The way Shona was clinging to Rick as if they were on a roller coaster made Andrew ever-so-slightly doubt this statement. Rick was American, and the way he pronounced the word “adults,” with the emphasis on the second syllable, seemed so impossibly exotic to Andrew he wondered whether he might just up sticks and get on a plane across the pond, too. But then he remembered their mother. Sally might not have had a conscience, apparently, but he still did.
At first, there was no word from Sally. But after a month a postcard arrived, postmarked New Orleans, with a picture of a jazz trombonist in smoky sepia.
“The Big Easy! Hope you’re cool, dude.”
Andrew chucked it on his bedroom floor, furious. But the next day he couldn’t resist the temptation to study it again, and then he found himself sticking it to the wall by his pillow. It would be joined later by Oklahoma City, Santa Fe, the Grand Canyon, Las Vegas, and Hollywood. Andrew used up what little pocket money he had on a US map, tracking his sister’s movements with a marker pen and trying to guess where she’d post from next.
By now his mother would oscillate wildly from angry rants about why Sally thought she could just go swanning off like that, to tearful laments about Andrew’s now being her only child—cupping his face in her hands and making him promise several times that he’d never leave her.
It was with grim irony, then, that five years later Andrew found himself sitting at what his mother now referred to, with no sense of how upsetting this was to him, as her deathbed. The cancer was aggressive, and the doctor gave her weeks. Andrew was supposed to be going to university—Bristol Polytechnic—to study philosophy that September, but he deferred to look after her. He hadn’t told her he’d gotten a place at university. It was just easier this way. The problem was that he’d not been able to get in touch with Sally to tell her their mother was dying. The postcards had dried up, the last one coming the previous year from Toronto with the message “Hey, bud, freezin’ here. Hugs from us both!” But more recently there had been a phone call. Andrew had answered with a mouthful of fish fingers and nearly choked when the echoey sound of Sally’s voice came through the receiver. The line was terrible, and they barely managed a conversation, but Andrew did manage to hear her telling him she’d call again on August 20, when they’d be in New York.
When the day came he sat waiting by the phone, half willing the call to come, half hoping it never would. When it finally did he had to wait for it to ring several times before he could face picking up.
“Heyyyy, man! It’s Sally. How’s the line? Hear me okay?”
“Yeah. So listen, Mum’s ill. As in, really ill.”
“What’s that? Ill? Like, how bad?”
“As in, not-getting-better ill. You need to get on a plane now or it might be too late. The doctors think it might be less than a month.”
“Holy shit. Fuck. Are you serious?”
“Of course I’m serious. Please come home as soon as you can.”
“Jesus, bro. That’s . . . that’s nuts.”
Sally’s return was as clandestine as her exit. Andrew was coming down for breakfast as usual when he heard the kitchen tap running. His mum hadn’t been out of bed for weeks, let alone made it downstairs, but he felt a flash of hope: maybe the doctors had gotten it wrong. But it was Sally, standing at the sink, a ponytail seemingly featuring every color of the rainbow stretching all the way down to her lower back. She was wearing what looked like a dressing gown.
“Brother, fuck!” she said, pulling Andrew into a bear hug. She smelled of something musty and floral. “How the hell are you?”
“I’m okay,” Andrew said.
“Jesus, you’ve grown about twenty feet.”
“Yeah.”
“How’s school?”
“Yeah, fine.”
“You do good in your exams?”
“Yeah.”
“What about girls? You got a new chick yet? Nah, too busy playing the field I bet. Hey, you like my sweater? It’s a Baja. I could get you one if you want.”
No, what I want is for you to come and talk to our dying mother.
“Where’s Spike?” Andrew said.
“He’s stayed out in the States. Gonna go back to him when it’s all, you know . . . over.”
“Right,” Andrew said. So that answered that. “Do you want to go up and see Mum?”
“Um, yep, okay. As long as she’s up and everything. Don’t wanna disturb her.”
“She doesn’t really get up anymore,” Andrew said, heading toward the stairs. He thought for a moment that Sally wasn’t going to follow, but then he saw she was just kicking off her shoes.
“Force of habit,” she said with a sheepish smile.
Andrew knocked on the door once, twice. Nothing. He and Sally looked at each other.
It was almost as if she’d planned to die before the three of them were together, just to make things extra painful.
“Classic Mum,” Sally said later in the pub, though she pronounced it “Mom” and Andrew was very tempted to pour his pint over her head, suddenly no longer in awe of the accent.
Their mother’s funeral was attended by two great-aunts and a handful of reluctant ex-colleagues. It was impossible for Andrew to sleep that night. He was sitting on his bed, reading yet failing to follow Nietzsche on suffering, when he heard the front door click shut. He was suddenly aware of the squawking starlings in the nest on the porch who’d mistaken the security light for dawn. He peered through his curtains and saw his sister, laden down with a backpack, walking away, and wondered if this time she was going for good.
As it turned out, it was only three weeks later—Andrew having spent the majority of that time lying on the sofa wrapped in the duvet from his mum’s bed, watching daytime TV—when he came downstairs and found Sally once more standing by the sink. She’d come back for him. Finally, something had gotten through that thick skull. When Sally turned around Andrew saw her eyes were puffy and red, and this time it was he who crossed the room and hugged her. Sally said something, but her voice was muffled against his shoulder.
“What’s that?” Andrew said.
“He left me,” Sally said, sniffing violently.
“Who did?”
“Spike, of course! There was just a note in the apartment. He’s gone off with some fucking girl, I know it. Everything’s ruined.”
Andrew shook Sally off and took a step back.
“What?” Sally said, wiping her nose on her sleeve. Then a second time, louder, when Andrew said nothing. There it was again, that old anger flashing in her eyes. But this time Andrew wasn’t afraid. He was too furious.
“What do you think?” he spat. And then Sally was advancing on him and pushing him back against the fridge, an arm against his throat.
“What, are you fucking glad or something? Pleased that he’s left me?”
“I couldn’t care less about him,” Andrew gasped. “What about Mum?” He struggled to pull Sally’s arm away from his throat.
“What about her?” Sally said through gritted teeth. “She’s dead, isn’t she? Dead as a doornail. How can you be that upset? That woman didn’t have a maternal bone in her body. When Dad died it was all over for her. She just fell apart. Would she really have done that if we mattered to her?”
“She was ill! And given what a mess you are about getting dumped I don’t think you’re one to judge about someone falling apart.”
Sally’s face flashed with renewed anger, and she managed to free her arm to hit him. Andrew staggered backward, his hands over his eye. He braced himself for another impact, but when it came it was Sally taking him gently in her arms, saying “I’m sorry” over and over. Eventually they both slid down to the floor, where they sat, not speaking, but calm. After a while Sally opened the freezer and passed Andrew some frozen peas, and the simplicity of the act, the kindness of it in spite of her being the reason for his pain, was enough to cause tears to leak from his uninjured eye.