LITMIR.BIZ

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miles. That was awesome! I had done it. My convulsive gasping took a while to stop, but after all, what a workout! After twenty minutes or so, I heaved myself out of the chair and downed a glass of water.

      Then I made the large mistake of looking in the full-length mirror. My face was a shocking shade of red. Not pink, not flushed with the glow of a good workout, not even just red. A shocking shade of beet-red. The whole face, just one solid color. My eyes were puffy from sweat irritation, my lips chapped and flaky white, providing the only break from the Crayola crimson. My sweaty T-shirt clung to the doughy skin of my upper extremities and neck. My legs were red and wind-burned, better, I supposed, than the chalk that was my normal skin tone. Oh, well. I was a work in progress, after all.

      I took a hot shower, forced out far too soon by the tiny water heater’s shortcomings. As I made myself a pot of greenish herbal tea, I decided to call my sister. After all, her marriage officially ended today, and I thought I should be, well, sisterly. Still…Trish scared me a little. I remembered her hissing fury when Gran’s will had been read. Trish had received several thousand dollars, a pittance compared to what this house was worth. That was the last time I’d seen her.

      After a few minutes of sifting through papers on my desk, I found her number. The strange area code gave me a pang. She was pretty far from home, our Trish.

      When I’d been in college, I’d called her fairly often for Danny updates, as I adored my nephew, but after he was six or seven, Trish would just put Danny himself on, knowing the true purpose of my call. Or I would talk to Sam, who would give me blow-by-blows of Danny’s Little League games, parent-teacher conferences, clarinet lessons, etc.

      “Hello?” As always, she sounded impatient.

      “Hi, Trish, it’s Millie,” I said, immediately uncomfortable.

      “Oh, Millie. Hi,” she answered. “What’s the matter?” I could picture her fidgeting next to the phone, no doubt with many better things to do than talk to her younger sister.

      “Nothing’s the matter,” I answered, pouring my bilious tea. The aroma of herbal sludge filled the room. “I, um, I heard your divorce was final today and I wanted to see how you were doing.”

      There was a pause. I could sense her irritation coiling like a rattlesnake. “I’m fine,” she said briskly. “Never better.”

      I gritted my teeth. Wishing I hadn’t called, I nevertheless forged on. “Well, you know, you were married for a long time, and I just thought…”

      “Millie, I’m happier now than I’ve been in years. Just because you belong to the Sam Nickerson fan club doesn’t mean that we made each other happy, okay? This is what I want. Avery is what I want. Not Sam. Sam is boring.” There was no greater crime in my sister’s eyes than being boring.

      “Right,” I answered. “It’s just that…I thought you might be down. Seventeen years and all. Thought you might be feeling a little melancholy, but I can see I was wrong.”

      “That’s right.”

      “Okay, Trish, great talking to you. Have fun in the Garden State.”

      “How are you?” Trish asked unexpectedly.

      “Me? I’m good. Great, in fact,” I answered, immediately assuaged by the unforeseen attention. Such was the plight of a younger sibling.

      “How’s Gran’s house?” she asked with only a moderate amount of hostility.

      “It’s getting there,” I answered. “Is there anything you want? Maybe an afghan?”

      “God, no, Millie. Please.” We were back to normal.

      “Well, I’m going over to see Danny later, and I’ll tell him you said hi,” I said, hoping to inspire some guilt. It didn’t work.

      “I called him earlier. He’s coming to visit again next weekend.”

      “Oh.” Our conversation was clearly over. We said our uncomfortable goodbyes and hung up.

      Trish and I were as different as two who shared a gene pool could be. While I had battled crooked teeth and fat as a youth, Trish had floated through adolescence, untouched by eating disorders, pimples or bad hair choices. Trish had been captain of the cheerleading squad. I had been president of the science club. Trish had been prom queen. I’d taken honors biology. She’d dated the football hero. I’d dated not at all.

      In order to dispel the feeling of incompetence and frustration my sister inspired, I next called Katie Williams. We’d been friends since kindergarten, when she’d thrown up on my desk, a bonding experience that has withstood the test of time. There’s something irreplaceable about a person who’s known you since you lost your first tooth, bought your first bra, had your first drink. Katie knew about my undying love for Joe, my plans, Trish, everything. Being the single mother of two little boys, she seemed to enjoy hearing about topics other than potty training and Bob the Builder. And of course, she got free medical care, courtesy of her sons’ godmother (that would be me). At any rate, Katie was my sounding board as I plotted, ranted, raved and fantasized about Joe Carpenter. She had always been extremely tolerant of this.

      Katie listened with false compassion and far too many laughs to the account of my first athletic attempt, sympathized about my sister and agreed to come over for coffee the next day with my godsons. After we hung up, I got dressed, hooked up my CD player and danced around to U2, pretending to be Bono for two songs. Then I finally stopped stalling and got into my car. Time to go see Sam and Danny.

      They lived on the other side of town in one of Eastham’s most picturesque neighborhoods. When my nephew was three or four years old, Sam’s parents had died in a car accident, the result of a drunken teenager smashing into them on Route 6. Trish, Sam and Danny had moved into Sam’s parents’ house three weeks after the funeral. My sister had begun remodeling immediately. A year later, the house was unrecognizable. They’d gutted it almost completely, and in its place now stood a modern, angular structure with huge windows facing the bay. Sam had taken a second job to help pay the bills.

      The modern house was not at all my taste, though I had to admit it was very impressive—large, open, lots of glass and deck space. But it was the view that made your heart stop. The house overlooked a tiny bayside beach. Water stretched out to the horizon, dotted with wooden rowboats and seagulls, cormorants, the occasional swan. You could hear their constant cries, a melody of sea birds, if you will, that blended with the omnipresent wind and gentle lapping of the waves. At low tide, you could walk almost a half mile out, and at high tide, the water was deep enough to swim. Sea grass waved gracefully, deep green in the warm weather, golden in the winter. People, even we hardened locals, came to the beach to get a glimpse of the sunsets that glorified the sky each night. This was what my sister had left for Short Hills, New Jersey, where I hear they have an impressive mall.

      I parked my car in the crushed-shell driveway and ran up the steps. Sam was a cop, and when he was not making the world safe for the rest of us, he worked part-time for a landscaper. His own gardens were spectacular. Even now in March, unexpected green things popped up to relieve the gray and brown of the dormant flower beds. In a few more months, people would be stopping on the street to admire my sister’s former showplace.

      I opened the door and shouted hello. With pounding feet, my nephew came bounding down the stairs like an excited Irish setter. I felt a rush of love and gratitude that even at the advanced and cynical age of seventeen, Danny was still so happy to see me. My nephew seemed, to me and just about everyone else, the culmination of what you’d hope your child would be. Funny, generous, extremely smart, tall and a bit gangly, he also excelled at baseball, truly the all-American boy.

      “Hey, Auntie,” he said, bending down to smooch my cheek. He’d become taller than I was about five years ago.

      “Hello, youngster,” I said. “What are you doing?”

      “Calculus homework. Want something to eat? I’m starving,” he said as we went into the kitchen. Stainless-steel appliances, granite countertops, stark white walls and an unforgiving

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