My Sister, My Love Read Online Free PDF

prodigy of Fair Hills, New Jersey. Or some sort of prodigy.
     
    “SKYLER! THIS WILL BE OUR SECRET.”
    A very cold morning in the second week of December 1991. Mummy was breathless, and Mummy was excited, and Mummy was wearing her long red quilted winter coat lined with goose-feather down so it weighed scarcely anything, and on Mummy’s head, pulled down snug over Mummy’s dark hair, was a knitted cap of vivid rainbow colors, a cap with a floppy eight-inch tassel like something a TV cartoon character or a clown might wear to make you smile. Unless I was mistaken, for Skyler was so frequently mistaken, peering up anxiously at the giant adults who surrounded him looming over him with their cryptic smiles, their frowns, their grimaces, their tics and twitches and mysterious signals you could not ever hope to decode, probably yes, four-year-old Skyler was wrong about Mummy’s new cap, the rainbow-knit cap with the floppy tassel was intended to be stylish , recently purchased at The Village Arctic Shoppe on Main Street where in the shoppe’s show window it was displayed onanorexic-adolescent-girl models with skis or ice-skates slung over their shoulders. Mummy’s new tassel-cap with its rainbow stripes was serious.
    “—our secret, Skyler, which you must never tell Daddy, you know what a cruel tease Daddy can be. Skyler, please?”
    Skyler’s eager little head nodded Yes! Yes Mummy.
    “—scolds me for ‘wasting gas’! ‘Never staying home’! Next thing, he’ll be checking the what-is-it on my car—‘odormeter.’ You know, tells how many miles you’ve driven? A little gauge, on the dash?”
    Skyler nodded, less certain now. Wasn’t sure he knew what an “odormeter” was but he knew what’s called a “dash.”
    “This little drive of ours, with a—destination. Which I think you will like, Skyler!”
    This little drive was a drive we’d begun to take frequently together, Mummy and me, ostensibly into town on errands of Mummy’s but by a leisurely, looping, circuitous route that took us miles into the “scenic” countryside north and east of the Historic Village of Fair Hills, New Jersey (to which we’d come to live only a few months ago, in September) and yes, often there was a destination to which Mummy headed as if helplessly, by these circuitous routes. “Daddy doesn’t need to know, Skyler. ‘What Daddy doesn’t know won’t hurt us.’” Mummy laughed, with a shivery shudder.
    “Skyler! Shove your stubby little arms into these sleeves.”
    Damn: I’ve forgotten to “set the scene.”
    We were in the garage. We’d “snuck out” into the garage through a back door opening off the kitchen and we were whispering. That is, Mummy was whispering. Often Mummy whispered, it had come to seem natural for Mummy to whisper which meant that you should whisper back or better yet just nod your head Yes Mummy! For there was some urgency here. The phone had been ringing much of the morning but not one of the calls was the call Mummy had been waiting for, only just tradesmen, telephone solicitors, Mummy wasn’t answering any more calls but would let the calls be picked up by the answering service which Mummy would check later which would be soon enough for Mummy, who didn’t want to sabotage this special day. In her cheery-jokey mood already zipped up into the quilted red coat that made Mummy look like—well, a bobbing red balloon, andwith her gaily colored tassel flopping over her forehead, Mummy paused to kiss Skyler’s cute-kid snub-nose though the nose was probably leaking, as Daddy complained the poor damn kid seems always to have a cold. “Shhh! Don’t want Maria to hear us.” Hurriedly Mummy was bundling me into a fleece-lined little parka with a hood made tight and snug, almost too tight and too snug, by drawstrings at the neck manipulated by Mummy. And on my stubby four-year-old’s legs warm flannel sweatpants, and on my stubby feet waterproof boots. Both the parka and the sweatpants