The Winter Sister(26)

“Just like what?” Jill asked.

“Just like after Persephone died,” I said. “I told you I’d be terrible at this, Jill. It hasn’t even been a full day yet, and I’ve already upset her so much that she’s right back where she was. I’m sorry, I just don’t—”

“All right, stop it.” The firmness in Jill’s voice made me flinch. “Do you think I expected you to walk right in, snap your fingers, and have everything be perfect?”

“No . . .”

“Do you think she never once locked herself away while I was taking care of her?”

“I don’t know . . .”

“Sylvie, this is your mother we’re talking about. She’s not drinking anymore, so she’s much more alert, yes, but she’s still Annie. And I love my sister, I swear I do, but that woman has been a mystery to me for a very long time. So buck up. She’s bound to backslide now and then. And just remember—when she gets like this: let the child pass out.”

“Let the what?”

“It’s something Grandma used to tell me, a million years ago, when I started babysitting. I was so nervous that they wouldn’t listen to me and they’d threaten to hold their breath or something until I—I don’t know—gave them cookies, or let them tie me to a chair and set the house on fire. So Grandma told me, ‘Let the child pass out,’ meaning—let them have their tantrum. Let them hold their breath all they want, because they’ll only pass out and then wake up again a few seconds later.”

I smiled a little. Jill always found a way to comfort me.

“Let the child pass out,” I repeated. “Okay, I’ll keep that in mind. But, Jill—do you know what boy she was talking about?”

Jill chuckled. “The boy she supposedly gave your sister’s things to? No. In fact, you got a much more specific answer than I ever did. All she told me was that she’d gotten rid of it all. Like I said, she’s a mystery to me.”

“Okay, but—”

A creak from across the hall—the sound of Mom’s door opening—forced me to stop. I jumped out of bed, like a soldier snapping to attention.

“She just came out,” I whispered. “I should go.”

With the phone still pressed to my ear, I cracked my door just wide enough to see Mom head into the living room, carrying a bowl with a spoon in it. She wore the same sweater and head wrap as the day before, but still, the smallness of her, the acuteness of her frame, was just as shocking as the first moment I’d seen her.

She’d had her tantrum, though—I’d let the child pass out—and now, at the sight of a cereal bowl in her hands, I felt a whisper of hope. She must have already come out that morning, or even late last night, and sick and skeletal as she looked, she had eaten something. This was a good sign.

“Okay,” Jill said in my ear, and I realized with a jolt that she was still on the line. “Listen—just keep me in the loop about how things are going, all right?”

“I will,” I said. “I’ll talk to you soon. Love you.”

Following Mom to the kitchen, I watched her place her bowl into the sink.

“Did you have some breakfast?” I asked.

Her only response was to turn the faucet on, watch the water as it collected in her bowl, and then turn it off. Walking closer to her, my bare feet winced against the cold kitchen tiles.

“Mom?”

The knuckles of her left hand were white from gripping the counter. As she stood there, staring into the sink, I thought I could smell something familiar rising off her skin—not a perfume, exactly, but a scent that was naturally, uniquely, hers. It reminded me of those nights she’d return home late from her shift at the restaurant and I’d already be in bed. She’d creep into our room so quietly I almost didn’t hear her, and then she’d kiss my forehead, run her long, cool fingers down the side of my face. “Good night, my sweet girl,” she’d say, and as I stood behind her now, my eyes closing as I breathed her in, I remembered how she would pull my blankets up toward my chin, tucking me in and making me safe.

“Mom,” I said again. “Are you okay? Can I get you anything?”

She swayed a little, like a thin tree in a breeze, and just as I was about to put my hands out to steady her, she turned around. Her face was so close to me then, so significantly changed from those childhood nights I remembered, that I almost stopped breathing again. Her eyes were two moons, gray and opaque.

“I’m fine,” she said abruptly, and then she moved to step around me.

As she walked back toward the cave of her bedroom, the ridge of her spine stabbed through her sweater. Soon she disappeared around the corner, and it was only a few moments before I heard her door close, heard the lock click from inside.

? ? ?

She didn’t speak to me again until the next day, when the nurse at Brighton Memorial’s cancer center hooked an IV into her arm. We hadn’t spoken in the car, where the only sounds between us were that of a morning radio show, and we hadn’t spoken when I checked her in at the hospital or when her blood was drawn and vitals were taken.

She’d replaced the head wrap she’d been wearing for the past two days with a shoulder-length blonde wig. She was wearing makeup, too—just some eyeliner and blush, maybe a hint of color on her lips, but it softened her features. She seemed less angular and washed out, and though the clothes she wore sagged against the edges of her body, she looked more like the woman I’d known before Persephone died. More like Mom.