Time Flies (27 page)

“Kurt moved out,” I said instead.

“You were always too good for him,” she said.

“Really?” I’d always thought she liked Kurt better than she liked me. Maybe I did like my sister a little bit after all.

She twisted her big fat diamond ring around on her finger. “Marriages take work. Jonathan still sends me flowers once a month.”

I reminded myself that I was decades too old to kick my sister in the shins. Or pull her hair.

“Well,” she said. “You’ll get through it.” She brushed her hands together like cymbals, her ever-aggravating signal for a change of subject. “Brittany and her family are summering in Provence, and Tiffany just got a promotion.”

“Trevor lost an arm and Troy joined a cult,” I said.

My sister looked at me. Then she turned and walked away.

I followed her out to the garage. The box was bigger than I remembered it.

Marion crossed her arms over her chest. “Jonathan thought maybe we should open it, as if it might be a present for us. I told him not to hold his breath.”

“It was addressed to me,” I said.

“You should have asked,” she said.

“I said I was sorry.”

There was so much outrage flashing between us you could almost see it like an aura. I wanted her to be my big sister again—to
braid my hair and push me on the swing and make me a peanut-butter-and-grape-jelly sandwich because they always tasted better when she made them.

I tried another smile. “Does this mean we’re not going to have cookies and milk?”

Marion looked at me like I had three heads. “I’m gluten-free.”

“Hey,” I said. “Remember how right before Mom died she always wanted us to be in the room together? How every time we tried to take shifts with her, she would freak out?”

Marion’s arms were still crossed over her chest. “She got like that as soon as Dad died. You just didn’t have to hear it because you weren’t around. I waited on her hand and foot and all she ever said was, ‘Where’s my Melanie?’ ”

My eyes filled. “I was twelve hundred miles away. I did the best I could.”

“Sure,” Marion said. “When it was too late to make a difference.”

I’d flown up practically every weekend those last few months. I’d talked to doctors, made funeral arrangements, sorted through her things at the assisted-living apartment, the whole time knowing that nothing would ever be enough, just as it hadn’t been when our father had died three years before.

And maybe it wasn’t. Maybe nothing I did would ever be enough to get past this logjam between my sister and me.

But maybe if I could just find a way to pretend she was someone I actually liked, even almost a friend, she’d rise to the occasion and be likable.

I found some garden clippers on a shelf and used one of the blades to slice the tape holding the top of the box closed. I removed the tissue paper and unloaded my box spring ladies.
I peeled off their bubble wrap and lined them up on the garage floor.

One by one I twirled them around and inspected them for damages. They were perfect, and even more beautiful than I remembered them.

It took everything I had to turn to my sister and smile. “I’d really like you to have one,” I said. “Take your pick.”

She gave them a quick once-over. “Cute, but thanks anyway. Not that there’s anything wrong with them—they’re just not my style.”

CHAPTER 28

The box spring ladies and I were standing at the end of my sister’s driveway.

When I saw the Mustang coming, I stuck out my thumb.

B.J. pulled up beside us. “Wanna go for a ride, little girls?”

She put the car into park and jumped out. “Ohmigod, they’re amazing. I love, love the parasols. Did you make them? Of course you did. Wow, you’ve come a long way, baby.”

I sniffed. “Thank you.”

B.J. shook her head. “Oh, no. What did that bitch say to you this time?”

I bent over and picked up one of the box spring ladies. “Come on, let’s just get out of here.”

The top was down so we lowered all three box spring ladies into the backseat.

“Do you think they’ll be okay,” B.J. asked, “or should I put the top up for them?”

“They’re pretty heavy, so I think they’ll be fine,” I said, “but we’d better buckle them in just to be sure.”

After we got them squared away, B.J. handed me a scarf and I found my sunglasses. B.J. gunned the motor a little louder than necessary and burned some rubber as we peeled out of my sister’s perfect neighborhood.

I tried to focus on the fact that it was a spectacular summer day, sunny and breezy and dry.

When we stopped at a red light, B.J. turned to me. “Spill it.”

I reached up under my sunglasses and wiped a few stupid tears from my eyes. I tilted my head back and blinked the rest away. There was no way in hell my sister deserved the satisfaction of giving me puffy eyes for my reunion.

“I offered her one.” I pointed over my shoulder at the box spring ladies. “Just to be nice.” I sniffed. “And maybe, well, so we’d get along for a few minutes.”

The light changed and B.J. took a right toward the beach. “Are you crazy? You could get a lot of money for those. And in case you’ve forgotten, you don’t seem to have any at the moment. What did she say?”

I swallowed back a sob. “She told me they. Weren’t.” I cleared my throat. “Her. Style.” I tilted my head back again, but it was too late. Tears rolled down my cheeks like a waterfall.

“Oh, please,” B.J. said. “Her style is early Stepford Wives.” She reached one hand over and patted my knee. “I’d hug you, but I don’t want to crack up my car. Or bruise your tattoo.”

I sniffed.

She handed me a tissue. “Here. Blow.”

I blew.

“She’s not worth it, Mel. And she’s totally, totally jealous of you. She always has been. You have more talent in your little finger than she has in that entire overplucked body of hers.”

“Really? She’s overplucked?”

“Oh, please, those eyebrows of hers, are you kidding me? And they’ll never grow back at this point, you know, even if she smartens up and realizes how ridiculous they look. She’ll be drawing them on with crayons for the rest of her ugly natural life.”

“Thank you,” I said. “You’re a good friend, Romy.”

“Damn right I am, Thelma. Okay, so we’ve got three options here. One, we can toilet paper your stupid sister’s house after the reunion. Two, we can go online and give your stupid sister’s email to every annoying politician we can think of. Or three, we can go find a ridiculously overpriced tourist trap and see if we can get them to take these gorgeous sculptures of yours.”

“Hmm. That’s a tough one.”

B.J. stopped at another red light. She popped the trunk. I ran around and got us each a can of Tab. I made it back to my seat just before the light changed.

“Well done,” B.J. said. “Good to see you haven’t lost your touch.”

“Thank you,” I said. I clicked open one of the Tabs and handed it to B.J. Then I opened the other one. I leaned over the seat to give each of the box spring ladies a pretend sip, then I buckled myself back in and took a real sip. It wasn’t sweet tea, but I had to admit the tinny, chemical taste was starting to grow on me.

I burped, long and loud. “Take that, my stupid perfect sister.”

B.J. burped, too. “And this one’s from me, Marion. Special delivery.”

I scrolled through B.J.’s playlist until I found Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive.”

“That’s the spirit,” B.J. said. She reached over and cranked it up and we sang along at the top of our lungs.

“Evivrus Lliw I,” I yelled when we finished.

B.J. reached for her lip gloss. “Wow, that’s so weird. I was just thinking about Fawn, too. I wonder if Veronica will find a way to make it to the reunion.”

“No way,” I said. “We both know that. Maybe the next one, though. Hey, you know what I was just thinking? What if we brought my box spring ladies over to the reunion? They could be part of the decorations. You never know, one of our classmates might turn out to be a collector.”

“That’s a good idea. You’d think at least one person we graduated with would have to have money
and
taste.”

“Maybe Finn Miller will want them,” I said, mostly because I was dying to say his name out loud again.

“Of course he will.” B.J. checked the rearview mirror and then made a U-turn. “And they’ll definitely be a step up from all those crepe-paper streamers and those tacky Best Class Evah balloons. Plus, it wouldn’t hurt for me to show my face one more time before tonight to drop them off. You know how those committees are—blah, blah, blah about who’s doing all the work, like I didn’t do most of the early stuff. But I don’t want to get stuck there forever, so why don’t you let me just run them in? You can keep Mustang Sally idling by the curb.”

“Fine, Louise,” I said. “You run them in and I’ll be the getaway driver. Just make sure you put them somewhere safe.”

B.J. reached over and hit the
SHUFFLE
button on her iPod.

“ ‘Itchycoo Park’? I said. “Are you kidding me? That song was way before our time.”

“No way.” B.J. turned it up. “We were young, but my first words were ‘It’s all too bootiful.’ ”

The Small Faces were impossible to resist, so we both sang along to the rest of the song.

“I’m not sure you should have included songs from before high school,” I said when we finished. “I think it might make us feel older than we actually are.”

“Incense and Peppermints” by the Strawberry Alarm Clock came on next. I reached over and turned the iPod up even louder. “Aww,” I yelled over the music. “I forgot how much I loved this.” I turned it down a little. “Okay, you were right. Pre-high-school songs are fine as long as they’re special enough.”

“Thank you,” B.J. said. “I was waiting for your permission.”

We pulled into the Marshbury Marine Park, which was tucked into a corner of the inner harbor on a narrow causeway that connected two oceanside cliffs. Across the harbor the main downtown area bustled with tourists. The last time I’d been here, it had looked like a boat junkyard, not that there was anything wrong with that.

Now it was upscale and amazing, with fancy new docks bobbing up and down on the water, sea-glass-studded walking trails spiraling through the whole property, and picnic tables everywhere. There was a great big building in the center with silvery white cedar shingles and whitewashed trim. And a huge deck
with horizontal steel cable railings framed harbor views that went on forever.

“Wow,” I said. “
This
is where we’re having the reunion?”

The Mustang’s tires crunched over clamshells bleached snow white by the sun. B.J. pulled up right in front of the main entrance. “Only the best for you, Romy. They just finished it about a year ago. Wait till you see the sunset from that deck—the committee had our first meeting here just to check it out. And the price was right—the marine center is a nonprofit and part of their mission is to make the building available to community groups at a nominal price.”

I clicked my door open. “I can’t wait to see it. I’ll just run in with you for a second and then run right back out before anyone catches my ear. It’s not like you can carry all three of them in by yourself anyway.”

B.J. put the Mustang into park and jumped out. “Okay, fine. You can run one of them to the door for me and peek in the window. But that’s it. I’m not kidding you, once those committee vultures smell fresh meat they’ll be all over you and we’ll never get out of here.”

Resisting B.J. was a lot like trying to swim against a tsunami, so I carried the first box spring lady I’d made, the one with the big floppy hat of chicken wire mesh, to the front door. Her hat looked a little bit plain without anything growing in it, so I pinched off some hot pink petunias from the two overflowing boat-shaped planter boxes that flanked the front steps and tucked them into the hat’s sphagnum moss.

I looked around for a hose to wet down the hat.

“
What
are you doing?” B.J. said. “We don’t have time for that.
Do you have any idea how much work we have ahead of us if we’re going to look dazzling by tonight?”

I picked up a half-full watering can tucked behind one of the planters. “I just have to water this sphagnum moss. I don’t want the petunias to wilt before the reunion.”

“Fine,” B.J. said. “But I have to tell you that your priorities are way off.”

I held the door open for B.J. and the other two box spring ladies. I kept it open long enough to see a huge room with dark wood floors, high white beadboard ceilings, and a gorgeous beach stone fireplace.

As soon as I finished watering the first box spring lady, B.J. was back to grab her. “Just give me half a second to find a good place for them.”

Mustang Sally was still running so I kept one eye on her as I peeked around the building. The water sparkled a placid blue in the late-afternoon sun. A family was pulling up to one of the docks in their cabin cruiser, two little boys in bright orange life jackets sitting on the bow. The older boy was holding a rope, getting ready to jump to the dock and tie up the boat when they got close enough.

For the gazillionth time, I wondered what it would have been like if my family and I had never left Marshbury. Would Trevor and Troy have been happier? Would my sister hate me less? Would Kurt and I still be together?