SHE MUST BE beautiful, the three of us thought. Not like our mother or the mothers of our friends with their long tangle of hair and arms lined with silver bracelets from Mexico. But beautiful like Joelle herself, all matching sweater sets and small pearl earrings and hair tamed by a fat headband. In our school, we did not have girls like Joelle. Instead of plaid skirts with a big gold pin on the side and loafers, we wore long flowered dresses, clogs from Sweden. Exotic, we thought,whenever we saw Joelle, our stepsister, again.
She made us lose our breath when we caught that first sight of her stepping, bored, from the train once a month. She came to visit our father who was her father too; it was our mothers who were different. We would run to Joelle with such ferocious hugs she almost lost her balance. Joelle was not a hugger, but she let us hug her and hang on the sleeve of her cardigan, dragging her toward our mother who waited by the car. For those few minutes, we had Joelle to ourselves. We breathed in her scent: Christmas trees. We babbled, the three of us talking at once about the total eclipse or the new Italian phrases we’d learned or how a snake sheds its skin. Joelle kept her eyes straight ahead, nodded if we were lucky. She let us guide her through the train station and outside.
Our mother waved at us, standing beside our VW, the one that could not make a steep hill so our mother had to get out and push, letting one or two of us steer. Also, the heater never worked so in winter we kept our mittens on, even inside the car. Joelle’s mother drove a Ford of some kind. We knew because Joelle told us; her mother always drove Fords.
In those moments, wrapped in Joelle’s scent, bursting from the train station, and seeing our mother there, disappointment and embarrassment flooded us. Joelle’s mother did not want her to speak Italian, did not have hard bottoms of her feet from going barefoot, did not have long dark hair under her arms or candles stuck into empty wine bottles made thick from melted wax. Our mother grinned and waved and whistled through an O made with her fingers stuck beneath her tongue, shrill and loud. She always mussed up Joelle’s hair, first thing. She always said, Time to let your hair down now!
The three of us piled into the back of the VW. Joelle sat straight as a ruler up front. Our mother put on “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes” too loud, then shouted at Joelle about our weekend plans. We shrank into the back seat, not wanting to hear. Our weekends were always the same: Friday night potlucks that ended in everyone dancing and drunk in our tiny square yard. Saturday afternoon drives from our house in Baltimore to Washington where we had to look at paintings or mummies or dinosaur bones. Then Chinese at Mr. Hsu’s on P Street. Sundays meant long walks somewhere, by the harbor or in the park, maybe crabs for dinner. Why our mother had to say all of this to Joelle, who knew it as well as we did, we could not understand. Joelle stared out the window while our mother shouted over Crosby, Stills and Nash.
We pretended our mother disappeared and we were sent to live in the suburbs with Joelle and her mother. Our mother made us eat yogurt at lunchtime. Also raisins, dried figs, Brazil nuts. But not Joelle’s mother. She bought her TV dinners, Salisbury steak or turkey with stuffing, all four courses nestled in their own private compartments. We imagined a dishwasher, a swimming pool—built-in. We imagined bedspreads light as angels’ wings, white or maybe baby blue. We counted all the Fords we passed, and sighed.
IN A CIGAR BOX that had long ago been painted black and covered with seashells glued onto it crookedly lay evidence of our father’s former life with Joelle’s mother. A wedding band, thick and gold, a lock of hair, also thick and gold, the only remnants of our father’s past. We thought him mysterious. A golden-haired first wife, a daughter, a life he talked about only when we pushed him.
How did you meet Joelle’s mother?
How did you fall in love?
Where did you get married? Did she wear a long satin dress? Our mother didn’t. Hers was white, Mexican, cotton, embroidered. She stood barefoot on a beach in Delaware. They blew conch shells, wore wedding rings fashioned from seaweed, had their friend Raymond play the flute. We knew Joelle’s mother wouldn’t stand for any of that. We had proof: the solid gold ring. Inside, in scrolly letters, initials carved beside a date. June 6, 1966. A million years ago.
“Another lifetime,” our father told us, sighing heavily.
But we pushed and prodded, hungry for details.
“We met in college,” he told us finally. “Are you satisfied?”
Satisfied? We were starving.