Caroline Eriksson - The Watcher

My sister looks meditative.

“You’re keeping me at arm’s length, Elena. And I’m letting you do it. Or, I have been letting you up to this point. I thought that if I just waited and was patient, that sooner or later you’d open up to me. And I’ve been waiting for…”

Her voice breaks a little.

“I’ve been waiting to matter to you.”

Her words wash over me like a warm wave. I wish that I had the strength to look her in the eyes, that I could say the same thing, but I can’t. The fly keeps bumping into the window behind us. Someone should get up and swat it, but neither of us moves.

Suddenly my sister’s hands fly up to cover her face.

“It feels like I’ve let her down.”

Her words are muffled, filtering through her fingers.

“What do you mean? Who did you let down?”

She removes her hands from her face again.

“Just before she… before the end. Mama asked me to take care of you.”

My cheeks feel tight.

“What?”

My sister studies her fingers. Her voice is quiet now, tense. Just before she died, my mother expressly asked for my sister’s help. “Elena is going to need you,” she had said. “Promise me that you’ll take care of her.”

I shake my head, can’t believe what I’m hearing. Would Mama have asked my sister to promise something like that, asked her to be responsible for my future well-being, after everything that had happened? When I say that it sounds unfair and not at all like Mama, my sister shrugs.

“You were always her favorite.”

I start to protest, but she brushes it off.

“It’s fine,” she says. “I’ve come to terms with it. I did that a long time ago, actually. She and I were really very different. You two, on the other hand, shared everything in common having to do with books and reading. But there was something else, too. It was as if there were some invisible bond between the two of you, as if you two knew something that no one else did.”

It’s grown quiet over at the window now. The fly must have tired itself out. I rock from side to side. Finally I get up. My joints are stiff.

“There’s one thing you should know,” I say, stretching one leg at a time. “No matter what Mama asked you to do, you’re not the one who failed.”

My sister watches me in silence.

“I didn’t want to be looked after. You said that yourself. I kept you at arm’s length. How are you going to help someone who doesn’t want to be helped?”

Without waiting for a response, I walk over to the window. The fly is slowly crawling around along the bottom of the window.

“What have you been up to?” my sister says.

I turn around and follow my sister’s gaze to the stack of pages in my hand.

“Nothing. Or maybe…”

“Did you write something? Is that what you’ve been doing since we last saw each other?”

I wait a few seconds before nodding. My sister’s tired face brightens up.

“So you’re back at it? Wonderful. That’s exactly what you need. I really believe that.”

“I… it’s not really like my other—”

“I’d love to read it,” my sister eagerly interrupts, “and tell you what I think, give you feedback like I used to do. You used to say that I had a flair for the dramatic arts.”

As she continues speaking, I set my stack of papers down on the armchair, on top of my sister’s coat, then open the window wide and help the fly find its way out.

The sky is light gray, and the pavement outside is still wet. The rain has rinsed everything clean. The air pouring into the room is cool and fresh, and I draw it deep into my lungs.

I turn around and look at my sister. Am I ready? I have to be ready. And yet at the same time: Only a little while for this, a little while left with her .

“Do you… want something to eat?”

My sister gives me one of her wry smiles.

“Oh my god,” she says. “I thought you’d never ask.”

“Liquor, we need liquor. What do you have?”

My sister opens the blinds in the kitchen, turns around, and eyes me hopefully. I shake my head, nothing like that here.

“Ugh, it doesn’t have to be hard liquor. Wine would be fine, too, or beer, maybe a half-finished bottle? Some old liqueur with only the dregs left? Anything will do.”

I laugh.

“Unfortunately, nothing. Nothing at all.”

My sister clicks her tongue in disbelief.

“Oh my god, a Friday night without alcohol? What kind of life is that?”

She rifles through the kitchen cabinets, finds a container of coffee, and emits a cry of relief. After having measured coffee grounds into the coffee maker for herself, she puts on tea for me.

It’s nice to have her here, nice to watch her move so naturally between the cupboards and household appliances even though this isn’t her kitchen. We chat like any old siblings, and I can almost delude myself that everything is fine. I say something that makes my sister laugh. She laughs until she can hardly breathe and has to clutch her stomach. Her breasts rise and fall under her flowery blouse and my eyes get stuck on her hand: That blouse and that hand . Time stops. Emotions freeze.

“You’re so much like her,” I blurt out. “You dress the same way and have the same stubby fingers. Or, I mean… she used to… the way she looked before…”

It takes all my self-control to hold back the tears, but I can’t bear the pain in my chest. Just when I think my rib cage is going to cleave me in two or that I’ll collapse in a heap on the floor, I feel my sister’s arms around me. She leads me to the kitchen table and pushes me down onto a chair, tucks a strand of my hair behind my ear, just like Mama used to do.

She quickly handles the rest, pouring the warm beverages into each of our cups and putting out the last of the oat crackers—Leo’s crackers, as I think of them—on a little plate.

“It’s not exactly a three-course meal,” she says. “But we can be happy there’s anything edible at all in this household. Or drinkable.”

When she notices that I’m not smiling, she grows serious again, drops down onto the chair across from me, and asks if I’m OK. She reaches for a cracker, and I look out the window.

“Don’t you ever think about her?”

“Of course I do.”

My sister brings her cup to her mouth and sips her coffee.

“In ten years, I’ll be the same age Mama was when she got sick,” she adds.

Then we talk about our parents, for real, for the first time in a really long time. About Mama’s illness, about Papa’s shortcomings, and about the emptiness they both left behind when they disappeared from our lives, each in their own way. My sister tells me about the conversation with Papa again, and this time I listen for real. When she asks what I want to do, if I want to see him when he comes to town this summer, I shrug.

“I feel the same way,” she says. “But we don’t need to decide now. Let’s think about it.”

The way she expresses this, how she clearly views it as a mutual decision, touches something in me. Tears burn behind my eyelids. My sister moistens a fingertip and presses it against the tabletop to pick up some cracker crumbs.

“When Papa met whatever-her-name-is and moved away,” she says, “was that even half a year after Mama died? That was lame, actually. I remember that all I could think was that I would never be included again. I think that’s when I decided I would never have kids, ever.”

“And for me, it was the same thing, only the opposite,” I say. “That was when I started longing to form my own family.”

“That’s why it was such a hard blow for you when you couldn’t get pregnant,” my sister says with a nod. “How long had you and Peter been trying when—”