Torn - Part Three (The Torn Series) (6 page)

CHAPTER 6

Part of me was dreading visiting my family. The other part, however, was looking beyond, looking forward to getting back to the city afterward. Back to Mallet and our fresh start.

I just had to survive Thanksgiving.

My homecoming went just as expected. Katherine picked me up at the train station, looking frazzled and tired and all-around miserable. “Hey,” I said as I slipped inside her car after tossing my bags in the trunk. “How’s it going?”

“About as well as you’d expect,” she said, though she smiled. “You look good.”

“Thanks.” I’d toned down my punk look somewhat since leaving the band, opting for more casual clothing, though I kept my wild red-and-black hair.

“Mom won’t like it,” she said with a wry grin, “But it suits you.”

She caught me up on a few things I’d missed on my quest to separate and reinvent myself - neighborhood gossip, stories about old schoolmates getting fat or pregnant, stores that closed down, new stores that opened up. It was strange to imagine things moving along in our little town as they had. It was almost like I’d expected time to stop while I was away. But it hadn’t. All the video stores we used to visit were gone, replaced by bakeries and coffee shops. Our favorite deli had changed hands and wasn’t as good as it used to be.

It wasn’t as if I hadn’t been back at all but my visits were always short, and this was my first once since graduation. To be fair, none of them had come down to the city to visit me, either. Not that I’d extended many invitations, but still.

We arrived home around two o’clock and found our mother at the kitchen table, her always-present wineglass in hand. “Alexa,” she said. She slowly hefted her weight from the chair and trundled over to me. Her nose wrinkled as she got closer. “Your hair.”

“Happy Thanksgiving, Mom,” I said softly.

She sighed and gave me a reluctant hug before moving back to her place at the table. “Don’t like what you’ve done with your hair. It’s trashy. Is that what the kids in New York are doing now?” Her speech wasn’t quite slurring yet but it was still early.

“No, Mom, I just liked it.”

“I don’t know what I’m supposed to tell the relatives when they see it.”

Nothing,
I thought. Saying it wouldn’t help matters. I could only change the subject. “Can I help with anything?”

She waved behind her towards the stove. “If you feel like making one of those pies of yours, Katherine picked up the ingredients. I’ve got dinner under control.”

By that, she meant she was happily ordering Katherine around while claiming credit for all the work herself. I shot my sister a sympathetic look over my shoulder, but it barely registered on her face. She looked like she wasn’t even listening.

“All right,” I said finally, “Let me throw my stuff upstairs and I’ll get started.”

“Try not to make a mess, I just finished cleaning.”

This time, Katherine sighed.

○●○●○●○●○

“Why don’t you move out?” I asked my sister. She’d followed me upstairs to watch me settle into my old room, presumably to make sure I didn’t make a mess, but what exactly was I going to do? Knock the photos askew on the walls? Immediately empty my purse on the floor? I wasn’t even planning on unpacking my bag.

“I can’t exactly afford to. Not on a substitute teacher’s paycheck.”

“I couldn’t afford to but I did it anyway.”

She frowned. “You had Tyler. It’s much easier when you have someone to share living expenses with.”

So find a friend. Get online and find a roommate.
We’d had this conversation before and all of my ideas were met with roadblocks. Truth was, Katherine was afraid that our mother couldn’t take care of herself. It wasn’t true - the woman was just a master manipulator. I just hadn’t been able to make Katherine see it that way, yet.

I changed the subject instead. “Tyler and I broke up.”

“Oh?” She sat on the edge of my bed. “What happened?”

“It’s complicated.” She remained sitting at attention with sisterly interest - a rarity between us. So I tried to continue. “He broke up with me because he didn’t like my new friends and the band I was playing with and, well, he just didn’t like going out much in general. Then he wanted to get back together but I’d already moved on.”

“Moved on? You found a new guy?”

“Just a casual thing,” I shrugged. I didn’t want to get into that, no matter how much I was enjoying Katherine’s interest. “Anyway, I’m done with Tyler.”

“Shame,” she said, “He was going places.”

There was the sister I knew. “Yeah, he’ll have a big fancy career and I’ll keep on being a loser bartender,” I said, waving my hand.

“Stop, you’re not a loser.” She stood. “You’re just young.
I’m
the loser.”

The mean sister part of me answered
yes,
but the other part of me was horrified. This wasn’t like Katherine at all. How much had I missed while I was avoiding the family?

I didn’t pry, though I wanted to. Instead I hugged her. “Don’t say that. Neither of us are losers, okay?”

She sniffled and pushed me away. “Come on. You can help me get everything ready for tomorrow. You’re on desserts, right? If Dad’s coming we’ll need cake, he doesn’t like pie, and if his sister and the kids are coming, we’ll need cookies…” I let her ramble as I followed her back down the stairs. I was definitely going to have to pull more information from her when the time was right. Maybe after Mom drank herself to sleep. I nodded to myself; that would be for the best. I’d take Katherine out someplace and find out what exactly was going on in her life. Obviously something was bothering her. And I could be a good sister for a change, or at least try.

Because I certainly didn’t want our relationship to wind up as bad as Mallet’s with his brother. I couldn’t imagine us reduced to violence at a diner, but it was easy to see how we could lose touch completely outside of holidays. We could become strangers. I didn’t want to come home but I didn’t want that, either.

○●○●○●○●○

Some pies and potatoes later, I finally got my sister alone. We had to help our mother up the stairs to her bedroom first as her words slurred and her slippers fell off.

“You did remember to pick up the turkey?” she asked for what must have been the third time.

“Yes, Mom,” Katherine said, helping ease her onto the edge of her bed. She sat and observed us with unfocused eyes.

“My girls,” she said, and then she scoffed.
Real nice, Mom.

“Come on,” Katherine said once we left the room and were out of earshot, “Let’s go out. I haven’t been anywhere in ages.”

“Okay,” I said, surprised. Normally my sister wouldn’t want to go anywhere with me. It seemed that she’d changed quite a bit since the last time we’d spent any time together.

She drove us around in silence for a time, seemingly lost in thought. We weren’t heading in the direction of any bars that I knew of but maybe she’d found a spot of her own, a new place that had opened up recently or something. I was a little bit surprised when we pulled into a strip mall and parked in front of a coffee shop, but the place was pretty busy considering it was so close to a holiday. It was probably packed with people like us - eager to escape their families for a time and gear up for the festivities the next day.

We both ordered lattes and found a quiet table by the front window. We sat and people-watched and sipped our drinks in silence for a while. It was nice to spend time together without fighting, and sometimes it seemed like the only way to keep from sniping at each other was to avoid saying anything at all. So I smiled at her over my coffee and said nothing. I still wanted to reach out to her but there was no reason to rush it.

“So, bartending?” Katherine said, finally breaking the silence.

“Yeah,” I said, “It’s fun, I guess. The money’s good depending on the night.”

“You don’t want to do something with your degree?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t really tried.” I’d done a little job-hunting when I moved to the city but nothing had come of it. I rationalized it away - a full-time office job seemed like a good way to kill all of my musical ambitions. But now I wasn’t playing music at all.
Time to steer the conversation elsewhere.

“What about you? Substitute teaching, you said? Do you like it?”

“Yeah,” she said, a smile finally replacing her usual frown. “I love working with kids. I just wish I could find a full time position. But it’ll happen eventually.”

“Anything else going on?” I asked. “I mean, is everything okay? You seem kind of… down.” I cringed as I said it, expecting some sort of snippy reply. She’d tell me to mind my own business, or blame it on me.

She did neither.

Instead, she placed something on the table and pushed it toward me. It looked like a poker chip, but when I squinted at it I could see that it said “3 months.”

“Is that an AA chip?” I asked, barely able to keep the shock out of my voice.

“Yeah,” Katherine said, nodding. “It’s why I wanted to talk to you. I have… amends to make.”

I felt myself immediately tear up. After everything I’d been through, with the band, with Mal, I hadn’t shed very many tears. I just wasn’t a crying sort of girl, not generally. But there with my sister opening up like she was, I wanted to cry.

Her eyes glistened back at me and she laughed. “I can’t do this if you start crying!”

I laughed, too - I felt silly for getting so emotional so quickly. “I can’t help it!”

She reached across the table and took my hands, squeezing them tight. “I’ll make this quick, I swear,” she said, sniffling. I nodded, and she took a deep breath. “I’m sorry that I missed your graduation. I’m sorry that I’ve been such a shitty big sister and kind of a bitch in general. I feel like I’m part of the reason you wanted to move away so quickly, but I’m so happy that you’re making it in the city. I… I’m proud of you. Even if you don’t think there’s anything to be proud of. And I hope that one day I’ll make you proud, too.”

Tears were flowing freely from the both of us by the time she finished. I opened my mouth to speak, but she cut me off. “Don’t say anything!” We laughed at our tears again, wiping them away with our sleeves. “Don’t reply to any of it. You don’t have to. Just…” She waved, still laughing and crying at the same time. “Just drink your damn coffee!”

We attempted small talk after that, though we spent the rest of our time mostly in companionable silence. It was like a wall had come down between us. My own confessions and apologies could wait for another night - this was about Katherine getting everything off of her chest and clearing the air.

Things would probably never be right with my family. Our mother and our father, they just had too many problems, too many personal issues that Katherine and I couldn’t even begin to help them with. But between the two of us, between sisters… for the first time, I thought that we were going to be okay.

I hugged her before we got back in the car. “I want you to come visit me,” I said. “For Christmas shopping. It’s a good excuse to come down to the city, even just for a day. Maybe in a couple weeks?”

“Sure, Alexa,” she said, “I want to see where you live.”

I thought about my apartment and grimaced. Katherine was working on getting her life together and was succeeding. It was time for me to think about taking a few steps forward. If my room was a reflection of how I felt inside, then I was in real trouble.

I knew what the first issue to attack was, too. I was still afraid to admit it but I couldn’t let it get out of control - not like it had for Katherine, not like it still was for my mother. But I was going to have to address all the drinking I was doing, and soon.

CHAPTER 7

“Alexa! These fucking pies of yours are burning!”

They weren’t. My mother was just in a mood. She was nervous about the meal, about my father and her brother clashing, about having so many people in the house, about everything. Why she insisted on hosting the holidays when she so clearly hated it was beyond my understanding. We could have met at another relative’s home. Hell, we could have skipped them entirely and Katherine and I would have been downright relieved.

But this was Thanksgiving every year. Turkey, pies, screaming.

I scrambled to get the pie out of the oven while my mother watched. “Strawberry rhubarb!” I announced, placing the steaming hot dessert on the stovetop. I retrieved my second pie from the fridge and slipped it in to the oven for its own turn. “Pumpkin!” I announced to no one in particular. My mother remained unimpressed by my enthusiastic baking, but my father would be happy.