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

there was no convincing Margaret that up is the same as down. She had had enough.

“Lunch?” she asked. “You’re gonna have lunch, Eileen?”

The problem with lunch was that it was fifteen miles back in the other direction. Hindsight told me I should have turned around at the trailhead, eaten lunch, and come back this way before attempting to hike. But I didn’t. So there we were.

“After the hike, Margs.”

We walked on in silence.

“You’re gonna have lunch, Eileen.” This no longer sounded like a question.

“How about a snack, Margs?” I dug in my pack and handed her another Luna bar. She looked down at it, and then she looked at me. The Luna bar bounced off my forehead and landed in the bushes.

“You don’t want the Luna bar, Margs?” Like I was just guessing.

“No! You don’t want the Luna bar. Lu-NA bar! Lu-NA-bar!”

Now she was pissed. She let fly with a string of nonsense words and extraterrestrial noises that were so familiar to me. She kicked her legs against the trail and flung one arm high in the air, ending with an angry “WHHH-HOOA!” I was still in denial.

“How about some trail mix?”

She grabbed the bag from me. I could tell she was hungry in that urgent way that you get hungry when you’re out of shape and asking your body to do something it’s not prepared for. She started shoving chocolate drops in her mouth. I knew I shouldn’t be, but I was annoyed. “Margaret, eat some raisins and nuts, too.”

She complied, but avoided the other dried fruit or chucked it onto the trail, where Dizzy happily chased after it. Margaret was breathing hard and not smiling anymore. It was clear to me that our hike was over. I surrendered.

“Do you want to go to lunch, Margs?” I asked.

“Yes!” Her face lit up, and she jumped to her feet and started walking down the trail, abandoning the trail mix, her CamelBak, and me.

My sister was not much for transitions. On or off. Going or staying. Clothed or suddenly quite naked. These things happened fast. In her mind, we should have been back in the car already. Hurrying so that I wouldn’t lose sight of her, I packed up everything she had left behind, stuffed it into my pack, and started down the trail behind her.

Dizzy was joyful, sensing the turnaround, and bounded along behind Margaret. I was disappointed and trying not to be. I mean, who really cared if we finished the loop? Would that have meant the hike was “successful”? Would that have meant Margaret had a good time, that I was, by that measure, a “good sister?” Was she even aware of my being here? Was she just somewhere else in her head? How was I supposed to even begin to connect with her if we couldn’t talk or sustain some kind of mutual activity anyway? This was probably just my own low blood sugar talking, but I was discouraged. No, discouraged doesn’t capture it. I was being a sore loser, a poor sport. I wasn’t getting my way, and I was pissed. I still seemed to be hung up on some expectation I’d had about how great everything would be for me, for Margaret, if I just tried a little harder to make things work. We headed down the hill, and I moved out in front, grumbling to myself. What I didn’t ask myself outright but was working toward was, Why bother? Why did I even make the trip? Six hundred miles round-trip for what? What kind of relationship could I honestly expect to have with my sister, and why shouldn’t I just throw in the towel? If she didn’t care, why the hell should I waste any more time than I already had?

I heard my sister stop on the path behind me. I turned around and looked at her. She glanced over her shoulder, then back at me.

“Dizzy,” she said, and pointed into the brush.

My dog, who had been off her leash, was nowhere to be seen. She’d disappeared off the trail into the bushes, chasing a chipmunk, perhaps, or, more likely, a phantom crust of sandwich. Margaret turned around now and was gazing into the wall of green surrounding us, silent and waiting. It dawned on me that she was waiting for Dizzy. She was worried about my little dog, or something like worried, and wanted to make sure Dizzy wouldn’t be left behind. She understood that we three were together. This went straight to my heart.

“Dizzy!” I called.

“Dizzy!” Margaret called. “Dizzy! Where’s Dizzy?” She was not using her pissed-off alien voice, but her regular voice.

“Dizzy! Here Diz!”

“Where’s Dizzy?”

“Dizzy, come! Dizzy!”

Soon, we heard the beat of small paws, and Dizzy’s head emerged from a thicket of thimbleberries with great verve. “Ta-da!” she seemed to be saying. “Here I am!”

“There’s Dizzy!” I said.

“There she is!” my sister said. “There’s Dizzy!” She gave Dizzy a pat as my dog leaped back onto the trail and bounded past us. We continued on in a happy silence punctuated by the sound of our eight feet. We reached the bottom of the trail and headed to the van. As we crossed the parking lot, I reached into my bag and took Dizzy’s leash out of my pack. Wordlessly, Margaret took it out of my hand, bent down, and clipped it onto Dizzy’s collar as if it were something she did every day, and led my dancing little dog toward the van. A trio once more, our hearts were lighter: Margaret’s because we were getting ever closer to lunch, Dizzy’s because she’d found some delectable and unmentionable snack in the brush, and me because it always made me feel happy when someone loved my dog. That much my sister could give me.

LUNCH WASEASY. We ate at a favorite family burger joint in Coeur d’Alene, happily getting a place at the counter after a brief wait. We hunched over our burgers in a companionable silence. The place was