Chapter IV #3
Next to me, Clara took a big gulp of Evelyn’s wine and then silently poured the rest of it over the side of the boat.
She wasn’t looking at any of us; she was looking out of the boat, away into the city, north over the lake and back in the direction of our home.
She was squinting her eyes so hard that her brow was wrinkled and I knew what she was thinking about because we were sisters and I always knew what all of us were thinking about.
“Do you know what it is?” I asked, as Bernadette continued to hold Evelyn and Clara continued to stare out at the city.
The painting.
Clara blinked a few times, then looked back at me. Her expression was thoughtful, patient. She nodded slightly and said, “Almost.”
We tried again.
We went skating at Rockefeller Center, drank frozen hot chocolates at Serendipity, waited in line to get up to the top of the Empire State Building.
We saw our city through the eyes of tourists; we ate lunch in Chinatown and Little Italy and got desperately lost in SoHo trying to find Balthazar, where we ate the most expensive omelets I had ever encountered in my life.
We took tours of St. Patrick’s Cathedral and Radio City Music Hall and the Apollo Theater.
And it seemed to be working.
October melted away into November and the days got colder and bitter and we went to Central Park the first time it snowed, standing in the middle of the Great Lawn (none of our favorite places, but nice for this purpose) and watching the grass turn white around us.
Aunt Bea came down for Thanksgiving, a holiday none of us really liked and didn’t celebrate in the traditional way, instead always opting to visit a local Chinese restaurant so we didn’t have to deal with the hassle of cooking and cleaning.
By then, Evelyn was mostly back to normal. It had been about a month since we’d last seen Henry and we’d kept every waking moment of her life busy with activities.
“She’s stopped knocking,” Bernadette said to me in the bathroom of the Chinese restaurant as she waited for me to finish washing my hands.
“She has?” I asked.
“Just this week,” Bernadette said quietly.
I shut off the water and stared into the mirror.
“We did the right thing?” I asked.
“I wasn’t sure,” she replied after a few moments. “For a long time, I wasn’t sure. But I think we might have.”
Bernadette grabbed a paper towel from the dispenser and handed it to me.
I dried my hands and we walked back to the table.
Two servers were just arriving, carrying trays laden with food.
I slipped back into my seat between Clara and Aunt Bea, who reached over and patted my leg, giving me a knowing smile I couldn’t guess the meaning behind.
Dad was in the middle of a long story about the TV remote (I’d missed the beginning and although I briefly tried tuning in, I had absolutely no idea what the point was), so I focused on filling my plate with a little bit of everything.
Across the table, Evelyn was doing the same, and at one point we knocked hands reaching for the same serving spoon.
She looked up at me and smiled happily, and for some reason it made me want to cry.
I mean, I knew the reason.
Because I had betrayed her, and she didn’t know, and even though it all seemed to be working out, I knew, deep down in my bloody, red, betraying heart, that I shouldn’t have done it. I should have found another way.
I shoveled a forkful of fried rice into my mouth. It tasted like torn-up cardboard on my tongue. I washed it down with water and tried not to look miserable.
“You’re coming undone,” Bernadette said to me that night.
The three of us were crowded on my bed—Bernie, Clara, and me—and it was true, I was coming undone.
As it turned out, I wasn’t entirely good with guilt.
It was eating me alive. It seemed like the happier Evelyn got, the more I fell apart.
Like she was sucking the life force out of me.
“She’s stealing my life force,” I said, but even as I said it, I realized it didn’t make any sense and it wasn’t going to be something I was able to explain.
“She’s doing better,” Bernadette countered. “As shitty a decision as it was, it’s actually working out.”
Clara was quiet, distant, staring at a mark on my wall, her eyes unfocused and unseeing.
“I’m a terrible sister,” I said.
There was a knock at the door and we all swiveled to look at it.
“Come in,” Bernie said.
Aunt Bea poked her head in. “We’re missing one,” she said.
“Evelyn went to bed,” Bernie replied.
“Smart girl. I’m exhausted. Clara, thank you again for letting me steal your room.”
“Oh, it’s no problem, Aunt Bea,” Clara said. “Do you need anything?”
“Nothing at all.” Aunt Bea smiled and looked at each of us in turn and I couldn’t help but feel like she was looking into us, like somehow she knew our sins—my sins—and she was deciding for herself just what punishment would suffice.
The beating heart in the floorboards. I could hear it even now, pounding away like a siren.
“Dismal mood in here,” she said after a moment.
“We all have our periods,” Bernadette replied.
“No,” she said thoughtfully. “That isn’t it.”
“I don’t have my period,” Clara said, oblivious, and I smacked her on the arm.
“All right, kiddos,” Aunt Bea said. “Night, night.”
She left the room, pulling the door closed behind her. It didn’t quite latch. We all stared at it, and finally Bernadette got up and went and pushed it closed.
“I’m tired,” Clara said. “Aunt Bea wants to leave early.”
We were going to look at all the Christmas display windows on Fifth Avenue.
It was sort of a tradition, but one upheld only because for some reason, Aunt Bea loved them.
And she had a point, I guessed; in all their consumeristic opulence, there was true beauty and artistry to be found behind those blocks of shiny glass.
Bernadette said good night and left the room, and Clara made herself comfortable in my bed. It wasn’t that bad sleeping with Clara; she was small and didn’t take up a lot of space, plus she slept like an actual rock, hardly moving at all throughout the night.
“Do you mind if I read?” I asked. For once I was tired before her.
“Knock yourself out,” she said, her voice muffled by the covers, which she’d pulled up over her face.
But I knew I wouldn’t be able to read anyway, and when I opened to the bookmarked page, the lines swirled and blurred in front of me.
I couldn’t make out a single word. I rested the book on my chest and stared up at the ceiling instead, imagining it going clear, transparent, seeing Evelyn in her own bed, staring up at her own ceiling, perhaps, or at her closet door, even now waiting, waiting, waiting …
I put the book on the bedside table and got up.
It was too late and too cold to go for a walk, but I couldn’t stay still anymore; I couldn’t even think about going to sleep.
Ever since Henry had left, I’d had trouble sleeping.
Ever since I had made Henry leave.
When I thought about it too directly, when I remembered Henry’s face in Evelyn’s bedroom, when I remembered the words that came out of my mouth, the vitriol, the hate …
I thought I would die from the guilt.
I thought it would tear me into pieces.
I let myself out of the bedroom and went downstairs.
Everything was dark. Sometimes Mom stayed up later, hunched over the kitchen table, paying bills or doing a crossword or just watching her tea grow cold, but today it was only me.
The wide windows at the back of the house were dark and creepy and haloed by cold; even double paned, they couldn’t completely keep out the chill of a New York winter.
I stood close to the glass, all the lights off inside so I could actually see to the backyard, the outline of the high wooden fence at the back of the property, the scraggly branches of the jasmine bushes, dormant now until spring, when they would grow back with reckless abandon, needing multiple rounds of trimming over the course of the year.
Jasmine grew quickly, wildly, it was impossible to kill.
He smelled like jasmine. He always smelled like jasmine.
I put my hand on the glass. (“I swear to god I can never keep these things clean,” Dad would say, had said a hundred times before, and Mom would reply, “Maybe swear to goddess next time and you’ll have more luck,” and wink at me if we caught each other’s eyes.)
“I’m so sorry, Henry,” I whispered.
Did I still think I had done the right thing?
She’s doing better, Bernadette had said.
But at what cost?
At what cost was Evelyn doing better?
Where was Henry? Where had I sent him and was he okay and why did he always smell like jasmine and why did I miss that smell more than anything in the world? I felt the absence of that smell like a physical thing that had been ripped away from me. Like I had given up a kidney.
I took my hand from the window. Five perfect fingerprints.
The proof that I had been here, that I missed him, that I would hate myself for the rest of my life for the things that I had said to him.
The next morning was absolutely freezing, the first really, really cold day we’d had, the kind of cold that made your bones stiff before you even opened your eyes in the morning, the kind of cold that didn’t pay attention to how many layers you were wearing or how snuggly you wrapped your scarf around your neck.
I wore jeans, wool socks, a long-sleeved T-shirt underneath my sweatshirt, an ankle-length winter coat, a hat and scarf and gloves.
By the time I stepped out our front door I looked more like a bundle of laundry than a human being, and the cold found the only exposed skin it could—around my eyes—and crawled immediately downward, leaving me feeling completely naked.