The Almost Sisters(87)

Frank Darian was near the foot of the dining-room table, on our side, clearly panicking. He had his hands raised in an almost comical defensive posture toward my grandmother, as if propitiating a fluffy-haired mad god.

Birchie stood with her legs braced on the far side of the table. Her face was shiny with sweat, and hectic red circles were burning in her cheeks. She had Lavender’s dirty fork in one fist, lifted like a weapon.

Wattie, talking so sweetly it was almost a croon, said, “Now, then, hush,” while putting one herding hand out as Batman and I came up, keeping us behind her. She shot us a quick glance over her shoulder. “Don’t, now. Birchie needs a little room.”

I’d never seen Birchie this way, violent, weaving, puffing. Wattie was so calm, though, that I thought, She’s seen this. She’s seen Birchie this way before, and more than once. God help us. I obeyed her, putting one hand on Sel Martin’s arm for a second to hold him with me.

Birchie’s chair was tipped over, and the pitcher of lemonade had fallen or been pushed off the table. It was now a large puddle dotted with melting ice and chunks and slivers of glass near us. Birchie’s cup was overturned on the tabletop, and her lemonade was still flattening and spreading across the wood. One liquid finger, then another, reached the edge of the table and began drip-dropping onto the floor. It was a soothing sound, a pattering, like summer rain.

That sound had no place in this electric room, where Birchie told us in a screechy, rage-filled voice, “I said no, I said no, I said no, I said!” She turned from one of us to the next, the dirty fork held up by one ear in her bent arm, tines facing us, like it was a butcher knife.

Frank Darian was talking to Birchie, apologizing for something? I couldn’t follow because Batman was asking quietly, “What meds is she taking?”

I could not remember the names, but Wattie answered, “Exelon and Sinemet.”

“I’m so sorry,” Frank said again. “I should have called.”

“Nothing for anxiety?” Batman’s stutter had not come into the room with us. Maybe it was the feel of the long cloak, still hanging down his back, or maybe he was in nurse mode.

“What are you whispering about?” Birchie said, turning her fork toward us, glaring. “Are you having secrets from me? Are you making more secrets?”

“I was telling Mr. Martin here that you have Valium for when you’re mad like this,” Wattie said. “In the kitchen cabinet, left of the stove. Maybe Frank can get one for you?” It was a sweet-voiced question, yet every person in the room but Birchie heard it as an order.

“Of course,” Frank said, and started forward.

“Go the long way, Frank,” Wattie said, and he obeyed her, turning away from the dining room and going through the entry and up the hall as Wattie went on, saying, “Maybe we should all sit down,” ignoring the fork and the way Birchie’s chest was heaving.

“How on earth can I? He took my chair!” Birchie said. “This won’t do! This will not do at all!”

“Your chair fell over. Frank didn’t take it. He went to get your pills,” Wattie said, sweet and reasonable.

“You’re bleeding,” Sel Martin said.

“What?” I said, but he was speaking to Wattie.

“Not Frank! Don’t be stupid. I meant him,” Birchie said, turning to jerk her fork toward no one, toward nothing, toward her own empty spot at the head of the table.

While she was in profile, Sel stepped forward, through the wreckage of the shattered pitcher. He ignored the crunch of glass under his shoes and grabbed Lavender’s linen napkin off the table. He went to Wattie and bent to examine her arm, up high near the shoulder.

“Mm, that’s pretty deep,” he said. He pressed the napkin to her arm, and red splotches came soaking through the white linen.

“Did she do that?” I asked Wattie, but she ignored me. “Did Birchie hurt you?”

“How’d you get back in my house, you salty bastard?” Birchie talked over me, furious. She was staring at the portrait that hung to the left of the table’s head. Her father, Ellis Birch, stared back with his proud painted eyes. “We took you out. How did you sneak back in my house? We crashed you in the car!” She was outraged, as if the bones had escaped the evidence locker, refleshed themselves, and come straight home to reclaim the head of the Birch table. It had been her spot for sixty years now.

It made me want her rabbits back. Birchie’s rabbits had gone bad, but at least she knew they weren’t really there. She didn’t curse or yell at them. That was saved for Ellis Birch, her father, the man she’d ended with a hammer. The worst part was, this shrieking version of my Birchie, lofting her fork, had no remorse. She looked ready to end him all over again.

“Keep pressing on it, and keep it lifted. We need to get it clean,” Sel told Wattie, folding her hand over the napkin. “When’s the last time you had a tetanus shot?”

Birchie heard him and glanced his way, fork still lifted high. When she saw Sel, she began to giggle. It was a high-pitched, girlish sound, almost garish coming from her small, elderly mouth.

She shook her fork at the portrait and asked, still tittering, “Do you know he’s black? Look how black he is!” She leaned in, smacking her lips.

“I did notice that,” Wattie said, unfazed, as if Birchie were talking to her. She was working hard to get Birchie to notice or talk back to someone, anyone, who was actually present.