The Orphan Sister (28 page)

“Okay,” I said, though I was thinking all sorts of other things, unkind things, jealous and hurtful things. “Okay,” I said again, because they meant well, and because I would always need them.

And that was the end of wallowing—if not the end of sorrow.

I
walked beside Odette in her wheelchair. I knew hospital rules stipulated that I couldn’t push the chair, but I wished I could—I wished I could be the one to roll her out of here, to rescue her from the constant lights and noises, the perpetual noon of the hospital. All these years they’d worked in places like this—white coats and bright fluorescent lights, the desks separating the nurses and support staff with their hidden novels and knitting from the sick, the patients, the people who didn’t carry their wallets or wear their jewelry, who were tagged by the wrist.

Of course, hospitals help people get better. That’s why they’d chosen them, for the science of it: figuring out the puzzles of the body, diagnosis. I’d always loved this part of having three doctors in the family: the discussions, the dinner-table games of Clue about patients and their symptoms and possibilities. But of course one sister was more concerned with the out-of-the-hospital things—quality of lives, immediate needs of pediatrics, and the other with the performances that were labor and delivery.

But Odette had been more than a simple theater, delivery and home. She’d actually been at risk, and despite the owls protecting her; the body itself was unpredictable, dramatic, difficult. And pain. She’d been in pain. And miracle—Adam himself. And now
they were going home, and I wanted to be a facilitator. I felt closer to my sister than I had in years, even though Olivia would match her soon in motherhood. I had been able to sit by Odette’s bed, where she was not a person of power, but a person in need of help and healing. Okay, so it wasn’t that simple, it wasn’t just that I liked my sisters better when they were sick—I didn’t. It was that she’d actually wanted me there. And now, we were off into the unknown of after.

Eli had come back to my house; we’d slept together for three nights, and on the third we just slept, no sex, hardly any talking, just lying in the same bed as if we’d been doing so for years. He was exhausted from a fourteen-hour day at the lab, and I had spent the day assembling a crib, setting up a mobile, putting together a changing table, which involved a power drill, measuring table, a lot of swearing under my breath, and Evan bringing me iced tea at dinnertime and asking whether I’d made dinner. I laughed. Evan laughed. I could tell this nanny gig would not be without challenges.

“Um, I’m not a cook,” I said, smiling as seriously as possible.

“Oh! I just thought . . .”

“No thinking allowed. Unless you’re very good at it.”

Evan frowned, but we ordered takeout from the Lebanese place and drove together in companionable quiet to pick it up in his perfect-skinned, midnight-blue BMW. I was ready for my sister to come back to take over her own life.

I didn’t know, though, what we expected to happen next. I was going away, though I hadn’t chosen where just yet, and Eli was planning, as far as I knew, on another postdoc year here at
Princeton. It was so good, so obvious, but I didn’t dare talk about the end of the summer for fear of ruining the now.

“Your chariot, madame,” I said to Odette. “And monsieur,” I said to Adam, helping my sister buckle him into his car seat for the first time. She was no more expert than I, and I felt a sense of propriety because I was going to care for this boy—he was going to be both my job and my nephew. As if he knew what I was thinking, Adam spat up a little white blob of partly-digested milk and gurgled. I cleaned him off with my sleeve and didn’t mind at all. This would be one satisfaction. Of course, I’d have to leave him, too.

“Are you Clementine?” asked a tall woman with curly, salt-and-pepper hair, familiar eyes, and freckles across her nose. Maybe she was an off-duty nurse; I knew her from somewhere.

“Yes?” I stood up from the car, readying to walk back to my own.

“I’m afraid your other sister needs you—um, Olivia? She’s just been admitted.”

“Is she okay? Olivia? Are you from maternity?”

“She’s in maternity, and she’s asking for you.”

“And we thought we were done with that place!” called Odette, unbuckling.

Evan put his hand on her soft, recently full lap. “You are coming home,” he said. “She has Clem, and your mother, and your father. You need to rest at home.”

“But I’m an expert,” said Odette.

“Yes, and your breasts are required. We can’t offer Adam a homecoming and then renege on our offer.”

“You kids work this out,” I said, following the tall woman,
noticing how her legs were longer than her torso. “I think Evan’s right, for the record.”

“She’s almost term?” said Odette, looking miserable.

“Go home,” I said, turning one more time to blow kisses. “Go home and you can visit later.”

I followed the woman back into the hospital, thinking she didn’t look like a patient, or a nurse, wondering how she knew who I was, and wondering, even more, if everything was all right.

“She’s okay, right?” I asked.

“She’s okay,” said the woman. Not-unlovely laugh lines bracketed her eyes. They were green and widely spaced. Her hair was rusty ringlets, though silver strands ran through them like mineral veins.

“You’re not a doctor here? A nurse?”
A baby thief?
I’d heard of those and felt protective of my new nephew.

“Well, now’s not really the time,” she said as we both took the stairs two at a time instead of waiting for the elevator I’d just ridden down with Odette and her family. Her family. Separate from my family. It was a little unnerving and very wonderful.

“Excuse me?”

“Your father thought we should meet now. My father, too.” She looked as though she might not be breathing, her face wax-smooth. “I know it’s kind of an awkward time, but I only have until tomorrow. I’m your half sister, Claudette. But go.” She patted my arm. “I’ll find you later.”

I wanted to ask a million questions. I also wanted, quite secretly, not to like her. I wanted to resent her. But Olivia was in labor. So I
told Claudette perhaps we could talk later and went to repeat a new version of the drama of four days ago. Olivia refused an epidural, which was shocking. I was sure she’d know she didn’t want quite so much pain. In the next room, a woman screamed out “Bastard!
Bastard!”
and we looked at each other and giggled. My mother fell asleep in a chair; Olivia was so quiet in her laboring.

“It hurts like hell,” she said calmly. She was sweating. And then, after only twenty minutes, she was ready to push.
Give me some of your pain.

“Ooops,” said the ob nurse, wiping off my sister’s behind. “Nothing to worry about.”

“You’d think,” gasped Olivia, crushing my hand on one side and Jason’s on the other, “that I wouldn’t be embarrassed.” She gasped and bore down hard.
I think I can do it
, she thought to me,
but thank you.

“Not too fast,” said the nurse.

“I can’t help—,” said Olivia, pushing again.

“Breathe, mama, breathe,” said the nurse.

“By a little involuntary bowel movement,” finished Olivia, laughing now. Her eyes were leaking tears. Her legs shook with effort, and her forehead belied the agony, but she was doing it, drugless, delivering her baby.

“They’re coming,” said the nurse. She hollered out the door, and the gynecologist flew in like a white bird. Under her lab coat, I noticed, she was wearing a fancy blue silk dress.

“Who?” I asked Jason.

“The babies,” he said.

“Excuse me? More than one baby? How is that possible? I thought you were having a girl.”

“We are. Two of them. As for possibilities—well, you can ask your sister about probability and fertility if you want.”

I looked at Olivia, her eyes closed, her head and neck lifted off the bed as she bore down. I looked up at the door, expecting my father to appear, as he liked to do, at the moment of truth, at the end of greatest effort, the way he appeared at my mother’s grand dinner parties for their friends—or his colleagues—fresh and ready to partake of other people’s efforts. To be master of all, the rooster strutting among chickens. Instead, standing outside was the half sister, Claudette. What did it mean, another sister in the world? Another nephew? Everything and nothing.

“Two babies?” I asked Jason.

“We just wanted to keep it to ourselves—they’ll be public interest soon enough. Olivia and Odette knew all about that.”

“Sure thing,” I said, raising my eyebrows.

“And you, too, of course.”

“Twins, not triplets?”

“Just two.” He looked smug for a second, then frowned. I didn’t always like Jason. “We weren’t sure they’d both survive. The pregnancy was vulnerable—”

“
Shut up,”
said Olivia, as the doctor gestured for Jason to come cut the cord.

“And here she comes, number two!” said the doctor. “Nice timing! I can still make my cousin’s wedding.”

“We aim to please,” said my sister, whose body started to shake.
Two, really two
, she thought to me.

“Just another push for the second placenta,” said the doctor. I noticed a fleck of blood had touched the neckline of her dress, and
it gave me a strange pleasure to see she wouldn’t depart untouched by the events at hand.

Two girls, lucky you.
Then I said it aloud. “Two girls.”

Olivia held one; Jason held the other.

“Jasmine,” said Jason.

“And Chloe,” said Olivia.
I like C names.

Will they hear each other?
Some twins did and some did not. Would they share a puppy and fight over the best dress? All new; all unwritten book. All my sister’s new kingdom, her new home.

My half sister was somewhere in the hospital. I wandered the halls of maternity looking for silvery-spun ringlets. I had no number, no information other than a sketchy memory of her walk and her name—Claudette. My hands were tired from my sister’s crushing grip as I dialed my father’s cell phone. Voice mail, of course. Gusts of warm air entered the lobby with patients—the hot breath of outside.

“So,” I asked his voice mail, “is this supposed to be a grand reunion? Or union, I guess?” I paused, but couldn’t come up with anything else to say.

I stopped back in to hold each of my nieces while Olivia sobbed with pleasure and relief, and Jason stared at the babies as if he thought they might disappear if he didn’t keep watching. I settled them back with their parents and chose that moment to exit at last.

Eli was chopping in my kitchen again. Mirepoix: onions, carrots, celery; precise, tiny cubes that looked like children’s toys. Children on my mind.

“Hi,” I said.

“I hear it’s a girl! And it’s a girl!” said Eli, looking up from his cutting board. His hands kept chopping.

“Why did you flirt with my sisters?” I asked, because it had been brewing since we slept together, before that—since Vermont after Cameron died. It came out hard and accusing. “Why do you flirt with so many women?” Because I realized all the way home I’d been imagining what it would be like to be the new mother, finished with that gruesome and impossible work, ready for new work at hand. I thought about what it would be like to be married, to know I was with one person and didn’t need to waste my time with people like poor, incompatible Ferdinand, what it would’ve been like—for the first time, I let the idea flicker in my mind like an old movie: I thought of Eli, if I’d married Eli, instead of Cameron.

“Excuse me? I’m chopping herbs, not flirting.” Eli scraped the mirepoix into a bowl and started on something else. The scent of cilantro spread from his board across the room, a big, green smear.

“I just wondered,” I said, softening my voice. The anger wasn’t meant for Eli, but for my father. “Sorry, I’m not mad. I just wondered why you flirted with my sisters—back when we were in Vermont, and you came up—after Cameron died—and why you flirt with women so much. I’m not asking you to change, Eli, I’m just wondering, now that we’ve started—whatever this is?” I wanted to be able to trust this man—not just as a friend. I wanted to be able to trust someone. I wanted to be able to trust myself.

“Shit!” yelled Eli. He held up his hand, the knuckle scraped by the knife. In all the years I’d known Eli, as long as I’d seen him chopping vegetables, stirring a roux, folding batter, flipping pan breads with his hands—I’d never seen him injured by cooking. There wasn’t much blood, but Eli crouched down on the floor as if he’d been stabbed.

“Is it that bad?”

“Of course not,” he said, his face pale.

“Let me see,” I said, since he was swaddling his hand with the other. “Not bad,” I diagnosed. “A scrape. It’ll stop bleeding soon.”

“I did it because of you. Because I’ve been in love with you forever, and I was insecure and jealous.” He said this with a wince, as if his hand really, really hurt. I couldn’t imagine it was that bad.

“You’re blaming me?”

“No, I’m blaming me. I was insecure and jealous.”