CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
I might as well tell you about the shoes. You’re probably wondering why Mom was walking all over Penticton without her shoes. Or maybe you’re not wondering at all and it’s only me who still can’t get it out of my head, even though it happened a long time ago.
Aunt Sissy had come to stay. Most of the time, Dad and Aunt Sissy got along. Dad gets along with everyone, Mom always says, and I think it’s true. He sees the good in people, no matter what. He always says hello to the neighbors who leave beer bottles on their front lawn. When they play their music too loud on the weekends, Dad’ll say, “At least it’s Bob Seger,” or whoever it is that he likes. In the winter, when Dad’s shoveling snow, he shovels in front of their house, too. He says we could have worse neighbors. Mom always smiles at that, and says, “Yes, you’re right, we could have worse.”
Anyway, when Dad and Aunt Sissy did disagree, it was usually about Mom. Or about why Aunt Sissy had come to stay. Usually, after I’d gone to bed, Dad sat in the living room watching TV and Aunt Sissy went to her room, a room we called the den, that was full of a jumble of different-sized bookcases, a saggy old hideaway bed, a kitchen table that was in Mom’s first apartment when she was eighteen and that we used for a desk, and a gooseneck floor lamp. But if Aunt Sissy stayed up to watch the news, I could hear her and Dad talking, because my room was right above the living room.
One of their arguments went like this:
Dad said, “I know you wanted to see Del, but now you’ve seen her, so I think it’s okay for you to go home. Don’t you have a law practice to take care of?”
“I’m just staying until things are a little more settled,” Aunt Sissy said.
“What things? I can certainly take care of things here. You’re the feminist.”
“This is what sisters do. You might as well accept it.”
“It’s not that I don’t appreciate it.” I could hear Dad’s voice softening. “And I know it’s nice for Francie to have someone here after school.”
“Don’t take this the wrong way,” Aunt Sissy said and stopped.
(Have you ever noticed that when someone starts a sentence that way, you’re almost guaranteed to take it the wrong way?)
“Don’t take this the wrong way,” she said again. “But I don’t think you always get hold of the right end of the stick on this.”
“On what?”
“On Del, on what she’s going through. I think you indulge her too much. Like the shoes, for instance. Did you even ask her why she’d lost her shoes or did you just go out and buy her a new pair?”
“I don’t think she lost them.”
“Left them, whatever.”
“There’s no point in asking that kind of thing.”
“That’s my point!”
I thought to myself that she sounded just like a lawyer then.
Dad was quiet. I could hear the news reporter on TV.
“Well, I asked her,” Aunt Sissy went on. “And do you know what she told me?”
“I think you’re going to tell me whether I want to hear it or not.” Dad laughed a little.
“But why wouldn’t you want to hear it? That’s what I don’t understand.”
“No, we don’t see eye to eye on that point, that’s true, Sis.”
(Dad was the only one who called Aunt Sissy “Sis.” Mom said it was just like him, finding a middle ground between Sissy and Cecilia.)
Aunt Sissy dropped her voice, but I still heard her perfectly.
“She said her shoes were listening to her.”
“Okay,” said Dad.
“She said they had been bugged. Her plan was to get a new pair, but everything downtown was closed. It was almost comical. I couldn’t stop myself from laughing.”
“That would upset her.”
“Well, yes, it did upset her, but we can’t pussyfoot around her delusions.”
“You call it pussyfooting around.”
“I do. I’ve spoken with the psychiatrist about it. She agrees with me.”
“I just don’t want to upset Del. It’s hard enough.”
“The government bugged her shoes. That’s what she said.”
“Okay, Sis.”
“You’re putting your head in the sand,” Aunt Sissy said.
“Okay.” Then he turned up the news and I heard the reporter talking about high-energy biscuits and medical kits arriving in Burma.
I felt sick. I wished I had plugged my ears.
I don’t know who was right in that argument, Dad or Aunt Sissy. I’ve thought about it a lot, but I can’t sort it out. Each of them seemed a little bit right and a little bit wrong. What I do know is that it’s not nice to be the one who upsets Mom. It’s not nice and you don’t want to do it, if you can help it.
But it’s different for sisters. Sisters can upset each other and nothing can make them not sisters anymore.
Fear has a taste. That’s what I was thinking when I woke up in my fir-bough lean-to on the ninth day. I remembered a taste in the back of my throat as I realized the lights shining back at me were not flashlights but eyes. It was a metal taste, or something sharp and silvery like that. I’d had a moment of excitement, relief. I could almost feel Mom’s arms around me. And then the sharp taste seared my throat. I could hardly get a word out. What had I said?
No. Off you go, bear. And she had gone. Even now I felt the leftovers of fear, like when I’ve cried myself to sleep and wake up feeling stiff and stupid.
The sun was high enough to shine in on my face as I sat up, but a cold breeze gusted up the road. Scrambled eggs were the next thing in my mind and when I thought of that, I felt a slip—weariness, helplessness—gaining on me. I almost lay back down. Why not snug the sleeping bag tight, let the sun shine on my face, and just wait? I would be rescued, or not. What difference did it make if I kept on trying to survive?
I went as far as to brush my hand over my sleeping bag to smooth out the lumps. My body leaned to it and then I remembered Ms. Fineday saying to me after the hiking trip, “I’m proud of you, Francie. You’re a brave girl.”
I straightened myself. I wanted to prove she was right.