The Good Sister (5 page)

“It’s a sickness in her head. I went online and read about it. It’s called…” Merell looked off to the right, chewing her lower
lip. “Like postal depression. Only different.”

“Postpartum depression.”

“Yeah. It comes from having babies.”

Whatever one called it—clinical depression or acute depressive disorder or postpartum depression—it was nothing Ellen was
going to discuss with a nine-year-old.

“It said online there are pills.”

If only it were that simple,
Ellen thought.

When Simone was in her early teens, Ellen had taken her to see a psychiatrist who prescribed antidepressant drugs. But there
had been side effects, and Simone couldn’t be relied upon to take the medication regularly. Eventually Ellen stopped getting
the prescription filled. She had been married to BJ Vadis then, and she never wanted to jar their harmony with thoughts or
talk about Simone’s problems. During the period after Merell was born, when Simone had one miscarriage after another and with
each one sank deeper into depression, she had been given medication again; but for some reason Ellen didn’t know, it hadn’t
worked the second time either.

Merell said, “She wanted to hurt Olivia.”

“What nonsense!” Hearing the truth stated with such
uninflected candor made it all the more terrible. “She loves Olivia. You mustn’t say such silly things.”

“Then why…”

“I know you’re smart, Merell, but this is a grown-up thing. And it must be a private thing. You can’t tell your aunt what
happened. Or your father. This has got to be a secret between the women in this family.”

“Franny isn’t in the family.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Isn’t Aunt Roxanne part of our family anymore?”

“You can’t tell anyone, Merell.”

“Why not?”

“You know the answer as well as I do.”

Or maybe she didn’t. It was easy to forget how young Merell was. Despite her intelligence, her powers of observation, and
the wonders of the Internet, she was only nine years old. “Come here and let me tell you something.”

Merell did as she was told, dragging her feet.

Ellen took hold of Merell’s hands, a gesture that felt awkward and unnatural to her, but seemed necessary to underscore the
importance of her words. “What you did yesterday, the 911 call, I know you think it was the right thing to do. But whatever
you believe you saw, you were wrong, Merell.”

“Mommy tried to hurt Olivia.”

“Don’t keep saying that.”

Merell snatched her hands away and stuck them up under her arms.

“You’re a child and there are things you don’t understand. People are complicated and sometimes things seem to be one way
when they are really another. Your mother loves her girls, all of you. But what happened… happened. And you’ll understand
what I mean when you grow up.”

Merell stared at her bare feet, curling the toes under.

“If those policemen hadn’t been so nice and if they hadn’t listened to what Franny and I told them, your mother might have
been arrested.”

At this point, another child would have begun to cry, Ellen thought. But not Merell. This girl had the same proud-hearted
reserve as Ellen’s mother.

“Imagine what it would have been like if she’d been taken to the police station and put behind bars.” Exactly how much would
it take to make this child show decent remorse, a little healthy shame? “And if your mother was arrested, it’s even possible
you girls would have been taken away from her and put into foster care.”

“Daddy wouldn’t let that happen.”

Probably not. But there would have been the kind of public and legal trouble even a rich and well-connected man like Johnny
Duran would have a hard time managing.

Ellen had been awake most of the night worrying if
she should tell him the whole truth. On the one hand, he had a right to know what had really happened. But he was most comfortable
dealing with concrete things: bricks and boards, permits and easements and contracts. If he knew the full story, there was
no predicting how he would handle it. Johnny had a temper, he could be mean, and none of them wanted that.

Ellen would never have chosen to live with her daughter’s family but three years earlier BJ Vadis had fallen dead before her
eyes at a broker’s and agent’s meeting, and that changed everything. BJ had been the great love of her life, late to appear
but no less wonderful for the delay. After he was gone the empty rooms and silent meals, the sleepless nights and long, idle
days unhinged her. She couldn’t work, so she sold the business; and with that last link to BJ gone, she was even more miserable.
Johnny had offered to build her an elegant granny flat over the new garage built for his vintage cars. He never said it aloud,
but she understood the bargain. In return for a home with them, Ellen would help to keep his household running smoothly.

She could have declined the offer. Despite the economic downturn and the real estate slump she had plenty of money. Theoretically
she could live anywhere in the world that suited her. But it had taken only one trip on her own—a miserable cruise to the
Galápagos—to teach her that geography was no escape. Wherever she went she would be alone.

The night before, Ellen told Johnny the story she and Franny had agreed upon; and Simone had no choice but to go along with
it. Simone had been in the water with Baby Olivia, who squirmed out of her embrace. Seeing her sister underwater for the few
seconds before Nanny Franny scooped her out of the pool gave Merell all the reason she needed to try out the 911 system. It
wasn’t quite a prank, more like an experiment.

Johnny hadn’t thrown a fit. Instead he growled, threatened to “deal with” Merell “later,” and then called the police chief
at home. They played tennis together and apparently the chief didn’t mind taking a call from Johnny Duran during dinner. Ellen
overheard some conversation about “smart-ass little girls.” The chief had promised to lose the paperwork, but before he could
get to it someone at the police station told a man who wrote a police blog. Now it was all over the news and the phone had
been ringing since seven a.m. Johnny had been adamant before he left for work. No one was to answer the phone unless his voice
came through on the answering machine. That didn’t mean Ellen couldn’t monitor messages left by reporters. She’d heard enough
to feel confident they didn’t know anything. They were just fishing and the gossip would wear itself out. In a city the size
of San Diego there was always a new story to distract the public.

“Merell, what happened was a mistake but fortunately no great damage was done. Now you must give your word
that you won’t talk about it to anyone. Not your father, not your aunt.”

“On the History Channel they said that God told Moses lying was a sin.”

“We’re not lying. We’re just not telling all the details.”

“I told the police I only called to see what would happen. That’s a lie.”

“Swear, Merell. God will understand.”

R
oxanne called Ty to let him know she’d be staying awhile at her sister’s, not to worry, she’d be home in time to make their
flight. She lured Simone into a cloud of bubble bath and then she washed her hair and blew it dry for her. Afterward, wearing
shorts and a tank top, Simone got back into bed and pulled a blanket over herself.

“You wear me out, Roxanne.”

“Everything wears you out, but you’ll feel better once you’re up and moving. I’m going to turn off the air-conditioning and
open the windows.”

“I don’t like drafts.”

“What do you mean? Why don’t you like giraffes?”

Simone giggled and pulled the covers up to cover her face, all but her huge brown eyes. “Rox, you’re the only person who can
make me laugh.”

“So get up and I’ll tell you all the jokes I’ve read off the Internet. Good Lord, you’re skinny. Have you eaten today?”

“I had some soup.”

“For breakfast? What kind of soup?”

“I don’t know. Franny brought it up. I didn’t like it.”

Roxanne’s thumb and forefinger easily encircled her sister’s wrist. “You’re way too thin, kiddo.”

“The little monster’s a cannibal.”

Roxanne stared at her sister. “You’re pregnant? Again? It’s too soon. How old is Olivia anyway?”

Simone yawned, not covering her mouth.

“You sound like a hippo.”

“Giraffes. Hippos. Is today zoo day?”

“I’m not laughing, Simone. Just answer my question. How old is Olivia?”

“I don’t even remember.”

Roxanne didn’t have words to say how deeply this casual dismissal troubled and saddened her.

“How far along are you?”

“A couple of months, maybe three.”

Roxanne sucked in her breath. “Your poor body.”

“It’s not my fault I have good eggs.”

“Which is great if you live in a henhouse. You’ve heard of birth control? The pill?”

“Don’t preach at me, Rox. You know how Johnny is. He’s going to keep me pregnant until he gets his son. Period. No discussion.”

“But it’s your body. You get to say what happens to it.”

Simone laid her palms across her stomach, fingertips
touching. “I think this one’s a boy, it feels a little different than the others.”

“You’ve seen a doctor?”

“It’s too soon. Anyway, I knew when it happened. I felt it, like a pinch.”

“When were you going to tell me?”

“Maybe if you came around a little more.”

To avoid Simone’s accusations of neglect Roxanne would have to move in with her and keep her company seven days a week, as
she had when they were children. “You didn’t tell me because you knew how I’d react.”

“I miss you when you stay away.”

“I wasn’t staying away. I’m married, Simone, remember?” Roxanne sucked back her impatience. Being angry with Simone was pointless
unless Roxanne wanted to make her more confused and unhappy than she already was. “We went up to the Bay Area to see Ty’s
family, we spent a weekend in Vegas…” There were not enough reasons in a lifetime to satisfy Simone when she was feeling sorry
for herself. “Stop being a baby. If you won’t go for a walk, at least come outside for a while. You look like you live under
a rock.”

Downstairs Roxanne made her sister a glass of iced coffee with milk and sugar and, like a nurse administering medication,
watched her drink it. Nanny Franny, the twins, and Olivia burst in from the park, rosy-cheeked and starving. The twins were
four years old, slender and
dark-eyed like their mother, and identical to each other except for a wave of freckles that broke across the bridge of Valli’s
nose and Victoria’s almost constant whining. Victoria and Valli threw themselves on their mother as if they hadn’t seen her
in months.

It was decided they would all eat an early lunch on the side lawn.

Roxanne wondered aloud if they should invite Ellen to join them.

“She’s not here,” Merell said. “She had a date. For coffee.”

“A date? Your grandmother? Who with?”

“Who knows?” Simone said. “She’s meeting men online.”

“I’ve heard her talking on the phone to them,” Merell said. “And she goes online late at night.”

“How do you know that?”

Merell tugged on her ragged bangs.

Nanny Franny said, “You know you’re not supposed to go outside at night, Merell.”

“I like to look at the stars. It’s interesting. Anyway, it’s safe. I just go in the backyard. Once she was sitting on her
balcony. I heard her talking and she said she was wearing a satin nightgown.”

Roxanne, Simone, and Franny looked at one another.

“What about BJ?” Roxanne had been very attached to her stepfather.

Simone said, “He’d understand.”

Maybe he would, Roxanne thought. Probably. Whatever made Ellen happy, BJ Vadis was almost always in favor of it.

Nanny Franny brought out badminton rackets and birdies and assorted balls for throwing and kicking. She and Roxanne lugged
several wheeled vehicles and a full picnic basket around the side of the house to a spacious rectangle of lawn secluded from
the street by a dense Eugenia hedge. Simone followed with an old quilt in her arms. Franny went back for a couple more.

“So we can sprawl,” she said, spreading them in and out of the shade of a wide-branched old pepper tree.

Watching her enlist the children in the picnic arrangements, Roxanne thought that everything seemed to be fun for Frances
Biddle. This pretty, take-charge girl, short and stocky with a stubbornly square Yankee jaw and a radiant smile, seemed up
to any challenge.

After a lunch of peanut-butter-and-potato-chip sandwiches—“Bad for us, but delicious,” Franny whispered to Roxanne—Simone
read aloud from a chapter book the twins knew so well they could repeat sections from memory. Merell called it a baby story,
but she seemed happy to lie with her head in her mother’s lap and listen. When the girls’ interest flagged, Franny enrolled
them in a hybrid version of kickball and keep-away while Roxanne and Simone stretched out with Olivia between them.

The baby sucked on her binky, watching overhead as
a soft breeze stirred the long, narrow leaves of the pepper tree and the festoons of green corns hanging like grapes. She
was a scrawny infant, not plump and rosy as she should be at eight months. Her bony little fingers had nails the size of baby
aspirin tabs.

Simone lay back, resting her head on one hand. Beneath her thin, white wrist the purple veins branched and pulsed with life;
and despite the circles around them, her dark eyes were beautiful. Roxanne saw tears.

“What’s the matter?”

“I wish—” She shut her eyes. “Never mind what I wish.”

“If wishes were fishes our nets would be full.”

“And if cats were canaries the clouds would meow.”

“Imagine the size of the cat boxes,” Roxanne said.

Simone laughed. “Imagine the rain.”

Later Franny brought out a Frisbee and offered to teach Merell how to throw it while the twins pulled a wagon, gathering leaves
and stones for some purpose Roxanne couldn’t guess. Beside her, Simone was half-asleep. The humid August heat heightened the
peppery fragrance of the tree; in the blue beyond its branches, a fresh contrail zippered the sky. Roxanne watched the pinked
line spread and blur and disappear. A muscle car turboed up Fort Stockton Boulevard, disturbing the quiet.