The Wrong Sister Read online

Come on. Louise stretched and pulled the blanket over her. Sadie kept her eyes wide open.

  In the morning, Sadie was exhausted. She couldn’t remember sleeping, but she must have, because the bed was now gloriously empty. She could look across and see Louise sleeping, her hair tumbled across the pillow. She looked up and there was her father, walking across the room naked. There was his penis! Long and dark, like poop, bumping against his leg. She recoiled and her father suddenly saw her, and he covered himself with his hands. He frowned. “Aren’t you ashamed of yourself, Sadie?” he demanded.

  Sadie shut her eyes so tightly, she saw pinpoints of light. Bill walked to the closet, jerking down his robe, belting it tight, and then strode from the room. She stayed in bed until she heard his car. No one talked about that night again, but Sadie stopped crawling into Louise’s bed. That night and every night after. Instead, she learned to sleep with her covers hooded over her face against the ghosts she heard whispering, calling her name. Her father never asked her to share his bed again, and Sadie never offered. “You’re growing up,” Louise said, approvingly.

  Sadie didn’t realize you could have a different sort of father until she was ten and became friends with a girl down the street named Judy Harper. Judy was skinny and pin-dotted with freckles. She had long red hair and laughed with her mouth wide open. She was an only child and her father was warm and funny, with the same red hair as Judy’s, the same bountiful laugh. He always gave Sadie a hug. He seemed genuinely happy to see her, genuinely interested in what she had to say. He’d sit opposite her and lean forward. “Tell me what’s going on in Sadie’s world.” Mr. Harper piled Judy and Sadie into the car and took them to the park and the diner. He joined in when they sang hit tunes in the car. He gave Sadie and Judy bites of his sundaes, fries from his plate. “Now, what do you say we go shopping?” he said. Judy clapped her hands.

  They went to the mall, to the TeenScene shop. All the new sweaters were in, rows of golds and greens and blues. Sadie flipped the price tag over on one of the sweaters: $80. Louise would never pay that. She got all their clothes in Filene’s Basement. “This, and this, and this—” Judy said, piling sweaters into her father’s arms. Sadie leaned along the racks, feeling her heart split with yearning, and then Mr. Harper came over and studied Sadie. “You know, I think blue is your color,” he said, and then he whisked one off the rack and held it up against her. “I was right,” he said. “I’m going to have to buy it for you as a present.”

  “Oh, yeah, get the blue!” Judy called, grabbing down a two-tone stripe. Sadie threw her arms around Mr. Harper. “You’re the best father in the world!” she said, and he laughed, and she meant it, but not the way he thought.

  She wore the sweater home. She modeled it for Louise and Bill, her face shining. “You have to take it back,” Bill said. “You want sweaters, we’ll buy them for you.”

  “Mom—”

  “You’re bringing it back,” Louise said. “It’s too expensive to keep.”

  “Fine,” Sadie said, bunching up the offending sweater. She never brought it back. Instead she had brought it to school, where she had kept it in her locker and changed into it until it got so dirty and stained, she couldn’t wear it anymore.

  After that, it wasn’t as much fun being at Judy’s house. She began to hate Judy for having a father who asked about your day, who talked to you and took you places and gave you hugs just because he felt like it. She began to hate Mr. Harper, too, for being so kind, so open. ‘Honey, is something bothering you?” he asked the last time she was there. He sat down opposite her. He tried to get her to look at him. “Well, I’m always here to talk. You know that, don’t you?” His voice was kind, but she couldn’t listen. She couldn’t hear. All his kindness did was remind her how much she was missing. It hammered home what it was she didn’t have. It was better not to see him, better not to be reminded of what you did and didn’t have.

  She stopped going over to Judy’s. “But why not?” Judy asked. “I never get to see you anymore.” Her voice was soft, plaintive.

  “I can’t,” Sadie said. “I have to go to the dentist.” Then, while Judy was bowling with her father, or eating out with her father, or watching a movie with her father, Sadie sat in the backyard leafing through magazines, thinking about her parents being killed in an accident.

  Killed suddenly, before they knew what hit them. The cops would come to the door, or maybe a kindly social worker. They’d tell her and then before they could take her to an orphanage, because there was no other place for her, no living relatives, Mr. Harper would come to her rescue. “I’ve always thought of her as mine,” he’d say.

  Sometimes she imagined her parents divorcing, instead, arguing over who would take Sadie. The judge, a kindly man with long white hair and blue eyes, would call Sadie into his study. “So Sadie, who would you like to live with?” No matter how many times she played the game, she always said Louise.

  It wasn’t until Sadie began dating Danny that Bill suddenly seemed to take new interest in her. The week of her first date, he began to ask her questions. “What does this boy do? How did you meet him?”

  “He went to my high school. He’s going to MIT next year. I met him at the bakery.”

  “Who are his parents?”

  “I’m not marrying him!”

  “Things happen.”

  “Bill, for God’s sake,” said Louise. “It’s a date.”

  The night of Sadie’s date she wore new blue jeans and a tight black T-shirt. “Don’t you think your guy would love to see you in a dress?” Louise coaxed. Bill frowned. “You be home by 11:00,” he said. Danny was supposed to come inside, to meet her parents, but as soon as Sadie heard his car, she was so keyed up she bolted outside to meet him. She jumped in his car. He was in a black T-shirt and jeans, too. He smiled at her.

  “Go, go, go,” she ordered.

  He buckled her in beside him in the car, tightening the seat belt, tugging her close.

  They didn’t do much that night. They walked by the Charles River and when she stubbed her toe, she pretended nothing had happened. Her whole foot throbbed, and she was grateful when he suggested they sit on the banks.

  They didn’t talk much, but it didn’t matter. She was already so in love with him he could have suggested they bay at the moon and she would have, so when he took her back to his house, to his parents’ basement, she followed along. He lowered her onto the black leather couch so that when she looked up she saw the Venus paint-by-numbers deer on the wall. He undid her blouse a button at a time, and he shook his head in admiration. “I have never seen anything like you in my life.”

  He kissed her stomach, her knees, knobby as teacups, her feet, her flossy hair. Sadie had never had a real boyfriend before. “I’m not ready,” she whispered, and he nodded at her. He lay back down and cradled her in his arms. “That’s OK,” he told her. “I can wait.”

  She could tell he was asleep by the way he was breathing. His arm was thrown across her, his eyes rolled in dreams, and then she looked up and saw the time. One in the morning. She bolted up. His arm fell from her. “What?” He blinked at her. She grabbed her purse. “I’m half an hour late,” she said, panicked.

  “How can you be so beautiful?” he said, but he got up, he pulled on his clothes and helped her with his, and then right before they got to the door, he leaned her to him and kissed her again.

  She was nervous all the way home, but he played the radio. He tapped his hand on the dashboard. “I’ll come in with you,” he said.

  “No, yes, no—” she said, flustered.

  Inside, the house was cool and dark. “They’re out looking for me,” she said, humiliated. Danny smiled. He tilted her face up to him. “Then we have time,” he said and started kissing her again. She shut her eyes and then she heard something and her eyes flew open and there was her father, in his gray robe, striding out, his face set and furious.

  His robe opened up. You could see his underwear and Sadie flushed, shamed. “
Where were you?” he said. “Your mother is out looking for you.”

  “Sir,” Danny held out his hand. Bill looked at it for a moment and then back at Sadie. “It’s very late,” he said. “You were supposed to come inside and meet us before you took our daughter out.” He looked at Sadie. “And you were supposed to be home on time.”

  “Sir, it’s my fault—” Danny said.

  “You had better go now.”

  Danny nodded. He opened the door and stepped out, and then Bill shut and locked the door behind him. “How could you do this?” Sadie asked.

  He looked at her as if she were a stranger. “How could you?” he said.

  She was grounded for two weeks. She had to apologize to Louise and apologize to her father, but she didn’t care, because every day during her lunch hour at Sweet Dreams, she met Danny and they drove someplace. They went to the next town and had coffee, they went into Boston and walked around and rode on the Swanboats, and they sat in his car and kissed.

  When she wasn’t grounded anymore, he made sure to show up on time, to talk to Bill and Louise and show them the itinerary for the dates he had planned. “Dinner in the Square, then a movie at the Brattle,” she said.

  They never went. Instead, they went to Danny’s house, because his mother was never home. They sprawled on her bed and watched TV or cooked dinner, and then ten minutes before Sadie’s curfew, he drove her home. It was a whole secret world no one knew about but them.

  The first time they made love was in his den. She felt small electric shocks. She tugged back, panicked. “I’m still not ready,” she whispered. He stopped, so suddenly she felt stunned, and all she could think of was how much she wanted his hands touching her again, telling her secrets she didn’t even know about her own self.

  She didn’t know what to do.

  “You’re everything to me,” he said. And then he kissed her neck, her face, her fingers, and then she forgot to stay his hands, to protest. Instead, she shut her eyes. “I’m not ready,” she whispered, but she arched her back, and moved toward him, as if he were her fate. She memorized every part of him she could touch and see.

  Afterward, she was silent. “Did I hurt you?” he asked. She looked up, rolling to her side, her face away from him, and he leaned over to her, brushing her hair from her face. “Sadie?” he said, and then she looked at him. She lifted up one hand and put it against his face. “Mine,” she said.

  It was that summer, just a month after she had started dating Danny, that Bill decided to go on vacation for three weeks instead of two. “Three!” Sadie said. She couldn’t imagine being away from Danny for three days, let alone three weeks. “I’m 17. Why can’t I just stay home?” she said. “I could watch the house, get the mail, water the garden.”

  Bill shook his head. “This is a family vacation.”

  “That’s right.” Louise nodded.

  Sadie argued and fought and finally Louise said, “Well, if you really hate it, you can leave after a week, I suppose. You could take a train back,” and Sadie threw her arms about her mother. Already, she was seeing it. The whole house and no one but her and Danny in it. This was it, she told herself. This was the last vacation.

  The ride up to the Cape seemed longer than before, crawling with traffic. The drone of the radio bothered her. Bill was now completely silent and Louise was talking far too much, making Sadie respond when all she wanted to do was sleep and dream about the way Danny kissed her. Sadie felt cramped in the backseat with the suitcases, the wicker picnic basket of sandwiches everyone was too hot to even nibble at. Her legs were too long. Her arms too ungainly. She sat in the car and thought about Danny. She stared out the window, while Karen Carpenter crooned that she had only just begun.

  Sadie had taken her time packing for the beach, but once they got there she found that she had forgotten essential things. Her favorite sunglasses with the fake jewel tips. Sundresses. Sunblock with such a high SPF factor she could go on the surface of the sun and not tan. The library hadn’t had any books she felt like reading, so she was forced to take a trilogy about a young French wife living in Paris with her husband Pierre. Sadie kept the suitcase on her bed like an open mouth, telling everyone just how Sadie felt about being there. She kept Danny’s photo tucked in the bleary mirror over her dresser and every night she kissed it. She whispered endearments to him, as if he could hear her. I love you. I want you. I need you desperately.

  Desperately. She liked that word. It fit her. “Desperately,” she said out loud.

  Her parents got ready to go to the beach and she sprawled on her twin bed reading.

  Louise came in and frowned. Her curly red hair was pinned up with a flower clip. She was in a bright yellow bikini and flip-flops and she smelled of the Skin So Soft she used to keep the horseflies off her. “You’re not in your suit?”

  “I’m not going. I hate the beach,” Sadie said.

  “Since when?”

  “Since now.”

  Bill walked by, an armful of the ice-cream colored shorts he liked to wear folded across his arm. “Come to the beach.”

  “I don’t feel good.” She put her hand on her head.

  It was four days into the family vacation and her parents were fighting again over what to do about dinner. Louise wanted to go to Thompson’s Clam Bar. Bill wanted to have corn on the cob at home. Bill sat silently in the kitchen, drumming his hands on the table, and finally Louise jerked open a cabinet and slammed two plates down, so forcefully one of them broke in two. “Fine,” she said. “Here’s your plate.” They fought all that evening and that night when Sadie woke up to get a drink of water, Sadie found her mother sleeping alone on the couch, her back to her, the sheets thrown off. Sadie crouched and picked up the sheet. Sadie put it over her. She didn’t stir.

  Her parents fought when they went to Trader Vics, a tacky three-story souvenir shop Sadie had loved when Sadie was in grade school. Her father refused to come inside but sat out in the broiling heat, waiting for them, his eyes hidden behind dark glasses. They fought at dinner, a cheap Italian restaurant with checked oilcloths on the tables, because her father still thought it was too expensive. “Look at these prices.”

  “This is a vacation!” Louise hissed.

  “Can’t you please just stop?” Sadie said.

  “Watch your tone,” Bill said.

  “Eat your fries,” Louise angrily ordered.

  “What did I do?” Sadie demanded.

  “Your fries—” Louise said. Sadie bolted up to find a phone, to call Danny, and found one in the back, and when Sadie picked it up, there was no dial tone.

  She came back to the table to find Bill handing the waiter the money, Louise shaking her head at the dessert menu, getting her sweater.

  On the ride home, no one spoke. Bill turned on a droning ball game, and in minutes, Louise and Sadie began to sleep. Sadie dreamed. Danny was in front of her, telling her something, his words getting lost in the ball game. “Look,” he said. He pointed to the highway, which had forked in two, which was suddenly alive, curling up like a serpent about to strike. And then she heard a shout and a scream, and her eyes fluttered open and she saw that Louise was screaming, too, and that Bill was careening the car down the grassy embankment of the highway, frantically trying to steer, his feet banging on the brakes. The car rolled and bumped. Sadie’s head snapped back. Louise braced her hands along the dashboard, and then Bill jerked the wheel to the side and the car stopped. For a moment, no one moved, and then Louise scrambled out of the car, panting. She jerked open Sadie’s door and then Bill’s. She waited for him to climb out, and then she struck him so hard in the chest, he fell back a step.

  “You fell asleep!” Louise screamed. “You fell asleep on the highway!” Stricken, he stepped back. He ignored her. He crouched and studied the car.

  “We’re alive,” he finally said, but he kept looking at the car, touching it. He reached for Louise and then for Sadie, holding her so close she could feel his heartbeat. But Sadie didn’t f
eel alive. The sun broiled her. The air was thick with its heat. Sadie wanted to be anywhere but where Sadie was, and then Louise whirled around and glared at her.

  “Look at that face on you. You don’t care if we died, do you?” she demanded. And for a moment, standing there in the shimmer of the heat and the road, the cars moving past like a river, Sadie didn’t know.

  They got back in the car. “I’m driving,” Louise announced, and then Bill sat beside her, not saying a word, not commenting on the way she drove five miles below the speed limit, the careful way she took her turns. As soon as they were back at the cottage, Sadie went outside and called Danny from the phone at the convenience store. “Come before I kill herself,” Sadie urged.

  He was driving to see her the next day. She kept repeating it to herself, imagine, he was driving all that way to come and see her! He couldn’t stay, but he’d be there just when her parents went to the beach, which was perfect timing. He’d leave a half hour before they usually got back. She wouldn’t tell them a thing.

  The day Danny was due to arrive, Sadie rushed her parents out of the house. Louise looked at her doubtfully. “Maybe I’ll meet you at the beach later,” Sadie faltered. Louise beamed.

  They were gone only half an hour when Danny showed up, and then Sadie didn’t quite recognize him. Sadie couldn’t tell if anything was different or not. Sadie had never seen anyone so beautiful. Sadie wanted to touch him, to swallow him whole inside of her. It was as if he had a sheen about him, like a kind of suntan oil, glossy and inviting, and if anyone had told her you couldn’t fall in love more than once with the same person, Sadie would have told them they were nuts, because that was exactly what was happening to her.

  Danny leaned forward and kissed her. His mouth tasted like salt, but not ocean salt. More as if he had been eating French fries. They went inside and sat on the couch and he smoked a cigarette and then he leaned forward and touched her, and then they were tumbling. They rolled on the ground, the windows wide open, they made love, and every time she dared to look at him, he had his eyes wide open. He was watching her.