Family Breakfast

Disclaimer - this is fiction, and contains explicit language.  It's appropriate to the story and not meant to be gratuitous.  Peace.

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            She would already be there, smoking and pacing - my twin sister Ellen - and I was late for our awkward, semi-annual breakfast.  We couldn’t have been more different if we had tried.  In seventh grade I had stayed conscientiously right, while she hair-pinned left like a bat out of hell – eventually falling off some unmarked deep end.  Yet, somehow, she always managed to pin herself together for our meetings, where I assumed her main goal was a free breakfast.  Mine was to verify her pulse, and avoid the obvious.

            My name is Jill Scarapelli, but she called me Jelly since we could talk.

            “Jelly, Jelly Scratch-yer-belly!”  She would scream at the top of her lungs, while chasing me through the pasture with a handful of cow poop, a dead squirrel, or a snake…she was my funny crazy sister.  I adored her back then.  That was before life had grown us up into these wary strangers - with nothing in common besides a shared vein with family blood, and childhood stories milked so hard, nothing but woody pith remained.

            This morning would be no different than all the others.  We were well versed in our roles.  We would crunch tentatively through toast.  Paltry banalities would be sipped with extra cream in our coffee.  An hour of accomplishing nothing more than not rubbing noses in obvious messes, rehashing the same  “remember when’s, have you heard’s, and that’s nice’s,” would end with me picking up the tab, and gushing that we really needed to do it much sooner next time – wincing in anticipation.

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            Even from a distance I saw the dinner plate-sized smile she always had for me. 

            “Ellen, it’s so good to see you!”  I was only half lying.

            As we got closer for hugs, I noticed bruises caked white with cover-up, and a new gap in her dental skyline.  She used to be pretty.   How did it come to this?  What happened to us Ellen?  What happened to you?

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            Growing up, certain kids were labeled as “discipline problems, failures...troubled.”  They were discussed behind the fronts of hands.  Adults beat them to break them straight.  Nowadays, we medicate them, and call them bi-polar - she just figured out the medication part sooner.  It began as “The Great Cough Syrup Disappearance of ’78” when my Dad stormed in yelling (he did that a lot), to find the Robitussin DM.  Ellen slid an unusually lazy eye towards me, and winked crookedly.  While Mom and Dad harangued the house sideways, Ellen couldn’t seem to stop giggling, and sweating.

            I’ve heard people talk about “gateway drugs,” but in 1978 pot was the biggie, and cough syrup was still the domain of family medicine cabinets.  Nonetheless, she darted through that gateway - and might as well have found a frozen river, for as fast as she skated out of our reach.  But we all stayed shivering on the banks, because she would sometimes flash by for a minute, before skating off again to God only knows where.

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             “Yes, we’ll have coffee.  Thanks.”   I was all poised to begin reciting tightly rehearsed lines, but Ellen knocked me loose by breaking the rules and getting personal.

            “Mike fucked me up again. “  Defiance graffiti’d her vulnerability.

            Whoa Nellie. 

            “I’m sorry…are you sure you want to talk about this?” My cowardice flapped nude and obvious.

            “Yeah, I want to talk about it, he’s a fucking bastard and I need to get out of there!”

             “Ummm, I don’t know what to say Ell...”

            Only partially true – I definitely knew what I wanted to say.  Strident words about “choices” strained like barely contained Dobermans.

            “Can I stay with you awhile?”  She mumbled quickly and vulnerably, before fascinating herself with the sticky plastic tablecloth.      

            “Uh-oh.” I thought frantically.   “Wow…Ellen…uh…I…uh… don’t know…”  I shenaniganed around.  She looked up with quickly hardening brown eyes. 

            ”Doesn’t that church of yours say something about taking in homeless people?”   She continued with a disdainful snarl, “I never ask you for shit.  And when I do…oh, whatever.  You’re such a goddamn hypocrite.”

             The Dobermans got loose and I growled, “Yeah - my church says I’m supposed to be good to ‘poor people.’  It also says people get what they choose.” 

            “Jelly, don’t fucking preach at me!  Do you actually think I chose this?”  She gestured to her bruised face.  Part of me did.

            I leaned forward, words ricocheting out in one breath.  “Ellen, I’m not a flophouse - Mike scares me -  If you really want to change, get some rehab...”  I was dizzy and churning like a crooked spin cycle.

            “Why should I want to change?” she mocked - "So I can be just like you?”  Her dirty spit landed on my forearm.  “I wouldn’t want to be like you in a million years!  You’re a total bitch most of the time!”

            “And you’re not?  The only time you ever want to see me is for an hour when I buy breakfast.”  I spat right back at her.

            “Jelly, the only difference between us is that you have more money and you’re a goddamn fake!  Maybe someday you’ll stop being so fucking judgmental and we can be real sisters again.  You don’t know anything about me…you don’t want to.”  She said this while struggling to get out of the booth.

            Standing up, she swayed and leaned right into my face.  I smelled the nicotine, coffee and rot as she yelled, “Fuck you!  I’m happy the way I am…Well, not always…but at least I know who I am!”  She flipped her hair one last time and continued, “Excuse me – I don’t need you…sister, my ass!”

            “Get some Prozac, you freak!”  I hollered at the stiff middle finger she was waving as she slammed noisily out of the, now, very quiet restaurant.  Embarrassed and shaking, I ignored the rubber-neckers by sipping my coffee and re-stacking the packaged jams.

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            An hour later I felt awful, but didn’t know how to get ahold of Ellen - she always called me whenever she wanted to see me.  Such as it was, it was our first real conversation since burying our parents after their accident ten years ago.  The line I had painted boldly between us was understandable, given our vastly different life choices.  But for the first time in years, it didn’t feel protective.  It felt mean.  I found myself really wanting to talk to her.  I wanted to listen to her.  I never got the chance.   Two days later a man in a beige uniform knocked on my door to tell me my broken sister was found snapped and twisted unnaturally into a moving box, and left under a bridge.   

              After her memorial service, I sat alone next to her casket – another horrible moving box - leaching a lifetime into a single handkerchief.  She was right, I was right, we both were wrong.

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            It’s been a couple days since the service.  It’s raining, and I’ve just left the police station where they handed me Ellen’s things in a plastic zipper bag.  I was shocked to see her old scuffed diamond and gold promise ring mixed in with a lighter, a snapshot of the two of us, and her empty wallet.  The promise rings were a gift from our parents when we turned thirteen, and promised to be “good girls.”  I still wear mine – it’s shiny and cared for.  I assumed Ellen’s had been pawned years ago. 

            As I come to a stop at an intersection, a homeless man with a dirty Moses beard, a ragged sign, and a shivering dog-on-a-rope steps boldly up to my car.  Ordinarily, I would stare piercingly ahead, while making pretend phone calls to avoid his gaze.  For reasons I can’t explain, I slip off my shiny promise ring, look right into his cloudy hazel eyes, and hand it to him before driving away. 

            I don’t know his story, or what it feels like to wear his skin.  For all I know, he will pawn my shiny “good girl” ring for his next fix of whatever.  But I don’t know that for sure - nor do I really care anymore.  I fish through the police zip lock bag, find Ellen’s dirty ring...and slide it on where mine just was.   

            I really miss my sister.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P58tNCBlr3U - great song by Imogen Heap...seems fitting.

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Writing this made me think about "safe distance" and what that really means. What do you think?