Driving My Sister

My ponytail is too tight. I can feel the skin on my forehead and the nape of my neck stretched to the point where it feels like ripping. I run my fingers through the suspended hair. The ends are rough. I need to make an appointment with Michelle.

I can do that when I get home.

Jane is late again. Her plane landed forty minutes ago, and this is a small airport, so no way it takes nearly as long as it would at Dulles to get off the plane, proceed through baggage claim, and find this bright red rental sedan. I already sent her the make and model of the car. License plate number HKW 1639.

I need to remember to call the rental company back.

Ping!

Mom again. Some garbled gibberish that could have been a message in her mind if we could unlock that place again. All those years spent bickering over Thanksgiving dinner, doing fifty rounds over seating charts and presidential candidates, it seems futile now. It’s far too late for mom. Yet it’s my name as executor of an ever-complicating web because Jane could never be trusted to grasp the magnitude of that situation. She can barely be trusted to grasp the magnitude of this moment and the necessity of her punctuality.

There’s no way she checked a suitcase. The funeral’s tomorrow, and I’m dropping her back off at the airport on Sunday. What time is that flight? 11:15. 11:15 and she should get here an hour and a half in advance so that makes it 9:45, and we’re about a forty minute drive from the airport, so budgeting in a bit of time, we should leave no later than nine.

I better tell her we’re leaving at 8:30. So she’s not late again.

Ping!

It’s my boss this time, I toss my cell back in the console. Where the hell is she?

I hear her before I see her, the high-pitched cackling laugh that some call lively and others, namely me, call grating. There she is, strutting through sliding glass automatic doors like they parted just for her, wrapped in some heinous knit sweater she probably made or bought off the rack. It’s bright pink too. Fuchsia. Like she doesn’t know we’re here for a funeral. Oh and of course she has the massive carpet bag with her. Forty-two going on eighty.

Ping!

I lay on the horn.

“My goodness, no need to be so loud, and hello! Oh, how I’ve missed you.” Jane drops the carpet bag into the backseat with a thunk. Sliding into the front, she gives me the sort of awkward half hug that people do when they can’t fully turn their body to accommodate a full hug, so you settle for half. It’s one half more than enough to catch a whiff of the mall perfume she no doubt doused herself in upon landing, a sickly sweet scent of the variety that can’t quite confirm whether you should gag or cough, but whatever it is it burns like the first shot of cheap tequila thrown back in your neighbor’s garage when you’re sixteen.

“What has it been? A year? And look at this! What’s this you have on?”

“It’s a blazer, Jane.” I put the car in drive and pull out, dodging a pedestrian with one of those rental luggage carts that a million other people have used and would need to be dipped in bleach before I would dare put my bags on. “We’re going to a funeral. Can you at least try to wear something more muted?”

“Uncle Frank always said he wanted his life to be a celebration! I figured I would dress for the occasion!” We’re going to need to find a department store somewhere. Lord knows what she brought for the wake.

Ping!

“Can you check that?”

“No! Not until you tell me about your new job! How’s the boss? Meet anyone cute yet?”

Ping!

I don’t even wait for Jane and reach for my phone myself, tossing it to her with a somewhat barked demand to read the message, a habit I picked up from work. Jane stumbles through a message from mom, pursing her lips as she mumbles to herself, trying to decode an enigma of garbled letters, find meaning in the meaningless, helplessly grasping at the last strand of hope I already cut.

At first, we all thought she was lying, making it up, a mockery of aging in a desperate cry for attention, nothing too far out of the ordinary for the woman I knew. In all honesty, I still can’t decipher when the fib turned factual, when her grandchildren’s ages and the name of a ten-year-old family dog finally slipped from her reality.

But we both had to admit the possibility this was mom’s new reality on the afternoon of her 79th birthday, barely one year ago. Jane and I drove up because it coincided with dad’s 80th, not that anyone would know; mom had monopolized the weekend as she did every year on their birthdays, and our father placidly obliged. We went to the Country Diner, a greasy establishment where the hostess knew mom by name, her favorite table, her favorite slice of pie. She deposited us at a corner table with a chirpy “Your waiter will be with you shortly,” and I watched the first sign of genuine confusion cross mom’s face. The raincoat she wore had a flap over the zipper and a line of buttons (all dutifully snapped). A child’s puzzle. Something my son and daughter had to prove proficiency in to attend preschool. But mom stared helplessly down at the obscured closure. I watched her fingers fumble with the fabric and glanced over at Jane, whose brows were furrowed and lips pursed in a very un-Jane expression.

Dad helped mom take her coat off, and the afternoon resumed as normal.

Ping!

I glance at my illuminated phone. It’s my boss again. Some data I need to pull before session starts next week.

“Hey, eyes on the road!” Jane teases. “Your boss can’t be more important than a safe drive, right?”

I tell her session starts on Monday, not that it matters. She wouldn’t know what that means. Jane kicks off her clogs. Clogs, I think to myself. My sister is wearing brown pleather clogs with that heinous fuchsia sweater and yoga pants. She’s not even wearing socks, which means she had to walk barefoot across the floor teeming with God knows what strain of bacterial foot fungus to get through security.

I fight the urge to gag.

“Whatcha thinking about?” Jane props her elbow up on the center console, doe eyes blinking up at me, somehow still as innocent and naïve as they’ve always been. She’s beaming at me, but for no reason; it’s just the same smile she has plastered on for strangers and relatives alike. I decide against recommending a foot cream.

“Uncle Frank,” I state, matter of factly, “and how much Aunt Alice must miss him.”

Jane is quiet for a moment, her suddenly-somber expression is jarring against her otherwise chaotic and bright appearance, like one of those animal rescue commercials that manipulate parents into adopting a pet for their pleading children, only to return it a year later, once it’s evident their lifestyle does not fit the care of a living being requiring 24-hour attention.

“Uncle Frank was always dad’s favorite brother,” Jane remarks. “Do you remember when I called you that one summer — oh, you were at that internship in New York City — anyways when Dad and I went and stayed with Uncle Frank and Aunt Alice for a month because mom–“

“Yes Jane, I remember.” It’s never worth rehashing the worst of days. Particularly on the way to a funeral. I steel myself to divert the conversation again, but Jane’s already lost her train of thought.  

“What about when we went for Easter that one year? You were back from college. I was maybe seven? And Uncle Frank told me to go out to the garden to look for the Easter bunny and I thought, well if only the Easter bunny had some carrots maybe he would come! So, I–“

“Harvested all of Uncle Frank’s carrots. Yes, I remember he was so angry with you.”

“Yes, his face was purple!” Jane is doubled over in laughter at the memory of our uncle as furious as either of us could remember him. “But Aunt Alice made that spectacular carrot cake for dessert, and we had a wonderful evening after all.”

“Hmm,” I hum through pursed lips, deciding not to attempt to correct Jane’s memory of the event, that Uncle Frank didn’t join us for dessert and Aunt Alice had to make three carrot cakes and carrot pancakes the next morning so as not to waste any of the vegetable.

“How long is the drive?” Jane whines.

“About thirty minutes,” I reply. “We came up past the airport yesterday when I brought Mom and Dad in.”

Dad refuses to give up his license. It’s some combination of stubbornness and faulty comparison because setting aside his hunchback, aching joints, and persistent shaking, his mind is 100 percent there. Mom is 28 percent at best.

That’s why I was so proud of Dad last week, when he called me to say Uncle Frank had passed and asked if, on my way to Rochester for the funeral, I could come pick them up because he felt six hours both ways behind the wheel might aggravate his joints. I had to take a day off for the drive (I was planning to fly, there was an 8:10 out and then I could’ve gotten the 11:20 back that night, wouldn’t have even had to stay over), but there was no other way to get them there. Renting the car was the only complication; Brian took ours in the divorce, and since living in the city, I haven’t had a need for one. Work pays for my commute.

So, I got this bright red sedan and drove the two and a half hours to Harrisburg, leaving just after rush hour and arriving shortly before lunch. Mom was still in the bedroom, packing. Dad let me in and then went to help her (she had started packing a sunhat, for upstate New York in February), so I explored the house, taking in the dusty frames and worn, creaking floors, the general smell of decay caused by a layer of filth they’ve grown too old to clear, the manicured lawn and overgrown garden in view out the kitchen window. Sitting on the counter was a small whiteboard in red marker reading:

Today is February 11^th.
My brother Frank passed.
Heather (your daughter) is coming
to drive us to the funeral.

I stared at it for a while. I don’t know how long Dad has been writing Mom notes. I don’t know if she ever reads them. I don’t know if she can still read.

Ping!

Jane reaches for my phone before I can even ask, a slight, cackling laugh crescendos over the hum of the engine.

“You little sneak! Why wouldn’t you tell me?

“Tell you what?” I tried to steal a glance at my phone, but Jane angled it away.

“Who’s Mark?”

“Mark?

Jane replied gruffly: “I had a great time the other night, sorry you had to leave so early but when you’re back in town I’d love to see you for dinner again.”

“Drop it, Jane.”

“Who’s Mark?”

“DROP IT, JANE!”

“Sorry.” Jane throws the phone down and slumps into her seat. I can feel her eyes on me as I study the road. My romantic life has never been something I share. I decided early in my career I would manage dating the way I managed my student loans: alone. The only time my parents saw me kiss Brian was at the altar. It wasn’t that the affection wasn’t there (it was, and then it wasn’t); it just didn’t belong to them. I take a deep breath and compose myself.

“Are you seeing anyone?” I feel like that’s a fair question under the circumstances. Jane sighs.

“Not anymore. I was seeing my yoga instructor for a bit, but then he moved to Denver.”

“I didn’t know you did yoga,” which is true, but not particularly profound. Lots of people do yoga.

Jane doesn’t notice. “A studio a block from my apartment gives a teacher’s discount. I go before work, which is where I met Nash.”

“Nash?”

“Yes, Heather. Nash. It’s a very nice name.” Jane’s voice is challenging me to respond, goading me into an argument, but I don’t take the bait. “Anyways, he was better in bed than Tommy.”

“You don’t talk about Tommy much,” I remark.

“Nothing much to talk about. I haven’t seen him in ages.” Jane picks absentmindedly at a cuticle.

Mom had me at nineteen, and the first dozen years of my life were spent in a rotation of military bases, schools, states, and countries as the Navy took Dad wherever it insisted. We settled in Harrisburg when I was in the 7th grade and Jane was just an infant, so the chore of social entrepreneur for the family fell to me. I joined the cheer team and excelled in class, particularly math, affording me the rare comfort of fitting in both with the stereotypical popular kids and leading the nerds. Mom loved that I was on the cheer team; it gave her the opportunity to network with snobbier, wealthier suburban moms who wore their hair just so and got their nails done biweekly at this and that spa. I was invited to parties where letterman-clad teenagers did keg stands but also had the respect of my more intellectual peers. I was homecoming queen and got a full scholarship to attend a small, private all-girls college in New York, seven hours from home. I majored in math and joined a sorority.

Father’s Weekend was the school’s largest annual tradition; two days of events put on by the Student Programming Panel culminating in a father/daughter dance Sunday night in the ballroom of the student union. I remember crying that afternoon because my curly hair couldn’t be tamed by burning metal irons, so Dad offered to blow off the dance and take me into town.

I lived frugally, the effects of a military kid learning to live on simplicity, forgoing new clothes and makeup and nights out with friends, relying on my meal-plan-supported dining hall food. My sheets and quilt were hand-me-downs, as were most of my clothes. That night Dad took me out to a steakhouse and insisted on ordering two appetizers, the lobster, and dessert. The mall hadn’t closed yet, and though I’d been inside with a few girlfriends on shopping trips throughout the year, I’d never bought anything for myself. Dad took me to department stores, makeup counters, and the piercing stand. He bought me the trendy shirts and pants my friends wore, gold hoop earrings, and a hot pretzel I couldn’t even finish. He helped me pick out a bright red lipstick and watched as the attendant taught me to swipe it on with precision, blotting my lips together to create the perfect red pout.

“Turn,” he said, smiling. This was the closest I got to seeing Dad cry. “When did I let my little girl grow up?”

“We missed the exit,” Jane says, bringing me back to reality.

“When?” I glance down at the GPS.

“About three minutes ago. I only just realized. It only added about ten minutes.”

She’s quietly staring out the window, enrapt by the interstate ecology. I remember sitting in the passenger seat of an older, wealthier friend’s car, a few days after Father’s Weekend, on my way back to the mall. Everything Dad bought me in shopping bags, tags still attached, receipts carefully organized in the most efficient order to make the returns based on the mall’s layout. Mom had seen the credit card statement and blew up, yelling at Dad for his fiscal irresponsibility, complaining of the unnecessary lavishness wasted on an unappreciative daughter. Spoiling her. Making her expect these kinds of extravagant gifts. I knew all of this because she said it to me too, over the payphone in the hall of my dormitory, while I silently cried with my face to the wall so the girls walking by to brush their teeth in the communal bathroom didn’t see. She told me to bring it all back as soon as I could, so I made the necessary arrangements.

The only thing they wouldn’t take back was the red lipstick. I had used it the night before mom’s explosion, on a date with Robbie Parker. It looked nice on me and satisfying smudged on his lips.

Ping!

“Who is it?” I ask. Jane’s feet are propped on the dash, surely leaving all sorts of scuff marks I’ll have to buff out before I return the car.

“Oh, it’s just Aunt Alice.”

“Well, what does she need?”

“Oh, do you remember that one summer when we went with Aunt Alice and Uncle Frank to the swimming pool? You remember? And I was so scared to go down the slide, but then you were there to hold me and–“

“Jane, the message!”

“She needs ice.”

“Is that it?”

“And for you to call the florist.”

“The florist?”

“She says here you were the one who talked to the florist, remember?”

The florist. Oh my god, the florist. I never called them. Uncle Frank is going to lay in an open casket in a bare room because of me and–

Ping!

“Does she need anything else?” I ask, wondering if I could dictate to Jane the conversation with the florist so we could make the call from the road.

“No, it’s just mom.” Jane sounds tired. “I can’t understand any of her messages anymore.”

I think about telling Jane about the whiteboard on the kitchen table, the messages Dad writes out patiently every day, reminders of her daughters, her schedule, her life. But I decide against it. She doesn’t need to see all of that yet.

Jane starts, “You know, Heather, it might be time to consider…”

“No.”

“Heather.”

“No, Jane, I know what you’re about to say!” We’ve had this conversation before, my shortsighted sister can’t let an idea go once someone’s stuck it in her head.

“Heather, Fox Heights is a beautiful community! They have the capacity to accommodate multiple levels of care, and Mom and Dad wouldn’t need to be separated. There’s even a knitting club!”

“A knitting club?” My laughter sounds shrill. “You’re willing to ship mom and dad off to the nursing home for a knitting club?”

“It’s not a nursing home.”

“No, no! Absolutely not. You are not moving Mom and Dad against their will twelve hours from their family.”

“Heather, I live in Atlanta, too!” Jane protests.

“Then find them a place in D.C., and I can take care of them!” What difference would it make? I’ll be the one calling the florist at the end anyway.

“Oh, and what, you’re going to visit them after your fourteen hour workdays? Heather, I can do this. I don’t have kids to worry about, no high-power job. Hell, I have summers off! Three months of every year where I can just be with them!”

“You’re not ready for that, Jane.”

“They’re my parents, too!”

I peel off the interstate, chasing an approaching rest stop, Jane’s glowing review of physical therapy, apartment-style living, day-to-day care, and “an interdisciplinary team of on-site doctors” drowned out by shrill tinnitus.

“You’re not moving them, Jane.”

“They can’t live alone in that house anymore!” I pull into a parking spot, decidedly ignoring her, “Heather, you’re so stuck thinking of them as your responsibility when I’m trying to–Heather!”

Jane grabs my wrist as I move for the door.

“You’ve been there for me my whole life, Ang. Taken care of me. Practically raised me. You can trust me on this!”

Shaking my hand free from her grip, I push open the car door and stride across the parking lot, over the barricade, and into the flat plain of grass, past the dog sniffing around the excrement of other canine travelers, stopping to face the small wood where no one stands in front of me. 

Jane took piano lessons as a child, and there was a baby grand in the lobby of my dorm room freshman year. Mom was at her worst, realizing the consequences of having two kids thirteen years apart as the moms she bonded with through my cheerleading continued their friendships at football games and choir concerts via the sons and daughters just two years younger than my friends, and she was left to network with the kindergarten parents, a decade her junior. Without me around, her usual vitriol landed squarely on Jane’s shoulders. So, Dad agreed that they needed a break, and at 8 pm one Friday night they deposited a sleeping Jane in my arms, dropped her suitcase on the curb, and told me they would be back to collect her “sometime Sunday.”

I gave her my bed.

A college campus is magical for a five year old. I let Jane indulge in the endless pancakes at the dining hall breakfast and the soft serve ice cream machine at lunch. I brought her to the rec center and watched her swim in the pool. We found an unlocked classroom, and a blackboard and three pieces of chalk kept her occupied for two hours while I got some work done. But that night was the highlight of the trip when Jane sat down at that baby grand and plunked at the keys. My little sister, who could barely string together a tune when I left two months prior, sent beautiful classical music emanating from the otherwise-untouched piano. My friends, eager to dote on her, sat applauding well into the night when the excess sugar finally wore off, Jane took her final bow, and draped herself in my lap, soundly asleep. Cradling her, I promised myself that to the best of my abilities, I would never let her see all the pain, all the frustration, that went into being raised by our mother. I promised myself that she would always have a cheering audience to surround her, and however idealistic that might make her, at least she would be happy.

Then, and now, I let a tear fall down my cheek.

Cars whistle behind me, fast and loud relentless noise down the interstate. The decrescendo of rumbles emanating from the few that pull into the lot remind me of Jane, hopefully still in the passenger seat of that bright red rental sedan.

I hear a noise over my right shoulder and turn slightly, taking in a young family piling out of their gray SUV. Two little boys, maybe three and five, swap toy cars as their father gently nudges them forward towards the bathrooms. His wife is reaching for the plastic automobiles with pleas to let her hold them in her purse, rather than bring them into the public restroom and risk them falling on the dirty floor, or worse.

Smart woman.

I wonder if she’ll ever forget her sons’ names.

I wonder if her sons will ever be able to forgive her for the million ways she’ll inevitably come up short between now and the time when they stop needing her.

Jane’s sitting with her window cracked when I rejoin her in the car. I flip down the mirror, carefully swiping off the evidence of mascara residue under my eyes.

“You got a text,” she offers quietly, staring out her window at the family loading back into their SUV, mom redistributing the toy cars to the boy’s eager hands.

I check my phone, but it’s just a confirmation of last month’s cell phone bill. I make a mental note to forward the statement to Denise for reimbursement.

“That little boy looks like he’s having fun,” Jane says watching the younger of the two drive his toy car across the window, little lips puckered in what’s surely a steady hum of vroom. She’s right. He looks contented, and his parents tired. As I move to start the car, a gleam of white catches my eye.

“Are those new?” I gesture towards Jane’s earrings, classic white pearls, the only non-offensive part of her outfit.

“No,” she replies, turning towards me, her eyes blank, “You got them for me for graduation. Twenty years ago.”

“Oh,” I say, which isn’t the most intelligent response, so I add, “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you wear them.”

“Well, they’re not really my style,” Jane remarks, turning back towards the window, “But I thought that for this weekend, you would have found them appropriate.”

The back of my throat is burning, so I swallow, grimacing as I blink back the moisture clouding my vision.

The contortion of my face is physically painful, and that thought distracts me. I can feel the skin on my forehead and the nape of my neck stretched to the point where it feels like ripping. I put the car in reverse and slowly pull out of the lot, accelerating to merge smoothly back onto the interstate. My ponytail is too tight. I run my fingers through the suspended hair. The ends are rough. I need to make an appointment with Michelle.

I can do that when I get home.

---

Madelynn Lederer is a senior studying Political Science and Public and Professional Writing at the University of Pittsburgh. After her graduation in April 2024, she will begin law school.