Dear Irene

“My car is at Banyon’s. We took a cab home last night because your sister and I forgot to draw straws for designated driver. We were celebrating the removal of her cast and splint.”

“Oh.” She looked more than a little disconcerted.

“Were you yelling at me on the phone all this time?” I asked.

That brought back some of her ire, but Frank’s chuckle cooled it right back down into embarrassment. “Never mind,” she said.

“Come on in and make yourself comfortable,” Frank said. “I’ll make some coffee.”

Barbara looked down at my hand and, seeing the puffiness around my thumb and forefinger, said, “It still looks funny.”

“Thank you.” I walked back to the kitchen, leaving her to follow or stand there.

She chose to follow and soon the pleasant aroma of coffee allowed me to become a little more human.

“Anything I can do to help?” she asked.

“Not a thing,” Frank said, getting some cups and saucers.

“I’d be happy to help,” she tried again.

“Just relax and enjoy yourself,” Frank said easily.

As I watched her take a seat at the kitchen table, I mused to myself that Barbara had probably never in her life “relaxed and enjoyed herself.” She’s bird-nervous by nature.

I put a couple of pieces of nine-grain bread in the toaster on the table and studied my sister while I waited for them to pop. For the most part, Barbara and I don’t look or behave as if we could be related. She has my mother’s red hair and green eyes; she’s tall and willowy. Her delicate features are very similar to our mother’s. Her skin is soft and white.

I’m only a little bit shorter than Barbara, but I’m built differently. She has always seemed more fragile to me; even though she’s the older sister, I’ve been the one she runs to with her problems. Unlike her, my hair is dark, my eyes blue. I look more like my father’s side of the family. I am, I admit, much less feminine than my sister — always have been. I was climbing trees while she played with dolls. I felt great when I hit my first home run, she felt wonderful when she learned to put on nail polish. I got tremendous satisfaction out of digging a hole in the backyard and filling it with water and then bombing it with dirt clods. Barbara was in the house, trying on my mother’s high heels. I still haven’t learned to walk gracefully in heels.

She married O’Connor’s son, Kenny, and divorced him when he turned forty and went thorough man-o-pause. He was brutal in his verbal abuse of her in that period. I couldn’t stand him before that, and afterwards was unwilling to try for polite. She got back together with him, much to my dismay. I was praying they wouldn’t remarry. But it’s her life. Barbara and I have never been great pals; in fact, we usually drive one another crazy.

The toast popped.

“Your hair is growing,” she said to me, as Frank filled our coffee cups. It made me reverse some of my thinking of the last few minutes. We are sisters, and woven over our differences is a fabric of kindnesses paid out to one another in times of trouble. After my captors had cut my hair into odd-shaped clumps, it was Barbara who came by and patiently reshaped my hair out of its bizarre styling into the cut I wore now. Having my shoulder-length hair lopped off by those men had been demeaning and extremely upsetting; Barbara’s efforts had made it much easier to look at my reflection in the days following that ordeal.

“Yes,” I answered. “Thanks again for the haircut.”

“I should trim it for you.”

“No thanks. I want to let it grow out again.”

“You can’t go around with the same hairstyle you had in ninth grade, Irene. You’re a grown woman.”

I was determined to keep my cool. “Like I said, I appreciate what you did for me, but I’m going to let it grow out.”

“Honestly. You’d think you’d act your age.”

Frank was looking between us, not trying very hard to hide his amusement. To hell with him, I thought. I’m still not going to be drawn into a fight with her. My head hurt.

“Was there something you wanted this morning?” I asked.

“It’s afternoon.”

I shifted in my chair a little but said, “This afternoon, then.”

“Well. Yes.” She took a dainty sip of coffee and glanced nervously toward Frank. He looked toward me with a silent question and I answered with a look that asked him to please stay put.

“Don’t drum your fingers, Irene,” she said.

“You came by this afternoon to ask me not to drum my fingers?” I took a deep breath. “I have to drum my fingers. It’s part of my physical therapy.”

Frank made a sputtering noise in his coffee, but she either didn’t pick up on it or was still too intimidated by him to comment. “Oh,” she said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

“I’ll stop doing it. Now, you were saying?”

Once again she looked over at Frank, who seemed to have himself back under control. “Well,” she said.

We waited. When she got it out, it was all in a rush.

“How can I make any of the wedding arrangements if you won’t set a date? Of course I didn’t tell him you were living together, but Father Hennessey is willing to give Frank instruction and said he would set aside a date for the wedding if we would just name one.”