Family Storms Read online

  Kiera wasn’t yet at the point where she would talk to me during the school day, but I did often notice her watching me when I was with other students in the cafeteria. A few times, I ate outside with some of my classmates, and I thought she was going to come over to say something, but she didn’t. I thought she was looking at me differently, too. I didn’t see the disdain or disrespect as much. It was more as if she was curious about me, which only made me feel even better about myself.

  Usually, if she did say anything to me after school, it was sarcastic or biting, but one day, she followed me out and said, “You’re hanging around with nerds and losers. If you stop, the other girls might invite you to something.” She didn’t wait for me to reply. She kept walking to catch up with her friends.

  Did I hear right? I wondered. From her tone, it sounded as if she was trying to give me good advice, looking out for my interests. What was she up to now? Had Mr. and Mrs. March come down on her for not being friendlier to me? Had she been promised something if she was? I couldn’t imagine ever trusting her or believing her, and yet there was a part of me that wanted to do just that.

  All I should want to do is hate her, I thought. It was easier to hate her when she was so aggressive and arrogant and mean. I hated her for being rich and pretty and popular with her friends, too. However, somehow, no matter how I tried to fight it back, I was beginning to pity her. In her mind, she was losing her father and had already lost her mother. Maybe she was becoming more of an orphan like me.

  With all that I was being given materially as well as emotionally now, it was sometimes hard to remember that I was an orphan. One afternoon, whether she had intended it or not, Mrs. March reminded me. As usual, Grover was there to take me home at the end of the school day, but when he opened the rear door for me, I saw Mrs. March sitting there smiling. I was so surprised that I didn’t move.

  “Get in, silly,” she said.

  I did, and Grover closed the door. Mrs. March had said nothing the night before or at breakfast to indicate that she would be with Grover. I first thought she was on her way back to the mansion and had timed it so she could detour with the limousine to the school, but that wasn’t it.

  “I’m taking you to see something,” she said.

  “Where?”

  “You’ll see very soon. How was your day?”

  I showed her a math test I had taken. I had gotten a ninety-eight, and I had an A on my english essay. She looked at it all and widened her smile.

  “Mr. March has gotten to where he’s actually bragging about you. I heard him talking to Mrs. Duval yesterday. We’re all very proud of your accomplishments in so short a time, Sasha.”

  “Thank you.”

  I saw that we were not going in the direction of the mansion.

  “Where are we going?” I asked again.

  “To see a promise fulfilled,” she replied. “Is it true that you might actually be in the spring concert this year?”

  “Mr. Denacio mentioned it, but he didn’t say for sure,” I replied.

  She nodded but looked as if she knew something more. “It would be something for a first-year instrumental student to be included in the school’s senior orchestra. I knew the clarinet would come naturally to you.”

  I had to admit that I didn’t think I would enjoy playing it as much as I had.

  “You deserve your moments of happiness,” she told me. “That’s what today is about.”

  She sat back, and we drove on. Soon it became obvious to me where we were heading, and the realization made me tremble in a way I hadn’t for some time. Minutes later, we turned into the cemetery and drove as far as we could before Mrs. March and I had to get out and walk the rest of the way to Mama’s grave. As we drew closer, I realized why she had brought me.

  There on the tombstone was the inscription I had wanted. Under Mama’s name and dates, it read, “who showed her daughter a little bit of heaven.” And beneath that was the calligraphy for heaven. It looked just like Mama’s work hanging in the Gravediggers.

  Mrs. March stood back and smiled as I stepped up to the stone and touched the engraved words. The engraving certainly made the tombstone special, but as I stood looking at it, I simply couldn’t imagine Mama lying below, shut up in the dark, cool earth. Most of the years we had been together, she had felt trapped, trapped by Daddy’s betrayals and failure to provide for us as well as he should have, trapped after he had deserted us, and then trapped by our terrible fate. She had certainly trapped herself with her drinking, and now death had trapped her. How could I free her?

  “Is it like you wanted it?” Mrs. March asked. Without turning, I nodded. “I’ll wait for you in the car, Sasha,” she said, and walked away.

  I felt my legs weaken and sat on Mama’s grave with my forehead just touching the cool headstone.

  “Don’t worry, Mama,” I whispered. “I haven’t forgotten you. I’ll never forget you, no matter how much they give me or do for me, no matter where I go and what I become. You will always be with me.”

  I thought I was going to sit there and cry, but I didn’t. Instead, I tightened up inside with a resolve that made me feel stronger, harder. I took some deep breaths, and then I kissed the tombstone, rose, and started back to the car.

  When I got in, Mrs. March said, “I was hoping this would please you and not make you sad, Sasha.”

  “Yes, I’m pleased. Thank you, Mrs. March.”

  She stared at me a moment, looking a bit hurt. What did she expect me to call her, “Mother”?

  “Let’s go home, Grover,” she said, and we drove out of the cemetery.

  Neither of us spoke for quite a while. I stared out my window. Just before we were home, she told me that for the first time since I had arrived, she had to go away that coming weekend with Mr. March.

  “It’s a traditional thing we do this time every year. We meet some of Donald’s old friends in San Francisco and go to Carmel. I’ll leave very specific instructions with Mrs. Duval, who is quite capable of looking after things, and after you, while I’m gone, and I’ll call often.”

  “I’ll be okay,” I said.

  “Of course you will. Why shouldn’t you?”

  I thought she might add that Alena had always been okay while she was gone, but she said nothing more. The night before they left, both Mr. and Mrs. March warned Kiera not to take advantage of their absence. Even Mr. March sounded firm and threatening. Kiera kept her head down and didn’t come back with any smart remarks. The last few days, she had come home right after school and shut herself in her room, and when she returned from her therapy sessions, she not only shut herself in her room but also refused to come down to dinner.

  At first, I thought all of this was her way of playing her parents again. She was hoping to punish them for forcing her to fulfill her obligations to the court and continue the therapy she hated, but she said nothing about it to them when she was at dinner. To my surprise, in fact, she showed them her math and science tests, on which she had received high-B grades.

  Mr. March looked very pleased. “This is very good, Kiera,” he said. He turned to Mrs. March. “Some people just take a little longer to wake up to what’s important.”

  “Yes,” she said, but she didn’t look as convinced about any change as he did. “Do keep it up, Kiera.”

  Because of some change in her schedule, Kiera had a therapy session on the Friday the Marches left for their extended weekend holiday. As usual lately, when Kiera returned, she went directly into her room and asked that her dinner be brought up. I ate alone. Both Mrs. Duval and Mrs. Caro kept appearing to talk and keep me company. They both seemed nervous for me.

  “Don’t worry,” I told them. “I’ve eaten alone many times.”

  “I’m sure you have, dearie,” Mrs. Caro said. She sighed deeply and returned to the kitchen.

  Afterward, I watched some television and then practiced some music Mr. Denacio had given me. By nine-thirty, I was feeling tired enough to go to sleep and prepared
for bed. After I put out the lights and slipped under my blanket, I listened to what I thought of as the grand house’s sad silence, but suddenly I heard a different sound. I listened harder and then rose and pressed my ear to the wall between Kiera’s suite and mine. I was sure of it now. She was crying. It wasn’t someone on television. It was Kiera.

  Full of curiosity, I put on my robe and stepped into the hallway and up to her door. I stood there for a moment, listening. Again and again, I heard the distinct sound of her sobbing. It was a sound that every part of me should enjoy, I thought, but I didn’t feel the satisfaction I would have expected or hoped to feel. I even tried to ignore her sobbing and turn to go back to my suite, but it was as if my feet were glued to the floor. I had no idea what I expected, but I knocked softly. Her sobbing continued, so I knocked a bit harder, and then it stopped.

  “Who is it?” I heard her ask.

  “Sasha,” I said, anticipating some nasty remark to send me back to my own suite. Instead, she opened the door.

  She was in her nightgown. Her hair looked as if she had been standing in an open convertible going seventy miles an hour. She wiped tears away from her cheeks and turned to go back to her bed, surprising me again by leaving her door open. I stepped in and closed it behind me.

  “Why are you crying?” I asked. She lay on her back, staring up at the ceiling.

  “It’s the therapy,” she replied.

  “Oh,” I said, waiting for her to complain, but she surprised me again.

  “It’s been giving me nightmares.”

  “Nightmares?”

  I stepped closer to her bed. I saw that she had taken off her clothing quickly, tossing it every which way, a blouse on the floor, her skirt on a chair, socks and shoes at another place on the floor, her panties beside them. In fact, the room looked as if someone had entered it in a rage and attacked it. Books and magazines were on the floor by a table, and items on her vanity table were turned over, uncovered, and scattered.

  “What sort of nightmares?” I asked.

  Still looking up, she spoke like someone in a trance. “Nightmares about that night. I can’t get your mother’s face out of my mind. I told my therapist, and he said that was good.”

  She finally looked at me.

  “Can you imagine that? He said it was good, good that I see her almost every night now, good that I dream about that night. I don’t sleep. I feel like I’m coming apart inside, and he nods and says, ‘You’re making progress, Kiera. That’s good.’

  “Every time I go to see him now, I begin to shake. He has this calm, soft voice, but it doesn’t make it any less painful. And it makes it painful to look at you,” she added in a louder, strained voice, her lips trembling. She turned away to illustrate her point.

  I certainly didn’t want to feel sorry for her, but I couldn’t get myself to say anything nasty, either. I was waiting, probably hoping for her to do or say something that would drown any sympathy I could possibly have for her, but she sobbed and then wiped her eyes and sat up.

  “What I hate about him, my therapist, is how low he makes me feel without saying anything. It’s like he’s become a mirror.”

  “Mirror?”

  “Yes, a mirror in which I see myself differently. I see what I’ve become to the people I love, how much I’ve hurt my parents.”

  She took a deep breath and looked at me silently for a long moment.

  “I hated you the first day my mother brought you here. I wanted to hate you forever, but my therapist pointed out that I was doing that to make myself feel better. If I could hate you, I could live with what I did much more easily, but hate doesn’t ease the pain or stop the nightmares, and you’ve been … been far nicer to me than I would have ever been to you if the situation was reversed. In fact, I’ve tried hard to get you to hate me even more.”

  “That’s true,” I said. She wiped away some more tears and smiled.

  “When my mother put you in Alena’s room and gave you Alena’s things, I really hated you, but you’ve never taken advantage of it. I complained. Oh, I complained to both my mother and my father, but I saw it only brought more pain to them, so I stopped complaining. When I did that and when I talked about you with my therapist, I realized I was trying to hate you for being so much like Alena.”

  “Why would you hate me for that? Didn’t you like your sister?”

  “Of course I liked her. I loved her.” She looked away and then turned back. “I wanted to be more like her, wanted to have my parents believe that and see that, but I couldn’t, and then you came, and you could. My therapist made me realize all this.”

  “I’m not trying to be like anyone,” I said.

  “You don’t have to try. You just are.” She sighed, lifting and dropping her shoulders. “My mother doesn’t know how close Alena and I really were. There were many, many nights when I went to her when she was sad and when she came to me. I hated that she got so sick. I hated everyone who was healthy. I even hated my parents for not giving her healthy genes, and I especially hated the world and God. Yes, I wasn’t there as I should have been when she was dying. I couldn’t face it. I wasn’t strong enough.

  “Maybe you can’t believe this, but I was looking forward to being her older sister, to guiding her through the dangerous channels we all pass through as girls. I wanted to be there for her when she had her first boyfriend. I hated being left an only child. I hate it now. Everything I’ve done to displease my parents was done in anger.

  “So,” she concluded, “I have the nightmares.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. I really did feel sorry for her now. “But what can I do?”

  “You can help me,” she said quickly.

  “Me? How could I help you?”

  “You’re just about Alena’s age, what she would have been now. Maybe you’ll let me be your older sister.”

  “Sister?”

  “I’m not saying I won’t still suffer. I can’t ignore what I’ve done. Your limping about is clearly in my face every day, no matter what I do to forget, but as my therapist says, maybe it’s better to confront what I’ve done and not try to ignore it.”

  “I’m not sure I know what to do,” I said.

  “You don’t do anything, silly. I do it all. You’re being kept like a prisoner here, and it’s all my fault. You should enjoy being a teenager, too. I’ll take you to places, to the malls, movies, parties.”

  “Parties?”

  “I want all my friends to know you are part of my family now. I’ll admit I have a selfish motive. I want to stop feeling terrible and having these nightmares, and I want people who think I’m so terrible to see me as a better person. If you’re with me, they will. Well?” she asked when I said nothing.

  Maybe I was very much like Alena. Maybe I was incapable of hate and being mean, and maybe my being with Kiera would change her. I tried to think of it as a selfish thing, too. I would enjoy living there more if we weren’t at each other’s throats.

  “It’s all right with me,” I said.

  She smiled and reached out for my hands. “Let’s make a pact, then,” she said. “Let’s swear that we’ll try to be like sisters.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  She squeezed my hands gently, and then she let them go and fell back to her pillow. “Do me a favor,” she said.

  “What?”

  “Just return to your room and play the clarinet for a while. Will you?”

  “Play my clarinet?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay.”

  “Thank you. It will put me to sleep, a good sleep,” she said, and closed her eyes.

  I stared at her a moment, and then I left, feeling as though I was the one who might begin to have nightmares.

  20

  New Friends

  Oddly, that night, I thought I played the clarinet better than I ever had. It was as if Alena possessed me for a while and had me do it well enough to help her older sister get through her own darkness. Afterward, I went to sleep
feeling contented, too. I felt safer knowing that Kiera needed me.

  For the first time, she was up before me in the morning. She knocked on my door, which was already different behavior for her. Usually, she would just burst in as if I didn’t have any right to privacy, especially in her dead sister’s suite. I thought it was Mrs. Duval and that I had overslept and was missing breakfast, but I saw it was early.

  “Yes?”

  Kiera peeked in first. “Hi,” she said, and entered. She was already dressed in a pink and blue tennis outfit and wore a blue wristband. I had never seen her look as fresh and as buoyant this early. She practically bounced over to my bed.

  “Get up, get up!” she cried. “We’re having an early, simple breakfast, and then I’m going to teach you the fundamentals of tennis so that eventually we can play doubles. I’ve had all sorts of professional lessons, as you can imagine, so I’m qualified to give instruction. I’m not terrific, but I’m pretty good, better than most of the girls in my circle of friends, for sure. And it won’t take you long to be as good as, if not better than, them, too.”

  “I’ve never played tennis.”

  “That’s the point, silly. That’s why I want you up and out there with me this morning.” She smiled coyly. “I have a few friends coming over to play later, swim, and have lunch. I got my parents’ permission,” she added quickly.

  “Really?” I said, feeling a little excitement but not rushing to get up.

  “I know what’s troubling you. Stop worrying about your limping. You get around pretty quickly when you want to, and you’ll see that in doubles, you don’t have to move that fast, anyway.”

  “But I can’t expect to be too good at it, good enough to play with you and your friends.”

  “So? None of us is going to be in any tournaments. It’s just for fun. Stop arguing. If you’re going to call yourself a March, you have to live up to the March reputation for self-confidence, if not downright arrogance. My father happens to be an excellent tennis player. My mother, however, is a professional sideliner.”