Sisters (22 page)

“It won't be fun,” Annie said stubbornly. “Nothing is ever going to be fun again.”

“Tell me that in six months when you're dating some other guy.”

“There won't ever be another guy,” Annie said sadly, and they could both see that she believed it.

“Okay,” Sabrina said, “I accept that challenge. Today is July fourteenth, Bastille Day. I hereby bet you a hundred dollars that six months from now, which will be January fourteenth, you will either have been dating someone for a while, or will be starting to date someone. A hundred bucks says you'll be dating again. And Candy is our witness. You're gonna owe me a hundred bucks, Annie, so you'd better start saving your money.”

“You're on,” her sister said. “I will bet you that in six months, or six years, I won't have had a date yet.”

“The bet is for six months,” Sabrina said firmly. “If you want a six-year bet, I'm going to charge you a hell of a lot more money. You can't afford it. Take the bet for six months. And remember, you're going to owe me a hundred bucks. Dead-ass certain.”

Annie was lying in bed, smiling. She was depressed about Charlie, but she enjoyed being with her sisters. Even now they made her feel better. Tammy had called her when she got back to L.A. the night before, and had even made her laugh with stories about Juanita, and some crazy guy she sat next to on the plane.

They left her a little while later and went back to the house. Before they left the hospital, Sabrina told her that she was going into the city to sign their lease.

“I haven't said I'd do it,” she said petulantly, still looking depressed, although better than when they'd arrived. She was understandably upset about Charlie. But at least now she wasn't trying to rush back to Florence. Being there alone and blind would have been impossible for her, and she knew it. But she insisted that she didn't want to give up her apartment in Florence. Sabrina told her to discuss that with their father. It was up to him, and she knew Annie's apartment there was dirt cheap so maybe he'd let her.

“Well, if you don't move in with us,” Sabrina told her, “then Candy and I will live together and you'll miss out.” Annie smiled slowly as she said it.

“Okay, okay … we'll see. I'll think about it.”

“I can promise you one thing, Annie Adams,” Sabrina said as they stood up to leave. “If you don't come to live with us, you'll miss out on the time of your life. We're great to live with.”

“No, you're not.” Annie laughed at her and looked straight at her as though she could see her. “I lived with you until I was ten years old, and I can tell you, you are a giant pain in the ass. And Candy is not a lot better. She is the messiest human on the planet.” They all knew that she had been for years, but she seemed to have improved lately.

“I am not anymore!” Candy said, sounding insulted. “Besides, we need a maid if we're going to live together. I am
not
going to clean house.”

“Gee, maid service too … now that is something to think about,” Annie said, grinning. “I'll let you know,” she said grandly, sounding more like herself for the first time.

“You do that,” Sabrina said, kissed her, and walked out of the room with Candy right behind her. Sabrina turned to wink at Candy, who gave her a thumbs-up. Annie was going to do it. She had no other choice.

Chapter 12

The psychiatrist saw Annie at the hospital as prom
ised on Wednesday afternoon, and she called Sabrina after she'd seen her. She couldn't disclose any of what Annie had said to her, due to the confidentiality laws, but she told Sabrina that she was satisfied with their meeting, and was planning to see her again, once more in the hospital before her discharge, and hopefully on a regular basis once she moved to New York. Annie still hadn't told Sabrina that she was moving into the house, but it sounded as though she would. And Sabrina had signed the lease the night before.

The psychiatrist reassured Sabrina that her sister was not suicidal, or even unusually depressed. She was going through all the emotions that were to be expected after that kind of trauma, and losing both her mother and her sight as a result. It was a major double blow. She suggested, as the surgeon had, that Annie needed to join a rehab program that worked with people who had lost their sight, but she said the doctor would make those referrals before Annie came home. In the meantime, she was satisfied with what she saw. For Sabrina, that was good enough.

The meeting had been particularly interesting for Annie, who had been furious when the psychiatrist walked into the room and told her who she was. She told her that Sabrina had called her, and at first Annie had refused to talk. She said she didn't want any help, and she was doing fine on her own.

“I'm sure you are,” the psychiatrist, Ellen Steinberg, assured her. “But it never hurts to talk.” Annie eventually exploded and said that the doctor had no idea what she was going through, and she didn't know what it was like to be blind. “Actually, I do,” Dr. Steinberg said calmly. “I happen to be blind myself. I have been since I was in a car accident much like yours, right after I finished medical school. That was twenty-four years ago. I had some very tough years afterward. I decided to give up medicine. I had trained as a surgeon, and so as far as I was concerned, my career was pretty well shot. There aren't a lot of calls for blind surgeons.” Annie was fascinated as she listened. “And I was absolutely sure that there was no other specialty I was interested in. I thought psychiatry was for the birds. What did I want to do with a bunch of lunatics and neurotics? I wanted to be a heart surgeon, which was pretty prestigious stuff. So, I sat home and pouted for a couple of years, and drove my family insane. I started to drink a lot, which complicated everything. My brother finally told me what a horse's ass I was, how everyone was sick of my feeling sorry for myself, and why didn't I get a job and stop punishing everyone for how miserable I was.

“I couldn't do anything. I had no training for any job except medicine. I got a job in an ambulance company, answering the phones. And as some kind of crazy fluke, I got another job on a suicide hotline, and I actually liked it, which led me to psychiatry. I went back to school, and studied psychiatry. And the rest is history, as they say. I met my husband when I went back to school, he was a young professor at the medical school. We got married and have four kids. I don't usually talk about myself this way. I'm here to talk about you, Annie, not about myself. But I thought it might help you to hear about what happened to me. I was hit by a drunk driver in the accident. He went to jail for two years. And I was blind for the rest of my life. But actually, if you want to look at it that way, maybe it was a blessing. I wound up in a specialty I love, married to a wonderful man, and have four pretty terrific kids.”

“How can you do all that, being blind?” Annie was fascinated by her. But she couldn't imagine any of that happening to her. Not the good stuff anyway. She felt cursed.

“You learn. You develop other skills. You fall on your face just like everyone else does, blind or not. You make mistakes. You try harder than everyone else at times. You have disappointments and heartbreaks just like people who have their sight. It's not so different in the end. You do what you have to do. Why don't we talk about you for a while? How are you feeling right now?”

“Scared,” Annie said in a little girl's voice, as tears started to flow. “I miss my mom. I keep thinking I should have tried to save her. It's my fault that she died. I couldn't grab the steering wheel. I didn't have time.” She looked anguished as she spoke.

“It doesn't sound like you could have. I read the accident report before I came here.”

“How did you read it?” Annie asked her.

“I had it translated into braille. That's pretty easy to do. I type all my reports in braille, and my secretary retypes them for sighted people.”

They talked for over an hour, and then Dr. Steinberg left her. She said that if Annie wanted her to, she would come back again.

“I'd like that,” Annie said softly. She felt like a child again, at everyone's mercy. She had told her too about Sabrina and Candy wanting her to move into a house with them.

“What do
you
want to do?” Dr. Steinberg had asked her, and Annie had said she didn't want to be a burden to them.

“Then don't be. Go to school. Learn what you need to know so that you can be independent.”

“I guess that's what you did.”

“Yes, but I wasted a lot of time feeling sorry for myself before that. You don't need to do that, Annie. It sounds like you have a good family. I did too. But I punished everyone for a long time. I hope you don't do that. It's a waste of time. You'll enjoy your life again, if you do what you need to. You can do almost everything that sighted people can do, except maybe watch movies. But there are so many things you can do.”

“I can't paint anymore,” Annie said sadly. “That's all I ever wanted to do.”

“I couldn't be a surgeon either. But I like psychiatry a lot better. There are probably a lot of artistic things you can do. Talents you don't even know you have. The secret is to find them. To accept the challenge. You've been given a chance here, to be more than you were before. And something tells me that you're going to do it. You have a whole life ahead of you, and new doors to open, if you're willing to try.” Annie didn't answer for a long time, as she thought about it. And a few minutes later Dr. Steinberg got up to leave. Annie could hear her cane sweeping the floor.

“You don't have a dog?”

“I'm allergic to them.”

“I hate dogs.”

“Then don't have one. Annie, you've got most of the choices you had before, and more. See you next week.” Annie nodded, and heard the door close. She lay back in her bed, thinking of everything Dr. Steinberg had said.

Chapter 13

The next few weeks were insanely hectic for Sabrina.
She took care of her father, and tried to buoy his spirits. Candy wasn't as much help as she'd hoped. She was easily distracted, disorganized, and still too upset about their mother's death to assist in the ways Sabrina needed. In so many aspects, Candy was still a child, and now she expected Sabrina to mother her. Sabrina did her best, but sometimes it was very hard.

After signing the lease, they went back through the house to decide which of the furniture they wanted to keep. There were a lot of pretty pieces that Sabrina and Candy both agreed they liked. She helped Candy put her apartment up for rent. It was off the market in three days, at a profit to Candy. She was going to make enough from it to cover her rent. And Sabrina got out of her lease, for a minimum penalty. She sold some of her furniture, put other pieces in storage, and earmarked what they'd need on East Eighty-fourth Street. Candy had rented her penthouse fully furnished, so they had nothing to move from there. Sabrina had told Candy to book the movers for August first. It was something she could do to help. And between the four hundred phone calls she had to make, Sabrina visited Annie every day. She had finally agreed to move in with them and see how it went. After her second meeting with Dr. Steinberg, Annie had told both of her sisters that if they babied her or made her feel helpless, she would move out. And both Candy and Sabrina had agreed, and said they would be respectful of her and wait until she asked for their help, unless she was about to fall down the stairs.

By the third week of July, when Annie was released from the hospital, all three girls were excited about the house and living together again, in spite of why they were moving there.

Annie's first days at her father's house were difficult. Being there without their mother was newer to her than to the others. They had already been there for three weeks without her. For Annie, it was all fresh. She knew the house perfectly, so could move around fairly easily, but in every room she expected to hear her mother's voice. She walked into her closets, and felt her clothes with her fingers and put them to her face. She could smell her perfume, and almost sense her in the room. It was agony at times being there, and reminded her again and again of her last vision of the steering wheel slipping out of her mother's hands as she flew out of the car. The memory haunted Annie, and she spoke of it during every session with Dr. Steinberg. She couldn't get it out of her mind, nor the feeling that she should have done something to stop it, but there hadn't been time. She even dreamed of it at night, and losing Charlie after the accident just made things worse. In some ways, she was glad she was moving to New York, and not back to Florence. She needed a fresh start. But her father had agreed not to give up her apartment there for a while.

Her treatment plan when she left the hospital was fairly straightforward, and the ophthalmologist explained it to Sabrina as well. Sabrina was beginning to feel more like Annie's mother than her sister. She was responsible for everyone now. Annie, Candy because she was still so young and irresponsible at times, and their father, who seemed to be getting more helpless by the hour. He lost things, broke things, cut himself twice, and couldn't remember where anything was, or worse, had never known. Sabrina commented to Tammy on the phone late one night that their mother must have done everything except chew his food for him. He had been totally pampered, protected, and spoiled. She had been the consummate wife, and it wasn't Sabrina's style. She tried to get him to do some things for himself, with very little success. He complained a lot, whined constantly, and cried often. It was understandable, but Sabrina was at her wit's end dealing with him and everything else.

Annie's doctor wanted her to have follow-up CT scans after her brain surgery, and he had strongly recommended that she attend a training school for the blind in New York for six months. He had told her and Sabrina that it would allow Annie to become independent, and able to live successfully on her own, which was ultimately their goal. Annie had been sullen about it for days after they talked, and wandered around her father's house looking depressed. She had a white cane, but wouldn't use it. In her parents' house she managed well, as long as no one moved anything. Candy left a chair out of place in the dining room, and as Annie cruised through the room unsuspectingly, she fell flat on her face. Candy apologized profusely as she helped her up.