“I’m sorry,” she whispered to Dara.
Marie smelling like toothpaste, pushing gently against Dara’s back, little scratches, hands tangling, like when they were kids.
“It’s okay,” Dara said. Somehow, she was glad to feel her there. To smell her smells—the Band-Aids and baby powder and the sweetness of her sweat.
She was finally starting to slip to sleep when—
“Where’s Mama’s blanket?” Marie whispered. Mama. She hadn’t called their mother that since they were very little. “Mama’s fur blanket. The rabbit blanket.”
Dara’s eyes shuttered open.
The rabbit blanket. It wouldn’t go away, would it, like seeing it in the basement only days before, kicking it across the floor toward the furnace. She’d made it come to life and then Marie had dreamt about it and now it was back again.
“You hated it,” Dara said. “And it gave you hives.”
Marie had wanted to throw it out when their parents died. She thought it looked like an animal hide left behind by a hunter. Which it was, really. Later, she’d claim it gave her hives and then, suddenly, it did. Pink wheals across her belly, on her thighs.
“What did you do with the rabbit blanket, Dara?” Marie asked, clutching at Dara’s back. “Do you and Charlie still take it out? Remember that blanket, how electricity would run through it. How it would hold it and spark?”
Dara could feel what was coming, could feel it vibrating in the air, and it was more than she could bear.
“We loved that blanket,” Dara said, even as she saw herself kicking it across the basement floor.
Marie was crying now and she was always so lovely when she was crying, her skin flushed and downy like a baby’s, her lashes fluttering.
“Dara,” she said, and kept saying it. “Oh, Dara. It was wrong. It was wrong and as long as we stay here we’ll never escape it.”
* * *
*
But there was nothing wrong with it. Sisters often slept together. And Charlie was like a brother to Marie.
They’d all known one another since they were children. That’s what someone like the contractor, or a detective, or the police could never understand. The innocence of children. The specialness of their special family.
It started on one of those Nutcracker nights, the first with Charlie in the house. After closing night, their mother invited all three of them into bed with her, under the rabbit blanket to watch grainy videocassettes of old Alberta Ballet performances, to watch their mother’s Clara, grave and perfect and wise beyond her twelve years.
Their mother clasping their hands under the blanket, cuddling tight, eventually taking Dara’s tiny hand and placing it on Charlie’s, like a blessing, or something.
It was all so intense and overwhelming, age thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, being so close to a boy, a boy whose body she longed for, whose touch made her feel warm all in the center of her.
And Marie, whose body she knew as well as her own and who loved to nuzzle up to Charlie as she nuzzled up to their father, the only man she knew. It all made Marie feel cozy and loved, a cat squirming with pleasure. And then a fox.
Marie, whose curiosity was even greater than Dara’s own, but confusion the next morning far heavier. What did we do, Dara. I feel so strange, and her legs trembling, and her wrist sore.
We didn’t do anything, Dara would tell her, her body still throbbing from it, feeling so spent from Charlie’s fingers, her own.
This was after their mother stopped joining them at all. Instead, she would drift down the hall, running a bubble bath. Leaving them alone to play.
After their parents were gone, there seemed no reason to end the tradition. In fact, it felt especially meaningful to sustain it, to honor it.
These were rare events, only on special nights. Marie’s twenty-fifth birthday, or maybe Charlie recovering from his latest surgery. A summer storm knocking the power out. The three of them in that old king-size, the blackened brass headboard and the drooping box spring. They felt so close, and would sometimes even whisper ghost stories to drown out the howling wind. Or on hot nights, the ceiling fan, the desk fan, the rotating floor fan, all the fans in the house arrayed around them. Charlie with his arms around them both and Dara not minding it at all. In fact clasping Charlie’s hand onto Marie’s arm, her belly.
They all needed one another and this was the way.
No one could say that it wasn’t natural. And pure. Three bodies all three knew so well, limbs interlaced by morning. Warm breath and giggles. Dara never felt jealous, nor ashamed. It didn’t seem like sharing Charlie, it seemed like an extension of their childhood, under that rabbit blanket big enough to contain them all, including their mother, whose hard, long hands would draw Charlie toward her. Who would encourage Dara to close her hands around him.
It was about play, comfort, escape. Soothing one another, and oneself. That childhood feeling of body pleasures that’s so pure, and natural, and right.
The next day, there was no need for bad feelings. Sleepily, a little bashfully, at the kitchen table, sneaking winks at one another over coffee, robes pulled tight.
It was like a dream in that you could never recall specifics after. You could only recall, dimly, how it felt: like family, like home.
Dara never felt jealous because Marie was part of her in ways deeper than feelings, attachments, rules. Marie was a part of her until she wasn’t.
Until she moved out, rejected them.
Dara had loved giving each to the other, the feeling of it, like their mother, taking one in one hand, and the other in the other. Joining them, laying her hand on him or his on her. Their lovely bodies so close to her as to be part of her. Family.
She was only doing as their mother had done, their mother had shown them, directed them, her greatest ballet yet.
This, she seemed to say, is beautiful and ours.
Some people liked to make everything dirty.
Some people liked to ruin everything.
* * *
*
Dara,” Marie was saying, her face gone so soft and her hand on Dara’s arm, “it’s not our fault. It’s not our fault.”
It wasn’t wrong, Dara wanted to say but couldn’t make the words come. It felt so strange, lying in the same bed, all the memories flicking around her, sly little flames.
“I know,” Dara said finally. “I know it’s not our fault.”
Marie paused, then said, as if just realizing it herself, “I think you wanted to leave even before I did.”
Dara looked up. It was true, of course. It was true. She had wanted to leave. She’d almost made it once, right before the car accident. Charlie was right about one thing, about that. They’d almost made it together, packing that rolling trunk, her chest jumping, imagining a world beyond that paint-thick front door. That house, this house. The house that was her childhood.
* * *
*
An hour passed, sleep tugging on Dara but never taking her.
A memory kept rising up, of Marie, age ten or eleven, squirming in her bunkbed above and insisting, I have something no one else has.
We all have it, Dara had said, dismissing her. But she’d never really been sure. Dara was dark, but Marie was light. Dara was cool, but Marie was hot. Marie, the wild child, the sword swallower, the illustrated lady, the freak.
“Marie,” she found herself whispering now, feeling for Marie behind her, her halting breath. “Do you remember the carnival? The one Dad took us to every spring at St. Joan’s?”
“Yes,” Marie said sleepily. “I remember.”
Dara didn’t know what made her think of it. Maybe it was Marie’s feet brushing against her feet, trying to stay warm.
“The Fire Eater was my favorite,” Dara said, pressing her arches against Marie’s hard skin. “And the Sword Swallower was yours.”
“They were the same,” Marie said softly.
Dara’s feet went still. “What?”
“They were the same woman,” Marie said, her sleepy voice, the words coming slowly and never quite finishing.