The Language of Sisters (20 page)

I set down my coffee. “I didn’t say I want to sleep with him…. ”

Nova held up her hand to stop me. “Please.”

“I didn’t! It’s just— We had such a great time yesterday. He
listens to me. He barely knows me and he’s interested in how I feel and what I think and what I want. It’s very flattering.”

“Hmm,” she murmured, contemplating.

“I found myself picturing him holding our baby, for Christ’s sake. I’ve never
once
done that with Shane. I feel like I’m already cheating on him and I haven’t even
done
anything.”

“So now you not only want to sleep with him, you want to have his baby?”

I paused, stuck my finger in my coffee to stir it around. “Maybe not his baby.” I looked up at her. “Maybe Jenny’s baby.”

Nova set her cup noisily on the white tile counter and came over to sit by me, her expression a blend of confusion and concern. “I thought motherhood wasn’t in the plan for you.”

“I thought so, too. I’m reconsidering, I guess.” I swallowed before continuing. “I just can’t stand the thought of handing her over to some stranger to raise. She’s my sister’s child, you know? I can’t stop thinking that I’m supposed to take care of her.”

“The way you wished you’d taken care of Jenny before you left?”

I paused, considering this. “Maybe. I don’t know.”

Nova puffed up her cheeks and exhaled loudly. “I wish you’d stop feeling like you have something to make up for with Jenny. You have been busting your butt the past couple of months.”

“And that makes up for years of neglect?”

“You neglected me and I don’t feel like you need to make up for anything.”

I sighed. “That’s different.”

She shifted on the bench, leaning her back against the edge of the table as she crossed her legs. “Why?”

“It just is. I didn’t abandon you in an institution where you ended up getting raped.” I shook as emotion welled up in the
muscles of my chest and took control of my words. “And for what? What is so extraordinary about my life that my sister had to be raped for it?” Tears threatened my voice. “And I just can’t stop thinking about it, you know? How she must have felt, what she must have been thinking with that horrible man on top of her…. How it must have reminded her—” A shuddering breath escaped me. “Did she cry? Did he hold his hand over her mouth so no one would hear? God, how it must have
felt
to her with no one to protect her. No one to tell what had happened.
Again.
” I was weeping now, and Nova grabbed my hands, her eyes glazed with tears.

“Listen to me,” she said, her round chin trembling. “You can’t control the world. The men who hurt her are not your responsibility. Punishing yourself is not going to make up for what they did. And adopting Jenny’s baby just to relieve your guilt is a pretty empty reason for becoming a mother.”

“I know,” I agreed, pulling my hands from her grasp. “But I can’t get it out of my mind that I’m supposed to do it.” I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand and sipped nervously at my drink. “Do you have any chocolate? Caffeine isn’t cutting it.”

“Does the Pope have a Bible?” She jumped up and opened the freezer, pulling out a quart of double fudge ice cream. “Bowls?”

I shook my head. “No.”

She grabbed a couple of spoons from the drawer beneath the sink and set the tub between us on the table, glancing out the back door. “If the kids catch me doing this, I’ll never hear the end of it. It’s barely nine o’clock.”

I dug out a bite and slid it into my mouth, the cold strangely pleasing after the heat of my coffee. After a couple more bites and several deep breaths, the tension that had rattled my core slowly began to dissipate. I looked up to see Nova staring out the window,
checking on the kids as they played in the backyard. I found myself suddenly envious of her life. “What made you realize you were ready to be a mother?” I asked her.

She moved her gaze back to me, took a bite of ice cream, then smiled, her mouth still full as she spoke. “The stick turned blue when I peed on it.”

I choked on the ice cream as I laughed. “Really. I want to know.”

“It’s true!” she insisted. “With Isaac, at least. If you remember my telling you, he wasn’t exactly planned. Ryan and I wanted to be married awhile before having kids, but a couple months after the wedding I started feeling pukey in the mornings and voilà: Welcome to parenthood.”

“What’s it like?”

“Being a mother, you mean?”

I nodded, quickly dipping the next bite of ice cream into my coffee for a touch of mocha flavor.

“It’s the absolute greatest thing that has ever happened to me. All the clichés you hear about it having the biggest rewards and the most difficult challenges?”

I nodded again, my mouth full.

“Absolutely true. There are moments of utter joy balanced only by hours of excruciating terror.”

“Terror? You? Come on. You’re great with your kids.”

“Not all the time, babe. It’s not a pretty sight when I lose it. However passionately you love your babies, there are moments you dislike them just as much.”

“So you’re saying it’s not easy.”

“Far from easy. But let me tell you, the other moments, the ones when you’re rocking them to sleep and they look up at you with your own eyes and smile … ” She shook her head fondly. “There ain’t nothing in the world like it. Then they reach up for
your hand when you’re taking them for a walk and they don’t even look up to see if your hand is there. They just know it will be…. ” Nova’s words sputtered a bit as she spoke and a fine mist veiled her eyes. She waved fluttery fingers in front of her face. “Oy. Look at me. All worked up.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No, no, it’s okay.” She scooped another bit of ice cream into her mouth. “It’s the best thing I’ve ever done, Nicole. I wouldn’t trade it for the world. Even on the bad days.” The patter of feet on the back steps interrupted us, and Nova rushed to return our dessert to the freezer.

Rebecca stomped in through the door, her eyes hawk-like on her mother. “Can I have some ice cream, too, Mom?”

Nova looked at me like, “See what I mean?” then shook her head at her daughter. “Sorry, honey.”

“How come you get to have it and I don’t?”

“That’s the way of the world, my sweet. You can have a yogurt.”

“I don’t want a yogurt. I want ice cream.” Rebecca stubbornly stomped her sandaled foot. I tried not to laugh out loud.

“Well, I want to be a size six, but that just ain’t gonna happen, now is it?” Nova reached into the fridge and pulled out a carton of lemon yogurt. “Do you want this?”

“No!”

“All right, then. Do you want something else?”

“Ice cream.”

“Oh, all right. Fine.” She snatched the container back out from the freezer and handed it to her daughter, along with three spoons. “Take it outside, then, and be sure to share it with your brothers, you hear me? I don’t want to hear any fighting over this or I’m putting it away. Okay?”

Rebecca lit up on her tiptoes, smiling widely. “Okay, Mama!
Thank you!” She rushed over and hugged her mother’s legs in a quick motion before racing back out the door.

“Way to stand your ground there, Nova,” I teased.

“Yeah, well, lesson number one of motherhood: choose your battles. This was one I didn’t feel like fighting.”

“And lesson number two?”

She reached into the freezer, pulled out another container, and dropped it between us. “Always—and I mean
always
—have more ice cream.”

•  •  •

Jack Waterson’s office was on the fifteenth floor of the Columbia Tower. At his request, I arrived for our first official appointment with my mother and Jenny in tow. He had already faxed paperwork for my mother and me to sign so he could present our case to Wellman’s lawyers but he wanted to meet Jenny, whom he called his “true client.”

Mr. Waterson greeted us at the double doors of his private office. A ruddy-skinned man with an average build, he wore a slightly rumpled blue suit with no tie. When he smiled, wiry black brows pushed toward a receding hairline. His handshake was firm and reassuring, and I was heartened by his approach to Jenny, how he carefully rested his fingers on her forearm and said hello. “Please, make yourself comfortable. Can I have my assistant get you anything? Water, coffee?”

“No, thanks,” Mom and I said at the same time.

Mr. Waterson settled into the well-padded burgundy leather swivel chair behind his cherrywood desk, resting intertwined fingers on the blotter in front of him. The room was unapologetically male, full of dark wood walls, oil paintings depicting English fox hunt scenes, and the distinctive scent of Old Spice. It encouraged you to sit down with a good cigar and sip a well-aged Scotch.

“Well,” he began, “thank you for coming. I have good news to begin with. The police believe they have found Mr. Zimmerman’s
last residence in Portland. He left there only a week ago. They’re pretty sure he’ll be located soon.”

“That is good news,” I said, watching Jenny for any reaction to her rapist’s name. I wondered if she knew who he was, if she remembered what he had done to her. Her eyes, however, remained riveted on the deer head mounted above the small brick fireplace on the other side of the room, and I could not tell what she was thinking.

“Do you have any idea how much time he’ll get?” my mother asked, leaning forward in her chair, her foot wiggling nervously. Since the day of Jenny’s screaming fit she’d reached out more often to my sister but seemed uncomfortable being involved in anything further than giving Jenny a shower or feeding her dinner. I figured she still felt guilty about not fully admitting what she knew my father had done.

“Unfortunately, no,” Mr. Waterson told us. “There’s just no way to tell ahead of time what a judge will decide about sentencing. It’s a complicated case. Even when they do find him, there’s the matter of proving that it was him who did this to your daughter. Since she can’t be a witness, the prosecutor will have to rely on more technical evidence to back up what we already know circumstantially: that he was the only male with regular, unsupervised access to Jenny at the time she became pregnant.”

“What kind of technical evidence?” I inquired.

“DNA, most likely, after the baby is born. If the baby is a match to Mr. Zimmerman, that’ll pretty much end the defense’s case.”

“I see.” I nodded. “Will we be notified when they find him?”

“The detectives working the case will call me, and I’ll contact you immediately.” He pushed his round head forward, urging his body to follow. Forearms resting on his desk, he shuffled through a stack of papers. “Now, about the civil case. Negotiations are
going well; I started our claim at seven million, and Wellman’s lawyers are up to four already. I’m required to present their offer of this to you, but honestly, I think they’ll go higher.”

“Four million dollars?” my mother gasped. “They’ve already offered that much even though Mr. Zimmerman hasn’t been proven guilty?”

“Oh, yes. They know their institution will be held liable no matter who committed the crime. If it was one of their employees, they’re liable. If they let a nonemployee gain access to Jenny, they’re liable. They, as an institution, are guilty, and they know it.”

“What about their hiring policies?” I asked. “Can we insist on an investigation?”

“That can be part of the settlement, yes. But I have to say on their behalf, they’ve already stepped up to the plate for it. They hired an outside firm to go over their background check routine. The fact remains, however, that even after close scrutiny, Mr. Zimmerman came up clean. His recommendations as a caregiver were glowing from every other place he worked. Either what happened with Jenny was a first-time occurrence or Mr. Zimmerman was extremely good at hiding his offenses.”

My blood heated in my veins. “What a bastard.”

“Well, yes,” Mr. Waterson agreed. “So, I just need you both to sign some more paperwork today and I’ll continue the talks with Wellman. Is there a specific amount you’d like to see Jenny get?”

“I wouldn’t know what would be realistic to expect,” Mom said. “I just want her to be well taken care of and not have to worry about the cost ever again.”

Mr. Waterson nodded, gravely. “Of course. Have you been to visit any of the homes my assistant researched?”

Mom looked at me, and I shook my head. “I’ve called a couple, but their waiting lists are years long. We need something by September, October at the latest.”

“Oh!” our lawyer exclaimed. “I almost forgot. I know that you, Mrs. Hunter”—waving his hand toward Mom—“are the guardian to Jenny right now, but have you thought about what you’d like to do when you no longer want or are no longer capable of managing her trust?”

“I’d like Nicole to take over as guardian,” Mom said, glancing at me hesitantly. “If that’s all right with you.”

I paused for just a moment before speaking. I’d come this far in caring for my sister; it made sense for me to take this next step. “Okay with you, Jen?” I said, reaching out to place my hand on her gnarled fingers.

“Arrugh,” she said, a positive lilt to the sound. She still stared at the deer head as though it might jump off the wall and come say hello to her.

I nodded at our lawyer. “Where do I sign?”

Mr. Waterson smiled with genuine indulgence. “All right, then, we’re all set. I’ll go back to Wellman with an asking price of six million, which I’m pretty sure they’ll agree to. If not, I’ll go to five, assuming, of course, that that amount is acceptable to you both.”

After Mom and I agreed that this was a more than acceptable amount, we signed the necessary paperwork and headed home. The sun was masked by a thin stretch of clouds, though it was still bright enough to demand sunglasses. The heat was a heavy thing, a lid pressing down on the city. A sure sign of an impending storm.

“He seemed like a trustworthy man,” Mom remarked as we drove up and over the West Seattle Bridge.

“Not what you’d expect from a lawyer, huh?” I answered.

She laughed. “Well, my only experience with lawyers was with the ones who managed my divorce, so I guess my frame of reference is a bit limited.”