Shred Sisters

by Betsy Lerner

In every way the opposite of her, I complied with rules, met or exceeded expectations. Now, all the scaffolding holding up my rule-abiding, single-minded self crumbled. And in the end I guess that, too, was predictable.

I was sitting on the steps of Low Library, the magnolias now in full plumage like fat ostriches, watching the campus empty out.

There was a certain intensity in the way he moved, his body pitched forward as he walked, as if something exciting were just around the corner.

I both admired his lack of prejudice and worried that he was romanticizing a group of troubled, broken men.

I had a premonition that we had reached our end.

Josh gently took my glasses off as if he were going to kiss me, but instead he breathed on the lenses and wiped them clean.

My mother hadn’t exactly mellowed, but something in her had shifted.

I didn’t want to bet against Ollie, but I couldn’t put my money on her either.

At random moments, I’d find myself having one-way conversations with her in my head.

“Maybe I’m stepping over a line, but you seem a little depressed to me,” she said, handing me a business card for a therapist.

If she saw a woman in a great outfit, she’d say, “Love that.”

Had my sister been spat out by a great whale, or was she the whale?

I wondered what would happen if life wrapped its cruel arms around Fiona and dropped a starter house on her head.

A plaque with my name was mounted outside my office door, giving me immeasurable pleasure every time I crossed the threshold.

One night she confided that she had dreamed of jumping off a building in those weeks and months after her abortion and before college, which she called the Dark Ages.

At last my reticence was interpreted as allure.

I didn’t have to worry. And best of all, I didn’t have to think.

Mostly, I persuaded myself that Marc’s temperament was enviable, perfect for me. I admired his clarity.

I feared the real me would emerge, a friendless girl who concocted Cobbler and Tupperware games to play alone. The girl who went to the movies with her dad on prom night, who drowned her disappointment in Milk Duds, letting the little caramel turds melt in her mouth before swallowing them.

Worse, I wasn’t able to quell the occasional fear that if she did return, Ollie would drag me down into the muck and ruin everything.

We loved REM and danced around the apartment yelling the lyrics to “The One I Love,” stabbing the air with our index fingers.

His emotions ran the gamut: relieved, angry, confused, happy.

He’d let Ollie back into his life on her terms, as he would continue to do again and again, suffering her abrupt departures and accepting her unapologetic returns. He’d become one of us.

Marc would cover me with his body, a human compression blanket, until my tension dissipated beneath the weight and heat of his body.

“I wish you were my sister,” I said. “I know,” she replied.

I wanted my sister; I just didn’t know if I wanted Ollie.

I wanted to believe that I had been rewarded for being good. That my stupid solitary life had been a mistake, that my real life was starting now.

I asked him if he had ever dropped a friend, and he looked at me quizzically: why would he do that?

I did love Marc, but I couldn’t always return the serve when it landed in my court.

I felt guilty and a little mean, but she had come to me this time.

I realized what was different: Marc was no longer mine.

I knew the smell of him, the taste of him, the clockwise whorl on the back of his head that I had kissed and traced with my finger.

I knew what was coming, but I didn’t know when. She was like a surfer waiting for the next big wave.

She fell backward into the tulip bed and pulled me down with her.

I knew Courtney well; she could work herself up over nothing in a matter of seconds.

It wasn’t until after we separated that she saw him in a new light. My light.

Together, we had transformed his dry academic prose into a book for a popular audience. He compared me to Rumpelstiltskin, weaving his straw into gold.

Our repartee was as quick and light as a birdie tapped back and forth over a badminton net.

“Can you stay for dinner? I don’t feel like being alone.” Not exactly the invitation I was hoping for, but good enough.

Paul suggested that I was punishing myself, but I believed that forcing myself to hear about their life together would make me stronger, more impervious to pain.

To the nurses, we must have appeared as devoted, loving daughters, and I was glad for that. The illusion, if nothing else, was comforting.

“Some people don’t have the knack for being alone” is how she put it.

I never viewed my ability to be alone as a strength. It was more of a default.

I had read in a women’s magazine that having someone ask how you are every day boosts the immune system. Did the coffee man count?

Too keyed up to sleep, I picked up the phone to call my mother, then remembered she was dead. That happened often.

As soon as the long fingers of an active ingredient reached Ollie’s brain circuitry, she rejected it.

Unlike people who sustained long periods of mania and depression, Ollie could fluctuate between highs and lows over months, weeks, or within a single day, or hour. This, he noted, was why she was difficult to diagnose and even more difficult to treat.

You could say she lived on her own terms, or you could dismiss her as mentally ill, the woman who continues to dance after the floor clears and the lights go down, listening to music only she can hear.

No matter what your desires, this was a city of chutes and ladders.

I couldn’t tell if I was burning with shame or anger.