Nearer Than The Sky Read online

  “Look at this little one,” Peter said, cooing at Violet, who was remarkably bright-eyed and smiling. Her cheeks were flushed pink, not with a fever today but with the chill of the air. Peter shook Rich’s hand and reached for Lily.

  Lily has always adored Peter. From the first time I brought him home, when Lily was still in high school, he had her won over. She’d curled her hair and worn blue eyeliner that day. Her favorite sweater. I remember feeling so proud of him, so happy when she pulled me aside and said, He’s awesome, Indie. I want one too. I remember she’d been wearing Bonnie Bell strawberry lip gloss.

  “Let me get your coat, Lily,” Peter said, helping her off with her jacket. She struggled to get her arms out of the big pink parka.

  “Much better,” he said and hugged her. I watched her close her eyes and let herself be lost for a moment.

  “Hey, Windiana,” Rich said, hugging me. His hair was combed neatly and his eyes were bright and open like Violet’s.

  Peter helped Rich take off the baby carrier and took Violet into his arms. He loves babies. They terrify me, but Peter is at ease with small and fragile things. Rich sat down at the kitchen table and let Peter walk around the kitchen, talking softly to Violet, who peered up at him with curiosity.

  Lily stood by the refrigerator, looking at Ma’s handwriting on the dry-erase board. Eggs. Milk. Dry mustard. Potatoes. I hadn’t been able to bring myself to erase her grocery list yet.

  “Come see the kittens,” I said because I didn’t know what else to say.

  “Okay.” She smiled, turning away from the fridge, and followed me into the living room.

  Inside the box, the mama cat was awake and licking her paws. She was healthier now. Her ribs were still prominent beneath her fur, but she was less lethargic. She would get out of the box when she heard the can opener. She was beginning to understand her own hunger as well as her kittens’.

  “Oh, look,” Lily said, kneeling down. She slipped off her shoes and sat cross-legged on the carpet, peering into the box. “Can I pick one up?”

  “Sure,” I said and sat down on the couch. But when she reached into the box, I felt my shoulders tense. “Be careful. Pick it up by the scruff of its neck.”

  “I know how to pick up a kitten,” Lily said, annoyed, and pulled the black one with the white ears and feet off of the mother. It cried out a little, and she cradled it in her palm.

  “Look,” I said. “Her eyes are open.” Until today, all of their eyes had been sealed shut. Now the kitten in Lily’s hand looked up at both of us with a milky blue intensity.

  “Did you name them?” Lily asked.

  “No. I wasn’t even going to keep them. I was on my way to the pound when . . .” I stopped.

  Lily looked down at the kitten and blinked hard.

  “Any ideas?” I asked. “For names?”

  “No,” she said and set the kitten gently back in the box.

  I could hear Rich and Peter’s voices in the kitchen, deep and soft. It reminded me vaguely of the sound of basketball on TV at night when Lily and I were small. Daddy would curl up on the couch, leaving enough room for me or Lily or Benny to curl up beside him. We took turns, but I always seemed to wind up there on basketball nights. In the crook of his arm, with my good ear pressed against his chest, I could never make out what the announcer was saying, but the sound was unlike any other. Comforting and safe. It tasted like warm tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches on days home sick from school.

  “How was the trip up?” I asked.

  Lily was pulling on a loose thread on her sweater.

  “Fine,” she said. “Violet slept the whole way.”

  “She looks good,” I said.

  Lily looked up at me, reminding me of the kitten; her eyes were a similar milky blue. I had no idea if Rich had said anything to Lily yet, about the doctors. About taking Violet away. Lily pulled on the loose thread. Her nails were freshly painted, like they’d been dipped in raspberry sherbet. The color of summer time.

  We sat there in silence, a quiet too awkward and uncomfortable for sisters.

  “What kind of memorial service do you think we should have?” I asked softly. “I mean, we have to plan this soon. I was thinking of something small. Just us, family. Daddy says he wants to come too. I called him last night, and he says he wants to come be with us.”

  “She knew,” Lily said, staring at the yellow piece of yarn between her fingers. “She knew the light was red.”

  I sat back and rested my head against the back of the couch.

  “Someone saw her accelerate. Someone on the street.” She had unraveled at least an inch of the bottom edge of her sweater.

  I closed my eyes and listened to the sound of Peter and Rich in the kitchen. The familiarity of Peter’s shuffle across the kitchen linoleum. A soda can opening. Rich lighting a cigarette. I listened to the cats squirming inside the cardboard box. To the sound of my own breaths, steady and slow.

  “She wanted to die,” she said. “And we didn’t listen to her.”

  I didn’t want to talk about this right now. I didn’t want to hear Lily’s imagined version of this story.

  “It wasn’t an accident,” she whispered.

  I sat up straight and squeezed my hands together. My heart was beating hard in my chest. A hammer against my insides.

  “She made a lot of things happen, Lily. To you. To me. To Benny. But this was an accident. If it wasn’t, it would mean she actually gave a shit. That she felt bad. And you know as well as I do that she never felt bad for what she did. Never.”

  Lily’s fingers were tangled in yellow wool. When she looked up at me again, her face had changed. Here eyes were intent, clear.

  “Rich is leaving me.” Her voice could have belonged to someone else. It was deep and strong. With my eyes closed, it could have been someone else sitting on the floor in an unraveled sweater. It could have been Ma. “I’m sure you know. He’s accusing me of terrible things.”

  “Stop,” I said.

  “You don’t understand,” she said, her voice breaking a little. “It’s not true. Whatever it is he told you.”

  “I said stop it.”

  Lily looked at me, opening her mouth to say something more, but no sound came out.

  Peter and Rich came into the room then. Peter was holding Violet, beaming as if he’d never seen fingers so small before. Never smelled the faint sweet milky scent of a baby’s breath. Violet reached for his new beard and touched it hesitantly. Peter smiled and let her fingers explore the dimples hidden beneath, play with his nose and ears. Rich was carrying a tray full of Peter’s homemade chocolate croissants still hot from the oven. Peter had gotten up at dawn to make them. Next to the croissants was a bowl of fresh fruit: three different colors of grapes, slivers of mango, and circles of sweet mandarin oranges.

  “Just something I whipped up,” Rich laughed, setting our breakfast down on the coffee table. He grabbed a croissant and motioned to Peter, “I hope you don’t do this for her every day. It’ll spoil her. Hell, you’ve already spoiled me. I’m about ready to hop on a plane to Maine.” He took a bite of the croissant. “If you won’t marry him, Indie, I will.”

  I felt my skin grow warm. Peter and I didn’t talk about marriage. We had an understanding about these sorts of things. We had respect for each other’s fears.

  I looked at Lily, who had gotten up and gone to the window. She was clutching a ceramic doll from the knickknack shelf over the TV. She was staring blankly out at the front yard. I turned to Rich and he shrugged his shoulders.

  “Lily and I were just talking about a memorial service,” I said. “I think it should be small. Just family.”

  “At her church?” Rich asked. “Does she have a church?”

  “We’re Catholic,” I said. Though Catholic meant little more to me now than Christmas carols and a nativity scene lit up with colored lights. Easter Sunday dresses and white shiny shoes.

  “Where will you spread the ashes?” Peter asked, cra
dling Violet, kissing her forehead.

  Lily set the figurine on the windowsill and crossed her arms.

  “She has a plot,” Rich said. “It’s all taken care of. But they have to wait until spring. The ground, it’s too cold now.”

  “Do you remember the time Benny got stuck under the porch?” Lily asked softly.

  I felt my throat grow thick. Rich set his croissant down.

  She kept staring out the window. “Ma was making cupcakes for him to bring to school for his birthday. He wanted green frosting and jelly beans.” Lily laughed softly. “She put food coloring in the frosting until it was the right color. Then she sent him outside to play while they cooked, because he kept opening up the oven door to peek. But when they were ready she couldn’t find him anywhere. We looked for him up on the garage roof and in the field. Finally, we heard him crying underneath the porch. He’d gone too far and he was stuck. Remember?”

  Lily turned to face us. Rich was staring at his feet, and Peter was stroking Violet’s hair. I felt sick.

  “So Ma crawled underneath the porch and got him. She took off her shoes and crawled under there and helped him. It took almost an hour to get him loose. When she finally got him out, he had scratches all over his legs and a big bump on his head, so she let him eat his birthday cupcakes early. He ate so many he got a stomachache. She had to make a whole other batch so he would have enough for his class the next day.”

  I stared at Lily, standing by the window with a string of yarn falling from her waist all the way to the floor.

  “She was afraid of dark places, but she went under there and got him. Don’t you remember that?” she demanded, not looking at me but at Rich, who would not look back.

  The house felt strange after Ma and Lily left. After Ma had filled the blue train case with makeup and hair spray and bobby pins, stuffed the matching suitcase with child-size nylon stockings and Lily’s costumes. After the car and trailer with the stairs for Lily’s Stars and Stripes routine pulled out of the driveway, the house felt quiet, as if it were the middle of the night and everyone was sleeping, instead of a bright sunshiny Saturday in June.

  Benny didn’t know what to make of Ma and Lily leaving. He stood quietly at the front door, waving to Lily, whose pink palms were pressed to the back window, until we couldn’t see the car or the stairs anymore. Even then, he didn’t seem to know what to think of their absence.

  Daddy was sitting at the kitchen table eating a glazed donut, reading the newspaper.

  “How would you like to have a party tonight?” he asked without moving his eyes from the newspaper.

  Benny turned away from the window. “A party?”

  “Sure.” Daddy smiled. “We can set up the barbecue in the backyard, invite some friends over,” he said, folding the newspaper and setting it on the table next to the now-empty box of donuts. “What do you say?”

  “I’m gonna have five hamburgers,” Benny said. “On sesame seed buns. Oh, oh, oh, can we get those red chips, Daddy?”

  “Barbecue chips?” Daddy smiled. “I suppose we could do that. Maybe get some watermelon?”

  “Who will come?” I asked.

  “Whoever you want to come.”

  “Can I have Starry over? Can she spend the night?” Starry was my new best friend. She and her parents lived in an A-frame about a mile down the road. I hadn’t invited her over yet; I didn’t usually like to have friends over.

  “I only like hamburgers,” Benny said. “I hate hotdogs. They smell like feet.”

  “Let me make a few phone calls, and we’ll see what we can do,” Daddy said. His eyes were bright.

  That afternoon, Eddie Grand came by with a bunch of lawn chairs and a portable record player. Benny and I set the chairs up in the backyard and helped Daddy clean off his records. They were dusty because he almost never played them. When Daddy and Eddie left to go to the store to get charcoal and hamburger meat and Benny’s chips, I called Starry. When I didn’t get an answer, I remembered that she and her parents were visiting her grandmother in Las Vegas for the weekend. I hung up the phone and tried to think of someone else I could call, but no one seemed as fun as Starry. Starry knew just about everything, it seemed: how to shufffle cards with one hand, how to make her hair feather like two dove’s wings at the sides of her head, how to do the Hustle.

  Eddie’s cousin, Sheila, who worked at the bar with Daddy, showed up while I was looking for an extension cord to plug into Eddie’s record player.

  “Hi Benny,” Sheila said. She was standing in the doorway, holding a grocery bag.

  “Hi Sheila!” Benny said, jumping up and down, clapping his hands. “Did you bring me hamburgers?”

  “I brought you plates, sweetie. And plastic spoons and knives and napkins. Didn’t your Daddy pick up hamburger?” She set the bag down on the table and tugged at her shorts. They were cutoffs, worn perfectly with white strings hanging down all around her shiny legs. Starry said you should put baby oil on your legs to make them look like that, but we never had baby oil in our house.

  “Daddy and Eddie are at the Foodmart,” I said.

  Sheila smiled. “Hi, Indie.”

  “Hi,” I said.

  “Wanna see the records we got?” Benny asked, tugging at Sheila’s elbow. She was four years older than Benny, but Benny towered over her.

  “I’d love to,” she said and followed him outside to the back porch where we had set up the record player. “You got any Bee Gees?”

  While Sheila kneeled down by the box of records and flipped through them, looking for Andy Gibb, I emptied the bag she had brought. Underneath the paper plates and utensils was a pack of menthol cigarettes and a small blue box. I pulled both boxes out and then realized that I was holding a box of Tampax. I quickly put them back in the bottom of the bag and went outside.

  “Found it!” She smiled, holding up the Saturday Night Fever record. I didn’t know what the movie was about (I wasn’t allowed to go when it came to the theater) but I’d seen it advertised on TV and my bus driver played the soundtrack on our bus every morning on my way to school. Plus, Sheila always picked songs from this record on the jukebox at Rusty’s.

  “Here’s the extension cord,” I said.

  “Thank you,” Sheila said and plugged it into the record player.

  “My dad really doesn’t like it when people mess with his records,” I said.

  “I’ll be careful.” She put the record back in its sleeve and put her hands on her hips. “Your dad says you are going to be in the pool tournament next weekend. He’s telling everybody you’re a shoo-in.”

  I felt myself blushing. “I don’t know,” I said. “There’s a lot of people better than me.”

  “Well, the way he talks about you, you’d think you were some sort of pro.” Sheila’s hair was curled like one of Charlie’s Angels. She had blue eye shadow on and sparkly lipstick.

  “You wanna see my room?” I asked.

  Standing in the doorway of my room, I tried to imagine how it might look through Sheila’s eyes. My bedspread was white with rainbow stripes. When you put the two pillows together they made a full rainbow. I didn’t have a lot of stuff on my walls, but around the edges of my bureau mirror, I had stuck the tiny class pictures of all of my friends. It looked like there were more than there actually were because I’d been putting them there since kindergarten. If you looked closely, you could see that there were really only four or five people. I had Lily’s pictures and Benny’s, too.

  There was a stuffed alligator that I won at the county fair the year before on my bed, but for the most part, I didn’t like stuffed animals. I collected board games, though, and I had a bookcase stuffed full of them. I played by myself most of the time because Benny didn’t have a lot of patience for games. It wasn’t so bad. I would write the colors or the names of the two playing pieces on two pieces of paper. Then I would fold them over and shuffle them, picking one and setting it aside. Then I played for both sides. Afterward, I would read the name on the
piece of paper that I had picked to see if I had “won” or not. It wasn’t as fun as playing with another person, but it worked okay.

  “Where’s this?” Sheila asked. She put one knee on my bed and leaned to look at the framed picture that hung over my headboard.

  “California,” I said. “That’s where we lived when I was born.”

  The picture was a black-and-white photo of Benny and me at the ocean. He was five and I was three. He was big even then, strong enough to pick me up. He was standing behind me, lifting me up under my arms. In the picture, we were both soaking wet and my shovel and sand bucket were in front of us. Behind us was the ocean. I didn’t know who took the picture. I didn’t even remember it being taken. But I liked the way Benny was smiling. I looked pretty happy, too.

  “I don’t have any brothers or sisters,” Sheila said. “I guess Eddie’s kind of like a brother, though.”

  I nodded and then I heard the front door opening and Eddie’s voice in the kitchen.

  Sheila straightened her shorts again and said, “They’re back.” In the kitchen Daddy was unloading grocery bags full of hamburgers and buns and charcoal. He handed me a pack of my favorite gum, Big Red, and winked at me.

  “Hi guys,” Sheila smiled. “Indie was just showing me her room.”

  “Benny, can you give me a hand here?” Daddy said, opening the fridge and handing him the hamburger.

  “Who’s running the bar?” Eddie asked.

  “Rosey and Nancy,” Daddy said. “They’ll call if they need me.”

  “Hey, sharkie,” Eddie said, wiggling his handlebar mustache at me. “Your Pa says he’s gonna let you enter the tournament next week.”