The Good Sister (20 page)

“Are we having a milkshake?” Valli asked.

“I want chocolate.”

Well, why not?
Simone thought with a bounce of happiness. It was already hot and ice cream was a dairy product. Calcium for the bones.

The twins cheered as she dropped enormous scoops of chocolate ice cream into the blender, whirled it again, and poured it
into tall plastic glasses. “Drink fast,” she said.

When Merell returned to the kitchen the twins were
outside in their play yard, and Simone was putting their drinking glasses into the dishwasher.

“What’s for breakfast?”

“Toast.” Something wormy and resentful in Simone wouldn’t let her make a milkshake for this daughter. “And peanut butter.”

“We ate all the peanut butter yesterday. For snack.”

“Have jam then, or cheese. Don’t say it. There’s no cheese.”

“Do you want me to write a list for Celia?”

“I don’t want you to do anything except eat if you’re hungry and then watch your sisters.”

Merell got a box of crackers from the cupboard and smeared several with strawberry jam.

“You know what, Mommy? I saw on TV, you can order groceries by computer and they get delivered in a van.” She shoved a cracker
in her mouth and wiped her sticky fingers on her shorts. “You don’t even have to leave the house. And the man’ll bring the
bags in too, so you don’t have to carry anything.”

“What makes you think I don’t want to shop?”

“You could tell me what to get and I could order for you.”

Johnny had bought Merell a computer when she turned seven. Simone had no idea how it worked and was afraid to ask, dreading
the humiliation, already knowing it would be too complicated for her.

“I can live without you managing my life, Merell. You’re as bad as Roxanne.”
And Alicia
.

She felt the first pinch of a headache, the kind that began between her shoulder blades and groped its claws up the back of
her neck, dug under her skull. Aspirin couldn’t touch it but she swallowed four anyway.

Merell sat on the counter and watched her. “Mommy, are you going to have another baby?”

Simone opened a cupboard and took down a blue-and-white-striped coffee mug and then put it back. It was too hot for coffee.
A shadow of profound, bone-melting lassitude fell over her.

God, no, not today. Please, not today.

“I like babies, Mommy.”

“Well, that’s lucky because you’re going to be helping me take care of this one. And Olivia. And the twins.” And after this
one, another and another until Johnny got his boy.

She poured a glass of ice water from the spigot on the front of the refrigerator and drank it down without breathing. A fist
of numbing cold slugged the back of her throat.

“Mommy, I bet if you called up Nanny Franny she’d come back. She likes us.”

“I don’t want her back, Merell. And I wish to God you’d quit telling me what to do.” The muscles in her neck weren’t strong
enough to hold up her head.

“Is anyone coming to help us? Can I call Aunt Roxanne?”

“Use the brains God gave you, Merell. Your aunt’s got a job, she’s a teacher. It’s Thursday and school is in session.”

Merell tugged hard on her bangs.

“You’ll go bald if you keep doing that. Make yourself even uglier.”

Merell’s expression pinched; and Simone wished she could take the spiteful and unkind words back. Merell couldn’t help being
someone else’s baby, it wasn’t her fault that she’d been switched in the hospital nursery, exchanged for Simone’s real child,
a baby boy. Voices in Simone’s head—a chorus of Johnny and Ellen and Roxanne—told her that never happened, that it was a crazy
thought; but Simone didn’t know if it was or not. There were times when she just couldn’t tell where the truth stopped and
imagination began.

If you weren’t so helpless…

She hummed the alphabet song and focused on gathering the necessary ingredients and equipment for making cupcakes. One afternoon,
watching the cooking channel from her bed, she had seen a stout, dark-haired woman make chocolate cupcakes in about five minutes.
Measure the dry ingredients, then the wet. Mix and put in the oven. What could be simpler?

She opened several cupboard doors before she found
the mixing bowls and all the while she felt Merell watching her, assessing her, passing judgment.

“What
is
it?”

“My school starts on Monday, Mommy. If I don’t have the right clothes the other girls’ll laugh at me. They won’t want to be
my friends.”

“What’s wrong with your clothes?”

“I need a special school uniform. I’m in the Upper Primary now. Remember?”

Johnny’s saintly battle-ax sister, Alicia, would never forget something like a school uniform. Roxanne would write it on one
of her lists. “I’m sorry, baby, I forgot again.”

“Can I ask Aunt Roxanne to take me? We could go tonight. The stores are open until late.”

Oh, what the hell.

“Go ahead.”

“I love you, Mommy.” Merell bounced off the kitchen stool, springs in her legs. “I love you more than anyone in the whole
world.”

Olivia had painted her sheet, the crib, and herself with the contents of her diaper. Simone backed out of the nursery, yelling
for Celia.

“I can’t do it. I’m pregnant. I’ll throw up.”

“Babies is not my job.” Sweat shone on Celia’s forehead and curled her dark hair. “Johnny tol’ me I don’t do babysitting.”

“This is cleaning. The crib… the wall…”

Simone watched Celia’s expression as she considered the situation. “Start with Olivia, okay. Put her in the tub.”

“Who gonna watch her in the tub?”

“I don’t know. You, I suppose. You can sit down for a change. It’ll be a nice rest.”

“I tol’ you—”

Simone’s almost automatic reaction was to scream and then to cry; but she controlled the impulse because this day had to be
a new beginning. A thought flashed across her mind. If this wasn’t a new beginning, what was it? An ending?

She tried to put some steel in her voice. “I can’t do it, Celia.”

“I still gotta vacuum Mr. Johnny’s office and then I gotta go to the market.”

“Merell’s making a list.”

“I got my own list.” Celia looked at the door to Olivia’s room and wrinkled her nose. A half smile dimpled her cheek. “That
baby, she made a big mess.”

“You knew? You went in there and saw it and then you just left her?”

“Mrs. Duran, I got plenty to do without babysitting.”

“I’ll give you twenty dollars extra.”

“Is not the money—”

“And another twenty if you’ll keep her out of my hair for a while.”

“Johnny don’ like it if the house is dirty.”

“You clean six days a week. How can it possibly be dirty?”

“Okay, okay.”

Simone hefted the big upright mixer out of the pantry. It weighed more than one of the twins, and she bet the dark-haired
woman on television had never tried to lift hers. She set it on the counter and cleared a space beside it. In a cookbook she’d
gotten as a wedding shower gift she found a simple recipe for chocolate cake, and she began to look around for the rest of
what she needed.

The twins, watching television in the family room, ignored her when she called them; and they complained noisily when she
stood in front of the big screen, blocking their view. “Go wash up so we can make cupcakes.”

Holding hands, grumbling and giggling, the twins ambled off in the direction of the bathroom next to the laundry room. Their
little backs and tangled hair and shuffling barefoot walk looked odd and pitiful to Simone. She wondered what mischievous
spirit had been present in the bedroom when she, who had never truly wanted even one baby, conceived two at the same time.

“Mommy?” Merell said. “The baby’s crying again.”

“Celia’s taking care of her.”

“I think I know why she’s crying. I made a bottle for her when I got up, but she likes cereal and applesauce for breakfast.”

Food for Olivia hadn’t occurred to Simone. At the moment she couldn’t even remember what the baby ate from day to day.

“What did you put in the bottle? The milk has chunks.”

“I opened one of those cans of formula.”

Merell was all the things Simone wasn’t: active, resourceful, responsible. It was a small thing to thank this child, and yet
the words jammed at the back of Simone’s throat.

Eventually the twins wandered back from washing their hands, their T-shirts and shorts soaked down the front. Simone realized
she had been standing in the kitchen doing nothing. Time had passed but she had no idea how much.

“Where’s the cupcakes?” Valli asked.

“Go outside. I’ll call you when I want you.”

“You said—”

“Go.”

She sat in the kitchen, reading and rereading the cake recipe, trying to make sense of it. She forgot about her daughters
and the print blurred in front of her eyes.

Merell appeared in the kitchen with the baby on her hip. The little one wore clean overalls and her hair was still damp from
washing. Merell put her in her high chair and Simone watched her move about the kitchen efficiently, warming formula in the
microwave to mix with
a packet of oatmeal, humming a little tune Simone recognized as the theme from
Shrek.
Between spoonfuls of cereal and applesauce Olivia smiled and whacked her hands on the tray of her chair. She had three teeth
and it seemed as if Simone had never seen them before. Merell talked to her, coaxing her to open her mouth wide.

She’s a better mother than I am.

More time drifted by.

The roots of the headache sank between Simone’s shoulder blades, the trunk rose up her neck, and the branches spread from
ear to ear and throbbed with life. She thought it strange that when she touched the back of her head she couldn’t feel the
tree-shaped headache under her fingers. Could it kill, a headache like this? Death did not seem so terrible.

For some time now Merell and Olivia had been stacking plastic blocks on the floor of the family room. A book was open beside
them.

Merell said, “Franny always gave Olivia a bottle in the middle of the morning when she takes her nap. Do you want me to give
it to her in her crib?”

Simone saw that when Olivia wasn’t crying, she was pretty: brown eyes and a round face framed by dark hair. Johnny’s sisters
all had girls who looked like Olivia. But she’s mine, I made her, Simone thought. She grew inside me. The pulsing headache
receded, and she felt a warmth
she recognized as love for poor, usually bawling Olivia. She wanted to do something special for her.

“Let’s put her outside. Fresh air will do her good.”

“In her playpen?”

“Good idea.” She thought of the big wicker laundry basket full of clean sheets she’d seen on the washing machine. “She can
sleep in the laundry basket.”

Merell looked doubtful. “It’s a really hot day.”

“We’ll put her in the shade, of course.”

“What if the sun moves?”

“After we make the cupcakes she can come inside and we’ll have a party. I think she’s old enough to eat cake, don’t you?”

Simone imagined her four daughters gathered at the table with dish towels tied around their necks to keep their clothes clean,
their fingers and faces covered with chocolate cake and frosting.

In the deep shade under the avocado tree at the far end of the terrace Simone opened the playpen and put the basket full of
clean sheets and pillow slips inside it. Olivia was a small baby and reluctant to explore her world. With encouragement she
sat up on her own and rolled over, but she had not begun to crawl and showed no eagerness to stand. The laundry basket was
the perfect fit for her.

You’re like me,
Simone thought, arranging the sheets to prop the baby bottle. She had produced a little girl as tiny and slow-moving as she
had been.
You’ll grow up just
like me.
But Johnny didn’t want any of their daughters to be like her.
Stupid and helpless.

She looked down at her baby and felt herself begin to break under the weight of love and certain failure, more than anyone
should have to bear.

M
erell’s mother had gone upstairs hours ago, promising to come back down when her head didn’t hurt so much. The twins were
whiny because there were no cupcakes, but Merell wasn’t disappointed. She understood that her mother’s intentions had been
good.

Merell cleaned up the kitchen, the scattered flour on the counter, and the spilled sugar that crunched underfoot. She put
the eggs back in the refrigerator and went outside to play in the tot lot with her sisters. Lunchtime came and went and the
twins complained that they were starving, but the peanut butter was gone and though the freezer was packed with frozen meals,
Merell was forbidden to use the microwave without an adult. She thought about asking Celia to do it, but the housekeeper was
polishing and dusting in the living room no one ever used, and cleaning up Olivia’s mess had put her in a sour mood that told
Merell she’d better stay away. She hated being bossed around in a language she didn’t understand.
The idea of learning Spanish reminded her of school and her uniform. She left a message on Aunt Roxanne’s cell phone, begging
like a baby.

Merell finally got sick of Valli and Victoria blubbering about how they were starving and called the nearest Domino’s and
ordered a large extra-cheese pizza. To pay for it, she found her mother’s purse in her study and took a ten- and two five-dollar
bills out of the wallet.

Several times during the day Merell checked on Olivia. Sometimes she was asleep, but when her eyes were open she seemed happy
just to lie on her back playing with her fascinating feet. Merell wondered if Olivia would be smart like she was or more like
the twins. Eventually the baby got tired of her toes and cried, but not the screaming cries associated with acid reflux. Merell
understood these to be
I’m bored, pay attention to me
cries and put her in the stroller and pushed it around the house and up and down the driveway a dozen times, which seemed
to make Olivia happy. Victoria and Valli rode their pink-and-yellow bikes with training wheels. After a while Celia asked
Merell to unlock the gate across the driveway, and she drove the Mercedes to the supermarket. She liked to take the big car
into her sister’s neighborhood and show off. She wouldn’t be back with groceries until late afternoon. The twins begged Merell
to play school but Merell preferred to hold Olivia in her lap and swing with her. The breeze felt almost cool. She wondered
if she should take Olivia into the house where the air conditioner, after going on and
off all morning for no reason, now blew a steady, frigid wind. The twins complained that it was like the North Pole. Merell
thought Nanny Franny would say that fresh air was the best thing for a baby, so she put Olivia back in the laundry basket,
pulling it close to the trunk of the avocado where the shade was deepest. She put on a sweater and in the family room she
lay on the couch and read about Harry Potter and his friends. Time always went fast when she was reading.