The September Sisters (5 page)

I looked through the peephole and saw an unfamiliar man standing on the doorstep. “Who is it?” I yelled.

“Pinesboro Police, ma’am. Detective Kinney.”

The man took his badge out of his coat pocket and held it up to the peephole, so I could see it. It looked authentic, similar to Harry Baker’s, so I turned off the alarm, opened the door, and let him in.

He looked surprised when he saw me. After all, he had
called me ma’am, so I knew he’d been expecting my mother. This was the first time I ever saw Detective Kinney, but I instantly despised him. His nose protruded out over his mustache in a steep point in a way that made his whole face seem inaccurate, unreal. His eyes were a steely gray, and they shot right through me. If a look could burn your skin, Kinney had perfected it.

“Is your mother home?” he asked.

“She’s sleeping,” I said. “Anything to drink?” I was trying to act as grown up as I could, despite the fact that I was still in my pajamas, and my hair was sticking up in at least twenty different directions. I wanted him to talk to me, not my mother. If my mother came down, she would act crazy; this man would take that as guilty.

“Could you ask her to come down here, please?” Kinney was trying to baby me. I could tell, the way he made his voice all mushy, almost as if he were speaking in baby talk, but it didn’t sound right coming from him

“Where’s Harry Baker?” I asked. “Why isn’t he with you?” I suddenly hated Harry Baker because I felt he’d sold us out, that he’d abandoned us. I could already tell this man was like the grown-up version of everyone in my school, who thought my parents were psychos who would
kidnap their own child.

But I realized that here I was, all alone with him, and I knew it was my opportunity to plead my parents’ case. “Look,” I said, trying to use my best grown-up-sounding voice. “My parents would never do anything to hurt Becky.” Kinney started squirming a little bit. I guess he didn’t like being lectured by an almost-thirteen-year-old.

Normally I wouldn’t speak to an adult like that. I would be quiet and respectful, but I felt so desperate that I wanted to scream until this detective listened to me, until someone listened to me. “I’ve lived with them all my life,” I said, “and they’re wonderful people. They really are. They love us. Both of us.”

It may sound corny, but I believed it. Despite my mother’s spacey, depressed episodes and my father’s temper, I knew that they loved Becky and me. They used to seem just like everyone else’s parents, distant, odd, adultish, but I always knew they wouldn’t do anything to hurt us.

Then suddenly I knew I had to tell Kinney about my dream, an image that was still so fresh in my mind that it felt real. “I think there was a man here that night,” I said.

He looked startled, as if he hadn’t been expecting new information, new clues, and then he frowned. “A man?
What did he look like?”

“He was wearing all black, and he was very tall.”

“Hmm?” Kinney didn’t take out a notebook or anything the way detectives always do on TV, so I wondered how carefully he was listening. “Well, I’m afraid that doesn’t help too much.” He paused. “Why didn’t you mention this earlier?”

“I didn’t remember it before,” I said. I didn’t tell him the truth, that I wasn’t sure if it was a memory or a nightmare, but I knew it couldn’t hurt for the police to check it out.

Kinney frowned again, and I instantly knew that he didn’t believe me, that he thought I was making the whole thing up. I felt my face turning red.

I heard a sound behind me, and when I turned around, my mother was standing there. She’d actually gotten dressed, put her lovely blond hair up in a twist, and was wearing some makeup, a little pink lipstick and some mascara.

She put her hand on my shoulder. “Abby, sweetie, get back into bed.” Her voice was soft, subdued, without a trace of anger, craziness, irrationality. She turned to Kinney and smiled. “She was sick this morning, so my husband let her stay home from school.”

“I’m feeling better now.”

“You should rest, hon.” She kissed the top of my head, which surprised me. Normally she was annoyed when I stayed home from school and felt better halfway through the day. Sometimes she’d threaten to send me in late.

“No,” I said. “I’m fine.” But the protest was useless. It was as if the adults had made a silent pact not to say another word until I left the room, because they didn’t. And they started to stare at me so I began to feel uncomfortable.

“Come on,” she said. “I’ll tuck you in.” She turned to Kinney. “If you’ll excuse me for a minute.”

My mother and I walked up the stairs together in silence. I didn’t know why she was coming up to tuck me in, what exactly was going through her head. I wondered if she was putting on an act for Kinney, if she’d known that the only way to get me out of the room was to act like a real bona fide mother again.

But she did tuck me in, and she stroked my hair back from my forehead. “You feel warm,” she said.

I shrugged. My body felt awkward again, off kilter. On the way up the steps I’d been slightly dizzy. “I’m okay,” I said. “I’ll be okay.”

She kissed my forehead. “Sweet dreams,” she whispered. “Sweet angel dreams.”

I closed my eyes, and I heard her tiptoe out and shut the door behind her. For a second I felt a moment of safety, an odd sense that everything might be all right, but then I remembered what was waiting for her downstairs. So I lay there wide-awake, trying to think of a way to save her.

ON SEPTEMBER 16
^th
, exactly six weeks after Becky disappeared, I turned thirteen. Becky and I are two years and one day apart, which means her birthday is September 17
^th
. My whole life my birthday has been reduced to the day before Becky’s birthday, but never more so than on my thirteenth birthday.

In the days leading up to my birthday, I wasn’t sure what to expect, really. I knew I wouldn’t be having a party. That I just assumed without even asking my parents. But I wondered if they would ignore my birthday altogether. At school I was still something of an outcast, but I’d begun to blend in, to become this fixture that no one really noticed. People no longer stared and giggled at me, but they didn’t talk to me either.

It’s not like I had been everyone’s friend before this year, but Jocelyn and I had been inseparable, and when we were best friends, it seemed like everyone liked us. Maybe it was just that everyone liked her, that without her I was semi-invisible. Even if my parents had given me a party, I’m not sure there would’ve been anyone to invite.

On the day of my birthday I begged my father to let me stay home from school. “You only become a teenager once,” I told him.

“Ab, you already missed a day last week.”

“But I was sick. That was different.”

He shook his head. “Don’t whine. You’re too old to whine.”

I wanted to tell him I wasn’t whining, but he was right: I was. I’d never gotten to stay home from school on my birthday any other year, so I couldn’t blame that on Becky’s disappearance or my mother’s strange behavior or any of it. I guess the thing was, in years past I’d always liked going to school on my birthday. Last year Jocelyn brought me a balloon, and I carried it through the hallways of the junior high, from class to class, and as I walked by, people I hardly knew said happy birthday.

I got to homeroom early, before Jocelyn arrived, and I
felt a small glimmer of hope. Maybe Jocelyn would come through for me. She couldn’t forget my birthday, after all.

When she walked in without a balloon, I felt something small drop in my stomach, like I’d just swallowed a piece of gum and it’d got stuck going down. Jocelyn sat in her seat next to me, and she stared straight ahead to the front of the room, the same way she’d been doing every day since the first one. Then she reached down and pulled a card out of her bag.

“Here,” she whispered, and sort of threw the card on my desk without really looking over.

“Thanks.” I wanted her to look at me, to smile, to tell me that everything would be okay, that even though the rest of the world had collapsed everywhere all around me, she was still there for me. But the bell rang, and she didn’t say anything, so I just picked up the card and put it in my bag.

All morning I imagined what the card might say, and I thought that Jocelyn must’ve written a secret cryptic note that only I could understand. I began thinking that Jocelyn still wanted to be my friend but her mother had suggested she stay away from me, or maybe she was just afraid of our talking in front of everyone at school. I couldn’t blame her, really. I didn’t want her to be an outcast just because of me.

I didn’t get to open her card until lunch. The week before, I’d begun eating lunch at the nerd table, mainly because no one at that table cared who sat there; everyone left me alone, and I realized that it beat eating in the library. I was happy then, though, that no one talked to me or noticed me, because it gave me a chance to open Jocelyn’s card with some sort of privacy.

The card had two red balloons on the front, and it said “Happy Birthday” in bright red bubbly letters. On the inside Jocelyn had written, “Happy 13
^th
, Luv, Joce.” I was disappointed, and I knew immediately that Jocelyn’s mother had made her give me this card. I imagined Mrs. Redfern standing over her, telling her to write something nice.

We usually wrote each other long notes in our birthday cards. Last year Jocelyn and I had written our birthday notes in our secret code. I would’ve expected her to say something terrific in her card, something like “Sorry about Banana. Iced Tea won’t let me call you. BFF.”

I read what she actually wrote, examining it over and over for secret signs or messages. But then I had to face the fact that the card was empty, like Jocelyn herself. I knew we would never be friends again.

Mrs. Ramirez picked me up after school, and when I got in the car, there was a bouquet of thirteen yellow roses sitting on the passenger seat. “Happy birthday, Ah-bee-hail.”

I put the roses on my lap, then held them up to my nose. Their scent was intoxicating, delicious. This was the first time anyone had ever given me flowers. I was somewhat embarrassed that they came from Mrs. Ramirez. I would’ve wished for them from a boy or my father at the least. But still, the flowers were perfect and sweet, and it was the first time that I felt glad for Mrs. Ramirez, so happy that someone was trying to do something special for me on my birthday. “These are really cool,” I said. “Thanks.”

“You put them in water right away. Otherwise they die.” I nodded. I knew my mother kept a few vases under the sink. My father usually bought her flowers for her birthday and their anniversary, pink calla lilies, her favorite and, my father always used to say, just as beautiful as she was.

“You know tomorrow is Becky’s birthday,” I said. I’d been thinking about Becky all afternoon, all through advanced English and intro. to Western civ., thinking about how tomorrow she’d be eleven. And I wondered if she’d get any presents wherever she was.

“
Si.
Just like twins. I remember when she born.”

I don’t, though I’ve heard the story a million times. Becky was born six weeks early, her lungs so tiny and undeveloped that she had to spend a week on a breathing machine before my parents could bring her home. Becky and I should’ve had birthdays nearly two months apart, but some small act of fate had Becky born all those weeks early.

My mother always called us the September Sisters and told us that someday we would appreciate it, that it would be a nice time to share. She was always telling us that when we were older, we would love each other, we would be friends, we would be happy to have a sister. Usually, though, we fought over birthday cakes and birthday dinners and birthday parties, and every hour on the hour during my birthday Becky would hold a countdown to hers.

“I took care of you,” Mrs. Ramirez said. “Every day for a week. And you cry and cry and cry. I thought you dying, you cry so loud.”

I tried to remember even a moment of it, but I couldn’t. My earliest memory is of the day my parents finally brought Becky home from the hospital. They’d let me sit on the couch and hold her, just for a minute, as they hovered over me and protected her head. She was my little doll, my amazing
sister. As soon as she started to crawl, talk, walk, we fought constantly, but for a few months she was perfect.

When I got home, my mother was in the kitchen, cooking something at the stove. I hadn’t really seen her since the day I’d stayed home sick the week before, except for one evening when she came downstairs to watch TV with my father and me. We watched an old movie together, something with Katharine Hepburn that my parents remembered having seen at some earlier point in their lives. When my parents discussed it, my mother smiled, and I thought her smile seemed genuine.

I was surprised, but then again I wasn’t, to see her in the kitchen. I didn’t really think she could ignore my birthday. I wondered if for her, the ache of missing Becky was subsiding. It was odd, but for me, the feeling was getting worse. I realized I was beginning to miss her, to think I really loved her, that in some odd way we had a special bond. When she was here, she drove me crazy on my birthday. I hated her on this day more than any other. But on the day of my thirteenth birthday something felt more missing than it had any other day since she’d been gone.

“Nice flowers,” my mother said when I walked in.

“Mrs. Ramirez gave them to me.”

“Oh, how sweet. She’s always been such a darling.” She reached under the sink and pulled out her favorite vase, a gift she’d gotten for her wedding. It’s hand-painted up the side with these lovely purple windy lines. “Here. Trim the stems first.”

I’d seen my mother do it a bunch of times, so I knew exactly how to cut the flowers and place them in the water. I suddenly felt like such a grown-up. Here I was with my very own flowers. “I should put them in my room, “I said.

“Or you can put them right here.” She picked up the vase and put it in the middle of the kitchen table, like a centerpiece. “They brighten up the room.”

“You’re right. They do.” She went back to the stove to check on the food. “What are you making?”

“Spaghetti and meatballs. Your favorite, sweetie.” She smiled at me.

“Great.” Actually, spaghetti and meatballs were Becky’s favorite, the meal she always requested on her birthday, but I didn’t want my mother to see how disappointed I was. For my birthday I usually asked for chili and cornbread, my mother’s two original specialties. The truth is I don’t even like meatballs all that much. They’re okay. I don’t hate them
or anything, but my mother’s are usually a little chewy and overspiced.

“Set the table, sweetie. Your father will be home soon, and I want to eat early tonight.”

We hadn’t eaten as a family since Becky disappeared. I set three places at the table instead of four, Becky’s old spot so awkwardly empty.

“Can I go watch TV until dinner?” I was suddenly desperate to see something else, to be absorbed in someone else’s life instead of my own. I didn’t want to look at the oddly empty table. I didn’t want to watch my mother cook Becky’s meal.

She turned away from the stove to check the table. “Abby, set another plate.”

“Why?” I asked. “Who’s coming to dinner?” I imagined she might say Harry Baker, Mrs. Ramirez.

“Becky.”

“Becky?” I didn’t expect to hear her name, even though I was thinking about her, even though I wanted her empty space to be filled, wanted to hear her brag about her birthday the next day. I suddenly had visions of a life returned to normal, of the two of us pulling each other’s hair and squabbling over an inner tube, of a family that ate dinner together,
of a mother who spaced out only occasionally when she lounged around with a cigarette in her hand.

“She’ll be home for her birthday. Becky wouldn’t miss her birthday.”

“You’re right,” I said quickly. “You’re right.” But I didn’t really believe it. I set the fourth place because I was afraid if I didn’t, my mother would make a silent retreat back into her own hazy world.

All through my birthday dinner my mother kept getting up to look outside, to peek through the front window. “I thought I heard something,” she said.

Finally my father said, “Elaine, have a seat. Relax.”

“I can’t relax, Jim. Don’t tell me to relax.”

I chewed my meatballs, pretending they were the best birthday dinner ever. But I was afraid to say anything. I knew if someone moved the wrong way, said the wrong thing, my mother would storm upstairs, and my father would run after her. I preferred this strange dinner party of my mother’s to being alone on my birthday.

“I remember when you were born, Ab, just like it was yesterday.” He tried to change the subject.

I nodded. He says this every year. Then he recounts the
story of my mother going into labor, of how the first time he held me, he thought I was boy because the umbilical cord was still attached. He did the same thing to Becky on her birthday, only then he talked about her small, weak lungs, and she’d use this to her advantage. She’d crawl on his lap and hug him until he’d start to tear up, just thinking about how she been so blue, helplessly unable to breathe for the first seconds of her life.

By the end of dinner my mother was a wreck. She paced through the front hallway. While my father and I cleared the table and put the dishes in the sink, we could hear the clicking of her feet, back and forth and back and forth. It was all very odd, really—not that it wasn’t odd anyway—but it was still my birthday. When I looked at this with my mother’s logic, I wondered why she thought Becky would come home today, not tomorrow. I wondered if my mother might be confused, if somehow she’d collapsed the two of us into one person in her mind, one little girl. I wondered if I’d become invisible.

“Dessert,” my father called to her. “Time for cake.” He’d picked up cupcakes on the way home from work—chocolate with vanilla icing, my favorite. At least he’d remembered that.

My mother came back in. Her hair was messy, falling out of the neat, tight ponytail it had been in earlier. She looked oddly disheveled. “I don’t understand it,” she said to my father. “I just don’t understand it.”

He went to her and gave her a hug, and I could see he was solid but defeated. This was quite possibly the nicest exchange I’d ever seen my parents have. There was something so sweet, so desperate in their hug that I knew instantly how much they loved each other. “People don’t just disappear,” she said. “Little girls. Little girls don’t just disappear.”

My father stroked her hair back into her ponytail. “It’s time for cake. Let’s sing ‘Happy Birthday.’” I knew my father was trying to do this all for me, and I felt ashamed that I would even want him to. I wasn’t even sure if I should have a birthday anymore.

I heard the grandfather clock in the hall chime, so I knew it was six o’clock. If Becky were here, she’d be hopping around the kitchen saying, “Six hours until my birthday!” “Be nice, Becky. It’s Abby’s day,” my mother would say, but she would smile, so I’d know she thought Becky was adorable, that she didn’t really mean it. It was strange that I missed that, that it didn’t quite feel like my birthday without it.

“I’m not really hungry,” I said. “It’s okay. We can have the cupcakes later.”

My father shook his head and let go of my mother. “Ab, sit down. We’ll have them.”

I didn’t want it to become an argument, so I did what he said. I wasn’t sure what he whispered to my mother, but then she sat down too. He put a candle in my cupcake and carried it to the table singing “Happy Birthday” in that funny off-key way he has of singing things. He put it down in front of me. “Make a wish.”