Christine Deriso - Then I Met My Sister

Mom’s jaw drops slightly. The pendulum on the mahogany grandfather clock ticks dully.

“Please tell me,” I plead. “If I know, I won’t wonder.”

Mom bright-blue eyes widen. They’re suddenly moist. Dad intertwines his fingers.

“There was nothing remarkable about that weekend,” Mom says, staring out the window. “Shannon was a little down. She’d had a crush over the summer on some boy …” Her lip curls. “I think, by the end of the summer, she realized it was just infatuation. But still … it was hard for her.”

“Did she talk to you about it?” I prod.

“Do you talk to me about those sorts of things?” Mom asks defensively. “Teenagers don’t talk to their mothers.”

“She talked to me.”

Dad’s voice is so small, we barely hear the words. But our eyes fall on him immediately. “She talked to me about him,” he repeats.

I lean in closer. “What did she say?”

He opens his mouth, but closes it. Then he opens it again … and a sob rushes out.

I lean in to hug him. He grips me so hard, I wonder if my ribs will break.

“Randall,” Mom says, but her voice is kind.

“She was in love with him,” Dad says through his tears, still holding me close.

“She wasn’t in love …” Mom protests.

“She was in love,” Dad repeats. “I tried to warn her, but she was … she was a kid. He broke her heart, of course. She cried her eyes out to me, right before she died.”

“What did you tell her?” I ask.

“I told her I was sorry, that she deserved better. That he was nothing, that she’d have a million more boyfriends.”

He sobs openly now. Mom’s face crinkles like a leaf. The mail drops from her fingers and her hands shake.

“It was nothing,” she insists, weeping. “It was just a silly little crush.”

“It wasn’t nothing,” Dad says firmly, pulling away from me and rubbing his fists roughly against his cheeks. “It wasn’t nothing.”

A long moment hangs in the air.

“Still,” Dad finally says, his voice steadier now, “she was okay. She was getting through it. I told her she should go shopping with her mother. Shopping always cheered her up.”

Mom walks toward us. “She bought four pairs of shoes,” she says, smiling through her tears. “It was ridiculously extravagant, but we decided we could both wear the shoes, so what the heck. We had the same shoe size.”

Mom stoops at the foot of my chair. Dad looks at her tenderly. “Those shoes are still in the boxes in my closet,” she says.

“Shannon and your mother were very close,” Dad tells me.

Mom smiles wanly through her tears. “She was tough on me,” she says. “Like you are, Summer. She kept me on my toes. She hadn’t always been that way—just toward the end. She was suddenly questioning everything, making me justify everything I said or did. It was exhausting.”

She laughs lightly, and Dad and I smile at her.

“My girls have really managed to put me in my place,” she says, reaching over and placing a cool palm against my cheek.

“We love you,” I say, then blush self-consciously. “I love you. I know Shannon did, too.”

Mom’s face crinkles again. “She did ,” she says emphatically. “She did love me. Both of my babies love me.”

I nod. “How could we not? You’re so damn lovable.”

Laughter sputters through Mom’s lips, then Dad and I join in, all of us laughing through our tears.

“Hey, guess what,” I say after a few moments, gazing at their rosy cheeks and bright, moist eyes. “Gibs and I are … let’s see, what lame term did Aunt Nic use? We’re an item.”

Mom’s eyebrows shoot up. “Oh, so we’re confiding in Mommy now, are we!”

I love the sparkle in her eyes. “I guess we are. But don’t start picking out china patterns or anything. Play it cool, Mom. Please.”

She swats me playfully on the leg. “I’ve been playing it cool all summer! You think a mother doesn’t know these things?”

I pause and glance at Shannon’s watercolor portrait on the wall. Her hair is windblown in the image, her white cotton dress blowing, her feet bare on a sandy shore as waves lap at her ankles.

“I don’t want to keep secrets,” I say softly, then swallow hard and continue. “There’s something I’d like you guys to see …”

A Conversation with

Christine Hurley Deriso

Where did the idea for Then I Met My Sister come from?

I wanted to explore the idea of connectivity … that we’re all linked to both the past and the future in ways that defy time or space. I never knew my ancestors, but I’m intrigued about how the seeds they cast long ago are influencing my life today. Likewise, I wonder how the choices I’m making will affect my descendants. I was intrigued by the concept of Summer reaching into her past to shape her future.

I also wanted to explore relationships that resonate strongly with me. I’m a mother, a daughter, and a sister, and I love the complexities and nuances of those roles. I like trying to see behind the façade of people’s personalities and understanding the insecurities and vulnerabilities that lie beneath the surface. For instance, perfectionist control-freak Susanne seems so easy to dislike until you peel away the layers. I loved the challenge of trying to make her lovable, or at least understandable. I think books can do that better than any other art form: remind us of our shared humanity, our shared frailties, and inspire a bit of insight and compassion.

I was also interested in exploring the life of an average teen. Teenage years have always been challenging, but life for today’s teens seems almost unbearably stressful. I know it’s important to plan for the future, but our society seems to give teens no room at all to live for the moment, to appreciate the present as a gift in its own right rather than as a stepping stone to the future. It’s stripped a lot of spontaneity and joy from teens’ lives, and I think that’s really sad.

I want teens to trust their wisdom, their bravery, their insight, and their instincts. I want them to explore what they want from life, rather than what others (like Summer’s momzilla mom) are thrusting on them. But mostly I want them to have a sense of humor … to be able to step back and laugh at the absurdities of life and know that this, too, shall pass. I want them to recognize the universality in the human condition and to have compassion for everyone they encounter. I want them to be joyful. I want them to lose themselves in a good book, and to learn about themselves in the process. That’s why I wrote this book.

Summer’s got a very … interesting relationship with her family. What was your family like as a teen?

I’m the fourth of five children, and like Summer, I was intimidated by the standard set by my older siblings. They were very high-achieving, and by the time I was in high school, I’d settled into academic mediocrity, masking my insecurity as non-conformity. Thank heaven my parents took it in stride, because I’m not sure I could have mastered calculus under the best of circumstances.

In fact, my mom was the anti- momzilla. She’s unconditionally loving, very open-minded, and whole-heartedly accepting of my choices. She never used guilt or manipulation to try to get her way. When I wrote the character of Summer’s control-freak mother, Susanne, I thought, “What would Mom do?” Then Susanne would do the opposite.

My parents are also extremely bright, well-read, and creative, so my teenage years were filled with lots of music, books, and interesting dinner conversation. Mom wrote poetry, Dad wrote songs, and we all tended to follow their lead of creativity and self-expression.