The Sister Season (7 page)

S
harp’s had been around forever. Julia remembered it from her childhood, back when the city was more of an energetic town and there were precious few restaurants to be had. Not that her family frequented restaurants anyway. This deep in the country, you ate the food from your own land. Vegetables, grown and canned, pickled, boiled into preserves, frozen. Cattle, butchered and stored in town in a smelly meat locker. Fish pulled from the pond behind the tree line. Even honey harvested from the white beehive boxes that lined the perimeter of the soy field.

Julia was married before she’d tasted her first commercially canned green bean, her first jar of store-bought jelly, her first carton of ice cream bought from a supermarket. It had taken a long time to get used to the texture of preserved foods, the taste of the can.

But on the few occasions that the family had gone out, it was almost always to Sharp’s. Robert had liked the fried okra there, and it was one vegetable they didn’t grow in their own garden, so he felt justified buying it. Of course, Robert felt justified doing most anything he wanted to do. It was only Elise and the girls whose wants he denied.

Stepping in through the front door, Julia noticed that little had changed since her childhood. The same dirty black-and-white tile held the same scuff marks, and the same jukebox sat dusty and mute in the corner. The place still smelled of old frying oil, and the chairs were still sticky against the backs of her arms.

She half expected to see her father, flannel sleeves rolled to the elbows, frowning and chewing methodically, holding a fork in one fist and a knife in the other, at one end of the table. Silent to everyone, and everyone wanting it that way, because when he spoke at the dinner table it was only because someone had tested his last nerve, and it was frightening and appetite-killing. She would never have thought it, but Sharp’s really did make her think of her father. In some ways, she may have felt his absence there even more than she did his absence at home.

She tried to drum up a feeling of mourning, but nothing would come, other than a remote sort of grief, a loss that she couldn’t quite feel because she’d spent so many years of her life pounding it away, pounding
him
away from her heart. You couldn’t miss something you never had. She supposed she had grieved him little by little, year by year, many years ago, and now, where he should have existed in her heart, there was simply a void.

Julia couldn’t be sure, but she was almost positive that she could remember a time, way back before her sisters were born, when Robert had occasionally smiled. When he hadn’t worn that angry vein in his forehead all the time. When her parents seemed flirty, happy. Could it have been the pressures of the family and the farm that made him who he was? Julia hated to think so, and she hated to have those fond memories, even foggily, because it was just so much easier to feel nothing but distance.

They trailed into the restaurant, one by one, and Julia pretended not to notice that the dinner crowd had seemed to stop and clam up, as if witnessing something spectacular. She wondered if the small-town gossip train still rolled through this area, if she and her sisters were speculated about, reviled. She wondered if her father ever came into Sharp’s alone and told stories of ungrateful children over sweaty glasses of stale beer. She wondered if what had happened at the Chuck Wagon was still legend to some folks. She didn’t know why, but she thought it likely.

The waitress led them to a room in the back. This, Julia didn’t remember, and the slightly modern decor of the add-on room was a physical reminder that time had apparently marched on, even at Sharp’s, while she’d been away.

“This work?” the waitress asked, and Julia nodded, appraising the long table, already set. The waitress methodically placed a menu at every place setting while the rest of the family filed in and began claiming seats. “Real sorry about your dad,” the waitress said on the way out, and again Julia just nodded. What was to be said? She was certain that the man the waitress was sorry to hear about couldn’t have been the man who’d bellowed in the barn, his fists of rage frightening and painful against the sides of her skull.

It took some uncomfortable shifting, but eventually everyone got seated. Nobody seemed to want to say much to anybody else, and it was obvious that Maya and Bradley were shielding themselves with their kids—Molly at Maya’s side and Will at Bradley’s. Though they, for some reason, looked no more comfortable sitting next to each other than they might have if they’d been sitting next to one of the sisters.

In the end, they were able to artfully arrange themselves so the empty seats would fall like moats between enemies, and before long those empty seats were taken by friends of Robert’s and Elise’s that the sisters didn’t recognize. The friends brought cards and breads wrapped in tinfoil and clucked their apologies to Elise and then fell into comfortable chitchat about the farm and bugs and rain.

Julia sat next to Eli, wishing she could fall into conversation with him, but the boy never talked, and she didn’t know what to say to get him to open up. Just like always.

The salads came, and went. The crackers stuck in Julia’s throat and the dressing tasted acidic as bile and she chugged water, but was overpowered by the sulfuric taste. She tried to shut out the lulled conversations around her.

Have you thought about what you’ll do with the farm?

Well, I intend to live on it. It’s been in my family for generations.

Oh, but, honey, how will you keep it up?

I haven’t figured that out just yet. Seems like I’ve been working this land forever. I sure could use a rest sometimes. But my grandfather Mick gave everything for that plot of land. Wouldn’t be right.

My Jeffrey could help you out, I suppose. I’m sure you could work out a deal of some sort.

Of course, of course.

I have a nephew, you know . . .

On and on it went, everyone expecting Elise to have all the answers. Hell, even Julia had expected her mom to have answers, and how could she possibly have them already? Good God, her husband had only been dead two days . . . When would she have had time to think through what she might do without him? Julia swallowed, and swallowed again as she fought her urge to turn to the neighbors and tell them to shut up, just shut up, and when the desire became too much, she turned to her son instead.

“So, what do you think of this place?” she asked. Her voice sounded high, strained, as if she were trying too hard. She wished she could make herself sound relaxed, in control, not like she was scared of her own kid.

Eli shrugged. “It’s small.”

“No, I mean the whole place. The farm. The town.”

“It’s a farm and a town.” Brushed off again.

The waitress came, and began setting entrées down in front of everyone. Julia could hear Molly griping that the macaroni and cheese was “the wrong color” and Maya trying to soothe her in weary, staccato sentences. She set a huge fried catfish in front of Eli, and a grilled chicken breast, perfectly swimming in greasy french fries, in front of her.

“Thank you,” she said to the waitress, and then pointed to Eli’s plate with her fork after the waitress had gone. “You want me to bone that for you?”

He frowned, his cheeks blooming high with red patches. “No. I got it.”

“Are you sure? You know how to bone a catfish? I can do it for you.”

“God, why do you always have to act like that, Mom? I’m not an infant.”

She knew that. Oh, boy, did she know that. The more she replayed palming that sack of pills in her kitchen, the more she knew that.
That’s right,
she wanted to say to him.
When you were an infant, you were so much easier. I could ball you up tight in a blanket and move you where I wanted you to be. I could say exactly what you did to your body all the time. I could pull you out of the way of danger any time I saw it. When you were a baby, you were all mine.

And I ruined you.

She took a few bites of her chicken, trying to will Tai’s words back into her mind—it was an idle threat, kids made them all the time, don’t take it so seriously—but she had a tough time swallowing past the lump in her throat. What if Tai was wrong? Why did she feel like he
was
wrong? Despite herself, she kept feeling tears collecting in the corners of her eyes and had to blink rapidly to keep them from falling over onto her cheeks. She also had to pretend she didn’t know they were there—every time she consciously acknowledged them, they got worse. She just wanted to go home. And not home to the farmhouse where all the ghosts lived, but home to Tai, and to an earlier time, when raising Eli was a no-brainer. Easy. As easy as raising an infant.

She felt a hand on her forearm, and looked up into the sagging eyes of the woman who sat next to her, a woman who’d introduced herself as Clem Hebert’s wife.

“I lost my daddy when I was nineteen,” she said around a wad of something green in her mouth. “So I understand how you’re feeling right now.”

Julia swallowed, forced a smile. “I’m just glad he didn’t suffer,” she said, because it seemed like the right thing to say. She had a list of those kinds of sayings:
It was the right time. I’m grateful I can be here for my mom. It is a trying time, of course
. And
I’m just glad he didn’t suffer
. She’d even practiced them in the shower back home in Kansas City before leaving. She wanted to sound genuine to other mourners. She wanted to make it sound like the loss of Robert Yancey was deeply felt, deeply mourned.
He was a good man
. That was another one she’d practiced. But she reserved it for last, in case she got desperate, because the truth was he wasn’t a good man. He was a difficult man. A mean man. A tempest of a man.

Clem Hebert’s wife leaned forward, her freckles looming large in Julia’s line of sight. “It’s okay to let those tears loose, honey,” she said, and Julia noticed Claire looking up and studying her from across the table.

By now the tears really were gone, the space filled by burning embarrassment. “I’m fine,” she whispered, and took another bite of chicken.

Clem Hebert’s wife’s attention was diverted by a conversation about taxes, and Julia was never so thankful for the government than she was at that moment. Once again, she turned to her son.

“Since we’re going to be here for a few days, what do you say we take some hikes into the fields tomorrow?”

He shrugged, but didn’t say no, which, sadly, Julia had to take as a hopeful sign.

“We can go out to the pond, though it’s probably too warm to do any skating.”

He said nothing, just continued to dig through the mushed-up mess that was his catfish. He was stroking bones into the flesh with his clumsiness, and it took all Julia had to keep from exasperatedly snatching it away from him and doing it right.

“I can show you the tree I fell out of and broke my arm when I was a kid.”

Still nothing.

Julia took a breath. “We can talk,” she said, and popped another piece of chicken into her mouth as nonchalantly as she could. As if talking was something they did regularly.

“I said I’d go with you, okay?” he answered, then pushed his plate away. “Why do you have to be so pathetic about it? I’m going to the bathroom.” He stood abruptly and strode through the restaurant so quickly that Julia barely had time to swallow her chicken.

“Eli,” she tried, but her voice felt impossibly loud, almost a yelp, coming out of her mouth, and she looked around nervously. All of the soothing Tai had given her had drained completely away, and she was once again a jangle of nerves. She wiped her mouth on her napkin and scooted away from the table. “Excuse me,” she said to nobody in particular, and followed the path Eli had taken, weaving past tables of locals, all fat and jovial in their plaid snap-front shirts and baseball caps.

Of course he’d already gone into the men’s room by the time she got there, so Julia paced outside the squeaky wooden door waiting for him, chewing on the side of her thumb to keep herself from imagining her son killing himself in a public restroom. Every time the door squeaked open and someone other than Eli walked out, she had to bite her tongue to keep from asking if the young man inside was okay.

Finally, after what seemed like an impossibly long time, during which Julia had begun to imagine that he’d not gone to the restroom at all but had gone outside and found a bridge to fling himself off of instead, Eli emerged through the door, wiping his hands on the back of his pants. His eyes grew alarmed and then narrowed.

“Mom, God, what are you doing?”

“I was worried. I was checking on you. Are you sick? Is everything okay?” She reached over to put a hand on his forehead, because this was what worried moms did, right? But he ducked away from her touch, his glare disgusted.

“Mom, seriously. I don’t want to bond. I don’t want to talk. I don’t want you cutting up my food and I don’t want you following me to the bathroom or feeling my forehead. I just want you to leave me alone. You should be really good at that. You’ve been doing it my whole life.”

Julia was stunned into motionless silence. She could do nothing but watch as her son turned and walked away from her, shaking his head as if she was despicable. Shaking his head just like her father had been known to do so many years ago.

So it really was about that. It was about her. She had ruined her son. She had caused her son to want to die, and then had failed to recognize it until it was almost too late.

Hell, what was she saying? He was so far away from her. She really was too late. Even if he lived . . . she’d lost him long ago.

Julia rushed into the ladies’ room and leaned over the sink. She turned on the crusted faucet for the noise. Her stomach rolled and rolled and she concentrated on the gushing water to keep from vomiting. She splashed a handful of water on her cheeks; then slowly, she looked up, met her own gaze in the mirror, only to find her father staring back at her.

You are one selfish shit,
Julia,
he was saying.
You know that? Demanding, selfish brat. I feel sorry for the man who marries you.