Two Sisters Times Two

By Jeffrey Anderson

What happens when you take two sisters stuck in middle age and join them with two sisters struggling to enter adulthood and stir them all together in the cauldron of life's trials? This novel picks up the story of Brooke and Leah Fulcher now in their fifties and adds Jodie and Penni, Brooke's daughters, to their mix, creating emotional entanglements beyond the sum of those parts.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jeffrey Anderson
• Release date: May 6, 2016
• ISBN: 9781310998904

Book preview

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 control 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.

2

Brooke stood at the end of their wide drive watching the limo’s taillights make a graceful arc around the cul-de-sac rimmed by stately three-story houses with their yard lights just starting to switch on in the fading dusk. She watched the pair of red lights end their arc and hit the short straightaway leading out to the main road. Those lights paused for what seemed a long time at the main road. Brooke wondered if they’d forgotten something, were maybe preparing to turn around and come back. She unconsciously took two steps in their direction—to meet them halfway, have Penni lower the window and say with an embarrassed apology I just realized I forgot my sunglasses, Mom and Brooke would run into the house and retrieve those sunglasses from her room. But then she saw the twin red lights turn left onto the main road and disappear into the swirl of traffic racing past.

It had all gone off as planned and on schedule. Following the champagne toast and the cake cutting and the garter toss and the bouquet toss, the bridal couple had run (or strode, hand in hand) the gauntlet of cheering, popcorn tossing guests arrayed on each side of the burgundy carpet running from the reception hall’s entry portico to the drop-off circle where they stepped up into a canopied horse-drawn carriage assisted by the carriage’s top-hat and tails attired coachman. After more shouts and cheers and a few off-color comments about the big night to come, the carriage slowly pulled away from the crowd, trailing some rattling tin cans that seemed to rile the horse no more than the trailing exclamations and whistles and a couple of firecrackers lit by high school boys from Randall’s side of the guest list—that is to say, troubling the handsome well-groomed gelding not at all. He was used to it.

As soon as the carriage was out of sight around a bend in the long drive of the sprawling restaurant complex (it had three wedding and two anniversary receptions that day in addition to a full book of dinner reservations), the carriage had veered right into a small service entrance where their hired limo and its more contemporarily attired driver (black suit and shoes and tie, white shirt, driver’s cap sitting on the middle of the front seat) waited. This time the coachman remained on his seat and let Randall jump to the ground and help his bride down. Randall pulled a fifty from his pocket and handed it up to the coachman. It’s covered, he’d said. For the horse, Randall insisted. The coachman laughed and took the bill then directed the horse and carriage to the loading dock’s overhang to await their next call. Randall slid into the car’s spacious backseat where Penni was already waiting, and the driver closed the door and took the wheel for the short trip to Penni’s parents’ house.

After hooting with the crowd at the carriage’s picturesque exit (Wasn’t it so romantic?), Brooke had hurried back into the reception hall, pausing only as long as necessary to be polite in accepting the thanks and congratulations of a number of guests who intercepted her along the way. She found Dave out back on the balcony with Whitfield and several other middle-aged men she didn’t know—maybe from Randall’s side, maybe party crashers: what did she care?

Dave had laughed at her impatience. You spend two years planning this, and now you can’t wait to rush home?

We need to help Penni load the car! she said with more volume and insistence than she intended. Why couldn’t he just do as she asked?

Penni’s got Randall now, Whitfield said. What do you think husbands are for?

Brooke turned a hot stare on her brother-in-law but swallowed her retort unspoken, for Leah’s sake. For some reason she felt closer to her sister than in years. She wondered if this was another symptom of menopause. She looked back at Dave and said in the calmest voice she could muster, I told Penni I’d be there to help her. Could you drive me home, please? The last word had more edge to it than the rest of the request, but at least she’d tried. Hopefully Whitfield would remember that when he repeated the incident to Leah.

Dave looked to Whitfield and shook his head. Duty calls. He knocked back what remained of the dark brown liquid in the tumbler in his hand. Have a drink on me, he said to the group, waving toward the bar behind the balcony’s doors. In fact, have as many as you want on me. By the time he finished shaking their hands, Brooke was already through those doors and on her way back to the main entrance.

––––––––

The driver had just finished loading the luggage into the trunk when Dave swerved the high-performance European sports car around the limo and raced into their garage before the overhead door was finished rising. He loved it when he beat the door from the end of their road.

Brooke jumped out and ran on her high heels through the garage and the mudroom and the kitchen to the entry foyer where Penni was double checking her list. Hey, Mom. What are you running for?

You’ve changed! Brooke cried.

Penni looked down over her linen blouse, thigh-length skirt, and open-toed sandals to confirm the fact. Yep.

How?

Penni laughed. I unzipped the gown and took it off.

But how? Brooke repeated.

Randall helped me. I hung it on the wide hanger and hooked the hanger over the curtain rod so it wouldn’t drag on the floor.

Brooke frowned.

Penni leaned over and hugged her with one arm, like a mother reassuring a petulant child. It’s O.K., Mom. I was careful with the dress. I told you that you didn’t need to rush back. We have it all under control.

As if to affirm that statement, Randall descended the central staircase, also changed—into casual khakis, a crewneck shirt, and an open linen sport coat. All set? he asked when he reached the bottom of the stairs. The driver would take them to the airport hotel where they would spend the night before rising early for the flight to their honeymoon in Hawaii.

Dave came out of the kitchen and intercepted Randall and pulled him into the dining room.

Brooke followed their disappearance with flashing eyes. I told him to hurry up, she muttered. But he had to stop and talk to every person we passed between the restaurant and the parking lot.

Don’t be angry, Mom. It was a big day for Dad too.

Dave and his new son-in-law reappeared and joined the women in the foyer.

Penni said to her parents, standing a few feet apart with arms at their sides like boxers being introduced to the crowd, Thank you both, not only for today but for the twenty-five years of days leading up to this one. She leaned forward and hugged her father, lingering with her face plastered to his chest for several seconds. Then she stepped back, took a couple steps to one side, and hugged her mother.

Randall followed his bride with a firm handshake for Dave and a warm but chaste hug for his mother-in-law.

Then they were gone—out the ornate front door, across the covered entry patio, down the brick walk, into the waiting car, out the drive, around the cul-de-sac, down the straightaway, left at the highway: gone.

Dave had watched from the open front door till they were in the car, then waved once into the dusk before retreating inside in search of a glass of water and a couple aspirin.

Brooke had followed to the end of the drive, discovered herself suddenly alone there, shivered at what she would’ve assumed was a chill in the new dark, if she’d thought about it at all.

3

Penni looked at Randall across the wide backseat in the pale glow of the car’s courtesy lights. Her eyes were lit by a glow far brighter than that of those courtesy lights, a vivacity and cheerfulness that originated inside and was quite amazing, particularly given the exhausting demands and stresses of the past twenty-four hours, starting with last night’s rehearsal and dinner. But then Penni was no ordinary young woman, a fact Randall affirmed through heavy-lidded eyes much more weary and a little bloodshot, his body reclining into the corner like that of a child about to take a nap on their ride home from a long trip.

Can you believe we made it? Penni asked, her tone answering her rhetorical question.

Unh-unh, Randall grunted.

What do you mean ‘unh-unh’?

Unh-hunh? Randall tried.

Penni tilted her head coquettishly and purred, Are you going to fall asleep on your wedding night? She reached across to grab his near knee then directed her hand slowly upward across his thigh.

Randall’s left eye, nearest Penni, opened wide in sudden interest and anticipation. Umm, he said, as if weighing the respective merits of sleep versus remaining awake.

Unh-unh, Penni mimicked as her hand ever so slowly crept toward Randall’s crotch.

Unh-hunh, Randall said, firmly this time.

When Penni and Randall were first dating, during their last undergraduate semester, they had quickly moved from hand holding to good night kisses to outside the clothing fondling to inside the clothing petting. By the day of their graduation, the climax of this progression appeared in sight. The prospect riveted them both, though perhaps more so Penni, who was a still a virgin, than Randall, who had had several sexual relationships with long-term girlfriends, starting in high school. The end to their longing seemed destined to happen during a weeklong beach trip, in a rented condo with only one bed, they’d planned for the end of that summer before they parted to go to separate graduate schools—Randall to medical school at Center, Penni to Georgetown for a masters (and later a doctorate) in public policy.

But two days before they were scheduled to go to the beach, Jodie stopped by home on her way back to Seattle from her annual visit to her father and his family on Shawnituck Island, a tiny island off the coast once accessible only by ferry but now with a bridge connector. She’d been making these annual visits every summer since Brooke and her father had divorced when she was three. When they were younger, Penni had envied Jodie for these annual excursions and for having a second mystery family. In Penni’s youthful eyes, it was as if Jodie the teenager could step off the face of the earth and into her version of Jodie’s Wonderland during these long absences. And Jodie happily enhanced that impression, returning with tales of adventure and intrigue she would share at length with her younger sister as they sat in Penni’s bed with the lights out until Penni drifted off to sleep. But once Jodie had gone off to college and, later, moved to the west coast, and Penni was herself engaged in a range of summer activities, they rarely saw each other during Jodie’s brief stops on her way to or from Shawnituck. Some years she didn’t stop at all, though home was less than a half hour from the airport she flew into and out of.

But this particular summer, Jodie did stop; and she was a mess. It was unclear to Penni exactly why Jodie was upset. She refused to share specifics, had never shared details of her personal life with her half-sister who was ten years younger. But she wore the emotional distress just as conspicuously as the five rings in her right ear and the stud in the side of her nose. She was chain-smoking—in the dark on the picnic table in the backyard, not in the house—and a fidgety wreck. Penni, at her mom’s urging, went out and sat with her, trying to calm her and, failing that, just keeping her company. At one point, Jodie grew suddenly still then looked to Penni and asked Who am I?

Penni had answered simply, Jodie Elizabeth Howard.

And Jodie laughed hysterically, frighteningly, for what seemed an eternity before leaning forward and saying quietly, Then tell her, pointing at Brooke standing in the light over the sink squinting out into the dark toward her shadowed girls.

That night, Penni decided she and Randall would not consummate their relationship during their summer-ending beach trip. They would never consummate it in any way that might result in the conception of a child out of wedlock. They could find plenty of other outlets and opportunities for expression of their affection, and in fact over the years had grown quite creative in this regard. But sexual intercourse would only happen once they were married and prepared to raise the child that might result.

And tonight, they were married.

Penni’s hand continued its slow passage up over his thigh toward the all too conspicuous bump beneath the zipper of his pants.

Randall slid further down on the seat till he was all but lying across it.

Penni’s body started to slide toward his. Shortly, she’d be fully on top of him.

Then the car stopped at a traffic light.

Penni sat up quickly and glanced toward the front seat.

The driver—his name was Al—redirected his gaze from the rear-view mirror to the windshield.

Penni giggled. She pushed the button to raise the window dividing the front seat from the back. Al could still see them but at least they had a little more privacy. She straightened her skirt then her hair and sat prim and proper on her side of the seat.

Randall slowly sat upright himself, his eyes now wide awake.

Penni looked at him with a wink and whispered, Soon, Tarzan, alluding to a game they’d created that involved him swinging her back and forth upside-down. Sometimes their Tarzan and Jane wore loincloths, sometimes not.

Randall thumped his chest a couple times in affirmation. An envelope fell out of his coat’s breast pocket.

What’s that? Penni asked. She had their tickets safely stowed in her purse.

Randall shoved the envelope back in his pocket. I’m sworn to secrecy.

Penni looked at him slyly and cooed, "Jane won’t come out to play if Tarzan keeps secrets.

Randall caved in all too easily. Your dad gave it to me at the house. He said to buy you something nice to remember the trip but not to tell you where the money came from.

Penni reached into his coat for the envelope. Randall grabbed her hands. They tussled a little bit until Penni whispered Al into his ear. He let her go.

She sat upright with the envelope in her hand. It was a standard bank envelope, shaped to hold bills, with a resealable flap. Did you look in it?

Not with him standing there!

She opened the flap and slid the contents partway out. There were at least twenty crisp new bills, all hundreds. She looked back at Randall. And you were going to buy me something?

Of course.

And pretend it was from you?

I guess.

On your student’s budget?

He shrugged. I have a piggybank.

Penni laughed, then slid the money back into the envelope and resealed the flap. O.K., she said. Your secret is safe with me. She handed the envelope back to her husband of five hours and forty-two minutes according to the digital clock blinking off the seconds just above the limo’s partition.

4

Jodie made her way from the reception hall to the public bar at the far end of the complex without any of the dispersing guests noticing her departure. Leah, who would’ve noticed, was preoccupied with loading her son into a van with a half dozen other State-bound students. And all the other guests still remaining were busy checking their phones or making eyes at their newest