chapter four

Our house is party central for the academic university crowd. Mom loves throwing parties. She flings invitations around like confetti at a wedding. I thought Dad would convince her to cancel her planned Sunday brunch for his colleagues under the circumstances. Oldest daughter having cancer and all. But no. Apparently, in their little game of denial, they aren’t planning to tell anyone about Kristina’s cancer. Party on.

“It’s the best way to handle it,” I hear Mom tell Dad as I pass their bedroom on the way to the bathroom. “We don’t want to change everything and upset Kristina.”

Yeah, I think, except I guess Mom totally missed the memo that everything has changed. Whether she throws a party or not.

Dad lets her make these kinds of choices, so he can focus on his work or do eighteen holes uninterrupted. I peek around the corner. Mom has an outfit laid out for him on the bed, one she picked herself from the gigantic walk-in closet. It’s embarrassing the way she treats him like she’s a lovesick 1970s housewife.

Dad’s upbringing was a lot different from hers but he doesn’t talk about it much either. His dad made uncanny investments in early technology, almost as if old Gramps had a crystal ball. The Smith family will benefit for generations.

I’ve gathered, though, that Grandpa Smith liked his whiskey, so things weren’t hunky-dory. Dad tells us money doesn’t buy happiness, but I don’t think Mom agrees, the way she fills space under the Christmas tree every year and has made shopping an aerobic sport.

I think Mom gives parties to celebrate her good fortune.

“We won’t say a thing,” Mom is telling Dad. “We have to show Kristina that life goes on...”

“What about my mom?” he asks.

“Her Alzheimer’s is too far along to bother her with this,” Mom mumbles.

“What about your parents?”

She doesn’t answer him and glances toward the hall where I’m standing, so I slip around the corner toward my bedroom. I consider protesting the party, but it’s way too late to cancel anything now.

“Kristina! Tess!” Mom yells, and I hurry inside my bedroom as quietly as I can.

“I want you girls dressed and down to greet our guests,” she calls, but her voice lacks her usual resolve.

Kristina doesn’t even bother to answer and stays locked in her bedroom. Before long, Mom’s demands turn to pleas and she bangs on Kristina’s door, but Kristina refuses to budge. She doesn’t even bother with me. I’m not the one she usually shows off anyhow.

I stay in my own room, taking advantage of Kristina’s rebellion and hiding upstairs, away from their friends. I’m grateful not to be forced to mingle with Mom’s party guests, listening to university profs tell me how much I’ve grown and ask how my grades are and if I’m still playing around with art. It’s like asking them if they’re still breathing.

There’s a light tap on the door. Dad opens it and sticks his head inside.

“You okay?” he asks.

I bite my lip and lift my shoulder. Does he actually think I’m going to go along with the pretending and say yes? Does he want my real answer? Why isn’t he in Kristina’s room, talking to her?

He clears his throat and runs his hand through his hair, then steps inside my room and closes the door behind him. “I heard you in the hallway.”

I don’t say anything.

“Your mom just wants to protect all of us,” he says, his voice gruff and uncomfortable. He walks to my bed and stands in front of it as if he’s perched on the high diving board at the swimming pool downtown. He has an extreme fear of heights. I wonder if it’s worse than his fear of expressing his feelings. But he walked into my room. I have to give him that.

“So she’s throwing a party to keep out the bad news? Pretending it’s not happening is supposed to help?” I’m supposed to make things easier, be on his side. But I can’t.

“You know your mom and the stiff upper lip. She didn’t want to cancel this party, give Kristina the wrong idea. That life stops. She plugs along. It’s how she copes with things.” He reaches for my hand and then pulls back. “She didn’t have it easy growing up.”

Mom never talks about her childhood and I long to ask him more but it’s too hard, and he’s already standing up and heading for the door.

“We’re going to need you to be strong, Tessie. Our rock.”

My old nickname. He hasn’t called me that in years. Rock, for my own stiff upper lip. Never letting people see the things that scare me, see inside at all. Just like him.

When the doorbell rings, announcing the first guest, I hear Mom clomp down the stairs, probably in a pair of her high boots. Her voice drifts up as she makes excuses for both of us. I grab my sketch pad and start some warm-up exercises to get my creative juices flowing and my fingers limbered up. My mind feels blocked though, and my attempts at shading are epic fails.

The living room and attached kitchen fill with noise as more guests arrive and swarm the lower level of the house. I plunk down on my bed and start flipping through a magazine for inspiration, when Kristina slips inside my room. I hide my surprise. Her face is pale, makeup-free. Her hair hangs in wet strings to her shoulders. She’s wearing Hello Kitty pajamas. I expect her to look more mature or grown-up after hooking up with Devon but there’s no visible change.

She tiptoes to my bed and sits on the edge of it like she used to do when we were kids. She was always the one who had nightmares, not me, but she pretended to sleep in my bed to keep me safe.

We stare at each other without speaking, and then a ghost of a smile turns up the corners of her mouth. “I screwed up,” she says, and remorse crackles in her voice. “With Devon.” She pauses and sighs. “I wish I hadn’t done that. I mean, it didn’t make me feel the way I thought it would. I guess I thought it would make me feel more alive, you know?”

I have no clue but nod. I want to ask what it did feel like. If it changed her.

“I don’t even love him. And it was almost like…well, it wasn’t like when we used to kiss for hours. I’m such an idiot.” She laughs, but it’s a strange sound that’s far from happy.

Under the circumstances she could have done a lot of worse things. But I don’t know how to say that to her. Words won’t even form in my head. My mouth seems to have no connection to my thoughts or my brain. I don’t have experience saying what’s really on my mind. Especially to her.

Kristina sits up straighter, pushes her hair out of her eyes, and studies a photograph framed and sitting on my bookcase headboard. It’s the two of us when we were six and nine, wearing inappropriate two-piece bathing suits Mom picked out. We’re standing back to back, smiling at the camera.

I love the memory of that day. I’d thought she was the coolest girl in the world. She’d won a sand-castle-building contest and shared her ice cream prize with me even though I’d knocked her castle over accidentally after the judging. I thought she could do anything. When she became a teenager though, she stopped finding me cute and I didn’t know how to talk to her anymore. My stomach pretzels with the anxiety of not knowing what to say to her. My own sister.

I reach my hand out as if to touch her, but pull back when she glares at me.

“Well, I guess you had to lose your virginity sometime?” I mutter and study the bright yellow walls as I speak, and I know even the dried paint can hear the lack of conviction in my words. It’s not what I mean to say, not what I want to convey to her.

I wish she hadn’t done that with Devon, but not for the reasons she might think. I believe she deserved her first time to be special. Not because she felt like she had to. “Yup. At least I won’t die a virgin.” Her voice is as rough as the first sketches of my art project.

“You won’t die at all.”

She shakes her head and pushes herself off my bed, her expression betraying her anger. “How do you know that, Tess? Did the doctor send you a guarantee? If so, I’d like a copy of it.” She hurries out my door and slams it behind her. The sound of her feet storming down the hallway is like the rat-tat of a woodpecker pecking wood.

Click.

She locks her door behind her.

On the floor below, laughter and clinking cutlery and glasses float through the air. I imagine Mom raising a toast to everyone, the way she loves to do, forgetting for the moment the tragedy in her own home. A tear runs down my cheek. It drips into my mouth and the salty taste taints my tongue.

I want to go to Kristina and hold her hand. I want to hug her and stroke her hair like she used to do for me. When she used to put my hair in pigtails and add ribbons and pretend I was just as pretty as she was.

I want to reassure her that I would have done the same thing if I found out I had cancer, even though I don’t have a guy I could even kiss, never mind lose my virginity to. I want to tell her that she will have sex with someone else and it will be beautiful and perfect, like the romance books she likes to read.

I want to tell her that she’s brave and I love her. But I don’t know how to say it. Talking about things is not what I do.

So I sit in silence. I close my sketchbook and toss the magazine on the floor. I close my eyes and imagine all the things I should have said.