“Simon, you look like shit.” Her words slip into each other.
“You smell like a brewery.”
“Happens sometimes.” Her laugh doesn’t sound like it comes from her body. She wiggles free.
“You drove like this?”
“Apparently.” She turns slowly, surveying the house, sniffing the air. “So, can I come in, or do I have to stand out here all day?”
“Sure. It’s your house too.” As though I’ve been keeping it for her. “Did you eat?” I look her over, taking her in. Her clothing hangs from her. A long hippie skirt, a huge hoodie — probably a man’s — a T-shirt poking out from underneath, moth holes in the fabric. Under this stuff is my sister.
She shrugs, jerks the screen door open, and then slams it behind her. It’s just me and the car and whatever she’s left behind. I search for her things among heaps of fast food containers, soda bottles, and beer cans. The floor is covered with matchbooks from bars up and down the coast. Burned out lightbulbs are wedged in the backseat. No bags.
“Where’s your stuff?” I yell.
“Trunk. Don’t worry about it. Didn’t bring much,” she calls back.
“Not staying long?” I shut the car door and head inside.
“Don’t know.”
I hear her swear, followed by a tearing sound. Inside I find her standing over Peabody’s book, ripping the sketch I’d just been looking at to shreds.
“Stop it. Why would you do that?” I shout. She flinches and scraps of paper float to the floor. “Do you even know how old that is?”
“Why would you keep that open? You can’t leave things like that lying around.” Her eyes narrow.
“You can’t rip up whatever you feel like. That’s mine.”
“Where did you even get that book? Who has this shit?” Home a few minutes and we’re already at each other. No wonder she left.
“A bookseller gave it to me.” The second I say it, I realize it sounds odd. People don’t give away books like this.
“Of course. Obviously.” She flops down hard onto the gray couch and a dust cloud wafts from the pillows. “You’re going to have to explain. Are you screwing people for books now?”
“No.”
“That’s a shame,” she says.
I tell her about the package and my conversations with Churchwarry. I mention Bess Visser’s name, that Mom knew it also.
She stares at me, suddenly sober. After a long silence she says, “I don’t trust him.” She pulls her knees to her chest, arms around her shins. On her wrist is a small blue tattoo I haven’t seen before. A tiny bird.
“He’s harmless. Actually, he’s pretty entertaining.”
“You’re gullible as hell. What does he want from you?”
I look around. I’ve no money. I have nothing. “He’s just an eccentric. Maybe a little lonely.”
“Are you? Lonely?” she asks. “He got to you about Mom. You’re fixated on her and it makes you an easy mark.” She’s dug her hands into the pockets of her hoodie. They’re working, twisting the fabric and pulling at something inside. “She’s dead, you know, not hiding in a book.”
“It’s hard not to be concerned. That book pointed out something fairly significant: the women in this family have a disturbing way of dying young.”
Her lip twitches with the beginning of a grimace.
I say nothing about the 24th. There are lines I can’t cross with Enola, and I’m edging close to one. “Don’t you want to know why? If there is a why?”
“Not particularly,” she says. “I’d rather just live.”
“In a carnival. And I’m the one obsessed with Mom.”
We glare at each other. She looks away first, picking at her sleeve. It’s difficult seeing her when she’s been gone so long. She could walk away again, right now, and I couldn’t stop her.
“How’ve you been?” I ask.
“Hungry.” She stomps off to the kitchen, a flurry of disjointed movement, feet slapping against chipped linoleum. Slamming drawers. “You’ve got fuck all in here. What do you eat?”
“Left-hand cabinet. Same as before. Third shelf.”
More rummaging. “Ramen? Jesus. What did I even come back here for?”
“I did wonder.”
“And why is all your crap in the living room? Wait, why are you home? Shouldn’t you be working?”
“Budget cuts.” Two deadweight words. I haven’t had to say them yet, not to anyone that’s mattered.
“No librarians on a weekday?”
“No more me. I was let go.”
Just like that her arms are around me again, clinging, like when she was little and wanted me to carry her, like she needs me. “They’re idiots.”
“They’re broke.”
“Only you would make excuses for someone firing you.”
Maybe. “Your turn.”
“My turn, what?” She lets go and heads back to the kitchen, returning with a ramen cake.
“You know why I’m home. Why are you?”
“I wanted to see you. It’s been a while.” It has. It’s hard to look at Enola without thinking of her tossing a backpack into the same car, leaving me. “You should come with me,” she says, breaking off a chunk of dried noodles and popping it into her mouth. “You’re out of a job. The carnival I’m with, Rose’s, it’s nice. Thom Rose likes me; he’d find something for you to do.”
“I’m a librarian.”
“Ex-librarian.” That shouldn’t hurt as much as it does. “You’re a swimmer, too. You could do the dunk tank no problem.” But she’s not thinking about dunk tanks. She flops down on the couch again, crunching on the noodles.
“They’ve got a swimmer.”
“Nope. That was your thing with Mom. I read cards.”
As though I didn’t show her everything that Mom showed me. How to empty your air and stretch your ribs, when to let the water weigh you down, when to smile. I remember her being little, in a polka-dot bathing suit, black hair floating all around her just like Mom’s, smiling at me from the water while I counted. Eighty-nine Mississippi, ninety Mississippi. “I’ve got some leads. I have applications out and I’m calling a headhunter tomorrow. I’ll make it work.”
“It’d be fun if you came with me. I worry about you alone in the house.” She looks around, taking in each crack, every hole that’s developed since she left. “I miss you sometimes.”
I sit on the floor, she stays on the couch, but a little of us slips together. “You scared me when you called. Something about a bad reading?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.” She picks at the arm of the couch, wiggling a little finger into a hole in the worn fabric. “Why’s your stuff in the front room?”
“It’s easier. The computer’s out here. It’s good for job hunting.”
“The air smells funny. Did it always smell like this?”
“How is it supposed to smell?” It used to smell like coffee and cooking with a little bit of the ocean mixed in. She drops to the floor next to me in a smooth slump, an effortless fall. She picks up an escaped paper, absently bending the edge back and forth, scoring it with her thumbnail. Circus Ephemera, 1981. A small excerpt about high divers, one that briefly mentions my grandmother. She rolls the edge between a thumb and forefinger, like a European with a cigarette.
“Stop it. Did you come home just to mess with my stuff?”
“Don’t look at me like that. It’s been forever.” She starts to say something else but chooses not to. Instead she says, “I talked to Frank. He says the house might go over.”
“You called Frank? Why would you call Frank?”
“To let him know I was coming by. I thought it’d be good to see him. Is it true?”