How to Be a Sister by Eileen Garvin (icecream ebook reader .TXT) 📗

as she passed, and my sister patted her gently as she danced her little canine foxtrot down the trail. We were silent listening to the wind, the creaking of the branches, and Dizzy’s prancing feet in the dust sending up puffs of red-brown dirt. Somehow the scents and colors seemed to intensify, too. We left a quiet in our wake.

For once I didn’t feel like I needed to say anything, and Margaret was all contentment, letting one moment lead to another, not having to ask what came next, when we were going home, where the car was, where Mom was, where her staff members were. I had a great time. She had a fine time, too, I think.

Please don’t think it was perfect. After all, life isn’t a Disney movie. I had to close my eyes and count to ten when Margaret decided that she really did not like the gourmet turkey sandwich I had brought for our picnic and, to demonstrate her displeasure, threw it at my head, mayonnaise side up. Yes, there are undoubtedly more appropriate ways to demonstrate one’s culinary preferences, but at least she didn’t yell or hit me. Or throw her soda can into the brush so I would have to scramble after it. She just looked at me with a bit of outrage as if to ask why in God’s name I would offer her such a piece-of-crap sandwich, and then she threw it at me. I kept counting after the focaccia bounced off my hair and into the bushes, and ultimately decided that $6.95 was a small price to pay for the peace and quiet that Margaret and I had shared up to this moment.

Dizzy was happy to take care of the rejected bun and its contents, and Margaret seemed content with the soda, chips, and cookie in her lunch box. I didn’t even say anything about the sandwich throwing. I just wiped the mayonnaise out of my hair with my napkin and handed over my bag of chips when Margaret had finished hers. She grabbed them from me without a word, tore open the bag, and ate them one by one while Dizzy sat and watched for crumbs. We all finished eating in a peaceful silence.

I still found the “peaceful silence” part amusing. This was the person who had kept me from getting a good night’s sleep for eighteen years and had sabotaged nearly every family holiday and special occasion with some bit of wild behavior. Now, here she was, sitting across from me at a worn, splintery picnic table with the wind and the sun in her face, offering me this tremendous, unlikely gift: her happiness, her contentment, her quiet. Life is nothing if not surprising.

We drove home, down the mountain, past the farms, into the city limits, where the neon lights that lined Division Street were turning on for the evening. When I took her home, Margaret let me come into her house and say hello to her housemates for about ninety seconds, which was a big concession on her part. I knew my limits and didn’t try to stay too long. She had her boundaries, and she was able to be very clear about them in her own way. I chatted with her friends as she stood behind me, nervously twisting her hands, anxious for me to leave, but not knowing how to ask. When I said I guess I’d better go, a huge smile broke out on her face. She gave me the bum’s rush out the door, her signature farewell. “Okay! Bye-bye! Thank-you-very-much-for-the-hike-Eileen! See you later! Bye-bye!” She gave me a firm shove over the doorjamb and slammed the door behind me with great gusto, nearly catching me in the ass. I stood on the porch, laughing, thinking that with Margaret there is never any doubt in your mind about whether it is time to go.

As I drove away, I kept the radio off and enjoyed the quiet. I thought about my big sister and how she kept surprising me. And I wondered about what we might do the next time I came to visit. I recalled the end of our hike when, as we walked toward the car, we hit a stretch of slippery gravel. Margaret had reached out and grabbed my shoulder to steady herself. Here is another of life’s great ironies—Margaret’s fears. This is a woman who thinks nothing about walking out into the lobby of the YWCA totally naked, swimsuit in hand, to ask someone to help her put it on. A person who would probably not think about putting out a fire in the kitchen if she happened to be listening to her favorite record. Someone who has no shame about disrupting a holy mass with some laughter or loud talking. This is a person who, as a child, once rode her bicycle downtown and out onto the highway at dusk. Suffice it to say she isn’t afraid of most things that other people are afraid of, but give her a slight incline and a little loose gravel and she is a bundle of nerves.

With her feet sliding mildly, she had grabbed my forearm with both hands and sidestepped her way carefully down the slope. After the worst of it was over, she let go of me with one hand and grabbed my hand with the other. She held on to me all the way back to the car. I didn’t mind. It was actually very nice having my big sister hang on to me. The physical contact that we take for granted when we are children or when we are with children is not easily sustained between adults. I liked feeling my sister’s slender hand in mine, her long fingers twined around my own in a silent request for moral support. The distance we’d traveled away from each other in the last two decades seemed gone in an instant. The years of anger and frustration and disappointment somehow