Anne Tyler - Vinegar Girl

He lifted the latch of the gate and then stepped back to let her go through. Again he allowed far more space than she needed, but it crossed her mind now that it might be for his sake as much as for hers. Both of them, for some reason, seemed to be feeling a little shy with each other.

On her wedding morning, Kate opened her eyes to find Bunny sitting at the foot of her bed. “What, are you checking out my window seat?” she asked, although Bunny wasn’t even looking at the window seat. She was sitting tailor-fashion in her baby-doll pajamas, staring at Kate intently as if willing her to wake up.

“Listen,” she told Kate. “You don’t have to do this.”

Kate reached behind her to prop her pillow against her headboard. She glanced toward the sky outside; there was a whiteness to the light that made her wonder if rain might be on the way, although the forecast was for sunshine. (Aunt Thelma had been reporting the forecast throughout the past week, because she was hoping to serve drinks on her patio before the “wedding banquet,” as she had taken to calling it.)

“I know you think you’re just doing a little something on paper to fool Immigration,” Bunny said, “but this guy is starting to act like he owns you! He’s telling you what last name to use and where to live and whether to go on working. I mean, I do think it would be nice if I could have a bigger room, but if the price for that is my only sister getting totally tamed and tamped down and changed into some whole nother person—”

“Hey. Bun-Buns,” Kate said. “I appreciate the thought, but do you not know me even a little? I can handle this. Believe me. It’s not as if I haven’t dealt my whole life with an…oligarch, after all.”

“An…”

“I’m not that easily squashed. Trust me: I can take him on with one hand tied behind me.”

“Okay,” Bunny said. “Fine. If your idea of fun is sparring and squabbling, so be it. But you’re going to have to be around him all the time! Nobody’s even mentioned how soon you’ll be allowed to divorce him, but I bet it’s a year at least and meanwhile you’re sharing an apartment with someone who doesn’t say please or thank you or smile when you’d expect him to and thinks ‘How are you?’ means ‘How are you?’ and stands too close to people when he talks and never tells them, ‘I think maybe perhaps such-and-such,’ but always, flat-out, ‘You are wrong,’ and ‘This is bad,’ and ‘She is stupid’; no shades of gray, all black and white and ‘What I say goes.’ ”

“Well, part of that is just a matter of language,” Kate said. “You can’t always be bothered with ‘please’ and ‘maybe’ when you’re struggling to get your basic message across.”

“And the worst of it is,” Bunny said, as if Kate hadn’t spoken, “the worst is, it won’t be any different from the fix you’re in here — living with a crazed science person who’s got a system for every little move you make and spouts off his old-man health theories every chance he gets and measures the polyphenols or whatever in every meal.”

“That’s not true at all,” Kate said. “It will be a lot different. Pyotr’s not Father! He listens to people, you can tell; he pays attention. And did you hear what he said the other night about how maybe I’d want to go back to school? I mean, who else has ever suggested that? Who else has even given me a thought? Here in this house I’m just part of the furniture, somebody going nowhere, and twenty years from now I’ll be the old-maid daughter still keeping house for her father. ‘Yes, Father; no, Father; don’t forget to take your medicine, Father.’ This is my chance to turn my life around, Bunny! Just give it a good shaking up! Can you blame me for wanting to try?”

Bunny looked at her dubiously.

“But thank you,” Kate thought to add, and she sat forward and patted Bunny’s bare foot. “You’re nice to be concerned.”

“Well,” Bunny said. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

Not until she’d left the room did Kate realize that Bunny hadn’t ended a single one of her sentences with a question mark.

—

It felt strange to have their father home in the daytime. He was sitting at the breakfast table when Kate came downstairs, a cup of coffee at his elbow and the newspaper spread before him. “Morning,” Kate told him, and he glanced up and adjusted his glasses and said, “Oh. Good morning. Do you know what’s going on in the world?”

“What?” Kate asked him, but he must have been referring to the news in general because he just waved a hand despairingly toward the paper and then returned to his reading.

He was wearing a pair of his coveralls. This was fine with Kate, but when Bunny walked into the kitchen a moment later she said, “You are not going to the church dressed like that.”

“Hmm?” her father said. He turned a page of his paper.

“You have to show some respect, Papa! This is some people’s house of worship; I don’t care what you believe personally. You need to at least put on a regular shirt and trousers.”

“It’s Saturday,” her father said. “Nobody else will be there, just us and your uncle.”

“What kind of photo will it make for Immigration, though?” Bunny asked. She could be surprisingly crafty, on occasion. “You in your work outfit. Sort of obvious, don’t you think?”

“Ah. Yes, you have a point,” he said. He sighed and folded his newspaper and stood up.

Bunny herself was wearing her angel-winged sundress, and Kate — motivated by a vague sense that she owed it to Uncle Theron — had put on a light-blue cotton shift that dated from college. She wasn’t accustomed to wearing pale colors and she felt uncomfortably conspicuous; she wondered if she seemed to be trying too hard. Apparently Bunny approved, though. At least, she offered no criticisms.

Kate took a carton of eggs from the fridge and asked Bunny, “Want an omelet?” but Bunny said, “No, I’m going to make myself a smoothie.”

“Well, be sure you clean up, then. Last smoothie you made, the kitchen was a disaster.”

“I cannot wait,” Bunny said, “till you are out of this house and not breathing down my neck all the time.”

Evidently she had overcome her concern about palming off her only sister.

A few days ago, Kate had hired a woman named Mrs. Carroll to come in every afternoon and do a little light housekeeping and serve as a companion to Bunny till Dr. Battista got home from work. Mrs. Carroll was the aunt of Aunt Thelma’s maid, Tayeema. Aunt Thelma had first suggested Tayeema’s younger sister, but Kate wanted someone seasoned who wouldn’t be susceptible to whatever Bunny tried to put over on her. “She is a whole lot cagier than some might realize,” Kate had told Mrs. Carroll, and Mrs. Carroll had said, “I hear you; yes, indeed.”

After breakfast, Kate went back upstairs and packed her last few odds and ends into her canvas tote. Then she changed her sheets for Bunny. She supposed this room would look very different the next time she laid eyes on it. There would be photos and picture postcards bristling around the mirror, and cosmetics crowding the bureau top, and clothes strewn across the floor. The thought didn’t disturb her. She had used this room up, she felt. She had used this life up. And after Pyotr got his green card she was not going to move back home, whatever her father might fantasize. She would find a place of her own, even if all she could afford was a little rented room somewhere. Maybe she would have her degree by then; maybe she’d have a new job.

She dumped her sheets in her hamper. They were Mrs. Carroll’s to deal with now. She picked up her tote and went back downstairs.