The Story Sisters

Rose

Everything was red, the air, the sun, whatever I looked at. Except for him. I fell in love with someone who was human. I watched him walk through the hills and come back in the evening when his work was through. I saw things no woman would see: that he knew how to cry, that he was alone.

I cast myself at him, like a fool, but he didn’t see me. And then one day he noticed I was beautiful and he wanted me. He broke me off and took me with him, in his hands, and I didn’t care that I was dying until I actually was.

MEG LOCKED THE BEDROOM EVERY NIGHT. ELV HAD HER OWN room now, one of the bedrooms on the first floor. She said she needed privacy and that at seventeen she was too old to share a room with the younger girls. But Meg knew the truth. Elv didn’t want to be up in the attic with them. In her little bedroom she could talk on the phone all night. She could sneak out the window and no one would be the wiser. She could cook up a potion of drugs, dreaming her way through her entrapment at home until at last she turned eighteen and could be free. Their mother had given her everything any girl could have wanted—her own TV, her own telephone. Still she wasn’t happy. She pouted and ran off to the city every chance she got. She told their mother she was seeing friends, spending nights with them. But anyone with half a brain could tell that was a lie. Elv had never had a friend in her life.

Sometimes Meg thought she was the only one who saw her sister for who she really was. She certainly wasn’t someone you wanted wandering around your house. Meg was reluctant to be in the same room as her sister. You could never trust a tiger, someone out for blood, convinced you had betrayed them. Meg waited until Claire fell asleep, then eased out of bed and tiptoed over to turn the key and lock their door. Sometimes she took out the worn piece of paper on which she’d written orange that she kept in her wallet, along with her school ID. Once or twice she’d fallen asleep holding it. She was glad she’d thought to write it down when they were in Paris.

Their mother had gone for a visit to New Hampshire and returned with their older sister, won over by her lies and pleas.

“Are you happy now?” Elv had remarked to Meg soon after she came home. That was when Meg knew nothing had changed for the better. “My hair’s shorter than yours. Does it make your day?”

Meg felt wounded that her sister would think her so vindictive. But in fact she had noticed that her hair was now much longer. Elv wasn’t as luminous or as obviously pretty as she used to be. She had a darker beauty now; she was thinner, edgier—even her eyes seemed a deeper green. The first week after she’d come home, Meg had spied her with some man in a parked car in the lot by the beach. Elv was sitting in his lap, kissing him—the kind of kisses Meg was embarrassed to see. It was daylight and many of the children Meg knew from the camp where she was once again a counselor were running around the playground. She hurried past, shamed, head down, but Elv had glanced up and spied her. That evening Elv had come up to Meg in the kitchen while their mother was out in the garden and Claire was in the living room, threading a strand of beads as a gift for their ama.

“Don’t tell Mom.” Elv grabbed Meg, the way she used to. She seemed stronger now.

“I told you, I don’t care what you do.” Meg’s heart was pounding hard. She pried herself out of Elv’s grasp.

“Seriously. If you open your mouth, I will make your life miserable.” Elv’s voice was matter-of-fact. Meg had no reason to believe that she wouldn’t do exactly as she threatened. She was already making things miserable without even trying.

“I’m not stopping you.” Meg shrugged. “You can take off all your clothes right in public if that’s what you want.”

Elv laughed. “You’re jealous. You always want what I have. Don’t think I don’t know it. And don’t think I don’t know you were the one who had me put away. Pretend all you want,” Elv told her. “I know it was you.”

Sometimes Meg couldn’t believe how much she hated her own sister.

Recently, she had run into Heidi Preston, who reported that her sources had told her Elv was using heroin.

“I doubt that,” Meg said, still defending her sister. But she thought about how Elv stumbled out in the mornings and late at night, about how thin she’d become. She thought about the bruised marks on her skin.

“Okay. Fine.” Heidi shrugged. “Some people are saying her boyfriend is a movie star.”

“Equally questionable.”

Meg didn’t want to think about the handsome man in the car or the kiss she’d seen. There was something illicit in it, something that suggested how little she knew about men and women. She asked Heidi about her brother, Brian. Heidi said she thought he was somewhere out west because he had once told her that a man could always make a living on a ranch. Meg wished the same thing would happen to them. Maybe once Elv turned eighteen she would take off the way Brian Preston had. She’d send them postcards from mysterious locations in California and Oregon. She’d promise she was never coming back.

Until that time came, Meg tried her best to avoid her. She was glad there were only two of them up in the attic now. Elv did as she pleased and took what she wanted. That was why Meg had recently taken a hammer and nails and permanently shut their bedroom window as a precaution. No one could get in now.

Sometimes Annie worked in the garden at night, waiting for Elv to come home, worried that Alan had been right. Annie dodged the truth, trying to maintain her optimism. But who did she think was calling late at night? Who was parked at the end of the street, waiting for Elv to sneak out her window and run down Nightingale Lane? Perhaps she had brought Elv home too soon. Perhaps as a mother she simply wasn’t up to the task. There had been a drought, and the soil was dusty in the garden. The leaves on the hawthorn tree curled and rattled in the wind. No tomatoes appeared on the vines. The star-shaped blossoms had fallen off before they could bear fruit. Annie had planted seven varieties, two more than usual, adding Arkansas Travelers and a new variety of Cherokee, but she’d wound up with nothing. She discovered hornworms, so pretty when they were moths, so deadly to tomato plants in their larva form. As soon as the harvest season was upon them, she pulled on her gardening gloves and tore out the tomato plants. There were red and brown leaves everywhere. She hadn’t the budget to hire a gardener anymore. All over town there were bonfires of burning leaves. Black ash drifted through the air. Annie looked up and glimpsed Meg behind the locked attic window. There was still the pungent scent of tomato vines. The metal trash can was full of tendrils and leaves, all turning yellow in the dark. This was the way her garden grew now.