after all these years.”
“Why didn’t I hear about this?”
“You’re away.”
“So are you!”
“Not so far.” Colette curls one leg under the other.
Jean begins to feel a new wave of resentment. Sucked in already. That familiar sensation that they’re all so fragile, a nest of thin-shelled eggs under attack.
“Have you missed me?” asks Colette suddenly. The cigarette drops to the ground.
“What a question!” Jean means to leave it at that.
But Colette’s eyes remain fixed on her, daring her. Now she could say something. Colette is aching to confess, begging for it. Any simple line will do-“Have you seen ’Him’ lately?”
No. Why should she make it easy?
“I always miss you,” says Jean. Her tone is stiff as new skates. “I’m always looking and can’t believe you’re not in the next room. Isn’t that silly?”
“Not silly at all.” Colette looks away.
They listen to the low crash of waves. Jean’s head buzzes with excitement.
“Yoshi’s going to be in Vancouver,” she announces. She doesn’t dare look at her sister.
“That’s right,” says Colette carefully. “For a record signing.”
“Are we going?”
“Going where?”
“To see him, of course.”
“No.”
“Why not?” She’s pressing in now, cornering her.
Colette seems to decide. “I don’t think we should dig up the past. Let it lie. We’re different people now. So’s he.”
“Exactly why it would be interesting.”
“You don’t understand, do you?” accuses Colette.
“Understand what?” Jean fakes innocence.
Instead of replying Colette slips off the rock. “Let’s go up to the house and make some tea. It’s getting late.”
Jean follows Colette’s rapid tread up the rickety log stairway. It’s a fast pace in the darkness, and Jean has to hurry just to keep her sister’s outline firmly in sight.
“How’s Nelson?” asks Jean, spooning honey into the steaming mug.
“Fine. As usual.”
They are sitting in the breakfast nook. The house is quiet at last. Girdling the kitchen wall is a belt of copper pots, shining like armour. Jutting up the centre is a giant butcher block armed with knives and cleavers in descending order of size. It has taken ten minutes to locate the tea kettle.
“What’s he working at these days?”
“He’s still with the Third World Echo.” Colette pauses and takes a sip from the mug. “They’ve made him editorin-chief.”
“And are you still working for them?”
“I am”-Colette puffs out her chest-“Circulation Director, Community Liaison Officer, and Production Manager of the Third World Echo.”
“No kidding!”
“It’s not a big operation,” allows Colette. “Our subscription base is maybe three thousand, and we do another thou at newsstands.”
“Didn’t you once say they tapped your phone?” says Jean. “Have you been raided?”
“No,” scoffs Colette. “We’re not threatening, yet. But Nelson’s got ambitions. He’d like to try controlled circulation—like Homemaker’s.”
“You’ve got to be joking.”
“Not at all. Just because it’s never been tried … Anyway,” Colette finishes lamely, “we’ll see.”
“Why didn’t he come?”
“What-out here?” Colette looks astonished.
“Is that so outlandish?”
“God, yes. He’d feel trapped. He married me, not the whole family.”
“Sure, but—”
“We’re not a couple that does everything together, if that’s what you mean.”
Jean didn’t mean anything in particular, so she just nods.
Picture of Nelson with his goatee, then later the bushy Castro beard and bandanna. Flash of Nelson (from a recent Polaroid snapped at Colette’s twenty-third birthday) shaved clean with cropped hair and a dreamboat smile. Always facing directly into the camera, radiating white teeth and confidence.
“What about you?” asks Colette. She reaches her hand across the table and touches Jean’s. “New York still agrees with you?”
“I like it there,” admits Jean, pulling back. “It surprises me that simply living in a place creates a life — a home.”
“Really?” Colette looks unconvinced. “Of course, you’re going to school still— ”
Jean takes a deep breath, sets the mug on the table, and looks her sister in the eye.
“No, I’m not. I’ve quit music!”
It’s the first time she’s spoken the words aloud. How certain they sound!
Colette starts. “What are you talking about?”
“I just couldn’t do it any more.” Jean cracks the table with the heel of her hand. The sound echoes in the big room. “Everything started to seem silly. A hundred grown men and women following scores as if they didn’t have a thought in their heads. Audiences that don’t listen then stand up at the end and demand an encore. I can’t believe in it.”
Colette strains backward in her chair, away from the pounding hand.
“Most of all, it’s me. I’ve gotten so the cello makes me physically sick. If I hear it on the radio I run to turn it off. It makes me puke. It’s like I’ve been doing the wrong thing all along, for the wrong reasons.”
“What wrong reasons?”
Colette’s voice is level, but her face has suddenly paled.
“Let me tell you the picture I’ve had in my head all these years,” continues Jean urgently. “I see myself, dressed in black, walking across a stage to thunderous applause. A short bow, then-then I sink into the cello, wrap myself around it
