her hair very gray, and her face was deeply lined. Her skin was especially crepey around her eyes and under her chin. She looked like she’d been awake for a year. Her down-turned mouth was grim...but then it was usually grim when she wasn’t having her way.
“Where’s Bunny?” Meg asked.
They stopped fighting and turned to look at her.
“Where’s her room? Her stuff?”
They gaped at her. A look of absolute horror crossed Louise’s face.
“What’s going on?” Megan asked. “Where’s Bunny? You know, Mary Verna?”
“That’s not funny, Meg,” Louise said.
“Funny?”
“About Bunny,” Charley said.
“Where is she?” Megan demanded, tears gathering on her face, her voice shaky. She was confused and frightened.
“She’s dead and you know it!” Charley snapped.
Louise didn’t say anything. They stood in the kitchen in heavy silence, looking at each other. Then Megan noticed the kitchen was just a little different and everyone, including herself, was wearing clothes she hadn’t seen before. Meg grabbed her stomach like she was going to be sick and made a loud, moaning noise. “Dead? No! Where’s Bunny really? Where?”
“Oh, Jesus Christ,” Charley swore, whirling around and presenting her back in disgust. But Louise got a strange look in her eyes and walked very slowly toward Megan as though she might bolt like a frightened fawn if anyone made any quick moves.
Megan’s ears were ringing so that it sounded like her mother was talking into a tin can when she said, “Charlene, please call Dr. Sloan.” Then Megan started screaming and running through the house, calling out to Bunny. She began tearing things apart, breaking things, ripping things off the walls, out of closets, pulling whole bureau drawers out and letting them fall upside down on the floor, looking for evidence of Bunny somewhere, finding none.
The police and ambulance came, someone gave her a shot, the world became very slow and quiet. The only sound was whimpering. Her own whimpering.
Megan had begun packing to go to the lake on May 8, 1989, and woke up a year later on May 12, 1990, without remembering a single thing. It was as though a slice was taken out of her brain. She spent two weeks in the hospital being treated for what the family doctor and the hospital psychiatrist decided to call a nervous breakdown. Later, when Megan became an RN, she recognized it as a psychotic break due to the psychological trauma of the past year. Bunny drowned, Charley was sent away to have and give up her baby, the family had become completely estranged. The family that had spent every summer, holiday and most Sunday afternoons together was gone.
Charley and Louise stopped fighting that summer. At least out loud. Instead, the summer was spent keeping Megan calm and remembering things to her. They all took turns—Louise and Carl and Charley. Sometimes Grandma Berkey and the judge came to visit, but the judge mainly grumbled that there weren’t any screws loose on his side of the family, so he could only guess where all this psychiatry bullshit was coming from.
At the end of that summer, Charley took her leave. “Once I get a little settled in the dorm, I’ll call you. I promise,” she told Meg.
“Oh, Charley, can’t you go to college around here?” Meg wept. “I can’t live here without you! Can’t you go to the university and live at home?”
“It’ll be better here without me—no more fighting, yelling, swearing, threatening...”
“But what if you get hurt or something? Or what if I need you? And you’re all the way in California?”
“If you need me, I’ll come if I can. I think my being here... I think it’s made you sick and made you forget.”
“No! That can’t be the reason! Oh, Charley, I just lost Bunny! I can’t lose you, too. Please don’t go!”
“I have to, Meg. I hate her and she hates me.” She took a deep breath and squeezed Meg’s hands. “I’ll never forgive her. Them,” she said, for it was the judge who came to Louise’s aid when she said she wanted to send Charley away to have her baby. Carl was not convinced Charley should have to go but he didn’t argue with Louise and the judge. “And as soon as I can, I’m going to start looking for my baby. Here,” she said, handing Megan a cigar box filled with letters.
“What’s this?”
“It’s every letter you wrote me while I was in Florida. It will help you remember. You wrote me almost every day, Meggie. I think you kept me alive.”
“But I can’t keep you home!”
Her lips formed the word, but Megan didn’t hear the sound. “No.”
Charley didn’t cry. Not when they talked about their dead sister, her lost baby or leaving home. Megan never asked but had always wondered if she knew it was a trait she seemed to share with Louise.
When Charley was away that first year, Meg spent a lot of time rereading her letters to her sister. The chronology of a year she couldn’t remember. Some of the letters were smeary with tearstains that Meg assumed must have been her own. It was hard to imagine Charley crying, even in private, she was so strong. Meg had written about the quiet of the house, about how their father seemed to grieve in deep silence and withdraw further and further inside himself, no match for Louise’s insistent and relentless anger. Louise had always been the more talkative of the two, but Carl no longer even responded with his usual grunts and humphs. She had written about missing Bunny but also missing her cousins—the only one she ever saw was Hope and it was as though Hope didn’t know her anymore.
“I’m pretty sure no one has ever been this lonely,” she wrote in one of her letters to Charley. And in the margin Charley had scribbled, “Except me!”
* * *
Charley called from Lake Waseka every day with good news and then better news. She went into the biggest real estate office in the nearest big town, Brainerd, and asked if they could help her find a competent decorator and a crew to empty the lake house of old furniture and trash. The decorator, Melissa Stewart, recognized Charley from television and they shared instant rapport.
While the junk was removed, Charley and Melissa discussed the interior design. She wasn’t going to completely redecorate the place; she wanted it spruced up, painted, furnished and restored. They talked colors, appliances, mattresses and rugs. Melissa said she could text Charley pictures and make purchases on her approval.
Charley went again to Brainerd and bought new appliances, even though the electrician hadn’t checked the wiring yet. They had to be purchased, anyway, didn’t they? And luck was on her side. The very next day the electrician spent six hours checking the house. He wanted to make a few repairs, put in a new fuse box, replace some switches and outlets, and they’d be good to go.
Megan was so excited at the reported progress she started pulling out dishes and glasses she could spare to be taken to the lake. The kitchen counter was full of the stuff. She’d barely begun when she got tired. Bone tired. Excruciatingly tired. She wanted to lie down and thought for a second about just lying on the kitchen floor. No one had adequately prepared her for the power of the fatigue. Cancer is a pain in the ass, she thought.
