“Which will close?”
“Mother’s death,” she said without hesitation. “Men lose their wives, and most, sooner rather than later, remarry and close the hole, but no parent can close the hole created by a lost child. The child has to be brought back to do that.”
“Brought back? How can a child be brought back?”
She didn’t answer. She continued to look at me, but the way she was looking at me gave me the eerie feeling that she was looking through me and not at me. And she was smiling, smiling at her own thoughts.
“Cassie? How can a lost child be brought back? No one can bring someone back, Cassie.”
She snapped out of her thoughts, stopped smiling, and said, “Jesus raised Lazarus, didn’t he?”
“But that was Jesus. He performed a miracle.”
“There are other ways,” she said.
“What other ways?”
“Don’t keep asking the same question. We can, and we will.”
“But I don’t understand.”
She was frightening me now. I could feel the terror gripping me at the base of my spine. There
was this new, even stranger look in her eyes. She blinked, and it was gone as quickly as it had come.
“It doesn’t matter. Just do what I tell you to do. Get along with Mrs. Underwood, and do your house chores. I’ll take care of everything else,” she said sharply.
I was still confused, but I didn’t say so. Her expression changed again, this time returning to a warmer, more sisterly look. She nodded at my sandwich?
“You made that with the chunky chicken. Very good. I’m hungry now. Why don’t you make me the same sandwich.”
This was another surprise. The only other time she let me make her anything was recently, after I had gotten in trouble in school. She didn’t mind me in the kitchen helping clean up or gathering what was needed to set the table, but she rarely liked me participating in the actual preparation of any food, except for slicing salad ingredients. It was always so important for her to receive all of the compliments, and if Mother ever started to show me some recipe, Cassie always reminded me of some other chore I had. She would tell Mother that she would teach me whatever it was later, but she never did.
“Food preparation requires almost as much concentration as a work of art,” she would tell me whenever I complained, “and you don’t have the ability to concentrate on something like that, Semantha. In fact, you almost have attention-deficit disorder. That’s why you’re doing only mediocre work in school, even with my help.”
She told me that so often and with such conviction that I started to believe it myself. This was another justification for her deciding that I should have a private tutor after all. It had come to that, she said. Deep down, I wanted to disagree adamantly, but the truth was my grades were nothing special. Next to her, I was like a small flashlight beside the sun.
I rose quickly to make her the same sandwich.
“And cut it in perfect quarters,” she added before I entered the kitchen.
Little did I realize it that night, but it was only the beginning. Every day for weeks afterward, Cassie insisted that I learn all of the recipes she knew, recipes she had learned from Mother, and I prepared them for our dinners. At first, I worked with her at my side until she was satisfied, and then she began to have me do all of the preparations myself. I thought she had finally come to see me as old and smart enough, but she had another reason for giving me the responsibility.
“I have to spend more time with Daddy,” she explained. “You will simply have to take on more and more of our housework as well.”
Spending time with Daddy didn’t only mean going with him to work in the morning or following him in her own car. It meant sitting at the diningroom table and talking to him while I prepared our dinner. Mostly, I heard her voice and her laughter. Daddy was still not fifty percent of his former self, and even with Cassie talking excitedly about something, he would stare blankly and drift away. It was easy to see how much that bothered Cassie. Her commands were sharper and full of frustration.
“Clean up. Wash the kitchen windows tonight. Clean out the refrigerator. Polish the stairway banister tomorrow.” On and on and on.
With these new responsibilities, my home-schooling, and my usual house chores, I had little time for myself, not that there was much for me to do for myself, anyway. The few friends I had made at school quickly forgot me once I stopped attending. I heard only once from Kent, but that was early on, merely to confirm that it was true that I had withdrawn from public school. None of the girls called me. Despite the fears I had about returning and facing the other students after Mother’s death, I couldn’t help but feel a constant emptiness. Aside from Mrs. Underwood, who avoided any conversation other than what was necessary for schoolwork, Cassie, and Daddy, I spoke to no one for weeks and weeks.
And Daddy was still quite different, much quieter, rarely smiling or laughing, even with me. He seemed only vaguely interested in my progress with Mrs. Underwood, too. If he said anything about it, it was to tell me Cassie had told him I was doing well. In my mind, I wasn’t really doing much better than I had done attending school, but Mrs. Underwood appeared satisfied. Her compliments, if any, were never exuberant. The best words I heard from her lips were “Good, continue.”
So, despite all I had to do, I still felt a terrible sense of loneliness and boredom. Cassie kept telling me how time softens the pain of loss, but I missed Mother even more. I thought it was just as true for Daddy, but Cassie insisted otherwise. When I told her what I thought, she became impatient and annoyed.
“I told you about the two holes, Semantha. It’s the deeper one, the deeper one!”
I didn’t argue, but I still didn’t understand or believe what she was saying. In the weeks that followed, Cassie became so different. She no longer wore any of her own clothes but only Mother’s. She would put on some of Mother’s jewelry as well, and Cassie was never one for wearing lots of jewelry. In fact, I recalled how much she had complained about Mother’s jewelry. No matter what Mother wore, it was always too much, too gaudy. Now she was doing exactly the same thing, never leaving the house without wearing a necklace, earrings, four or five rings, bracelets, and watches, even a jeweled pin. And this was the sister who had often said, “What Mother’s wearing today could feed a third world country for a week.”