The Story Sisters

It was there in the kitchen, while Annie cut up a loaf of bread and Claire fixed a salad, the dog stretched out at her feet, that Pete felt he had stumbled into the best part of his life. He didn’t know if he deserved it, but he wasn’t about to turn it down, despite the fact that there wasn’t going to be much time. Maybe that was why it had happened so fast between them. Or maybe he’d been in love with her all along, since that first time she came to his office looking for her daughter.

He started sleeping on the couch when the weather was bad or when their dinner stretched into the late hours. One night Annie came out from her bedroom wearing a robe.

“You can’t be comfortable,” she said. He was too tall for the couch. His feet hung off the edge.

“I am,” he told her. “I’m fine.”

“Well, I’m not. I’d be better off with you.”

He’d slept with her every night since, waking early to go back to the couch so Claire wouldn’t know. Annie laughed at him.

“Do you imagine she’ll think we’re too young to get serious?”

He was a man used to setting things right, but in this case there was nothing he could fix. He’d done the research, had spent nights searching the Internet. He’d talked to doctors and brought her records to experts in the city for second and third opinions. Sometimes, when he came to the house, having stopped at the market for groceries on his way, he put off going inside. It was the bright hour of before. He wanted to hold on to that for as long as he possibly could. He’d been there once before. He’d lost someone he loved. He knew what happened next. The air was cold; he could feel it in his lungs when he breathed in, little ice crystals. He left the sacks of groceries in the car while he went to the garage for the shovel. He came back and cleared the walk, making a neat path from driveway to back door. His breath billowed into the air. He might have cried if he’d been another man, one who hadn’t buried his daughter, lived a solitary life, fallen in love so late in life.

By the time he went inside, the eggs he’d bought at the market had frozen in their shells. The world felt enchanted. Perhaps in this snowstorm they would sleep for a hundred years and wake consoled, young again. Annie was at the kitchen table, drinking tea. She had a scarf tied around her head. She’d been watching him through the window. It was growing late and the snow was turning blue in the darkening light. “I should hire someone to shovel the snow,” she said. “You might throw out your back.” Pete had a football injury from high school, but he was shy about it. It had happened so long ago he figured he should be completely healed.

“I enjoy doing it.” Pete took off his jacket and his gloves, then went to the sink to run his hands under a stream of warm water. He could barely feel his fingers. He still kept an eye on Elv, even though Annie had told him he didn’t have to. He didn’t like what he saw. She and that boyfriend of hers had gone on a spree of robberies. Pete had followed them out from Astoria to Great Neck one night, then had parked a block down when they pulled over on a quiet street filled with grand houses. Lorry got out, wearing a black coat and cap. He slipped his hands into his pockets and shifted down the lane. Elv watched him from the driver’s seat, rapt. The whole time he was gone she barely moved, until at last he came ambling back, a duffel bag swung over his shoulder. They’d sped off, not even noticing the Volvo on the corner, in a world of their own.

Pete decided to make chicken and dumplings, a somewhat complicated recipe. He wanted to take his time, use it for simple things. He tested the dumplings on Claire, who was always so picky. “Delish,” she said, then surprised him by asking for more.

It seemed impossible that Pete would know how to make such a dense, homey dish. Nobody cooked like that anymore. Claire fed tidbits to her dog as she studied for a history exam.

“How did you know how to make those?” Annie asked Pete when they sat down to dinner. “Are you sure you’re not a gourmet chef posing as a detective in order to sleep with various dying women?”

“It’s just flour and water.” There was a dusting of flour on his hands. “Annie,” he said sadly.

Annie wrapped her arms around him. She couldn’t understand how a man like Pete could get involved with a woman in her situation. She hadn’t yet told Claire what the doctors had said on her last visit. She wasn’t having chemo anymore. There was no further treatment. All she asked was to last until Claire’s high school graduation. She didn’t think beyond that. As for Pete, he wasn’t thinking beyond the current evening.

The snow had slowed down. It was just flurrying. There was a shimmering cast to the drifts, as if sugar had been sprinkled over them. Pete wondered if the endings of things gathered in the corners of a room, hanging down like a spider’s web, waiting.

“What?” Annie took note when he grimaced. “You did hurt your back!”

Pete insisted that shoveling snow was good exercise, but in fact his back was killing him. That night he couldn’t sleep. He thought about Elv in that fast car, about his daughter slamming out of the house the last time he saw her, shouting “Go to hell” when all he’d wanted was to bring her back to life. He thought about the fact that Annie rarely complained or took her pain killers. She wanted to be in the here and now, she’d told him. She wasn’t going anywhere just yet.

Restless, Pete went downstairs for a glass of water. Claire was in the kitchen, submerged in a textbook. Shiloh was stretched out under the table. Claire still spoke infrequently, choosing her words carefully. Although she was a top student, she had decided not to take any college placement tests. She wasn’t interested in the future. She dreaded change of any sort and was dismayed when faced with too many choices. Every day after school she went to the cemetery. While other girls were meeting boyfriends, going to dances, working on the school newspaper, Claire was walking through the wrought-iron gates.