The Story Sisters

The sisters sat by their mother’s bedside. Today, the light through the window was pink and clear. They were glad she was there. Ever since Elv went away, she had been too quiet. She forgot to go shopping or make dinner. The milk in the refrigerator was often sour, and Meg had taken to cleaning the house once a week. Sometimes Annie didn’t seem like their mother anymore. Now, for instance, she seemed like a little girl sleeping in the guest room bed. She was disappearing before their eyes. Meg made sure she was breathing; she held a mirror close to their mother’s mouth—she’d seen this done in an old movie. When the glass fogged up, the girls knew she was still alive.

Natalia finally woke Annie from her long sleep, shaking her, calling her name, bringing her a cup of hot tea. She insisted they all go out for the day. They went to the Musée d’Orsay, where they thought they were enjoying themselves until they noticed Annie standing in front of Van Gogh’s self-portrait, crying. Annie excused herself and went off to the restroom. Claire was reminded of the black river Elv had once painted. She wished she had begged for it. She wished she had it right now.

The rest of the weekend was better. The Story sisters took their mother to all the places they loved most: the ice cream stand, the bookstore, the Jardin du Luxembourg, the bench in front of Notre Dame, where they all sat together holding hands, and anyone who passed by would have thought they were happy. Annie slept through the night for the first time in ages under the white coverlet. She ate soft-boiled eggs. She painted her nails red, then polished the girls’ nails as well. On their last day in Paris, the sisters were in the kitchen cutting up pears for a tart. Their mother and grandmother were on the terrace having their morning coffee. Below, in the courtyard, two elderly tenants were arguing over whether or not a third could tie his bicycle to the now broken stone trough. Their mother laughed when one tenant called the other a stupid boot. Meg and Claire looked at each other. They could hear the clock over the stove, ticking. They could hear doves in the courtyard. They wanted this moment to last forever. The sunlight was orange. They had to remember that. Meg would make certain they did. She fetched a piece of paper and wrote down the word orange, then folded the paper in half. They could cut up pears and write down all of the colors of the light and listen to people laugh and smell the blooms on the chestnut tree and forget about the rest of the world. They wanted to stay in their grandmother’s apartment always, but instead they would have this memory of sitting in the kitchen, being happy.

They flew home on Air France. They spoke French to the stewards, and their mother was proud of them and let them each have a glass of champagne. Claire felt dizzy and sick right before landing at JFK. She had to go to the restroom even though the seat belt signs were already switched on. Once there, she vomited into the horrible, messy toilet. She clung to the sink, stricken that she had imagined she was happy, or that she might even have a right to be. She must have been gone for a long time, because her mother came looking for her, worried.

Annie tapped on the door. “Claire? Are you all right?”

Claire opened the door.

Annie touched her forehead. Burning hot. “Claire,” she said. “Darling.”

“I’m fine,” Claire insisted. “Really. I am.” And then, before she could stop herself, she said, “Maybe I just miss her.”

Claire would certainly miss her beloved grandmother, but that wasn’t who she was talking about and they both knew it.

“I miss her too,” Annie said.

They went back to their seats. They were closer to home than they’d thought, all the way across the Atlantic. They put their seat belts on, and after that they didn’t think about Paris anymore.

ELV WAS FINALLY ready to see them. They didn’t have to coax or beg. She herself asked for the meeting. She wanted it right away. Sometimes Annie felt as though she had invented Elv, and all those years they’d spent together had been a fevered dream. It was decided that Alan and Annie would drive up separately. Neither wanted to be in the car with the other for five hours. Annie wore black slacks and a black sweater. She looked as though she were going to a funeral, so at the last moment she added a pink silk scarf, one the girls had convinced her to get at a tiny shop on the Rue de Tournon. Watching her get ready to go, Meg took out the piece of paper on which she’d written the word orange to remind herself of the day when the light had been so beautiful in their grandmother’s kitchen. She told her mother not to worry; she would make dinner for herself and Claire. She reminded Annie to be careful on the road, as though she were the mother. Then Meg sat down in the kitchen, worrying about what would happen next.

As Annie drove along the highway, she thought of her three little girls helping her in the garden when they were small on a day when Natalia and her friend Madame Cohen were visiting. The older women had been perched on garden chairs, applauding every ripe tomato the girls picked. The girls had then gathered around Madame Cohen cross-legged in the grass and she told them that tomatoes were in the same family as belladonna, henbane—all poisonous, all associated with witches. “The fruit is so delicious,” she’d said as she held up a ripe Indian Orange to mato. “But the leaves can be lethal.”

THEY MET WITH Elv in a carpeted therapy room. Alan and Annie were anxious, as though they were meeting someone for the very first time. Alan’s girlfriend, Cheryl, was waiting in the car for him. Alan had bought himself a Miata convertible, with room enough for two. He and Cheryl lived in a house on the west side of North Point Harbor, which they were now considering putting on the market. They were thinking of applying for positions out in the Hamptons. They had recently taken up sailing.