The Saran wrap twists together in my sister’s hands, the beginning stuck near the end and the middle a jumbled mess. Sandra sighs and stretches the material hard enough to rip it. What would happen if the vegetables weren’t covered? I wonder. Marissa walks down the stairs into the kitchen, stopping a step before her expensive heels can click on “cheap, imitation hardwood floors.”
Sandra wipes her clammy hands on the rough black material of her dress. It chafes her fingers and seems to distract her for a moment. I can see Marissa eyeing her, intimately familiar with the way her eyes tighten around the ends when she narrows them, as if a string is pulling them taut.
Marissa stares towards me impassively and turns again to Sandra who is now slowly rubbing her hands together in the hot water of the sink. I move out of the way as she comes closer, careful not to touch her as I know she will not like that. Her eyes look gaunt and the crow’s feet around them are deep enough to swim in. Her face is a mountainous landscape. Her nose, which was once as familiar as my own, seems bulbous in the dim lights of Mother’s kitchen and the dips and depressions of her skin leave her face hollowed like a skull.
“What do you want, Marissa?” Sandra asks.
“Mother needs your help packing boxes when you’re done,” she says snidely.
I snort. “Of course mother needs help with that right now,” I say.
Sandra glances in my direction, but doesn’t respond. I roll my eyes heavenward and look at Marissa who seems to have grown more irritated. She fiddles with the edges of her black shawl, a nervous trait I associate with an outburst of impatience.
“Just do it, Sandra. Mother isn’t much more patient than Marissa,” I say to placate them. As the youngest, I do not expect a response. Marissa and Sandra have hated each other for years and nothing seems meaningful enough to bring them together again.
“Burying her was hard enough for Mother, Sandra. You need to help her now,” Marissa says with less rancor but no less impatience.
I watch my sisters glare at each other from either end of the low-ceilinged kitchen. Suddenly, much to our surprise, Sandra throws the dishtowel into the sink and covers her face with her hands.
The tears flow from her aged eyes and her mouth twists—with disgust at herself for crying, no doubt. Marissa looks as shocked as I am. Neither of us has seen Sandra cry since Mother took away her stuffed lion in second grade.
“Don’t you miss her?” Sandra whispers.
Marissa steps down from the stairs and approaches Sandra hesitantly before I can.
“I don’t have time to miss things,” she says.
“That’s a lie,” I say, my voice raising. Neither of them flinches from my outburst and I am left feeling cold and empty. Could it be the truth?
“That’s a lie,” Sandra says, parroting my words in a quiet voice that is laced with accusation.
I look closely at Marissa’s face. A streak of grey runs through her dark hair and falls into her eyes like a veil. Her blue eyes look dimmer than I remember, as if viewed through the lenses of a memory.
She sighs. “I don’t know if we can fix things between us, Sandy.”
Sandra sniffles and regards Marissa with a trace of nostalgia etched around her eyes.
“You haven’t called me Sandy since before Katie—“ she begins to say as a sob cuts off speech.
“Since before I what, Sandy?” I ask, prompting her, needing her to say it.
Marissa looks behind her at the darkened staircase. I follow her vision and picture Mother weeping over the boxes in the small room upstairs. Something compels me to stay in the dusty kitchen. Marissa turns back to Sandra and reaches out to her.
“Let’s just try. For Katie,” she says and I notice her eyes glaze with a layer of water.
I look at the counter where the uncovered vegetables lay limply on the platter, shrunken on a bed of lettuce. The square of paper next to them has a shiny picture on the front, a smiling girl with blue eyes and dark hair and the addition of a death date.
“For me,” I whisper. Finally, they hear me.