She looked shocked, as though the f-word hadn’t been the mainstay of her vocabulary two years ago. “You know what the Bible says about…” She paused and looked around and then whispered dramatically, “…divorce.”
I laughed ironically. “Yeah, Quinn. I got it. You’ve highlighted all the passages for me—”
At that moment, I heard, “Sorry I fell asleep, babe. You really know how to tucker a guy out.”
It was like trying to stop a moving train. I couldn’t see him; he couldn’t see me. And his voice traveled. Before I could say anything, he was in the room. In his boxers. With those abs. And that tousled hair.
My sister looked at me as if I were the devil as Andrew said, “Oh, sorry. I didn’t know you had company.”
A moment later, I heard the back door open and Diana’s voice saying, “Hi, Gray, I’m back. Hey, where is everybody?”
That’s when my sister huffed, “I don’t want to have tospend eternity without you, but I’m not sure Jesus himself can save your soul.”
She picked up her bag and stormed out, brushing past Diana as I called, “Hey, Quinn, remember when you could do more blow than an entire fraternity house?” Then more loudly, “Oh, wait, remember when I was breastfeeding Wagner and had to leave in the middle of the night to bail you out of jail?” My “TWICE!” coincided with her door slam.
It might have been the first time that both Andrew and Diana had been rendered totally speechless. I sighed heavily, and Diana, who knew all about my sister and our past, hugged me. I wished she wouldn’t have because it made me want to cry. Fighting with your husband is awful. But your sister? That’s your flesh and blood, the person who has known you longer and better than anyone. I mean, it goes without saying that sisters fight. But this wasn’t an argument, one of those we’re-sisters-so-we’ll-be-over-it-in-an-hour types of things. This was do or die.
“Ironically,” I said, “the biggest fights Greg and I ever had were over her.”
“Who was that?” Andrew said, sitting beside me where I had flopped down on the couch. I put my legs in his lap as Diana whispered to him, “Do you ever wear clothes?”
I actually smiled when he replied, “Don’t act like you want me to.” Then he squeezed my calf and said, “No, babe. For real?”
“That lovely creature is my sister. She was the wildest, craziest, most out-of-control person you’ve ever met. A little over the edge, but so fun and so vivacious.”
Andrew grimaced. “So what happened?”
“Pastor Elijah.” I rolled my eyes. “Do you think there’s even a chance that’s his real name?”
Quinn had met Pastor Elijah right after our mother’s diagnosis. I don’t know what took her to church; I guess a last-ditch attempt to pray that “terminal” out of Mom. But he had been utterly charmed by her, like the many, many men before him. And maybe he was looking for a soul to save, I don’t know. My parents were so relieved. Their baby girl was finally growing up. She was finally making the right choices. She fell in love with him so hard and so fast, and, before you knew it, she had traded binge drinking for Bible study and sleeping with every man up and down the Crystal Coast for monogamy. We were all thrilled—at first.
I contented myself with knowing that my mom died thinking Quinn had found Jesus and the love of her life. But assuming she’s looking down, she couldn’t be happy that I was letting my sister carry on with this lunatic. And she’d just left me here to deal with it on my own.
“Trust me,” I said. “No one is happier than I am that she found Jesus. But it’s, like, in a weird way, you know?”
“What do you mean?” Diana asked.
“Like in a cultish, we-need-to-rescue-her-and-put-her-in-the-witness-protection-program sort of way.” I stood up and started pacing. “I mean, she’s just so damn judgmental all of a sudden. It’s unbelievable. After all the times I picked her up at a stranger’s house, all the nights I stayed up holding her hair… Like, I get that she has changed, and I’m so glad. But how do you forget so quickly that you weren’t always perfect either?”
“Ohhhh,” Andrew said. “So what you’re saying is the nearly naked twenty-six-year-old emerging from your bedroom did not impress her?”
I smiled.
“But you know,” he said, “I’m going to be twenty-seven soon. Do you think that would help?”
Diana gagged. “Little boy, go put some clothes on.”
Andrew smiled that charming smile at her and said, “Yes, ma’am,” and got up and wandered back to the bedroom.
Then Diana took my hand and sat us both down on the couch. “Look, honey, losing your momma, it’s tough. I know. You won’t ever get over that.”
She paused. I knew I should feel grateful that I got to have my mom all the years I did, that she was there at the beginning of my marriage, that she helped me with Wagner when he was a baby. That she got to go to baseball games and grandparents’ day and the school play.
Diana said, “Everybody handles loss in a different way. And it looks like maybe your sister’s transformation was her response.” She nodded toward the bedroom and said in a low voice, “I don’t want to say it, but do you think that maybe Andrew is yours?”
If Diana had been my mom, I would have yelled at her then. I know I would have. I would’ve said, “You have no idea what I’m going through. He makes me happy, and I deserve a little bit of happy right now!”
I would have walked off and slammed the door, knowingshe was right the whole time but not wanting to admit it. But Diana wasn’t my mom. She probably wasn’t going to take that kind of attitude from me, and, well, I needed her. So I just shrugged.
