Father pointed a finger at me. ‘You be happy for your sister.’
I loosened my necktie. ‘May I be excused?’ I pushed away from the dining table, left them behind, took off to the backyard, and tried to calm myself. How long had Lizzie been cooking up this plan? I wanted to scream but thought better of it. I did nothing, let crickets surround me. Later, Father came outside, kept his reason for letting Lizzie go simple: ‘For once you need to put Lizzie’s needs before your own. You’re the mature one. Let her see the world and become a woman.’
It took all I had to say nothing.
In the months leading up to the trip, Lizzie held court in her little nun room, packed and unpacked her travelling trunk for days on end. ‘I just can’t decide what to bring.’ Lizzie knew nothing about practicality. I knew what I would take: a few dresses, notebooks and pencils, a book, Mother’s fur coat. I thought about all the time I would have away from Abby, away from Lizzie. Things unlikely. There would be an upside to her leaving.
As the departure drew near, Lizzie buried herself at Father’s side, spoke softly and followed him to church. Father’s little girl returned. I often overheard Lizzie tell Abby, ‘I’m already beginning to miss you.’ All that love she pretended they shared.
Afterwards Lizzie would tell me, ‘I hate her, Emma. Father’s just as bad.’
And then Lizzie was gone. The morning she left, a white coach pulled up at the house, the white draught horse’s bridle decorated with vermilion rosettes and ribbons. ‘Do you like it?’ Lizzie asked me before stepping out the front door. ‘I made them dress her up. It adds a certain touch, doesn’t it?’
Half the street had come to see Lizzie off and she waved to them. ‘Don’t go changing Fall River on me while I’m away.’ Some laughed, others glared. Mrs Churchill gave Lizzie a piece of cherry pie to take with her for the journey. ‘Don’t you forget what home tastes like.’ Lizzie kissed her on the cheeks, sniffed the pie, licked it, placed it on the coach seat. I wanted the street to open up, swallow them all.
The driver lumbered Lizzie’s trunk onto the coach and Lizzie came to me, a bear hug, whispered, ‘I’ll miss you, Em Em.’
Childhood names. I wasn’t that cold-hearted. ‘You too, Swizzy.’
Lizzie kissed me dead on the lips. We were warm. The driver said, ‘It’s time to go.’ We separated. Lizzie said last goodbyes to Father and Abby and before we knew it the horse was clopping down Second Street, and the crowd went back to their own lives.
The house was quiet. Sometimes I would open the bedroom door that separated us and stand in the middle. I raised my arms above my head, a lack of knowing what to do with myself. I had that feeling: happiness and loss hitched together. It felt like I was missing a limb.
I became more attuned to Father’s and Abby’s presence, their winter-years bodies, the way they slurped their food, the way Father held his breath when he snored, Abby’s too-round face that made the dimple in her cheek look like a crescent moon. They were always there.
Occasionally Lizzie would send me a postcard: ‘Small walks taken through Rome’, ‘Endless Spanish steps’, ‘The food, Emma! The glorious food.’ I swallowed Lizzie’s words. Some of that should have been mine. I took countless walks through Fall River, tried to take my mind off things. But it was hard to take the summer heat on my back without her.
I walked. The cotton mill’s industrial calls thumped over stone. In the mornings factory steam covered Fall River in a summer fog, thick with a chemical smell that made me cough on my way downtown. Every so often I would pretend Fall River was the French Riviera, an impossible feat without the prospect of an ocean. Downtown was always the same: birds in cages, cawing and singing, hung from house verandas and shopfronts; horses and carts carried human movement; children jumped over kerbsides, boiled sweets pushed hard into swollen cheeks; Mr Potter, the Western Union Telegraph officer, waved to businessmen, trying to hide the extra pinkie finger on his right hand. On the hottest days, the police station would open the outer doors of cell rooms, exposing the screaming and cursing drunkards behind iron bars to the street. Once I watched a prisoner pull down his pants and take his penis in his hand, wave it around before letting warm urine stream down his legs. ‘Hey, love,’ he called to me, ‘Oh, love. How sweet it is.’
At the end of my walks, I would stand outside the confectioner’s store and stare at the yellow cheesecloth curtains, remember all the times Lizzie and I had spent there. I waited for the doors to open and inhaled sugar. Then I would walk away.
When Lizzie finally returned home, I welcomed her with kisses. She demanded we swap rooms.
‘I think it’s time you let me have it.’ Lizzie chewed each word as it came out, a dragon spitting out carcasses. She’d barely asked me how I was, how I had spent my time.
‘I don’t think so,’ I told her.
Lizzie closed in, squeezed my cheeks. ‘I’ll tell Father your big secret,’ she whispered. Samuel. I pulled her hands away, squeezed them in my own, made Lizzie’s blue eyes widen like sky. I wanted to break a bone. Instead, Lizzie got the room and I shamed myself for missing my sister as much as I had.
‘Oh, God, Emma!’ Helen shouted, filled the paddock.
I snapped to attention. Behind me, feet sounded small thunders across hard land. My name again. I twisted around, pulled towards the voice.
‘What is it?’
‘It’s terrible news.’ Helen stood back. There was the loss of gravity as images presented themselves: a burning home, Mother’s grave desecrated, Father striking Lizzie, Bridget abandoning her station. Thoughts of being alone with Abby.
‘There’s been a terrible accident.’ Helen, a quake.
A small fist settled at the bottom of my abdomen. Lizzie. What had happened to baby Lizzie? I wanted our mother.