He did mind, but he surrendered his chair and wandered off to the bar. Dorothy's other companions shifted about uncomfortably.
"I've come to get you;" I said to Dorothy, who clearly had been drinking for a while.
"Well, look who's here!" she exclaimed, and she raised her stinger in a toast. "My big sister. Let me introduce you," she said to her companions.
"Be quiet and listen to me," I said in a low voice.
"My legendary big sister."
Dorothy always got mean when she drank. She didn't slur her words or bump into things, but she could sexually tease men into misery and use her tongue like a nettle. I was ashamed of her demeanor and the way she dressed, which sometimes seemed an intended parody of me.
This night she wore the handsome dark blue suit of a professional, but beneath the jacket her tight pink sweater offered her companions more than a hint of nipples. Dorothy had always been obsessed with her small breasts. To have men staring at them somehow reassured her.
"Dorothy;" I said, leaning closer to her ear, almost overwhelmed by Chanel Coco, "you need to come with me. We have to talk."
"Do you know who she is?" she went on as I cringed. "The chief medical examiner of this fine Commonwealth. Can you believe it? I have a big sister who's a coroner."Wow, that's got to be really interesting," one of the men said.
"What can I get you to drink?" said another.
"So what do you think is the truth about the Ramsey case? Think the parents did it?"
"I'd like somebody to prove those were really Amelia Earhart's bones they found:' "Where's the waitress?"
I put my hand on Dorothy's arm and we got up from the table. One thing was true about my sister: She had too much pride to cause a scene that didn't make her look clever and appealing. I escorted her out into a dispirited night of darkened windows and fog.
"I'm not going home with you," she announced, now that there was no one to hear. "And let go of my fucking arm.
She pulled in the direction of her hotel while I tugged her toward my car.
"You're coming with me and we're going to figure out what to do about Lucy."
"I saw her earlier at the hospital," she said.
I put her in the passenger's side.
"She didn't mention anything about you;" my oversensitive sister said.
I got in and locked the doors.
"Jo's parents are very sweet," she added as we drove off. "I was very taken aback that they didn't know the truth about Lucy and Jo's relationship."
"What did you do? Tell them, Dorothy?"
"Not in so many words, but I suppose I implied certain things because I just assumed they knew. You know, it seems so odd to see a skyline like this when you're used to Miami."
I wanted to slap her.
"Anyway, after talking with the Sanderses for a while, I came to realize they're the Jerry Falwell type and weren't about to condone a lesbian relationship."
"I wish you wouldn't use that word:"
"Well, that's what they are. Descended from the Amazon types on the island of Lesbos in tile Aegean Sea, off the coast of Turkey. Turkish women have so much hair. You ever noticed?"
"You ever heard of Sappho?"
"Of course I've heard of him," Dorothy said.
"She was a Lesbian because she lived on Lesbos. She was one of the greatest lyric poets in antiquity."
"Ha. Nothing poetic about some of these body-pierced, stocky hockey players I see. And of course, the Sanderses didn't come right out and say they thought Lucy and Jo were lesbians. Their reasoning was Jo had been horribly traumatized, and to see Lucy would bring it all back. It was too- soon. They were quite emphatic in a very nice way, and when Lucy showed up, they were very kind and sympathetic when they told her."
I passed through the toll plaza.
"Unfortunately, you know how Lucy is. She challenged them. She said she didn't believe them, and got pretty loud and rude. I explained to the Sanderses that she was just very upset after all she'd been through. They were very patient and said they'd pray for her, and next thing I knew a nurse told Lucy she had to leave.
"She stormed out," my sister said. She looked over at me to add, "Of course, mad at you or not, she'll come looking for you, just like she always does."
"How could you do that to her?" I asked. "How could you get between her and Jo? What kind of person are you?”
Dorothy was taken aback. I could feel her bristle.
"You've always been so jealous of me because you're not her mother," she answered.
I turned off on the Meadow Street exit instead of keeping on toward home.
"Why don't we just settle this once and for all," Dorothy and her stingers said. "You're nothing but a machine, a computer, one of those high-tech instruments you love so much. And one has to ask what's wrong with a person who chooses to spend all her time with dead people. Refrigerated, stinky, rotting dead people, most of them low-lifes to begin with."
I got on the Downtown Expressway again, heading back downtown.
"Versus me, I believe in relationships. I spend my time in creative pursuits, in reflection and relationships, and I believe our bodies are our temples and we should take care of them and be proud of them. Look at you." She paused for effect. "You smoke, you drink, you don't even belong to a gym, I bet. Don't ask me why you're not fat and flabby, unless it's cutting through all those ribs and running around crime scenes or being on your feet all day in a goddamn morgue. But let's get to what the worst thing is."
She leaned close to me, her vodka breath an unpleasant vapor.
"Fasten your shoulder harness, Dorothy," I quietly said.
"What you've done to my daughter. My only child. You never had a child because you've always been too busy. So you took mine," she blasted me with her boozy breath. "I should have never, never, ever let her visit you. Where was my brain when I let her stay summers with you?"
She dramatically clutched her head in both hands.
"You filled her with all this guns and ammo and crimesolving shit! You turned her into a fucking little computer nerd by the time she was ten, when little girls should be going to birthday parties and riding 'ponies and making friends!"
I let her rail on, paying attention to the road.
"You exposed her to a big, ugly redneck cop, and let's face it. He's really your only close relationship with a man. I hope like hell you don't sleep with a pig like that. And I have to tell you, as sorry as I am about what happened to Benton, he was weak. Not enough sap in that tree, oh no. No yolk in that egg.
"Huh. You were the man in that relationship, Miss doctor-lawyer-chief. I've told you before and I'll tell you again, you're nothing but a man, with big tits. You fool everybody because you look so elegant in your Ralph Lauren and ritzy-titzy car. You think you're so fucking sexy with those big tits, always making me feel something's wrong with me and making fun of me when I ordered Mark Eden and all those other contraptions. And remember what Mother said?
"She gave me a photograph of a man's hairy hand and said, "That's what makes a woman's breasts get big."' "You're drunk," I said.
"We were teenagers and you made fun of me!"
"I never made fun of you"
"You made me feel stupid and ugly. And you had this blond hair and a chest and all the boys talked about you. Especially since you were smart, too. Oh, you've always thought you're so fucking smart because I couldn't do anything but English."
"Stop it, Dorothy."
"I hate you."
"No, you don't, Dorothy."
"But you don't fool me. Oh, no."
She shook her head from side to side, wagging her finger in my face.
"Oh, no. You can't fool me. I've always suspected the truth about you."
I was parked in front of the Berkeley Hotel, and she didn't even notice. She was screaming, -tears streaming down her face.
"You're a closet diesel dyke," she said hatefully. "And you turned my daughter into one! And now she almost gets killed and she thinks I'm lower than a sewer!"