Marla is there, on the other side, looking like she always does, but different because we missed her and we know now just how much it means to be sisters.
“I thought Mom forgot all about her lost sister in the closet. I didn’t know she could never come back, that she had died. I thought she was another person Mom didn’t love enough. That she didn’t care enough to save her,” Marla says.
I know, from the shake in her fingers and her huge, oversize gulp after she says it, that she was waiting for herself to turn into a whisper, a voice without a body too. She was waiting to be forgotten.
But we didn’t forget her. We couldn’t.
And that’s the thing she hadn’t expected. That’s what Marla didn’t count on.
That we would always, always remember her.
Forty-Five
“Eat these,” Astrid says, when Marla is on the carpet and we have our backs to the closet, in case looking at it funny will somehow make it pull us back in. She points to the stars, and Marla shivers.
“That seems dangerous,” Marla says. But Astrid is sure, sure that they are safe. And I am too. We are our normal colors again, tan for Eleanor, the palest pale for Astrid, half sunburnt for me. Whatever the stars did to us was temporary, and Marla, with her shaking and lip biting and skinniness, needs a little temporary boost. Before we say good-bye to the closets forever.
“Don’t eat this one, though,” I say, and take my star out of the pile. I put it back in my pocket.
“Silly,” Eleanor says, and I almost correct her, because I have certainly earned the name Priscilla today, but somehow it doesn’t feel so bad right now, to have a funny, cute, ridiculous nickname that no one else has. “You can’t keep that.”
“I’m not going to. I promise,” I say. Eleanor wants to ask one million follow-up questions, but Astrid gives her a look that says no and Marla starts eating the stars and smiling, and we tell her Mom is staying Away for a long, long time, until she’s better and then even longer still, and that we are going to save a few stars for Dad to eat so that he gets a little bit of himself back too.
“Mike’s mom is going to help,” Eleanor says. “I’m going to tell her everything, and she’s going to make sure we’re okay. She’s going to get Dad help too. She works for a place that helps parents be better parents. We won’t have secrets like Mom does, okay? We won’t have secrets from each other.”
“Who’s Mike?” I say, even though I know the answer. I grin, because Eleanor said no more secrets, and she can’t break her promise so quickly.
“My boyfriend, okay?” she says, blushing.
I like that she’s going to let us be part of the little bit of normalcy she’s found with him, and I realize that I can call LilyLee’s parents and tell them what’s happening, and that they’ll help too. That we aren’t so stuck and alone in New Hampshire. The tallness of the trees and the winding roads of the mountains make it seem like we’re far away from everyone else, but we’re not.
“It won’t be perfect,” Astrid says, all wise and breathy and sure. “Some days are going to be the worst. And some days won’t be the worst.”
“And some will even be great,” Marla says.
I love that Marla is the one who says it. Because it makes it even more true.
Forty-Six
I’m sure I’ll tell them later what I’ve done. They’re my sisters, after all, and I can tell them pretty much everything now.
We’ve made sure Dad remembers Marla, and we slipped some stars into his hamburger, and he gave us big hugs before bed and promised to make pancakes in the morning even though it’s not Sunday. He apologized too. For forgetting to sometimes go to the lake with us and for not enforcing bedtime, and for talking too much about Mom when we sort of want to talk about ourselves sometimes.
He talks to Mike’s mom. He talks to LilyLee’s mom. And I finally, finally talk to LilyLee. She says she and her mom are coming next weekend to check on us. She says she tried writing me postcards and tried calling me but got too sad, from all the missing.
I still feel a little bit of hurt, but I know that sometimes when something hurts, people do whatever they can to make it not hurt. And that sometimes the things people do make it worse.
So I try to be okay with the hurting, and know that it will all be better when we see each other.
“Oh man,” Dad says, when we sit on the porch after dinner and drink hot chocolate. “It’s going to be all right, you know? And gosh, I love the porch at night.”
“Do you think Mom has a porch, where she is?” Marla asks. Dad looks confused, thinking he wasn’t supposed to bring up Mom at all, when really we have only ever wanted both. To talk about her and to not talk about her.