Anna #2
He takes a silver flask out of his pocket—it’s one my father got from the chief and thinks he lost three years ago—screws off the cap, and pours whiskey all over the front of his shirt.
Then he starts to walk down the hall. Well, walk would be a loose approximation—Jesse slams like a billiard ball into the walls and knocks over an entire cleaning cart.
“Ma?” he yells out. “Ma, where are you?”
He isn’t drunk, but he sure as hell can do a great imitation. It makes me wonder about the times I have looked out my bedroom window in the middle of the night and seen him puking into the rhododendrons—maybe that was all for show, too.
The nurses swarm out from their hive of a desk, trying to subdue a boy half their age and three times as strong, who at that very moment grabs the uppermost tier of a linen rack and pulls it forward, making a crash so loud it rings in my ears.
Call buttons start ringing like an operator’s switchboard behind the nurse’s desk, but all three of the night-duty ladies are doing their best to hold Jesse down while he kicks and flails.
The door to Kate’s room opens, and bleary-eyed, my mother steps out.
She takes a look at Jesse, and for a second her whole face is frozen with the realization that, in fact, things can get worse.
Jesse swings his head toward her, a great big bull, and his features melt.
“Hiya, Mom,” he greets, and he smiles loosely up at her.
“I am so sorry,” my mother says to the nurses. She closes her eyes as Jesse stumbles upright and throws his sloppy arms around her.
“There’s coffee in the cafeteria,” one nurse suggests, and my mother is too embarrassed to even answer her.
She just moves toward the elevator banks with Jesse attached to her like a mussel on a crusty hull, and pushes the down button over and over in the fruitless hope that it will actually make the doors open faster.
When they leave, it is almost too easy. Some of the nurses hurry off to check on the patients who’ve rung in; others settle back behind their desk, trading hushed commentary about Jesse and my poor mother like it’s some card game.
They never look my way as I sneak out of the linen closet, tiptoe down the hall, and let myself into my sister’s hospital room.
· · ·
One Thanksgiving when Kate was not in the hospital, we actually pretended to be a regular family.
We watched the parade on TV, where a giant balloon fell prey to a freak wind and wound up wrapped around a NYC traffic light.
We made our own gravy. My mother brought the turkey’s wishbone out to the table, and we fought over who would be granted the right to snap it.
Kate and I were given the honors. Before I got a good grip, my mother leaned close and whispered into my ear, “You know what to wish for.” So I shut my eyes tight and thought hard of remission for Kate, even though I had been planning to ask for a personal CD player, and got a nasty satisfaction out of the fact that I did not win the tug-of-war.
After we ate, my father took us outside for a game of two-on-two touch football while my mother was washing the dishes.
She came outside when Jesse and I had already scored twice.
“Tell me,” she said, “that I am hallucinating.” She didn’t have to say anything else—we’d all seen Kate tumble like an ordinary kid and wind up bleeding uncontrollably like a sick one.
“Aw, Sara.” My dad turned up the wattage on his smile. “Kate’s on my team. I won’t let her get sacked.”
He swaggered over to my mother, and kissed her so long and slow that my own cheeks started to burn, because I was sure the neighbors would see.
When he lifted his head, my mother’s eyes were a color I had never seen before and don’t think I have ever seen again.
“Trust me,” he said, and then he threw the football to Kate.
What I remember about that day was the way the ground bit back when you sat on it—the first hint of winter. I remember being tackled by my father, who always braced himself in a push-up so that I got none of the weight and all of his heat. I remember my mother, cheering equally for both teams.
And I remember throwing the ball to Jesse, but Kate getting in the way—an expression of absolute shock on her face as it landed in the cradle of her arms and Dad yelled her on to the touchdown.
She sprinted, and nearly had it, but then Jesse took a running leap and slammed her to the ground, crushing her underneath him.
In that moment everything stopped. Kate lay with her arms and legs splayed, unmoving. My father was there in a breath, shoving at Jesse. “What the hell is the matter with you!”
“I forgot!”
My mother: “Where does it hurt? Can you sit up?”
But when Kate rolled over, she was smiling. “It doesn’t hurt. It feels great.”
My parents looked at each other. Neither of them understood like I did, like Jesse did—that no matter who you are, there is some part of you that always wishes you were someone else—and when, for a millisecond, you get that wish, it’s a miracle.
“He forgot,” Kate said to nobody, and she lay on her back, beaming up at the cold hawkeye sun.
· · ·
Hospital rooms never get completely dark; there is always some glowing panel behind the bed in the case of catastrophe, a runway strip so that the nurses and doctors can find their way.
I have seen Kate a hundred times in beds like this one, although the tubes and wires change.
She always looks smaller than I remember.
I sit down as gently as I can. The veins on Kate’s neck and chest are a road map, highways that don’t go anywhere. I trick myself into believing that I can see those rogue leukemia cells moving like a rumor through her system.
When she opens her eyes, I nearly fall off the bed; it’s an Exorcist moment. “Anna?” she says, staring right at me. I have not seen her look this scared since we were little, and Jesse convinced us that an old Indian ghost had come back to claim the bones buried by mistake under our house.
If you have a sister and she dies, do you stop saying you have one? Or are you always a sister, even when the other half of the equation is gone?
I crawl onto the bed, which is narrow, but still big enough for both of us.
I rest my head on her chest, so close to her central line that I can see the liquid dripping into her.
Jesse is wrong—I didn’t come to see Kate because it would make me feel better.
I came because without her, it’s hard to remember who I am.