Three Sisters (6 page)

Into the chair, on with the baby bib, open the mouth. She turned her thoughts to Davey to keep them off the cleaning and scraping. What a coward! It wasn’t true, as some people thought, that being the daughter of a dentist took away the fear and loathing. Her father had her on a six-month schedule, but Karen always canceled her appointment and made a new one. Putting off the dread day.

“You haven’t been flossing too well, Karen.”

“Mrrmrghh.” About Davey now. She liked that she made him feel sexy. She liked feeling sexy, herself. The problem was—different definitions of sexy.

Rachel bent her spotted face over Karen. “Don’t forget, brush gently, you don’t want to injure your gums.”

“Mrrmrghhh.” The way it was with Davey, she felt constantly as if she were walking a tightrope. Teetering along a wire strung over a gorge -

Her father came in. “How’s daughter number three doing?”

“I think she has some work over here, Dr. Freed.”

Now they were both peering into her mouth.

- a gorge, and down below—crocodiles, rocks, a raging -

“You haven’t been here in, let me see—” Rachel looked at the chart.

- furious river. If she leaned too far in either direction, slipped off that wire, it would be goodbye, Karen.

“It’s over eight months, Karen,” Rachel said.

Goodbye, Karen? No more Davey? Her breath caught in her chest. “Eight months?” she said, sitting up in the chair. “I wonder how that happened.”

That evening she and Tobi were playing chess, the board between them on Tobi’s bed. “Tobi,” she said, “I want to ask you something.”

“Shoot.”

“It’s about sex.”

Tobi looked up from the board. “No.”

“I didn’t even ask you the question and you’ve got an answer.”

Tobi leaned back on her hands. She was wearing a Jane Fonda leotard, purple and white stripes, gold belt, the legs cut way up on her thighs. “What do you want to know?”

“It has to do with Davey and me. I don’t want specific advice so much as, ah, just, ah, a general—”

“If no won’t do, Karen, spit it out.”

She picked up a pawn and put it back down again. “Tobi, when did you first do it?”

“Hold it, hold it. What’s that got to do with you and Davey?”

‘“Well, he’s, ah—”

“Oh … so that’s it.”

“Right. We haven’t exactly talked about it in so many words, but—”

“No,” Tobi said again. “Don’t.”

One thing about Tobi, all her opinions were firm. Yes. No. Do. Don’t.

“Why not?”

“You’ve got time.”

“My idea is, I should be in love.”

“Good, Karen. You just wait.”

“Did you?”

“That’s right.”

“How old were you?”

“Karen—” Tobi leaned forward. “I just—” She broke off. “I don’t want to talk about it. It’s personal. And don’t you go blabbing, either.”

I just—Had Tobi been about to say she just did it for the first time? With Jason? Karen studied Tobi, while Tobi studied the board.

Liz came in. She’d showered; her hair was wrapped in a towel. “Doughnut holes, anybody?” She held out a box from the bakery.

“You’re going to get fat,” Tobi said.

“And you’re going to disappear one of these days if you don’t start eating like a normal person.” Liz leaned on Karen’s shoulder. She smelled of shampoo and lemon skin lotion.

Karen moved her pawn, hoping it was a decent move, and ate a doughnut hole.

“Look, look what you did, Karen!” Tobi said. “That was dumb! You opened up your queen-bishop. Liz, I have to teach you to play this game. Karen is hopeless.”

“Come on, Tobi, don’t take it so seriously,” Liz said.

“What other way is there?” Tobi bent over the board, pulling at her lip. “You missed the fireworks this morning, Liz. Mom and Dad got on me about Jason.”

“Dad, too?”

“You betcha. Real united front. It’s just pure prejudice, because Jason’s older than me. I call that narrow-minded.”

“Well, maybe they’ll get used to the idea,” Liz said.

Tobi made her move and Karen was in trouble. Tobi sat back. “He’s not an ordinary person. He’s an artist. Probably a genius. People like Mom and Dad ought to be falling down on their knees in front of somebody like Jason!”

“1 don’t think you’ll get them to do that,” Liz said. “But, Tobi, you know how you are—don’t rush into anything—”

“Oh, God! I can’t stand it. You sound just like the parents. I don’t get you, Liz. I really don’t. Why do you always play it so safe?”

Liz’s freckles brightened. “You call quitting my job safe? You call writing poetry safe? I guess our ideas about safety are pretty different. I don’t know where you get this idea that you’re the only one who can do things, Tobi.”

“Did I say that, Miz Liz?”

Karen moved a knight.

“What’d you do that for?” Tobi said. “You have to move your king. You have to think when you play this game, damn it.”

“Leave her alone,” Liz said.

Karen sprang up, knocking over the chessboard. “Stop your damn arguing. Just stop it!”

Ten

Daveeey… .” “Daveeeey,” he mimicked.

“My sister’s going to be home any moment.”

“Which one?”

“Tobi.”

“Invite her in.” He tried on a leer.

“She says you’re too young.”

“Oh, just for that—” He kissed her again, a really fat kiss, big, sloppy, and wet. She knew him—he did it just to be annoying.

She wriggled free. “Davey, remember our first kiss?”

“Total novices. I remember bumping your nose and being so embarrassed.”

“I guess we’ve learned a few things since then.”

“I don’t know about you, but I have.”

“How do you rate yourself?”

“Off the chart.”

“He said, modestly.”

“Well, look, Karen, if a thing is so, it’s so. We

could give lessons in kissing. We’ve had plenty of practice, since we don’t hardly do nothin’ else.”

“You are so subtle.”

“Do you have anything against sex?”

“David.” She tried for a heavy dose of irony in her voice. “I have nothing against sex. I’m a card-carrying member of the majority party—I approve of it.”

“So?”

“So, it still doesn’t mean I want to do it—the ultimate—immediately.”

“How do you know that?” he demanded. “How do you know you like steak or don’t like steak if you’ve never eaten it? If-you never had ice cream, wouldn’t you be dumb to be sitting around here saying, Oh, no, I don’t want to have any ice cream, that’s not for me.”

“I don’t think we’re talking about the same things,” she said. She wished she got as worked up as he did. It would make life easier. She was so tired of saying no and feeling in the wrong. Right then, in the middle of his big speech about steak and ice cream, he was also shoving one hand under her sweater and fiddling with the elastic of her pants with the other hand.

“What clever hands,” she said, grabbing for them. Useless to be subtle with Davey. He was slippery as an eel, had at least ten hands and twenty different approaches. She finally settled for the basic defend-yourself approach and pushed him away.

“Very nice,” he said. “What am I, on your Enemy Number One list?”

“I know your hormones are churning,” she said, trying to be amusing. “It’s typical of teenage males.”

David didn’t look amused. No wonder. She didn’t think it was very funny, either. “You know, Davey—David!—I want to say something. It really makes me feel punky to be always putting on the brakes.”

“So give it the gas.” He threw himself down on the floor.

She stepped over him. ““What makes me feel punky is to always be the cop.”

“So, stop,” he said, staring up at her.

“You look like a dead person.” She picked up a little statue Tobi had given her years ago, something she got by sending in boxtops. A little pink and green plaster shepherdess with an innocent look on her sweet, dopey little face. “I guess I’m not making myself clear,” Karen said.

“You know, Karen, I want to say something to you, too.” He closed his eyes, put his hands over his chest like a corpse. “Did it ever occur to you,” he said in a deep voice, “that maybe you are too young for me?”

“That’s very suave of you, Davey.”

“Now don’t get mad, I just want to talk about this.”

Karen stared at the cover of a fashion magazine. Liz must have left it in her room. Who was this fabulous creature on the cover, her hair flowing out behind her, smiling at her as if to say, You see how easy it is to be a woman!

“Talk about what, Davey? We’re exactly the same age; in fact, I’m a month older than you.”

“I didn’t mean literally, age-wise.”

“Oh, God,” she said, sounding like Tobi. “What are we talking about here?”

“Don’t you know?”

“Would I ask if I did?”

He rolled over, kicked his feet. “Oh, well …” he said in a muffled voice. He sat up. “Forget I said anything.”

“No, come on. If you want to talk about something, let’s talk.”

“Forget it, forget it, forget it,” he said rapidly.

They went downstairs to the kitchen, sat down across from each other, and went to work on a carton of peach ice cream. “Did we just fight?” she said.

He shrugged. The hum of the refrigerator. The scrape of spoons in the ice-cream carton.

Finally, she said, “Do you want to come over to my grandmother’s with me?”

“Why?”

“I promised I’d visit her this week, bring you along.”

“How’d I get into this?”

“She wants to meet you.”

“Look me over, see if I’m okay for her Karen?”

“Something like that, I guess. Come on, be a pal. My grandma’s liable to send me to Siberia if I disappoint her. Or strangle Gladys Goldfish.”

“I’m always your pal,” he muttered. “Aren’t I always a gooood boy?”

“God, Davey.”

They took the bus over to her grandmother’s. Karen toted Gladys in her plastic bag and David had Eggbert in a sling he’d made out of an old sock. Some people stared at them. She poked Davey and wriggled her eyebrows. He wriggled his in return, but half-heartedly.

Her grandmother lived in the Sudbury Towers,

a semi-fancy apartment building. They took the elevator to the fourth floor. “Creaky old thing,” Davey said, and gave the wall a hard kick.

“Maybe we shouldn’t go, after all,” Karen said. “You really are in a foul mood.”

“Uh-uh. You didn’t drag me all the way over here just to call it off. We’re visiting Grandma.”

She rang the bell. “Karen?” her grandmother said, then opened the door. “To what do I owe this unusual pleasure?”

Kiss her cheek. Introduce Davey. Go inside.

Her grandmother’s apartment was small, but elegant. Lots of shining, polished wood, brocaded chair seats, and velvet curtains. She had on a turban that matched her curtains, deep green with a sparkling jeweled pin set in the middle.

“That is a great turban,” Davey said.

“Why, thank you, David.” She passed him a plate of little frosted cookies. “Take plenty.”

“I hope we didn’t come at a bad time for you, Grandma.”

“What could be a bad time for me, Karen? An old lady like me has nothing but time on her hands and nothing to fill that time.”

A reminder that Karen was in general a crummy, neglectful granddaughter?

David examined a picture on the wall. “Who’re these women, Mrs. Freed?” He sounded intelligent and respectful.

“Those are women I employed in my shop.”

“What kind of shop was that, Mrs. Freed?” Oh, what a pussycat. “You designed your own hats? Where’d you get your ideas? Did you ever sell a hat to a famous person? Did you make men’s hats,

too?” He sounded as if Grandma’s having a hat shop was just about the most fascinating thing he’d ever come across. Before long, Davey and her grandmother were chatting away like two old best buddies.

Suddenly Karen heard her grandmother say, “Oh, no, Karen isn’t very curious.”

She sat there, hurt, stunned. Was it true? She thought of herself as full of questions. Big questions, important questions, the questions of her life!

“David,” her grandmother said, “you have more the makings of a reporter than a biologist.”

“Oh, I’ll report the doings of the frogs and the mosquitoes.” Her grandmother laughed as if she hadn’t ever been quite so well amused.

“I’m sure I say funnier things,” Karen said after they left. “And I never get her to crack a chuckle.”

“The old Kursh charm.”

“He said, modestly.”

“Karen, when a thing is so, it’s—”

“I know, I know.”

“I like your grandmother. She’s kind of a grand-old-lady type.”

“Right.” The whole afternoon depressed her. That weird fight-no-fight with Davey. Then the visit with Grandma. Pretty clear that her grandmother preferred Davey, an utter stranger, to her. That hurt. “She’s awfully formal. Didn’t you think so?”

They stopped on the corner near the bank to wait for the bus. “What I think is,” he said, “if you don’t get along -with her, it’s your own fault.”

“Just what I need, Davey. A little honest criticism.” But it hit home. She found herself explaining how her grandmother was never interested in her.

“She’s always telling me to work hard in school. And saying how brilliant my father was. That’s her whole conversation with me. She’s different with Tobi and Liz. Well, everybody is fascinated by Tobi, anyway. And Grandma likes Liz because Liz is beautiful and—”

“Karen, get off it. The way you talk about your sisters—it’s really sick!” He stuck his face in hers. “Sure, Liz is beautiful. She’s super beautiful. And Tobi, I’ll take your word she’s fascinating and smart. Maybe she’s a genius. So what? What does that make you? Nothing? Maybe you’re just jealous of your sisters, Karen.”

“Excellent! Thank you! This has been an outstandingly wonderful afternoon. You don’t like anything I do, you don’t like anything I say. I mean, it’s just been the same thing the whole bloody afternoon.”

“Hey.” Davey held up his hands. “Say no more.” The bus was coming, his bus, but he walked away and disappeared around the corner.

Eleven

Saturday morning, Karen threw some fruit and cookies in a bag, put her camera around her neck, and wheeled her bike out of the garage. The front tire was flat. She pumped it up and yelled goodbye again to her mother, who’d come outside to dump the garbage. Karen didn’t mean to do it, but found herself on Davey’s street. She bent low and pedaled fast past the little grocery store.