Two Sisters Times Two
by
Jeffrey Anderson
Copyright 2016 by Jeffrey Anderson
This story is a work of fiction.
Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Wedding Belles
Leah watched in silence from the Fulcher family table as her sister Brooke rose from her seat at the head table and, after a few inaudible words cast in the direction of the huddled bridesmaids and the bridesmaids’ reaction of shocked laughter, began her visits to the tables assembled around the dance floor. She trailed the bride, her twenty-five year old daughter Penni, and groom, Penni’s boyfriend since college Randall, by about five tables. Brooke’s husband Dave—her second husband, though who here remembered her long ago and brief marriage to Onion?—pretended not to notice Brooke’s departure as he continued his animated conversation with Dave Jr., a groomsman and the eldest of their three sons. After a few minutes, Dave Sr. turned toward his wife’s empty chair, made an exclamation of surprise with upraised arms, and stood to follow his wife who was now four tables ahead. Though Brooke was lingering at each table, offering forth her patented mix of incisive observations and self-deprecating humor, it still took Dave another seven tables to catch up to his wife as he paused at each table she’d just visited to exchange small talk or a loud belly laugh in response to some lame joke.
Leah saw that their staggered start was calculated, unconsciously so, the product of decades of practice in social events just like this, allowing each marital half to be their own forthright self while still presenting a united front. That Brooke had developed such social skills following her rebellious youth and adolescence still, even all these years later, struck Leah as one of the most amazing reversals she’d ever witnessed.
Her eyes drifted from her sister across the room to her parents across the table. Momma and Father had just returned from the dance floor after taking a turn to the rock band’s version of “Blue Moon,” a request relayed from Father to the band by Leah’s son Jasper who had continued past the band to join two of his cousins at the open bar. Father slid Momma’s chair out for her to sit, directing a gaze of love-struck attention toward his wife of fifty-eight years as if they were still at the college formal where they’d first met, each abandoning their dates to leave together. Momma sat with a natural grace and dignity she’d not lost despite the knee replacement last year and a nearly fatal post-surgical infection. Before Father sat, he daubed his brow with his handkerchief as he surveyed the room. Though Dave’s money had paid for this plush affair, and his side of the family far outnumbered the Fulchers—all neatly corralled at this eight-seat table if you didn’t count those at the head table—Father still projected an air of patriarchal satisfaction. He and Momma had done right by their families and their community. Leah saw that though Brooke’s social skills were of a more conspicuous sort, their roots were surely genetic, as predetermined as her nose or eye color. It was the rebelliousness that had been the feint all along, though someone forgot to tell Leah, and Onion.
Leah’s gaze shifted back to the head table. Jodie, the Maid of Honor and Brooke’s daughter with Onion, sat by herself surveying the room with active and piercing eyes. The mauve-colored sleeveless attendant’s dress revealed the multi-colored tattoo covering her left shoulder. Even at this distance, the tattoo was striking; and up close it was a work of art. But it also set Jodie off, not only from the bride and the other bridesmaids—all with lily-white shoulders and backs—but also from everyone else in attendance. Leah had noted small and innocuous tattoos on the exposed lower backs of several young women, but none to match the in-your-face insistence of Jodie’s. Her niece’s current frank and imperious gaze seemed perfectly matched to that tattoo’s claim—I don’t need or desire your approval! But that defensive wall crumbled as soon as Jodie’s eyes crossed Leah’s. The taut skin of her quite beautiful face relaxed, her dark eyes twinkled, and her mouth curled into that vulnerable lopsided grin that had been her standard greeting to Aunt Leah during all those years of difficult transition and frequent moves. Jodie could shove away the rest of the world, even her mother (sometimes her mother most of all); but she’d never figured out how to push away Leah. And now they both hoped she’d never want to.
Jodie’s eyes locked on Leah’s and her grin steadily swelled into a smile. She stood from her seat and started toward Leah’s table. Then she stopped, frowned, and veered off toward the restrooms as if that was where she’d been headed all along.
Leah stood to follow but was stopped as the bride stepped in front of her. “Aunt Leah!” Penni exclaimed with a broad smile and glow of affection and attention that would’ve melted a stone monument’s heart. “My day is now complete!” She leaned over—aunt and niece were exactly the same height, but the bride’s heels made her a couple inches taller today—and kissed Leah lightly on each cheek then gave her a hug that lingered for a few seconds, her face pressed against the side of Leah’s head. When Penni stood upright, her eyes glistened with tears. She took hold of Leah’s two hands without looking down and waited for her throat to clear, her gaze never breaking from Leah’s despite the swell of emotion. “I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for you,” she said finally in a soft though firm voice. She regained her graceful smile and composure. “Everything that happens from here on out is your fault!” she exclaimed with a restored playful twinkle.
Penni was referring to an incident at the beach when she was ten. Though an expert swimmer for her age, she’d miscalculated the strength of the tide and then panicked. No one on shore had heard her shouts above the crashing surf, but Leah had spotted her hand in its last reach above the waves. With no time to communicate the distress to anyone else, Leah had rushed into the surf and made her way to the spot where she thought Penni would be, instinctively adjusting for the current’s powerful pull. She found Penni thrashing about and gasping but still conscious. She’d put Penni on her back and somehow forced her way through the rough surf to shore.
Penni, with her fair skin perfectly made up, her brown hair beautifully arranged atop her head, her lovely sleeveless wedding gown with hand-stitched beaded lace bodice and a sea of satin folds, gazed serenely at her aunt now and repeated what she’d said that day when she finally stopped coughing up seawater, as she lay in the lap of her frantic mother and looked up at her still panting rescuer. “Aunt Leah, I didn’t know you could swim!” Neither had Leah.
By now Randall had come abreast of the two. Overhearing Penni, and having heard the story many times before, he took Leah’s hand and kissed it lightly following a deep and formal bow. “I am forever in your debt,” he said, and seemed to mean it.
Leah accepted their gushing praise without blushing or embarrassment though with a clear-eyed nod that let them both know their kind recognition was gratefully accepted. Then she turned bride and groom toward her parents and her Grandmother Mim in a wheelchair at the other side of the table.
Penni immediately caught the hint and rushed over to lavish attention on those elder generations that were half-responsible for her half of this affair. Randall followed just a short stride behind.
Leah turned to check the hall leading to the restrooms. Jodie was nowhere to be seen. She decided to excuse herself and head off to find her wayward niece but was intercepted by her sister jumping in front of her and exclaiming, “Hey, Sis,” in a volume of voice and gesture better suited to their afternoons at the pier or State Fair than in this place on this occasion. The skin of her sister’s face was taut and lined with more than just the wrinkles of her midlife. Her eyes looked especially animated, producing in Leah an instinctive reaction of anxiety. Brooke out of con
trol had once been her greatest worry, dating to the days when her destiny and Brooke’s were inextricably twined. Though they had spent little time together since Brooke’s marriage to Dave and the four kids that followed in quick succession, some deep-seated fears never faded. Leah tried hard to ascribe Brooke’s frenetic energy to the stress of planning this event or the relief at accomplishing it or the emotions of seeing her baby married off, not to mention the two vodka tonics and three glasses of wine with dinner. There were plenty of reasons for Brooke to be giddy. Still, Leah felt unsettled by the sight and actually took a half-step back from her sister. “Hi, Brooke,” Leah said tentatively.
“I love it!” Brooke shrieked. “I still can’t get used to you talking!” She threw herself onto Leah’s neck in an impassioned embrace that shifted her entire weight onto her sister.
Leah recoiled another half-step then caught her balance. She accepted Brooke’s hug with a patient indulgence recalled from decades ago. After a few seconds, her arms gently wrapped around Brooke’s small waist and held her sister close. Despite her misgivings of the moment—in fact, quite probably because of them—she realized she still loved her sister more than anyone in the world.
When Brooke finally unknotted herself, there were tears in her eyes that she tried to wipe away while pretending to straighten her neatly permed short hair that showed many flecks of gray amidst the fading brown. She stared at Leah in hapless vulnerability through brimming eyes, trying several times to speak but each time failing.
Leah grinned at her sister. “So now who’s the one that can’t talk?”
Brooke laughed. “Now that my kids are gone maybe we should relive our childhood with me deaf and you speaking.”
“That would be a lot of history to rewrite.”
Leah had been born deaf, and depended heavily on her older sister’s care and guidance throughout her childhood and adolescence. By the time she graduated from high school and went on to college, she had developed, with Brooke’s help, the skills to prosper on her own despite her deafness. Brooke moved to Shawnituck Island, married Onion Howard, and had Jodie all in rapid succession, her time and attention now diverted to other demands. Leah went on to college, then graduate school, then married and had a child of her own.
Then, ten years ago in a miracle of medicine coupled with microprocessors, she was fitted with two cochlear implants that gave her the ability to hear. It took many months of therapy and training to learn to hear—that is, interpret the signals the implants sent to her brain—then many more months to train herself to speak intelligibly (she’d always had the ability to make sounds with her mouth and throat; she’d just never known what they sounded like and had always used sign language or written messages instead of the awkward and embarrassing “deaf-speak”). Now she spoke as naturally as any lifelong hearing person, if a little formally and more distinctly. The only evidence of her prior handicap were the small external processors magnetically attached to the internal implants just behind and above her ears (and discreetly hid by her long blond hair) and the small microphones hung over her ears like hearing aids.
Brooke’s mouth curled into the sly grin of their childhood conspiracies. “I’m game if you are. I’ll rent that cottage at the tip of Bogue Beach and bring the wine; you bring the food and promise to do the cooking.” She laughed at her joke—Leah was a gourmet cook from a stint at an upscale restaurant between college and grad school whereas Brooke had never gotten past church casseroles and meatloaf.
Leah laughed. It was the one sound she retained from her pre-hearing days—a cross between a hiccup and a baby’s giggle, a childish sound that didn’t fit her polished demeanor and thus made it all the more endearing. “How much wine?” Leah rarely drank and then only sparingly.
“Oh, cases and cases,” Brooke said. “The whole truck!”
“Then I’m there,” Leah said.
Penni stuck her head between the two sisters. “What are you two schemers planning?”
Brooke turned to her youngest child. “How to get you back in the crib!”
“Crib? Who’s having a baby?” It was Whitfield, Leah’s husband, back from sharing Cuban cigars and golf anecdotes with other like-minded males out on the balcony overlooking the golf course behind the restaurant.
“Don’t look at me,” Penni said.
“I mean Penni,” Brooke wailed. “Just yesterday you were the cutest little baby. Now look at you!” She burst into tears and threw herself on her daughter’s chest, burying her face in all that lace and delicate beadwork.
“Aww, Mom; I’ll always be your baby,” Penni cooed, only faintly aware of all the eyes turned toward her and Brooke, many of those eyes shedding sentimental tears.
Jodie watched from the entrance to the restroom hall, no tears in her eyes.
Leah instinctively looked in that direction, away from the hubbub. She caught Jodie’s eye and gestured for her to join the group. Dave Sr. had just caught up to his wife, Dave Jr. came over from the head table, and Jasper along with his other two cousins, Brent and Garrett, had crossed over from the bar. Only Jodie was missing from this assembly of Fulcher kin.
Jodie shook her head once.
Leah sighed—always the outsider. She nodded acceptance of the choice then started toward her elder niece. She would not let the outsider stand outside alone.
Jodie stopped her with a look and a half-raised hand, locked her face in an impassive stare and came forward.
Leah met her halfway and took her hand. They walked toward the Fulcher table together.
By then Brooke was standing on her own and again wiping away tears. She spotted Jodie and exclaimed, “The Maid of Honor!”
Jodie flinched and her hand tightened on Leah’s.
“One day soon, a bride,” Brooke announced.
Jodie looked down and shook her head but kept on coming, urged along by Leah.
“If she could only hide that tattoo,” Brooke concluded. She’d lowered her voice by then, but still everyone around their table heard her.
Penni raced to her sister. “I think it’s beautiful! I think she’s beautiful!” She gave Jodie a big hug as Leah stepped aside. “The best Maid of Honor and the best sister in the whole world!” She gave Jodie a kiss on the cheek then forehead. Several cellphone cameras flashed pictures of the embrace.
Jodie, at first stiff and hesitant, suddenly acquiesced to the moment, the day, her whole Redmond-family life, and firmly grabbed her sister’s face in her hands, stared straight into her eyes, and gave Penni a long kiss on the lips. Photos of the moment (there are eight known to exist) show Jodie’s eyes closed in passionate surrender and Penni’s open and wide in wonder and surprise. One of the eight snapshots, taken on panorama setting, shows Brooke off to the right with her hand raised to her mouth and Leah off to the left with an ambiguous half-grin that might be of approval or might be of tolerance but was in any case patient and watchful.