Then I Met My Sister (13 page)

Twenty-Four

Mom is weeding her flower bed when I pull into the driveway.

She waves as I get out of the car. I walk over and sit on the grass, careful to avoid her impatiens. She glances up at me and looks startled.

“Hi!” she says, then peers anxiously at my white shorts. “You sure you want to be sitting in the grass? You’ll stain your clothes.”

I shrug. “I just got back from sitting in the grass at the park. Guess I’m stain-proof now.”

“Who were you at the park with?”

“Gibs.”

“Mmmmmm. Oh, incidentally, I talked to his mother about the beach trip. She seems like a lovely person.”

“Yeah, his folks are great.”

Mom looks at me closer. “And Gibs? Do you think Gibs is great, too?”

“We’re just friends.”

“Mmmmmmm.”

I study Mom’s face as she resumes clawing into the crumbly black soil. This is when she looks prettiest to me: no makeup, even a little dirt smeared onto her cheeks, her fine wrinkles as distinct in the late-afternoon sunshine as the etched lines on a relief map. She hates her wrinkles, her pale lashes, the dark shadows under her eyes; she spends forever in front of the mirror each morning camouflaging her face with makeup. But this is how I like her best.

She glances at me again and seems to read her mind, putting a hand self-consciously against her cheek.

“I look like something the cat dragged in,” she says.

“Mom, what happened to the friends you had when Shannon was alive?” I ask.

She resumes digging in the dirt. It’s the first time she hasn’t acted startled when I’ve mentioned Shannon’s name.

“What friends?” she asks.

“Your friends. People you sang with in the choir at church. Your book club friends. The mothers of Shannon’s friends.”

She wrings a stubborn weed from the earth. “People come and go in life, Summer,” she says without looking at me.

“So where did they go?”

She sighs and looks at me evenly. “Any particular friends you’re interested in?”

I shrug. “I just think it’s weird that the mom I know is so different from the mom Shannon knew. I mean … your personality’s the same, I guess, and God, your control-freak vibe is still going strong …”

Mom raises an eyebrow, but smiles. “
Gosh
, Summer,” she chides me. “Say
gosh
, not
God
.”

“… but friends don’t just drop off the face of the earth,” I continue. “Why’d you stop hanging with them?”

Mom wipes the back of her hand across her forehead, then sits next to me. “We never exactly
hung
,” she says, her hands draped lazily across her knees.

I laugh at her, and she laughs back. “No, you’re definitely not the type that hangs.” I pluck a grass blade and run it between my fingers. “Do people dump you when your kid dies?” I ask impulsively.

I’m hoping for another laugh, but no such luck. Mom stares at her impatiens. “Actually, yes,” she says in a faraway voice.

I inch closer to her. “That totally sucks,” I say softly.

Mom shrugs. “It wasn’t just them. It was me, too.” She’s still gazing at the flowers. “Everything changed after Shannon died. I wasn’t the same person. I didn’t care about books anymore, or tennis, or choir. And my friends? If our kids were the only thing we really had in common, well, where did that leave us?”

My jaw sets. “How could they dump you when you needed them most?” I ask in a steely voice.

Mom waves her hand absently. “They called, honey. They brought food. They invited me to movies … well, those first few weeks anyway. But they didn’t know what to say, and I didn’t know what I wanted them to say, and nothing would ever be the same again, and we all knew it, so …”

“You must have felt so alone,” I say, a stiff breeze buffeting our faces.

“I had your father,” she reminds me. “And Aunt Nicole, and the rest of our family.” Her face brightens. “Then
you.
I got pregnant almost right away, you know, just weeks after she died.”

Mom looks at me squarely. “You saved my life.”

A chill runs up my spine. I’ve heard this all my life, usually from other people:
You gave your mother a reason to go on,
they say, or
I don’t think she could have made it without you.
No pressure there, right?

I squeeze the blade of grass and green moisture stains my fingers. “It freaks me out a little when you say that, Mom.”

Anger flashes across Mom’s face.

“I mean, I’m glad you were happy to get pregnant again,” I clarify, trying to sound casual. “It’s just …”
It’s just friggin’ hard to be born with a job.

“You don’t have to explain,” Mom says, her voice steely.

“Don’t get mad, Mom,” I say. “We should be able to talk about things.”

“We’re talking,” she snaps.

I stand up abruptly and put my hands on my hips. “I hate it when you do this—shutting me out every time I try to open up to you.”

Mom turns defiantly, returning to her hands and knees, returning to her weeds.

“By all means, Summer, open up and let me know it annoys you to be told you make me happy,” she mutters to the dirt.

My stomach tightens and my eyes shimmer with tears. God. I never cry in front of my mother. “I’m not goddamn annoyed!”

Mom turns and stares at me sharply. “Don’t curse at me, young lady.”

I open my mouth to respond, but Mom has resumed digging in the dirt, clawing her fingers into the soil, yanking up weeds and tossing them aside without giving them another glance. Each weed will be purged methodically, systematically, impassively, until her garden is perfect.

And she is finished talking to me.

“I hate her!”

I bury my face in my hands. I was a ball of hot, indignant rage as I drove to Gibs’ house, but now that I’m sitting with him in his den, my fury has melted into tears. They stream down my cheeks.

“Your mom?” Gibs surmises.

I rub my face with my fists. “She hasn’t changed a bit! Poor Shannon—she went through all that shit for nothing. Mom didn’t learn anything.”

Gibs runs his fingers through his hair and reaches out to touch me, but drops his hand before it reaches me. “What was she supposed to have learned?” he asks softly.

“How to quit being a control freak! A prissy, perfectionist, cold, callous control freak! It ruined my sister. Dad ruined her, too, good ol’ don’t-make-waves Dad, letting Mom call all the shots.
‘Yes, dear,’ ‘Okay, dear,’ ‘Whatever, dear,’
sleepwalking through life except for his occasional fling with the church secretary …”

Gibs’ eyes fall.

“… and Shannon got it! She totally got it. She was too real to go along with the program once she understood what phonies they were, but she loved them anyway, you know? She loved them and wanted them to be better, wanted our
family
to be better.”

My eyes crinkle and unleash a fresh wave of tears.

“That’s what your mom wants, too,” Gibs says, intertwining his fingers.

“No!” My face turns jagged. “Mom doesn’t want
better.
She wants
perfect
. But not real perfection, just her phony Christmas-card version of perfection.”

“She wanted Shannon to be better,” Gibs counters. “She was obviously worried about her. She tried to help her. I mean, she had her in counseling …”

“No, no, no!” I shake my head roughly. “She just wanted Shannon back to the way she used to be. She didn’t want Shannon to understand her feelings, she wanted her to
deny
her feelings, to stop growing, to stop understanding, to stop seeing the family for what it really was. She wanted her perfect daughter back, but Shannon couldn’t fake it anymore. So she died feeling like a failure, just like I’ve felt every day of my life. And
Mom
is the failure, not us! Damn Mom. Damn her.”

My sobs are whimpers now, and without thinking about it, I lay my head in Gibs’ lap, my body curled into a ball. I feel his hand haltingly touch my hair. A few moments pass. I don’t know exactly what I’m expecting Gibs to say, but God, I feel like I see things so clearly now, so I assume he’s getting it.

“You say your mom’s standards are too high,” Gibs says, and I can already tell by his professorish tone that he’s not getting it at all. “Well, your standards for
her
seem awfully high, if you ask me.”

I stiffen. “What do you mean?”

“Jesus, Summer,” he says. “Some mothers beat the crap out of their kids, or lock them in dark closets, or don’t give them enough to eat, you know? A lot of kids really have it rough. Your mom … sure, she has her issues, but she’s a nice lady who’s trying her best. She doesn’t get the whole control-freak thing. It’s just who she is. I mean, was it a crime for her to want Shannon to make A’s in school or prefer that she stop sneaking out of the house to smoke pot with a loser boyfriend? You make Shannon sound like she was Gandhi, for Christ’s sake.”

I sit up, turn away from Gibs, and press my knees against my chest, staring out the window. It’s begun raining, one of those schizoid sunshine-rainstorms. “You don’t understand,” I say coldly.

“I
do
,” Gibs says. He takes my arms and tries to prod me in his direction, but I don’t budge. The rain is falling harder now.

He sighs, tosses his head backward, and squeezes the bridge of his nose. “Yeah, your
mom’s
the ice princess,” he mutters wearily.

I gasp a little, then stand up and face him. “I am
so
out of here.”

“See?” he says, flinging his palms in my direction. “You expect your mom to see things in herself that
you
can’t see in
your
self. Not so easy, huh? So why don’t you give her a friggin’ break, Summer? She’s not the only one who has a hard time seeing things from anybody’s perspective other than her own.”

I’m frozen in place. I want to leave, but I’ll be damned if I do anything to prove his point, whatever his point might be. So I just keep standing there, my jaw set and my eyes narrowed to slits. My gaze bores into his and I expect him to look away, but he doesn’t. He just keeps looking back, but his eyes are soft.

“What am I not seeing?” I finally ask, trying to keep my voice steady.

He takes my hand and holds it loosely. “That you’re a lot like your mom. And that’s not such a bad thing.”

Twenty-Five

Gibs thinks I’m too hard on Mom.”

Aunt Nicole’s eyes stay focused on the bright-yellow button poms she’s arranging in a vase. The screen door squeaks lazily. The first customer of the week has just come and gone, a fistful of peonies in her hand, and the flower shop is sighing and creaking in her wake as Aunt Nic resumes her flower-arranging.

“I’m just frustrated she hasn’t changed,” I continue, lightly fingering one of the velvety blossoms.

Aunt Nic tucks a sprig of baby’s breath into the vase, then faces me, resting a hand on her hip. “How do you want her to change, honey?”

I surprise myself by feeling tears spring to my eyes. Aunt Nic’s eyebrows weave anxiously and she guides me to the loveseat by the work table.

“It’s weird,” I say as we sit down. “I’ve always assumed
I
was the reason Mom was so uptight … because I was such a screw-up. I figured I made her a perfectionist because I was so unperfect.”

“Im
perfect,” Aunt Nic says, winking at me playfully.

“Right. It’s like, if you’re allergic to peanuts, you may never even know it until you eat one. No peanuts, no problem.” I search her face.

“I’m the peanut,” I explain.

She smiles patiently. “I get it, sweetie.”

“So I figured, Shannon was perfect, which made Mom perfectly happy. But now I see that Shannon wasn’t perfect, and it made her crazy trying to pretend she was.” I pick up a throw pillow and squeeze it against my chest. “Shannon kinda took the pressure off me, you know? I mean, I’ve known my whole life I could never be as great as her, so I didn’t even try. But what if there hadn’t been any Shannon? Then I would have felt all the pressure
she
had, with Mom expecting perfect looks, perfect grades, perfect blah-blah-blah-blah-
blah
.”

I squeeze the pillow tighter. Aunt Nicole reaches over and runs her hand through my hair.

“And she was able to keep it up for a long time,” I continue, peering into space. “She kept tap-dancing as long as she could for Mom until she was too exhausted to do it anymore. By that time, she was so furious at Mom, she couldn’t see straight. Then, instead of being just a run-of-the-mill screw-up, like me, she had to make herself the
perfect
screw-up. She went nuts the last few months of her life, hanging out with some pothead girl, sneaking off nights with a loser boyfriend …”

“Mmmmm. I remember,” Aunt Nic says in a sad, dreamy voice.

“I feel so sorry for her when I read her journal,” I say, my shoulders tensing. “I want to go back in time, tell Mom to back off and tell Shannon she can relax and just be herself. I don’t think she could ever
relax
. I love Mom, but she makes it so hard to relax.”

I sigh, exhausted just at the thought.

“So,” Nic says tentatively, “have you told your mother any of this?”

I shrug. “Bits and pieces, I guess. But she can’t hear it. She couldn’t hear it from Shannon and she can’t hear it from me. It keeps us all stuck.”

“But your mom was in counseling with Shannon those last few months,” Aunt Nic says.

“That drove Shannon the craziest of all,” I say in a pleading voice. “It’s like the shrink gave her a glimpse of what it could be like to live as something other than Mom’s trophy kid, and it gave her hope. But Mom didn’t want any part of it. She just wanted the shrink to fix Shannon, like
Shannon
was the problem.”

Aunt Nicole smiles wanly. “And where does your dad fit into all of this?” she asks. “I mean, he was her parent, too. Does he get any of the blame?”

I shake my head roughly. “I’m not blaming. I mean, I know it sounds like I am, but I’m not. I don’t think Shannon was blaming anybody either, not really. I know she was on a total
screw you
kick for a while, but she loved Mom and wanted so much for her to love her back.”

Aunt Nic’s eyes flood with concern. “Oh, Summer, if I know nothing else, I know that your mom worshipped the ground Shannon walked on.”

“She wanted Mom to love her
unconditionally
,” I stress. “Mom can never quite manage that. I tried to talk to her yesterday, and she froze me out. Damn, I’m
still
feeling guilty about it.” I shake my head slowly. “You know, you pay a huge price when you use guilt to get your way.”

Aunt Nicole puts her palm against my cheek. “I’m so sorry, sweetie,” she says, then lowers her voice to a whisper. “I think it was a mistake to give you that journal. I think this is way, way too hard for …”

“No!” I insist. “Hard is okay.
Sad
is okay. And mad is okay. I wish Shannon had known that. Shouldn’t Mom have learned that? After everything she went through with Shannon, why is she still laying guilt trips on me?”

Aunt Nicole takes my hands. “She
did
learn, Summer. Maybe not enough, but she’s different with you than she was with Shannon. Just look at you. You’re so confident and independent. You don’t care what other people think. You don’t care about conforming. That came from somewhere, you know.”

I laugh wryly. “Not from Mom. I’m that way in
spite
of her, not because of her. Why is Mom so rigid?”

Aunt Nicole smiles wryly. “You’ve met Grandma? You know, a little old gray-haired lady about yea high?”

I smile and nod knowingly.

“Yep, if genes have anything to do with personality, then your mom definitely comes by her rigidity honestly,” she says. “Plus, our childhood was a little, um … challenging.” Aunt Nic continues in a softer voice. “Nothing awful, but your grandpa drank too much, and he was in and out of jobs pretty regularly.”

I glance at her, surprised.

She nods. “Grandpa’s fine now. He’s come a long way. But you know, sometimes you don’t necessarily
want
to be a control freak, but life demands it of you. If Grandma hadn’t been cracking the whip all those years, who knows how we might have ended up. She held everything together. And your mom, well, she was the oldest, so …”

“Mom never told me any of this,” I say.

Aunt Nic lightly bites her lower lip. “There were plenty of times your mom was more like a mother to me than a sister. If Grandma was suddenly having to work an extra shift or take in laundry or whatever, your mom was the one who made sure I brushed my teeth and had clean clothes to wear to school the next morning. And it didn’t bother me a bit. Sure, she was bossy, but knowing
somebody
was in control felt like the best thing in the world to me.”

My hands clench. “I didn’t even know Grandpa drank.”

Aunt Nic sucks in her lips. “He hasn’t had a drop in years. He stopped around the time we started high school. Grandma finally gave him an ultimatum, and I guess she convinced him she meant it.” She pats my knee. “Things were better from then on, much better. But by that time, your mom’s role was pretty entrenched.”

I shake my head. “Why won’t she tell me these things? I’d understand her so much better if she’d just be honest with me.”

Aunt Nic squeezes my hand. “She didn’t want her girls lugging around any of her baggage. She wanted your lives to be perfect.”

My chin quivers. “Honest is better than perfect.”

Aunt Nic nods smartly. “Right you are. And honesty has the damnedest way of asserting itself.”

“I wish you could have said these things to Shannon,” I say.

Aunt Nic gives me a guarded look. “Shannon wasn’t nearly as mature as you are,” she says. “I tried talking to her a few times, especially after she found out about her dad’s affair, but she shut me out. She just wasn’t ready to handle it.”

“I guess shutting people out runs in the family,” I say with a rueful laugh.

Aunt Nic puts an arm around my shoulder and I nestle my head into the crook of her neck. She fingers a lock of my hair as the scent of roses wafts through the air.

She hasn’t uttered a word yet about the question I need answered the most: Does she know if Shannon committed suicide? Does she even suspect it?

And I’m not asking. I don’t think I’m ready for the answer yet.

I take a deep breath and sigh, wishing I could reach back in time and guide my sister when she needed help the most.