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

lived in Seattle. For starters, I thought, this visit was my idea. That hadn’t been the case before.

DURING THE SEATTLE years, Margaret’s visits were my mother’s idea. Margaret was living in a group home and had a part-time job at a workshop for people with disabilities. My mother thought it fitting that she take a vacation just like everyone else. Somehow or other, I became the Vacation. Over the course of a few years when I was in my mid-twenties, it became an annual pilgrimage of sorts. “You’re going to Seattle to see Eileen; you’re going to visit the Space Needle,” was how my sister put it.

On some level, of course, I welcomed these visits. They were coming all that way to see me, right? And this was family. Here I was, blindly groping my way through the mysterious rules of our unique family code, bumping up against the acceptable and the unacceptable, all unspoken. I often found myself at odds with what was expected of me and what I really wanted. I did my best to act like the good daughter and kind sister. But every time Margaret and Mom appeared on my doorstep and my sister, ignoring my greeting, shoved her way past me and sprinted into my apartment building with her suitcase, signaling the start of the Vacation, I felt like running in the other direction.

For one thing, my studio apartment on Boren Avenue wasn’t exactly built for three. To make room, I slept on the floor and gave them my Murphy bed. It was a slumber party! Just us girls! But one of us girls kept getting stepped on in the middle of the night by people trundling to and from the bathroom. And that same girl was sleeping on the floor. The floor! Plus, I had become accustomed to my quiet little studio and the delightful privacy that followed nearly two decades of sharing a bathroom with six other people. So I lay awake at night listening to Margaret whisper or snore, feeling invaded, too cowardly to speak up. Why didn’t I ask them to get a hotel room? Because in an Irish Catholic family, asking someone to spend a little money to make life more convenient for you is practically a cardinal sin. So I didn’t say anything. I just became surlier as the week wore on and my sleep deprivation increased. But my mom didn’t say anything. This was the kind of passive-aggressive response my people embraced as normal.

I almost welcomed the early mornings of these visits, because they put an end to my exhausting attempts at trying to sleep. While my guests slept in, I’d get up off the floor, put the cushions back on the couch, shower, and walk downtown to work at the small publishing company where I was the only employee. My boss, a likable, anxious man, always made me a latte from his personal espresso machine during our mid-morning break. As he waited for the shots to drip, he would pull his hair out from the sides of his head with both hands and wonder aloud how in the world we were going to manage to stay afloat for another month. He’d tell me how hard it was to be a small-business owner, always teetering on the brink of disaster. I’d accept my latte, feeling like I might cry, and then I’d wander back to my desk believing I was supposed to save the company. Hours would pass, and then I’d hike back up the hill to entertain my houseguests.

Anxiety had always been a prominent feature of our family culture, a common interest, you might say, but in Margaret it played a starring role. Keeping a certain maniacal sameness in her life calmed her. And unless you were a complete idiot, you’d see that the order kept her happy, so you’d better damn well stick to the program, too. When she was at home, Margaret’s schedule was like clockwork: mealtimes, showering, work hours, bedtime. She rivaled the U.S. Marines for order. It was like boot camp, only she was the troops and the drill sergeant all rolled into one. I imagined that her routine had become even more rigid since she had moved into her group home and no longer had the rest of us screwing things up for her.

Whatever the case, visiting Seattle disturbed her careful routine. Even though she wanted to make the trip, all the change and upheaval was difficult for her to cope with. So, in an attempt to fend off the anxiety created by the change, Margaret created a program for the Vacation. She divided her day into two parts—Before Eileen Gets Home and When Eileen Gets Home. She’d enjoy the day sightseeing with my mother, but all the while they’d be talking about what we were going to do When Eileen Gets Home. At the Space Needle, on the monorail, at Pike Place Market—the conversation was the same.

“Mom? You’re going to go out to dinner?”

“When Eileen gets home, we are going to go out to dinner, Margaret.”

“When Eileen gets home, you are going to go out to dinner, Mom.”

“That’s right, Margaret.”

“You’re going to change your clothes?”

“When Eileen gets home, you are going to change your clothes, Margs.”

“When Eileen gets home, you are going to change your clothes, Mom.”

“That’s right, Margaret.”

“Mom? Mom. Mom, you’re going to go back to the apartment, Mom?”

“Yes, Margs. When Eileen gets home, we are going to go back to the apartment.”

“When Eileen gets home, you are going to go back to the apartment, Mom.”

So it went for eight hours. Unfortunately for me, Margaret didn’t think of this time as After Eileen Gets Home. “After” could have designated an ambiguous stretch of time, aimless hours moving into the evening during which we could do any or all of the things they had discussed. My sister said “when” all day, so as soon as she caught sight of me climbing up to Boren Avenue,