No One Knows Us Here(41)

A groan escaped from her, a pitiful bleat.

Did she really drink an entire bottle of wine by herself? I examined the label. I had bought the bottle last week—I definitely hadn’t opened it myself. The foil had been torn off haphazardly, as if she’d hacked at it with a butter knife or peeled it off with her fingernails.

An unpleasant odor—the lasagna, undoubtedly petrified into a charred stone in the oven—wafted through the air.

“Wake up, Wendy.”

This time she rolled over, shielding her eyes with her arm. She groaned again.

“So this is how it’s going to be? I can’t leave you alone without you self-destructing?”

“You left,” she said in a slurred, mumbly voice. “On my first night.”

“We’re not going over this again. I have a real job now.” I tried not to flinch at my own words. “That’s how we can afford this place. How we can afford to be together.”

“I’m going to be sick.”

“The bathroom!” I stabbed my finger in the direction of the hallway. “Go!”

When she came back out, she looked better. She had pulled her hair up into a messy bun and splashed some water on her face. The hair around her temples was still wet.

I was kneeling down on the rug, trying to blot out the red wine stain. I’d poured white wine over it—requiring me to open another bottle—and was blotting away at it with a dishrag. While I blotted, I had composed a little speech for Wendy, a speech about respect and boundaries and authority and only being fourteen years old and damaging brain cells.

She plopped herself back on the couch and wrapped the blanket around her head, clasping it under her chin. She looked so forlorn and pathetic, like a little pioneer child abandoned on the side of the road because they’d needed to lighten the load of the covered wagon making its trek out west. “Are you going to send me back now?” Wendy asked me.

Her soft voice, her pathetic little abandoned orphan routine—this should have sent arrows straight through my heart. I searched deep inside of myself for some of those sisterly feelings we’d shared last night. I couldn’t feel them. It was impossible for me to believe that this girl sitting here, with the blanket tucked around her, those doleful eyes, was the same girl who used to follow me around. She used to wear my clothes, even when they were way too big. I indulged her. I was a good older sister. I had this boyfriend, junior year of high school. Duncan Kline. I used to let Wendy hang around with us. For several weeks, we were like the three amigos. Two sixteen-year-olds and an eight-year-old, going out to the movies, drinking hot chocolate in coffee shops, drawing gigantic sidewalk murals up and down the driveway.

He broke up with me because of it. He wanted a girlfriend, not a full-time babysitting gig, he told me. I hadn’t thought of it that way. I’d thought we were having fun, the three of us. When I broke the news to Wendy, she shook her head sadly. You’re too good for him, she told me. I remember that she said it like that, wise beyond her years. I had to laugh. We’re too good for him, I agreed.

The hungover teenager on the couch was the same little girl, I told myself. My little sister. It still seemed impossible to believe. I sighed theatrically. “I owe you, remember?” I said to her.

“I could have my grandma come get me.” A tear trickled out of the corner of one eye. She was really milking it. “Get out of your hair.”

“You’re not leaving,” I said, my voice firm. “No one’s leaving anyone again. Got it?” I kept dabbing the rug with the cloth. That was the secret to getting stains out. Never rub. Dab. Dab, dab, dab, dabdabdabdab.

“I’ll clean that up,” Wendy offered.

“That’s okay. The stain’s almost out.” It wasn’t true. The blemish remained visible on the carpet, though it was more a bruised gray than dark burgundy now. I could dab for hours and it would still be there, a dirty shadow. I exhaled. “Once it dries, no one will ever notice it.”





CHAPTER 14


“How’s the new job?” Steele asked me. We—Steele, Margorie, this guy William we used to work with, the old gang—were sitting at a back booth in a dark bar, the kind of place that would have been clouded over in smoke when that was still allowed. The booths were old and ripped, the tables sticky with years of sugary cocktails.

“The new job?”

“How is it working for Leo Glass?” Margorie added.

“It’s fun,” I said. “Challenging.” Over the last two months, I’d seen Leo only a handful of times. He’d be in town for a night or maybe two, or he would fly me somewhere to visit him. Business trips, I told Wendy.

Most of the time I was home, with nothing to do. Every morning I got up, got dressed, and walked out the door with Wendy. She went to school, I pretended to go to work like a laid-off Japanese businessman.

Wendy and I were careful around each other, ever since that first night. On our best behavior. I spent afternoons baking cookies or laminating dough or frosting cupcakes, which I would set out on a plate, awaiting Wendy’s return from school. This was what a loving sister would do, I thought, and I imagined her coming home, her eyes widening in delight at the treats. We would eat cookies, dipping them in glasses of cold milk, and she would tell me about the cute boy she sat behind in biology class.