Nicholas Sparks - Two by Two

I knew I was being vague, but there were some things I just couldn’t tell Emily.

She nodded before sliding her water glass toward her. Rather than raising it to her lips, however, she rotated it on the table. “I saw Marge yesterday,” she said.

“I know. She told me. How do you like being labeled the ‘new-and-improved model’?” I cracked a grin.

“I’m honored.” Then, with a sad smile: “She’s such a good person.”

“The best.” There was nothing else really to say.

After school, I brought London to Marge’s. Because she’d been to the house numerous times in the past month, she’d known that Marge was sick, even if she didn’t realize the seriousness of her illness. When Marge opened her arms, she went to her as usual and gave her a tender hug.

When I mouthed the question, Do you want me to stay? Marge shook her head.

“I’m going to visit with Nana for a little while, okay, London? Will you keep an eye on Auntie Marge for us?”

“Okay,” she said, and I left them alone in the living room. My mom and I sat on the back porch off the kitchen, not saying much of anything.

A short while later, when I saw London enter the kitchen, I went back inside and held her as she cried.

“Why doesn’t God make Auntie Marge better?” she choked out.

I swallowed through the lump in my throat, squeezing her small body to mine. “I don’t know, sweetie,” I said. “I really don’t know.”

Vivian texted that she planned to go straight to Marge’s after her flight landed, and as a result, she didn’t arrive at the house until half past six.

As soon as I saw the limo out front, I thought of the letter from her attorney. I left the front door open but retreated to the kitchen, feeling a wave of disgust toward her wash over me. Even though she’d just spent more than an hour with my sister, I still had no desire to speak to her.

I heard Vivian enter the house, and then London’s tremulous voice, asking Vivian if she really had to go to Atlanta. Despite Vivian’s promise that they were going to have a terrific time, London began to cry. Footsteps pounded as she ran to the kitchen and threw herself into my arms.

“I don’t want to go, Daddy,” she sobbed. “I want to stay here. I want to see Auntie Marge.”

I scooped her up and held her as Vivian entered the kitchen. Her expression was unreadable.

“You need to spend time with your mom,” I said. “She misses you all the time. And she loves you very much.”

London continued to whimper.

“Will you take care of Auntie Marge while I’m gone?”

“Of course I will,” I said. “We all will.”

With London in Atlanta, I passed most of the weekend at Marge’s, just as I’d promised my daughter. My parents were there too, alongside Liz.

We spent long hours at the kitchen table telling stories about Marge, as if our vivid memories and outrageous accounts of Marge’s exploits would help keep her alive longer. I finally told my parents and Liz about the night I rescued Marge from the water tower; Liz re-created the romantic scavenger hunt. We laughed about Marge’s roller skating and horror movie obsessions, and reminisced about the idyllic day that Marge and Liz had spent with Emily and me at the Biltmore Estate. We marveled at Marge’s wit, and the fact that she still viewed me as a little brother desperately in need of her superior guidance.

I wished Marge had been there to hear all the stories, but she was with us for only a few of them. The rest of the time, she was sleeping.

On Sunday evening, London returned from Atlanta. Vivian said goodbye to our daughter near the limo and didn’t come inside.

It was the last day of January. Marge and I were both born in the month of March; she on the fourth, and I on the twelfth. We were both Pisces, and in the world of the Zodiac, people born under that sign are said to be compassionate and devoted. I’d always believed that to be truer of Marge than me.

Her birthday, I realized, was less than five weeks away, and I knew she wouldn’t be around to celebrate it.

Like Marge, I just knew.

My parents didn’t have the most active social lives when Marge and I were young. While my dad might grab a beer every now and then with friends, it was relatively rare, and my mom hardly went out at all. Between work, cooking, cleaning, visiting her family, and raising kids, she didn’t have a lot of extra free time. Nor did my parents dine out as a couple very often; dining out was considered an extravagance, something I can remember them doing perhaps half a dozen times. When you consider birthdays, anniversaries, Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, and Father’s Day, six dinner dates in eighteen years isn’t much.

That meant that when they did go out, Marge and I would be giddy at the thought of having the house to ourselves. As soon as their car pulled out of the driveway, we’d make popcorn or S’mores-or both-and start watching movies with the volume turned up way too loud, until, inevitably, one of Marge’s friends would call. Once she got on the phone, I would suddenly be forgotten… but I was usually okay with that, since it meant even more S’mores for me.

Once when she was thirteen or so, she convinced me that we should build a fort in the living room. We found a coil of clothesline in the storage shed and ran it from the curtain rod to the grandfather clock to an air vent and back again to the curtain rod. We pulled towels and sheets from the linen closet, fastening them to the line with clothespins. Another sheet went over the top, and we furnished the fort with pillows pulled from the couch. Marge hauled in a propane-fueled camping lantern from the garage. We somehow got that lit without burning down the house-my dad would have been furious had he known-and Marge turned out all the lights before we crawled inside.

Setting the whole thing up had taken more than an hour, and it would take almost as long to take it all down and clean up, which meant we were only able to spend fifteen or twenty minutes in the fort before my parents got home. Even when they did go out, they never stayed out late.

I still recall that night as a near-magical experience. At eight years old, it was adventurous and new, and the fact that it was also against the rules made me feel older than I was, more like Marge’s peer than a little kid, for the very first time. And as I looked at my sister in the eerie glow of the lantern in our makeshift fort, I can distinctly remember thinking that Marge was not only my sister, but my best friend as well. I knew even then that nothing would ever change that.

On February 1, the high temperature hit seventy-one degrees; five days later, the high was only fifty degrees and the low dipped to twenty-four. The wild temperature swings that first week of February seemed to weaken Marge even further. With every passing day, Marge grew worse.

Her sixteen hours of sleep a day lengthened to nineteen hours, and every breath was a struggle. The paralysis on her right side grew even more pronounced, and we rented a wheelchair to move her around the house more easily. Her words started to slur and she had hardly any appetite, but those things were nothing compared to the pain she was experiencing. My sister was taking so many painkillers that I suspected that her liver was turning to mush, but the only time she seemed to feel any real relief was when she slept.