Nicholas Sparks - Two by Two

“I want Daddy!” London said, and when Vivian started to lift her, I felt London squeeze even harder, nearly choking me, until Vivian finally relented.

I carried London back to my chair and took a seat, listening as her cries gradually diminished. By then, my mom had mixed baking soda and water, forming a paste, and brought it to the table, along with a spoon.

“This will help the swelling and take away some of the itch,” she said. “Do you want to watch me put it on, London?”

London pulled away from my neck, watching as my mom applied the paste to her skin.

“Will it sting?”

“Not at all,” my mom answered. “See?”

London was back to sniffling by then and when my mom was finished, London brought her hand closer. “It still hurts,” she said.

“I know it does, but this will make it feel better, okay?”

London nodded, still examining her hand. I brushed away her tears with my finger, feeling the moisture on my skin.

We sat at the table for a while making small talk, trying to distract London and watching for an allergic reaction. None of us expected one-neither Vivian nor I were allergic, and London hadn’t been allergic to the fire ants-but since it was London’s first bee sting, no one knew for sure. London’s breathing seemed normal and the swelling didn’t worsen; when we turned the conversation topic to Mr. and Mrs. Sprinkles, London even seemed to temporarily forget her pain, if only for a few seconds.

Once we knew that London was fine, I recognized that all the adults had overreacted. Our panic, our rush to soothe, the way we’d fussed over her in the aftermath, struck me as a bit ridiculous. It wasn’t as though she’d broken an arm or been hit by a car, after all. Her screams of pain had been real, but still… she’d been stung by a bee. As a kid, I’d probably been stung half a dozen times and when it happened the first time, my mom hadn’t made paste from baking soda and water, nor had she held me in her arms to comfort me. If memory serves, my mom simply told me to go wash the stinger off and my dad said something along the lines of, “Stop crying like a baby.”

When my mom finally asked if London would like another spoonful of chocolate pudding, she hopped off my lap and gave me a kiss before following my mom into the kitchen. She held her hand out in front of her like a surgeon who’d just prepped for an operation. I said as much out loud, eliciting a laugh from Marge and Liz.

Vivian, however, didn’t laugh at all. Instead, her slitted gaze seemed to accuse me of a crime: betrayal.

I was twelve years old and Marge was seventeen when she came out of the closet, or whatever the politically correct way to say it is these days. Marge wasn’t conscious of being politically correct back then; it just sort of happened. We’d been hanging out in her bedroom and the subject of the homecoming dance at the high school came up. When I asked why she wasn’t going, she turned toward me.

“Because I like girls,” she said abruptly.

“Oh,” I remembered saying. “I like girls, too.” I think part of me vaguely suspected that Marge might be gay, but at that age, everything I knew about sexuality and sex pretty much came from murmured conversations in school hallways or the occasional R-rated movie I’d watched. Had she told me a year later, when I would wedge my bedroom door shut with a shoe to have some privacy practically every day, I don’t know how I would have reacted, although I suspect it would have been a bigger deal. At thirteen-middle school-anything out of the ordinary is considered the Worst Thing Ever, sisters included.

“Does that bother you?” she asked, suddenly engrossed in picking at her cuticle.

It was only when I looked at her-really looked-that I understood how anxious she was about telling me. “I don’t think so. Do Mom and Dad know?”

“No. And don’t say a word to them. They’ll freak out.”

“Okay,” I said, meaning it, and it was a secret that stayed between us, until Marge sat my parents down at the dining room table the following year and told them herself.

That doesn’t make me noble, nor should you infer much about my character at all. Even though I sensed her anxiety, I wasn’t mature enough to understand the full gravity of what she’d told me. When we were growing up, things were different. Being gay was weird, being gay was wrong, being gay was a sin. I had no idea of the internal struggles Marge would face, or the things people would eventually say behind her back-and sometimes even to her face. Nor am I arrogant enough to believe I can fully understand them even now. The world to my twelve-year-old brain was simpler and whether my sister liked girls or boys frankly didn’t matter to me at all. I liked and disliked her for other reasons. I disliked, for instance, when she’d pin me on my back, her knees on my arms, while she scoured my chest bone with her knuckles; I disliked when Peggy Simmons, a girl I liked, came to the door and she told her that “He can’t come to the door because he’s in the bathroom, and he’s been in there a long, long time,” before asking Peggy, “Do you happen to have any matches?”

My sister. Always doing right by me.

As for liking her, it was really pretty simple. As long as she wasn’t doing something dislikable, I was more than happy to like her. Like younger siblings everywhere, I had a bit of hero worship when it came to Marge, and her revelation didn’t change that in the slightest. As I saw it, my parents treated her like a young adult while they treated me like a child, both before and after she told me. They expected more from her, whether around the house or in taking care of me. I’ll also admit that Marge made my own path to adulthood smoother than it otherwise would have been because my parents had always been there, done that with Marge first. Surprise and disappointment, after all, often go hand-in-hand when it comes to raising children, and fewer surprises usually meant less disappointment.

When I snuck out one night and took the family car? Marge did it years before.

When I had too many drinks at a high school party? Welcome to the club.

When I climbed the water tower in our neighborhood, a popular teenage hangout? That was already Marge’s favorite place.

When I was a moody teen who barely spoke to either my mom or dad? Marge taught them to expect that, too.

Marge, of course, never let me forget how much easier I had it but to be fair, it often led me to feel like an afterthought in the family, which wasn’t easy either. In our own ways, we each felt a bit slighted, but in our private struggles, we ended up leaning on each other more and more with every passing year.

When we talk about it nowadays-what she went through-she downplays how hard it was to come out to others, and it makes me admire her all the more. Being different is never easy, and being different in that way-in the South, in a Christian home-seemed to strengthen her resolve to appear invulnerable. As an adult, she lives in a world defined by numbers and spreadsheets, calculations. When she speaks with others, she tries to hide behind wit and sarcasm. She deflects intimacy with most people and while we’re close, I wonder if my sister sometimes found it necessary to hide her emotional side, even from me. I know if I asked her, she would deny it; she would tell me that if I wanted sensitivity, I should have asked God for a different sister, the kind of sister who carried a Kleenex at the ready on the off-chance a sad song began playing on the radio.