Henry's Sisters (25 page)

I laughed.

The next day I rode my motorcycle to the Columbia River before opening the bakery. I was calmed by the golden lights streaking over the horizon, trails of pinks and yellows and a slash of orange swirling around the breaking sun like a dancer’s dress.

From the side of that rushing river, I studied my windsurfer. At another time in my life, I might have wandered over to say hello. Chat. Get laid, if necessary. He was male and, from a distance, he was attractive. He was athletic.

That would have been enough for me to drown myself in for a few hours so I could bury my pain, then get rid of him. Plenty enough.

But I didn’t need any more drowning. I had done that for too many decades.

I think I was finally finding Isabelle.

She’d been hiding, arms over her head, curled up in a ball, in a closet in my mind, but she was there.

The wind puffed on by, soothing my face and, I do believe, my soul.

I tried going to church on Sunday. Cecilia and the girls always go, but I told them I’d go only if we could sit in the back and disappear.

We sat in the back. Velvet, Janie, and Grandma came, too.

The disappearing part didn’t work too well.

At the beginning of mass Father Mike spread his arms out and said, ‘Welcome, everyone! Welcome if you’re here weekly. Welcome if you come once a month or once a year. Welcome welcome welcome if you’ve never been to church at all but here you are today! And, ladies and gentleman, I would like to put a
special
welcome out there for the Bommarito family, Amelia Earhart, and Velvet Eddow!’

The whole church turned and stared.

Grandma stood and saluted, left, centre, right.

Henry stood up in the first row and shouted back, ‘Hi, Isabelle! Hi, Janie! Hi, Cecilia! Jesus loves you!’

The clapping of the congregation was quite welcoming.

When the clapping congregation turned towards the front again, I rolled my eyes at Father Mike and spread out my arms like –
what the hell?

He grinned.

He’s a sneaky priest.

‘Daddy and Constance had a huge fight this weekend. They thought we were at the neighbours next door, but we weren’t. We got the whole meal deal,’ Kayla said. She was wearing three giant wooden and metal crosses on her neck. (‘I am reviewing my study of three religions this week: Judaism, Catholicism, and Lutheranism.’)

She leant against the porch rail. It was twilight and the three Bommarito sisters were almost comatose with exhaustion. Henry was running around with Grandma like a plane on the lawn, although slower than usual. Velvet was asleep on the lounge, snoring like a southern lady.

‘We heard the whole yucky thing,’ said Riley. She was wearing a green bandana and a shirt with Einstein’s picture on it. ‘Seems like whenever we’re there they get in a fight and start in on each other like colliding asteroids.’

I dipped some chips into mango salsa and muffled my chuckles. The neighbour up the street gave it to us. His name was Chance Dickey, he was eighty, and he winked at Velvet when he came by.

‘Dad was sweating he was so mad because he said he gave Constance a “shitload” of money – he used that word, Mom, I’m just repeating it – from his retirement accounts to pay her credit cards off before they got married. They also opened accounts together,’ Kayla said. ‘What’s that called?’

‘Joint accounts,’ I said, settling into the porch swing with my strawberry daiquiri. This was gonna be good. I smirked at Cecilia.

Janie hummed over her teacup. She had a journal on her lap where she’d drawn a noose.

‘OK,’ Kayla said. ‘That. So, like, he had the bills for their credit accounts on the table and he was so awesome pissed at Constance.’

‘Yeah,’ Riley chimed in. ‘Daddy and her are renting that place in downtown Portland, they don’t own it, and I heard Daddy say they weren’t going to be able to buy a house unless they could get rid of the new credit card bills and Constance yelled, “You better get a raise at work then, Park,” and I thought he was gonna throw Constance out the window. He said his boss was already on his back anyhow because he got divorced. His boss liked you, Mom.’

‘When I was studying to be a Mormon, I called him and he told me all about their religion. He’s so cool,’ Kayla said. ‘They got nine kids.’

‘Dad yelled at Constance,’ Riley said, ‘that his boss hauled him into his office because you called him, Mom, because Dad hadn’t paid his child support and the boss told Dad he couldn’t trust him morally anymore, whatever that means, and to pay the child support immediately.’

‘Now isn’t that a shame,’ I muttered.

‘Shameful,’ Cecilia drawled.

‘Constance told him she wasn’t Betty Crocker, like Mom,’ Kayla said. ‘And she wasn’t going to stay home and cook dinner and she sure as hell’s bells – that’s what she said, “hell’s bells” – wasn’t going to take his shirts to the dry cleaner or take his car in for an oil change, like he’d told her to since she doesn’t work. Dad got even more mad and madder. He said, “Cecilia always did it and she worked and had two kids!” and Constance threw a fireplace poker at his head. It broke a window.’

‘Constance wants to go to spas all day and get her hair done,’ Riley said. ‘She says she has a business, but all I saw were hundreds of shampoo and cream rinse and lotion bottles stacked up in their storage space. They were labelled Constance’s Creams and Dalliances.’

‘Her business sucks,’ Kayla said. ‘She told Dad before she married him that she had so much business she could barely handle it all and Dad said he was going to help her with it. They were all excited about it. They said they were going to take her company international and make a bunch of money.’

‘Like, she doesn’t even use it on her own hair,’ Riley said. ‘I saw her shampoo bottles in the shower.’

‘How was your behaviour with your father?’ I couldn’t resist. I had to ask. Bommarito Power!

I watched the girls squirm.

‘I felt like furthering my education as a Muslim again,’ Kayla said. ‘So I wore my burka.’

‘I told Constance her boobs were out and she should put them back in,’ Riley said.

‘I prayed five times a day on my mat to Allah,’ Kayla said. ‘Out loud.’

‘But other than that and telling her she was too old for the outfit she was wearing and that you, Mom, would never dress like that,’ Riley said, ‘I didn’t speak to her.’

‘You spoke to Constance when you two had that fight,’ Kayla corrected her. ‘Actually, you yelled at her.’

Riley sighed heavily. ‘Constance was bugging me. She doesn’t know anything about the European Union or what’s going on in the Sudan. She doesn’t even know what macroeconomics is. She thought physics was spelt with an
f
. She’s stupid. Most of the time I glare at her.’

A puff of wind puffed by. I tried not to laugh at how Parker was being filleted.

‘When I go to Dad’s I feel spiritually driven to be a Muslim woman.’

‘And I’m going to pluck out my hair in the kitchen.’

There was a fully loaded silence as we digested this hilarity.

‘To hair plucking and burkas!’ I cheered, holding up my daiquiri. ‘Cheers!’

I drove out with Cecilia and Janie to see Momma about a week later.

When we arrived, we found Momma square dancing, her head back, laughing, her face lit up like a Christmas tree. She was even wearing one of those flouncy, lacy skirts.

Clearly, she had forgotten her daughters were coming.

I had not seen her so happy in years.

I watched her for a while, remembering all we had been through.

Sinda leant over my shoulder.

‘She’s having the time of her life,’ I said.

Sinda nodded. ‘They all do here. What’s not to like? These people are older, not ill, not dead. They still want to laugh and dance and have a good time. We have activities all day. They don’t have to do any housework, their meals are cooked for them, they can go on outings whenever they wish. Yesterday we took them to an action movie and out to dinner. There’s a group of them who want to go to a water park and slide down the slides. We’re getting signed consent forms from all of them before we go so we don’t get sued if they get hurt – and their families have to sign, too – but all the forms but one are back in, so it’s a go.’

I smiled as I watched an older gentleman spin Momma.

‘Is Momma one of the water park people?’ Janie asked.

Cecilia threw up her arms, ‘Whaddya think?’

Sinda handed me the form.

I signed it.

We decided to stay in Portland that night, so we headed over to my loft. It was the first time I’d been back since I was attacked. I felt ill down to my toes, almost feverish, and my sisters held my shaking hands in the elevator on the way up.

Cecilia inserted the key in the lock. Since the police had busted the door down, management had arranged for a new one.

When Cecilia opened the door, it was like she was opening the door to Demon Hell. I didn’t want to go in.

I started to shake from the inside, as if my lungs were shrivelling from fear. The deathly memory of that night came rushing back, the stark, hopeless, raging terror. I could feel my face getting pounded in, my braids being yanked from my head, my ribs splitting, my chin cracking, and my own hot blood spurting out of me.

I could hear him, his spine-tingling giggles, his off-key singing, his explosive anger, and I heard my own muffled screams, the thunk of my body hitting the floor, the punches he’d rained on me. I smelt his body, his breath, his groin, his danger. I could almost feel the tooth he’d knocked out in the back of my throat.

‘Now, don’t forget,’ Janie said, ruffling her beige skirt, ‘smile when you go through the doorway.’

Janie’s sweet voice, her innocent, eager face, cut through the churning, paralytic fear of my hideous memories.

‘You’re kidding, Janie. You want me to smile before I go into a place where I was attacked?’

‘Yes, honey, please, it’ll feel better in there, it will.’

‘She’s got a point,’ Cecilia said, bending over double with me, feeling what I felt. ‘That bastard took so much from you, Isabelle. From all of us. Let’s say to shit with him, hope the electric chair malfunctions and he has to fry for hours, and walk on in here. Smiling.’

‘Yes, let’s do!’ Janie said, cheerleader-like. ‘Smile, sisters!’

I straightened back up. Damned if they weren’t right. I was not going to let that demented criminal take one more thing from me.

The three of us sisters linked arms, turned sideways, and went right through the door of my loft.

Smiling.

Even when I saw the bloodstains on my floor, I kept smiling.

When I sagged, my knees sinking into themselves as too many horrifying visions collided in my brain, both my sisters caught me.

And hugged me close.

That night we dragged three loungers onto my deck to check on the stars.

We couldn’t see as many stars in the city as we could in the country.

That bugged me.

I heard cars and horns.

That bugged me, too.

And I couldn’t see through the skyscrapers around me to any towering trees.

That bugged me big-time.

I was in a modern loft instead of Grandma’s gracious Queen Anne with the nooks, crannies, stained-glass, sunroom and wraparound porch.

That made me feel cold.

I wanted to hug Henry and get to know the White Dove better and salute Amelia and laugh over Velvet’s throat-burning lemonade.

I wanted to make a peach upside-down cake and apricot brandy muffins and hear more outrageous stories from Kayla and Riley.

Dare I say it? I wanted to go home and home wasn’t here.

Home was not here.

No phone call at two in the morning is going to be good.

You know that.

All three of us boinged up in my bed at one time as the ringing echoed off the walls of the night and the steel skyscrapers. I tried to climb over Cecilia to get at the phone. Cecilia fumbled for it blindly. I got tangled in the covers and slid off the bed while Janie pleaded, ‘Get the phone, get the phone.’

‘Dammit,’ Cecilia muttered. She knocked over the last of the gin and tonic she’d been drinking in bed. Janie knocked the lamp over on her side.

I hopped to the light dragging the sheet, flicked it on, grabbed my phone.

The news was not good.

No phone call at two in the morning is going to be good.

You know that.

‘He’s in the hospital,’ Dad said, his voice controlled, but the worry zigzagged through his tone.

‘We’re coming,’ I said, panic charging like a bull in my gut. ‘Right now.’

Cecilia was on the floor, her hand on her chest. ‘Holy shit, what is it?’

‘Oh dear oh dear,’ Janie whispered.

‘It’s Henry,’ I said, choking back tears. ‘Dad and Velvet don’t know what’s wrong. He’s in pain. Says it’s his stomach. They’re headed for the hospital in Trillium River. Velvet’s staying with Grandma.’

We jumped into our clothes and flew out the door.

Sweet, sweet Henry was hooked up to IVs, pale, weak, his eyes shut in a way that almost-dead people’s eyes start to shut. In typical Bommarito fashion, we hugged and kissed Henry, then the three of us sisters went back into the hallway of the hospital and had our meltdowns.

Pancreatic cancer are two words you never want to hear.

It’s when the pancreas, this organ that we’re not aware of at all, this six-inch
thing
that lies sideways behind the bottom part of your stomach, is infested with cancer. The cells mutate supersonically fast and live a long time, forming tumours that suck the life out of their host. The host being your: grandpa, aunt, sister, father, and so on. The cancer usually spreads quick, insidious and cruel.

And by the time you find out you have it, things are not good.

With our Henry, our sweet Henry, things were not good.

‘It’s metastized,’ Dr Remmer told us in a conference room late the next afternoon. She was thin, about sixty years old with grey hair pulled back in a ponytail. Knowledgeable, friendly, professional. Exactly who you want when you’re in the crisis of your life.

Dad leant his head back, covering his white, pasty face with his hands.

‘I don’t understand,’ Cecilia snapped off, already angry. ‘He’s had stomach aches all his life. We’ve always had him lie down, given him milk and cookies…how did this happen? How did Henry get pancreatic cancer? He doesn’t drink, doesn’t smoke, never did drugs. He eats healthy. He’s a little fat, but that’s it. He’s even lost about fifteen pounds in the last couple of months!’

Janie started hiccup-crying, tapping the table in sets of four. She’d already found herself some lemon tea.

‘Unintended weight loss, actually,’ the doctor said, calm and controlled, ‘can be a sign of pancreatic cancer.’

The doctor glanced down at her notes and the lab tests that she had spread out on the conference table.

‘How could it have metastized already?’ Cecilia said. ‘This is the first damn second we’ve even heard about the damn thing!’

‘It’s a terrible beast.’ The doctor showed us a scan. The scan was a black-and-white blur of pancreatic disaster.

‘The cancer has spread to his liver.’ Another scan.

‘It’s spread to his stomach.’ Another scan.

‘We think it’s in his lymph nodes.’

Janie threw her hands up in the air in defeat and sobbed.

Tears ran silently down Dad’s well-lined, white-as-a-sheet cheeks.

I could hardly move.

Devastation, bleak, utter and all-consuming, filled my entire being. How could this be happening?
How could this be happening?

Cecilia’s anger notched way up. ‘We have to fix this. Can he start chemo today? What about radiation? Can you operate and take the damn thing out? What’s the plan? We need to start this immediately. Right now. Like, tonight.’ I don’t even think she noticed that her whole body was shaking, her head wobbling from stress.

I put a hand on her hand, even as the room seemed to swirl and spin.

‘Stop it!’ she rasped out, standing up. ‘Don’t touch me! You’re all sitting around, doing nothing.
Nothing
. And Henry needs help!’ She pounded both fists on the table. ‘What are you going to do, doctor? How are you going to help my brother?’

The doctor was used to this. ‘We can do
chemo—’

Cecilia interrupted. ‘That’s a given. Now get your nurse, or get another doctor, and tell her to get things set up right away. If this is spreading fast, we need to stop it. Why aren’t you calling her?’ Cecilia pounded the table again, her head wobbling. ‘Why aren’t you calling her?
Why aren’t you doing something?
’

‘Cecilia,’ I said. My heart felt as if screws were being drilled into it.

‘Cecilia,’ Janie said, tap, tap, tapping.

‘Don’t patronise me!’ she shouted, kicking her chair against the wall. ‘Don’t do that! Don’t tell me to calm down. I am not going to calm down until we get Henry help. Help him!
Help him!
’

‘Honey,’ Dad said, getting up and putting a hand on her back.

‘Don’t honey me!’ She shrugged off his arm. ‘I want a second opinion. Who knows if you even know what you’re doing…’ She put her hands on her face. ‘Who knows if you even know what you’re doing…’ She bent over at the waist as if she’d been slugged in the stomach. ‘I think you’re wrong.
You’re wrong
.’

Dad put an arm around her, urged her to sit down.

‘This can’t be true,’ Cecilia half screamed, wrenching away from Dad. ‘You have the wrong scans. Henry isn’t sick. He was outside the other day running around with Grandma. They were planes. He helped with treats on Wednesday night at church. We made giant whale cookies at the bakery because they were studying Jonah and the whale. I’m telling you!’ she screamed. ‘He is not sick!’

The doctor’s eyes welled up. ‘I am so deeply sorry.’

‘You’re not sorry enough! Not sorry enough!’ Cecilia’s voice ended in a wail. She didn’t even bother to try to land in a chair. She sank to the ground, forehead to the floor, keening, crying.

I grabbed her and rocked her, her head in full-throttle wobble. ‘He’s not sick! He’s not sick!’

Janie stood up to help and I saw her sway, vision unfocused. ‘Dad! Get Janie!’ I yelled.

The doctor and Dad moved at the same time as Janie pitched straight back.

Cecilia moaned, low, guttural, grief-stricken.

Destroyed. I felt her. I felt that destruction.

I thought of Henry in that bed, his sweet face, his kindness, the only sane person in the Bommarito family.

The tears came like a wave, an angry, frothing, hateful wave.

Cecilia said, ‘She’s wrong! She’s wrong! Our Henry isn’t sick! He’s not sick! He was petting the dogs the other day!’

But the doctor was not wrong.

Our Henry was not only sick.

Our Henry was dying.

‘Go and get Momma,’ Janie whispered to me the next morning, her voice weak. ‘Go get her.’

She was lying in a lounge chair next to a hospital bed where Cecilia was resting. The doctors were concerned about her heart.

I hadn’t been surprised. My heart was skipping back and forth, and I knew Cecilia was doing it to me. It was I who told a doctor to check Cecilia. He had done so, against her wishes, and she was wheeled out on a stretcher seconds later. She was currently sleeping, but her sleep was restless, her chest rising up and down, body trembling.

Janie had fainted twice and was sickly pale. Dad was sitting next to Cecilia, holding her hand.

‘I’ll go get Momma,’ I said. I dreaded it like nothing I had ever dreaded before.

‘I’m coming with you,’ Dad told me.

‘No, I’ll go alone. It would be too much of a shock to Momma.’

Dad put his chin up. ‘Honey, it will be a shock to your mother to see me, there’s no doubt. But I have not been there for your mother for almost three decades. I will be there for her when she hears this news.’

‘But Dad,’ I said, ‘you left her, left us. She may be furious with you still. Hurt, angry. You know Momma. She lives on full-blast. Forgiveness is not her forte. Neither is forgetting a grudge.’

‘I know River,’ he said. ‘I loved her. I still love her.’ He paused, swallowed hard. ‘River knew why I left, honey. She also knew I was in jail.’

I felt like I’d got another hit in the face. ‘She did? She never told us.’

‘You didn’t need to know that your daddy had landed himself in jail. River knew not to hurt you more than you’d been hurt. I know how to handle River and I know I can be of comfort to her. It’s time for me to go to her. Please. Allow me.’

There were too many emotions in my head to argue. There was no doubt that Dad was a calming presence to us. He would know how to handle Momma better than I, of that I had no doubt.

He kissed Cecilia and Janie, who clung to him.

We hurried in to the retirement centre, our despair heavy, dreadful, and I immediately saw Sinda. I told her about Henry, who we had brought to the centre many times. She got teary-eyed, shook hands with Dad, then led us into a library, where Momma was deep into a bridge game with three other ladies.

For a second Momma didn’t see us and I studied her. She was still so beautiful. Bright eyes, soft bell-shaped hair, trim figure. She had a bone structure that would never give. At ninety she’d still be a stunner.