The Sullivan Sisters - Kathryn Ormsbee Page 0,95
should tell people. You know, accountability. That’s pretty big there.”
Claire was remembering two years’ worth of Eileen shutting herself in that garage, the late-night passes in the hallway and the biting sweet stench of Eileen’s breath. The dull eyes, the monosyllabism. She was especially remembering a sentence that could not be unyelled: Better to be a bitch than a burned-out drunk like you.
For all their recent nights of TV-watching and talking, Claire hadn’t addressed that.
“I’m sorry,” she murmured, when the memories had ceased their parade. “Leenie, what I said at the house, on Christmas Eve? I’m sorry.”
“Well. You weren’t wrong.”
Claire studied her sister’s sharp-cheeked profile. With every passing day they’d spent together, Claire had better understood a truth: You couldn’t easily make up two lost years, and the words, both spoken and unspoken, contained therein.
She wondered if it was a good time to bring up the news. Eileen didn’t seem upset, so Claire decided she might as well.
“Mr. Knutsen called the house. He left a message about you missing an appointment?”
Claire braced herself, waiting for Eileen to lose her temper and call Claire a goddamn snoop.
Instead she said, “Yeah, I’ve been trying to figure that shit out. I know Mom said it was our decision, that we didn’t need to consult her, or whatever. But I don’t want to deal yet.”
“Deal with what?”
Eileen shrugged. “The paperwork, I guess. The legal stuff. Like, what’s the point? Until you and Murph inherit, we can’t sell.”
Claire studied her hands. “Maybe there’s a loophole or something.”
“Well, if there were, would you want to sell it?”
Claire considered before saying, “I’m not sure. It’s a house, it’s not Dad. Knowing everything we do, though … selling seems wrong. Like maybe it’s something Dad wouldn’t want. Him, or Patrick, or John.”
Dad. To Claire he was only a fuzzy memory of broad shoulders and a deep laugh. Of a chocolatey cure to a scraped knee. The stories that Cathy, Kerry, and Mom had told seemed foreign to Claire, distant from the dead father and absent mother she’d known. Leslie and Mark may as well have been Wendy and Peter Pan—fairy-tale characters.
“Whoa,” said Eileen. “So, really? No sale? What about the money?”
Claire realized that Eileen was trying to be funny. She’d missed this side of her sister, however infuriating it could be. She’d missed Eileen’s humor, even her jabs.
“I guess money’s not as important anymore,” Claire said. “No college education to fund.”
“Bullshit,” said Eileen, humor suddenly gone. “You’re college material, Claire. Just not for those snobby-ass institutions. You apply next year to colleges you’ll get into. Hell, you’ll get scholarships. U of O would probably offer a full ride.”
Claire looked out on their neighborhood, a stretch of vinyl-sided ranches and crumbling, weed-choked sidewalks. She’d been so singularly focused on getting off this street, she wondered if she’d lost sight of the good on the periphery. Like state schools. Like sisters.
Lately, she’d been trying to focus on what she’d blurred out before. Hard as it was, she hadn’t been making plans. Hadn’t been looking for golden moments. Hadn’t been watching Harper Everly. She’d just been living, taking it in.
“Leenie,” she said, softly. “Are you going to the interview?”
She’d given Eileen everything when they’d returned to Emmet: the artwork she’d submitted, the application, the letter with the interview information.
“Yeah,” said Eileen. “I think so.”
“Then you’ll do the program?”
“I don’t know. I might try. I think I need it.”
Claire’s intestines knotted into a bow. “Well, that’s good.”
Eileen eyed her, saying nothing.
“What?” Claire asked, at last.
“You know, the thing about Eugene … I couldn’t afford the room and board. It’d be a lot easier with a roommate. A rich one, with her own business.”
Claire exhaled. “Not funny.”
“I’m not being funny. I’m saying you should come. What else are you going to do when you graduate? And you can do your business anywhere, right?”
“Murphy, though.”
“We’ll talk to her. It’s, like, an hour away. We can visit her easy. Anyway, she marches to the beat of her own drum, you know?”
Claire laughed shortly. “I know.”
“And Mom, she’s …”
“More here,” said Claire. “Yeah.”
It was true. Mom’s shifts weren’t any shorter, and a tension remained between her and her daughters—syllables that died on the tongue and hugs not quite seen through. But this past week she’d woken the sisters up with breakfast. No gourmet feast, just toasted Pop-Tarts for Eileen and Murphy and a cup of yogurt, no gluten, for Claire. That was something.
“There’s one condition,” Eileen said abruptly.
“Huh?”
“On moving to Eugene. You can’t be whining about