What Happened to My Sister

Looking across at my little girl showing Carrie a flashlight, chattering away, I see that the difference in her is astounding. She is a rare gem, this child of mine. I just wish someone other than her family knew it. Then it occurs to me.

  Carrie knows it.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Carrie

  Ever-where you look there’s something interesting to look at. They got so many things it’d be hard to count even if someone offered to pay you a penny for every item you made note of. So many that if Miss Chaplin had to move from here to a tiny map dot in the mountains—Hendersonville maybe—it’d take her weeks just to pack it all up. Don’t even get me started on how much money she’d make if she decided to sell it all in a yard sale because she was turning the page by moving away. I’m telling you: there are a bazillion things under this one roof.

  Miss Chaplin tells Cricket and Mrs. Ford that she’s borrowing me for a minute. She stands behind me and with her hands on my shoulders she guides me like a shopping cart into the front room with all the boy dolls.

  “It’s taken me over three decades to gather all of this together,” Miss Chaplin says, standing now in the middle of the room. “We have the premier collection of Charles Chaplin memorabilia in the United States.”

  I worry she thinks I’m staring on account of the way she looks. Her being so fat and all. She probably weighs a thousand pounds. I went to a county fair once and there was a booth where you could guess the weight of the person setting there and if you got it right you’d get a huge jar of gum balls and I guessed wrong but Tommy Bucksmith was close so he won the jar and he didn’t share one single gum ball with anybody. Not one. That was the fattest person I ever saw—the man at the guess-the-weight booth at the county fair. Until today. So I try to make her think I’m not thinking about her being fat by asking her questions I didn’t put any thought into.

  “Where’d that one come from?” I point to a random doll that’s no different from a million others lined up alongside it and I make sure to look her in the eye because that’s what polite people do.

  She looks as pleased as if I’d told her she won the Miss America pageant. Which, not to be mean or anything, she isn’t likely to do anytime soon.

  “Well, someone has a good eye,” she says, putting strength behind the some part of the word someone. “That particular likeness is one of a limited edition put out by Madame Alexander on the occasion of what would have been Uncle Charlie’s one hundredth birthday.”

  The skin on the back of her arm stretches into a wing when she reaches to bring it down from the shelf. She’s as careful with it as Momma was with that glass pitcher we had to part with back in Hendersonville.

  “Look at this,” Miss Chaplin says, turning it over and holding the base up close for me to get a look. “See the numbers there? Read them out loud for me, honey, will you? My eyes aren’t as good as they once were.”

  “There’s a number seventeen,” I say, squinting to make out the tiny marks stamped into the wood, “then a line then the number two hundred and twelve.”

  She nods like she’d known the answer and says, “That means there were two hundred and twelve dolls produced in total, and of that two hundred and twelve, this particular doll is number seventeen.”

  The way she looks at me I know I’m supposed to say something about this fact but I don’t know—is this a good thing? Or is she kind of sorry she didn’t get the number one doll? Me, I’d gun for number one.

  I settle for “wow” and that seems to suit her fine.

  “Now take a look at this and tell me what you think,” she says, waddling across the room to a glass case I hadn’t noticed before and pointing to a china plate ringed in gold with Charles Chaplin’s face in the middle, hat and all. I try to imagine what a shock it’d be to the person eating, say, meat loaf off the plate handed to them, finishing it entirely and realizing the whole time they’d been eating on top of a fancy man’s head.

  “Wow,” I say again because I’m too stupid to think of something different. Plus, she seems happy with just that one word so why mess with success, as my daddy used to say when Momma’d ask him why he never got the promotion he’d told us he was going for.

  “ ‘Wow’ is right,” Miss Chaplin says.

  She pulls a pretty gold necklace up from underneath her blouse and dangling from it is a tiny key she fits into the lock on the front of the case. “You may find this hard to believe, Miss Carrie, but see this gold line here? The one around the edge? That’s real eighteen-karat gold.”

  “Really? It’s real gold?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” she says. “And all the black in his hair and top hat? That’s a layer of real ebony. Do you know what ebony is?”

  “No, ma’am,” I answer her while trying to keep my hands to myself. I so badly want to trace the gold-circled edge. To see what real gold feels like.

  “Ebony is a rare kind of wood,” she says, lifting the plate off its stand over the cups and saucers setting in front and out of the case. “Just think how difficult it must have been for the manufacturer to put these pieces together. The china, the wood, the gold. It boggles the mind. You can hold it if you like.”

  Of course I want to know what this plate would feel like in my hands but then what if something happened and I dropped it? I’d never forgive myself ever and, worse than that, she wouldn’t forgive me either. So I shake my head and say, “I’m scared I’ll break it, ma’am. I’m pretty clumsy. Momma always says it too. Shouldn’t it be in a museum or something?”

  “Don’t be silly, here you go,” she says, simple as pie, putting it in my hands like it was a deck of playing cards. “I trust you.”

  Now I cain’t recall anyone ever saying those three words to me. Ever.

  I trust you.

  “It’s heavier than it looks, isn’t it.” She smiles, knowing somehow that’s exactly the thought forming in my brain at that very second.

  “Yes, ma’am. It’s two temperatures too,” I say, “the white china part is cool but the black is warm. Why’s it like that?”

  “Well, you’d have to ask a physicist to get the answer to that,” she says, “but it has to do with the different textures. The different solids and this and that.

  “Now, I know my granddaughter’s waiting on you, but let me show you one more thing before y’all go off and play,” Miss Chaplin says. “You’re probably bored to tears by now.”

  “No, ma’am,” I say. “I’m not bored at all.”

  It’s true. If you’d have asked me an hour ago if I’d care to know about a bunch of dolls and plates all covered with a man’s face and hat I’d have said no sirree. But it ain’t as bad as you might think, learning about all this museum stuff.

  I don’t tell her that me and Cricket weren’t going to play—that’s something babies do. She’s being so nice, calling me sweetheart, talking to me like I’m grown-up like her.

  Miss Chaplin motions for me to come closer to get a look at a small iron statue of—you guessed it—Charles Chaplin, leaning on his cane in what looks like a small town. He’s facing an official-looking building, like a post office.

  “This is a real crowd-pleaser,” she says, fanning her hand out to reveal something that don’t quite look to me like it’d please a crowd but what do I know. “We used to conduct tours here, and this was usually what the kids loved best. Watch.”

  Miss Chaplin puts a penny in a slot at the base of Chaplin’s cane and presses a lever like a pump for a well of water and suddenly the statue moves. Chaplin leans forward into a bow, and when he does, his cane pushes the penny and it slides down a ridge to the building, whose doors magically open to take it in. A little iron dog moves alongside the penny like it’s chasing it and I wouldn’t be shocked if it started barking.

  “It’s a bank!” Miss Chaplin says, watching my face be surprised. I never saw anything like this.

  “See? Wait, the bank doors are a little slow to close back up. Shoot, I’ve been meaning to oil this for years.”

/>   When they do close up ever-thing stands still again and if you were to walk into the room right now you’d think it was just a boring statue. You’d never know it had come to life like it just did only a few seconds ago. I’m not a baby anymore but if I were I’d ask her to do it again. That was really something.

  The phone rings and Mrs. Ford hollers “I’ll get it” from another room.

  I start to thank Miss Chaplin for showing me around but she holds up her hand and shushes me, cocking her head toward the sound of Mrs. Ford’s voice. She floats—if an incredibly fat person can float—to the doorway and turns to hold her finger in front of her mouth to let me know I need to keep quiet too.

  From the other room we can both hear Mrs. Ford’s part of the conversation:

  “I know, I know …”

  Silence.

  “I feel the same way too, Ed …”

  Silence. Then she says some stuff in a low voice no one could make out even if they had super-duper hearing. More silence.

  “Well, I guess that’d be all right …”

  Miss Chaplin cups a hand to my ear and whispers, “Why don’t you run on up to Cricket’s room and keep her company for a bit, ’kay?” and even though she didn’t say to I tiptoe across the living room, through the front hall where we first came in, and then up the staircase. I know how it is when you’re trying to listen in on someone—you got to be careful nothing around you makes a sound.

  Cricket’s door is open. She’s at her desk typing on her computer thing. When I say “hey” from the doorway she turns and smiles at me like finally now ever-thing is great. Now that you’re here. That’s what her smile says to me.

  “Sorry you got stuck with Grandma,” she says. “I was going to give it another five minutes then I was going to save you, don’t worry.”

  “It’s fine,” I say. “She’s so nice. Your momma too.”

  “Yeah, well, they’re okay I guess,” she says, twirling in her chair. “They’re always worrying about me and stuff. You know. Because of my sister. And, um, well, I guess they worry I’m going to turn into a loner who shoots up people because my friends kind of dumped me when Caroline died because they didn’t know what to do and … oh, forget it. I sound like a loser and no one wants to hang out with a loser so whatever. Hey, weren’t we going to Google something? When we got called downstairs?”

  Without waiting for an answer she turns back to the computer.

  “Huh,” she says, “I thought we started on something, but it’s not in my history.”

  I don’t know what that means but I do know she said we could find out anything about anyone so I remind her. “You said maybe we could check out my momma?”

  She lights up and gets her fingers ready over the letter buttons.

  “Okay, spell your mom’s name for me,” she says, and I do.

  “Hey, why’d you move here, anyway?” Cricket half-turns from her desk so the question can reach me better on the bed, where I’m flipping through the Encyclopaedia Britannica.

  And that’s how it starts.

  I didn’t plan on lying. I don’t even want to do it. But like it sometimes does, my mouth starts moving without checking with my brain first, and before I know it, the lie is told and there is nothing I can do to change it. Taking it back would be the end of being friends with Cricket. She’s probably got hundreds of friends, I don’t believe they all dumped her like she said. She’d throw me back like a caught fish too small to keep.

  She isn’t even really paying me close mind, tapping on the computer keys like she is. I could say anything. There are about a hundred and one things I could do that would make much more sense, but instead, I lie. I cain’t say I even give the words much thought before they come tumbling out.

  “My daddy finally got my momma to say yes to marrying him again,” I say, “and he’s here so we came on to be with him.”

  I think this will be the end of it, I really and truly do. I figure that will answer her question and we’ll talk about something else. I hadn’t counted on her swiveling her head to me with her eyes all huge and bluer than ever, saying, “That’s so romantic! That’s like a movie! Start from the beginning. Tell me everything, leave nothing out.”

  And that’s how come it keeps going, my lying I mean.

  Cricket folds her legs under her in the desk chair, Indian-style, and shimmies deeper into her seat the way you do when you want to get comfy for a long spell.

  “How long were they apart?” she asks.

  She keeps prodding me to keep talking so that’s what I do.

  In the beginning I felt bad lying to her like that. My stomach felt like it did when Richard punched me in the gut, all twisted up and knotted with no room for air to get in. I know I shouldn’t tell a lie but I also know that I cain’t tell her the truth because she’d tell her momma and her momma’d never let her be friends with a girl who’s a murderer.

  “I was little when they split up but I remember what they were like together,” I start slowly, my mind racing to try to come up with details I know she’s wanting. Lucky for me, I have some real-life stuff to use—that really helps when you’re telling tales. “Daddy used to swing Momma around the living room, dancing to the music on the radio, and Momma’d try to get him to stop but there’s no getting Daddy to stop dancing when he starts. He’s a real good dancer.”

  “Yeah?” Cricket says, leaning into my words, smiling and nodding like she can picture exactly what I am saying.

  “Momma always gets real pretty for him—so when he twirled her around the room, her dress would fan out like a ballerina tutu. He’d say pea-pop—that’s what he calls me. I know it’s stupid but he calls me pea-pop—”

  “That’s not stupid,” Cricket hurries to say, “it’s cute! Go on. What’d he say? Pea-pop …”

  “He’d say, ‘pea-pop, your momma’s the prettiest thing I ever laid eyes on,’ and Momma would holler for him to stop spinning her around and for me to turn down the radio but Daddy’d wink at me to stay put and I’d watch him move her to the music, one hand on her waist, the other holding one of her hands arching up high enough for her to twirl underneath and out from him then back in close to his chest.

  “He’s got this laugh—he’d laugh and holler real loud over the music things like ‘I love this woman!’ and Momma’d get all mad and tell him to hush up but he’d keep going. ‘Libby-Lou I love you’ he’d call out sometimes. Momma’s given name’s Libby, but he likes to make things rhyme so he’d say ‘Libby-Lou.’ Momma’d get spittin’ mad when he used that name and that’s usually when I knew the dancing was over. She’d yank herself away, smooth her dress, and fix her hair if it was out of place and tell him to start acting his age. But she still loved him and all.”

  “Why’d they break up?” Cricket asks.

  “Why’d they break up?” I say her question out loud.

  Why’d they break up? Why’d they break up?

  “Um, I don’t know.”

  Again, my mind races to come up with something that makes sense but turns out I don’t know is enough of an answer for Cricket.

  “Don’t worry, my parents are apart now and I have no clue why because as far as anyone can see they still love each other but it’s like they’re the only ones who don’t know it. They’re totally getting back together. I don’t know when but they have to. Anyway, go ahead,” she says.

  Go ahead. Go ahead. Oh Lordy …

  “Um, well, I don’t know.” I try that again, thinking it will cover the middle part of the story. I squinch up my shoulders and act real casual. “Then we moved here.”

  “Wait!” she says. “How’d they get back together? What happened?”

  “Daddy left for a while,” I say, picking at my thumbnail like I do when I’m thinking hard on something, “I guess for work. Yeah, he was away for work a lot of the time. But he’d always bring Momma flowers and presents whenever he’d come back to town. When they were apart, I mean. Even when they were apart he brought her all
kinds of things. And me too. He’s always giving me stuff.”

  Cricket says “That’s so romantic” again.

  I don’t know what happens, but somehow it starts getting easy. The more I talk about Daddy trying to win Momma back, the more I can see it. Like I’m watching a movie. I picture Daddy and Momma kissing hello when he comes in the door from being gone—even though in real life back when he was alive Momma’d always turn her head so Daddy’s kiss would land on her cheek instead of her lips. My stomach stops knotting up the more I come up with scenes of my movie parents. Daddy and Momma getting all dressed up for going out just the two of them. Movie Momma tying a scarf over her hair to keep it from flying around in the convertible sports car Movie Daddy drives. Momma smiling and feeding him a bite of her supper because it was so good it melts in your mouth. My movie parents laughing at me playing with the new movie puppy they surprised me with on Christmas.

  None of it happened in real life but it could have. If things were different I bet it could have.

  Then, when it gets to where I’m good to keep going with the story, Cricket decides she’s heard enough and starts fiddling with a little musical jewelry box.

  “It used to play this really sweet lullaby when you opened it,” she says. She holds it open for me to see. “And this ballet dancer would twirl and twirl. So cute. My dad gave it to me when I was little.”

  “Hey, is Cricket your real name?” I ask her.

  “Nah, it’s a nickname I got when I was a kid,” she says, rolling her eyes. “Daddy says I talk so much I’m like a chirping cricket and they started calling me Cricket and it stuck.”

  “So what’s your real name then?” I ask her.

  “My real name is Hannah,” she says. “After my great-great-aunt Hannah Chaplin, Charlie’s mother.”

  I been fiddling with this tiny flashlight of Cricket’s. It looks like a thin ruler, but when you pinch it in the middle a point of light shoots out the end.

  “This is so cool,” I say, pinching the light on and off.

  “You can have it,” Cricket says. “I already have something just like it and anyway it was free, so.”