“Good morning, dear,” my mother said as I came into the kitchen.
“Shirt,” my father said without looking up from his paper. He sipped his coffee.
I stood fixed for a moment. “Sorry,” I said, “I left it upstairs.” My mother shrugged and set a plate of pancakes on the table.
“Eat, before it gets cold,” she said.
I pulled the chair back and sat down. My father sighed loudly, and lowered his paper enough to look into my eyes. I looked back for a second, then down at the plate. The only sound for the next few minutes was the clink of fork against the plate. Then Sarah breezed in. My father finished his coffee in one long gulp, stood, sat the paper down on the table, and walked out the garage door.
Sarah kissed mom, then fixed her plate. My mother’s face wrinkled, and I could tell she wanted to go after him. Sarah put her plate down on top of his paper, and sat in the chair he’d just left. Mom came to the table and hovered.
“Did you sleep okay, dear?” she asked.
“He had a bad dream,” Sarah said.
“It wasn’t a bad dream,” I said, “just—.”
“The dream of being on an airplane means something, Michael. Did you bother to look it up?” Sarah asked, staring at mom.
“No,” I said, “I just sort of—.”
“Researchers find that just before attempting suicide,” Sarah said, and mom flinched, “patients invariably report having dreams about being aboard an airplane.”
“Is that true?” Mom asked. I didn’t say anything.
Sarah nodded, “worse; those whose dream of flying into a sunset always make successful attempts within a few weeks time.”
“Where did you get that from?” I asked.
“It’s in the books we use for the sophomores. P-S-Y two-ten, ‘the disturbed psyche’” she said, spelling it out.
“Oh,” I said.
“Well, that can’t always be true, dear. Mikey isn’t suicidal, are you?” she said, looking from Sarah to me.
“No, mom, I’m not,” I said. Mom smiled at me, then walked away from the table. “What the hell is your problem?” I hissed at Sarah.
“I’m just telling the truth.”
“You’re being a raving bitch is what you’re doing,” I said, and then felt the shock of what I’d just done.
Sarah’s eyes got wide.
“I’m sorry,” I said, “Shit. I’m sorry, I just—why are you—?” I asked, and stopped again. Sarah’s face fell.
Before she could answer, mom came back to the table with a mug of coffee for me. “Just like you always like it, dear; two creams, two sugars.” I hadn’t ever told her that I’d stopped drinking coffee a while back. I smiled up at her, and went back to eating.
“What are you going to be doing today?” Mom asked.
“He has to drive me to the airport,” Sarah said.
“What?” mom asked, putting her open palm to the center of her chest.
“Diane called. I have to return today,” Sarah said, taking the mug mom had given me, and taking a long gulp.
“But surely you could—,” mom started.
“No,” Sarah said, “no choice. I’ve already exchanged the ticket over the phone; I’ll be leaving at about three this afternoon. Michael will take me to the airport,” she said, and finished the last of the coffee with another long swallow as she stood up.
Upstairs, she was throwing clothes from the messy stack next to her bed into the open suitcase. I smiled; mom had always made us do that. Even in hotels, the rule had been a separate dirty clothes stack for each of us in some discreet corner. I leaned against the doorframe. She finished getting the clothes packed, and looked up at me.
“What?” she asked.
“Why are you leaving?” I asked.
“You wouldn’t understand, Michael.”
After a while, I said “Look, I’m sorry about—.”
“No, you’re not. Don’t lie.”
“But I didn’t mean—.”
“Yes, you did. You may have been angry when you said it, and that made you not care enough about my feelings to tell the truth, but you meant it.”
“Well, you’re being—,”
“Being what, Michael?” she asked.
“You’ve changed,” I said, and immediately wished I hadn’t.
“What?” she asked.
“Nothing,” I said, “listen, try not to—.”
“No, don’t change subjects. Tell me what you were going to say.”
“Nothing, it was like one of those things where you just sort of say something and you don’t know what you meant even though you’re the one who—“
“Tell me what you were going to say.”
“I dunno—it’s like—like you’re—hurt. Like you’re really badly hurt.”
She sat down on the bed, “What makes you say that?”
“You’ve gotten—I don’t know—cold. Like that, what you just said, all of that. It was really—sharp and cold,” I told her.
“How do you mean?” she asked.
“I don’t know how to tell you what I mean. It’s just—being there—coming back— you’re different; colder.”
She sat for a moment, nodding her head as if she understood what I was saying. I relaxed my shoulders some and breathed in. Then she brought both of her palms to her face, rubbing them in hard.
“Let me tell you something, Michael,” she said, “I have been out there, seen things you wouldn’t dream of. I’ve seen just how horrible this world really is, and I’ve reacted how I thought best. I’m sorry that I couldn’t come back here and be your dear little sister anymore. I am. But what I’ve been through has made that return impossible. So you are either going to have to get to know me as I am, or walk away from me. There is no going back.”
I put my hand on her shoulder, “We all think that, Sarah, but—“
“No,” she said, too loudly, and looked around, waiting for someone to yell at her. When no one did, she said “Do. Not. Start. With that bullshit about just smiling, or hoping, or whatever other idiotic greeting card thing they’re telling you this week. This world is a horrible place to be, Michael. Life is hard and disgusting and the only option we’re given is to take it or die.”
“But don’t you see that—?”
“See that what? What is it you’re asking me to see that I haven’t already seen?” she said without turning.
“Don’t you see that we all have to figure out a way to be happy?” I said, and wondered why. I wondered if that was what I really believed. I wondered where I had heard that if it wasn’t.
“Who says?” she asked, looked at the floor for a few moments, then “how long are you going to stay?”
“I don’t know…a little while. I guess they need me.”
She looked up sharply, “how do you figure that?” Her eyes were hard.
“I don’t know. Mom asked dad to call, and I thought—.”
“You thought you’d swoop in like some hero, and make everything all better just by being here?” she asked, standing up. I stepped back. “Hero, huh? You’re the new superhero-child? Well, you can have them. Dad is a raging homophobe who believes that the 1950’s were some sort of golden age, and mom’s turned into a fucking cunt—,” she got progressively louder as she went on.
“Hey!” I exclaimed under my breath. I looked back down the stairs.
“What, Michael? Are they going to disown us, too? You don’t have a thing to worry about. You’re not the queer one.” She went into the bathroom and started to put her thing in a re-sealable baggie. I wanted to smile at that, but things were too serious. This was another of mom’s inventions. Plastic baggies for shaving cream and shampoo bottles kept the leaks from destroying clothes. Mom was that Stewart lady long before there was a television show.