The Silent Sister(19)

I lowered the frame to my side, disappointed. I could hardly bear how lonely his response made me feel. I had a box of treasures but no one to share them with. I wouldn’t show him the others I’d brought with me.

“I found some VHS tapes of Lisa that I want to watch,” I said, “only I had to order a VHS player, so I can’t see them until it arrives. I’m guessing you don’t have any interest in watching them with—”

“You couldn’t pay me enough,” he said. “I had to watch her perform thousands of times when I was a kid. That was enough.”

I felt defeated. “Why are you so … disdainful about her?” I asked.

“You were too little to remember what it was like,” he said. “Lisa was their princess. Their little violin goddess. Their everything. You and I could never measure up.”

“I never felt that way,” I said, defensive of our parents.

“Well, you were not even two when she died, so you lucked out.” He sounded bitter. “The world revolved around her. When she killed herself, she took our parents with her. She turned them into zombies and you and I were left to fend for ourselves.” He shook his head, looking down at the book where it rested next to him on the hammock. “This is pointless,” he said. “Talking about the past. Totally pointless.” He motioned toward the photograph, still clutched in my hand. “Why do you want to live in the past?” he asked.

“I don’t.”

“You’re looking through old pictures. What’s the use?”

I looked away from him and into the forest. I could feel the carved wood of the frame beneath my fingers. “It’s because I feel alone, Danny,” I said finally, turning toward him again. “I miss having a family, and I really wish you and I could be closer, but you won’t even answer the phone when I call. I promise I won’t call about helping with the house, okay? I get that you don’t want to do that. But can we at least hang out a little while I’m here?”

“What would we do?”

“Anything,” I said, exasperated. “We could go to the movies or out to dinner or … you could take me to your favorite bar.” I remembered he’d been banned from his favorite bar and wished I hadn’t added that. “Maybe we could go out with Harry and his wife some night. You could introduce me to your friends.”

“Most of my friends are online.”

“Well, then, you can tell me about them.”

He smiled at me, the sort of indulgent smile an older brother might give his little sister. “You want me to be someone I’m not, Riles,” he said.

“Maybe I do,” I admitted. “I’ll work on that, but could we at least see each other? We can hang out on your terms. Whatever you want to do. Just include me while I’m here, okay? Not every minute. Just sometimes. What do you like to do?”

“Read. Walk in the forest. Fish. And I like to get shit-faced drunk.”

“I can do that.” I smiled, game for anything. “Or I could be your designated driver.”

“Maybe,” he said. “But we stick to the here and now, all right? No old photographs”—he motioned toward the frame in my hand—“or old tapes or stories about Dad’s sex life. Deal?”

“Deal,” I said. And we shook on it.





9.



I drove away from Danny’s trailer and turned right on the gravel road toward the RV park. Okay, I thought, the way to deal with Danny is to focus on the here and now. I felt some joy, as though I’d found a path into his troubled mind. I wouldn’t bring up our family with him again. Though I bet he talked about the past with his online ex-military buddies. Wasn’t that what those guys did? Relive everything that happened to them over there? Whatever. I’d leave the past in the past. I’d try to find a movie playing nearby that he might be interested in. I’d take him to dinner. We could talk about books. Some nice, safe topic. Maybe I could get him to move up to Durham, closer to me. There were more services for veterans up there.

But I was getting ahead of myself.

My father’s small RV stood where it always had, in the first of the park’s twelve sites. The old trailer had once been white with a green stripe down the side, but although the green was still in pretty good shape, the white had aged to a dingy yellow. I pulled up next to it on the concrete pad and was about to get out of my car when my phone rang again. Pulling the phone from my tote bag, I saw Jean Lyons on the caller ID. With a sigh, I lifted the phone to my ear. Might as well get it over with.

“Hi, Jeannie,” I said, opening my car door wide to let the air in.

“Listen, honey, I’m swamped the rest of today and tomorrow morning,” she said, “but I could come over tomorrow afternoon. Christine’s dying to meet you, but she’s tied up till next week, so I can get started on making an inventory of everything in the house. Then we can get cooking on—”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” I interrupted. “I have plans for tomorrow.” I was lying, but I needed one more day to myself without Jeannie in it. “The next day, maybe?”

“I have two showings that day.” She sounded frustrated. “And you need to get going on this or we’ll be putting the house on the market too close to the schools opening. We’re way too late as it is.”