Janie swallowed hard. “You’re making me nervous.”
“I’m making you nervous?” Cecilia said. “ Too bad. I make myself nervous. My life makes me nervous. Momma makes me nervous. My kids make me nervous. I’m nervous all the time. I want to kill Parker, but at least I don’t hide, don’t cower, don’t mutter to myself.”
“Why are you so mad at me, Cecilia?” Janie said, her eyes filling up, her fists clenched. “Why are you attacking me? I have done nothing to you. Nothing.”
That stopped Cecilia up short.
I pushed my braids back. “Well? What, specifically, has Janie done to you to make you so mad at her?”
“I’m not mad at her,” Cecilia spat out.
“Then you hate me. You hate me. And that’s fine.” Janie’s voice was ragged. She stepped in front of me. “You always have. I don’t care.”
“You don’t care? I do.”
I could tell that Cecilia was pretty miffed about not hating Janie.
“And I don’t hate you, Janie.”
“Must we hammer out our hatred now?” I asked. “Momma is pale and ghastly in that bed. Surely there’s a better time for this?”
“Why not now?” Janie demanded, those tears spilling out. “Momma can’t hear and I want to know. I’m sick of this! Sick of you, Cecilia! Sick of your condescension, your criticisms. Nothing I do is right. You think I’m a head case, a loser. I am not a loser. ”
I could tell that Janie, who was definitely not a loser, was losing it. I reached out to pat her arm. I hurt for Janie. “Janie, chill.”
“No, I won’t! Tell me, Cecilia!” She spoke through clenched teeth, tears pouring down those perfectly carved cheeks of hers. “Tell me. Why do you hate me? Why?”
Cecilia’s anger seemed to deflate as fast as it flared up in the face of Janie’s ragged anguish.
“Why do you hate me?”
Janie’s words were bordering on a scream. “Janie, get ahold of yourself,” I said. “We’re in a hospital.”
“I know we’re in a hospital!” She yanked her arm away from me and swiped at a few stray hairs, her voice pitched and shaky. “And I want to know why that mean, fat bitch hates me!”
Cecilia and I froze. Janie rarely swore. It wasn’t in her nature. Though she might torpedo people with flying saws for her books, she preferred speaking in the same civilized manner as English women in the 1800s.
“Janie, I—” Cecilia started, cupping her face with her hands.
“What?” Janie hissed, charging toward her. She compacted her emotions right into a box of obsessions and checking. I had never seen her this mad. “ You what? Tell me. Do you hate me because I’m obsessive? Compulsive? Odd? Ugly? Frumpy? Which is it? Or is it all of them, Cecilia?” Her nose ran, but she didn’t bother to wipe it. “Because I am sick of not knowing. I am sick of being attacked by you. I am sick of it and sick of you!”
Cecilia sank into a chair.
I should have gone to Cecilia, but I couldn’t. Part of me was glad that Janie had drawn on the war paint. Cecilia deserved it.
“Janie…” Cecilia started, then patted her chest where her heart was. “Janie.”
Some machine blipped, which caught my attention. Why can’t family arguments ever occur at the right moments, the right places? Why do they always explode exactly when an explosion is not needed?
“I’m jealous of you, Janie,” Cecilia said, voice weak.
“Oh, now there’s a revelation,” I murmured. “I’m floored. Shocked.”
“You’re jealous?” Janie sputtered, red and mottled in the face. “Jealous? How can you be? You’ve told me yourself that I’m the biggest head case you’ve ever met.”
“I’m jealous,” Cecilia whispered, finally meeting Janie’s gaze. “You left Trillium River.”
“Not that again,” I complained. I was so sick of that jealousy. We’d been around and through it ad nauseum.
Janie clasped her hands over her ears. “Cecilia, I can’t hear you whine for one more minute about being stuck here. I’ve heard it until I want to throw my pink-and-white china off my back deck at passing boats in groups of four! Please, shut up about that, shut up shut up shut up!”
“Can you let me finish?” Cecilia said, her anger flashing, as she kept patting her chest. “I’m jealous because you left and made something of yourself. You’re a best-selling writer. You’re thin. You have a cool houseboat and cool things. You’re only frumpy because you don’t want attention from men. You play down how naturally beautiful you are. You hide. You try to disappear. I’m frumpy because I’m the size of a cow.”
“I worked to get what I have, Cecilia,” Janie shrieked, her body shaking. “I worked hard. I still work hard. I’m a workaholic. Do you think it’s fun to have murderers running through your head? Do you think it’s fun to have all these crime scenes lurching about on the pages in front of you and you have to study all the sick, tiny details? Do you think it’s fun to watch people get strangled in your mind? Or bludgeoned with hammers? It’s not, Cecilia, it’s not! I write because I have to write. I can’t not write. You get that? I can’t not write.”
“But, Janie, your obsession with writing has gotten your skinny ass famous. You being a recluse only makes you more famous. I’m a kindergarten teacher. That’s it. I teach kids how to count. How to read. We sing clean-up songs and songs about love and flowers and a whale who yodels. I teach the boys how to pee in the toilet without spraying the walls. The other day I got peed on.”
Cecilia tried to lasso in her emotions. “I’m so damn fat. I hate myself. I can hardly move some days. I can hardly get up. I put my fat face in the mirror and all I see is fat. I will probably die young because of it, but I can’t stop myself. Yesterday I had eight tacos. The night before I made myself a stuffed turkey!”
If Cecilia thought her confession was going to soften up Janie, she had another thing coming. “Cecilia, your weight is your issue,” Janie roared, fists clenched. “It’s you who have chosen to stuff your mouth full of food until your guts are gonna explode. You got that? It’s you. It’s your fault you’re fat and I have zero pity for you. You have no right to chip away at me, to find my weak spots and attack, all because you don’t like yourself and the way your life turned out. You’re responsible for yourself and you are a miserable, miserable person and you make me miserable, too. Miserable! Sometimes when I’m with you I want to take a shovel to my own head after digging a grave for myself to fall into!”
Janie did shriek that last part, then sunk into a chair on the opposite side of the room and pulled her body into a tight ball.
Cecilia leaned over her knees and sobbed.
I hardly knew which sister to go to first. I was smack in the middle of a fight. That’s the worst. If either sister thought I was siding with the other, I’d get jumped. I’d be pulled in as sure as a tsunami’s gonna take out the palm trees when it barrels on through. Sisters do that to each other. Neutral doesn’t work.
But then Momma took care of the problem.
“For God’s sakes, Cecilia, stop that infernal snuffling,” she said, eyes still shut. “Janie’s right, you are a terrible bitch to her. She can’t help it that she’s thin and you’re fat and she’s a writer and you’re a kindergarten teacher. What was she supposed to do? Become a gas station attendant so you wouldn’t feel bad? And what’s to feel bad about anyhow? Those little brats love you. God, I cannot stand small children. They make me ill. And, Janie, Cecilia’s right.