Everything She Wanted
I thought my cuter, perkier kid sister had all the breaks. Then she set her heart on the impossible.
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Got a sibling? This week’s post is for you. In my 70s, I’ve never thought so much about my treasured younger sister—and she, I’m pretty sure, would say the same about me. We have known each other longer than anyone living. Every emotion that would shape our adult lives first revealed itself between us. And before my sister could speak, we knew things about each other that escaped our parents. The intuition of children is a marvel.
Of all the grudges I held against my little sister, the most galling concerned her nearly omnipresent smile. Eyes big and bright as a doll’s, upturned lips with a perfect Cupid’s bow. That smile of hers made people happy, our parents above all. When Joyce’s smile faded, our mother might tweak her lips back where they belonged. Anything to make my sister smile.
She would eat only nuts, grapes and chicken wings, fried specially for her every night. I would roll my eyes in disgust. “Why does she get everything she wants?”
Mother poked a wing with one hand while keeping an eye on everyone else’s London broil. “Wings are no trouble.”
I was the family kvetch, Eeyore to Joyce’s Piglet. Why bother trying to make Rona happy, when nature clearly had other plans?
We were driving home from somewhere when Joyce caught her first glimpse of the twins, a matched set of cuteness in frilly pink sun suits. Neither of us had seen twins before, so they might as well have landed in our town from the pages of a book where horses flew and sorcerers cast spells. They swung from the bars of a shiny jungle gym that had appeared overnight in a yard that only yesterday was only dandelions and crabgrass.
Joyce might have been six, the twins just her size, the two most winsome little girls to come this way since her own smiling self. Longing flared in her eyes. She had to be more than their friend. She had to pierce the twoness, make them the trio they were meant to be. At 10, I knew this in a matter of seconds. No one watched my sister’s face the way I did, scanning for threats and portents. I’d been watching ever since she came home from the hospital, wrapped in layers and layers of white blanket as if she might break. One glance at her face—melted-chocolate eyes, skin the color of cinnamon—told me I had been surpassed.
All her life she’d been the perky one. The twins were perky times two.
I thought Joyce had all the breaks, but when it came to making friends we both struggled. My shyness looked like snobbery to other kids; her practiced adorability endeared her more to adults than to children. But while I accepted my outsider status, Joyce kept waiting for birthday invitations that never came. Why didn’t she get it? Other kids can’t break your heart unless you pine for them.
She had me, after a fashion. My sidekick of last resort, she would follow me under the stooped mock orange tree we called our house. The space beneath its branches was just big enough for the two of us and a couple of doll beds. I always made the rules for this game. “Not like that, Joyce. This way.”
No one could rile me like my sister, mostly for being cheerful and proud of it. She would draw smiling portraits of herself and peddle them from door to door, a nickel apiece, with the cent sign backwards. I sneered as the neighbors forked over their change. “Try to be kind to your sister,” Mother said. “She admires you so.”
Sweet, irresistible Joyce. Mean-minded me. I couldn’t wait for her to meet the twins. Then she wouldn’t tag after me anymore.
It didn’t take our mother long to find the mother shepherding our town’s only twins. That pair did not simply enter a swimming pool, a grocery aisle or wherever it was that Mother booked the first play date. They swaggered in their bubbling, gesticulating, darting twoness. Up close in non-matching outfits, they were only medium-cute. Joyce was prettier by a mile. She had spark and charisma, but so did Penny and Pammy McClure—times two. Their mother, Evie, ran after them with a flyaway bun and an air of proud frazzlement. Joyce’s longing to meet her twins confirmed what she had always known: the specialness of Penny and Pammy. Yes, she’d be delighted to bring them by.
Other mothers drove Fords, Dodges and Buicks (a used one, in our mother’s case). Evie McClure zipped around in a yellow MG. When Penny and Pammy first hopped out in our driveway, you’d think the circus had arrived. Joyce glowed as they tore into our house, with its Danish teak and hand-sewn linen cushions, to make free with the craft supplies. All afternoon they drew and wrote. They competed with each other and with Joyce to be the funniest, the boldest, the most creative, until Evie burst in calling, “PennyPammy!” That day and ever after, Penny’s name always first. Trust a sister to notice.
I had a sometime friend, Madeline, who lived around the corner and shared my fascination with the lurid. In our favorite game, French Revolution, dolls rode in tumbrils to the guillotine. Madeline had a mean streak. She once warned that if I gave her any grief, she would break my arm. The twins began began to strike me as a more attractive option. “The twinkles,” as Mother called them. How they glimmered and flashed. I had always disdained younger children, but as Joyce’s big sister I could float in and out of the hijinks without fear of slumming. The twins intrigued me. That didn’t mean I liked them.
“PennyPammy!” Their signal to brandish the afternoon’s creations for Evie. “Pammy Picasso!” she once exclaimed, while Pammy beamed and Penny pursed her lips. Another day Penny stage-whispered her latest poem. which began and ended, “Do leaves have shadows?” Evie clapped her hands as a sly grin crossed Penny’s face. She had won. It was no news to me that sisters compete, or that mothers take pride in their children’s cleverness. But with the twins competition eclipsed everything else.
There was no other child they preferred to Joyce, but they didn’t seem to need other children. Twoness gave them everything they wanted, and Joyce adored them anyway. I thought she was a chump. Yet at the same time, I ached for her. As Winnie the Pooh put it, “Some people care too much. I think it’s called love.”
Joyce wasn’t one to share dreams, but one morning she recounted a humdinger. Evie took her and the twins for a spin in the yellow MG, the merriest occasion until the door flew open and Joyce went flying. As she lay scratched and bloody on the road, Evie called back, “What’s that you said, Joyce?” Then off she sped. It was no dream. Penny and Pammy were through with Joyce.
The McClures didn’t stay long in our town. A couple of years and they moved on. They’d no sooner set out for Arizona than Joyce asked me to walk her over to the ramshackle house they’d been renting. Whatever the twins had told her, it wasn’t a proper goodbye.
Joyce and I found the door unlocked. The McClures had left in such a hurry, they hadn’t bothered to clean up. The place smelled of dust and spoiled food. I pictured Evie tearing about, throwing possessions into any sack or box at hand. Whatever didn’t make the cut, she tossed on the floor. I shook my head. “Bunch of slobs.” Joyce wouldn’t say a word against the McClures.
In the twins’ old bedroom, we found scuff marks on the walls and broken toys at our feet. Orphaned puzzle pieces, headless dolls. Joyce bowed her head. I’d have taken her hand, but we both knew I wasn’t that kind. When she looked up, her eyes brimmed with tears. The space between us quivered. I stood beside my sister as she wept.
Over to you. What do you think of children’s intuition? Have you experienced it with a sibling, or observed it in your own children? Do you recall deep love for a childhood friend? Was your heart ever broken when a child you adored moved away? Then there’s the matter of the roles children play in families. No need to stick to my questions. I’m listening, and so are lots of other Amazement Seekers.
If you enjoyed this post, I hope you’ll share it. The more voices, the better the conversation.
I have two sisters. We’re all very different.
Here I loved the line: “I had a sometime friend, Madeline, who lived around the corner and shared my fascination with the lurid. In our favorite game, French Revolution, dolls rode in tumbrils to the guillotine.”
I am a twin. My brother and I were utterly inseparable as children. We were together always and into everything. Together. Bonded. We were each other’s best friend. Although time and life events have sometimes intervened and caused friction between us, there is no one who can evoke such a strong emotion in me. We had two older siblings, both sadly now deceased. I saw my older sister (middle child) in my mind’s eye while reading this.