Christine Deriso - Then I Met My Sister

But I don’t want to tip my hand about Shannon’s journal, and I don’t want to freak Dad out by going from zero to ninety, communications-wise. (Hey, Dad, I know we’ve never talked about anything of substance before, but do you think Shannon committed suicide? And do you have any juicy secrets from your past that you’d like to share?)

Still, I have to dip my toe in the water. My habit of following my family’s game plan—shutting down and making nice—is why Shannon’s words have gobsmacked me. I don’t think the game plan will work for me anymore.

I sneak a glance at Dad. He notices and gives me a wary smile.

I take a deep breath. Okay, here goes—Introduction to Dad 101. I decide to start with what seems to be the most innocuous information I’ve learned from the journal.

“Did we used to go to church?” I ask Dad.

Try answering that question with an mmmmmm.

“We?” Dad asks, running a hand through his gray-flecked brown hair.

“Yeah. Our family. You and Mom … and Shannon, I guess. I don’t remember ever going to church, but did we? Did you ?”

Dad absently scatters the food on his plate with his fork. “Your mother was raised Catholic.”

“I know that .” I don’t mean to sound impatient; at least he’s talking. But Grandma and Grandpa are so Catholic, their house is practically decorated in Contemporary Crucifix. Mom’s being raised Catholic is virtually the only thing I already know.

Dad rests his fork on his plate. “I grew up Methodist,” he says. “I converted when we married. Well, not technically. I just started going to church with your mother. We went for several years, until …”

I lean subtly closer. “Until Shannon died?”

Dad’s lips tighten and he stares at his food. “I guess it was around that time that we stopped going. Your mother kind of calls the shots in those matters.”

It sounds so crazy—Mom “calling the shots” about the whole family’s religion—but then, Mom calls the shots about everything.

“Why did you stop going?” I ask.

Dad shifts his weight and rubs the back of his neck. “Do you want to go?” he asks wearily, seeming to hope against hope that the answer is no. I don’t think Dad is anti-religion. He’s just anti-changing-his-routine.

“I just want to know why you stopped going,” I repeat.

His eyes flicker in my direction, then back toward his plate. He fiddles with his fork again. “I think you’d have to ask your mother about that.”

I open my mouth, then shut it, resigned. Dad takes another bite.

I watch as he chews and dabs his mouth with a napkin. He always looks a little rumpled first thing in the morning, but he’s still handsome with his square jaw and deep-set eyes. I rest my chin on my knuckles. “How’d you and Mom meet?” I blurt out, surprising even myself. I don’t remember forming that question in my head.

Dad smoothes his T-shirt and clears his throat. “How did we meet ?”

“Yeah.”

He crinkles his brow. “You know the answer to that, honey.”

He’s burying his head in the paper again.

I thump it again. “No. I don’t know.”

He takes a deep breath and puts the paper aside. “Sure you do. Your mom talks about those kinds of things.”

“No, she doesn’t.”

Nobody in my family ever talks about anything that matters.

Dad glances around the room like he’s looking for an escape hatch. “Of course she does,” he says, trying not to sound irritated. “School. We met in school.” He stabs a piece of chicken and pops it in his mouth.

“College, right?”

“ Yes ,” he says, sounding vindicated. “I told you that you already knew.”

I absently finger a lock of hair. “When did you see her for the first time? In a class?”

“Um … a party, I think.”

I smile. “Did you like her right away? Did you think she was pretty?”

He peers into space. “I believe my roommate introduced us.”

“And you asked her out that night?”

A hint of impatience flashes across Dad’s face, but then, unexpectedly, his eyes soften and he smiles.

“What?” I ask him.

He blushes. “It’s kind of embarrassing.”

I bounce a little in my seat. “ What ?”

He holds a hand loosely over his mouth. “I wanted to ask her out, but I was too shy. I had a part-time job in the comptroller’s office and I told her it was fortunate we’d happened to meet at the party, because I’d just been going through the files and there were some ‘discrepancies’ with her paperwork.”

My jaw drops slightly. “You’re the only person I’ve ever known to use the word ‘discrepancies’ in a pickup line.”

Dad scowls at me playfully. “Well, it worked. She dropped by the office a couple of days later. I told her I must have confused her file with someone else’s, that all of her paperwork was perfectly in order … and the rest is history.”

Mom walks in the kitchen, tightening the sash of her terrycloth robe. She gives us a little nod and heads for the coffeemaker.

“Mom,” I say, “did you know Dad tricked you into seeing him again after you first met by telling you something was wrong with your college paperwork?”

“Of course,” she says matter-of-factly.

“You never knew that,” Dad protests.

Mom gives a little snort as she pours herself a cup of coffee.

“You did know,” I say, more to myself than to Mom, “but it was okay, because you wanted to see him again, too?”

Dad gazes at Mom, waiting for her response. He’s actually curious. I’ve never known him to be curious about anything other than golf before.

“Well?” I press.

Mom waves a hand dismissively through the air as she takes a sip of coffee. “This is ridiculous,” she says decisively. “Randall, the grass needs cutting. Better get it done this morning, before it gets too hot.”

Dad buries his head back in the paper. “Mmmmmm,” he says.

“Mom, why don’t you go to church anymore?” I ask her impulsively.

Her shoulders stiffen as she searches my face for a clue about my sudden penchant for memory lane. “Do you want to go to church, Summer?”

“I’m just wondering why we don’t,” I say. “I mean, Dad says we used to. Or you used to. I don’t remember ever going except for holidays.”

“You know that you can go to church any time you’d like,” Mom says defensively. “I’ll take you this morning if you’d like to go.”

“No, it’s not that I want to go. I just …”

“The grass, Randall,” Mom interrupts, casting me an annoyed look. “Don’t forget to cut the grass this morning.”

I sigh as Mom walks out of the kitchen with her coffee, her robe swooshing through the air. I stare for a second at the paper that hides Dad’s head, wishing I could keep him talking and wondering if I can pull him back into the conversation.

But no. He’s more than filled his word quota for the day.

The magic is gone.

Ten

“So this is a library, huh?”

Gibs stops in his tracks and stares at me, jaw dropped and eyebrows arched.

“I’m kidding,” I assure him.

We walk through the foyer and a security turnstile, then into the brightly lit expanse of books, computer banks, tables, chairs, and grim faces of people who spend Sunday afternoons in libraries. (Okay, so they’re not all grim-faced. But they do seem awfully pale.)

“This way,” Gibs says in a lowered voice, leading me past the reference desk toward a closed door. He squeaks the heavy oak door open and I follow him inside.

“… so I guess you’d say the tundra—or, more specifically, the ice—serves as a metaphor,” a guy in a sports jacket and a dress shirt with an unbuttoned collar says into a microphone, leaning way too close to it. He sounds like a grocery store manager calling for cleanup in aisle six.