How to Be a Sister

sadness a physical weight on my chest as I watched her silent and terrible sorrow. I knew I couldn’t do anything to help, but I tried anyway, feeling useless, like I often did.
“What’s the matter, Margaret?” I asked.
“You’re crying!”
“Why are you crying?”
“You’re sad,” she said, trying to give me an answer.
“Why are you sad?”
“Hi, Eileen!” she said to me, smiling through her tears.
“Do you want to go back to the house?” I asked.
“No!”
“Do you want to go for a bike ride?”
Silence.
This is what it feels like to be unable to comfort your family, people so close to you genetically. It seems a given that you should be able to reach each other in this most basic way. But nothing I did seemed to make a difference in moments like these.
So we sat there for a while with the wind in our faces. It started to rain a little bit, but we just stood there. We kept our hands on the handlebars and our feet on the pavement, standing on the pedestrian overpass down by the Spokane River. After a while, Margaret took a deep breath, exhaled, wiped her eyes on her sleeve, and rode on without saying anything. Later, when we got back to the house and one of the staff members asked if we’d had a good time, Margaret’s answer was unequivocal: “Yes!”
SO AS WE sat there on our stools, I didn’t know what to say, as usual. But I was learning what to do. Wait. Shut up. Wait some more. Be kind by being quiet. I couldn’t fix my sister. And as much as I wanted to, I usually couldn’t make her feel better. But I could sit with her in her sorrow, in her silence, with her cooling chicken sandwich, in her struggle to allow me to invade her routine so that I could be a part of her life.
In the spirit of shutting up and waiting, I finished my lunch in silence while Margaret finished her final Coke. About the time I finished eating, the cook groaned, rolled over, and went outside to smoke a cigarette. I got a box for Margaret’s food and paid the bill. “Thanks,” I said to our server, who had recovered her composure and was able to act like it was perfectly normal to order food, try to throw it behind the counter, let it get cold, and then take it in a to-go box. “No problem,” she said.
“Are you ready to go?” I asked my big sister. These words were like some kind of abracadabra. Margaret jumped down from her stool, grabbed her fanny pack, sucked in her tummy, threw the straps around her waist, and snapped the clasp shut. Then she headed for the door at full tilt. But when she got there she stopped abruptly and turned. She looked directly at the young woman behind the counter and broke into a radiant smile.
“Okay! G-bye! Thank you very much for the lunch! Haveaniceday! G-bye!”
Margaret shouted this in one breath, all the time smiling and waving madly. The young woman smiled a real smile and waved back, shyly, uncertain under the weight of such gratitude. Suddenly she was beautiful, her face reflecting my sister’s strange and simple joy. “You’re welcome,” she said.
She got it right, Margaret, some of the time, anyway. She knew she was supposed to say thank you for food and hospitality even if she didn’t appear to accept them. Besides, most of us don’t get it right all of the time, do we?
And that helped me, seeing someone else understand Margaret for a minute, recognizing her attempt to sustain a normal exchange, however brief, seeing the kindness that strangers are capable of. Maybe it’s not so complicated. We might not ever be like normal sisters, but what does that mean anyway?
My whole life with Margaret I’d always felt like we were in a hurry. But now I wanted to think I was trying to learn to follow her at my own pace and let her go at her own. So when we first got to Arnie’s and she raced across the parking lot, her pink and purple Windbreaker flapping in the breeze, I followed behind and made sure to watch for cars. But I didn’t chase her. And I didn’t try to get her to slow down. I let her go in and be the first one through the door of the café, ringing the bells over the door with a bit more force than they were probably used to. I let her go in, knowing that she might just stand there and stare if someone asked her a question and that people might feel awkward when she didn’t answer. It’s that thing about transitions; they aren’t always smooth, but they have to happen if you want to leave the place you are and get to another. I let her go. I just let her go. I was beginning to realize that her life was her own, and that I was no parachute.
Margaret slammed the door behind her, and the bells jangled. I was right on her tail as she raced toward the car. The wind ruffled her short hair and caught her Windbreaker, making it billow like a kite. She grinned at me over the top of the car as she waited for me to unlock the door so that she could get in and turn the key for me. As I smiled back, I thought, There might be hope for us after all.

3.
let her eat cake
The good guest is almost invisible, enjoying him- or herself, communing with fellow guests, and, most of all, enjoying the generous hospitality of the hosts.
 
—On Wedding Guests, EMILY POST’S ETIQUETTE
THE SUMMER OF the chicken sandwich ended. After my visit, I flew back to New Mexico, said good-bye to my friends, packed up my things, and drove a quaking U-Haul from south to north with one nervous dog,