We walked to the front door. I opened the deadbolt slowly, quietly. Our night porch time had always been sacred. If mom or dad had heard us going outside, there would have been questions to answer. We didn’t want to answer any.
Not until we were sitting outside in the cold did it occur to me that I’d just gotten the scotch down and not worried about getting caught. I’d gotten it down as though I’d bought it, not worrying what anyone would think. It made me feel like an adult. I wondered if that was for everyone, or just me. I wondered what I’d have said if my father had come back in, or my mother had seen. I smiled for a moment, thinking that Sarah would have offered to make one for mom.
We were sitting on the front porch, just like always. Sarah fumbled in her pocket for a moment, then brought out a cigarette. She did the same again, producing a lighter. Sarah was smoking and we were both drinking scotch and soda out of dad’s tumblers. It was just like old times.
Sarah exhaled like a dragon. The smoke billowed slowly out of her mouth. I always thought of dragons. I thought that, if I ever made a movie, I’d want it to look like that. That’s what smoking looked like. I’d always seen people do it in a hurry, just quick puffs and long jets smoke with a lot of noise. Sarah just sort of opened her mouth and the gray came out like words.
“Heard anything about Katy?” I asked her.
She laughed, tapped her ashes, inhaled again. “Our illustrious sister?” she asked. “Last I’d heard, she was in Costa Rica,” she said, playing our old game.
“What’s she doing there?” I asked, sipping my drink. I tasted the rum more than the coke.
“God, I don’t know,” she said, exhaling smoke, “some damn thing with the Red Cross or whatever bleeding heart cause she’s adopted this time. Whenever she calls, and I’m not there, she talks to Diane,” she said, “I hate that.” She took another quick sip, then looked over at me. How long have we been pretending, now? the look said.
“Is she going to come home ever?” I asked, noticing how thin and hollow the words sounded. I thought of me when I was little asking Katy if the sun would come back. We’d watched an eclipse together. My mom and dad had said it would be okay for us to go up on the roof. Katy had tried to shove me off, but Sarah made her stop.
“I don’t know,” Sarah said, putting the cigarette back to her lips.
“How is Diane?” I asked. I didn’t really want to know, but you’re supposed to ask things like that.
Sarah laughed on short little barking laugh, then said “Fine, as always. She’s gone home to mumsie and dadsies for the winter.” She always put on a fake Boston accent when she said those words.
“You don’t like her mother and father?” I asked. It was Sarah and her lover together; just a quick picture then blank. I inhaled some of her smoke, held it, then exhaled. I thought about being at the bottom of that pool at the Y all those years ago. I thought about how I used to dive to the bottom and look back up at the people on the side of the pool. I used to think about how maybe this was how they were supposed to look; wavy and blurry at the edges.
I inhaled and held it again. Then I exhaled and noticed that her cigarette was down to the filter. My nose and mouth felt dry and brittle inside. I wondered if I’d have a nosebleed later.
“It’s not that,” Sarah said, exhaling and sipping her drink, “it’s just—she has everything, you know? I mean, I love her, and I think she understands me. At least, she gets my writing, but—,” she said, letting it hang there. She in haled and exhaled loudly. The smoke drifted just above the words. The ice clinked in her glass. “What about you?” she asked.
“What about me what?”
“Susan?”
“Susan,” I said.
“Still?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“You’ve been seeing her for what, a year?”
“A little less.”
“Have you fucked her yet?” she asked.
I blushed, said nothing.
“I saw Kevin O’Mally at a stop light on my way into town,” she said. When I didn’t say anything, “How come you and he were never friends?”
“Why would we have been?” I asked. An image of him pounding his fists into another boy’s head flashed in my mind.
She moved a leaf with the toe of her shoe, “I don’t know,” she said.
The deadbolt clicked. Sarah and I looked at each other, and she threw the cigarette overhand as far as she could. She exhaled sideways out of her mouth. The door opened, and I looked back. Mom was there in her robe. The light behind her made her face hard to see. For a second, I was a kid again.
“Don’t you two want to go to bed?” Mom asked.
“In a minute, mom,” Sarah said. Just like when we were younger, Sarah’s voice toward mom was always a warning.
“Oh. Okay. Mike, will you take the garbage out?”
“Garbage day isn’t until Wednesday, ma. I’ll take it out tomorrow night,” Sarah said.
“Oh. Okay,” she said, and I heard her cross her arms. I could tell she was trying to look up and down the street, seeing what lights were on. “It’s very cold out here, isn’t it?” she asked.
“Goodnight, ma,” Sarah said.
Mom paused. I saw her tighten her robe belt. Then she said, “Goodnight. Don’t stay up too late.”
“Night, mom,” I said.
“Sweet dreams,” she said. After a moment, she closed the door. The deadbolt clicked.
Sarah and I looked at each other. She rolled her eyes, and took a long swallow of her drink. The ice clinked against the side of the tumbler.
“That damn old woman is going to drive me to drink,” she said. I laughed. She smirked.
“What are you writing now?” I asked.
“The new novel?” she asked, setting the glass down on the lawn. “It’s a period piece. It’s about a woman who goes home to her ten year high school reunion. The kids treated her like shit, and it’s been a huge weight on her the whole time, so she goes back. By going back and dealing with these people head on, telling them ‘you hurt me’, she heals herself. She stops writing romance novels and decides to start writing something worthwhile, something more like her life. On the trip, she meets a guy and they fall in love.”
“Oh,” I said, sipping.
“There’s a lot of music symbology in it, as well as a serious call to get off prozac for this generation. Jamie says that there’ll be a lot of interest in it when I’m done,” she said, picking up her drink. She drained the rest of it in one long swallow. Then she crunched one of the ice cubes. My shoulders tensed.
“She’s straight?” I asked.
“Who? The character? Yeah. Why?” she asked.
I shrugged.
“Do you think just because your sister is a big ol’ dyke that she can’t write something about a straight girl finding love?”
I don’t know why, maybe the warmth in my chest, but I asked “Was it Ainsley? That girl from Alabama?”
“N—no. How did you—? No. I was—I mean, I did—with her, I mean—but—,” she stammered. She cleared her throat loudly, then looked away. “I had already been with a few girls by then.”
“What?” I asked.
She cleared her throat again, then tipped her tumbler up, hoping to find a few drops. She set it down. “I said, I’d already been with a few girls before Ainsely.”
“Who?”
She snorted, “Shit, Michael. That was a long time ago.”
“Who?” I asked.
“I can’t tell you.”
“Why not?”
She stood up slowly, picking the glass up after she was standing. “Because I can’t. I’m going to bed.” She walked up the steps. Each on creaked under her feet. As she opened the door she asked, “You coming in?”