Does all of this mean I didn’t love her? Can you still love someone who frightens you? She was my sister. We were part of the same family and had the same loving parents. If something happened to her, I would certainly be unhappy about it. I thought.
And I hoped she felt the same way toward me, but did we love each other the way other sisters loved each other? Sometimes I thought we did, and often I thought we didn’t, but in time, I would learn that Cassie’s way of showing her love or feeling love was so different from mine, from everyone’s, that it was easily unseen and unfelt.
Maybe that was the tragedy of Cassie Heavenstone.
No one could ever see how she really was capable of loving someone else.
It’s the only soft and forgiving thing I can say about a sister who nearly destroyed me.
An Announcement
WHEN I WAS just fourteen years old, my world began to sink in and collapse like a punctured balloon. Whatever happiness I enjoyed slowly leaked out and disappeared. It took me a while to notice and realize it. I was just like someone who, gazing at his car one day, saw that he had a flat tire. When did that begin to happen? he might wonder. I knew when it had begun to happen for me.
One night at dinner a week after my birthday, Daddy put down his knife and fork, folded his hands, and cleared his throat. Cassie and I believed that whatever he was about to say had nothing whatsoever to do with his business or his finances. There was a rule at our table that none of that would be discussed at dinner. And that was true even if Daddy had something wonderful about the business to announce to us, such as a large increase in the profits of one of our stores or our stores beating out the famous chain stores nearby. Whatever the good business news was, he wouldn’t say a word about it until after dinner or maybe not until breakfast the following day. For some reason, breakfast was not as sacred a meal as dinner. Of course, dinner was more elegant, with our expensive china and silverware, linen napkins, and the imported tablecloth that Mother had bought on one of their European trips.
My responsibility was to set the table, light the candles in the gold candle holders, and after dinner put everything away or in the dishwasher and washing machine. Cassie helped Mother prepare the food, and I helped both of them serve it. Mother was an excellent cook, always coming up with new and interesting recipes, and Cassie was a quick study. She could replicate almost anything Mother had made a day after she had made it. Twice when Mother was sick with the flu, Cassie “leaped to the helm,” as Daddy would say, and created dinners that were as wonderful as what Mother made. Even I had to admit it, although Cassie was far more interested in Daddy’s opinion.
At the be
ginning of dinner, we were to lower our heads while Daddy recited a prayer, but Cassie never lowered her head. I knew both of my parents were aware of it, just as they were in church, but neither forced her to do it. It suggested to me that maybe they were as afraid of her as I was, which, of course, made no sense. How could parents be afraid of their own daughter?
“Your mother and I have an announcement to make,” Daddy began this particular evening, and then he stroked his perfectly trimmed and groomed rust-brown goatee. It was a gesture that was always followed by a very serious pronouncement. Another sign was the way his emerald-green eyes brightened. At forty-eight, he was by anyone’s measure still a very handsome man, with a perfectly proportioned straight nose and firm lips. He kept his hair a little longer than most businessmen his age, but it was always trim and neatly brushed. Even though he didn’t work outdoors, he had a robust complexion, and because he was six feet two inches tall with wide shoulders, he looked fit and strong. Mother always said that when he was wearing jeans and a short-sleeved shirt instead of his suit, he looked like a lumberjack.
His father had named him Teddy after Teddy Roosevelt and, according to family history, made sure he understood that he had to be as courageous, as loyal to the truth and to what was right, and as strong in body and mind. He was fond of telling Daddy, “Charge up that hill! And no matter what, never surrender!”
Daddy’s pausing made what he was about to tell us even more important. I held my breath and glanced at Cassie, who sat with a smirk on her lips. She looked as if she knew what he was about to say and already did not approve.
“Your mother,” Daddy continued, reaching to his right to take her hand, “is pregnant.”
I know my mouth widened with surprise, and I was sure my eyes swelled, but Cassie’s smirk only grew deeper. She leaned slightly forward, folding her hands on the table the way Daddy folded his before a serious pronouncement.
“Is that wise at your age, Mother?” she asked very calmly. “You’re forty-two.”
“Women in their forties are having children. Your mother is in perfect health, Cassie, and Dr. Moffet is very optimistic about her having a healthy and successful pregnancy,” Daddy replied before Mother could.
“Of course, Dr. Moffet would say that. We’re good customers.”
Daddy sat back, displeased with her, which was very unusual to see.
“Doctors don’t have customers, Cassie. They have patients, and a good doctor is not motivated by profit the way a businessman should be.”
“Then there are no good doctors,” Cassie said.
Cassie never backed down from what she said or believed. When she was very little and she was reprimanded or forbidden to do something, she would hold her breath until her face reddened so that Mother would relent or to get Daddy to compromise. She once went two days without eating a morsel because she was in a sulk.
“I was hoping you girls would be as happy about this as we are,” Mother said, battling back the disappointment I could see she felt.
“I am,” I said, perhaps too quickly.
Cassie glared at me for a moment and then formed her smile mask. “Of course, we’re happy, but naturally, we’re worried, too, Mother.”
“Don’t be,” Mother said firmly. “I’ll be fine. It will all be fine.”
“We hope so,” Cassie said, but the way she said it made it clear that she was full of skepticism. She always managed to speak for me, saying “we” whenever she was going to offer an opinion about something that could have an effect on us both.
“In any case,” Daddy continued, “I would like both of you to take this into consideration and do whatever you can to make things easier for your mother during the next seven months. I know you both already do quite a lot, but …”
“Then you are already two months pregnant?” Cassie asked quickly.