The Day I Saved My Sister

 

 

The day I saved my sister, it was my fault she needed saving. We were at the neighborhood pool and I was supposed to be watching her. Mom had a dentist appointment and she’d agreed, after much begging from me, to let us go to the pool for an hour while she was gone.

“Do not take your eyes off Jolie for one minute!” my Mom said, already second-guessing her decision. She’d gotten right in my face, fierce-eyed, trying to burn her words into my fourteen-year-old brain.

“Geez, Mom, I know. Only the baby pool, keep putting sunblock on her, make her wear her swimmies – I know all that.”

What I didn’t know was why it was my fate to be saddled with an obnoxious three-year-old on a beautiful summer day. It was the first year I’d noticed – in a new way – the boys who hung out at the pool. They’d always been there, a source of annoyance, but now it was different. I wanted them to notice me in my new red swimsuit. Maybe talk to me a little.

And that was happening. I was surrounded by a group of boys pushing and shoving each other, having burping contests, making fart sounds with their underarms, showing off – all for me. The sense of power it gave me was so heady there was no room for anything else, including Jolie.

When I heard someone scream, my head jerked around to the baby pool – which was empty – and then to the big pool and the little patch of color on the bottom. Without even thinking, I ran and dived, swooping down to gather up my little sister and bring her to the surface. I laid her on the side of the pool and began chest compressions. Don’t ask me how I knew to do it. Maybe all that television paid off. It seemed like forever, but finally Jolie coughed up a gush of water and started to cry. Then the paramedics arrived and took over.

I was a hero – the girl who saved her sister from drowning. There were cameras and reporters and the story even made the national news one evening. The mayor gave me a proclamation, I got a thousand dollars in scholarship money from an anonymous donor, and a local ice cream store gave me and Jolie free cones for a month. Social media went nuts and I was hot stuff for about three days. Then the news cycle moved on.

It changed me, that experience. It made me aware of how fragile and precious everyday life is, and how quickly it can turn sour. And it made me love my little sister in a fierce, protective way that never changed.

Jolie didn’t even remember what happened after a week or so. As the years went by and she heard the story over and over again, she grew resentful.

“Okay, okay, she saved my life,” she would say wearily.

My persistent loving gestures only annoyed her. She’d run ahead like she was embarrassed to be seen with me when I walked her home from school. She’d shake her head when I offered to paint her nails or fix her hair. It certainly wasn’t the usual kid-sister worshipping big-sister scenario. In fact, she avoided me.

“It’s like having two moms,” Jolie said. Two was clearly one too many.

As we became adults, I still hovered over my baby sister and she still resisted. I worried when she got her driver’s license. I fretted when she went off to college. I cheered when she landed her first real job. And then I watched in horror as Jolie slowly sank in a quicksand of depression.

“Let me take you to a good psychiatrist,” I begged. “Maybe it’s a chemical imbalance in your brain and it can be fixed. There are drugs that really help.”

Jolie looked at me hopelessly and shrugged. She wouldn’t talk to the doctors and she wouldn’t take the medicine. She moved back in with our parents and spent most days in bed.

~*~

I went straight to Mom’s from the doctor’s office. I wanted my mama in the way we all do when life overwhelms us.

“It’s cancer,” I said as we sat at the kitchen table and cried. “What am I going to do? I’ve got the kids and all their activities, the house, laundry, cooking…I know Brad will do his best, but he can’t boil an egg. And now there will be all that treatment – surgery, chemo, radiation and physical therapy. Just the logistics alone…”

“I’ll handle it,” said a voice from the hall. Jolie had heard every word.

She stood there in her frowsy bathrobe, hair matted on one side, face pale from all the hours indoors. The same – but different. The vacant stare was gone. She was present behind those eyes again, and she looked at me with love.

“I’ll take care of you and you’ll get well,” she said simply.

~*~

A couple of years later, when we were both fine, Jolie said the day I got my diagnosis was the second day I’d saved my sister.

 

The Day I Saved My Sister

The day I saved my sister, it was my fault she needed saving. We were at the neighborhood pool and I was supposed to be watching her. Mom had a dentist appointment and she’d agreed, after much begging from me, to let us go to the pool for an hour while she was gone.

“Do not take your eyes off Jolie for one minute!” my Mom said, already second-guessing her decision. She’d gotten right in my face, fierce-eyed, trying to burn her words into my fourteen-year-old brain.

“Geez, Mom, I know. Only the baby pool, keep putting sunblock on her, make her wear her swimmies – I know all that.”

What I didn’t know was why it was my fate to be saddled with an obnoxious three-year-old on a beautiful summer day. It was the first year I’d noticed – in a new way – the boys who hung out at the pool. They’d always been there, a source of annoyance, but now it was different. I wanted them to notice me in my new red swimsuit. Maybe talk to me a little.

And that was happening. I was surrounded by a group of boys pushing and shoving each other, having burping contests, making fart sounds with their underarms, showing off – all for me. The sense of power it gave me was so heady there was no room for anything else, including Jolie.

When I heard someone scream, my head jerked around to the baby pool – which was empty – and then to the big pool and the little patch of color on the bottom. Without even thinking, I ran and dived, swooping down to gather up my little sister and bring her to the surface. I laid her on the side of the pool and began chest compressions. Don’t ask me how I knew to do it. Maybe all that television paid off. It seemed like forever, but finally Jolie coughed up a gush of water and started to cry. Then the paramedics arrived and took over.

I was a hero – the girl who saved her sister from drowning. There were cameras and reporters and the story even made the national news one evening. The mayor gave me a proclamation, I got a thousand dollars in scholarship money from an anonymous donor, and a local ice cream store gave me and Jolie free cones for a month. Social media went nuts and I was hot stuff for about three days. Then the news cycle moved on.

It changed me, that experience. It made me aware of how fragile and precious everyday life is, and how quickly it can turn sour. And it made me love my little sister in a fierce, protective way that never changed.

Jolie didn’t even remember what happened after a week or so. As the years went by and she heard the story over and over again, she grew resentful.

“Okay, okay, she saved my life,” she would say wearily.

My persistent loving gestures only annoyed her. She’d run ahead like she was embarrassed to be seen with me when I walked her home from school. She’d shake her head when I offered to paint her nails or fix her hair. It certainly wasn’t the usual kid-sister worshiping big-sister scenario. In fact, she avoided me.

“It’s like having two moms,” Jolie said. Two was clearly one too many.

As we became adults, I still hovered over my baby sister and she still resisted. I worried when she got her driver’s license. I fretted when she went off to college. I cheered when she landed her first real job. And then I watched in horror as Jolie slowly sank in a quicksand of depression.

“Let me take you to a good psychiatrist,” I begged. “Maybe it’s a chemical imbalance in your brain and it can be fixed. There are drugs that really help.”

Jolie looked at me hopelessly and shrugged. She wouldn’t talk to the doctors and she wouldn’t take the medicine. She moved back in with our parents and spent most days in bed.

~*~

I went straight to Mom’s from the doctor’s office. I wanted my mama in the way we all do when life overwhelms us.

“It’s cancer,” I said as we sat at the kitchen table and cried. “What am I going to do? I’ve got the kids and all their activities, the house, laundry, cooking…I know Brad will do his best, but he can’t boil an egg. And now there will be all that treatment – surgery, chemo, radiation and physical therapy. Just the logistics alone…”

“I’ll handle it,” said a voice from the hall. Jolie had heard every word.

She stood there in her frowsy bathrobe, hair matted on one side, face pale from all the hours indoors. The same – but different. The vacant stare was gone. She was present behind those eyes again, and she looked at me with love.

“I’ll take care of you and you’ll get well,” she said simply.

~*~

A couple of years later, when we were both fine, Jolie said the day I got my diagnosis was the second day I’d saved my sister.

 

Reigning Cats and Dogs

I see her there beneath the hedge. She’s crouching like a tiger. Only the very tip of her tail twitches as she glares at me with yellow eyes. She’s waiting for me to pass by and then she’ll reach out and slash me with her claws. It’s happened often enough; I know what to expect.I’ll just wait. He’s so stupid, he may fall for it again. If he doesn’t, I’ll nap.The day Mom and Dad brought her home, I had no idea the shambles she’d make of my life. She was so tiny. Just a little bit of harmless fluff.  Even I thought she was cute. They were gaga over her, and while I didn’t particularly like that, I couldn’t complain. I still got plenty of attention.Oh, he tried to make friends at first, but his clumsy efforts annoyed me. I’d mew piteously so the humans thought he was hurting me. They’d swat him and yell NO. It was funny.She’s clever, I’ll give her that. That time she barfed on Mom and Dad’s bed, she waited until I came to investigate before meowing her head off. Mom came in and saw me standing over the disgusting pile. Who got yelled at? Me. Okay, full disclosure, I was thinking about rolling in it, but still.It’s too easy sometimes. Once he dared to lie on my favorite sofa cushion. He didn’t move even after I walked over and hissed – just rolled his goofy brown eyes at me. He should know puppy eyes don’t work with me. So I waited until he was asleep and then pounced from the top of the sofa. He leaped straight up in the air, came down on the coffee table and broke the big human’s remote. Oh, there was hell to pay, but I didn’t pay it. I just dematerialized and watched from under a chair. When the ruckus was over, I took a nice nap on my favorite sofa cushion.I hurt my back leg in that coffee table incident and got an awful scolding, but the worst thing was seeing her grin. Mom and Dad don’t know cats can grin, and I’m glad they don’t. I wouldn’t want them to see such a sight. I try to protect them by blocking her, but they don’t understand the danger. They say, “Look who’s jealous,” and laugh. They wouldn’t laugh if they really knew her.My plan for today is simple. If I can’t claw him from under the hedge, I’ll wait until he’s sleeping. He sleeps twenty hours a day, so it won’t be a long wait. Then I’ll drag the kibble out of his dish a piece at a time. I’ll scatter it where the humans walk so when they step on it there will be what they call a mess. I’m hoping they’ll put his bowl on the counter where he can’t reach it. I’ll jump up and sit over his food and grin at him. He hates that.I’m so hungry! I didn’t finish my breakfast, thinking I could go back for a mid-morning snack. But then she scattered my food all over the floor and they thought I did it. Now my bowl is out of reach and she’s sitting up there pretending not to see me. I hate her, I hate her! I wish I could think of revenge, but I’m not good at planning. I’m good at walkies, though, and naps and fetch.He’s never figured out that fetch is a degrading exercise. (There is absolutely no correlation to me chasing the laser pointer, no matter what he says. That’s a ballet of feline grace and agility.) In the “game” of fetch, humans throw something – a ball, a stick, whatever – and he runs like an idiot, brings it back and drops it at their feet. Then they throw it again, and he runs after it again. He smiles all over his dumb face and runs until his tongue hangs out. It would bring me to tears of vicarious shame if I actually cared.Maybe once a day, she’ll approach Mom and Dad and rub up against them. They drop everything and stroke her. Sometimes she’ll roll over on her back and let them rub her belly and when she’s had enough, she’ll bite. She bites them, and they just laugh! If I bit somebody, oh my, baaaad dog! Call the vet, call the dog trainer, call the police. Who made these rules? The Cat King?He’s asleep again and I’m cold. I’ll curl up next to him for warmth. At least he’s got one use: he’s a big furry heater.Even though I’m asleep, I can feel her settle right up against me. It’s creepy, but I can’t make myself wake up to chase her away. I’ll put my paw over her to hold her down. So sleepy…skknnxx.“Honey, come look at this. Get the camera. Aren’t they the sweetest little best friends!”

The Truth Hurts

 

Like George Washington, Alissa could not tell a lie, even as a child.  Backed into a corner with her mother’s finger waving two inches from her nose, only the truth, however damning, came out.  Questions like, “Who made this mess?” or, “What’s all the screaming about?” always elicited a truthful if reluctant response.  It wouldn’t have been so bad had she only confessed to her own sins, but as often as not she helplessly ratted out a playmate or a sibling.  Even at a young age, she realized this was not the path to a peaceful life.  How she envied those who spread lies like oil slicks over the choppy seas of life.

Time and maturity did not cure what Alissa thought of as her truthfulness disability.  She dreaded questions like, “Do these pants make me look fat?”  Or worse yet, “What do you honestly think of my new boyfriend?”  Try as she might to equivocate, her honest brown eyes gave her away.

When she met the man she would marry, Alissa relaxed in the belief that she had found someone who truly understood and accepted her as she was.  So she was totally unprepared for the discovery early in their marriage that her new husband was a nonchalant liar.

“Little white lies,” he called them, “just ways to grease the wheels of social interaction.”

She shivered the first time he said, “I need you to lie for me.”

“What about?” she asked in trepidation. “You know I’m not good at lying.”

“Just a fib,” Mike assured her. “No big deal. Harmless, really.”

“If it’s no big deal, why don’t you just tell the truth?”

“Look, it’s complicated. You know when I left last Thursday and was gone all weekend…on a business trip?”

“Yeah?”

“So if anybody asks, like someone I work with or my boss, you just tell them you were sick and I took some time off to take care of you.”

“Wait, what? Where were you? Did you lie to me?”

“No, well, not exactly. I did call on a client in Palm Beach, and then I went to Kent’s bachelor weekend.”

“You knew I was afraid of what could happen at that wild party!”

“Exactly. That’s why I didn’t tell you. You didn’t have to worry about me all weekend, and I didn’t disappoint Kent. Win-win.”

“If you were so determined to go, why not just take a couple of vacation days? That would eliminate one lie, at least,” Alissa said.

“I don’t have any vacation days left this year. Used ‘em all on our honeymoon. But taking a couple of sick days for my new wife – totally acceptable. So you see? It’s just easier to tell a little white lie, and no one gets hurt.”

“And you get to do as you please,” Alyssa said. “How convenient.”  She wondered what else he “didn’t exactly” lie to her about.

As the years passed, Mike’s lies became a commonplace thing in their lives. Alissa’s attempts at covering for him were so clumsy and transparent that she only made things worse. Finally, he left her out of his deceptions, which meant that she, too, was deceived.

“Wouldn’t it be easier, less stressful, to tell the truth?” she asked him after one of her inadvertent exposures. “You wouldn’t have so much to remember, and neither would I.”

“You’re a child.” Mike’s voice was filled with scorn. “You have no idea how the real world works. If you didn’t have me to take care of you, you’d be cut down like a weed.” He sounded like he thought she deserved it.

Alissa told herself to stop trying to change him and accept him as he was, but it was exhausting. As the years passed, she felt tired to her bones. She thought of leaving.

She’d read advice columnists who said you should ask yourself, are you better off with him or without him? Alissa examined that idea dispassionately. She was by now fifty-five years of age and had not held a job since her marriage. Mike earned a comfortable income for one family, but not enough for two households. There was money in the bank, but not enough to support two retirements. Alissa could count on no more than her share of his Social Security in her old age, which wasn’t that far off. Clear-eyed, she assessed her options and decided she was better off staying.

She had her own little world and she retreated into it. There were compensations, she told herself; there were friends and books and music – plenty of things she enjoyed doing alone. So what if she wasn’t living love’s young dream. Who, at her age, was?

Eventually – and it took a while – Mike noticed her withdrawal. “Is anything wrong?” he asked.

Her smile never reached her eyes, but Mike didn’t notice. “Of course not,” she said.

It was her first successful lie.

 

Lawnmower Man

 

“He’s at it again!”

Tom was usually a mild-mannered and tolerant neighbor, but really, this was getting to be too much.

“What?” Willa asked. “Who’s doing what?”

“It’s Jake. He’s cutting his grass again.”

“Well, so what? What do you care?”

“He just cut it three days ago,” Tom said bitterly. “Now I’ll have to cut ours, or it will look awful next to his. He used to be normal and mowed once a week like a civilized human being. What is the matter with that man?”

It was a rhetorical question. Nobody seemed to know why Jake had suddenly taken to manic lawn-mowing. It was true the whole street competed for the coveted “Yard of the Month” sign, but this relentless shearing was carrying friendly competition to extremes. Well, if Jake wanted to play that game, Tom could too. He’d be darned if he’d let his grass look shaggy and unkempt next to Jake’s. He heard the roar of Jake’s lawnmower so often it was haunting his dreams.

“I’m gonna talk to him about it,” he said, glaring out the window at Jake.

“Don’t you dare!” Willa said. “What would you say – you’re too neat? It’s not worth having a neighborhood spat over.”

Tom knew she was right, but he wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of admitting it. Instead, he slammed the door a little too hard when he went out to yank the pull cord that started his own lawn mower. Wearily, he trimmed off a quarter-inch of grass along the invisible property line where the yards met. Hadn’t he just done this?

Jake stepped from the shower where he’d rinsed off grass clippings, pulled on a robe and peeked around the bedroom curtains. He smiled with satisfaction when he saw his neighbor stomping along behind his machine. Tom’s mower had a safety switch that would automatically shut down the motor if he released his grip on the handle. Then it had to cool off before it would start again, and that might take up to thirty minutes. Consequently, Tom never paused until the lawn was finished. He would be occupied for at least an hour, a captive of the shut-off switch, rendered deaf and dumb by the motor’s roar.

Jake turned his head when he heard a tap on his back door. He hurried to answer it, tingling with anticipation. There she was, wearing a raincoat and – he knew – nothing at all underneath.  He swept her into his arms.

“Willa!”

“Darling! We’ve got an hour.”