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

me something else I never knew about color and fragrance and growth. I would just have to wait and see what happened. After all, there was no rush.

Like my life, this was just another season.

10.

life is a bowl of spaghetti

There are gentle ways to acclimate your visitor to the way things are in your household and help her fit right in without causing annoyance or conflict on either side. . . . This in no way means that you can insist that she do everything your way—after all, she is your guest and her happiness and comfort are important, too.

 

—On House Guests, EMILY POST’S ETIQUETTE

MARGARET WASSCREAMING, and the whole world stopped. We were trapped, all of us, inside the sound of her voice, a piercing, anguished wailing that felt like it would never stop. Somehow I couldn’t remember the sound of the world before, when it had been quiet and calm, when we had all been walking down the street together just talking, the five of us. Before we got in the car. Before Margaret had started screaming.

My mother was in the driver’s seat, sitting across from Margaret. Mom was speaking, but I couldn’t hear the sound of her voice or make out what she was trying to say. Her face looked calm from where I was jammed between Brendan and his best friend, Rob, in the backseat of my mother’s ancient Mercedes. We were on our way to dinner. We had been on our way to dinner. And then Margaret couldn’t find the case to the tape she had been listening to all day—Ravel’s Bolero. Then the world tilted, and we were all trapped by the panicked loss of a piece of plastic.

Before the screaming started, I had been experiencing a family visit. I can’t say “enjoying,” because that isn’t really accurate. This was the mid-90s, and my mother had driven herself and my sister across Washington State to come stay with me in Seattle. Bolero was blaring out of the speakers when they pulled up to the curb outside my apartment on Capitol Hill. The car was still moving when Margaret threw open the car door to greet me, and the crescendo of Ravel’s march came with her. It was like a parade. “Hi, Eileen! You’re going to see the Space Needle!” Margaret said. Without having to ask, I figured they had probably listened to Bolero over and over again during the three-hundred-mile drive—through the desert, across the Columbia River, up into the mountains, over the pass, and down into Puget Sound. And I knew then that Bolero would be our soundtrack for the week. This was my sister’s way. She’d choose a theme song—or, if we were luckier, a whole theme record—which she would compulsively play again and again for a period that might last days, or, in some cases, years.

I stood on the curb feeling depressed as I watched my sister climb out of the car. I knew Margaret had been looking forward to this visit. With her severe autism, my sister does not have a long list of hobbies. It was difficult for us to find activities to share with each other. But car travel she loved. The elevator in the Space Needle, ditto. The Seattle Aquarium, the monorail, seeing me—it all seemed like a perfect combination, for her at least. But even with her excitement on the first day, I knew from experience what a challenge she could be as a guest. I knew what kinds of things could happen. As they eventually did: The case to the Bolero tape had gone missing, and she had just lost her shit.

We were all locked into the car. Even if the door locks hadn’t been automatic, none of us would have been able to move anyway. The force of my sister’s rage had rendered everyone immobile as we watched her sound off. Margaret screamed with her whole body, her entire, powerful 180-pound body. Her torso was the instrument of her rage. Her mouth was open wide, and the scream went on and on in between breaths. She arched her back and launched herself against the back of her seat, slamming herself against it so hard that I thought she might join us in the backseat. Eyes closed, she kicked her feet, grabbed the sun visor, the glove box, anything she could put her hands on. Her cry, which had started as a question, had become a howl of despair. It was like being in a tornado. We were all just sitting there, packed into the car like pickles in a mason jar, watching. Even though I couldn’t hear her, I knew my mother was trying to reason with Margaret, but I doubted my sister could hear anything at all. The old sedan rocked from side to side with the force of my sister’s rage. Brendan and Rob looked terrified, and I couldn’t quite believe that the police hadn’t arrived yet.

Why did she need the tape case? I would never know the answer to that. But the loss had set off an uncontrollable, raging panic. I had lived with her for eighteen years, shared a bedroom, a bathroom, hundreds of holidays and special occasions. My parents had lived with her for twenty-one years. Nobody had figured it out. What were we supposed to do? Why was she doing it? When would she stop? What should we do next time? We couldn’t actually ask these questions when we were in the thick of it, because the screaming was all we could think about. It was like being caught in an avalanche: You can’t recall what you learned in snow safety class, because you are too busy fighting to stay alive. Even by the time I had moved to Oregon, I hadn’t found the answers to these questions. But I could say this much: It was quite something to be in the same situation time and time again