The Good Sister Page 3

  “What am I going to say to these people, Ty? They’re going to think you married an airhead. I don’t know anything about biology—”

  “Holy shit! Why didn’t you tell me this before?”

  He could make her laugh, make her doubts and anxieties seem unimportant.

  “Just be yourself, Roxy. The only thing I worry about is you’ll forget to breathe. You’re like our friend the hummingbird out there. You don’t dare relax.”

  She didn’t like being compared to a bird.

  Until Roxanne heard her sister’s name, the radio had been background noise, muttering to itself from the top of the refrigerator.

  She turned up the volume as the announcer said, “About now Simone and Johnny Duran are probably asking themselves why they decided to have kids.”

  “Cue screaming brats,” said the cackling sidekick, and the recorded wails of half a dozen children filled the kitchen.

  “God, that man is irritating,” Ty said and turned down the volume slightly.

  “Yesterday, San Diego police responded to a 911 call from a girl who said her mother was trying to drown her sister in the swimming pool. At the Duran residence.”

  “I have to get over there!” Roxanne cried.

  “Cue screaming sirens.”

  Chowder’s head came up and he looked around. Another two seconds of this and he’d start howling.

  “Seems the kiddies had learned all about the emergency call number 911 the day before—”

  Roxanne was on her way to the bedroom, shrugging off her dressing gown as she went. She opened her closet and pulled pants and a shirt off their hangers. “It’s probably nothing, but I’ve got to check. Simone’ll be in a state.”

  “What about the meeting?” Ty stood in the bedroom doorway and watched her dress. “You want me to call Mitch?”

  “Just tell him I’m at Simone’s. He’ll get it.” By now half of San Diego would have heard the news.

  * * *

  The day after Merell Duran did the bad thing that made the police come, she was in her hideout between the pool house and a clump of pampas grass reading Harry Potter. Nanny Franny had taken the twins and Baby Olivia to the park, but Merell had been there about a thousand times and she knew she’d get stuck pushing the twins in the bucket swings while Nanny Franny tried to make Olivia stop crying. She had acid reflux and cried all the time. Screamed.

  This was the third time Merell had read Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix and she liked it better every time. But today the words blurred on the page because she couldn’t concentrate. She kept remembering the day before: the cameras and the police and everyone telling lies while the police wrote it all down as if it were the truth. It made her mad that they all believed she was so dumb she’d call 911 for no good reason at all. Last night her father, Nanny Franny, and Gramma Ellen had stayed up late talking. Merell sat on the stairs and tried to hear what they were saying until Daddy came out of his study and told her to go to bed; they would deal with her tomorrow. Tomorrow was today. Her father had gone to work and no one had dealt with her.

  She wondered if Mommy was angry with her because of yesterday. Everyone else sure was. At breakfast Gramma Ellen gave her a look like if she were a wizard Merell would be turned into a houseplant. She closed her book and went into the house and upstairs. It wasn’t a good time to remind her mother of her promise, but if she waited for a good time, she’d be an old woman.

  Merell Duran was not quite nine but already she knew that she wasn’t beautiful like her mother or even cute as the twins were. But she was smart, even smarter than her mother, which didn’t seem right to Merell. Her arms and legs were long and skinny and the elbows and knees might as well belong to a boy, they were that bouldery. Her hair was sort of mud-brown and nothing special at all, just ordinary hair made horrible by the fact that she had three cowlicks on the back so anyone standing behind her could see her pink skull. The tip of her nose bent a little to one side; and when she smiled at herself in the mirror her face looked lopsided so she tried to ignore mirrors as much as she could. Daddy said she was gorgeous, but she knew he wasn’t telling the truth.

  The subject of honesty and lies was of great and perplexing interest to Merell, almost as baffling as gravity and sex.

  She squeezed her hand on the knob of her mother’s bedroom door, opened it carefully, and stepped into the gloom. She had learned to slip into rooms and disappear into the shadowy corner spaces, becoming practically invisible. Grown-ups didn’t like it if she ran into a room talking, better to enter silently and stand as she was now, next to the door and a little behind a chair, away from the light. Across the large bedroom, her mother lay buried under a blue comforter against a half dozen pillows, with celebrity and fashion magazines scattered around her. The blackout drapes were pulled, and the room was dark except for a wedge of light from her mother’s dressing room. The air-conditioning was set so low that Merell got goose bumps, and it didn’t smell good. When the meany-men came to call, Merell’s mother got unhappy; and when she was unhappy she didn’t shower and she hardly ever washed her hair unless Aunt Roxanne or Gramma Ellen helped her.

  Earlier in the month her mother had a lot of good days one after another, and Merell had almost forgotten what it was like when the meany-men were in her head. Only last week she had been happy to help Celia fold the big fitted bedsheets, and when she emptied the dishwasher she sang the alphabet song with the twins, mixing up all the letters on purpose, which Merell didn’t think was a good idea. Earlier in the week Mommy and Nanny Franny, Merell, and her sisters had gone to the zoo and afterward they ate dinner at the Big Bad Cat, where Mommy gave the DJ a twenty-dollar bill so he would play “Chantilly Lace.” She asked one of the waiters to dance with her, in and out and between the tables, and the other food handlers stood around chewing gum and clapping hands in time to the music. Afterward everyone cheered and Mommy made a bow like a princess. She was the only mother Merell had ever seen dancing at the Big Bad Cat. As she thought about it now, she realized the dancing might have been a warning that the meany-men were coming back.

  Merell studied her mother’s moods the way a sailor read the wrinkle of the wind on the face of the sea. She didn’t have to see her mother to know how she felt. The air in the house vibrated with her moods.

  “Why are you hovering?” Mommy sat up a little and pulled off her black satin sleep mask. Her eyes were pink and puffy and crusted with yellow crumbs. “You know I hate when you hover.”

  “Were you sleeping?”

  “Do I look like I’m asleep?”

  “I’m sorry.” Merell knew that although her mother spent hours and often whole days in bed, she hardly slept at all.

  “Mommy, I was wondering…”

  “Merell, my head hurts.”

  “I’ve been thinking about school.” She waited a moment, hoping her mother would remember on her own. “And I was thinking, I was wondering… Do you remember I’ll be in Upper Primary this year?”

  “And?”

  “Did you forget?” She spoke softly because Mommy had sensitive ears.

  “Will you get to the point, Merell?”

  “You said we’d go shopping.” In September Merell would start fourth grade at Arcadia Upper Primary, and she needed a new uniform because girls in fourth grade and older didn’t dress like the babies in Lower Primary. “You said we’d go in a taxi.”

  At that moment Merell realized that she had never truly believed her mother would take her to Macy’s, walk around the crowded store, and act like other mothers; and though this disappointed her, she wasn’t angry, for she knew her mother never intended to break her promises. She just couldn’t help it.

  “I’ve got the meanies today, Merell. I can’t do anything.”

  Merell had a far-off memory of a time before she knew about the meany-men, when the twins were still in their cribs and they had their own nanny. In that sweet time Merell spent hours in her mother’s bedroom, where they played games and l
ooked at picture books together. Sometimes they played Pirates of the Caribbean. Mommy emptied all her jewelry onto the bed—earrings, necklaces, rings, and bracelets, everything that sparkled—and then buried it beneath the covers, under the pillows, up inside the shams, between the mattress cover and the mattress. They wore scarves tied over their eyes and pretended to be pirates searching for treasure. Afterward they draped the booty all over themselves.

  One day Mommy had found her wedding dress in a box at the top of her closet and let Merell put it on, using safety pins to pull it tight. Mommy wore a special suit called a tuxedo and held up the pants with suspenders.

  “You’re the princess,” her mother said that day. “And this is your wedding day and all the important people in the kingdom have come to see how beautiful you are.”

  She turned on soupy music, made a little bow, and lifted Merell into her arms.

  “Will you dance with me, my beautiful bride?”

  Merell would always remember how her mother’s eyes sparkled like treasure as they held each other. They couldn’t dance because the wedding dress had too much skirt and veil, and everything got tangled up around them. Instead they stood in one place and hugged and swayed side to side in time to the music.

  Mommy whispered with her lips touching Merell’s ear. “I love you, I love you, I will love you forever, my beautiful girl. My wife.”

  Soon after that the meany-men came for the first time Merell knew about, and in the months and years that followed they seemed to come and go as they wished, taking up residence in her mother’s head for a few hours, days, or weeks. Once Merell had pulled back her mother’s hair and looked in both her ears, hoping to see one of the little monsters. Now, of course, she knew that the evil little men weren’t real, that Mommy was depressed; but depression was just a word like sad or lonely and she didn’t understand what gave it such great power, so she continued to think of her mother as possessed by tiny, evil-minded creatures whose sole desire was to make her miserable. Since Baby Olivia was born the meany-men hardly ever went away, and Merell wondered if she was the only person in the family who could see that they were hurting Mommy, making her sick.

  “When does school start?”

  Merell said that city schools opened the day after Labor Day, Arcadia Academy a week later.

  “It’s still July, isn’t it? There’s plenty of time.”

  “It’s okay, Mommy. I understand.”

  Simone lay back, closing her eyes again. “You’re such a good girl, Merell. I wish I weren’t this… way.”

  Merell’s mother slept as much as Baby Olivia. Nanny Franny said that babies had to sleep a lot because their brains were growing.

  “Mommy”—Merell took a tentative step closer to the bed—“is your brain growing?”

  “Christ, no. It’s getting smaller every day.” She waved Merell away. “Off you go—”

  At that moment Gramma Ellen walked into the bedroom without knocking. “Your sister’s here.”

  Mommy said, “Crap.”

  Merell stepped away from the bed and close to the window where the heavy drapes bunched against the wall.

  Gramma Ellen said, “I just saw her drive through the gate.”

  “I don’t want to see her.”

  Mommy loved Aunt Roxanne more than almost anyone else in the world, but the meany-men made her say things that weren’t true.

  “What does she want?”

  “What do you think? I suppose she’s seen the news like everyone else in this city.”

  Mommy groaned and pulled the comforter up over her head. “Tell her to come back when it snows.”

  “Very funny, but I don’t think you have any choice. You know how persistent she can be.”

  “Say I moved to China.”

  “She loves you, Simone. I’m sure she’s as worried as the rest—” Gramma Ellen stopped.

  Aunt Roxanne stood in the doorway. “Who’s moving to China?” She gave Gramma Ellen a quick kiss on the cheek.

  “You might knock, you know. You could have rung the bell.”

  “If I did that, Simone, you’d pretend to be asleep.”

  Gramma Ellen began making excuses.

  Aunt Roxanne held up her hand like a crossing guard. “Truth time, folks. What happened yesterday?” She had a no-nonsense schoolteacher voice and a tall, strong body. Merell thought it would take a whole lot to knock her down.

  Groaning like she had a tummy ache, Mommy pushed back the comforter and sat on the edge of the bed. She wore her bra and panties and her skin was the color of skim milk. “It wasn’t a big deal. I was in the pool with Baby Olivia and she squirmed out of my arms. That’s all that happened. She was screaming and twisting around. You know how she is.”

  Perhaps Aunt Roxanne had forgotten that Baby Olivia suffered from acid reflux and was in pain more often than she wasn’t. The doctor said she would outgrow it, but she’d been screaming for eight months and didn’t seem ready to stop yet.

  “It was no one’s fault, just a terrible misunderstanding.” Gramma Ellen tossed up her hands. “Honestly, I never saw such a tempest in a teapot.”

  “What about you, Merell? You called 911.” Though she stood in the shadows, Aunt Roxanne knew right where she was, looked right into her eyes before she could look away. “Why did you do that?”

  Gramma Ellen said, “Nanny Franny had been teaching them about how to use the emergency number and Miss Merell here just had to try it out.”

  “Is that what happened, Merell?”

  She wondered if lying would someday be easy for her, as it seemed to be for her mother and grandmother. Now it hurt, as if there were a dozen thick rubber bands around her chest. Nevertheless she nodded, agreeing with her grandmother. A moment later she slipped out of the bedroom unnoticed.

  * * *

  Ellen Vadis stood in the door of Merell’s bedroom and watched her granddaughter where she stood at the window overlooking the back garden and the terraces down to the swimming pool.

  She said, “Merell, I want to talk to you.”

  Ellen wondered what was going on in Merell’s quick child’s mind, what story she was dreaming up. Roxanne had been a deep child, but nothing like this one. This girl was the Mariana Trench, and Ellen had been dreading this conversation since Johnny enlisted her for the job the night before. If he were here he would probably gather Merell into one of his enveloping hugs to soften the resistance out of her before he said anything, but Ellen had never been able to show her affection that way. If she couldn’t do it for Simone and Roxanne, this little girl wasn’t going to thaw the Arctic in her.

  Merell had wobbled Ellen’s confidence from the day she started putting sentences together. She knew too much, read too many books, and listened in on too many adult conversations, hovering in the shadows, hearing things never meant for a child’s ears. If this talk with her were not absolutely necessary, Ellen would have turned and walked out the door rather than start up.

  She said again, “Merell.”

  The child turned and for the flash of a second Ellen saw her own mother’s plain, strong features; and she was suddenly a child herself, kicking the toes of her Buster Browns into the floor, getting lectured. Merell had the same narrow, straight back and squared shoulders, the hair that was no color in particular. Her knees were bony, her arms were long, and her hands were big. All indications that she would be a tall woman. Ellen’s mother had been almost six feet tall.

  “I want to talk to you about yesterday,” Ellen said. “There are some things I want to make sure you understand.”

  “Mommy’s sick. I know all about it.”

  “She’s not sick,” Ellen answered automatically, without considering a more complicated explanation. Never mind how bright Merell was, a child was a child was a child. “She’s sad. Everyone gets sad sometimes. And these sad times pass. You know they always do. But it’s not a sickness.”

  “It’s a sickness in her head. I went online and read about it. It’s called�
��” Merell looked off to the right, chewing her lower lip. “Like postal depression. Only different.”

  “Postpartum depression.”

  “Yeah. It comes from having babies.”

  Whatever one called it—clinical depression or acute depressive disorder or postpartum depression—it was nothing Ellen was going to discuss with a nine-year-old.

  “It said online there are pills.”

  If only it were that simple, Ellen thought.

  When Simone was in her early teens, Ellen had taken her to see a psychiatrist who prescribed antidepressant drugs. But there had been side effects, and Simone couldn’t be relied upon to take the medication regularly. Eventually Ellen stopped getting the prescription filled. She had been married to BJ Vadis then, and she never wanted to jar their harmony with thoughts or talk about Simone’s problems. During the period after Merell was born, when Simone had one miscarriage after another and with each one sank deeper into depression, she had been given medication again; but for some reason Ellen didn’t know, it hadn’t worked the second time either.

  Merell said, “She wanted to hurt Olivia.”

  “What nonsense!” Hearing the truth stated with such uninflected candor made it all the more terrible. “She loves Olivia. You mustn’t say such silly things.”

  “Then why…”

  “I know you’re smart, Merell, but this is a grown-up thing. And it must be a private thing. You can’t tell your aunt what happened. Or your father. This has got to be a secret between the women in this family.”