She began spending more time writing. She kept a journal and wrote poems, which she shared with her parents.
“Hmm,” her mother would say thoughtfully. “I guess I don’t really understand it.”
Ellen would take the poem to her father. He would shut out the rest of the world and read it thoughtfully, sometimes with tears in his eyes.
“Sweetheart, it’s wonderful,” he would tell her. “Someday you’re going to be a famous writer.”
“Oh, Daddy!” Ellen would blush. “Do you really like it?”
“It’s fantastic. Can I keep this copy for myself?”
The first four years in Petoskey were innocent and carefree, despite her struggle with weight. In summer their dad would get off work, squeeze into his swimsuit, and take the family for a late-afternoon swim at Petoskey State Beach. The sand stretched for what seemed like miles, and Ellen and her brother and sisters would play volleyball in the shallow pools near the shore. Despite his own worsening problem with weight, Dad could still palm a volleyball and rise halfway out of the water for a serve. Mom would laugh and wave from a nearby blanket, thoroughly content to watch the others play.
The summer after she turned fourteen, Ellen began noticing boys. She became keenly aware of the way they paid attention to other, thinner girls. One afternoon she went home, rummaged through her parents’ bookcase, and found a dusty old paperback called Dr. Stillman’s Quick Weight Loss Diet. The front cover promised a fifteen-pound weight loss in one week. Determined to keep her plans private, Ellen whisked the book into her bedroom and studied the doctor’s diet plan.
The next morning Ellen ate three eggs for breakfast, cottage cheese for lunch, and only the meat from her dinner plate. No fruit, vegetables, bread, or sweets passed her lips, and in three months she went from size twelve jeans to an eight. The diet was neither balanced nor healthy, and twice she nearly fainted because of low blood sugar. But it worked, and that summer she slimmed down even further when she sprouted three inches, seemingly overnight. By the time she started high school that fall she had been approached more than once by a representative from a local modeling agency.
“Daddy, please, can I get new clothes for school?” she asked her father one night.
He smiled at her. “Of course, honey. I’m so proud of you for losing weight. Pick out whatever you want. By the way, maybe you can share your secret with me sometime.” He patted his stomach, which had continued to grow.
“Ah, Dad. That’s just you. Don’t worry about it.”
He didn’t.
Ellen had fairly danced through her first year at Petoskey High School, thriving on the attention she received from her classmates. That year in physical education class Ellen met a girl named Leslie Maple, and the two were instant friends. They both rode skateboards and wanted to try out for Petoskey’s cheerleading squad. They had shoulder-length dark hair and light green eyes, and they were both tall and slender. They even lived in the same neighborhood, just around the corner from each other. From the beginning, people mistook Ellen and Leslie for twins, and the girls delighted in letting people believe it was true.
It was a perfect year except for one thing. She and Jane had grown apart. Her father pulled her aside one day to share his observations about the situation. “Honey, I think Jane’s feeling left out. Why don’t you spend some time with her.”
Ellen realized her father was right. She had been so busy making friends and celebrating her new popularity that she hadn’t made time for Jane. She felt bad about Jane’s hurt feelings and even tried to talk to her once. But Jane would be at Petoskey High in a couple years and then they would have more time together. Sure enough, when Jane entered high school, she spent most of her time with Ellen and Leslie and the problem seemed to dissolve.
Besides, Ellen was too caught up in her own life to worry about Jane. There were football games and cheerleading practices and Friday-night parties to attend. The next year, Ellen discovered the greatest distraction of all, one that would change her life forever. Jake Sadler.
Until that time Ellen’s father had been the only man in her life. But Jake was like an unquenchable thirst—he consumed her from the moment they met, leaving little room for father-daughter talks.
At the thought of Jake, Ellen drew a deep breath and stretched her legs. She checked her watch. The plane had been in the air for two hours, which meant they still had an hour to go. With a sigh, her thoughts returned to Jake.
They had dated six years before breaking off their relationship, and even then it was another two years before they learned to live without each other. They dated throughout Ellen’s three years at North Central. The same time period when her father lost his job and did something no one ever thought he would do—wrote a note to his family, pulled together a few belongings, and left.
The memory brought Ellen instantly back to reality. She sat up straighter, took a magazine from the back of the chair in front of her, and flipped through the pages.
Some things were better left in the past.
6
It was nearly midnight when Jane heard the front door open. She was sitting in the recliner, rocking slowly, hypnotically, staring at a blank television screen.
“Sorry I’m late.” Jane watched Troy drop his things near the front door. He came to sit on the arm of the chair and put a hand on her shoulder. “I wanted to be here. I can’t imagine how you must feel.”
Jane looked up at him without expression. “I’m not devastated, if that’s what you mean.” Her eyes were dry. “I haven’t been close to my dad in years. You know that.”
Troy raised an eyebrow. “Okay. But he was your dad, after all, and now he’s gone. That has to hurt, Jane.”
“It’s supposed to hurt. That doesn’t mean it does.”
“Jane, don’t be strong at a time like this. It’s okay to cry.”
“Why should I cry, Troy? My dad didn’t love me. Why should I act like I’m suffering now that he’s gone?”
Troy stood up and collapsed in a heap on the couch a few feet away. “Here we go,” he muttered. “What do you mean he didn’t love you? Of course he did. I saw how he treated you.”
“Did you see how he treated Ellen? I’m not blind. He didn’t love any of us the way he loved Ellen.”
Troy shook his head and stared at his brown loafers. “Jane, you’re wrong. You’re forgetting the good times. Your dad loved each of you five kids the same.”
Jane resumed her rocking and turned to stare at nothing in particular. Troy did not understand because he did not know everything about her past. He knew neither the facts nor the way they had affected her life. She took a deep breath and stopped rocking.
Perhaps it was time.
“Troy, there’s something I want to tell you, something I never wanted you to know. But it’s been inside me for so many years that if I don’t let it out, especially now with my dad gone, it’s going to kill me.”
Troy leaned slightly forward. “All right. I’m listening.”
“Promise me it won’t change anything.”
“I love you, Jane. Nothing could change that.”
“All right, then. It goes back a long way. I’ll try to take it from the beginning.”
Jane drew in another deep breath and closed her eyes. “As far back as I can remember I was part of a pair, of Ellen and Jane. We shared a room, played together, fought together, and got in trouble together. At Christmas we received duplicate presents. We wore identical clothing. We were inseparable.”
Jane smiled at the memory. Of course, there had inevitably been a leader among the two: Ellen. She decided what games they would play, what songs they would sing, and which programs they would watch on television. Because Jane was always seeking Ellen’s approval, she was compliant and went along as she was expected to do. She never considered crossing Ellen or suggesting something that Ellen might not agree with.
Over the years that relationship had produced two very different personalities. Ellen
was outgoing, gregarious, and a natural leader. Jane had always been considered the quiet one, shy and unsure of herself in public situations.
Jane shook her head. “Even when Ellen went through a period of being overweight,” she said quietly, “she seemed to have more friends and more self-confidence than I did. So I suppose it only made sense that Ellen gained Dad’s attention, his praise and admiration. Whatever I could do, Ellen could do better.” She gave a hoarse laugh. “Once, when I was seven, I realized how much approval Ellen received for writing poetry. So I tried to compose a poem of my own. I brought it to Daddy, timidly making my way to where he sat watching a football game in his easy chair.”
“ ‘Daddy, look,’ I said, handing over the scribbled prose. ‘I wrote this for you.’ ”
“What did he say?” Troy asked softly, and Jane looked away.
“He read the piece and smiled at me and said it was wonderful.” Emotion burned deep inside her at the memory. “I was so thrilled. I really thought he was talking about my poem.” Her voice broke, and she had to wait a moment before she could go on. “But before I could thank him he told me it was wonderful I wanted to be a writer like my big sister. ‘Have you shown this to Ellen? She could probably help you put it together, honey. Make it into a real poem.’ I was crushed, but Dad had already gone back to watching television and he didn’t even notice. I just walked to the kitchen, opened the cupboard, and pulled out the trash basket. Then I ripped the poem into a hundred pieces.” She sighed and studied Troy.
“Go ahead,” he said softly. “I’m listening.”
She drew a deep breath and continued talking.
There were other times she’d been hurt. While going through puberty she gained eighteen pounds. She’d been chubby, but not nearly as overweight as Ellen had been. When Jane reached her highest weight, Ellen had already lost hers. One Saturday afternoon the summer before Jane started at Petoskey High, she and her mother purchased school clothes and then staged a fashion show for her father. When it was finished, he pulled Jane close beside him and smiled at her.
“You look beautiful, honey. The clothes are really nice.”
Jane smiled, allowing the praise to warm her body. Her father was pleased and all was right with the world.
“And don’t worry about your weight. Ellen lost hers at about this age. I’m sure you’ll slim down, too, and then you’ll be just as popular as your big sister.”
Jane had felt her face flush with embarrassment. She’d been very sensitive about her excess weight and her cheeks had burned in shame. Again, her father didn’t notice.
“You’re lucky to have Ellen. When you get to Petoskey she’ll help you make a bunch of new friends. You’re a lucky girl, Jane.”
Jane nodded and stared at her shoes. She suddenly felt uncomfortable in the new clothes and she wanted to get far away from her father and his hurtful comments.
“Hey,” he continued, “don’t worry about how you look now. When you lose weight, I’m sure you and Ellen can go shopping and get some real nice skinny high school clothes.”
Jane nodded again and turned away so her father wouldn’t see her tears. Then she ran into the bedroom she shared with Ellen and ripped off the new clothes, stuffing them into her closet. For the next two days she ate nothing. She wanted desperately to be rid of her plump figure before the week was through.
Instead, on the third day she found a freshly baked batch of cookies in the kitchen, grabbed two handfuls, and ate them in her room. She would eat whatever she wanted even if she never looked like Ellen.
High school was more of the same. She’d been cast immediately into the role of Ellen Barrett’s little sister. “At first I didn’t have or desire a separate identity.” She frowned. “But Ellen ignored me when we were at school. She seemed almost embarrassed of me.”
“How so?” Troy asked, and she told him of one incident in particular.
Jane had worn a light blue, oversized nylon windbreaker to school nearly every day that year. The jacket gave her a way to hide her less-than-perfect body, especially in light of Ellen’s slim figure. The last thing she needed was people comparing her and Ellen at Petoskey High the way they did at home. But one day Ellen pulled Jane aside and fingered the jacket in disgust.
“Jane, you’ve got to get a new jacket. You wear this thing every day. Everyone’s talking about it.”
Jane struggled for an answer, her cheeks red hot with shame. “I like it,” she said finally.
“Well, I think it makes you look fat. If you want people to like you, you need to wear something else.”
A few days later, Jane overheard Ellen talking to their mother.
“Mom, pleeease!” Jane peeked into the room and saw that Ellen’s arms were crossed and one hip jutted out in frustration. “You have to make her wear something else. It’s embarrassing.”
“Ellen, you should be talking to her about this. It’s between you and her.”
Jane was furious as she listened, but she was afraid to say anything. She needed Ellen if she wanted to survive at Petoskey. Her eyes stung as she ran out of the house and slammed the door. The noise brought Ellen and Mom into the foyer and Jane heard them calling her. But it was too late. She walked through the quiet, tree-lined streets of Petoskey for an hour. Then she came home and shut herself in her room.
Jane fell silent for a while, then shrugged. “Things were never the same again between me and Ellen.”
“I’m sorry.”
Troy’s quiet sincerity touched her deeply, and Jane bit her lip, then went on. “Mom must have said something to Ellen because she didn’t say another word about the jacket. I still hung around with Ellen, but by that time I was making friends of my own. Friends who were outside the circle of popular kids Ellen associated with. By the end of my sophomore year, I’d made friends with a group of quiet, studious types who didn’t care about the clothes I wore. I could tell them secrets about Ellen, things I would never have shared with my family.”
Jane’s comments came back to her as though she’d said them just yesterday. “I told them Ellen was a snob. I told them she was stuck-up and self-centered; and that all she ever thought about was herself. I said I could barely stand living with her.”
She swallowed painfully, then looked at Troy and smiled weakly. “It was about that time I met you. I knew I’d never love another boy like I loved you. But then you were gone and I had no idea whether I’d ever see you again. By the beginning of my junior year I had grown taller than Ellen and lost twenty pounds so that I was actually quite thin. I was pretty enough—”
“You were beautiful,” Troy broke in. “You still are.”
She smiled at him. Her father had said the same thing, but she hadn’t believed him, either. Unlike Ellen, Jane had lacked confidence and charisma and therefore still could not compete with her.
Her lips pressed together. Of course, on the heels of telling her she was beautiful, her father had gone on to add something about Ellen giving her makeup tips.
Finally, in her senior year, Jane was free of Ellen’s shadow. That was when Jane began doing things she had never done before. She went on dates with older boys and came home well after the family’s midnight curfew. She bought a bicycle and rode through the dark streets of Petoskey to Magnus Park on Friday nights. There she would meet her new friends and drink beer. Eventually her parents forbade her from going out. Jane still found a way to do what she wanted, only now she no longer asked her parents’ permission.
She stopped studying and her grades plummeted. The conservative outfits she had worn in her first three years of high school were replaced with tight, black outfits borrowed from her new friends. She wore heavy mascara and carried an air of defiance that caused her parents great concern.
At one of the parties Jane attended that year she had met a long-haired man in his midtwenties named Clay. He was the leader of a local rock band, Jungle Fever, and Jane began dating him secretly.
By that time Ellen was involve
d with Jake Sadler. Popular, handsome, basketball-hero Jake. Everyone liked Jake. But Clay was hard and mean looking, with a viper tattoo that wrapped around his left forearm. He was a rebel, and Jane knew better than to bring him home. Her mother might have made an attempt to be nice to him, but the comparisons between Clay and Jake would have been too tempting for her father to resist.
“I didn’t know any of this.” There was a kind of shocked sadness in Troy’s eyes. “I’m surprised your parents put up with it all.”
Jane shrugged. “They didn’t. Not for long.”
She could still hear the tone of her father’s voice when he’d finally confronted her. She had broken the rules and ridden her bike to a party. When she came home, it was two in the morning.
Her father was waiting. He’d stared at her with an expression she’d never seen before.
“Jane, you’re being disobedient and rebellious and we cannot tolerate it any longer.”
Ellen was gone that night, sleeping over at a girlfriend’s house, but that hadn’t kept Dad from making a comparison. “When Ellen was your age, she would never—”
“Stop!” The shout came out before Jane could think, and Dad raised an eyebrow. Well, she’d started it so she might as well finish. She met his surprised gaze. “I don’t want to hear about Ellen. All I’ve heard since I was a little girl is how Ellen does this better and Ellen does that better. Well, Ellen’s no saint, Dad. She’s probably spending the night with Jake Sadler instead of staying at Leslie’s house. She lies to you all the time, but you don’t see it because you think she’s so perfect. She’s not! She never has been!”
Her father had been stunned. It was completely out of character for her to accuse Ellen of such a thing.
He shook his head. “I don’t think Ellen’s a saint. I think my children are wonderful people, fully capable of making wrong choices. We’ve certainly seen that these past few months. Besides, this isn’t about Ellen. It’s about you. I want you to stop coming home whenever you please and start respecting our curfew. Do you understand?”