The Winter Sister(97)

She put her hand in the air like a shield. “I love him,” she repeated, but her voice wobbled this time. “I love him.”

She began to stand, her arms shaking with the effort of pushing against the chair. I felt no instinct to help her, to leap toward her and steady her. Instead, I watched her struggle, watched her rickety knees try to carry her weight, watched her nearly fall over as she reached for the bucket on the floor.

“I love him,” she insisted, straightening back up, and I couldn’t be sure if the sheen I saw across her eyes was a film of tears or a flash of light. “I love him, I love him.”

Clutching the bucket to her chest, she turned away from me, and I watched her go, listening for the increasing rasp of her voice as it echoed those words: “I love him. I love him. I love him.” Even as she disappeared down the hall, even as her bedroom door closed and the lock clicked into place, I could still hear her mumbling.

“I love him.”

The words were becoming deeper and deeper—“I love him, I love him”—until they sounded like nothing more than a prolonged and agonized moan.

Then, finally, I heard a sob—low and cavernous, as if it welled up from the most buried part of her. And then it was two sobs, three sobs, four, one right after the other until it was too many to count.

I loosened with relief. Even as her pain thundered in my ears, I felt myself grow lighter, more buoyant, as if gravity were relaxing its grasp on me for the first time in years.

For a long while that afternoon, I sat on the couch, listening to my mother cry. At times, I even smiled, not at her sorrow or anguish, not at the fists I could hear beating against her bed. I listened to her sob so hard, so feverishly, that I imagined, the corners of my lips lifting, that the sobs might split her open, like a stem breaking through layers of darkness and soil into light.





30




That night, I called Aunt Jill to tell her everything I’d learned. I explained how Mom had been locked in her room since I told her, how she hadn’t responded to my knocks at dinnertime, hadn’t even come out for the plate of food I’d left in the hallway. When I finished speaking, Jill immediately started planning a trip to see us in a few days.

“No,” I told her. “You should stay with Missy. She needs you.”

“Carl’s parents fly in on Tuesday. Missy and the baby will be fine until then.”

“Yeah, but—”

“No buts. Nothing you say will stop me from showing up, okay? That’s what family does, Sylvie. In times of crisis—or times of . . . unbelievable news—we show up.”

I imagined it then—Jill at the front door, gathering me into a hug. The smell of her—cinnamon cookies and coconut lotion—would feel more like home than the house I’d been living in for the past couple weeks.

“How do you do it?” I asked, a tear wetting my cheek.

“Do what?”

“Bounce from person to person who needs you. You took care of me in high school, and spent years after that taking care of Mom. And now you’re taking care of Missy and the baby and Mom and me, all at once. It’s so much, Jill. I’d hate to think that you’re sacrificing your own needs.”

Jill sighed impatiently. “Oh, what do I need,” she asked, “other than the people I love?”

I wiped at my cheek with my sleeve. “Well thank you,” I said. “Seriously, thank you so much, Jill. I don’t know how I ever would have—”

“Stop,” she interrupted. “It’s nothing. Now, let’s hang up so I can text you a picture of the baby. She’s sure to make you feel a little better.”

And she was right. The picture that came in a few minutes later showed the baby wrapped tightly in a knitted blanket, her face poking out the top with wide, curious eyes. “Mallory Joy, our little potato,” Jill had captioned it, and I laughed then, as effortlessly as breathing.

I stared at the picture for a little while longer, running my pinky finger over the baby’s cheek. Then I took a deep breath, pulled up my list of contacts, and finally called Lauren back.

“You’re lucky I’m even picking up at this point,” she said by way of greeting. “And literally the only reason I am is because I have some news.”

I was startled by the tone of her voice. Along with the impatience and frustration I’d been expecting, there was a note of excitement, too.

“Okay . . .” I said.

“And obviously we have a lot to talk about, but I’ve been dying to tell you this all day. Only—I promised myself that I wasn’t gonna call you again until you called me. And yes, that sounds like something I’d say about a guy, but you’re basically my wife at this point, so shut up.”

“I wasn’t gonna say anything.”

“Okay, so . . . when I got into work this morning, Steve told me that some woman he knows is looking to hire a new tattoo artist at her parlor.”

“Oh. And you’re thinking of applying?”

“What? No, dummy. I already have a job. You’re going to apply. Steve said he’d give you a glowing recommendation. Isn’t that amazing?”

For a few moments, I didn’t know what to say. The snap of the latex gloves against my wrists, the buzzing of the tattoo machine—they seemed like details from a movie I’d seen, not something I’d lived every day for the past several years. It was as if someone else had been in control of my life, telling my body what to do, my mouth what to say, and all that time, I’d just been hunched somewhere deep inside of myself, letting it all happen because it was easier and less exhausting than trying to live on my own.