The Watcher

2

My sister squats in front of the oven and peers through the dirty glass.

“It’s done,” she decides, adjusting the pot holders before opening the door.

A pan of lasagna lands on the table in front of me, alongside a simple green salad and red boxed wine. It’s the same thing she’s served the last several Fridays. She seems to like lasagna. Or maybe she’s decided that I do? My sister holds up the box of wine and fills my glass first and then her own. After that she sits across from me and offers me the serving utensils.

“Go for it,” she says.

Soon two steaming helpings sit on the plates in front of us. My sister has a healthy appetite. She says something about the weather, about how waiting for things to warm up in the spring is the worst. After having tried to start a discussion about some new TV show I’ve never heard of, she asks how I like my new place. I answer that I’m sure it will be fine but that I haven’t really settled in yet.

My words sound stiff and fake. I feel that strangeness again, just like a few hours earlier when I stood in the front hall, just inside the door. I was dressed and ready to go out when this feeling of unreality came over me. This won’t do. I’m not up to this. I realized that I was going to have to call and cancel, that I couldn’t go to my sister’s for our now-traditional Friday-night dinner. Sit there eating and chatting, pretending as if everything is as it should be. No, not again. Never again. And yet, in the end, here I am.

“Yes, yes,” my sister says. “It’s not like you owe it to me to be happy there just because.”

The woman I’m subletting the place from is one of my sister’s many friends. She’s traveling around the world right now. That’s the kind of thing my sister’s friends do. They fly places and grab life by the horns. My sister and her husband used to travel, too—sometimes on their own and sometimes with other couples—but it’s been a long time since they’ve done that.

“I mean, we’re only talking about a few months,” my sister says, and I realize that she’s still talking about the town house, about my existence.

She rotates her wineglass in her hand, eyeing me thoughtfully. She had previously offered to let me live here, with her and her husband, and now I have the sense that she’s about to repeat the invitation.

“I’ll figure it out,” I say in answer to a question that wasn’t really asked.

Out of the corner of my eye, I think I catch my sister eyeing my plate and the food sitting there more or less untouched. I dutifully stuff a bite of lasagna into my mouth and wash it down with wine, not tasting it. Then I ask my sister a question about her job and listen as best I can while she answers. Things go better when we focus on her instead of me.

I empty my glass and my sister refills it. The alcohol does its part, dulling the sharp edges, dimming and covering. I feel almost real.

“How about you?” my sister asks after a while.

“What about me?”

“Have you started to give any thought to the future?”

I look down at my plate again, poking at the lettuce leaves. The future? The future is already behind me. That’s what I think, even if I know better than to say it out loud. I make do with a simple shrug, but my sister doesn’t relent. How’s the writing going? Have I started anything new? I moisten my lips and tell it like it is.

My sister leans toward me.

“You need to get back to writing,” she says firmly. “Work is the best medicine.”

I stiffen. “Work is the best medicine” is Mama’s old mantra. The words she smilingly used to counter all our efforts to make her rest, to not overdo it. The words she constantly repeated, right up until the pain made it impossible for her to speak, let alone sit up in bed and read or write.

My sister says the words so neutrally, as if they don’t have any deeper significance to her. There’s nothing in her voice to suggest that she remembers. Maybe she doesn’t. By the time Mama got sick, she’d already been living away from home for a long time. She lived abroad for so long and rarely came home to visit until the final stage.

I fill my chest with air and hold it in. Only when my chest feels tight and my ribs ache, only when I no longer have any choice, do I exhale again.

“Just so you know, I am actually working pretty much all the time.”

That’s true. I accept as much work as I can as a publisher’s reader and translator.

“It’s great that you’re busy, but you’re an author, Elena. Authors write, right? They don’t just dink around with other people’s texts.”

My glass is empty, again. I stare at the box of wine.

“I don’t have anything to write about.”

My sister pours me yet more wine and then gets up to fetch some ketchup from the fridge.

“What’s that thing your publisher always says, that writing advice… dig your own grave, or something?”

A strange sound, which could have been a laugh, hacks its way from between my lips. My sister raises her eyebrows, and once again I look away. I suppose I’m getting a bit tipsy.

“Dig where you are,” I correct her quietly.

“Right, that’s the one,” my sister says, picking up her fork and knife again. “Whatever. Anyway, I know you’ve mentioned the saying several times. So are you working on old manuscripts or what?”

I nod slowly. For the majority of my life, I’ve been a spectator, a person who observes rather than participates. This has benefited my writing. My texts have been based on events and developments I’ve either witnessed or heard tell of. The characters in my four books have all been based on people I’ve known, although that hasn’t been evident to those involved. All an author needs to do is sprinkle in a few smoke screens—maybe change the character’s age or profession—to keep people from recognizing themselves and realizing that the book is about them. I’ve written about friends and coworkers, about people I’ve known intimately but also about those I know only by sight. I’ve written about my mother and father, even my sister. I don’t think she’s aware of it.

“Do you remember,” she says, breaking into a smile, “how I used to read your manuscripts before you sent them off? Especially in the beginning before you were published, but after that, too. At least for your first two books. You said I had really shrewd observations, and that I helped you bring out the best in the text.”

Even though I had just set down my glass, I pick it up again. The wine runs down my throat, full-bodied and harsh.

“I’d love to do that again,” my sister continues. “Read what you’re writing, I mean.”

I tell her there’s a little ketchup on her chin, and as she dabs it with her napkin I say, “Like I said, there’s nothing to read.”

“But what about that advice? ‘Dig where you are.’ If that worked before, you could just follow it again, right?”

I lean back in my chair.

“Why is it so important to you?”

“Because I think you need something to really commit yourself to, something to focus on fully and completely while you go through… what you’re going through.”

We look at each other. Finally my sister throws up her hands and mumbles, “OK, OK.” Then something else seems to occur to her. She passes the ketchup bottle to me and asks if I won’t take a few more bites. Apparently I’ve barely touched my food.

I explain that I’m not hungry and push the plate away.

“Where’s Walter tonight?” I ask, shifting the conversation away from me.

“Bowling, I think.”

Up until now, I’ve taken it for granted that my sister and her husband have a good relationship. It has just seemed that way. Suddenly I don’t feel so sure anymore. A married couple that spends every Friday night apart… isn’t that a little odd? And then there’s that business about the trips. Why have they stopped traveling together on weekends and vacations?

I study my sister more closely. Is there something she’s not telling me? Maybe their relationship isn’t that good after all.

“How’s he doing? Have you guys—”

I’m interrupted by noise from the apartment upstairs—high-pitched voices and a series of howls followed by a thud.

“They just moved in,” my sister says, flashing that wry smile that is so typically her. “Three children, all under the age of seven.”

She rolls her eyes, and I pretend to follow her gaze, but I sneak a peek at her face, the arch of her forehead, the lines of her lips. The likeness is striking. I wonder if my sister is aware of it, if she sees whose features she’s inherited when she looks in the mirror—and, if she does, what she thinks about it. If we had a different relationship, I could ask her, but now things are the way they are.

We hear another thud from the apartment above, this time followed by children’s laughter and an adult’s quiet voice. We can’t make out the words, but it’s obvious that the speaker is a warm, loving parent. I pull the back of my hand across my eyes. When I look up again, my sister has crumpled her napkin into a ball. She squeezes it in her hand and studies it intently.

“You know,” she says, “it is possible to live a happy life without children.”

Once again a sense of unreality sweeps in. Everything comes back to me, and at the same time I feel unmoored. My sister says something else—something about Walter and her and how they definitely chose this themselves, but still. She understands that it must be heartbreaking, but still.

“What I meant… and I’m sorry if I’m overstepping here, but are you really going to leave him for something like that? I mean, you love each other.”

She puts her napkin on her plate with what’s left of her food and looks me in the eye. Then she reaches across the table and rests her warm, slightly damp palm on the dry back of my hand. I stare at her fingers covering mine and think that even they remind me of Mama’s. The lump in my throat grows, and I can’t get a word out.

Finally my sister pulls her hand back, and she gets up to clear the dishes.

While she starts loading the dishwasher, I close my eyes and feel the world capsizing. What am I doing here? Why did I even come?

Soon the table is clear except for my empty wineglass. My sister closes the dishwasher.

“There’s ice cream for dessert,” she tells me.

As if in slow motion, I get to my feet, reach for my glass, and walk over to the sink. It takes every ounce of effort I have to keep from dropping the glass on the floor. Nausea shoots through my body, rolling over me in waves. Once I set my glass down, I turn to my sister.

“I think I’m going to call a cab,” I say. “After all, tomorrow’s another day.”