Dear Irene

“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’Co

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 He

Two sounds broke the brief second’s total silence which followed this a

“Of all the unmitigated gall!” I shouted. “Barbara, who asked you to make any arrangements? Who asked you to talk to Father He

“Not get married in the Church!” she shouted back. She looked between us as if I had just said we pla

“The point is, my dear sister, that you are once again butting your nose in where it doesn’t belong!”

“I’m your older sister. I have an obligation to take our mother’s place in situations like these! If Mother were alive-”

“Don’t start! If Mother were alive, she’d respect my wishes. But she’s dead, Barbara. She’s been dead for over twenty years. And you won’t ever take her place in any situation!”

“You are being mean and selfish!”

“I’m being selfish. Look at you!”

Our shouting match came to a sudden halt when Frank stood up and looked between us. He shook his head, then walked out of the room. Not much later, I heard him going out the front door.

“Now look what you’ve done,” Barbara said, but I had already decided to honor Frank’s unspoken request – to grow up – so I didn’t rise to the bait. She went on for about another thirty seconds, but conversations with Barbara, like earthquakes and dental appointments, always seem to last longer than they actually do. When she finally wound down, I even managed to hold back the 486 really spectacular comebacks I had been considering, and simply said, “I need to find Frank. You need to go home. We need to talk about this later.”

“What do I tell Father He

“That there has been a misunderstanding and that I’ll call him if I need him.”To administer Last Rites to my sister, I added silently. Okay, so I was only pretending to have grown up.

“And Bettina Anderson wants to do the flowers! She’s going to be so upset with you.”

“Who the hell is Bettina Anderson?”

“You don’t remember her? You went to high school with her.”

“I’m not just trying to irritate you, Barbara. I swear I didn’t go to high school with anyone named Bettina.”

“Betty Zanowyk.”

“Betty Zanowyk? Lizzy Zanowyk’s sister, maybe? I went to school with Lizzy Zanowyk. What does that have to do with this Bettina person?”

“Bettina Anderson is Elizabeth Zanowyk. Or should that be the other way around? You know her, Irene. She called herself Betty Zanowyk after high school. Lizzy, Betty, and Bettina are all names that come from Elizabeth. She’s been Bettina Anderson for about five years now.”

My head was aching again. “Let me guess. She’s not a Zanowyk because she got married to someone named Anderson?”

“No, she got tired of being a ‘Z.’ She says she was subjected to alphabetic discrimination all her life.”

“Barbara… please, go home.”

“I don’t know if you should marry Frank. It’s not healthy to deal with anger by going off and pouting,” she said.