Mom rubs her temples. She takes a sip from her glass of wine. Then another. Her teeth are already stained a scary purplish color.
I try to guess at how she’s feeling and how she’ll respond. But there are a thousand options, and whichever one I think it will be is probably wrong. There’s always some new response, some strange hiccup that I hadn’t expected.
“She won’t let me in,” Mom says, her finger tracing the heart-shaped face of the girl in the pictures. “She won’t come out. I can’t get her.” I feel my forehead scrunching up so much that I’m giving myself a headache. Or maybe Mom’s giving me a headache.
“Can we talk about it in my room?” I try again, knowing full well it’s a lost cause. I got distracted and sloppy and ruined everything. Typical.
“You don’t have a sister,” Marla says. “Mom doesn’t have a sister.” She elbows me without moving her gaze from Mom’s drooping face.
“You think I didn’t care enough about her?” Mom says, hearing something entirely different than what was said. “You think it was my fault?”
“No!” Marla says. “I don’t know!” Mom gets off her stool and drains the rest of her wine. She wipes her mouth with the back of her hand. It’s not very graceful. One of her feet hooks around the other, and she stumbles. “I didn’t know,” Marla says. I want to cover her mouth. I should say something so that Marla stops speaking, but I’m mute. “You’ve never mentioned her before.”
“You think I forgot all about her,” Mom says. “You think that’s the kind of person I am!”
Mom’s moving toward the cabinet that holds more bottles, and Marla steps in front of her, blocking her path.
It happens fast, while I’m trying to think of more words to get Mom calmed down or talking about something else, something less upsetting.
Marla takes one step closer to Mom, and Mom grabs
Marla’s wrists. One in each hand.
I look away.
I am the kind of sister who looks away.
Marla yelps, a surprised, animal sound, and I run up the stairs, straight into my closet.
Twelve
I lie in the warm pink light of my closet for a long time. Nothing else in the room changes, only me.
When I come out, I knock lightly on the twins’ door. It’s dark. I stayed in the closet long past bedtime. Past whatever happened in the moments after Marla’s terrible yelp.
Eleanor answers the door in her pink nightgown. The rest of us wear shorts and tank tops to bed, or worn-out pajama pants with Christmas trees on them, the kind we get some years from Dad. The years that Mom doesn’t feel like doing Christmas, so Dad has to buy all the presents.
“I messed up,” I say.
“No kidding. I didn’t get to the birthday party. We were all stuck here. And don’t think we don’t know what you were doing in your room.”
“And Marla—,” I say, wondering why Eleanor cares more about her secret boyfriend than she does about our sister.
“I’m mad at Marla, too, don’t worry,” Eleanor says, like I’m worried about sharing the blame. Sometimes I think Eleanor doesn’t know me at all.
“Is she okay?” I say. Astrid rolls out of bed and stands in the doorway with Eleanor.
“She’s Marla,” Eleanor says with a cruel shrug. Eleanor’s not that cruel, though. I have a feeling they don’t know what happened.
I guess I don’t really know what happened, either.
Maybe nothing happened. I didn’t really see. Marla makes a big deal out of small things. Marla’s been known to make loud noises in quiet moments, to exaggerate to get our attention.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I did everything wrong.”
“I give up,” Eleanor says, and she really does sound like she’s given up. “Everyone can do whatever they want.” It’s the saddest thing I’ve ever heard Eleanor say. All she’s ever cared about is telling us what to do and how to do it. All she’s ever wanted are rules and for her sisters to follow them.
“I won’t go in my closet anymore,” I say, but I know that’s not true. If Eleanor is going to be sad and Mom-like, I’ll need the closet even more. If I won’t be allowed in their closet anymore, I’ll need my own.
Astrid reaches out and touches my arm, the place where it bends.
“We don’t know what your closet is for,” Astrid says.
“It’s for me!” I say, even though I know that’s not what she’s talking about.
“We don’t know how it works. We understand Eleanor’s. And we know mine is bad. And we know Marla’s doesn’t work. Yours is too mysterious. We’d tried it once a long time ago and it didn’t work, but now it does and we don’t know anything about what it does. Do you really want one more unpredictable thing in this house?” Astrid says. She’s talking about Mom, of course, but ignoring the fact that something could be unpredictably wonderful, not only unpredictably awful.