The Oleander Sisters. Elaine HusseyЧитать онлайн книгу.
handed Sis the shovel, as matter-of-factly as if she’d just planted prizewinning roses in a spring garden. “Stow this, will you, Sis? I’m gonna get some sweet tea before I melt.”
Sis held on to the shovel and stared at the Don Juan, paralyzed. Were the bones still under there? Or had Beulah moved them?
Sis had an insane urge to ram the sharp edge of the shovel under the bush and see for herself, but it was broad daylight and there was no telling who might be looking out a window or passing along the street. What would they see? Would they see a decisive woman who never even blinked when she chose family over college, who ate the same thing every morning without once wondering if corn flakes would be better for her than biscuits and bacon, who got out of bed every day at the same time and did her job in precisely the same way without ever stopping to cry over what she might be missing? Or would they see a divided woman split by the need to protect her family at all costs and the urge to discover the truth behind the awful secret in her garden?
It seemed to Sis that the bones under her feet were calling out to her, trying to tell her of something she’d missed, some little clue from her past that might reveal why they were there.
She thought back over the years. Once there had been a mimosa tree where the rose hedge stood. Its twin was still on the other side of the yard, its branches sturdy enough to hold a tree swing for Andy. She tried to remember when the first mimosa tree had come down, but the red petals drifting over her shoes from the newly planted Don Juan brought her mind back from the past and into the awful present.
The back door popped open and Beulah called, “Everything all right out here, Sis?”
“Everything’s fine.”
As she hurried off to the garage to stow the shovel, she tasted the bitterness of her lie. Everything she’d held true about herself and her history was suddenly in question.
She heard the sound of Sweet Mama’s powerful old Buick engine, followed by the slamming of a car door and Emily’s voice. “Andy, be careful and don’t drop the pie.”
She’d followed Sweet Mama to make sure she got home all right, just as she’d promised Sis she would. The pie would be the coconut cream she’d made at the café especially for Jim. Soon Emily would be driving to her own house where she would stand in her little blue-and-white kitchen making cookies for Andy and dreaming of having a family complete with a husband.
Sis tried not to even think about that, about dreams that turned out wrong and dreams that got left in the dust.
“Watch your step, Sweet Mama!” Emily’s voice echoed through the stillness of a clear afternoon. She’d be taking Sweet Mama’s elbow now as they climbed the front porch steps, something neither sister would have imagined the need for five years earlier.
The front screen door popped, and Beulah called out, “Ya’ll set that pie in the kitchen, then come back here on the porch under the ceiling fan. I got sweet tea made.”
Their voices receded and Sis stood in the doorway of the garage, half in shadow, half in sun, which seemed to her a metaphor for her life. Soon she would join her family, smiling while she sipped iced tea and discussed her sister’s wedding. Looking at her, nobody would know she was the keeper of a nightmare, one so dark that if she made a false move her world would crumble. And with it the family she loved.
SWEET MAMA’S KITCHEN SMELLED of fried chicken and field peas cooked with fatback, sweet corn seasoned with butter and sweet potato casserole cooked with chunks of pineapple, each scent as distinctive to Emily as if she’d personally stood at Beulah’s elbow watching her cook for Jim. While Andy began a reconnaissance of the area that included looking in every cabinet and peering out the window, Emily set the coconut cream pie on the table beside a platter piled high with Beulah’s biscuits.
The kitchen was Emily’s favorite room in Sweet Mama’s house, or any house, for that matter. Her best memories were here. She ran her hands over the scarred surface of the table. She’d sat at that same table while Sis struggled to explain the mystery of numbers and her twin brother breezed through the multiplication table as if he’d been born knowing it. She pictured her own little maple table and how Larry would soon bend patiently over Andy, helping him add and subtract and listening to him as he read about Dick and Jane from the first grade reader. Did they still teach Dick and Jane? She could hardly wait to find out.
“Mommy!” Andy tugged at her skirt. “Sis is out in the backyard! Can I go out and make frog houses with her?”
“That’s a wonderful idea. But first go out to the front porch and tell Beulah and Sweet Mama I’m going upstairs to see Uncle Jim.”
“’K!” He raced off, his sneakers skidding in the polished hallway.
“Andy,” she called. “Don’t run in the house.”
“I won’t.”
Emily grinned. Of course he would. What little boy ever walked when it was so much more fun to run?
She got a dessert plate from the cabinet and cut a generous slice of pie, then headed upstairs to find her brother. Beulah said he hadn’t come out of his room all day. When Emily got upstairs and pushed open his door, she saw evidence of his hermitlike day—his bed still unmade, the plate of half-eaten chicken and the glass with ice melting in leftover tea. Jim was sitting in a straight chair at his desk, an open book in front of him, his beard stubble so blond it was barely visible.
“Em!” His smile reminded her of Andy’s, except for the vacant eyes.
“What are you reading?”
She walked over and put her arm around his shoulder, and he gestured toward the page, Constellations and Constitution in Volume C of the Encyclopedia Britannica. He could have been reading about either one with equal curiosity.
“I hope Andy inherited your brain,” she said.
“I hope he’s nothing like me.” The force of his passion catapulted him from his chair, while Emily stood by, helpless. “Look at me, Em! I can’t even stand the sight of my own face.”
“It’s a dear face. I love your face.” She cupped her brother’s cheeks. “Look at me, Jim.”
“Don’t, Em.” He jerked away. “Everywhere I turn I see the eyes of the dead staring back at me. Even when I look at my own sisters.”
He grabbed his crutch and clomped to the window while she stood in the middle of the room wondering what to do. When Andy was hurting she could pull him onto her lap and smooth his hair and sing-song his favorite nursery rhyme. Humpty Dumpty sat on the wall. Humpty Dumpty had a great fall. All the King’s horses and the King’s men couldn’t put Humpty Dumpty together again.
Who would put her brother back together?
She joined him at the window and linked her arm through his, then just stood there, not saying a word, scarcely daring to breathe in case he pulled away. She tried to think of something wise to say, but in the end nothing came to her. In the end she said a silent prayer, not even knowing whether God would listen to something as simple as Help my brother. Help me help my brother.
A breeze came through the open window, welcome after a day of intense heat, and voices drifted through—the indecipherable, meandering conversation of Sweet Mama and Beulah on the front porch and the clear, high voice of Andy in the backyard, peppering Sis with questions.
“Do holes have bottoms?”
“Can I dig to China?”
“Do frogs get married?”
“Is first grade scary?”
“Can I come home if I don’t like it?”
The sun was lowering toward the western horizon, reminding Emily she’d promised to cook dinner for Larry. An