Her face darkened as I knew it would. Standing up to the entire world was one thing. Standing up to your father was another.
“Want to get dinner?” she asked, eager to change the subject. “My treat. Let me run Sir home first.”
At least she had the common sense not to invite him.
Thirty minutes later she joined me at a family-run trattoria. The first glass of red disappeared quickly for both of us, but Jack guzzled hers like there was a drought in Tuscany. She stared at her glass afterward; she was waiting for me to say something, though I could not fathom what.
By the time our meals arrived—a spaghetti Bolognese for her, chicken cacciatore for me—I had been updated on every last detail of Jack’s life. Based on what she had told me, I had even less in common with my sister now than I had as a child. She would soon marry her college boyfriend, produce a few offspring, and continue to run her small marketing firm that serviced clients in western Ohio. Her life was positively midwestern. I couldn’t believe someone with such a checkered childhood could evolve into something so uninteresting.
“Too bad Mom couldn’t come tonight,” Jack said, halfway through her third glass. “She would have loved the show.”
“Would she?” I sat back against the viscid red leather booth. “She’s too busy kowtowing to our father to form an opinion of her own. And based on the verbal review he gave me, he’d rather be burned at the stake than forced to watch another of my performances.”
Jack’s eyebrows jumped. “Geesh. What did he say?”
“The usual. I’m an abject failure; my career is disreputable. This time he compared me to a common street whore, which was a new touch.”
She winced. “I thought he’d behave himself.”
I gazed at my sister. “When on earth has he ever done that?”
She squirmed under my glare.
“Why did you even bring him?”
“I thought it’d be good to get the family together. You invited him, didn’t you?”
I wished I never had.
“I was trying to be nice,” she said.
I crumpled my paper napkin and placed it atop my half-eaten meal. What meager appetite I’d had to begin with had vanished. “Now’s a fine time to start.”
My sister watched me, her lips pressed together. I’d meant for my words to cut her, but saying them felt like shoving a knife into my own gut.
“Is this the point where you tell me it was my fault?” I pushed the napkin harder into the sauce, watching the white paper turn tomato red. “That if I’d only been more like you when we were young, he wouldn’t have been so awful?”
“Not at all.” Jack swallowed. “I didn’t know the stuff from our childhood still bothered you.”
I scowled at the other patrons slurping their noodles, wiping orange sauce off their chapped lips and mottled chins. “It bothers me that you’d come to my show and act like we were the best of friends when you’ve spent most of our lives pretending I don’t exist.”
She flushed. “I was trying to break free. Start fresh.”
“Some of us were still locked up. I needed you.”
“I shouldn’t have lumped you in with him. I get that now. I’m sorry for shutting you out.”
Some apologies, even when heartfelt, were laughably inadequate.
“I stuck my neck out for you all the time.” I struggled to steady my voice. “I got into the boat at Lake Minnich so you wouldn’t get in trouble. You knew how scared of the water I was, yet you all but let me drown.”
“I dove in after you. I saved you.”
Saved me? Anger and sorrow were both symptoms of weakness, fear manifesting in different forms. Anger was unquestionably easier.
“There would have been no need for saving if you’d stood up to him in the first place,” I said. I wanted to hurt my sister and protect her from me all at once. Why couldn’t I let this go? What right did I have to impart wisdom to others when I was stabbing my finger in the same tired old wounds?
“Where would that have gotten us? Tossed in the water side by side? Him deserting me on some random beach and leaving me to find my own way home? Mom frantically searching for me in the dark with a flashlight?”
“He never laid a hand on any of us.”
“I was afraid that one day he would. Listen, I’m sorry I didn’t protect you back then. And for ignoring you in college. I’m trying to make up for it now.” She gestured at the meals on the table between us. “I’d like for us to be closer.”
I thought about taking her in my arms. Instead I crossed them. “Why now? Why’d you wait until my star was rising to reach out?”
She rolled her eyes. “I admire the success you’ve had, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves. You’re a long cry from people using you for your ‘fame.’?”
I fought the urge to claw at her face. What had she said when I called to tell her I was dropping out of school to go on tour? Can’t you choose a career that isn’t so . . . embarrassing? She had always doubted me. She still didn’t believe in my mission.
“I’ve spent the last year trying to reconnect with you,” she said. “You’re the one who keeps blowing me off.”
How does it feel, dear sister? I’d come to this dinner with two options: I could restart our relationship, or I could make her feel as unwanted as she had me. I didn’t relish my choice, but I would stand by it. I wanted her pain more than my happiness.
When I studied my sister, I no longer saw the girl with whom I’d built forts and chased lightning bugs. I saw the hundred times she’d dodged my calls or glanced the other way. At eighteen Jack had moved across the country to begin anew, but ever since, she had been sliding into the quicksand of fear. The return to Ohio, the number of dinners, card games, and movies she surely now shared with Sir. How could she invite him into her life after all he had done? She was weaker than I could have imagined.
I pinched the crook of my arm under the table until the skin broke.
“I don’t think you deserve to be in my life,” I said. Not all of them could be saved. Not all of them were worthy.
Jack’s mouth fell open. She sat there, blinking and speechless. “That is so harsh.”
I put my purse over my shoulder and slid out of the booth.
“Runs in the family.”
21
Kit
JULY 2019
I WANDERED OUT of Rebecca’s office and down the spiral staircase in a daze. My feet carried me toward the cafeteria. Outside in the blinding sun I was vaguely aware of guests tending the vegetable garden, carrots and kale on the left, zucchini and peas to my right. Contradictory thoughts battled for headspace.
No one gets to criticize my family but me.
She’s right: they have failed me. They’ve loved and protected and saved me—but they have also failed me in hundreds of tiny and not-so-tiny ways.
Isn’t that normal? Don’t all parents and siblings fall short at one time or another?
But do all parents fall as short as mine have?
What’s so wrong with wanting to take six months off to improve my life? What right does Nat have to make me feel bad?