My Sister, My Love Read Online Free PDF Page B

still had tags attached for they were new purchases from The Village Arctic Kids Shoppe.
    “Skyler, do you hear—? Is it—”
    Mummy’s eyes widened in an expression of guilty fear. We listened.
    Faintly in the distance, maybe: a wan, wailing sound. Could be a siren. Could be an airplane high overhead. Could be the wind in the 150-year-old brick chimney about which Mrs. Cuttlebone the perky/canny real estate agent who’d sold Mr. and Mrs. Rampike the overpriced house had nervously joked: “Ghosts! All our ‘historic’ Fair Hills houses have them.” But the danger passed, no one opened the door behind us. No one stared at Mummy with dark-quizzical eyes and inquired politely in heavily accented English when did Mrs. Rampike think she would be returning?
    “—will be all right. Doesn’t need me. Nobody needs me. I need me. ”
    In our three-car garage only two vehicles remained that morning. For Daddy was away at Baddaxe Oil “corporate headquarters” and had taken his shiny black Lincoln Continental, that Mummy was not “encouraged” to drive. Left behind was Daddy’s even bigger and heavier steely-gray Land Rover that was so large and so “tricky to maneuver,” only Daddy could be trusted to drive it. But there was Mummy’s lime-green Chevrolet Impala (a ’94 model that Daddy bought for Mummy to “cheer my gal up” when we’d moved from Parsippany to Fair Hills where Mummy had not wanted to move) that Mummy drove into town at least once a day. It was in the backseat of the lime-green Impala that Mummy had placed, with no explanation, a bulky zip-up satchel. Sharp-eyed Skyler asked, “Mummy, what’s in there?”
    Was it Baby? Baby Sister? Puny little Edna Louise? That Mummy did not want, or anyway did not want so soon after Skyler? That Mummy is tired of, forcrying all the time, for being colicky and keeping Mummy awake, a fretful baby, a homely baby, a blue-bug-eyed baby, a baldie baby with only a few blond hairs on her head, a silly girl-baby missing a real pee-pee like Skyler’s, an exasperating baby demanding always to be fed (chalky-milk formula prepared by Maria), demanding always to have her diaper changed, needing to be bathed and again fed, nappy-nap time and diaper changed, bath, towel-dry, new diaper, all babies do is sleep pee and poop and shriek like a cat being killed and babies try to win your heart by cooing and “smiling” and reaching their astonishing little baby-fingers at you but babies are SO BORING unable even to say their names or walk upright or go potty in the bathroom using the flush. Not like Skyler who is Mummy’s little man!
    Behind the wheel of the ’94 lime-green Chevy Impala, Mummy was humming. Here, you could see that Betsey Rampike was happy.
    “Let’s get buckled in, Skyler. ‘Safety first.’”
    Since Skyler was still a little too small to sit comfortably in the passenger’s seat beside Mummy, Mummy had placed a cushion there for him. (Was this legal? The seat belt fit Skyler kind of loosely.) So proud to have graduated from the silly strap-in kiddy-car-seat in the back that, when homely Edna Louise had to be transported, was used now exclusively for her.
    Surreptitiously Skyler glanced into the backseat at the satchel. Was it stirring? Was there a living creature inside? Was it Baby?
    Skyler asked another time what was in the satchel and Mummy said with a mysterious smile he’d find out, soon.
    “Here we go!”
    The Chevy Impala emerged out of the garage rear-end-first like an explosion.
     
    THE WINTER AIR WAS BLINDING-BRIGHT. OVERHEAD THE SKY WAS A painted-looking robin’s-egg blue. On the ground snow lay in sculpted drifts and swirls vivid-white as detergent or Styrofoam. (Hey forgive me: this is how the memory is coming to me in a blinding rush like Dexedrine. And my heart is hammering, too: 260 beats a minute!) You had to conclude that, if there were airborne “toxins” in the idyllic hills of north-central New Jersey where the wealthy live, said