Monthly Story (June, 2024): My Sister's Girl

fiction

We never did find out what happened to Jill for the longest time. My poor, hapless, misguided niece. That first time they tossed her into the hoosegow, we drove all the way down to Philadelphia in the middle of the night. We found Audrey perched on a bench in the police station, a boney-kneed eleven-year-old, dangling her legs and sleepily trying to read a book. They’d locked Jill up someplace else in that same building. You could hear doors squeaking open and clanging shut someplace down the hallways. Echoing shouts. So it was us—Jill’s old Aunt Margaret and Uncle Jim—or foster care for Audrey. I told Jim right then and there I would rip that terrible building apart with my bare hands if they’d tried to “place” Audrey with some stranger. We drove her home before they could think too hard about what to do with her.

Jill got five years. She’d made a real mess alright. “Aggravating circumstances,” the court documents said, but aggravated doesn’t begin to describe how I felt. My little niece who’d come and stayed with me a whole summer while Jim commanded a battalion in Korea—that child behind bars. I couldn’t imagine how she had made such a shambles. We took Audrey home and settled in together. She would have her friends and her school work, but, let’s face it, it must have been like going to live with grandparents. Jill was my sister’s girl, so—formally—we were “Grands,” but kept it simple for Audrey. I was “Aunt” Margaret and Jim was “Uncle” or “Sir.”  Maybe I kid myself, but I think Audrey appreciated that neither one of us were what you would call “huggers.” We never forced ourselves on her, and she gave us a minimum of childish hooey.

We took Audrey to visit Jill a few times, those embarrassing trips through prison security, and Jill called to keep up with Audrey. Marginally. I gave her credit for good intentions, but then she got out on parole and vanished. Poof. Now you see me, now you don’t. That was hard, but, taking everything into account, I’d say Audrey handled her situation pretty darned well. Life had put a worm in her apple and she did her best to eat around it.

Still, it must have been a jolt when her mother suddenly reappeared. A telephone call from the bus station. Poof. Now you see me again. Audrey had finished college by then, found herself suitable employment, and moved in with a boy—“playing house,” we called it, though not to her ears. She’d begun a life. We couldn’t have been happier for her. Then, of course, we found out about the drugs and the drinking. Audrey’s depression had finally surfaced just in time for her mother to show up. To start calling and dropping by, sometimes with a bottle and with strange men who made Audrey nervous. She’d traveled here and there, been to prison a couple of times in different states. And now acting like nothing had happened is how I imagined it. We heard about all of it second hand from people. Who could blame Audrey for falling off the deep end? These things catch us up.

I’d seen my share of that with other officers’ wives over the years. The suppressed pain making its demands. The loneliness. The worry about what their men had to do, where they had to go. How long they had to be away. Raising children by themselves, which I missed experiencing because our life was always Jim’s career. Every social event was a kind of performance. I put on the white gloves and the hat with the veil. Performance. My mother’s pearls. The finest dresses our income allowed. Even playing cards with the ladies. If Jim’s ambition was to be the very model of a modern major general, then mine had to be becoming the very model of a modern major general’s wife. Getting tipsy at cocktail parties or flirting with attractive men contradicted our agenda. I think I was cut out for something more fun loving, but never mind. I played the part fate sent me. I ate around the worm in my apple, too. It was a heartbreak to learn that Audrey had slipped into overdoing the booze. Her fate, I guess. A disappointment, too, if I am honest. We thought we had been a sturdier example to her.

All credit goes to that girl, though. She dropped the boy. She pulled herself together. Managed her mother’s shenanigans without falling back into the same trap. Accepted help. She didn’t say a word about all this until she felt clear of it. “Dried myself out,” Audrey called it. Overcame her mother’s influence, I’d call it.

Then my phone rang.

“She wants to come and see you,” Audrey whispered into the phone.

“Why are you whispering?” I whispered back. “Is she a spy?”

“No, no, no, Aunt Maggie. This is no time for your jokes. She’s in the other room. I don’t want her to hear. She wants to thank you. You know, in person, for taking care of me. She’s in some sort of program.”

“I don’t need to be thanked, for goodness sakes. What else could we have done?”  

Jim had been gone nearly three years, buried in the Quaker cemetery at the far end of our meadow. Not the only military man up there with the pacifists. I owned the plot next to his and figured it wouldn’t be so terribly long until I’d hop in there with him. You have to be realistic about these things. It’s not morbid. We live, we die. My aching, bum hip, and my huffing and puffing on the staircase were kind enough to remind me of that every day.

What would he have made of this? Jill’s return. Or me, for that matter. A me he’d never gotten to know. The independent me I’d had to turn myself into each time they sent him someplace. That me since his death had boldly rented the little wood-framed tenant farmer’s house in the back to a couple of stylish young men who offered to give it the new paint its peeling clapboards cried out for. Jim had been contented with no near neighbors. I can’t say I wasn’t shocked when they painted it red with blue trim, but after they’d planted tulips and chrysanthemums to compliment the lilacs and apple trees already there, I appreciated their whimsy. I baked for them at least once a week, just for fun, and they frequently invited me in to share my pies and dumplings over a nice cup of tea. Maybe a glass of something afterwards, too. Those two boys had better china than I did. Things were looking up, as they say, and I had been looking forward to the day when people would stop introducing me as “Colonel McLean’s wife, Margaret.” Now I wished I could holler him down from his attic sanctuary so we could face this new chapter together. I still knew how to play my part and felt sure that we could put Jill back in her place together. 

“She wants to come here?” I whispered into the phone. “I thought she never wanted…”

“You don’t have to whisper,” Audrey said. “For Pete’s sake. Yes. She does want to come there. To see you. She’s sorry. She wants to say she’s sorry.”

I couldn’t say no. Audrey said they’d drive up from Philadelphia that afternoon. “Then you’ll be here in time for dinner,” I said. “We’ll have a nice meal and you’ll please stay a couple of days.”

Off the phone, I found myself glancing around at our belongings. What would she see and want? Was this nothing more than—what’s the word?—a “casing.” She’d been convicted on drug charges more than once, but her longest sentence came from a burglary she and a boyfriend committed. Apparently it wasn’t the only one they had done for drug money. She’d be eyeballing the place to see what she could get. It wasn’t my niece coming to visit. It was a hardened criminal. Or maybe a broken down drunk. I’d seen that in officers’ wives, too. The pathetic remains. And Jim’s memorabilia alone would be tempting. The ceremonial sword. The pith helmet from the war years in the Philippines. His medals and uniforms, not to mention his priceless gun collection and all his photographic equipment in the attic. My mother’s pearls and my diamond ring, too. Our home would be a treasure house to such a person. After Jill disappeared while Audrey was in high school, I wished and wished she’d come back and everything would be all right again. I saw how Audrey suffered, but then when she didn’t come back I gave up and said, “Fine. She’s deserted her child again. May we never hear another word out of her.” I knew it was heartless to think that way. I had loved her. So like my little sister. At least I thought. This girl would be a stranger.

While I waited for them, I planned the meal: meatloaf, mashed potatoes, and a green vegetable. I could have thawed out a package of green beans from the store, but chose the frozen asparagus from our garden patch instead. Something to brag about. The boys in the tenant farmer’s house always snickered and made admiring jokes at my meat and potatoes cooking. They were well on their way to perfecting the recipes from Julia Child’s French cooking, but I almost immediately discovered that my meals reminded them of their mothers and they were always happy for an invitation. Using them as a buffer between myself and Jill had to have been somewhere in the back of my mind.  

I threw on a coat and walked over and knocked on their door. Manny, the taller and better looking of the two, answered in gym shorts and a sweaty T-shirt, breathing hard. “Sorry, Margie,” he said. “I just came in from my run.” I apologized but then got to work. He and Brad were invited for dinner. Audrey and her mother were coming. The way I said it, I’m sure, made it less an invitation than a desperate plea for help. Brad was stuck in New York for the night, Manny told me, but he swept his arm out in a courtly bow, “Name the time, my lady. I can’t wait to meet the infamous Jill.” I think I relaxed a little.

By the time I heard their car drive down the gravel lane, though, I’d tensed up again. I stood by the window watching as they opened the car doors and eased to their feet. Audrey had that honey blond hair of hers in a ponytail and wore jeans and a heavy sweater. She leaned into the back seat and took out a canvas knapsack I recognized as having belonged to Jim. Touching. She’d kept something of her uncle’s. They’d had a quiet closeness, those two. Her mother took in her surrounding as if sniffing the air, squinting to bring details into focus before motioning to Audrey to open the trunk. The autumn breeze lifted her greying hair in wavering streamers as she strolled—that was the word—strolled to the back of the car. I barely recognized her. Audrey offered to lift the large suitcase out, but Jill waved her off and heaved it free herself in a quick jerk that reminded me of cinching a horse. Well, I thought, where have you been and what have you done? What nerve to show your face after all this time. Where have you hidden the girl I loved? As they started up the walkway, I went over and opened the front door.

Audrey stood back and let her mother go first. “Jill,” I said and opened my arms. She stank of cigarettes. What does one say? Those officers’ wives had been my tribe. We had our own private language. Our own signs and signals. We confessed and advised between the lines. I realized that all those years as Jill was growing up and then as she and Audrey had been living on their own and we visited them, all those years, we had chatted about everything and spoken of nothing. Now all I could do was step aside and say, “Please come in. You are always welcome in my home,” the ceremonial niceties that one hopes will come true.

So, carrying her enormous suitcase, she came in.

“Maybe you’ll want to take that up right away,” I said more to the suitcase than to Jill. “You have the room at the top of the stairs and, Audrey, you know what’s yours.” I’d be lying if I said that huge suitcase didn’t worry me. It looked like she planned to stay a month. Then she must have read my mind.

“Don’t fret, Auntie,” she said, “it’s the only one I have,” and walked past me to the stairs. “Come on, kiddo,” she called over her shoulder.

Audrey followed with a secret hang-in-there expression that I suppose she meant to be humorous. I went to the bottom of the steps and sang out, “Make yourselves at home. There are fresh towels and wash cloths on your beds. Freshen up and come on down. We’ll have dinner in an hour.” She had never called me “Auntie” before, for goodness sake.

I hobbled into the kitchen on my aching hip and called Manny to come over right away. “I need reinforcements,” I barked.

Jill came downstairs first and went straight out to the patio to smoke a cigarette. Well, okay, I thought. I stood at the sink window watching her. “Where’s Mom?” I heard a voice say from behind me. I say “a voice” because I couldn’t imagine Audrey saying that word. “Mom.”

I pointed. “Having a smoke.”

“Oh, here comes Manny,” she said. “Does he know we’re…”

“I invited him,” I interrupted. “Brad’s away. I thought he might be lonely.

She shook her head thoughtfully. “Well, that was nice. At least, I guess it was.”

A moment later Jill came through the kitchen door already in intense conversation with Manny. I silently ushered everyone toward the table, though my signal didn’t divert Jill’s flow of talk a bit, and Manny listened and nodded all the way across the kitchen floor and into the dining room. “They say when you get really good,” she was saying, “you can feel the energy through the sword and then beyond it.”

Good grief! Swords? I imagined prison inmates practicing with swords! Which of course made no sense whatsoever. My mind wandered as I took my seat, thinking there would now be room for general polite conversation. Audrey must have known better. “Mom,” she said, “maybe not everybody at the table actually knows what martial arts are, so maybe explain a little bit more.” She glanced my way as she said this. As a matter of fact, I did know a little about judo and such, but then Jill delivered a dissertation on the various forms and schools of martial arts around the world, rattling off names of places and teachers as if we should all recognize the references. “My teacher,” she explained, “was trained by a Shoalin master who escaped China.” Manny kept nodding and smiling, managing to ask the right questions at the right places. I still can’t figure out how he did it. I couldn’t think of a word to say and the lights started to play tricks on my eyes. I passed the asparagus, ready to lead the conversation around to something closer to home.

“Oh, your asparagus!” Manny said. “This must be some of what I helped pick!”

I was ready to open my mouth for a few words about my garden when Jill clapped her hands and said, “Yes! Wild asparagus, though. Also milkweed flower buds! That’s the thing. You parboil the milkweed flower bud seeds three times and then sauté them in a little butter. Delicious!”

I had the oddest feeling she didn’t want to hear me talk.  

By the time Audrey and I started bringing out the pie and ice cream, Jill had covered the ins and outs of Latin American politics, which she seemed to have made an extensive study of. Then somehow it was the world-wide trafficking of women, then how to build a log cabin, which she and a “lover”—the actual word she used, “my then-lover,” she said—had done in Northern California before “the cops showed up and ripped out all our plants.”

She excused herself to go to the bathroom, and we all looked at each other and breathed as if for the first time since we’d come to the table. Manny raised his eyebrows in humorous sympathy for me. Audrey sent a tight-lipped smile down into her plate and shook her head. I just wanted quiet to clear my racing mind. Jill returned already filling the airspace with more about the building trades.

When Manny tried to interject an account of the home improvements he and Brad were attempting in my tenant farmer’s house, she listened impatiently until the first opportunity to enumerate the tools—brand names, steel tolerances, grades—that every self-respecting home owner should have handy, and where to get the best prices on them. “I’m thinking of starting my own home repair/remodeling business when I finish my program,” she added.

But then she looked away as if she had said more than she intended. Manny filled the sudden silence. “Well, that would be terrific. I’ll bet you could get a lot of business. Brad and I could certainly use somebody who knows what he’s—or she’s—doing,” he laughed. “We’re probably making a muddle of your Aunt Margie’s little house.”

She smiled uncomfortably. “It’s just a sort of dream,” she said. “I’m not ready yet,” which I interpreted as meaning she had to finish this so-called “program” first. “You know.” She shrugged her shoulders. “You need a truck and tools and all that sort of thing. But, yeah, I think I could do it.” She said all this without looking at any of us. I wondered if her real object in coming was to borrow money, but then she said, “I have to clean up the mess I’ve made first. You know. Of my life. I’m not ready yet.”

Manny saved the table from its awkward silence. “That’s really brave of you to say, Jill,” he said. “I think you will make Audrey proud.”

Jill tried not to turn her head, but I saw her eyes. Gesture, I thought. So much of doing the right thing is playacting the small things. “And me, too,” I said. It came out rather unconvincingly, but I suppose I meant it.  

In the next minute, everybody started moving to clear the table. “Oh, please, kids,” I said. “You’ve had a long drive. Go relax. I’ll do this.” I suspected Jill would take the opportunity to smoke a cigarette on the patio, and on that score she did not disappoint. Manny and Audrey drifted off into the hallway as Jill left, and then drifted back to help me once she was on the patio. Manny gave me a quick hug. “Dear Margie,” he said. Audrey let out a sidelong, “Whew. It’s a trip.” I looked out the window to see the faint burning end of a cigarette arch through the darkness and then glow bright as Jill inhaled. Hmm, I thought, slightly surprised at myself. Yes, of course, she would have remembered not to smoke inside my house. A small thing.

Manny thanked me for dinner but then persuaded Audrey to come with him to see the new loveseat he and Brad had recently acquired. “Aud,” he told her, “you have to see it right now. It’s so Victorian!” He was no better at playacting than I was. I could tell they’d arranged this as they’d been whispering out in the hallway. They’d conspired, those two blasted traitors, to leave me alone with our family jailbird. What darlings they were.

By the time Jill came back inside, I’d finished the dishes and was fussing around the kitchen waiting for her. “I guess they left the two of us to ourselves,” were her first words as she came through the door. She’d taken quite an interest in the wallpaper. “Nice of them, huh?”

“Maybe you’d like to go sit in the living room?” I suggested and she nodded. I led the way through the dining room and front hallway and braced myself with a hand on the wall as I stepped down into the cozy room with the stone fireplace. “I could build a fire,” I said. “Would you like that?”

“I always loved this room when I visited,” she said. She still couldn’t look at me.

We stood there a moment, neither of us knowing what to do. Finally, I went to the bin and bent over to take out a handful of newspapers to crumple, grimacing with a sharp pain in my hip. “No,” she said. “I should do that,” and gently took the papers from my hands. I stepped back and eased into one of the wingback chairs we’d had reupholstered when we moved in. Jill squeezed papers into the grill and laced them with plenty of light kindling, then built a teepee of logs around that before lighting the papers. Something in the way she absorbed herself in this simple, unexceptional task reminded me of the little girl I had so loved, maybe how she had looked with her coloring books or playing pretend with the doll house I had bought her. Against my stubborn determination to maintain my seat next to God, Country, and All that Is Righteous, I smiled to think of that absorbed expression as she handled a framing hammer or a power saw. Then she took the wingback opposite me, watching the kindling burn. “It seems so many years since I’ve done that,” she whispered.

Now we sat watching until the heavier wood caught and flamed up. Neither of us spoke. After a while, I heard Audrey come in the kitchen door and through the dining room. I knew if I turned around I would see her silhouette in the doorway. When she flipped the hall switch and tiptoed up the stairs to bed, our only light came from the fire. We sat like that a long time and every now and then, as I turned to glance at her, I saw little bits and pieces of that child I had loved peeking out from the tough know-it-all we’d had dinner with. After a time, and I can’t tell you who began, we fell into talking, remembering the time she kept we company during Korea, tiptoeing lightly into our difficult stories, and then, when the fire had finally burnt itself down into vaguely flickering coals, a grown-up Jill, sweet and sour now, held her doddering old auntie steady as we climbed the stairs and said our goodnights.

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