Three Sisters (5 page)

Karen’s father came into the kitchen then, and he and Jason shook hands. “Jason Wade Wilson, sculptor,” Jason said and, without missing a beat, he added, “Remember that name. It’s going to be famous.”

“Arnie Freed,” her father said, and passed his hand over the bald spot on the back of his head. His mode was modesty.

Then there was a lull in the conversation, one of those dead spots when nobody knows what to say. In fact, Karen thought, Jason was the only one who looked at ease. He stamped out his cigarette butt in the sink, brought out a rumpled pack, and lit another cigarette.

“Would you like to see the backyard?” her father said finally.

“Sounds good to me.” The two of them went out.

Karen’s mother turned to Tobi. “How old is he?”

“Thirty-five.” Tobi stuck her chin out.

Karen did a bit of elementary math. Seventeen years older than Tobi. Ten years younger than her father, only eight years younger than her mother. And if you got right down to it, old enough to be her, Karen’s, father.

Her mother must have been doing the same math. “He’s too old for you. He could almost be your father! What is he doing with a green, eighteen-year-old girl?”

“Green!” Tobi’s voice rose. “Thanks, oh thanks. For your information, we’re in love.”

Her mother’s nose turned blue again, then white. “Tobi—”

“Age doesn’t matter.” Tobi cut her off. “I don’t care. He doesn’t care. Why do you care?”

“He’s had other relationships,” her mother said.

“So?”

They were talking over each other.

“What was that about a family?”

Tobi hesitated, then said defiantly, “He was married before.”

Her mother stood in the middle of the kitchen, holding a stirring spoon, looking as if she wanted to clobber Tobi with it.

“And you might as well know, he has two kids.”

“Wonderful.”

“A boy and a girl. They live with their mother in Spain. She—Lara—went there a few years ago. It’s awful for him, he never gets to see his kids and he misses them a lot.”

“Then why doesn’t he go live there?”

Their voices notched up another decibel.

“Tobi, you’re getting in over your head.”

“It’s my life.”

“You’re not even nineteen—”

“I told you! My age has nothing to do with it.”

Stop it, Karen said. Stop. It. She thought she said it. Maybe she just imagined saying it. Her mother at the table, her hand over her mouth. Tobi leaning against the refrigerator, face glowing with anger and tears.

And just then they heard her grandmother calling, “Sylvia? Arnold? I’m here.”

“So there you are,” her grandmother said, as Karen came into the front hall. She was waiting by the staircase to be received. A real lady.

“How are you, Grandma?” Karen kissed her soft, bristly cheek.

“Are you working hard in school?”

“Yes, Grandma.”

“You have to work, Karen. You can’t be lazy.”

“Yes, Grandma.”

Her grandmother straightened her hat, a classy-looking felt fedora with a wide brim and a dark band.

Mrs. Freed, or Hattie, as she prefers to be called, is never seen anywhere, anyplace, anytime, without a hat. Quote unquote a newspaper article, written about twenty years ago and now hanging, framed, in her grandmother’s living room.

One way or another, she had been making hats since she was a girl. “I used to make hats out of nothing, a bit of ribbon and a little scrap of material. I went to work as a milliner when I was fifteen; I had to help out my family.” Later, she had become a hat designer for a big manufacturer. And much later still, she had opened her own shop, Creations

by Hattie. “A dream come true,” she had told the reporter.

Now, with the fedora, she wore a draped midnight blue dress, a string of blue glass beads, and matching blue stone earrings. She had a big, deep voice and big, fat, strong arms. An impressive woman. Even her earlobes were impressive, large and thick, fleshy as thumbs.

“Too bad none of you take after your father,” she said. Grandma’s lament. “Arnold was an exceptional student. Do you know that he went to medical school when he was only nineteen?”

“Yes, Grandma.”

“Brilliant. A brilliant boy. He could have been a surgeon. Of course you three girls are bright enough,” she said, sounding regretful at having to concede so much. Tobi had once said that if their father had been able to conceive and give birth to the three of them on his own, a holy male birth, without their mother’s taint, their grandmother would think they were brilliant, too.

Karen followed her grandmother into the living room, brought her the fruit tray, showed her the new issue of the school paper. She had a photo in it of a blue jay sitting on a roof of a house next to a TV antenna. “Very nice,” her grandmother said. Karen winced. Why had she trotted the paper out? When she developed the photo she had thought it inspired, a satiric comment on modern life. Now it seemed banal, even pointless.

Her grandmother sat upright in the chair, her eyes bright, looking around to see if anything had changed since the previous Sunday. “I’m seventy-six,” she

liked to tell people. “I look much younger. People are amazed when they hear my age.”

Karen’s mother came in. “Mother Freed, hello.” She kissed the older woman. “Dinner’s almost ready.” Then everyone else appeared. Tobi kissed her grandmother. Liz was there and stepped up. “How are you, Grandma?” She hugged her and Grandma patted Liz’s face. Everyone got in line, even Scott. Jason smiled under his mustache. Hang around a while, Karen thought, you’ll be kissing her, too.

Grandma beckoned to Jason. “A teacher? At the college?”

“Teaching’s a sideline,” Jason said. “Cruel necessity. I’m an artist.”

Grandma pursed her lips fastidiously. “I don’t suppose you make a living at that, either.” Why did everything she say sound like God’s word to Moses on the mountain?

“I do all right. I don’t think about it any more than I have to.”

Karen watched the-two of them dueling. Worthy opponents. She enjoyed the contest—this was different than Tobi and Mom going at each other.

“Food, folks.” Karen’s father set a bowl down in the middle of the table.

“Arnold,” her grandmother said, “sit down, dear,

you look tired. Are you overdoing things?”

“I’m fine, Ma.”

“Then you must be getting old.”

“It happens to us all,” her father said mildly.

“Does it?” Grandma sat up even straighter.

Liz tapped her spoon on her glass. “Hello, everybody, I have something to tell you all.” She held

out her hand. Among her silver rings was a new one on her thumb. “Scott and I are now engaged to be engaged.”

A hum of talk arose. “Engaged to be engaged,” her grandmother said. “What kind of nonsense is that?”

Karen’s father tipped back in his chair. “That’s a new one on me, too, Mother.”

“Congratulations,” Karen’s mother said, and added, “I think.”

“Come on, guys.” Tobi raised her eyebrows at Liz. “You people act like you’re in the Stone Age. You’ve heard of that. Everyone does it.”

Karen toyed with” her melon. So Liz and Scott were making their relationship really tight. Scott was going the distance, all right. She might even have a brother-in-law sometime soon. So why didn’t she feel terrific and happy?

“You have two children?” her grandmother was saying to Jason.

“Right. My daughter’s name is Georgia. Named after Georgia O’Keefe.”

“The artist,” her grandmother said.

“My son’s named after Picasso.”

“How very interesting.”

“When he lived here, Pablo was a funny name, but in Spain, it’s ordinary as dirt. So I’m told by my wife. The bitch.”

The word dropped into the conversation like a stone in water. A short, vibrant pause. Tapping the edge of her glasses on her mouth, Karen’s mother looked at Jason. And Tobi, her face flashing warning signals, looked at her mother. You could always tell when Tobi was on the verge of exploding. She

got red right under the roots of her hair.

Karen’s stomach clenched. She pushed back her chair and left the table. “Where are you going?” her mother said.

“My camera,” she improvised hurriedly.

She stood in the doorway, snapping pictures, focusing on hands. Grandma’s hands, liver-spotted, strong. Her father’s hands, the blunt, clean nails. Scott’s, bitten-down, raggedy nails, a blood blister on one of his fingers.

“Take me and Scott,” Liz said.

Karen took deep breaths, unclenching her stomach. The dangerous moment seemed to have passed. Jason was devoting himself to the food. Her mother had put her glasses back on. Karen stood up on a chair, focused. Liz and Scott. Tobi and Jason. Mom and Dad. Click … click … click. … All those pairs. This was a regular Valentine. To rumple things up a little, she took Mom and Grandma, Scott and her father, Jason and Liz. Uncouples. A series. The happy family at the table. Sweet Harmony in Suburbia. Ms. Freed is know for her satiric yet sympathetic exposition of suburban life… .

“Too bad you didn’t invite David over today,” Liz said when Karen sat down again.

“How is the boy?” Tobi, though, was still perched on the edge of her chair, as usual picking at her food. “Is he still going to be the brilliant young scientist?”

“I guess.”

“And who,” said Grandma “is David?”

“My friend.”

“Friend? Do you mean you have a boyfriend, Karen? You’re too young for a boyfriend, darling.”

Karen’s father zeroed in for a wink. Liz smiled, tapped her lips. Another poem coming? At once, Karen remembered a funny, slightly humiliating moment some weeks ago. Rashly, she had said to Liz, “Why don’t you write a poem about me?”

And Liz, smiling, had obliged on the instant. “My sister Karen, she is so sweet. My sister Karen, she has cold feet. There’s a poem, there’s a poem about you. Is one enough? I can’t do two.” Karen’s head flamed; she felt the injustice of being the youngest in this family. When would they stop treating her like a joke?

“Are those all your own teeth?” Karen’s father was saying. He leaned interestedly toward Jason. Had he really said that? Were all families as bizarre as hers?

She looked across the table, met Scott’s eyes. He didn’t smile, wink, blink, or look away, but watched her gravely. Something passed between them, some link, some unspoken message, and then he nodded, a tiny salute—only she saw it—as if he were telling her he understood. Understood what? Everything, she thought, everything.

Nine

The more I think about it, Tobi,” Karen’s mother said, the next morning in the kitchen, “the more I know I just am not terribly thrilled with what’sisface.”

“Jason. His name is Jason.” Tobi’s voice was like wire.

“Right. Jason. No, not thrilled with him, not thrilled at all.” Her mother pulled a pack of cigarettes out of her skirt pocket.

“And I’m not real thrilled with your smoking,” Tobi said. She stood in the doorway, nibbling half an orange, wearing her knapsack, looking over her shoulder. All ready for a quick get-away.

“That’s a strange comparison.” Their father was sitting in the dinette eating eggs and reading. Karen, across from him, glanced up in surprise. Who could tell that he was even listening? Usually, he left these family things up to her mother.

Her mother coughed, lit up. “And, by the way, Tobi, is that all you’re having for breakfast?”

Tobi put down the orange. “Are we talking about food or my friends?”

“Anything you want.”

“I don’t want to talk about either one.”

Karen hunched over her bowl of cornflakes.

“Just tell me this, Tobi,” her mother said. “How serious is this thing with, er—”

“Jason. Jason. Jason.”

“Right. Jason. He’s going to be famous.”

“That’s right,” Tobi flashed. “Then you won’t be asking me how serious this thing is.”

Bam. Bam. Bam. Karen pushed aside the bowl of soggy cornflakes. Shut up. I hate you both. Shut up.

“Well, Tobi has been through things before,” her father said, sticking his finger in his book. “Remember when you took up the clarinet, Tobes?”

“The clarinet!”

“And dance. For a while you wanted to be a dancer.”

“I did not!”

“I mean,” he said mildly, “you have enthusiasms and perhaps—”

“I know what you mean!” Tobi ate arguments the way she wouldn’t ear a piece of meat, getting it between her teeth, biting and chewing. “You mean Jason is one of Tobi’s little enthusiasms. Here today, gone tomorrow. About as important as the clarinet. Well, think what you want, both of you!”

Karen and Tobi left the house together. “Are you on their side, too?” Tobi said. She didn’t wait for Karen’s loyalty oath. “I knew they’d have a cow about Jason. I told him. I told him they’d go crazy.

You know what he said? They’re going to be crazy about me.” She smiled proudly.

Lunch period, Karen ran into Davey on her way out of school. “Where’re you going?” he asked. He looked handsome in a green shirt.

“Taking some film to be developed. Want to come along?”

“I don’t have anything better to do.”

“Don’t get carried away with enthusiasm, Davey.”

“David,” he warned.

Outside, it was another warm, rainy, end-of-March day. Technically, they weren’t supposed to leave the building during lunch break, but nobody ever said anything if you got back on time. David slung his arm over her shoulder. “Karen. Why don’t we trot over to my house for a while?”

“Davey—David,” she corrected herself, “you know we’ll never get back on time if we start that.”

“What?” he said innocently. “Start what? Maybe what I want to do is watch a little TV.”

“Oh, right, you’re a terrific soap opera fan.”

“I can’t convince you?” He let his hand drop lower.

Karen linked her fingers with his. “Does that shirt make you feel sexy?”

“Everything makes me feel sexy,” he said seriously.

“Me?”

“Well, yes!”

Later, after school, she had an appointment with Rachel, the hygienist, in her father’s office. The last time Karen had been into the office, the hygienist was Jenny; the time before that, Terri. It seemed as

if every time her father hired a DH, she immediately got married, moved west, or went back to school. And every time Terri-Rachel-Suzie-Mary-Pat-or-Jamie left him, her father would say, “Sometimes I think I have bad breath.” Another dentist joke.