Tom visits his sister at Warner’s house. He is on summer vacation from college and wants to help.
Warner’s house is twenty minutes from the beach, so Tom drives Louise there and they stick their plastic chairs in the sand. The winds are high, and tiny grains are blowing everywhere, but Louise wants to tan, so they stay.
Tom doesn’t know how to talk to his sister anymore. Since she got sick, she doesn’t want to hear anything positive. She shoots down any optimistic comment he makes, about anything, which was understandable for a while, but Tom had assumed that after the surgeries, her attitude would be better. If anything, it’s worse. She’s jealous of all her friends, their careers, their relationships—everyone but her seems to be moving into nicer and nicer apartments, moving up. They are all beautiful, every one of them, she says. Her bad eye bounces up and down as she complains.
Tom is three years younger than Louise, and three years older than Michael. Tom and Louise were in college together for one year, when Tom was a freshman. He tutored her in math. She became frustrated so easily, slamming the book shut and swiping it off the table. Tom has to be careful not to raise his voice to Louise in any manner. Sometimes, feeling brave, he asks Louise softly to please be a little pleasant.
At the beach, sitting stiffly in her fold-out chair, Louise says she wants to start driving again. She says that if she passes a special driver’s education program for disabled people, she can get her license back.
“Paraplegics drive,” she says. “I could get a handicapped pass and park anywhere I want.”
Tom does not know if she should be thinking about handicapped passes.
•
Tom makes a corner of Warner and Elizabeth’s basement into a painting studio for Louise. He arranges a card table with some watercolors in a plastic palette, a jar of brushes, and a short stool. Louise has not painted since she was a kid, but Tom did not know what else to do, and thought she might like it. She looks at the table, then looks at him, and goes back upstairs.
Warner is not doing much painting either. When he does work, he makes watercolors of the brain, giant and multi-colored. He walks around the house in socks while Louise watches the big TV screen. Tom gets depressed watching them. Elizabeth bakes pear tarts. She smiles a lot and brings home gifts. But nothing helps much.
Tom remembers when he was in middle school, seeing Louise, a teenager, pour vodka from their mother’s liquor cabinet into a water bottle. It was a winter day after school, just them in the house, and the living room was filled with sunlight bouncing off snow. He’d been shy at that age, uninterested in team sports and skateboarding like all the other kids at school. Louise used to taunt him, ask him why he didn’t have any friends and what he did all day. All he had done that day was walk in the living room and see her in the liquor cabinet, but she’d grabbed him, hard, and told him to shut up and go away, as if he’d been spying. He never told on her.
Another time, in college, Louise had invited him to a party. The apartment had been full of sweaty drunks, and Louise was wearing a sparkly tank top and lots of makeup. When she handed him a drink, he said no thanks. It was his first semester.
“You’ll never make any friends here,” she’d said, and handed the cup to someone else.
Tom does not want to remember these things. He wants to connect with his sister the way they used to, as kids, before she became a moody teenager, and then this. He would like to tell her about his new girlfriend. About his housemates at the scholarship house—a place where they all pitch in and do chores to keep the place running. But all Louise talks about is her physical therapist, her breakup with Claude, and how nothing will ever get better. “You don’t believe that,” he tells her. “Sometimes I do,” she says. “And sometimes I don’t.”
•
In Michigan, the family goes to an animal shelter. A kitten will make Louise happier, everyone agrees. Louise will be responsible for feeding it, filling its water bowl, and scooping the small litter box. It is an experiment.
Louise chooses the cat that meows the loudest. A volunteer tells them the sad story of how the cat got there: It was put into a paper bag and thrown into the local river. A man walking his dog saw it happen and pulled the cat out. Louise smiles and kisses the cat’s ears. Her wrists are already bleeding in little pricks from the cat’s claws. She names it Ivan.
“Ivan the Terrible,” she says.
Tom remembers the family cat they had to put to sleep. It had been attacked by a Rottweiler in their front yard and its intestines were on the outside, touching the grass. Janet had rushed it to the vet, and Warner took Tom and Michael to pick up Louise from a birthday party at the mall. Louise had been eleven, and came out holding a giant jawbreaker.
At the vet, Louise held the cat’s paw, sobbing as it was injected. On the way home she held Tom’s and Michael’s hands in the backseat of the station wagon and stared out at the dark. Tom remembers her friendship bracelets and lace glove.
Now, Louise keeps the kitten in a small room in the basement, away from Warner and Elizabeth’s two older, bigger cats. She spends lots of time in that room. Sometimes Tom stands at the top of the stairs, listening to her talk to the kitten, even laughing at times. As he packs up to go back to school, Tom thinks, everything is okay now. Next time I see her, she will be stronger than ever before.