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

disorder harder to bear. Whatever the case, for both of our sakes I had made a list of everything we would do that day. Both Margaret and I have always been compulsive list makers. Margaret would fill an entire notebook when something was on her mind, lists of words like “Lake” or “Lunch” or “Mike.” Ladders of words climbed up and down the lined pages. My day planner, less linear, always looked like a key piece of the plotline from the movie Memento. But I figured if I planned out our day and wrote everything down, we could both refer to it if either one of us started feeling nervous. I’d written “Eileen and Margaret’s List” at the top. I handed the notepad to my sister and asked her to read it. She scanned the list and swept a slender finger under each item as she read it.

“Home. Store. Hike. Lunch. Shop. Home!” She ended with a flourish.

“Where are we now?”

Margaret looked out the window. “Home!”

“What’s next?”

She looked at the page. “Store!”

“Right! We are going to the store to buy some snacks for the hike.” And so we did.

Huckleberry’s Natural Foods store was on the south side of town. I was a little nervous about this stop, because the store was also on the way to my parents’ house, and I didn’t want Margaret to think that that was where we were going. Or to insist on stopping by and derailing my plans for the day. But she didn’t mention it as we flew up the hill and pulled into the parking lot at Huckleberry’s. Margaret was out of the door almost before the van stopped moving and halfway into the building when I caught up with her. I grabbed a basket, which I asked her to carry. Huckleberry’s was crowded. Margaret charged through the late-morning throng with purpose, as if she’d won a timed shopping spree. This is just how she moves. Mostly people didn’t notice. Occasionally someone sensed her moving up behind and jumped out of the way, looking startled or irritated. I kept a stupid smile plastered to my face, as if this would somehow ameliorate any trouble. “Hi! We’re friendly! Just a little weird!” That’s what my smile said.

Luna bars, trail mix, apples, and water. With our items quickly gathered, Margaret banged our basket down on the counter. The cashier quickly shifted his gaze to me, because my sister didn’t make eye contact. But he was friendly, nonetheless. I paid. I said thank you. We left.

“What’s next, Margaret?” I asked my sister.

“Hike!” she said. Now she was grinning.

INTERSTATE 90. IT’S one of the longest in the country, stretching from Seattle to the Midwest. For thirty years my family had used about thirty miles of it to get back and forth from town to “the Lake,” which was what we call Lake Coeur d’Alene. The section we’d always traveled took us from downtown Spokane to open land that used to look like country: cows grazing, the occasional horse, homey old farmhouses under the shade of tall willows. Any semblance of country between Spokane and Lake Coeur d’Alene had disappeared during the 1990s. First came the outlet malls, and then housing developments sprang up on the shoulders of hills like acne on a teenager. The traffic was now constant and thick. I wondered where all these people were going and where you might work if you lived out here.

When I was a kid, the open space out here would lull me into a doze by the time we reached our marina. It was a beautiful transition time, taking us from our busy lives in town to the quiet tempo of lake life. All seven of us would pile into a Chevy van with cats and dogs and the birds in a birdcage and food for a week or more at a time. We’d drive to the marina, load the boat, and speed across the short stretch of water between the dock and our place, unload the boat, and then there we were. Our own line of sandy beach, our splinter-inducing dock, deep cool water, and the quiet woods behind the house. Since 1973 this had been our gathering place, this secluded spot with no road. Anyone who came had to arrive by boat and stay after dark. A paradise or a prison, depending on your take. Often for me that depended on what kind of mood my sister was in and what kind of reaction her actions incited in the rest of the family

As I mentioned, we’d had some wonderful times at the cabin without Margaret in the past couple of seasons. My father wrote me an e-mail after the first experiment saying he’d never had a better time. He didn’t mention the fact that my sister was not there. But the rest of us siblings had felt more relaxed because we weren’t holding our collective breath all weekend. Maybe my dad felt that, too. As for my sister Margaret, I truly believed that being out there with all of us had made her unhappy. Not when we were children, but when we were young adults. She never made it through a visit without completely melting down. And when she wasn’t upset, she was withdrawn, listening to her music and rocking, trying to build a wall against the rest of us. On a normal Saturday in July there might be twenty people in the place, all talking and laughing, playing music. How could this have been fun for Margaret? How could she not have a blowup? When I thought of it that way, it made sense to me that my sister was so calm, so quiet when I spent time alone with her. And I could believe, during these hours, that this was a good time, a period of transition into something new and better for all of us.

MARGARET AND I rode along and felt the road move under the tires. Neither one