“You know how your father is,” Mom said, and I did, but she told me anyway. How when she was pregnant and they moved into our house all the furniture had to be child-friendly, spill-friendly—it had to pass Dad’s safety code, Mom said. No furniture made out of glass, only edges that were peacefully rounded, and Mom just couldn’t bear to look at it anymore. Mom needed a little beauty in her life. She said, “Just a little beauty is all I ask for.”

  “I’d like to buy this couch,” Mom said to the man in the store.

  “I’m afraid it’s out of stock,” the man said.

  “But it’s right here,” Mom said, putting her hand on the couch.

  “This is just the floor model,” the man said.

  The man ordered another one that would be delivered in three or four months. In April. Maybe May? Was that okay?

  “That’s a long time to wait,” Mom said.

  But Mom bought the couch.

  “For this couch? That’s nothing,” Mom said to me as we walked to the car. “I’d wait forever for that couch.”

  Of course, walking out of Macy’s, we couldn’t imagine the way things would be different by the time the couch arrived. We couldn’t imagine that by then, you would be dead.

  How could we have ever imagined such a thing back then? When we got home, there you were, sitting in your winter parka, sunning your hair on the deck. Your hair was so thick, spread out over the back of the chaise lounge, and it seems impossible to me even now that a girl with hair like that could ever die. It looked like proof that you would always be here, lit up by the sun, lounging around, not worried about anything at all.

  So I ignored you. I walked right by you and into the kitchen. I felt better as I wrote down the delivery date on the Big Calendar, as Mom always called it. I liked seeing our future spread out before me as it always had been, every week made up of tiny white squares. Every day, the same length as its width.

  But six weeks later, you were dead.

  I’m sorry if that seems sudden to you, but that’s what it felt like to me. That’s what it still feels like even now, fifteen years later. Like, poof! Sally, your sister is dead! Now, go to church.

  There was no warning. No premonition. Not at all like the movies, where the sister always feels the bad thing that is about to happen. The sister notices a crooked painting on the wall or feels a chill up her spine or wakes in the middle of the night with a terrible feeling in her chest and clutches whoever is sitting next to her and says, Glen, something is wrong with my sister, and somehow Glen can feel it, too.

  But I felt nothing. I thought it was just going to be another one of those school nights when nothing happened, when we did our homework and then ate dinner and then went upstairs to pick out our outfits for school in the morning.

  But after dinner, when I went upstairs, I found you already in the bathroom brushing your teeth.

  “Why are you brushing your teeth?” I asked. It was too early—normally, we didn’t brush our teeth until just before bed.

  I looked at the foam building in your mouth, and I thought, for a second, you might try to speak. I thought we might laugh the way we used to. But you were sensible. You spit in the sink, put your brush back on the holder, and said, “How’s my breath?”

  “Fine?” I said. “Toothpastey. Why?”

  “I’m going out tonight with Billy.”

  “Going out?” I asked. I followed you into our bedroom. “You can’t go out with Billy.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s a school night.”

  School nights were sacred. The only nights when I was certain I would get to spend time with you.

  “So?” you said. “Almost all nights are school nights. Statistically speaking, it means none of them can actually be that important.”

  This is what was important: Billy’s semifinal game that night against Dalton. “Dalton, Sally!” you said, like it meant something to you, but I couldn’t imagine what.

  “If they win, they have a chance at being state champs,” you said.

  “Mom actually said you can go?”

  It was rare for Mom to break her own rules. Mom ran a tight ship, which is something she liked to say a lot, just before she looked to Dad for confirmation about something. “What do you think? Richard?” And then Dad would take a sip of his beer. Dad didn’t normally make the rules, but he had the power to veto them. Once canceled a trip to Hershey Park because we lied about cleaning our room.

  “They said it was fine,” you said, with less enthusiasm than I expected, as though you had negotiated a successful business deal with them. “I’m sixteen. I can do what I want. Why don’t you mind your own business?”

  You leaned close to our bedroom mirror to apply Mom’s lipstick. Then, you blotted your lips with a tissue, which was something I had only ever seen Mom do, in the car, before we headed into the grocery store or the mall. A familiar gesture, but watching you do it gave me that strange feeling again, the same feeling I had earlier that morning before school when you leaned into Billy at our kitchen counter and said, “Congratulations, baby,” because Billy showed us the 60 he got on his Global Civ quiz. And I was confused. When did you start calling him “baby”? And since when was 60 a good grade? I would have cried if I got a 60, even on a quiz, but Billy was pleased. All Billy needed was a passing grade, he said, because he had gotten into college that week—a scholarship to play ball at Villanova. But you were only a junior. You still needed to get As on your quizzes and tests, if you wanted to get into Villanova and join Billy one day.

  “Sally, I need you to take notes on the State of the Union for me while I’m gone,” you said, pulling away from the mirror. And suddenly, just like that, you were Kathy again. My sister, who always needed something from me, and what a relief. “There’s going to be a quiz on it in history first thing in the morning.”

  Though I admit, I would have liked it to be something bigger than that. Something involving your boyfriend.

  “What’s the State of the Union have to do with history, though?” I asked. “It hasn’t even happened yet.”

  “But it will happen,” you said. “One day, it will be history. You don’t know what’s history as it’s happening. That’s what Mrs. Klausterman said.”

  You leaned forward to sweep shadow across your lid.

  “But how do I know what to take notes on?” I asked. “I’m not even in the class.”

  “Just write down everything that sounds important,” you said.

  “But how do I know what’s important?”

  This had been a problem for me lately. Everything I thought was important was turning out not to be important. Like school nights. Like the myth of Philomela, which I had taken two pages of notes on because Mrs. Framer had talked about it for nearly twenty minutes, and then it wasn’t even on the test.

  But you weren’t concerned. “You’ll figure it out,” you said to me. “You’re smart.”

  You plucked two gold hoop earrings from your jewelry box—real gold, a Christmas gift from Billy. As you slid one through your ear, I picked up the other.

  I was surprised by how heavy it was. It felt real in my hand, like the weight of the world you were about to enter with Billy. I couldn’t bear the thought: soon, Billy would be at college, and then a year later, you would join him. And what would happen to me?

  “I can’t believe Billy is going to college next year,” I said.

  “Why not?” you asked.

  Because it was Billy, the boy who was so stupid, he jumped off the school roof. The boy who was so stupid, he always dove headfirst to get a ball. The boy who got the first question wrong on his Global Civ quiz: Who was Socrates? And Billy had no idea. Billy wrote, “Socrates was a man of his time.”

  “Because,” I said, “he doesn’t even know who Socrates is.”

  “What does that have to do with anything?” you asked.

  “It just seems like if you’re going to college, you should know who Socrates is.”

  “What, is that some kind of admissions test? You think the basketball coach cares about that? Is that how you’re going to pick a husband?”

  You looked back at yourself in the mirror.

  “I take you, Billy, to be my husband, for richer or poorer, in sickness and health,” you said, dramatically to yourself. “Assuming you know who Socrates is, of course.”

  I laughed. I swallowed.

  “Are you going to marry Billy?” I asked.

  You were too young to get married. But you had already done things with Billy that I couldn’t have ever imagined you doing, and so what did I know?

  “Maybe,” you said. “Now give me the other earring.”

  You started to slide in the other gold earring when the doorbell rang. Your hand shook, as if you could feel whatever your boyfriend did with his hands, and you dropped it on the desk.

  “Tell Billy I’ll be down in a minute,” you said. “Oh, and Sally, don’t tell Mom and Dad you’re taking notes for me. Mom won’t let me go out if she knows I’ve got homework to do.”

  I didn’t like lying to Mom. Mom always knew. Mom said that lies showed up as white spots on our fingernails. Mom made us put our hands on the table whenever she suspected we were lying, and, of course, we always had a ton of white spots on our nails. We confessed—yes, we were watching Jillian Williams. Yes, we were making prank phone calls. Sorry, Mom, so sorry, but apologies were never enough. “Up to your room,” she would say, “and don’t come out until you’re ready to respect the truth.”

  But I was willing to risk it that night. I loved keeping your secrets more than anything. It was the only thing that made me feel like I was still your sister.

  “I won’t tell anyone,” I said, and then ran down the stairs, so excited to greet Billy.

  * * *

  “Billy!” Dad said.

  “Hi, Billy,” Mom said.

  Billy had brought flowers, as usual.

  “What’s the occasion?” Mom asked, as she put them in a vase.

  “My dad likes to say that there shouldn’t need to be an occasion,” Billy said.

  “A smart man,” Mom said.

  You rushed down, grabbed Billy’s arm. It was a quick exit, over as soon as it began. “Bye!” you shouted at us, like we were all the same person, and then you slammed the door. Mom poured herself a glass of wine and Dad poured himself a beer, and they clinked glasses.

  “To us!” Mom said.

  “Everything really has gone according to plan, hasn’t it?” Dad said, and then provided evidence: We’ve got two beautiful daughters, we take vacations twice a year, we even had a deck with a water feature, not to mention a new car that tested well in mock safety crashes. That was actually Dad’s toast.

  “And Billy,” Dad said. “He’s not too bad.”

  “I like Billy a lot,” Mom said.

  “He’s a really great ball player,” Dad said, because that was how Dad complimented Billy. “A tall kid who can actually handle the ball.”

  Mom stuck her nose in the flowers he brought.

  “On a Tuesday,” Mom said. “So sweet.”

  “His dad is a florist,” I finally said, because I couldn’t take it. “He gets them for free.”

  “Oh Sally,” Mom said, “don’t be like that.”

  She patted me on the head, like I said something embarrassing, but she was the one with orange pollen on the tip of her nose.

  “You’ve got something on your nose,” I said.

  Mom went to the mirror and Dad put his arm around me.

  “Let’s go watch a movie,” he said, and I followed him into the living room.

  Dad started flipping through the channels, until he stopped on a western. I don’t remember which one, but I remember it was a western because the screen was very yellow and everything always looked very yellow in a western, as if the world had been left outside for too long and gone bad.

  “Ah! John Wayne,” Dad said. “This is a good one, Sally.”

  “What’s it about?” I asked.

  Dad didn’t remember. On-screen, cowboys started shooting Native Americans, for no reason that I could understand. There was a lot of death, but never any blood. People shot dead like milk bottles off the wall. And a blue-eyed girl who had been abandoned by her man in Apache territory, which was all anybody knew about her, but enough to make us, and John Wayne, fall in love with her. I remember worrying for her, as various men approached her cabin, I remember wondering if she would live or die, and that’s when the president came on TV and interrupted our regularly scheduled program.

  “Aw, come on!” Dad exclaimed. “This man won’t leave us alone.”

  “It’s the State of the Union,” I said. “All the presidents do it.”

  “But this one enjoys it too much, don’t you think?” Dad asked.

  I didn’t know. I didn’t know much about Bill Clinton. I almost never thought about him. All I knew was that now it was my duty to watch him speak.

  “I have to take notes,” I said.

  “Take notes on what?”

  “Everything the president says that’s important,” I said.

  Dad laughed. “Ha! Good luck with that,” he said. He changed the channel, started searching for something else.

  “I have to watch it,” I said, more firmly this time. I sat on my hands so Mom couldn’t see my fingernails, just in case. But Mom didn’t turn around. She was curled up on the floor.

  “Richard,” Mom said. “Put the president back on.”

  Mom was no longer a teacher, but she still had that voice, the kind that convinces people it’s very important to do whatever it is they don’t want to do. That’s how she got Dad to put the president on. But he wouldn’t go down quietly.

  “You want to know a secret, Sally?” Dad asked.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “The only reason your mother wants to watch the State of the Union is because she thinks the president is handsome,” Dad said. I waited for Mom to disagree, to get embarrassed, but she didn’t. Only I got embarrassed. Mom was on her second glass of wine. Mom just shrugged and said, “He’s got very nice features.”

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” the president said on TV. “The state of our union is strong.”

  Everybody in the audience stood up and started clapping for a long time.

  “Are you jotting this down, Sally?” Dad joked. “This is very important. A bunch of people are clapping.”

  “I am,” I said. I knew Dad was joking, but I wasn’t. We couldn’t possibly know what was important yet—not until after the test was taken, not until after the State of the Union was over. That’s what I was learning. So I had decided to write down everything the president said, just in case.

  The president was wearing a black suit.

  The president had bags under his eyes.

  The president seemed very tired.

  But this was not a time to rest.

  It was a time to:

  Build a new America!

  Cure diabetes!

  Not to mention AIDS!

  The president wanted to save a lot of things, like Social Security. The national parks. Not to mention, all of the children. Everybody was invited to the discussion about how to save the children. The circle of opportunity here was very wide.

  “This is a new world,” the president said.

  “It certainly is,” Dad agreed.

  He took a sip of his beer. Then he cleared his throat, which meant he was about to give a public service announcement. “This is a great time to be alive, you know. Life used to be hard.”

  Reasons life used to be hard, according to Dad: If we lived “way back when,” I would already have two kids, and you would be pregnant with your third, walking across some endless prairie, searching for water in the night. If we ever found it, which we wouldn’t obviously, that’s when we’d step on the rattlesnake.

  “Okay, Richard,” Mom said. “Let’s just watch the show.”

  “It’s not a show, Mom,” I said. “It’s the State of the Union.”

  “Oh, it’s a show all right,” Dad said. “Look at all those people clapping.”

  And that’s what we were doing when the phone rang. We were so committed to watching the show that nobody answered it.

  “Well, isn’t somebody going to answer it?” Mom finally asked.

  “I’m taking notes!” I said.

  “I thought we were supposed to be watching the show!” Dad said.

  “Well, somebody should answer it,” Mom said. “Why am I the only one in this house who answers the phone?”

  “Why would I answer it?” Dad said. “It’s never for me.”

  “How do you know that, Richard?”

  “Because I don’t have any friends.”

  Mom thought this was funny. “Of course you have friends, Richard.”

  “Name one,” Dad said, and now he was laughing, too. “Name one friend that I have.”

  But Mom couldn’t name one. She started to look concerned, until she remembered John. From the club!

  “You mean, Frank? From the gym?” Dad said. “Frank and I aren’t friends. We’re just people who go to the gym. We do sit-ups together. Frank holds my feet.”

  Mom laughed. Mom was a little drunk.

  “Well, that’s something, Richard,” Mom said. “That’s something.”

  Now Mom seemed upset by the fact that Dad didn’t have any friends. Mom had a lot of friends. Having friends was important, she was always telling me. Mom had once gone backpacking through Europe with some of her friends, bought a marble chess set, and ran through the empty town square of Amsterdam at three in the morning, and wanted these things for me, too. Mom believed we were put on this earth to be together, which is why she was always talking on the phone with Mrs. Mitt or Mrs. Mountain, always coordinating group trips to the grocery store so nobody would have to go it alone.

  But Dad was like me. Dad was always alone. Because when he was alone, he could get things done. He could work in his wood shop or sit out on the deck with a big thick book and a smoky-looking beer and enjoy the silence. Being totally friendless, Dad said, was what being a father was all about.

  “What do I need friends for anyway?” Dad said. “I have you guys.”

 

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