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

disaster and into a breakup of Dickensian proportions. Somehow I managed to believe this mythology even though my father was a senior partner in his obstetrics practice and we owned a lakeside summer home.

But what caused Margaret to start screaming is really beside the point. Her tantrums were often not connected to anything that the rest of us could understand, even after they were over. She might scream for an entire Saturday afternoon, causing a complete uproar as people either fled, struggled with her, or turned the house upside down looking for whatever object it was that might comfort her—a dog tag in the secret pocket of my mother’s purse, the piece of metal from the center of the record player (which she called “the Spindle!”), or the tattered fragment of an album cover. And even when we never found the sought-after object, all of a sudden she could just wind down, take in a shaky breath, and say, “Okay, now. That’s better.” Then she’d go back to whatever it was she had been doing hours before as if nothing had happened. The rest of us would stagger around feeling like there had been a tornado and we were still pulling pieces of roofing and walls off our bodies and prying nails and staples out of our heads and hands.

This is really the clincher. If you yell or cry because you want something or need something or lost something, the people around you want to help. Usually we can help each other, and we take turns comforting each other in this basic way. But if you can’t tell anyone what it is that you are screaming bloody murder about, no one has a prayer of helping you. The result is dual alienation. I have no doubt that the origins of my sister’s panicked rages were very concrete to her, but because she couldn’t explain them to me, there was a wall between us, and we were trapped on our respective sides.

EVERYBODY IN THE neighborhood knew us, so whoever had called the police had to know that it was Margaret who was causing all the ruckus that day. Frankly, it’s a wonder the neighbors didn’t call the cops more often. That they didn’t made it quite a special occasion to see the men in blue on our block, so I’ll bet a lot of people were peeking out through their curtains when the big uniformed officer showed up on our front porch. I know that’s what I was doing. I saw the police car pull up to the curb as I stood next to my screaming sister in our bedroom, wondering who was in trouble. Then I realized he was coming to our house. I watched him come up the walk, and I pressed my nose against the screen as he disappeared under the eave on our porch. I heard the doorbell ring, and I ran to the top of the stairs to watch my kind, petite mother open the front door. From behind the screen, she tried to explain the situation in her calm, reasonable voice. He let her finish, looked at her like he’d heard it all before, and said something like, “Lady, I have to see for myself.” Mom wearily waved him up the stairway to our room, where Margaret had planted herself.

I stood at the top of the stairs watching him climb. It was funny to see a big police officer shouldering his way up the narrow staircase to the second floor of our house, so out of place next to the delicate pencil portraits of our childhood faces in the stairwell. (There were only four; Margaret wouldn’t sit still for hers.) He ignored me as he passed, and I followed him into our peach-colored bedroom with frilly curtains and matching bedspreads, all hand sewn by my mother. Margaret was sitting on one of our twin beds, quiet for the moment and sweating. Clearly this didn’t look like a den of iniquity and torture. It looked like a little girl’s room. My mother came into the room and stood behind him and told Margaret that the nice man was worried about her. And then the nice man went over to where she was sitting to ask her if she was okay. He said something like, “Honey, are you okay? Are you hurt? Can you tell me what happened?”

After a moment of silence, Margaret took a deep breath and looked at him. Then she reared back, grabbed a fistful of bedspread in each hand, and howled in his face: “WHEREEEEEEEEEE ISSSSSSSSSSSSSSS THE BLUUUUUUUUUUUUUE HAAAAAIR-RRRRRRRRBRUUUUUUUUUUUUSH! I DON’T KNOW WHERE IT IS! DO YOU WANT THE BLUE HAIRBRUSH? AAAAAAAAHHHHHH! AAAAAAAAHHHHH!” Then she threw herself backward on the bed, kicking her legs and thrashing around. The policeman fled, his white face a blur as he rushed by me in the doorway. Clearly he had been convinced that there was no law to be enforced here. I gave up, too, and went up to Michaela’s house. Later in the afternoon she and her parents escorted me home.

Were Michaela’s parents coming to look at my family’s demons that day? Were they were luridly curious, genuinely concerned, or just being friendly? Whatever the case, I remember that it was nearing twilight as we headed down Wall Street. Walking in front with Michaela, I felt oddly formal with the adults in tow as we approached the front of my house. Perhaps that’s why I went to the front door, the same one the policeman had gone to, the one that the rest of us never used. I knew it would be locked, but instead of going around to the side door, where I knew my family would be gathered in front of the TV, I reached out and poked the doorbell, just like the cop had.

My mother came to the front of the house and opened the screen door, met Michaela’s parents, and charmed them like she charmed everyone.