Three Sisters (14 page)

“Want to come over to my house and study?” Marisa had asked as they left school. And Karen had said, No, not today, she had something to do. But she only knew what it was she “had” to do, at the moment she said it. So she couldn’t possibly have told Liz beforehand. But, somehow, she still felt guilty.

Look, Liz, Scott’s sick and has no one to do anything for him. You should approve my giving him a bit of help, since you’re feeling too zapped yourself to do anything. And, besides, Scott’s also my friend, so what if I just happen to want to see him? Do I have to report in to you?

Karen Clarence Darrow, famous lawyer, arguing her case before the Supreme Court of Sisters. One moment persuasive, the next cajoling, but always with iron logic. And so your honor… . Say no more, Counselor. Charges dismissed!

She strolled down Oak, knapsack over her shoulder, easy and casual. A person on her way to see a friend. But at Scott’s house, she lost heart. Just barge in on him? What if he hated company when he was sick? Karen, Harold, and Alfred, three big slobbering dogs falling all over Scott. Do you love me? Do you love me? Pant, pant, pant.

She sat down on the top step and argued with herself. Either go in there and see Scott, or go home. She got up, then sat down again.

Come on, someone seemed to be saying to her. Aren’t you tired of watching things happen to other people? To Tobi, Liz, Marisa … to everyone except you?

She went up the stairs resolutely, two at a time. Then, on the landing, she thought if she went away

now, nobody would ever know she’d been here. No up against the wall, traitor. No Florence Nightingale. No guilt. No nothing.

She knocked. From inside, Scott called, “Come in.”

She opened the door, peeked in. “It’s me.”

“Karen.” Scott’s voice cracked. “What are you doing all the way over here?” He was unshaven, wearing unlaced work boots, pajamas, and a Snoopy sweat shirt under a bathrobe. He looked like the man with the headache in the aspirin ad. Correction. He made the man with the headache in the aspirin ad look like Mr. Vitality.

“I came to help you. You said you didn’t have anybody to take care of you. Well … here I am.”

“Really? Is that why you came?” She took off her knapsack.

“Sure.”

“Your sister will kill me if you pick up my germs.”

“I won’t. I’m healthy as a horse. But you look awful. You should be in bed.”

“I was.”

“In your work boots?”

He looked down at his feet in surprise. “Oh, right. I was thinking about taking Harold and Alfred out for a walk.” Hearing their names, the dogs got up, grinning, their ears laid back.

“You don’t look as if you have the energy to take yourself down the stairs,” she said.

“That’s true.” His eyes were bloodshot, his bathrobe pockets bulging with tissues. “I should get in bed, I suppose,” he said vaguely, but he didn’t move.

“Scott, if you want me to, I’ll take the dogs out. Where are their leashes?”

He thought about it in slow time. “I guess we could just put them out in the backyard,” he said finally. “It’s fenced.”

“Okay. You want me to do that?”

After another long conference with himself, he nodded. “Door through the kitchen.”

The dogs romped behind her, knocking into each other. She led them out to the back porch. A flight of covered wooden steps went down into the yard. “There you go, boys, have fun.” They galloped down the stairs like a cavalry charge.

Scott was still slumped on the couch when she came back. “Is that your bedroom?” She looked into the room off the kitchen. The bedding was crumpled on the floor. “I’ll change the sheets, Scott. Where do you keep—”

“Ah, no, Karen—” He half rose. “I can’t let you do that.”

“Yes, you can. What do you think I’ve been doing all week for everybody at home?” Moving back and forth with the clean sheets, she said, “Have you eaten anything today?”

“I always eat.” He sat down while she finished, then got in bed. All at once, after all the hustle and bustle, there was a big silence.

“Will that fence really keep the dogs in?” she asked, just to have something to say.

“It has so far.” Scott’s lids trembled and closed. He started snoring. When he opened his eyes he looked surprised to see her still there.

“Want some tea?” she said.

He shook his head.

“I could shave you,” she offered.

He put his hand to his chin. “No,” he said after a moment. “I don’t mind.”

She looked around the room. There was a drawing board in one corner, a bureau, a chair with some clothes draped over it and one thing that surprised her, a full-length oval mirror in a wooden frame. What now? she thought. Was that all? Was that it? Did she have to leave?

But then Scott said, “Do you play checkers?”

“Checkers?”

“Don’t you like them?” He sounded disappointed. The nap had made him feel better, he said, put him in exactly the right mood for a good game of checkers.

“I usually play chess with Tobi.” She got the board and checkers from the closet. Scott patted the side of his bed and after just a tiny moment she sat down. “You want red or black?”

“Red,” he said. “I always play red.”

After a few moves she could tell that, even sick, he was a lot more serious and a whole lot better at checkers than she was. He studied the board, frowning, tapping his lips. Was that where Liz had picked up that habit? Karen made her moves fast and without a lot of thought. It was like playing chess with Tobi. After the first few moves, she knew he was going to wipe her out.

“Not a bad game,” he said, after he’d finished her off. He had crowned every one of his kings and taken almost all of hers.

“It was a terrible game. Don’t laugh.” She knocked the pieces onto the floor. “I’m a sore loser.”

He started coughing, his face got red, and he

leaned back against the pillow. “In high school we had a checkers club. Not a chess club. That was for the brains. I was our star checkers player.”

“A fine time to tell me.”

“You’re impressed? I never once, not in my entire checkers career, impressed a girl with that news.” He reached for a cigarette from the pack on the bedside table.

“You shouldn’t,” she said, and held out her hand for one for herself.

“You’re right. Neither should you.”

“If you don’t smoke, I won’t.”

“I’m not going to inhale,” he said.

“Okay, I won’t either.” She stuck the cigarette between her lips.

“What are you going to do when you graduate high school?” he asked.

“I’m not totally sure yet. I have a lot of different ideas.”

“That’s good. I didn’t know for quite a while what I was going to do. I didn’t know all the way through college. Then it came to me—I’ve been wasting my time! All I want to do is build. … So, that’s what I’m doing.” He sat up, raising his knees. His hair was damp, curling down onto his forehead and over his ears. “What kinds of things are you interested in? What do you think about?”

“A lot of things.” She looked down at the blanket, smiling a little.

“You think about the world situation?”

“Sure, don’t you? Doesn’t everybody?”

“Well, what do you think?”

“Bad. Very bad.”

“How about the economy?”

“Gives me a headache.”

“My feeling exactly. How about boys?”

“Hmmm … not like girls.”

“Remarkable. Tell me, Karen, are kids still getting together in the same old way?”

She waved the cigarette as if to say, if he was talking about sex, nothing had changed.

“Ahh, so.”

“Human nature,” she said.

“You get sex ed. in school these days, don’t you?”

“Not really. Family Life. I had to care for a goldfish for a week.” She explained about Gladys Goldfish and Eggbert.

“I missed out on all that fun.” Then he started talking about how kids really learn about sex. “I suppose you learn the most from your parents. And after that, you learn from your friends and on the street. It’s not so bad.”

“Maybe,” she said. “And sometimes it’s awful.”

“What do you mean?”

“I was just thinking … after I started kindergarten, one of the big boys pushed me down in the playground, fell right down on top of me.”

“He fell down?”

“No, he threw himself down on me, wouldn’t let me get up.”

She stopped, remembering how the boy had said, I fick fick fick you! Even though she’d never heard the real word, she still knew what it meant. In some way she knew and she was terrified.

“Baby rape,” Scott said. “What did you do?”

She shrugged. The conversation was making her uncomfortable now. “I yelled and scared him off.”

“Good for you.” He lay back against the pillow

and a moment later, he’d dropped off to sleep again.

Karen tiptoed out of the room. In the kitchen, she ate an apple and some cheese. Harold and Alfred were whining and pawing at the door. Let us in, Karen, pul-eeeeze!

“Okay, you guys, but you gotta be quiet.” They tumbled in, grinning. She filled their water bowls. They sounded like Niagara Falls when they drank. “Shhh! Scott’s sleeping.”

When she went back into the bedroom, Scott was still asleep, lying on his side, one hand under his chin. She sat down in the chair across from the bed. The other night she and Tobi had watched a movie about a teenage girl in love with an older man. The girl, who was seventeen and incredibly sexy (Tobi disgustedly said that in real life the actress was thirty-one), went all out to make the older man see that he should let go and fall in love with her, too. Actually, secretly, he already was crazy about her, but he didn’t want to admit it because he thought the difference in their ages was too great.

The girl, though, thought love was the most important thing. She didn’t care about anything else! She wanted him and did just about anything she could think of to influence him, including stripping off her clothes on the beach when he was watching. He had a wife, which was the bad news, but the good news for the girl was that she didn’t have to think about his wife because (luckily—or anyway, conveniently) she was someplace else, far away.

That definitely helped. Liz, for instance, was right here. What if her flu took a turn for the worse, her temperature shot up, and before they had a chance to even call the ambulance, she went into a coma?

DOA. First the shocking phone call from the emergency room doctor. Ms. Freed? I want you to break this news gently to your mother. I have bad, very bad news…. Then the funeral, all of them weeping. Poor Scott! He’d be inconsolable. Karen would be the only one who could make the tiniest dent in his misery.

On the other hand, it would be better all around if Liz didn’t die. She didn’t want Liz dead. Just away. Far away. Very far away, and not coming back. For instance, if Liz were in California … but that wouldn’t work. Liz didn’t like California. Last year she’d gone out there with a girl friend for a couple weeks and come back saying she wouldn’t care if the San Andreas fault opened up wide enough to swallow the whole goofy state.

Maybe she’d like to go to Africa on a safari. No, that would only be for a month at most, and then she’d be home again. Karen pondered. Since Liz didn’t like the Sunshine State, maybe she’d flip for snowy Alaska. She could live in a cabin and write poems about cold and frost and polar bea^s. She’d be away, but happy, while Scott would be here and lonely.

Karen got up quietly so as not to wake him and looked at herself for a while in the mirror. The dogs came in. “Shhh!” Harold lay down on the floor with his chin on his paws. Alfred took over the chair, turning around and around like a cat until he got comfortable. “Thanks a lot, Alfie,” Karen whispered. “Where am I supposed to sit?”

Alfred looked at her out of one eye. Suit yourself, Karen, sit on the bed, just don’t bother me, pul-eeeze.

She sat down carefully on the bed. The room was quiet, just the sounds of the dogs snuffling in their sleep. Everyone was sleeping but her. She yawned and leaned back, breathing quietly. Scott had turned to lie on his other side. He faced her, the blankets pulled up around his ear, his mouth slightly open. She slid down a little, then a little more, until she was lying flat on the bed next to him.

When she woke up, Scott was looking at her, his eyes sleepy. “Hu-lo,” he said.

“Hu-lo.” The smell of his skin came to her: fresh wood and cigarettes and cough drops. Their faces were close. She didn’t know if she could bear it, if she was going to live or die. Scott touched her chin with one finger, his face came closer still, and he kissed her.

Then suddenly the dogs were on the bed, Harold and Alfred, both of them leaping on Scott and Karen, licking their faces, grinning and happy. You’re kissing? We want to kiss, too. Scott sat up, his hair mussed. He didn’t look at Karen. He grabbed Alfred by the ears. “These mutts!” he said. And Karen slid off the bed, stooping to pick up the checkers.

Twenty-four

Karen’s grandmother came over on Sunday, after calling up to make sure no one was still sick. “No, we’re all recovered,” Karen’s mother said on the phone. “Liz’ll come for you, Mother Freed.”

“Want to come with me?” Liz said to Karen, picking up the car keys.

Overnight, the weather had turned summer hot. The inside of the car was like a furnace. “Ugggh, sticky seats.” Karen rolled down her window.

“I hate it when spring gets gobbled up this way,” Liz said. “But I’m not complaining,” she added hastily. “I’m just glad not to be sick.”

Grandma was waiting in the lobby of her building. She walked leisurely toward them, her face shadowed under a large straw hat with a pink band.

“Hello, Grandma,” Karen said, getting out of the front seat and into the backseat.

Her grandmother put out her cheek for Liz’s kiss.

“I said, hello, Grandma,” Karen repeated louder.

“I’m not deaf, Karen. Try to remember.”

“Sorry.”

“I have excellent hearing, dear.”

Karen slumped lower in the seat and closed her eyes. When life was unbearable, go somewhere else. Go to Scott’s house. He had kissed her. First he had looked at her. Hel-lo. And then he had kissed her.

Liz, I’ve something to talk about to you. Scott and I don’t want to hurt you, it’s just that we feel we have to be honest with you. …