The Story Sisters (28 page)

“Claire’s fine. She’s downstairs studying.”

“Yes, Claire. But that’s not what I mean.”

Pete sat on the side of the bed. He knew exactly what she meant. He wished he never had to leave this room and that he and Annie had met years ago. He wished he could somehow let Claire know this was what love was. The ability to ask for something. The desire to give someone what they asked for.

“I intend to,” he said. “You don’t have to worry about Elv.”

C
LAIRE WAS GRADUATING
from the Graves Academy with high honors. That morning the home health aide said she wasn’t certain Annie would make it through the day. Claire had wanted to forgo the whole thing, skip graduation and stay at her mother’s side, but her grandmother said absolutely not. Annie wanted to see her in her white cap and gown. She had been living for this day. Claire finally put on her graduation outfit. She went up to her mother’s room. The curtains were drawn. On impulse, Claire had thrown up the skirt of her gown, kicking like a Rockette, and they’d all laughed, even Annie. “Oh, hurray!” Annie had cried in a small, delighted voice.

Pete went to graduation with Elise and Mary Fox. He stayed on his cell phone the entire time. Sitting on a chair set up in the soccer field, he felt like one of those commentators in a basketball game, giving the play-by-play. “The headmaster is on the stage,” he reported.

“Tell them he’s fat and sweaty,” Mary Fox chimed in.

“The faculty are all lined up in a row,” Elise added. “It’s crowded as all get out.”

Natalia had been living with them for the past few weeks. Now she was in bed with Annie, holding the phone up so Annie could listen. When the headmaster announced Claire’s name, they cheered. They pretended they weren’t crying. It had all been
so exhausting, holding on for this moment. After a while, Natalia felt as if the air was too close. Annie’s breathing was labored. “I think I should get the doctor.”

“Don’t,” Annie murmured. She wanted to close her eyes, but instead, she struggled to listen to the rest of the graduation ceremony. It all poured into the room, the applause and the excitement. They could hear a marching band. Natalia wrapped her arms around her daughter. She sang the lullaby she’d sung a long time ago. Annie was surprised to find that she remembered the words. She remembered her parents’ bedroom in Paris, the orange light seeping in around the white window shades. There was the scent of chestnut blossoms and the sound of leaves rustling in a slow, green rhythm.
Sleep, my darling child. Sleep through nights and days. I’ll be here to watch over you
.

P
ETE AND
C
LAIRE
left the school grounds as soon as Claire received her degree. They left Elise and Mary Fox and ran for the parking lot, which was cluttered with cars, many of which had streamers dangling from the bumpers and antennas.
Congratulations. Best of luck
. Claire threw her diploma in the backseat and tore off her cap. Everything was green in the fields surrounding the school. The other students’ parents were still in the soccer field, cheering. There was a series of awards, including one meant for Claire from the English Department. Mary would accept on her behalf. The head of the department, Miss Jarrett, read a poem Claire had written during the time she stopped speaking. Claire couldn’t have cared less about the award. Her poem was about the sixteenth-century
Golden Book
in Venice, in which all of the maestros of glassmaking were listed by name. She described the ways in which glass could shatter. Rocks, storms, hail, carelessness, slingshots. In the end there’d been too many to list.

Pete broke the speed limit on the way home. As they raced through town, Claire buzzed the window down and leaned outside. Her face was streaming with tears. It made sense for Pete to drive on the bay road, even though they usually avoided the corner where it happened. It was the fastest way home.

Claire’s back was to him, but Pete knew she was crying. He reached to pat her shoulder. A soft cry escaped from Claire’s mouth.

“She made it till today,” Pete reminded her.

When they got to the house, Claire ran inside to see her mother. She hadn’t been the smartest or the most beautiful, but she had graduated and that had mattered to Annie. Pete stepped into the kitchen. Natalia had heard the car and had come downstairs so Claire could have some time alone with her mother. She handed Pete a cup of coffee. He and Annie had talked about everything, but they weren’t finished.

When Natalia went back to Annie’s room, Pete said he would be right up. He stayed in the kitchen with the dog for a while. He covered his face and wept. When he was done, he patted Shiloh’s head. This wasn’t his house or his family or his dog, but it was his sorrow. The phone rang. It seemed ridiculously loud. The kitchen clock was ticking. It wasn’t the sort of day anyone would remember. Just an average June day. Pete blew his nose on a napkin. Maybe it was the ex-husband telephoning. He hadn’t been able to attend Claire’s graduation because there was also a graduation at his own high school. Just as well; nobody wanted him. Pete didn’t care to talk to him either, but when the phone continued to ring he had little choice but to answer, if only to quiet the damned thing.

He grabbed the receiver and said, “Hello,” feeling awkward.

“Who is this?” A woman’s voice.

For a brief alarming moment Pete thought it was his daughter, Rebecca, calling from the beyond. Then he understood.

“It’s Pete, Elv.”

Elv paused, then went on. “They let me have a phone call. I knew it was graduation day. Claire probably wouldn’t want to talk to me.”

“She’s upstairs with your mother.”

“You don’t think my mother would want to talk to me, do you?”

Pete gazed out at the tree in the yard. Annie had told him Elv used to sit up there like a nymph, even in the rain. “I think she would. But she’s not capable. Do you understand what I’m saying?” Pete asked.

“If I could talk to her once, I could tell her how sorry I am.”

Pete said he was going to look in on her mother and that he’d tell her. When he went back up, Claire was curled up in a chair in the corner. Her graduation gown was rolled in a ball, tossed on the carpet. Pete hung it over the back of a chair. He went to the bedside. He didn’t know if Annie recognized him or not, but he leaned in close to tell her she didn’t have to worry about Elv anymore. She was the way she used to be, the girl in the garden with the long black hair.

The light through the window was changing. It grew oddly bright just before twilight, then faded into bands of blue. By evening it was over. Claire went downstairs and opened the back door. She’d heard that was the way to release a spirit. Her grief poured out in a few wrenching sobs. She pulled herself together and glanced at the clock. This was the hour of her mother’s death. Shiloh was staring into the yard, so Claire opened the door wider.

“Go on,” she urged.

The dog trotted out to the lawn. The phone rang and Claire ignored it. Speaking had always seemed beside the point for her, now more than ever. What were words but a pack of lies, however you sorted them. There were birds outside, robins. All at once, they flew into the trees.

The phone continued to chime. Claire finally picked up the receiver. When she held it to her ear, a woman’s voice said, “Mommy? Is that you?”

Claire felt as though she’d just placed her hand on the burner of the stove. She quickly hung up. The birds were all nesting now. Not a single one sang. It had begun to drizzle and everything was turning gray. Pete came into the room. He’d heard the phone and he’d rushed down to answer it, but he knew he was too late as soon as he saw the expression on Claire’s face.

“She called before,” he admitted.

“She can go to hell,” Claire said.

They didn’t need to talk to anyone right now. Instead, they stood at the back door and watched the dog walk the perimeter of the yard. Aside from the spindly tomato plants Pete had planted in a corner, the vegetable garden was filled with stray weeds. Nettle, thistle, jimson weed, nightshade. A few tremulous sweet pea vines had begun to wind along the fence. The tendrils were soft green with luminous pale buds. Natalia came from upstairs. She had covered Annie with the white linen bedspread she’d brought with her from France. It was the one that had been in the guest room, when the girls were young and Annie had slept for seventeen hours and the light was orange. In a little while they would have to call 911 and ask for an ambulance to be sent to the house. But for now they remained at the door, breathing in the evening air. There was really no place else they wanted to go.

Changeling

W
HAT CLAIRE LIKED MOST ABOUT
P
ARIS WAS THAT NO ONE
noticed her. She could walk for miles without speaking to anyone. Of course there were places she made certain to avoid, the
favorite, most-beloved list she and Meg had agreed upon that spring when they’d come here together. The ice cream stand by the Île Saint-Louis. The Rue de Tournon. The bookstore, Shakespeare and Co.

Claire now bought her secondhand books from the stalls along the river. She thumbed through volumes to make certain there were no dedications. She avoided sentiments of love and loyalty. Three years had passed since Claire had moved to Paris with her grandmother. The house had been sold and Natalia had given up the apartment on Eighty-ninth Street. Claire never went to college. She didn’t apply. She wanted to go someplace where they’d once been happy. She packed a single bag of possessions and took Shiloh. Sadie, the cat, was still alive, and when the dog arrived, the two agreed to a truce, forced to share close quarters in a small flat. Claire herself despised the cat, and Sadie must have felt her contempt. It disappeared whenever she was around, hiding beneath the couch. Occasionally a claw darted out to strike at a boot or shoe.

Shiloh went everywhere with Claire. He was beside her when she went walking after dark, late at night when the skies were heavy, filled with clouds. The only people out at this hour were the ones who couldn’t sleep, those haunted by one thing or another: love thwarted, love lost, love thrown away. They were the sort of people who didn’t wish to be noticed, who wanted to slip through shadows, be alone with their despair. Claire wore her hair short and dressed in the worn Burberry jacket her mother had donned while gardening. She had a pair of jeans she’d bought ten years ago and the boots she wore all the way through high school when she had to wait for the bus on the corner of Nightingale Lane. She liked the way the night turned green in Paris, the green air, the slick green sidewalks after a rain. She frequented a café in the Marais near her grandmother’s apartment.
Everyone knew her, but acted as if they didn’t. Claire appreciated that brusque courtesy. She never looked at the waiters or the proprietor. She didn’t wish to make polite conversation about the weather or current events. She didn’t want companionship, merely coffee and a quiet table near a window.

Since she’d moved to Paris there had been men who were interested in her, but Claire ignored them. She thought that love ruined people. She kept her distance. Once a man had come up and kissed her as she was searching for shallots in a vegetable bin in the market. He’d grabbed her and pulled her close before she could react, then had blurted out something about her being too beautiful to ignore. Claire abandoned her groceries and left the shop. She’d never returned to that market, although it was the one closest to her grandmother’s apartment.

She no longer cared about the many colors of sunlight in Paris. She remembered making lists with Meg about that, too. There were times when the light had been pink or pale lemon, dusty violet or gray as smoke. Then there had been the day when it was orange. Claire preferred the dark. Paris was good for that. People said it was the city of light, but not if you went out on rainy days, coat collar turned up. Not if you waited for twilight before emerging onto the street. There were many things Claire had no interest in anymore besides light. Friendship, food, conversation, men, love, school, work, dreams. She shut herself away in her room and slept most of the day. When she came out for dinner, merely a bowl of soup or some crackers, her face looked crumpled. Sometimes her grandmother feared that Claire was evaporating. What would be left of her if she kept disappearing into a smaller and smaller world of her own? Her shoes, her hat, her coat, nothing more. Claire spoke only when the need arose, but the need for speech is arbitrary. When neighbors greeted her, she looked startled, as though she’d pricked her finger with a pin.
Sometimes she had terrible dreams. That was something even Claire couldn’t avoid with sleep. Several times Natalia heard her call out in the gibberish language the Story sisters used to speak.