"Every time I saw her, she looked smaller, but her eyes grew bigger. It was like her body was becoming more and more surprised by what was happening to it. It was very weird," she told me. "It got so I was afraid of going to visit her with Daddy and Mama. I envied you because you were so oblivious and protected. Daddy wouldn't take you along to visit like he took me, so you didn't see firsthand how very sad he was about it all. He tried not to be sad. He told me sadness hardens like tar on your soul, and you carry the weight of it forever."
Aunt Marissa was married but had never had children, and we had little contact now with her husband, my uncle Granger. He had left our area and moved to Oregon, where he met another woman and remarried.
Despite all this sorrow. Daddy held on to his optimism and happy personality. He had his own firm with two junior partners and was seemingly always busy. We took at least two vacations a year. Before his Mr. Hyde days. Daddy was a skier and had taught both Brenda and inc how to ski. Mama was okay at it, but almost immediately. Brenda was on the advanced slopes with Daddy, and I was left with Mama to navigate along with the other insecure skiers and children. We went to Aspen and Sun Valley, and once, we all even went to Austria during a Christmas holiday.
They took us to Disneyland and to Universal City in California. We went to the Caribbean. where Daddy and Brenda went scuba diving, and we took a train trip through the Northwest and Canada. There was a pile of vacation pictures in the living room and dozens of family videos on shelves and in drawers.
Our Christmases and Easter holidays were always happy and grand. The front of our house was decorated with lights, as were the trees. Mama would have a parry for her and Daddy's friends and business acquaintances. There was even a time when Daddy pretended to be Santa Claus and surprised me on Christmas morning. I was only four. That was when he gave me Mr. Panda.
Mama loved to cook and bake. She had gone to school to be a paralegal, and that was how she and Daddy had met, but after Brenda was born, she stopped working. She wasn't unhappy about it, and she never thought of herself as some shut-away housewife. She was active in community charity events and frequently held teas and dinner parties. It seemed there was never a dull moment or an empty hour in our house.
Sometimes. I felt as if we truly lived a storybook life, and every day brought a new chapter full of fun and excitement and surprises. If any family was a success, ours truly was. So many of my school friends came from broken families or one-parent families, and a few lived with their grandparents. If they didn't say it, I could read it in their eyes when they saw us all together at a restaurant or at the mall or just walking in the street. You're lucky. You can't fail.
I wasn't as good a student as Brenda was, even with all her extracurricular activities, but I wasn't a poor student. either. There was always an expectation about me. I would lose weight: I would get better grades: I would burst out with some talent. rd be socially popular. Soon. It was always soon.
Soon wasn't to come soon enough. Before it could, the darkness was to close in on us, folding itself over our happy home and then seeping in under the doors, through the windows, down the chimney, until it entered our very hearts.
If I were forced to pick any special moment and say. "There, that's when I remember it all becoming too hard to bear," I'd pick the day Daddy forgot it was Brenda's birthday-- and her sixteenth at that! I knew Mania had reminded him enough times about it. I even overheard her tell him what she was planning to buy her. It was a very expensive mountain bike.
Brenda didn't want a Sweet Sixteen party. She was never that sort of girl. Oh, she enjoyed pretty things and pretty clothes and had her favorite music, but she never seemed distracted by any of it. I remembered when Daddy thought that was a wonderful trait. "It's good to be like Brenda," he would tell me. "It's good to be dedicated and fixed on a Goal, to know your priorities and live your life accordingly."
I supposed he was telling me that because I didn't have any apparent priorities or interests, except that I did like to read. In fact. I loved to read. I could get so lost in a book that I'd lose track of time and even place. Both Daddy and Mama used to laugh remembering when they saw me lying outside on a chaise longue reading and not at all aware that it was raining. It wasn't a heavy rain, just a sprinkle, but surely enough to stain the pages of the book.
"April is truly into the book when she reads it," Mama said. "She's beyond the page, past the paper and ink."
Now. Daddy called that foolish and said I was absentminded. even lame-brained.
"Only dogs would stay out in the rain like that. Even cats are smarter," he would comment should Mama ever remind him of that time. He came very close to calling me retarded, and of course. I hurried away to hide my tears behind the closed door of my room.
I was so mad at him those days that I was happy he had forgotten it was Brenda's birthday. Good. I thought. Now he's the one who looks like he's lame-brained, not me.
He had come home expecting that Mama had prepared dinner and we would be eating almost immediately. Instead, of course, she had made reservations at what used to be our favorite family restaurant. Dickson's Steak House. She told Brenda and me to get dressed and ready. anticipating Daddy's arrival, She did comment that she wasn't sure about his exact arrival time because he hadn't returned her phone call to the office and all his secretary would say was that he was in conference. She left a message and jumped to go to the phone every time it rang, but it was never Daddy.
The three of us, all dressed and ready, sat in the living room waiting. Mama looked nervously at the clock.
"What could be holding him up?" she muttered.
"Why doesn't he call you?" Brenda demanded. "It's just plain inconsiderate."
Brenda's face had changed so from her younger days. It used to be rounder, more like mine, but with her growth spurt. as Mama liked to call it, her face narrowed and seemed even to lengthen. I suppose her best feature was her eyes. They weren't quite as dark as mine. They were almost charcoal but clear and striking and almond-shaped. Her hair was more dark brown than black. She wore very little makeup, barely some lipstick, never cared about trimming her eyebrows, and rarely, if ever, wore earrings. She was wearing some tonight and did brush her hair, which she had let grow a little longer, more. I thought, to please Mama than herself.
Tall and lean like Daddy, she had a small bosom, long legs, and long arms. Her fingers weren't exceptionally long, but she had a very strong grip. I could see it in the faces of the men with whom she shook hands whenever she was introduced to someone. They were always surprised at the strength in her hand.
Part
of her ability to focus was the intensity in her eyes when she fixed them on something, whether it be a basketball net or a hurdle to jump on the running track. She could apply this same firm attention to people as well, and most could not look her in the eyes.
"Now, Brenda," Mama began, preparing to roll out one of her many excuses for Daddy's current disturbing behavior.
"No, it's just plain rude for him to do this to us. Mama," she insisted.
"Oh. I'm sure he has something terribly heavy on his mind. Some of his cases are so complicated, Brenda. We just don't appreciate how hard he works. He's so good at what he does, we take it all for granted," Mama said.
"Yeah, right," Brenda replied, and folded her arms under her bosom so tightly her shoulders arched. She glared at the doorway.
Mama glanced again at the clock.
"We're never going to make that reservation. you know." Brenda muttered. "Call his office and see if he left, at least." she insisted.