Summer Sister

A Rose in bloom

I wake up to find the other twin bed empty, the pineapple-print comforter thrown back. Soft noises come from downstairs. I follow them and find Rose in the small bathroom, putting on lip gloss with a fake flower scent I can smell from five yards away. (The riptide will take the lip gloss with her life, sealing our secret.) She looks at me and puts her finger to her lips. I am nine (and a half, I always insist). Rose is fourteen (and a quarter).

"Where are you going, Ro?" I ask.

"Out to see Danny," she says. She and Danny met on the beach the second day; they have watched a few sunsets, taken a few long walks on the beach, exchanged a few inexpert kisses in imperfect privacy. Mom and Dad have no illusions about the durability of this romance, but they like it well enough. They have touched and kissed more this summer than they normally do, part poking fun at Rose, part triggered reminiscence on new love. Tomorrow I will not tell anyone about this meeting with Rose; I will not tell them whom she went to see. Danny will depart our lives after one stammered, frightened apology for our loss, and I will stare silently at him the whole time, peeling him back layer by layer with my eyes to see if that apology is boilerplate (as it is framed) or a concealed confession. When I am a woman grown, I will find him again and ask straight out, but I will get no better answer.

"Can I come?" Unconscious of the irony, I rub my eyes.

"No, Leen," she says, as kindly as she can. "I'll see you tomorrow."

"Danny said he'd play tennis with me." Rose refuses to do this for good reason; I cannot serve properly, and my return strokes send the ball straight up like a bottle rocket when they connect at all.

"Go to bed."

"Take me."

"Eileen."

"Take me."

It is a deliberately childish request. The hour, the cosmetics, the liaison: These augur a Rose in bloom, becoming some kind of thing that I am not, that may not love me, and so I clutch. We go back up the soft-carpeted stairs, hand in hand, and she places the blankets over me. I am asleep before she leaves the room. Later tonight, as my breath rises and falls under those warm pineapple blankets, hers will heed the wheedling whisper of cold water and be still.