The Space Between Sisters (10 page)

O
n the Fourth of July, Win invited her friend Mary Jane Carpenter to spend the day at the cabin with her and Poppy. Partly, she did this because she hadn't seen that much of Mary Jane lately and she missed her. Mary Jane was a third grade teacher at the K–8 school in Butternut, and when Win had started teaching there two years ago, the two of them had bonded, almost immediately, over bad coffee and Girl Scout cookies in the teachers' lounge. But partly, she'd invited Mary Jane over because two weeks into Poppy's visit Win's patience with her had already begun to fray, and she was hoping that Mary Jane would serve as a buffer between them. And Mary Jane, who was direct, friendly, and, above all else, cheerful, had done just that. Not only had the two sisters gotten along, they'd had fun together. The three of them had spent the whole day—which was warm and sunny, with just the right amount of breeziness—down at the dock, reading magazines, munching on egg salad sandwiches, and floating in the big red-white-and-blue inner tubes Mary Jane had bought at a Fourth of July sale at the Butternut Variety Store.

Now, with the late afternoon sunlight making pleasant, watery
reflections on the knotted pine walls of her bedroom, Win was sitting on her bed, freshly showered, and wearing a cotton sundress that she hoped would be kind to her slightly sunburned back and shoulders.

“Do you think I have chipmunk cheeks?” Mary Jane asked, turning to her. She was standing in front of Win's dresser, studying herself, critically, in the mirror that hung above it. Looking in the mirror was what everyone did, eventually, if they spent enough time with Poppy, and the fact that Mary Jane, with her sturdy self-confidence, was not immune to this was strangely comforting to Win.

“No,” Win said, though Mary Jane
did,
in fact, have chipmunk cheeks. Still, they were
adorable
.
She
was adorable. And Win told her she was adorable.

Mary Jane smiled, a faintly preoccupied smile, and sat down,
bounced
down, really, on the bed beside Win. “I think I might be gay,” she announced without preamble.

“Well, you better tell that to Bret,” Win said. Bret was the man Mary Jane was going to marry in a month.

“No, I don't really think that,” Mary Jane said. “It's just that all day today I couldn't stop staring at your sister.”

“
Nobody
can stop staring at her,” Win said, suddenly irritable.

“Now they can stare at her at Birch Tree Bait,” Mary Jane pointed out.

“Right,” Win said, rolling her eyes. “Where she'll be taking bags of Cheetos out of boxes and placing them on shelves.”

“A job is a job,” Mary Jane said. “Plenty of people would be happy to have one like that.”

“I know.” Win sighed. “But is it wrong of me to want more for her?”

“No,” Mary Jane said, frowning slightly. “I know what I would be doing, though, if I were her. I'd be modeling. Honestly, Win, she looks better than the models in the magazines we were reading today. Should I . . . suggest it to her?”

“And you think you'd be the first person to ever do that?”

“Probably not.”

“Mary Jane, people have been suggesting that to her her
whole life
. And she's always said the same thing. She doesn't think she'd be good at it. Which is possible, I suppose. Apparently, there's more to modeling than just sitting there and looking beautiful.”

“It's true,” Mary Jane said. “I watched the first nine seasons of
America's Next Top Model
.”

“Still, don't you think it's strange that she's never even
tried
to do it before?” Win asked.

“Yeah, kind of,” Mary Jane said. “Especially with her natural beauty.” She paused. “It
is
natural, isn't it?”

“What do you mean?”

“Does she dye her hair?”

“Nope. That's hers. Roots to tips,” Win said of Poppy's gloriously blond hair.

“What about her eyes?”

“Those are hers, too,” Win joked, though she knew what Mary Jane meant. When they were in high school, there'd been a rumor circulating that Poppy's brilliant blue eyes came to her courtesy of tinted contact lenses. It was, alas, not true.

“What about . . . ?” Mary Jane asked, pointing down at the neckline of her own floral print sundress, where, even in a push-up bra, her breasts were still too small to create an impression of cleavage.

“Oh,
those
are definitely real,” Win said. “I mean, if Poppy can't even go to the trouble of wearing mascara, she's not about to
go to the trouble of getting breast implants.” Mary Jane nodded, thoughtfully, but Win was still preoccupied with the modeling question, and she told Mary Jane something about Poppy now that she'd never told anyone but Kyle before. “Do you want to know something weird?” she asked, and then she lowered her voice, even though she knew it wasn't necessary. She could still hear the water from Poppy's shower running.

“What?”

“I think the real reason Poppy's never tried modeling,” Win said, “is because she doesn't like having her picture taken. As in, dislikes it intensely.”

Mary Jane's eyes widened. “Why?”

“I don't know. I used to tease her about it, but I stopped. It only irritated her, and she wouldn't admit it, anyway.”

Mary Jane considered this. “Are there
any
pictures of her?”

“From childhood, yes. But later, starting from when we were teenagers, very few. And most of those were taken at my wedding.” Even those, Win remembered, hadn't come easily. She'd insisted that Poppy be in some of the group photos, and Poppy had submitted, though she'd submitted with the determined stoicism of someone who was about to have a root canal.

“She must have pictures of herself with boyfriends, though,” Mary Jane said. “I mean, not all of them. But the serious ones, right?”

“The
serious
ones? There haven't
been
any serious ones.”

“Okay,
that
really is weird,” Mary Jane said. “She's older than we are. And she's never had anyone special in her life?”

“I'm not sure what you mean by special,” Win said, in a whisper, because she could hear that Poppy's shower was over now. “She's had boyfriends before, of course, but it's like . . . it's like even before a relationship has really begun, she's already
looking for a way out of it. And then she's just”—she shrugged—“she's just moving on to someone else.” She paused then, worried about how that sounded. “I don't mean she sleeps around,” she clarified. “She doesn't. She doesn't have one-night stands, but she also doesn't have long-term relationships. It's a fear of intimacy, I think, of
both
kinds of intimacy. The emotional kind, and the other kind, too.” The truth, though, was she wasn't even sure if she was right about all of this or not. Sex was one thing she and Poppy never discussed. Well, no, that wasn't true. Win had discussed it with Poppy, especially when she was falling in love with Kyle. Poppy, though, had never returned her confidences. It was a subject about which she'd always been deliberately vague.

She could tell Mary Jane wanted to pursue this further, but Win decided to change the subject, and asked Mary Jane instead for an update on her wedding planning. And then, while Mary Jane discussed, in great detail, the relative merits of salmon versus halibut for one of the main course options, Win stopped paying attention and thought about her sister. No,
worried
about her sister. If she'd been from a normal family, a
functional
family, she could have let her parents worry about Poppy. But, as it was,
she
had to worry about Poppy,
and
worry about her parents, too. There wasn't a lot she could do for her mom and dad at this point, though. For better or for worse—mostly for worse—they were already following a path that neither one of them seemed capable of diverging from. Poppy was different. She
had
no path. She had no direction
.
Most people, Win thought, moved forwards, a few unlucky ones moved backwards, but Poppy, Poppy seemed to move sideways.

Had she always been like that? Win wondered, picking at a loose thread on the patchwork quilt on her bed. No, she hadn't. There'd been a time, in high school, when she'd been committed
to something. She'd been a majorette in their high school marching band and she'd loved it. She'd been obsessed with it, in fact, obsessed to the point where the hours she'd spent practicing twirling at home in their cramped bedroom had driven Win crazy. But Poppy hadn't just been twirling then, Win recalled. She'd been studying, too. Her grade point average had been high enough for her to apply to Penn State, which was famous for its marching band. And she'd had other interests, too, friends, and fashion, and drawing. But what had happened? Win tried to remember, but it was hard. She'd been so caught up in her own life then: school, babysitting, homework. At some point, though, Poppy had quit marching band, quit studying, quit . . . everything, it seemed, and had just started to drift. There was no other word for it. Except for a few instances—a short-lived relationship with a boyfriend everyone liked, a semester long stint at a community college—she'd been drifting ever since.

Poppy had changed jobs more times than Win could remember. And it wasn't that she got fired—she had a natural intelligence and picked things up quickly—it was that she got “bored” or “restless,” or decided it was “time to move on.” And the same thing happened with roommates and apartments. Win had lost track of all of the places Poppy had lived over the years, although she always stayed in the same general area of Minneapolis, the area they'd grown up in. Win had talked to her, tactfully, and then not so tactfully, over the years about all of these things. But Poppy, it seemed, was masterful at changing the subject, and equally masterful at avoiding any real introspection.

“Do you agree?” Mary Jane asked now, breaking into Win's thoughts.

“About what?”

“About the grilled asparagus?”

“Oh, definitely,” Win said, and she was saved from having to say any more about this when Poppy tapped, lightly, on her half-open door.

“Hey,” she said. She was wrapped in one towel, and her hair was wrapped in another one. “Can I borrow your mascara?” she asked Win.

“Since when do you wear mascara?”

“Since now.” Poppy shrugged. “Unless you'd rather I not—”

“Top drawer,” Win interrupted, pointing at her bureau.

Poppy opened it and rummaged around in it, oblivious to the fact that Win's makeup drawer's classification system was as precise as her utensil drawers'. Finally, though, she pulled out the tube of mascara, unscrewed the wand, and, leaning closer to the mirror, brushed it on her eyelashes.

Mary Jane looked meaningfully at Win.

“Are you sure you don't want to come with us, Win?” Poppy asked, standing back to study the effect.

“I'm sure.” She'd told Poppy and Mary Jane that she wouldn't be going with them tonight to the fairgrounds in Butternut for the annual Fourth of July picnic and fireworks. “I'm looking forward to a quiet night at home,” she reminded them.

“Okay,” Poppy said. She leaned closer to the mirror and applied more mascara to her lashes, and Win felt a flicker of irritation at the way she brushed casually against an old postcard from Kyle that Win had recently propped up on the dresser top.

“Sam's driving Cassie and the twins down to his ex-wife's this afternoon,” Poppy said nonchalantly, screwing the wand back into the tube, and putting the mascara back into the dresser drawer. “But he said he still might stop by the fairgrounds later.”

Win sat up straighter on the bed. “Poppy,
no,
” she said, shaking her head.

“No, what?” her sister asked, innocently.

Win ignored the question. “Don't even think about it. Really. I
like
Sam. He's a nice guy. Just . . . just
don't
.”

“Win, calm down. It's a harmless flirtation. That's all.”

“Well, it won't be harmless for him. Trust me.”

“God, you make it sound like I'm some black widow or something,” Poppy said, looking hurt.

“You're not. You just have a long history of skipping out on people.”
Not to mention jobs
. “And another thing, Pops,” Win said—using the nickname that, for some reason, she only used when she was feeling either affectionate or irritated with her sister—“this is a small town. Long after you've left here, I'll still have to live with all of these people.” She looked at Mary Jane, hoping she would back her up on this, but her friend obviously considered herself a spectator here, and she was looking with fascination, from one of them to the other, as if she were watching a tennis match.

“Look, I think you're blowing this out of proportion,” Poppy said. “I just like flirting with him, that's all. You're the one who told me that half the single teachers at your school have a crush on him.”

Mary Jane finally got involved now, nodding her head vigorously. “Actually, some of the
married
teachers have a crush on him, too,” she told Poppy.

“Okay,” Win said, throwing up her hands, because now she was exasperated with both of them. “Do what you want, Pops. For the record, though, if things go south with you and Sam, and I have to find someplace other than Birch Tree Bait to make my emergency Ben & Jerry's runs, I will never forgive you. Understood?”

“Understood,” Poppy said breezily.

Later, as Win said good-bye to the two of them on the cabin's front porch—Mary Jane and Poppy were driving to the fairgrounds, where they'd meet up with Bret and some of his friends—Poppy pulled Win aside and said, firmly, “I want you to promise me that you won't be reorganizing the linen closet or anything else like that tonight.”