asked, petting the dog, and she lifted her paw, always obliging. The dogs didn’t withhold love; none of them had a hand, but they’d offer what they had. I checked on Skinny, who was basking in a single sun spot in the corner of his cage.

On my way to the kitchen, anticipating the cocktail nuts beside the bar for some mindless worry-eating, I stopped and picked up the Chaucer I’d pilfered from Dad’s office. I remembered attending a student recital with my friend Lily sophomore year—there were free concerts almost every afternoon and evening at Oberlin, some spectacular, the future of classical music resounding in Kulas Recital Hall at the conservatory, voices that rang again and again with all the passion of history. A soprano portrayed the
Wife of Bath in
The Canterbury Tales;
she seemed wise and condescending, and, if I remembered correctly, fairly bawdy, singing about marriage and being the whip.

Looking for that part I’d heard sung, I flipped through the book. Wife of Bath.

Experience, though noon auctoritee
Were in this world, is right ynogh for me
To speke of wo that is in marriage . . .

I looked at his notes, Dad’s notes in the margins.
Experience tells us marriage is a woeful thing—this wife of Bath married five times! (Love stinks) What an appetite! She wants to know what’s wrong with that.
Dad in college—it seemed incongruous with the grown man. His handwriting was legible before he became a doctor—fancy that, it was a cultivated specific sort of inarticulateness.
I’m more important than you are, so you have to work to read even my notes.

I flipped forward through the tale, and a photo fell out of the book. It had those scalloped edges you never see anymore—a woman’s bridal portrait, painted the way larger portraits were retouched. Was this in the fifties or sixties? Who was this woman? Her eyes were dark, but painted in with a little green. Coiffed brown curls. Her dress was vast, but cinched at a tiny waist. She had real eyebrows—little fermata marks without the dots (I’d looked at a lot of music with Cameron), and she seemed joyful, full of promise, full of expectation. Her flowers were painted blue and white, the brushstrokes so oddly primitive and obvious. She had a distinctive nose. Probably hated it, I thought, but it made
her look strong. Bow-shaped lips. Cheeks brushed roundly pink. Nothing, once again, on the back of the photo. Was she someone Dad knew in college? Right after the Wife of Bath, a bride, how ironic. She looked a little ironic. She looked smart. I wanted to introduce myself.

My phone rang and I jumped up, knocking over my desk chair.

“Bakery?” said Eli.

“Excuse me?” I asked, though I knew he meant
Let’s meet at the Bent Spoon in town
. We were both done with classes, and he was getting ready to start his summer job. He had two days in between to swim at the university pool, cook for me, watch me fall apart over Dad—or not—no, I couldn’t—and probably find a new girlfriend, something he tended to do in moments of gap. We’d talked about a day trip to the shore, but now I felt I had to stay close to home.

“Any word from your wayward father?”

“No, I haven’t heard anything about my stupid father. I need to crack Olivia. I need my Chem grade.”

“Say what you want about him disappearing like this, but he’s not stupid.” Eli respected my father. The two of them talked about wine together, and Dad pretended to know about cooking to impress my friend. I didn’t like the two of them together, vaguely chummy—it made my skin itch. At least he’d resented Cameron outright.

“Bakery,” I said, slathering lotion on my dry, bleach-perfumed hands. Maybe I had just been waiting for Eli to call all along.

G
ripping an amazing pecan-and-glaze-encrusted bear claw, I grappled in my purse to check my phone again. Eli was late, and I was peeved, because if he hadn’t suggested the Bent Spoon, I’d still be checking my e-mail every few seconds and moping at home, which would’ve been satisfying, and much less embarrassing than gobbling a bear claw on my own, wondering whether I should add some artisanal ice cream à la mode. I smiled at the dreadlocks guy behind the counter—he was always there now, and I loved him for his vulnerability, his baby skin, even the small chapped patch under his lip. I wanted to offer him lip balm.

“Dad.” I was talking to his voice mail again. “It’s not fair. You’re not fair. This doesn’t make you mysterious and cool. It makes you a jerk. Call, Mom.” Maybe he forgot, though. Maybe he wasn’t a jerk, but ill.

Finally Eli arrived, flirting with a woman who might’ve been with him or might coincidentally have been walking into the Spoon.

“You’re totally hilarious!” the woman shrieked, patting Eli’s shoulder in a proprietary sort of way.

“And you’re lovely,” said Eli, giving her a long towel-dry of a look.
Disgusting
, I thought. The woman was lovely—she was lean
and taller than Eli, her eyes were shaped by perfect liner, and her skin was bronze, her hair down to her waist, supershiny, deep brown. She had gold eyeshadow, and it actually looked stunning. Her lips were lush and just lightly glossed. I almost couldn’t stand to look at her.

“This is my Clementine,” said Eli, sweeping his generous arm toward me. I swallowed a wad of bear claw and nodded.

“Oh, my darlink, oh, my darlink,” the woman sang, her accent vaguely Russian. I almost spat out my next sweet mouthful because I hadn’t had to endure such childishness since grade school.

“I’m Elainamartella,” said the supermodel.

“Pleased to meet you,” Eli said, bowing and kissing her hand. Elainamartella looked longingly at the food cases, then kissed Eli’s cheeks, waved at me as if erasing something, and left the premises without ingesting a single calorie.

“Did you get her number?” I spat at Eli.

“Of course,” said Eli, blushing.

“Elainamartella. She was probably born Roberta Blackhead or something.”

“Now, now,” said Eli.

“You’re the one who called, and then you brought
that
with you.”

“Meow. I just met her while I was waiting for you.”

“You were not waiting for me.” I gestured toward my bear claw. I felt, inexplicably, like crying. Eli always had someone new. He had a mysterious universal sex appeal, and he responded to most overtures. But he was still my best friend.

Eli had been there after Cameron—he led me around Oberlin
like a skittish whippet. I didn’t want to eat, but he took me to the café in the basement of the student union so I wouldn’t have to face the overwhelming mashed potatoes and bulk cereal of the dining hall.

There was a woman named Maya who worked at the café and made Adjective Sandwiches. You gave her an adjective—for your mood, for an idea, for the pure pleasure or pain of it—and she expounded in a sandwich. I remembered one time in particular—I wore sweatpants that hadn’t been washed for a week, and a T-shirt Cameron had lent me before break. It was just a plain blue T-shirt, washing-machine stress-holes worn at the neckline, and it fit me badly, gapping at the shoulders and clinging at the belly, but I couldn’t take it off.

“We’re getting you an Adjective Sandwich,” said Eli. “And you’re going to eat it.”

“Whatever,” I said. “I’m not hungry. You get one.”

“Fries, please,” Eli said to Maya, who was famous for “blustery” sandwiches, and “amnesiac.”

I hated food almost as much as I hated breathing.

“I’m going to get, um, let’s see—‘contemplative.’”

“Sure, that’s easy,” said Maya. She asked him a few questions about taste and texture, then started with wheat flatbread, then layered sautéed portabella mushrooms, roast beef, baby Swiss, and papaya chutney. She slid it into the oven to toast, then topped it with radish sprouts and olive oil, salt, and pepper—it was a beautiful choreography. “What are you getting, Clem?”

“I can’t,” I said.

“She’s going to eat. How about ‘fortitude’?”

“That’s a noun.”

“Okay.” Eli looked at me, as though he might read me the way my sisters did. He patted my head, which felt bruised.
Ow
, I thought, but no one could hear me.

“Okay,” Eli repeated. “How about ‘recuperative’?”

“You got it,” said Maya. She sliced Eli’s sandwich into wedges. I was almost hungry. Somehow I felt able to absorb the colors—the delicate green of the sprouts, the melancholy red-specked gold of the chutney.

She made me “recuperative”: ciabatta bread with red-pepper mayonnaise on the bottom and honey mustard on top. She filled it with roast turkey and white cheddar and put a hurtfully red, succulent tomato slice on top after she toasted the sandwich. I managed to eat the whole thing, the best food I’d had in my life, the only food I’d had in my life. Eli fed me half his “contemplative,” and though I wanted to feel guilty for eating, instead I was incrementally restored.

Eli helped me pack up at Oberlin, though he said he’d be miserable when I left. He was relentless in caring for me—I couldn’t lose him, though I was rude to him sometimes, and when I went to California, I took his friendship for granted and sometimes ignored him. I wasn’t mad at him—I was mad at Cameron for leaving me.