The Good Sister Read online

  Roxanne hated when she said that.

  “Are you?”

  “Am I what?”

  Mad at me.

  “You know.”

  “No, I don’t know.”

  “How long are we going to be there?”

  “You mean how long are you going to be there. I’m not staying one minute longer than I have to. I gotta work, you know.” Mommy worked at a Buick agency on the National City Mile of Cars. The ads on television said it was the biggest dealership in San Diego County. “Mr. Brickman’s letting me use a good car.”

  “Am I going to sleep there?” The polar bear was ready to swallow her up now, and there was something heavy in her stomach like a thousand ice cubes bunched together. “I don’t want to sleep there. I want to stay in this house.” One bedroom, a kitchen with space for a table, a bathroom with a tiny window over the tub, and a screened porch at the back where Roxanne slept. “I like our house.”

  “You need your head examined.”

  Mommy put her bare toe on the pedal of the garbage can, and the top sprang up and clanged into the side of the stove. She dumped most of her dinner. Mrs. Edison said Mommy didn’t eat enough to keep a bird alive.

  “What if she doesn’t like me?”

  Roxanne’s mother sighed as if she had just that minute put down a bag of rocks and been told to pick up another. “Look, I know you don’t want to go up there, but believe me, I’ve got my reasons and they’re plenty good. Someday you’ll thank me. But we’re not going to talk about it and that’s final. And I don’t want you calling me up and whining on your grandmother’s dime. She’d make me pay for those calls and like I’ve said to you about a thousand times only you don’t seem to get it, I am not made of money.”

  After dinner Roxanne pushed a stool up to the sink and filled a square plastic tub with hot water. She washed two plates and two forks and the spaghetti pot. She rinsed her glass and sudsed away the milk scum, rinsed it again in the hottest water she could bear and set it in the drainer. As she worked she thought about her mother’s words. Some of the things grown-ups said were ridiculous. But not all. The trick was figuring out when Mommy meant what she said and when she didn’t.

  Hair to kill for.

  Made of money.

  Roxanne wiped down the counter and the stove top. She emptied the brimming ashtray on the table and put the beer cans in the garbage and swept the kitchen floor, careful to poke the broom into the space between the stove and the refrigerator where the greasy dust bunnies lived. She imagined people with dollar bills for arms and legs and eyes made out of coins. The children would have Indian faces like the nickel she once found in the gutter.

  Roxanne set the timer on the stove for one hour, the length of time she was permitted to watch television after dinner. Mommy didn’t like Roxanne to sit close; but the yearning to lean against her shoulder, to press her body against her mother’s hip, was so intense Roxanne’s skin tingled the way it did when she knew the oven was hot without touching it. On television she had seen mothers and daughters with their arms around each other, kissing and hugging. Was she meant to believe this or was television like a fairy tale, a made-up story no different from the fantasy about children with heads like Indian nickels?

  There was so much Roxanne didn’t know.

  Mrs. Edison baked pies and cakes to earn extra money, and she had taught Roxanne to read the recipes. Roxanne liked cooking because when Mrs. Edison followed the directions Roxanne read to her, the desserts turned out perfectly. But life wasn’t like cakes and pies. Even when she did exactly what she was supposed to do, Roxanne was still afraid when she heard Mommy and Daddy talk and laugh and fight at night. Though their words went by too quickly to understand and she pulled the blankets over her head, making a tent full of her own familiar breath, their mixed up angry-happy voices filled the darkness. She thought about the homeless woman in the red wool hat and wondered if she had ever been in the first grade.

  Roxanne and her mother lived on a street where the traffic was noisy until late at night. There were two bars on their block. One had a name Roxanne could not read because it was in Spanish. Mommy often left her in bed at night and walked across the street to the other one, the Royal Flush; and when he was home from the Marines, Daddy made money playing pool there.

  Roxanne tried to remember when she had last seen her daddy. She remembered asking her mother where he was, but she had forgotten the answer. She raked through her memory for something she had forgotten or done wrong that would explain why Daddy wasn’t home, and Mommy was making her live with a grandmother she’d never met or even heard about until that day. At home she didn’t talk too much or whine for candy in the supermarket or ask even half of all the questions in her mind. She hardly ever forgot to do her chores. In fact, she enjoyed making the kitchen orderly after dinner; and in the morning she made her bed and swept the porch before she went to Mrs. Edison’s. It gave her a safe feeling when all the chores were done.

  In the car the next day she asked, “Are we almost there yet?”

  “We’re not even to Bakersfield.”

  Roxanne imagined a field full of Mrs. Edisons and all of them rolling out pie crust and making cakes.

  “How long till we get to Bakersfield?”

  “Stop with the questions, Roxanne. I’ll put you out at the side of the road, I swear I will.”

  From the car window she saw a sad part of the world, run-down buildings and vacant lots, broken-down fences and hardly any trees, just bushes that looked like dried-up spiders, and paper litter, fast-food wrappers and coffee cups blowing up from the dirt at the side of the road as cars and trucks rushed by. How would she live out there?

  A dry wind blew grit into the car, and Roxanne’s hair flew up and around her face in tangles that made her skull hurt. She held up her silver pinwheel and watched it whirl into a blur. She thought about nice Mrs. Enos, and wondered if she would look around her first grade class and worry because there was no Roxanne.

  The Buick loaned to Mommy by the dealership was shiny and almost new-looking, but the air-conditioning didn’t work. When Mommy realized that, she said a lot of the bad words forbidden to Roxanne, who had no idea what they meant anyway. In the heat Roxanne’s bare legs stuck to the car seat. Already she knew she would be unhappy in Daneville. She imagined her grandmother had a nose that curved down and almost touched her chin.

  “I don’t want to stay alone with her.”

  “I’ve got a job, Roxanne. Mr. Brickman depends on me.”

  Mr. Brickman, the manager, called Mommy all the time and sometimes at night he drove her to meetings about serious dealership business. She got dressed up for her job as his secretary and was always excited when the day began; but by the time she fetched Roxanne from Mrs. Edison in the afternoon, her mood had soured and she couldn’t wait to pop open a beer, sit on the couch, and watch television.

  “What about my toys?” There hadn’t been room for much in her pink backpack. “And my books?”

  “Your grandmother’s got a whole roomful of books.”

  This was the first good news Roxanne had heard.

  “What kind of books?”

  “Book-books. How should I know?”

  She had seen her mother read only magazines and sometimes the newspaper. “You don’t like books.”

  “What I don’t like is being told I have to read them or else I’m stupid.”

  “You’re not stupid, Mommy.”

  “Well, thank you very much.” Her mother looked at her for so long that Roxanne started to worry she would crash the car. “Sometimes I’m not so sure.”

  Mommy said, “Watch for the signs to Visalia.”

  “Is that where we’re going? Are we going to Visalia?”

  “Jesus, Rox. I told you we’re going to Daneville. The turnoff’s near Visalia.”

  Mommy put her foot on the gas and passed a truck driven by a man in a white straw hat. Roxanne smiled at him and waved her silver pinwheel and he wa
ved back.

  She risked another question.

  “How come you don’t like her?”

  “Did I say that?”

  “Is she your mother?”

  “No. She’s Jackie Kennedy’s mother. What do you think, Roxanne? Jesus.”

  Mommy muttered something else. Roxanne saw her lips move, but the only sounds she heard were clicks and puffs. Back in wintertime Roxanne had had an earache and now she didn’t hear very well in her left ear.

  Mommy jerked the wheel, turning onto an exit.

  “Is this Visalia?”

  “If I don’t get a Coke soon, I’m going to pass out.”

  Four cars awaited their turn at the take-out window at Jack in the Box. Four plus the Buick made five. Roxanne figured that without counting on her fingers. Adding and take-away were simple if the numbers weren’t too big, but she worried about multiplication. Even the name was hard to say.

  “What about school?”

  “Oh, believe me, the old lady’ll get you to school. She’s big on school.”

  The words sounded good, but Mommy’s tone said otherwise.

  “Does Daddy know I’m going to Gran’s?”

  Mommy’s face went suddenly scarlet. “Do you think that’s funny?”

  “What’s funny?”

  “He’s dead, Roxanne. Remember? You must have a hole in your head.”

  She didn’t want to remember Mommy crying, throwing kitchen pans into the wall and screaming, What the fuck am I supposed to do now? Later Mrs. Edison had come over, and she and Mommy drank whiskey. Mrs. Edison said, “They always leave. One way or another.”

  “How did he die?”

  “He was a Marine. Marines die.” Ellen took her right hand off the wheel and reached behind her head, lifting her long hair off the back of her neck. “Judas Priest, I hate this fucking valley.”

  Roxanne stared at the shiny car radio and read the name written across the top: MOTOROLA. In books and on television if a girl’s father died, there was a funeral and a lot of food, and the girl cried and everyone was nice to her. But nothing like that had happened as far as Roxanne knew.

  “Did Daddy have a funeral?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it. Just forget about it.”

  Roxanne pulled her legs up onto the seat and wrapped her arms around her knees. Her daddy was dead but she didn’t feel sad, not even a little bit. She just wanted to forget about it.

  Back on the highway, Roxanne fell asleep; when she awoke they were driving on a two-lane road, and on both sides rows of trees lined up at attention. She tried to count them but they went by too fast and made her go cross-eyed. Through the car’s open window the air smelled like fruit and wine mixed up together. Weeds stood stiff and brown at the edge of the road, but beyond them the trees were dark green and cast pools of deep shade.

  “Does my grandmother have a hammock?”

  “How should I know? I haven’t seen her since before you were born.”

  There was a world of lonely meaning in her mother’s response, and Roxanne knew better than to ask about it.

  “Will she like me?”

  “If you behave yourself.”

  “How do I behave myself?”

  “Goddamn it, Roxanne, you’ve gotta give me some room here, some air. I can’t breathe with all these questions. She’s okay, you might even like her. She’s… orderly, like you.”

  Orderly and books and big on school.

  “Tell me what day you’ll come back.”

  “You think I have a calendar in my head?”

  Roxanne liked calendars.

  “I’m starting in first grade.”

  “And you’re gonna be dynamite.”

  “I saw my teacher. Her name is Mrs. Enos and she has orange hair.”

  “Roxanne, please—”

  “I told her I could read recipes. I know the words for milk and butter and eggs and—”

  “Don’t do this to me, Rox.” Her mother’s voice cracked like the sidewalk in front of the house. “I’m warning you, don’t push your luck.”

  They drove past a house with a water tower beside it, a field where people were picking something, a fruit stand with boards nailed across the front, and Roxanne waved at a boy riding a fat horse beside the road. All the questions she had been wanting to ask had joined up into one huge thing she had to know, right then and immediately.

  “Will you come back?”

  Her mother hunched over the wheel, scowling at the road.

  “Promise?”

  “What?”

  “Promise you’ll come back so I can go to first grade.”

  Her mother slammed her foot on the brake and turned the car left, across the pavement and into a driveway lined with thick-trunked palm trees like huge dusty-green toadstools. Ahead Roxanne saw a two-story house built of stone and wood with a pointed roof and a wide porch, surrounded by so many trees that she could see only three or four windows. On one side there was a water tower, on the other a long, low shed that extended the depth of the house. An old truck and a pile of rusty machinery stood off to one side of it.

  Nothing looked ordinary or familiar, nothing looked absolutely safe.

  “Promise, Mommy?”

  Chapter 3

  July 2009

  Roxanne finished her second cup of coffee as she scanned the to-do list sharing space on the refrigerator door with pictures of her sister, Simone, and her family. On the to-do list more than half the items were circled—done, accomplished—but she fixed on those that weren’t. There were similar lists in the bedroom and stuck to the bathroom mirror, a world of things to do before she and her husband, Ty, were due at the airport. Lists, calendars, clocks: she relied on these to navigate her world, and if Ty got this job in Chicago it would mean lists on top of lists; even the lists would have lists to keep her from getting lost.

  A turquoise enamel bowl piled with nectarines sat on a counter in the kitchen of the bungalow on Little Goldfinch Street. They’d be ready in a day or two, but she and Ty wouldn’t be there to enjoy them. She would take the fruit to school when she went to her meeting. They would spoil if left on the counter over the weekend and be tasteless if she refrigerated them. Roxanne never wasted anything if she could help it.

  Though it was barely eight a.m., the July day was already hot and the air carried a hint of the humidity that would come in August. Roxanne was still in her dressing gown, barefoot, a pencil stuck behind her ear. Chowder, the family layabout, sprawled on the kitchen floor, panting and pleased with himself after a good run.

  Roxanne was mildly irritated that Ty had taken time for a run that morning when they both had so much to do. He wore his old shorts and an MIT T-shirt thinned by a thousand washings and smelled pleasantly of clean sweat. His beat-up running shoes were only four months old but had already traveled hundreds of miles. He had a tall, lean runner’s body and looks that were both homely and handsome at the same time; his was the kind of large-featured face that got better-looking with age. After she met him, Elizabeth, Roxanne’s best friend, had said that by the time Ty was fifty Roxanne would have to beat off the competition with a stick.

  He gestured her over to the kitchen window. “Our friend’s back.” He pointed to an iridescent green hummingbird dipping its spike beak into the cup of a red trumpet flower, emerging with a crown of gold dust. For half a moment Roxanne tried to see them living in an apartment in the Windy City, in what would always be to her—thanks to her grandmother’s leatherbound edition of Carl Sandburg’s poems—the hog butcher to the world. No trumpet vines there, no pollen-crowned hummingbirds.

  It was not a happy thought so she put it aside in a part of her mind labeled LATER. In a few hours she and Ty would board a plane for Chicago, where he was interviewing for a senior position at the University of Chicago. She’d been trying for a month to accept the possibility of a major move, but she hadn’t had much luck so far. He was sure to get the job and when he did, LATER would become NOW and NOW meant TROUB
LE.

  “Shall we eat at the airport?” Ty asked. “I know you never like to miss a chance for fast food.”

  That morning she wasn’t amused by jokes made at her expense. So what if “fast” was her cuisine of choice? Not everyone had been fortunate enough to have a mother who made dinner every night, all food groups present and accounted for.

  “Can you take Chowder to the pet sitter?” She heard her voice—crisp, efficient, a little chilly—and wanted to take the question back, start again. She knew she was being a pain but the closer they got to takeoff, the harder it was to pretend away her apprehension. Common sense told her that Ty hadn’t meant his food crack as criticism, but they’d been married less than a year; she wasn’t used to being teased, however lovingly.

  She laid her hand on his forearm. “I’m sorry, honey, I’m just feeling the pressure. I should be out of the meeting by one but a roomful of teachers… it could go on way past that. There might not be time for dinner at all.”

  Roxanne had taught at Balboa Middle School for more than ten years; she knew that Mitch Stoddard, the principal, would understand if she no-showed, but she never liked to miss a meeting, especially not one where new hires would be introduced, first impressions made, and a pile of new rules and regulations presented.

  Ty said, “No problem, I’ll take Chow to the lab and drop him off after. Don’t be nervous, Roxy. It’ll all get done.”

  “Easy for you to say.”

  “Chicago will love me, love you, they’ll beg us to join their elite faculty, and we’ll be the belles of the ball.” He put his arms around her. “Trust me, even if they hate us, it doesn’t really matter.”

  “But it does. You want this job.”

  “Well, yeah, but it’s not like I’m unhappy at the Salk.”

  Roxanne wanted to ask, If you’re not unhappy, why are we flying halfway across the country for an interview? Ty had been a research biologist at the Salk Institute for eight years, loved the work and was good at it; but he said he was ready for a change. The Chicago job would mean a full professorship and a chance to continue his research into new antibiotics with the full weight and influence of the University of Chicago behind him. He could trivialize the outcome of this weekend’s interviews and meetings, the dinner parties Roxanne particularly dreaded, but she wasn’t fooled. He would be disappointed if he didn’t ace the interviews and get an offer. As she told Elizabeth, she would go with him to Mars if he asked; but that didn’t mean she had any enthusiasm for leaving San Diego, her job, her friends. And her sister. Mostly she didn’t want to leave Simone.