The Story Sisters

In the night, however, nothing seemed normal. The house echoed. Branches hit against the roof in a strange melody. Sometimes she dreamed about taking Elv to Westfield, the same turns on the highway, the same falling leaves, that dreadful moment when Elv glanced out the window and realized where they were. Everyone said to wait. Elv would contact her when she was ready. They said her oldest daughter would turn around and come back to her. But she had waited long enough.

One day, after Claire and Meg had left for school, Annie got in the car and started for New Hampshire. She’d felt such urgency she hadn’t bothered to listen to the weather report. By the time she’d made it to the New Hampshire state line, it was snowing so hard the road didn’t look the same. She stopped at a market and put together a care package of food, then headed on. She grew confused and had to stop several times to ask directions. The area around Westfield was a mystery. The roads were badly marked and turns came up suddenly. Everything was white and the woods were endless. Fir and oak and crumbling stone walls zigzagged through places where there were once farmers’ fields. Annie pulled over to the side of the road, completely lost. The terrain was wild and hilly and she had mistakenly run over some felled logs. Somehow, she’d missed the turnoff to the Westfield School.

A police car came up behind her. Annie knew she was about to cry. She slipped on her sunglasses. The officer came around and tapped on the glass.

“Everything okay?” he asked when Annie buzzed down the window. He looked at her curiously.

“I missed the Westfield School. I didn’t see it. My daughter’s there.”

“You can make a U-turn,” the officer allowed. “I’ll make sure the road stays clear.”

He pitied her. She could tell. She saw that same look from neighbors and friends.

“It’s about a quarter of a mile on the left. Why don’t you stay here until you’re ready to drive,” the officer suggested. “I’ll wait. No rush.”

Annie sat there parked for a while, then turned and headed back down the blacktop. The officer waved to her. She felt as though he was the only person on earth who knew she was alive. The snow was coming down harder. As she edged along, Annie still couldn’t see a thing. She drove slowly. When she squinted through the large fluffy flakes, the Westfield gates appeared in side a white fog. This time she didn’t miss the turnoff.

The care package was perched on the backseat. Fruit and cookies and a plant. Annie parked and retrieved her offering. She kept on her sunglasses and tied a scarf around her head. The school looked different in the falling snow, as though it had been caught in a snow globe. The campus seemed so far away it might as well have been in the Russian steppes. Annie’s mother always said that her childhood in Moscow was a childhood spent in winter. The first thing Natalia’s parents had done when they’d reached Paris was to buy fruit, something they’d rarely had beyond a few brown apples at most. It was Natalia who had started Elv on her love of apricots. Fruit is always a gift, Natalia always said to the girls. No one knows that better than those who’ve never tasted it.

Annie could hear the crunch of her boots and the sound of her own breathing as she walked the icy path to the administration building. She thought she saw something in the tall, plumy weeds, an opossum or a raccoon. Whatever it was, it was watching her as she tried her best not to slip on the ice. Inside, two guards were at the front desk, chatting. They stopped talking when Annie approached.

“I’m here to see my daughter,” she told them.

When neither responded, Annie had a wash of panic. Didn’t they know their own students?

“My daughter,” she insisted. “Elisabeth Story. Elv. She’s a student here.”

“Did you have an appointment?” one of the guards asked.

“Do I need an appointment to see my own child?”

Apparently she did. The guard called down to the administration office. All Annie could do was wait as the care package was examined. Only the fruit was acceptable. The plant would have to be confiscated. They handed her a list of dos and don’ts for the future. Annie thought about the cashmere sweater she’d sent at Thanksgiving. She’d taken hours choosing the right one, nothing too fancy or frilly.

Elv was coming back from lunch in the cafeteria when she spied her mother in the lobby. She ran to her room and shut the door. Her heart was beating fast. Her mother looked like a stranger in her black winter coat. She’d been wearing sunglasses even though it was snowing outside. Elv felt a wave of sadness. She thought about being in the garden with her mother when the other girls were little, asleep in their cribs. Only Elv helped to gather tomatoes and peas. Her mother lifted her up so she could reach the highest of the climbing tendrils and pull down the sea green pods. There was pollen in the air, and the hawthorn tree sent the light through the slats of the trellis, and her mother laughed at how many pea pods Elv managed to gather at one time, dozens in a single handful.

Elv went into the bathroom and forced her fingers down her throat so she could make herself sick. When Julie Hagen came to get her, having made a special allowance for a family meeting, Elv was on the bathroom floor vomiting. Miss Hagen went back to the lobby to tell Annie the visit would have to be postponed; her daughter was sick, not the optimum time for a first encounter. Nothing to worry about, probably a stomach virus. Nothing for Annie to do but leave despite her protests.

Elv went to her window to watch her mother’s car cross the parking lot. It drove away slowly, as though caught in dreamtime. It stopped at the end of the long driveway, and Elv felt something flutter inside her chest. Then the car started off again. It went through the gates and was gone. There was no point in feeling anything. Elv was weirdly protected, as if she lived in an Arnish castle made of stones and sticks. As if the wire fence was there to protect her from evil. When they brought her the care package her mother had left, Elv let it sit on her dresser until the fruit rotted. There were yellow apples and blood oranges and tangerines, but soon enough they all turned black and poisonous. In the end, Elv threw the fruit out her window for the birds to peck.