Ten Rules for Living With My Sister

  “Whew,” said Lexie. “That’s a relief.”

  But I didn’t feel like the emergency was over. “Mom, you’ll probably need me to sleep with you tonight,” I said, “since you’ll be lonely without Dad. So don’t worry. I’ll be there for you.” Which was more than Lexie could say.

  What she did say, though, was, “Oh, Pearl. When will you outgrow sleeping with Mom and Dad?”

  It’s true that I do still like to sleep with my parents sometimes, but I thought it was quite rude of Lexie to say so when I was just trying to be nice to Mom. I was about to point out that Lexie had been no help whatsoever all evening, when she said, “Poor Mom. Do you want me to make you a cup of tea?”

  Still, I figured I was ahead of Lexie, two to one, in helping Mom cope with the emergency:

  ME—1. Finding her address book and calendar, and 2. offering to sleep with her. LEXIE—1. Offering to make her tea. (That’s all.)

  On the other hand, Lexie was ahead of me in everything else in life one hundred billion to approx. zero.

  7

  Dad came back the next day, right after lunch. He looked very tired and said he hadn’t gotten any sleep the night before.

  “Really? You never went to bed at all?” I said.

  “He was in a hospital, Pearl,” said Lexie.

  “Duh. I know where he was. And hospitals are full of beds.”

  “Yeah. For the patients.”

  “Girls,” said Mom, and that was all she needed to say.

  Dad flopped onto an armchair. His hair was messed up, he had loosened his tie, and his shirttail was sticking out. Also, I am sorry to have to report this, but he smelled a little.

  “Wow, Dad.” I leaned over and sniffed his shirt.

  “Pearl!” shrieked Lexie.

  “What?”

  “That is so rude!”

  Well, Lexie had been rude the night before, so now we were even on rudeness, one to one.

  Mom brought Dad a sandwich, and I could hear the coffeemaker start to slurp in the kitchen.

  “The thing is,” said Dad after he had eaten a few bites of turkey and cheese, and removed Bitey from his lap 4x, “Daddy Bo will be released from the hospital on Wednesday, which is good news, but there’s bad news too: He won’t be able to care for himself at home. And even when his shoulder is all well I don’t think he’ll be able to care for himself anymore.”

  “What? Why?” I asked. Just a few weeks ago Daddy Bo was going on field trips to Philadelphia.

  “Will and I had a chance to talk last night, and Will told me some things that concern me. He said he doesn’t think Daddy Bo cooks for himself anymore. He just eats frozen dinners or gets takeout. Will isn’t sure he’s remembering to do his laundry, and he worries because Daddy Bo is unsteady on his feet sometimes. Which is probably how he f ell in the first place.”

  “Where did he fall?” I interrupted. “Was it on the stairs? Did he bleed a lot?”

  “Pearl!” exclaimed Lexie again. “Do you have to know every gory detail?”

  Well, of course. The gory details are the best ones.

  “Excuse me for interrupting,” I said primly.

  “That’s all right.” Dad shooed Bitey off of his lap once again. “I wanted to know too.”

  “See?” I said to Lexie.

  “Apparently he slipped getting out of the shower,” Dad continued. “I went over to his house today before I came home, and I took a look around. His stairways are dark and so are the halls, and I saw plenty of things he could trip over. What’s worse is that everything Will told me seems to be true. There was almost no food in the refrigerator, and there was dirty laundry piled up in the bedroom, not to mention garbage piled up in the kitchen. I’m afraid someday he’s going to leave a burner on. I don’t know if he remembers to lock his doors, and I don’t even want to imagine what he’s like behind the wheel of a car.”

  “He can’t live on his own anymore,” said Mom quietly.

  Dad swallowed a bite of sandwich. Several seconds went by and he cleared his throat. A lot. “No,” he said finally. “I don’t think he can.”

  The rest of the afternoon passed slowly. Lexie went off with her keys to the apartment and her cell phone and her friends, Justine and her parents left for the Children’s Museum, and Mom and Dad closed themselves into Mom’s office to talk. I could think of nothing to do except my homework. One science worksheet, one math worksheet, and use our vocabulary words in sentences. I did the worksheets first, saving the sentences for last since I hate thinking up sentences, which is weird because that is what my mother does all day long. There were ten vocabulary words, and the last one was “habitat,” since we were studying habitats in science, but I still couldn’t think of any sentence except Habitat is our number ten vocab. word.

  “There,” I said to Bitey, who was sitting on the floor at my feet, tail switching dangerously back and forth. “All done. Want to watch TV with me?” I picked Bitey up, but he bit me so I put him down again. He followed me into the family room, though. I lay on the couch and Bitey lay on my head. I was feeling around for the remote control, trying not to jostle Bitey, when Mom and Dad came into the room, looking serious.

  “Is Lexie back yet?” asked Mom.

  I started to shake my head, but when Bitey dug his claws into my scalp, I just said, “Nope.” Then I added, “I did all my homework.”

  “That’s wonderful!” exclaimed Dad. “Would you like me to check it?”

  “Not really,” I said, thinking of that tenth sentence.

  We all heard the key turn in the lock then, and Bitey, as if he’d heard an explosion instead, leaped off my head, scratching my cheek, and tore into the kitchen at top speed, his nails skittering on the floor.

  “Ow,” I said.

  “Hi,” said Lexie.

  “I’m glad you’re back,” said Mom. “Dad and I have been talking and doing a little research this afternoon, and now we need to have a family conference.”

  Lexie sagged. “A family conference?”

  We have family conferences about once a month. Some have been good, such as the one at which Mom and Dad announced that we had a little extra money so we were going to take that trip to Disney World. I hadn’t known that the trip would lead to the Show and Tell incident, so it had seemed like a good idea when they’d mentioned it. Even Lexie, who was already twelve then, had jumped up and down and said, “Goody!”

  Most of the other conferences, though, have been about chores and responsibilities and manners. I thought this one was probably going to be about the silent treatment plus underwear visits.

  “Everyone sit down, please,” said Dad, even though I was already sitting down.

  I’m glad that at our family conferences all we have to do is talk respectfully. One of Lexie’s many friends is a girl named Chloe, and at Chloe’s family conferences they pass around this thing called the Talking Stick, and you can only talk when you’re holding it, which is supposed to cut down on interrupting. But this is stupid and so is the stick. I saw the stick one day and it’s all wrapped in ribbons and has a silver tassel on top to make it look like a fun princess wand instead of what it really is.

  Lexie sat next to me on the couch, and Mom and Dad sat across from us in armchairs.

  Dad was the first to speak. “This meeting,” he began, “is about Daddy Bo. Since he can’t go home by himself on Wednesday, Mom and I have decided to bring him here.”

  “Yes!” I cried, jumping to my feet.

  Lexie was smiling.

  But Dad looked serious. “There’s more. Daddy Bo isn’t going to be able to go back to his house. He needs to move to what’s called an assisted-living community. Permanently.”

  “A nursing home?” asked Lexie, and she looked troubled.

  “No. Different from a nursing home,” spoke up Mom. “Assisted living is for people who are still active but who need help with cooking and cleaning and taking care of themselves. They can still live fairly independently, and they don??
?t need nursing care—”

  “But they need assistance?” said Lexie.

  “Exactly.”

  “Is Daddy Bo going to move far away?” I asked.

  Mom smiled. “No. That’s the good news. There are several assisted-living facilities very close by. The one we like the best is on the Upper West Side. But every place has a waiting list, and some are quite long. Daddy Bo will need to live with us for at least several months before he can move to a new home.”

  “Yippee!” I said.

  “And while he’s here, he’ll need a room of his own.”

  “A room of his own here at our apartment?” asked Lexie suspiciously.

  Dad nodded. “So we’ve decided that Daddy Bo will move into Pearl’s room and Pearl will move in with you, Lexie.”

  My sister shot to her feet as fast as Bitey had leaped off my head. “WHAT?”

  “Now calm down,” said Mom.

  “No way!” exclaimed Lexie. “There is NO way Pearl is moving into my room.”

  I smiled sweetly. “I would be happy to help out by moving into Lexie’s room.”

  “Thank you,” said Dad.

  Lexie was still standing, hands on hips. “No way,” she said again.

  “All right,” my mother replied. “There is one other possible solution.”

  “Anything,” muttered Lexie as she flopped back onto the couch, this time a little farther away from me.

  “If you don’t want Pearl to move into your room, then you can move in with Pearl. It will be a bit tighter, though. Pearl’s room is smaller than yours.”

  Yeah, I thought.

  “And Pearl doesn’t have bunk beds like you do,” added Dad.

  Yeah, I thought.

  Of course Lexie was on her feet again in one half of a second. “Move into Pearl’s room?” she cried. She might as well have said, “Move into a sewer?”

  “Hey! What’s wrong with my room?” I asked.

  And Dad said, “Lexie, please consider your words. You aren’t being very respectful to Pearl.”

  “Sorry,” muttered Lexie as she sat down again.

  Mom clapped her hands together. “Those are the two choices,” she said decisively. “Daddy Bo needs a space of his own. He can’t sleep in the family room—and neither can you or Pearl,” she added quickly, seeing the hopeful look on Lexie’s face. “There’s absolutely no reason the two of you can’t share a room. It will only be for a few months. So either Pearl, you move in with Lexie, or Lexie, you move in with Pearl. You girls can decide.”

  “I’d be very happy with either choice,” I said, ignoring Lexie’s scowl. Although the truth was, that while it would be fine if Lexie moved into my room, I really, really, really, really, really, really, really wanted to move into hers. I hardly ever even got to see inside her room. The door was usually closed and those signs were usually hanging. Here was my chance to live in her room. To observe my big sister up close, as if Lexie were an animal in the woods and I were a nature specialist with a fancy camera.

  Mom and Dad looked at Lexie. “Well?” said Dad.

  Lexie let out a sigh that Justine could have heard if she’d been at home. “Okay. Pearl can move into my room.”

  “Thank you,” said Mom and Dad.

  Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you! I thought. Soon I would be inside the magic lair of Lexie Littlefield.

  “But I’m not happy about this,” declared Lexie, and she flumped out of the family room, down the hall, and into her room.

  She closed her door with just a bit too much force.

  I smiled and stood up. “I think I’ll go make Daddy Bo a get-well card,” I said. I was feeling inspired.

  I sat at my desk with a sheet of white paper before me. I thought for a long time before I drew a picture of a man lying in a hospital bed with a big cast on his foot and his leg in traction. I knew Daddy Bo had broken his shoulder, not his leg, but I really wanted to write inside the card:

  Dear Daddy Bo,

  Here’s hoping you’re back on your feet soon!!!

  Love, Pearl Littlefield

  On the way to the family room to show the card to Mom and Dad, I paused outside Lexie’s door. Soon I would be on the other side of it, sleeping on the bunk bed, watching Lexie choose her outfits, and listening to her phone conversations with her friends.

  These were probably going to be the best months of my life.

  8

  “I advise you to be careful.” That was pretty much the first thing Lexie said to me on Sunday, and she said it at 3:00 p.m. in the afternoon, so you can see that the silent treatment had been back in place.

  Advise. Like Lexie was a warning label.

  “You’re not being very respectful, Lexie,” I replied.

  My sister sighed. “I’m just saying to be careful.”

  “I’m trying.” I was trying to have fun too, since here I was moving into Lexie’s room three days early. Mom and Dad had decided at breakfast that the move should take place right away, since we had the whole day free and they would both be around to help out.

  “Yippee!” I had said.

  But Lexie had hung her head so low that her hair drooped into her Cheerios a little bit and she’d given me a dirty look as she wiped the milk off.

  I didn’t care. I had just been granted three extra days inside Lexie’s room. I spent the morning taking all my clothes out of my dresser and closet and piling them on the bed, and then emptying the drawers of my desk and the shelves of my bookcase. When I was done, the edges of my room were bare, and the middle part looked like the Lost and Found bin at school.

  “Good heavens,” Mom had said at lunchtime when she’d poked her head into my room to check on my progress. “Maybe you ought to take advantage of the situation and do a little cleaning out.”

  I was in such a good mood that I had agreed without arguing, and I got a large garbage bag from under the kitchen sink and threw away quite a lot of things, such as the leaf shaped like a fish that I’d found in Central Park, and a doll whose arm had fallen off and gotten lost, and a package of dried-up markers, and also a moldy plum, which I didn’t mention to anyone. Then I cleaned out my clothes and made up a bag of things that would fit Justine soon.

  “Good job, Pearl,” said Mom.

  But when Lexie had peeked around my door later and had seen how much stuff was still left she wailed, “There’s no way all of that is going to fit in my room!”

  Mom and Dad agreed with her. “You don’t have to move everything out,” Dad told me. “Daddy Bo won’t need too much space.”

  “Why won’t he?” I asked. “He has a whole house full of stuff.”

  “Yes, but we’re not going to bring all of it to the apartment. And even when Daddy Bo moves to a new place he’ll only have a few rooms, so he’ll need his clothes and books and a few pieces of furniture, but not much more.”

  I’d realized that although my father didn’t smell today, he still looked tired, and a couple of times that morning he hadn’t heard me when I was talking to him and I’d had to repeat myself until the words started to sink in and then he was like, “What? What?” And that was how I knew he was worried about Daddy Bo.

  “What are you going to do with the rest of Daddy Bo’s stuff?” Lexie wanted to know now.

  “Put it in storage for the time being,” Mom replied. “When he’s feeling better we’ll talk to him about it.”

  “So how much space should I clear for him?” I asked, looking around my room.

  “How about,” said Dad, “two of your dresser drawers, two of your shelves, and half of your closet?”

  “Okay,” I replied.

  “Thank you for being so cooperative, Pearl.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “And Lexie,” Dad continued, “can you clear out two drawers, two shelves, and half of your closet for Pearl?”

  “I’m not sure how …”

  Dad gave her a Look, which meant he was feeling impatient, which was probably
due to his tiredness.

  “But I’ll figure something out.”

  “Thank you.”

  I noticed my father hadn’t said, “Thank you for being so cooperative, Lexie.”

  So I had put back some of my things, leaving plenty of space for Daddy Bo, and now, at long last, I was actually moving into Lexie’s room. And I was trying to have fun. But I knocked the edge of a carton against Lexie’s desk and this was when she advised me to be careful, and I told her she wasn’t being respectful, and she said she was just saying to be careful, etc., etc., etc., and so forth.

  I left the carton on her floor, and returned to my room for another load, then hurried back through her door, which Mom and Dad had told her she had to leave open, and dumped an armload of clothes on the floor.

  “Dresser,” commanded Lexie, pointing to the dresser as if maybe I wasn’t old enough to identify furniture.

  “Which are my drawers?” I asked. I knew better than to pull them open to find out for myself.

  “The bottom two.”

  At least the silent treatment had ended.

  I opened the drawers and began shoving my clothes inside. When I was finished, I went back to my room and returned with an armful of things from my closet, still on their hangers.

  “Which half of the closet?” I asked.

  Lexie was lying on the top bunk, gazing down at me like the lazy grasshopper in the fable, not offering to do any work at all.

  “The left side.”

  I hung up the clothes, careful not to let my purple shirt, which was at the right end of my things, touch Lexie’s white blouse, which was at the left end of her things. I didn’t want to hear a word about germs (mine).

  I worked hard all afternoon, carrying my stuff into Lexie’s room and arranging everything as neatly as possible. There’s no question that we were cramped. The shelves were overflowing, and most of the dresser drawers wouldn’t close all the way. The closet door wouldn’t close either because apart from our clothes and shoes, we had stuffed stray books and games and even Lexie’s old dollhouse into the closet. A lot of my things were under the bottom bunk, and Lexie’s violin and violin stand had been moved into the family room, even though she said she was incapable of practicing where people could hear her.