“Whose birthday party?” I say, even though I know the answer. I want her to admit Eleanor does bad things too.
“You know whose,” Astrid says. “Don’t make it harder, okay? Having a secret boyfriend is making this tolerable for Eleanor. So.”
“This is making it tolerable for me,” I say, and gesture toward the closet door. Astrid sighs.
“I won’t tell this time.” She twists a silver-blond strand of hair around her thumb and releases it. It stays pin-straight, of course.
I step closer to my sister. She smells unusual: Like salt and wind. Like the ocean and a roll in a meadow. Like a place we’ve never been.
I breathe it in deeply, so she knows that I know she’s been in a closet today too.
Eleven
“She’s unwinding,” Marla says.
Mom likes to “unwind” before dinner, which means she likes to open a bottle of wine and get the rest of us piled into the TV room to watch the Disney Channel for a while so she can enjoy her unwinding by herself.
The problem with Mom’s unwinding is that we can’t sneak outside when she’s at the kitchen counter.
Actually, there are a lot of problems with Mom’s unwinding, but most of them come after.
Eleanor’s in a green dress, hiding in the downstairs bathroom. The dress cuts low, lower than anything I’ve seen her wear before. I want to put her in the running shorts and T-shirt she wears for soccer, and some muddy sneakers.
She has a purse. Her hair is curling at the ends. She has lipstick on. No wonder she’s hiding.
“We can’t interrupt unwinding time,” I say. We are having a sister meeting in the bathroom, with the faucet running hard and the fan making its too-loud noise. I don’t know that any of this actually hides the sounds of our whispering, but we’ve agreed to at least pretend together that it does.
“You only need to get her out of the kitchen for a minute,” Eleanor says. She’s gripping her phone in one hand and the bottom of her dress with the other. She’s near tears. I don’t like this new side of Eleanor. Eleanor is supposed to be calm and eternally correct and sure.
“Don’t upset Mom,” Marla says. “Can’t you wait until she’s done? She’ll fall asleep when she’s done, probably.” Marla’s wringing her hands and has her Marla-pout on.
We don’t know when she’ll be done. Unwinding takes anywhere from a half hour to three hours, and there’s no predicting it. There’s no predicting Mom’s moods.
“I’ll do it,” I say. “I’ll distract her.” I want them to look at me the way they did the other day in Eleanor’s closet. Like I am old enough and solid enough to be a full-fledged sister, and not simply The Youngest or The Baby or Silly.
We concoct a plan where I distract Mom and lead her up to my room. Marla will follow us up there to help out if I freeze and forget what to say and do, but she looks sour about it.
“You’d never do this for me,” Marla whines. “You’re such a kiss-up.” I hate her voice when it sounds like this. Astrid is the lookout, staying down by the stairs to tell Eleanor when it’s safe to sneak out. She’ll cough really loud to cover the click of the front door closing.
When we get to the kitchen, Mom’s unwinding with a photo album. I peek over her shoulder. The pictures are of Mom when she was Marla’s age, and another little girl who looks a lot like me.
I elbow Marla, hoping she’ll see the photos and start asking questions, so that I don’t have to. Maybe I’m wrong and Mom has mentioned her sister before. Maybe we really are bad daughters who don’t care about anything but ourselves, like Mom says when she’s been drinking.
But Marla is too focused on Mom’s face and the expressions passing across it, instead of what is causing those expressions to occur.
“Mom? Will you come to my room?” I say, like I’m supposed to. I step closer to her and ignore the way she smells. I want a better look at the pictures.
“Why?” Mom says.
I hadn’t thought about an answer to that question. I thought she’d follow me upstairs simply because I’d asked, even though that’s never happened before.
Silly, Silly, Silly. I call myself the name I hate, as punishment.
“I have a bunch of questions about your sister,” I say. It’s not what I mean to say. But my mind gets too hyper and too hazy when Mom is sick, and I make terrible decisions. It’s all queasy regret the moment the word sister comes out of my mouth.
“You saw her?” Mom says. Her voice is far away, except that it’s right here. The strangeness of that gives me chills. New Hampshire gives me a chill in general. It is never hot here. Only ever warmish with a breeze. I want one hot day.
“You mentioned her. Is that her in the pictures?” I say. Marla stands next to me with her mouth open and her arms loose at her sides, like my stupidity is making her stupid too. I think I can hear Eleanor and Astrid mumbling in the bathroom, and I wish I could tell them to be quiet.