American Girls(17)

“Uh-huh,” I said. Delia was staring at the phone on the living room floor like how those priests in horror movies look at calm little girls who have the devil inside of them. Waiting.

“I just—” she said again. “I can’t take the risk that having you here might make the cancer worse.”

My sister looked like she’d swallowed poison.

“What?” I said. I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t catch my breath.

“That’s it,” Delia said. “Conversation over. I’m so sorry about your news, but we can talk about this tomorrow. Good night, Cora. And thanks for handling this in such an adult fashion. She’s not old enough to handle your bullshit, you get that, right? You get that you’re the adult?”

One of them must have disconnected because my sister tossed the phone across the room and then picked up her gym bag and slammed it against the floor.

“Please don’t be mad at me,” I said.

“Oh, Anna. I’m not mad at you.”

She sat down across from me and collapsed into herself. I tended to think of my sister as a big person—tall shoes, wide smile, loud voice. But she was probably a hundred pounds soaking wet, and she looked kind of like a pill bug on her sofa, rolling into herself, almost disappearing.

“Don’t cry,” Delia said. “Please don’t let her make you cry. Please. It’s not worth it. She’s like a selfish two-year-old. With cancer, yes, but, Jesus, God Almighty, is it so hard, such a terrible challenge, for anyone in this family to be normal?”

“Do you think it’s my fault?” I could barely even say the words.

I knew I wasn’t a perfect kid. I probably should have helped more with Birch, or complained less about the school thing. I should have walked to the grocery for her when she was pregnant instead of pretending I had homework to do and texting with Doon. There were about a million things I would have done differently if I had known.

“That’s not how cancer works,” Delia said. “Not even in her faux-hippie universe, okay? And if she ever says something like that again, tell her you are going straight to your therapist and not speaking to her again until your therapist gives you permission.”

“But I don’t have a therapist.”

“Anna. I hate to tell you this, but you’re gonna need one.” She laughed, and went across the room to the television, where she removed a small box of matches from beside one of the candles. From it, she removed the thinnest joint I have ever seen and looked at it like it was her oldest, dearest friend.

“This is just lazy-ass self-medication,” she said. “And I don’t recommend it.”

“Can I have some?”

I’d had one puff of pot a year ago when Doon sneaked some from her brother’s stash, and it just made my lungs burn. Nothing interesting happened. Either the pot was defective or I was.

“Not a chance,” she said, holding smoke in her lungs while she choked out the words. “But I will let you in on a little family gossip.”

“Can I at least have the last doughnut?”

“You can have ten more doughnuts. We’ll drive there later.”

She tossed a pillow onto the floor, sat down, and focused her eyes on the ceiling. Then she started talking to the ceiling.

“So I never told you this, but the first part I ever got in a movie, it was a Japanese horror flick called St. Succubus. It was pretty twisted, I guess—you know how when you’re on a set sometimes you can be doing the grossest stuff, but instead of seeming gross it just seems silly or stupid? Anyhow, there was this scene where I went down on a guy and then later I ate his boiled penis like it was, I don’t know, a suckling pig.”

“Can we stream it?” The thought of my sister cooking a penis for dinner was actually cheering me up. I moved my hands in front of my face like I was two-fisting some imaginary dinner. Dick a l’Orange.

“No way. It’s disgusting. And my acting is terrible. But it was my first role, so I was proud and all convinced that it was artistic, so I let Mom know that I had made a movie, and I kind of warned her about it, and I thought, stupidly, idiotically, flying in the face of everything I know about our mother, that she would be proud. Because it was a movie and I was her daughter, and I’d been paid to go to Japan and act and all of that. It was exciting. I thought it would be my breakthrough role, blah, blah, blah. So I called Cora about two weeks after it came out, to see if she and your dad had watched it, and you know what she says to me?”

I shook my head. My sister stopped looking at the ceiling and stared me dead in the face.

“She says, ‘I can’t have sex since I saw that movie. It’s disgusting and it’s made me realize that sex with men is violent and predatory. I’m not sure that I can ever have sex with any man again.’”

“Seriously?”

“Oh, I am the deadest of serious.”

“So it’s your fault Mom is a lesbian?”

“And her marriage ended. Something like that. I didn’t speak to her for, like, two years. She’s incapable of taking responsibility for any of her actions. Incapable. You must promise me to never, ever, ever under any circumstance take anything she says personally. Ever. Please. I’m making like it was funny, but it wasn’t. She’s my mother. I was devastated. I wanted her to be proud of me. I wanted her to be my mom. I mean seriously, isn’t it, like, rule number one of your marriage breaking up that you don’t blame your children? Don’t even psychopaths follow that rule?”