Becoming My Sister

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  prologue

  “I’ve seen you here from time to time,” the elderly man said after I entered the lobby of Golden Ages.

  He surprised me. I hadn’t seen him there in one of the big cushion chairs until I was well into the waiting room and past the shaft of light streaming through the open walnut shutters.

  His glasses seemed wrong for someone his age. They had pinkish frames and extra-large lenses, which made me think of a young Elton John. He wasn’t gaunt; however, the thinness in his frame suggested he might be in his late eighties. Gray hair ran a little long around his ears and down the back of his neck. Small brown age spots peppered his forehead. He must have been a redhead or maybe a blond with a fair complexion because he still had freckles, too.

  He wore a dark blue turtleneck sweater with a pair of fading baggy blue jeans and couldn’t have been more than five foot seven or eight. Yet he appeared to have long legs. With his black running shoes and thick white socks, he had the look of someone who had once been quite athletic, perhaps a runner.

  “Yes, you have,” I said, and sat on the beige leather settee across from him and slipped my paisley triple zip messenger bag off my shoulder, clutching it in my lap like someone who feared it would be snatched. Today I was wearing my Bohemian V-neck long-sleeved single-breasted dress. I wasn’t always so fashion-conscious. My sister, Gloria, was more like our mother than I was, a fashionista, who would fine you for matching the wrong shirt with the skirt.

  Although long-sleeved, my dress was a light cotton. It was early fall, but by the tips of its fingers summer was hanging over the gorge of darker, cooler days and nights. Leaves had yet to turn, even at the higher mountain elevations.

  “I thought so,” the elderly man said, looking relieved that I had verified his suspicion.

  However, I was a little defensive about it, annoyed that anyone had been watching me and keeping track of my visits.

  “From time to time, when I can, I come,” I said, sounding more like my mother, who could turn a consonant into a razor blade in your ear when she was even slightly irritated. “I live some distance away. Laguna Beach. On a hillside just across from the beach. It’s not an easy ride, traffic the terrible way it is all day in both directions.”

  “Ahhhh,” he said, as if I was examining his throat. “It’s still very nice that you try to visit as often as you can. Sometimes I’m here almost all day and no other visitors for anyone else appear. House of the Forgotten.”

  “Yes, it’s easier to forget and not confront something you cannot change.”

  He nodded and smiled. “When my partner has a lucid moment, he accuses me of putting him in storage.” He shrugged. “What else is it, really? I know there is no hope he’ll recover. Once everyone accepts it, including me, he’ll really go into storage.”

  He uncrossed his legs and sat straighter in the way a man might who thought that to continue to do otherwise when speaking to a woman would be impolite. I relaxed a bit because it brought a hidden smile to my face. Long ago I had learned that a smile leaves you vulnerable. You look too innocent, too gullible and eager to please. Spend fewer smiles, suffer less disappointment. That was what I had come to believe.

  But there was something old-fashioned and romantic about his appreciation of the way a woman sitting across from him might feel looking at a man who appeared so indifferent, slouched with his legs apart. My father had been aware of how important the little things could be, especially with women. He was always rising to pull out my mother’s chair and opening and closing doors for her. “Your wife is your queen,” he often had said, especially if another man looked surprised or didn’t do as he did.

  My father was gallant and my mother graceful and elegant, especially in public. I would reluctantly give her that. She moved slowly, her posture perfect, and when Daddy did something courteous for her she always made sure to say, “Thank you, Alan dear.” She smiled at my father as if they had just started dating and he was doing it for the first time.

  My sister, Gloria, and I would look proudly at each other. Who didn’t think we were the perfect family? Other husbands and wives surely dreamed of someday becoming like our parents, who seemed to wear invisible crowns. They could part a sea of people, everyone vying for their personal greeting. My mother never shook hands; she bestowed a touch or blew an air-kiss like an actual queen might. She clung to my father’s arm when they walked in public or entered a room. They moved with such synchronicity that someone would think they were attached at the hip. He never walked ahead of her.

  I thought about couples dating today or young marrieds. I didn’t know whether to blame the women for wanting to appear independent or the men for being self-absorbed, but rarely did I see a couple practice such chivalry. Whatever the reason, the gaps between generations often seemed like canyons. My generation especially appeared to be oblivious to the little things that made their partners comfortable. Some couples looked as if they were moving in separate dimensions. As we were growing up, especially when we were in our teens, I often pointed that out to my sister, who would laugh and tell me I was being hypercritical. “But they ignore each other,” I insisted. “They’re not like Mother and Daddy.”

  “I’m sure they care for each other deeply,” Gloria would say. “They simply show it in other ways, private ways, Gish. Don’t worry about it.”

  I wasn’t worrying about it, not like she was implying. I was worrying about ever meeting a man who would be as devoted to me as Daddy was to Mother.

  Besides, Gloria was so forgiving. I had despised her faith in the goodness of people and then eventually envied her for it when I came to understand that cynicism and cold realism baked a crust over your eyes. Everything beautiful, everything hopeful, gets filtered until it’s too thin to matter. Cynicism verifies the inevitability of unhappiness. No one knew that better than I did.

  The old man in the lobby was waiting for me to say something insightful, something beyond small talk. I could see the hope in his eyes. He would finally have a real conversation with someone here.

  “What does your partner have? What’s the diagnosis?” I asked.

  This wasn’t exactly an adult residence. Clinic was the operative word. Expensive followed on its heels. And as the old man had suggested, from here a hearse might take you off or an ambulance might transport you to the sister facility with a similar but not as stylish waiting room and what was known as hospice care. Anticipating Mother going there soon, I had visited it and couldn’t leave fast enough. There, clocks ticked down, oxygen tanks emptied, and death swept through like some eternal vacuum cleaner sucking up souls.

  “Dementia, creeping dementia,” the old man said. “It became dangerous to leave him alone. That included my taking a nap or oversleeping. Twice he wandered off and the police brought him back. I resisted as long as I could. I’ve never liked facing reality. I’m the dreamer; he’s the realist. If he could, he would have checked himself in here and then called to tell me. That was my guy, my guy,” he said, his voice drifting. “We had a wonderful life together.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. It wasn’t simply something I would say because it was expected. I cherished my words. And I really had come to think of old age as more of a disease, something worthy of pity and compassion. Maybe that
was because I could see it eventually waiting out there for me, too, hungrily rubbing its palms and holding out its arms, despite how young I was. Mother had tried to wrestle it down with her plastic surgeries, her hair treatments, and her expensive makeup. In the end, age wove its persistent wrinkles through her like a spider would weave a web.

  “It’s funny,” Gloria once said, “but when you see an elderly man struggling to walk or something, you can’t help but feel sorry for him, even if he was just released from prison for doing something terrible.”

  “Lady Jesus,” I called her, and she laughed. We were in high school by then. People paid more attention to your words when you were beyond just being cute.

  “I like your hair,” the old man suddenly said, surprising me. With the light in his eyes and the softness in his smile, he looked like he had suddenly fallen back in years.

  “Thank you.”

  I had my espresso-brown hair in a layered bob. Older men were usually a little hesitant about commenting on my hair or my clothes. Some looked uncertain about how their words would be taken, even afraid they were crossing a line. Despite being in my twenties, I knew I still looked like a teenager. But most men I had met certainly would risk it. Women rarely flirt when they’re older; men never seem to stop, even to their last breath. Daddy was like that, especially when he was introduced to an attractive woman. There was a brightness in his eyes, the green specks dancing around the blue. Mother’s friends said his smile could melt an iceberg, not to mention their hearts. She nodded, forcing her own smile. She was never good with jealousy. It brought out the knives.

  “What are those flowers woven into your hair?”

  “Baby white roses,” I said.

  He closed his left eye like someone aiming a rifle. “Poet, artist?”

  “I’m an artist, painter.”

  He nodded. “I used to design custom-made furniture. My partner was an accountant. He was the one who looked after us, the stable one. He had a very good 401(k) in place, thus we could afford this. I’m probably not that far behind him. I’m already quite forgetful.” He leaned forward to whisper. “I have a note on the inside of the front door that reads, Did you zip up your fly?”

  He laughed, but I simply stared at him. I was never very good at pessimism. His face quickly folded into the serious puddle of age again.

  “So who are you here to visit?”

  “My mother,” I said.

  “And your father?”

  “Died a little over ten years ago. Heart failure. In his sleep.”

  “Oh? Sorry.” He thought a moment and then said, “I wonder if women still outlive men.”

  “I don’t know. I never paid much attention to statistics. There are always too many exceptions.”

  “Exactly. Hope is based on that,” he added. “So… your mother…”

  “Is being given a bath.”

  “Ahhhh,” he said again. “Dementia?”

  “No, it’s a little different. Complicated,” I said. What a perfect word, I thought, so serviceable, the perfect I don’t care to discuss it answer.

  He nodded and looked around the waiting room, shifting his eyes from me because I had established a firm boundary around what was clearly personal.

  “I came in here a little while ago because I started to feel alone. My partner drifted way off, so I figured I’d wait another hour or so and go back to see if he’d returned to earth.”

  He clasped his hands in his lap and looked down at them. His age began rushing back again as if the tide of time had instantly changed.

  “You call him your partner? Never legally wedded or…”

  “Civil stuff. Neither of us cared about titles. Although I wouldn’t pass up a lordship.”

  He smiled. Neither of us spoke. One of the nurses stopped by, looked at us, and walked on.

  “We almost adopted, you know.”

  He was so eager to talk about himself that it felt like a sin to ignore him.

  “Really? Adopt?”

  “I wonder how we would have done as parents, whether he or she would have come to see either of us in a place like this, whether they would have cared at this point, and whether they would have realized the importance of it.”

  “There’s one test of that,” I said. “One question to answer.”

  “Oh? What?”

  “Is your daughter or son visiting for you or for herself or himself?”

  “Very interesting thought. And how do you answer that, if it’s not too personal?”

  “No, it’s not. I’m here for myself,” I said. “My mother stopped needing me long ago, long before she was brought here.”

  He widened his eyes and froze for a moment. Before he unfroze completely, another nurse came to the door and nodded at me.

  “Nice meeting you,” I said, rising. “I hope your partner returns to earth, at least for today.”

  He stared, looking like someone unable to speak. I could see it in his eyes.

  He was still trying to digest what I had said about my mother.

  chapter one

  For me more than for my sister, Gloria, our house was always full of echoes, and not because our house was vast and cavernous with high ceilings and long hallways. It was bigger than most homes, but it wasn’t a castle. These were the echoes of voices from the past speaking softly. I remember playing alone in my room with a hand-me-down doll that originally had been given to Gloria, and hearing whispering outside my door, sometimes so loud I finally had to get up to peek down the hallway. If I looked, the whispering always stopped. I’d wait and wait and then rush back to the doll and hug her, patting its almost human hair.

  “Don’t be afraid,” I’d assure her with my eyes on the doorway. “These aren’t bad ghosts.”

  Our house had once been the home of a famous silent-movie star who frequently threw glamorous parties right up to and through most of the 1960s. According to Mother, anyone who was anyone during the golden age of Hollywood and right after had come here, slept here, and partied into the “wee hours” in our living and dining rooms. Chefs and servants ran back and forth from the long, restaurant-sized kitchen with trays of hors d’oeuvres. Champagne bottles were popped so quickly that they “sounded like a tune.” Often the guests reveled outside on our beautiful grounds, sitting and dancing on the patios. Musicians played under large umbrellas. There were dramatic lights. There always had to be lights. These were movie stars.

  As if she had been there at the time, Mother described in great detail how the house had been filled with laughter, music, and the clinking of champagne glasses, all of it being more significant because of the overlay of fame.

  “These weren’t just any parties,” she bragged. “They were parties that were written up in the newspapers, reported on the radio and on television. These were parties with pictures of our house and grounds in magazines! Sometimes a producer would premiere a movie here.”

  Many times I heard my mother claim that the spirits of cinema as well as stage theater greats still walked the halls, which explained the ghosts she claimed inhabited our house. Although she had redone most of the floors, replacing all the wood with rich marble tiles that didn’t creak, she would swear to her friends that she still heard their footsteps late at night. She claimed that she often woke, opened her eyes, and listened to the voices, the laughter, the singing, and the applause. “As if it was happening in the here and now.”

  Of course, my father had slept through it and simply smiled and nodded when she described it all to us in the morning. Our nanny, who was with us both since birth, Mrs. Broadchurch, smiled, too, but took my hand and Gloria’s for a quick, reassuring squeeze. Mother insisted nobody should be frightened by it, but sometimes I thought Mrs. Broadchurch was frightened as much and as often as I was.

  Gloria never seemed afraid. In fact, now that I think about her more, I don’t recall her ever having a nightmare. But she was at my side whenever I did. Our bedrooms were next to each other’s, and our parents’ was to
the right at the end of the hall. I started to believe Gloria had her ear to the wall anticipating my sobs. She was always there before Mother, who took one look at us lying together and went back to bed, content that Gloria had done what had to be done with me. She had little patience for me. My fears annoyed her. “How could these ghosts frighten anyone? They were stars!”

  “Gish has a big imagination, Mother, bigger than mine,” Gloria would tell her.

  Mother would throw her right hand up in a smooth motion and dramatically dismiss me. She had seen it done that way in some silent movie. She unraveled through our house every day like a reel of film.

  She was unstoppable when it came to convincing everyone that the movement of famous spirits through our house was real. I’d look at the way Mrs. Broadchurch’s eyes would widen as Mother detailed her colorful descriptions, pinpointing laughter, the tinkle of glasses, and the whispers of secret love at this corner of the house or that. She made it sound so logical and true and with such vivid detail that my four-year-old heart, so willing to accept wondrous new things, would begin to race with my own memories of voices heard just the previous night.

  On one occasion, one of her more skeptical friends asked Mother how she was so sure these spirits lived on for decades.

  “And here?” she added, looking like she had collapsed Mother’s house of cards with her logical question.

  “The more famous you were, the longer you could haunt the settings you had enjoyed,” Mother replied, as if the answer was as clear as day. “Ordinary people evaporate instantly, but celebrities whose names linger on the lips of the living and whose voices and faces are still resurrected on television and the internet are immortal. And they are that especially in this house, our house!”

  She would say all these things to all her friends and visitors as well, while brightening her beautiful amber eyes with their yellowish golden and coppery tint, hypnotizing her listeners with even more detail about this celebrity or that, some of those facts astoundingly personal. It was as if she was immortal and really had known them all. She’d sit in her favorite vintage English Victorian carved high-back armchair, looking like a monarch with her dark brown hair styled in what she called the Garbo bob, named for the actress Greta Garbo, “who most certainly had been here.”