It was a flat grey stone, the kind you found in tourist shops, with pre-set words. What a strange gift from Andrea, I’d thought, and plunked it into my pocket—carelessly. Only later, I found my hand often curving around it, feeling its weight, its contours.
Where was she now?
All those nights I found myself awake, throwing on some clothes. Inside my car, I cruised through the dead-quiet night streets. Sometimes, the streetlights, or the cold probing lights left on in closed stores, allowed me a glimpse of a huddled shape under a doorway, or on a staircase, but they all looked the same. Anonymous. Alien.
Useless to search, but I did, anyway.
Back in my apartment, I opened the fridge, the cupboards, pulling out cookies, ice-cream, cream cheeses, not even bothering with bowls, just digging in with a spoon. The food made me feel nauseous after a while, heavy and sick.
Andrea was all bones when I saw her last. Cheeks like caverns, jutting shoulders-blades, legs wobbly like the stilts our father made for us one year. We’d taken turns with those stilts, standing on the steps to hoist themselves up to the foot rests, staggering, giggling, falling sideways.
My extended family met once a year, at Christmas: aunts, uncles, cousins, talking, eating, laughing. Glasses and cups clinked. Smells of roasting turkey, baked pumpkin, spicy mincemeat everywhere.
No one mentioned Andrea. They’d stopped long ago.
But, for me, that unspoken name was so loud, I felt deafened by it.
The one person willing to mention my sister was Aunt Eddie, and only if she was alone.
I followed Aunt Eddie when she when she headed outside with her cigarettes.
Although I didn’t smoke anymore, I bummed one. “Always think of Andrea at this time of year,” I remarked. I bent to light the cigarette.
When I glanced up, I caught Aunt Eddie’s keen look. She puffed smoke out. “Poor kid.” She swirled the ice in her glass of ever-present gin and tonic.
“The family thinks she didn’t try hard enough.” I pulled on the cigarette. “Then the stealing. I think that was the worst for them. The stealing and the sneaking out.”
Aunt Eddie snorted smoke through her nostrils. “They should have known better. You don’t leave valuables around with an addict in the house.”
“I guess not.” The cigarette was making I feel sick. I crushed it into the ashtray. “Guess, I’ll go in. Cold out here.” She nodded at me.
From the doorway inside, I heard the bustling sounds of voices, laughter. I looked back. Aunt Eddie looked strangely solitary in the darkened verandah. I wondered about her own ghosts.
After one of my late night cruises and binges, I was suddenly, enormously enraged. I pulled my phone from my pocket and stabbed at the buttons. It was after 2:00, but I didn’t care.
My mother’s voice answered, quickly, after only the first ring. Her voice crackled, on high alert, after years, I knew, of middle of the night calls. “Yes?”
“Mom! It’s me! Do you ever even think of Andrea?”
There was a long pause. “It’s the middle of the night, Sonya.”
“I know that!” I pounded one fist on the table laden with cheese sticks, cookies, ice cream dripping in sticky white streams on to the floor. ”Do you? Do you and Dad ever talk about my sister?”
“Your father was crushed,” my mother murmured. Her voice pulled itself away from the phone. “No, just a wrong number, Ben. Go back to sleep.”
My mother’s voice came back on a few minutes later, hushed. “I think about her all the time, honey. But there’s nothing more we can do. So I try not to.”
I felt suddenly, overwhelmingly, worn out. “O.K., Mom. Sorry to phone at this hour.”
My mother’s voice sounded as tired as I felt. “All right.” The voice paused. “Please take care of yourself, I love you.”
“Love you, too.”
The last time I had seen my sister, Andrea had given me the stone. Her hollowed cheeks curved up in the remnants of a smile. “The word are true.”
I brushed my fingers over the raised letters. Sisters and Best Friends, the letters said.
“Thanks.” I’d said, shoving the stone down into my pocket. “Andrea, you were clean for a whole six months. . . . If you could try again,” I took a breath.
Andrea gazed at me. “Maybe,” she said.
I blew my breath back out. “O.K.”
After a while, I stopped my middle of the night searches. I didn’t binge anymore.
The place where my sister sat in my body, in my heart, would always been empty. I couldn’t fill it up. I’d have to live around it.
I enrolled myself back into my final year of university. I made a few new friends.
I was having dinner with my new boyfriend. I liked him more all the time. I was laughing at one of his stupid jokes when my phone buzzed.
“Sorry,” I said. “Thought I put it on mute.”
“Go ahead,” David said.
I unfolded my phone. “Hello?”
Dad’s voice came on. “She’s gone, I—. She’s gone.” He was crying. “Andrea. She’s dead. Overdose. They phoned us.” The voice cracked. “I I thought I’d stopped hoping, but I didn’t.”
I felt strangely calm. “How’s Mom?”
“Oh well. You know. She was going to phone, but I wanted to.” That choking sound again.
“OK, Dad. I’ll come right over.”
I folded my phone back and met David’s questioning alert eyes. “My sister. She’s died. An overdose.”
David grabbed his jacket from the back of his chair. “I’ll drive.”
I stood and pulled my own coat on. I pushed my hand into my pocket, felt the stone, caressed the raised letters for a moment. “Thanks, Dave. I’m glad you’re here.”
I held his arm as we paid the bill and walked out into the dark night.
Share this post with your friends.
