Kris paws at Amber’s lime-green scrubs, leaving a smear at the knee. My sister glances at it, shrugs, and moves on. She’s a different person from the sister I knew before she married Mark and moved as far away from home as possible. Back then, Amber would have reacted to smudged pants with a whole new outfit, plus coordinating makeup.
Now her fashion sense matches the way my parents raised us. As dyed-in-the-wool outdoors enthusiasts, they were more concerned with function than fashion, as their constant hat hair and use of ski pants as leisure wear could attest. And as a single mom with a six-year-old and an ex who decided teaching English overseas was a better deal than marriage and parenting an autistic kid, my sister has to pick her battles.
Like me, she’s picked this one.
“I could get used to drying, if anyone gave me a chance.”
In the sink of my parents’ place—where Amber lives and I’m crashing until they get home from Arizona—are two knives and a pot.
This is the hill I have chosen to die on.
“Drying isn’t easier. And it’s not like you got off the couch this weekend.” She pushes a pair of rubber gloves at me with a movement I’ve seen her make a thousand times when we were teenagers. That impatient, abrupt motion meant she wanted to get the dinner dishes over with so she could retreat to our room, put her earbuds in, and ignore me.
“I never said drying was easier!” I’m regressing to our childhood so hard I can feel the pout pushing out my lip. I should get couch privileges for forty-eight hours, minimum, after leaving my husband. My heart is a black sun shining dark and heavy in my chest; I can only carry it around so much before I have to lie down.
Drying will make me feel better. I’m not sure how I know that; it justwill. “Can I please dry? For once?”
“Can you not raise your voice around Eleanor? You know it upsets her.”
“Eleanor’s not—oh,” I stammer, spying my niece lurking at the kitchen door.
Eleanor’s the best. Adorably eldritch; a definite Ramona Quimby type. Wears socks only under duress. Refuses to stop cutting her own sandy-blond bangs no matter where her mother hides the scissors. Learned to read almost before she could talk—not unusual for autistic kids, although Amber had to recycle her parenting magazines in other people’s bins after Eleanor started sharing facts about postpartum sex at kindergarten.
I bend down. “Eleanor, do you know where Yeti’s hiding?”
She adores the kitty. Yeti accepts all cuddles (including overenthusiastic kid squishing) and is a three-time national purring champion. She vanishes in search of him.
“Sorry. Didn’t see her.”
Amber gives me a look I can’t interpret. “I don’t know why you’re surprised. You loved to sneak around and eavesdrop.”
She’s got a running tally of every annoying thing I did as a kid, when our three-year age difference meant I wasn’t capable of being anything but a pest, but Mom still made us share a room because, and I quote, “sisters need each other.”
Amber’s balance sheet includes things like the time she had to quit the curling team after her cringey little sister joined. Also, all the friend hangouts I ruined when Mom made her invite me along. It doesnotinclude all the times Tobin and I stepped up for last-minute sleepovers with Eleanor when Amber had to work. If I mention that, she whips out her Sword of Guilt: Eleanor needs her family; I’m the aunt who shares a special bond with her after three years of basically being an honorary parent. It isn’t unusual for me to sleep over at my parents’ place for a week of Amber’s night shifts when Tobin’s on his seven-day-on, seven-day-off dogsled guiding schedule and my parents are wintering down south, at the place they bought when they retired from teaching and Dad’s arthritis got unmanageable in cold weather.
Eleanor’s iPad alarm goes off—we’re out of time to argue if my niece and I are going to get out the door on time for school.
Sigh. “I’ll wash for today.”
“You can dry whenever you want if you move back home. Some consistency and predictability would do you good. And you won’t find anyone better than Tobin.”
My black sun pulses with a heavy solar flare. That’s not what she said about him at my wedding, but regardless of whether she believes it now, she doesn’t have to remind me. Everyone knows he’s way out of my league. Especially me. For years, I’ve been dreading the day when he finally figured that out, too.
“It’s not about finding someone better.”
“Everyone has limits, Liz. Accepting them isn’t a bad thing. Blowing up your life is, though.”
Amber isn’t always like this. Friday night, when I showed up onmy parents’ doorstep with my overnight bag and my cat, she took us in without an argument.
Our family is all about closeness. Togetherness. Smoothing over our differences no matter what, the way we had to when we were kids and it was just the four of us hiking the West Coast Trail, or kayaking around Haida Gwaii, or skiing into remote backcountry huts. When you’re twenty kilometers from the nearest road with only your companions and whatever you can carry, there’s no room in your backpack for discord. On the trail, Amber and I secured each other’s loose straps, smacked the horseflies off each other’s shoulders, and swapped novels (back when she used to love romance). Dad always said she and I paddled a canoe like we shared the same brain.
The months after my wedding when Amber and I didn’t speak drove Mom to the brink. Our relationship is still healing, but I want to believe Amber loves me. I don’t call her Slamber anymore, even in my head. We’re like Baby and Lisa inDirty Dancing—family in the end.
I flip the dripping pot onto Amber’s dish towel. “El and I will see you after work.”
She stalks me to the front door, scooping scattered kid items into Eleanor’s backpack on the way. “Think about what you’re doing. This whole thing is about your unrealistic expectations—Tobin, work, all of it. Remember when you followed me into debate club and wouldn’t give up even after you fainted during your rebuttal? You don’t know when to quit, Liz.”
Fair, but I would eat glass before conceding the point, because if Amber senses she’s winning an argument, she fights even harder. Besides, persistence is one of my key strengths, even if it only works some of the time.
