Between Sisters

The only way to survive was to keep moving and never make eye contact.

He’d learned in these vagrant years how to be invisible. If a man cut his hair and dressed well and held down a job, people saw him. They stood in line for the bus beside him, and in small towns they struck up conversations.

But if a man let himself go, if he forgot to cut his hair and wore a faded Harley-Davidson T-shirt and ragged, faded Levi’s, and carried a ratty backpack, no one noticed him. More important, no one recognized him.

Behind him, the bell rang. With a sigh, he stepped into the warehouse. The icy cold hit him instantly. Cold storage for the fruit. The sweat on his face turned clammy. He tossed his empty Coke can in the trash, then went back outside.

For a split second, maybe less, the heat felt good; by the time he reached the loading dock, he was sweating again.

“Wyatt,” the foreman yelled, “what do you think this is, a damn picnic?”

Joe looked at the endless row of slat-sided trucks, filled to heaping with newly picked cherries. Then he studied the other men unloading the crates—Mexicans mostly, who lived in broken-down trailers on patches of dry, dusty land without flushing toilets or running water.

“No, sir,” he said to the florid-faced foreman who clearly got his kicks from yelling at his workers. “I don’t think this is a picnic. ”

“Good. Then get to work. I’m docking you a half an hour’s pay. ”

In his former life, Joe would have grabbed the foreman by his sweaty, dirty collar and shown him how men treated one another.

Those days were gone.

Slowly, he walked toward the nearest truck, pulling a pair of canvas gloves out of his back pocket as he moved.

It was time to move on.

Claire stood at the kitchen sink, thinking about the phone conversation with Meg yesterday.

“Mommy, can I have another Eggo?”

“How do we ask for that?” Claire said absently.

“Mommy, may I please have another Eggo?”

Claire turned away from the window and dried her hands on the dish towel hanging from the oven door. “Sure. ” She popped a frozen waffle into the toaster. While it was warming, she looked around the kitchen for more dirty dishes—

And saw the place through her sister’s eyes.

It wasn’t a bad house, certainly not by Hayden standards. Small, yes: three tiny bedrooms tucked into the peaked second floor; a single bathroom on each floor; a living room; and a kitchen with an eating space that doubled as a counter. In the six years Claire had lived here, she’d painted the once moss-green walls a creamy French vanilla and replaced the orange shag carpeting with hardwood floors. Her furniture, although mostly secondhand, was all framed in wood that she’d stripped and refinished herself. Her pride and joy was a Hawaiian koa-wood love seat. It didn’t look like much in the living room, with its faded red cushions, but someday, when she lived on Kauai, it would stop people in their tracks.

Meg would see it differently, of course. Meg, who’d graduated high school early and then breezed through seven years of college, who never failed to mention that she had buckets of money, and had the nerve to send her niece Christmas gifts that made the others under the tree look paltry by comparison.

“My waffle’s up. ”

“So it is. ” Claire took the waffle from the slot, buttered and cut it, then put the plate in front of her daughter. “Here you go. ”

Alison immediately stabbed a piece and popped it into her mouth, chewing in that cartoon-character way of hers.

Claire couldn’t help smiling. Her daughter had had that effect on her since birth. She stared down at the miniature version of herself. Same fine blond hair and pale skin, same heart-shaped face. Although there were no pictures of Claire at five, she imagined that she and Alison were almost carbon copies of each other. Alison’s father had left no genetic imprint on his daughter.

It was fitting. The minute he’d heard Claire was pregnant, he’d reached for his running shoes.

“You’re in your jammies, Mommy. We’re gonna be late if you don’t hurry. ”

“You’re right about that. ” Claire thought about all the things she had to do today: mow the back field; recaulk the showers and bathroom windows; bleach the mildewed wall in cabin three; unplug the toilet in cabin five; and repair the canoe shed. It was early yet, not even 8:00, on the last day of school. Tomorrow, they’d be leaving for a week of rest and fun at Lake Chelan. She hoped she could get everything done in time. She glanced around. “Have you seen my work list, Alison?”

“On the coffee table. ”

Claire picked up her list from the table, shaking her head. She had absolutely no memory of leaving it there. Sometimes she wondered how she’d get by without Alison.