“I’ll be all right, big sister, I really will be.”
He took her to him and hugged her. That had been his name for her since he’d been able to speak. Big sister. Meant both fondly and just a bit ironically, the implication being that it was big sister, not little brother, who needed guidance and help.
She returned the embrace.
They’d always been close but never more so than after their parents died.
She used to worry desperately about him getting hit by cars, or coming down with some terrible disease, or getting himself paralyzed in a football accident.
“I’m going to be all right, Amy. I really am.”
“I just worry about you.”
He grinned. This was the good grin. The heartbreaker grin.
“Watch this,” he said.
There was a white line that stretched from one garage wall to the other.
“This is my home sobriety test.”
He pulled up his left leg and started hopping down the line on his right one.
“Now could anybody who’d had too much to drink do something like this?”
She couldn’t help herself. She laughed. Sometimes he could be a little kid in a pleasant way, and this was definitely one of them.
He continued to hop down the line to midpoint, and then he turned around so he was facing her.
“OK, watch this,” he said. “Blindfolded.”
He then took his right hand and clamped it over his eyes.
And then started hopping toward her on one leg.
“Suitably impressed, big sister?” he said as he drew close to her.
“Suitably impressed,” she laughed.
She felt guilty that she hadn’t really screamed at him to make her point about AA meetings. She felt remiss in her duties as big sister. But the problem was... he had to help himself. There was nothing more she could do for him.
“You want to see me do it on my right leg?” he said.
“No thanks.”
“So you’ve been charmed by my humble demonstration?”
How could she do anything but go along with this mood of the moment?
“Charmed,” she said.
He was on two feet again. He walked over to her, took her by the arms again.
“Everything’s going to be fine, sis.”
“Darcy could get you into a lot of trouble, Richie. Prison trouble. The conviction rate on statutory rape charges is very high.”
“I’m taking her out of my little black book immediately.”
Then he had her by the arm and was gently walking her back toward the steps leading up to the parking lot.
“Dad’s birthday is coming up,” she said.
“Yeah. I was thinking about that last night. You get the flowers. I’ll give you my half of the money on payday.”
She’d never see his half, of course. But that didn’t matter. The important thing was that he be there with her. They visited their parents’ graves five or six times a year. They never missed birthdays.
When they reached the stairs, she decided to give it a final try. “Would you just try it again for me? Just once or twice?”
“AA?”
She nodded.
“You really believe in that stuff, don’t you?”
“Yeah, I do.”
“Then I’ll go.”
“Really?”
“Really. I’ll go tonight, in fact.”
She felt ridiculously optimistic at this moment, as if the weight of the world had been lifted from her shoulders.
He was going to go to AA again.
Things would be better.
Only when he was drinking would he even have considered playing around with somebody like Darcy Fuller.
Now he was going to be sober and judicious again.
Thank God for AA.
Back in the garage, the phone was ringing.
“I’d better get that, Amy.”
She nodded and watched him trot back into the shadows and oil smell of the garage.
Everything was going to be fine.
For one long, wonderful moment she convinced herself of this.
5
“Yes, you do,” Lilly Swanson said. “You look very familiar.”
It wasn’t easy, Helen keeping her face turned away from Lilly’s.
Every time Lilly would get close, Helen would turn her face a few inches away.
Lilly was like a little kid who kept trying to get something that a big older kid was keeping just out of her reach.
“Say, I’ll bet you’re Debbie’s cleaning woman, aren’t you? Debbie said she was going to keep on having the house cleaned.” Then, “Do you suppose you could do me a favor?”
Helen muttered, “If I can.”
“Next time you clean there, would you look around and see if you can find a pair of sunglasses in there? They’re Gaultiers and I hate to lose them. They’re the kind Julia Roberts always wears.” She paused with proper self-effacement. “A lot of people think I look a little like her.”
Helen almost burst out laughing.
Yes, she thought, you’d look just like her if you were thirty years younger, lost seventy pounds, had dark hair, didn’t have those outsize Norwegian features, and walked with slightly more grace than a moose.
Other than that, you two are dead ringers for each other.
“They have my initials inside the right stem,” Lilly said. “In gold. Real gold.”
“I’ll look for them, ma’am; now I’ve got to be going.”
“Say, are you all right?” Lilly said suspiciously.
“Yes, ma’am, I’m fine.”
“Say, I thought that Debbie’s cleaning woman was Mexican.”
“I’m part Mexican, ma’am.”
She almost said “señora” but decided that would be pushing things a little.
Lilly made her final attempt to see the cleaning woman’s face.
But the cleaning woman kept turning away ever so slightly...
“So will you look for my glasses?”
“Sí.”
There, that sounded pretty good.
“And if you find them, I live right over there in that big brick place. Ours cost about twice as much as the Fullers’. But don’t tell Debbie that. I wouldn’t want to hurt her feelings.” Then: “Or if you tell her, don’t tell her who told you.”
“Por favor,” Helen said, suddenly realizing that she was not exactly sure what por favor meant.
“See you,” she said then, making her voice sound like Charo’s, her words therefore coming out “Chee you.”
Then she was off, walking down the dusty alley, leaving a very curious Lilly Swanson behind her.
So strange how that woman had kept turning away, Lilly was thinking.
So strange.
Four
1
Sunlight streamed through Venetian blinds and made bars of gold on Sam’s desk. The room was small but well furnished with a mahogany desk and two deep leather armchairs. These were treasures he’d discovered while shopping for antiques with Amy last year.
He allowed himself a brief, luxurious fantasy. Tonight he’d run into Amy at the barn dance and by moonlight she’d fall back into his arms, and back into his life, forever. They were both stubborn people. Tonight he was going to take the initiative and say that he was sorry and that maybe he’d been wrong after all.
Maybe as early as this weekend they’d go up to Galena on the Mississippi and go antique hunting again. His sentimental memories of those days still snuck up and ambushed him every once in a while. He had just plopped himself down in his long-backed executive chair when his secretary buzzed him and said, “You said to let you know if Senator Cummings showed up. He just walked into the Chief’s office and closed the door.” “The Senator ask to see Stander’s file?”