“Amanda, why did you stop calling my sister?” I’ve got Karen’s tone, the one that makes any question sound like a blunt object hitting you in the face.
Amanda looks up from her coffee. “She told me to.”
Bobby tips his chair back so it’s propped against the kitchen counter and asks, “She told you to?”
Amanda nods. I can see she’s tired. None of us has really slept. The family goes to bed, and the three of us end up in the kitchen, eating the casseroles and cakes the neighbors brought over. I let them play at being my parents. Bobby gives me bad advice about how to deal with the kids at school and Amanda makes me take my medicine. Better than my parents, though, we spend a lot of time behind the house throwing rocks at the shed.
“Bullshit,” I say. “You were her best friend. Why would she tell you not to call her?”
“When I came to visit that time, when I left early, we had a fight. I was begging her to get help, and she told me I had to let her go.”
I don’t believe this.
“Why would she say that?”
“Because it was harder for her to stay sick when she knew how much I cared about her.”
“We all still cared about her. Fat lot of good that did.”
“I didn’t stop caring, Donnie. She wanted me to, but I didn’t. I kept calling. Your mom would lie and say Karen was out. Then she would just say, “I’m sorry, Amanda, she doesn’t want to talk to you.” She and I would make small talk for a while, she’d give me some advice, and we’d hang up. I wrote Karen twenty letters from the time I moved. Your mom has them. By the time I visited, she’d stopped writing me back. I kept writing, even after the visit. Karen would throw the letters out and your mom would pull them out of the trash. Karen blocked my e-mails, they would just end up back in my in-box. I started writing just once every couple of weeks and then once a month, and it became like I was writing to myself, because I knew she wouldn’t read them.”
“You should have tried harder,” I say.
“I thought I was trying harder,” she says.
“Not hard enough,” I say.
“I know,” she answers. She closes her eyes for a long moment.
“You can go to bed,” I say. She shakes her head, hard.
They’re both fading, I can see it. They jack themselves up full of coffee and try to stay up with me. They always make it till four A.M. and then come the long pauses in conversation. One of them will doze off, jerk awake, and say, “What’d you say?” and it will be too much of an effort for us to unglue our tongues to say, “Nothing.”
I stay quiet and let them both fall asleep in the kitchen chairs. I’m glad they’re here. And I’m glad they’re asleep. I can think about Karen and not be alone. That’s all I really want to do at night, think about Karen. I sit and stare at the darkness through the sliding glass door, and I watch our life flash before my eyes.
The first thing I see when I open my eyes is Amanda looking at me. We both slept with our heads on the table. Bobby’s stretched out, snoring, on the floor. I keep my head on the table and swallow back the lump in my throat. They’re leaving today. Everyone is. Leaving me with Mom and Dad and the Karen-shaped hole in the universe. Tears are running sideways out of Amanda’s eyes and dripping on the table.
“Stay,” I whisper. More tears slide down her face.
“Stay,” I say again, letting the lump rise up and out.
Amanda reaches out her arm, laying her palm face up, her wrist facing me. I sniff and move my arm so my fingers touch the blue green vein on the inside of her wrist.
“I can’t,” she says.
We say our good-byes in the driveway, in the same place we said hello four days ago. Mom and Dad walk Aunt Janice and Uncle Dan down to their car, leaving me at the top of the driveway with Amanda and Bobby.
“Well, kid. Here’s my number. Use it. Anytime. Come be a roadie when my band goes on tour.” Bobby presses a folded piece of paper into my hand and pulls me into a hug.
Then Amanda and I just stand there nodding at each other and giving sideways looks to Bobby till he says, “Oh. All right. I’ll wait in the car.” They are giving Amanda a ride back to Chicago.
“You already have my number,” Amanda says.
I nod.
“Okay, then,” she says, and hugs me. For old time’s sake I think, Kiss her kiss her kiss her kiss her kiss her kissherkissherkissher. I kiss her. It’s amazing. She pulls back and scowls at me, and then laughs and says, “Dude!”
“Ha.” I say.
“Your sister would have a cow.”
I shrug. “Moo,” I say.
“Bye, Donnie,” she says. And as she walks down the driveway, she keeps looking back at me and laughing and shaking her head. I know I’ll probably never kiss her again. I don’t care, because I also know that I’m going to know Amanda forever. And that she’s my sister, like Bobby’s my brother, and the way to get people to love you is to show them that you love them.