Crash Into Me

I look at her, incredulous. "Customer service stick?"

She glances at the clock, then back at me as she uses her key to open my register and drop in the cash drawer. "Pop, pop. You got three minutes to count in."

"Lori, what's the customer service stick?"

She walks out from behind the register, heading for her office. "Don't you pay that no nevermind, sweetie. You ever need to know, you'll learn." I can't tell as I'm focused on counting my till, but I swear out of the corner of my eye I see her shoulders bob with laughter as she walks away down the center aisle.

* * * * *

Dad's car is parked on the street and Mom's in the driveway. That's not a good sign. Any day Dad's home from work before six o'clock means bad news; nothing good ever gets him out of the office early.

Since I don't want to interrupt anything, I drive a short distance down the block, pull over, and send Mom a quick text. "Running errands after work, home with Lynn later." I give it a minute, but when I don't get a reply I know they're in the middle of a serious discussion, or a fight. Mom's not about to lose points by picking up her phone during an argument unless it's to prove someone wrong using Google.

Pre-rush hour the streets are relatively clear and there are dozens of choices for where I could wind up. The coffee shop is tempting: pull up a table and read? But alas, I lack the requisite beret, glasses, scarf, skinny jeans and ironic jacket to properly cement my new-found hipster poet enthusiast status. No dice.

Finally after driving aimlessly for about ten minutes, I pull into the local Baskin Robbins, commandeer a scoop of Daiquiri Ice, and hunker down at a corner table to flip through my new book. Twenty minutes later the incoming text alert goes off on my phone: Mom, reminding me not to spoil my dinner (too late) and letting me know Dad's already home.

Yay.

I know it's time to stop reading when I turn the page and encounter Robert 'the whole bag of dicks' Frost and his Road Not Taken again. The noise as the cover slams shut is enough to stir the guy behind the counter from his daydream. I take care not to meet his gaze as I pitch my trash and walk out the door.

* * * * *

Lynn spends most of the drive home on the phone with Mom, barely able to get a word in as she's regaled with a one-sided version of the events that transpired earlier in the day. I don't have to hear the conversation to know what the fight's over, because Mom and Dad only argue about money.

Prior to the accident we weren't what you'd call wealthy by any stretch of the imagination, but we were firmly-entrenched in the middle class. Dad brought home the bacon with his accounting business, and Mom volunteered as a classroom helper at Tiffton Academy, where Lynn and I went to grade school, and worked for the library.

We have medical coverage. Lynn's life insurance and my parents' auto policy helped offset the cost of the surgery, her recovery, and physical therapy as well as vehicle repairs and whatnot. But life didn't suddenly become easier once those bills were out of the way. The real sucker punches hit later.

There are dozens of things you don't even think about until you have to make major life changes for someone you love, and insurance doesn't cover most of them: stuff like Lynn's wheelchair; the new bathtub; buying the van; pouring a concrete ramp connecting our front door to the sidewalk and putting up the hand rails to make it accessible. None of that came cheap, but all those costs were small potatoes compared to her prostheses.

I'd always assumed that when you got a prosthetic limb, you got one limb, because how many artificial legs does one below-the-knee amputee need? Turns out that's not the case. The first was temporary, designed so she could get used to moving around on something that wasn't her original leg. That one was basically a metal rod with an open cup-like depression on one end to support her stump―it looked like something you'd see on a Terminator with as open and exposed as all the parts were. Dr. Michaels always had to adjust this or that to make sure it held her weight, maintained the proper gait, wasn't too long or too short, and so on.

The second prosthetic, the one that's sculpted to better resemble an actual calf at the top and a foot on bottom, is the one most people think of. You can get ones designed to look like a real leg when viewed from a distance, but we can't afford anything that fancy so my sister's still has the reinforced bar of the ankle visible. Lynn's on her fourth already. Not because she's wearing them out, although that's apparently a thing, but because she lost her leg at thirteen. Every change in her body, from weight gain to puberty-driven growth spurts, has to be accounted for with an artificial leg. That's where the real expenses come from, the giant outlay every time she's fitted for a new one. It stresses me out just thinking about it, and I don't even write the checks. I can't imagine what it does to our parents.

We eat dinner around the table, but in a frosty silence no one wants to be the first to break. Lynn valiantly tries a couple of times, first complimenting the chili which gets nods of agreement all around, then asking about grandma, which brings one- and two-word replies from Mom. Finally even her optimism is exhausted, and one by one, we finish our bowls, deposit the dishes in the sink, and head off on our own. Lynn retreats to her room to do homework, I head to mine to get lost in the bowels of Facebook. Dad heads to the bathroom because I hear the water jets in the tub fire up.

After a few hours, even though the sun is still up, I've had just about all I can take of today, strip to my panties, kick my ceiling fan up a notch and crash into bed.

* * * * *

The tapping on my door wakes me up, and I turn to look at the clock: just after midnight. Rubbing sleep from my eyes, I sit up in bed. "Who is it?"

"It's me, can I come in?" Lynn's muffled voice is quiet, subdued on the other side of the door.

"Uhh...hang on a sec." I feel around on the floor until I find my shirt and pull it over my head, then give the OK. Lynn, clad in a nightgown, makes her way into my room, closes the door behind her, then ambles over to sit on the foot of my bed. As my eyes slowly adjust, I see it isn't a gown, but a powder blue oversize sleep shirt with the Snuggle fabric softener bear on the front, which hangs down nearly to her knees.

"Can I...sleep in here with you tonight? At least for a little while?"

I frown and sit up straighter. "What's wrong, hon?"

"Mom and Dad are fighting again."

Lynn's bedroom shares a common wall with our parents', and it's not a very thick one, so sounds louder than normal conversation carry right through. When she was much younger, Lynn told me how she woke up to the sound of their bed frame rhythmically bumping the wall, and knocked on their door to make sure everything was OK. They re-arranged their room that weekend, much to my amusement and Lynn's confusion.

I pat the bed closer to where I'm sitting. "C'mere."

She scoots over, and I take her hand.

"I wasn't trying to be nosy, but they weren't exactly making it difficult. Dad's stressing about money."

"He's an accountant, Lynn, he's always stressing about money."

"No, it's different." She stands up, pulls me out of bed, and we walk into the hall where my parents' voices, muffled though they are by their own door, are still loud enough to make out.

"-saying she should either be in college, or out in the real world by now. Is that unreasonable to you?"

"Bill, I will not charge our daughter rent while she lives-"

"She's doing nothing with her life. By all rights she should be a senior at Valparaiso like she planned, or at least a junior with a healthy load of credits, but instead? Nada, zip, zilch. She's smart, but if she doesn't get herself moving, she's got no future outside of that bookstore."

"She helps take care of Lynn so I can help mom and you can work. Or did you forget because you spend more time at the office than you do at home?"

"Lynn's nineteen, and she'll be going off to college―what's Colleen going to do, toddle along after her like a nanny when she's at St. Joseph's next year?"

"That's her business, not ours."

"I'm just saying, two hundred dollars a month would go a long way towards-"

"Are you even listening to yourself right now?"

"Tell me somewhere in this state she could live for two hundred bucks a month. It's hardly highway robbery, and it would help offset the slow period after the end of the fiscal year."

"What are you going to do if she doesn't pay? Kick her out?"

"Jesus Christ, Judy, I'm just saying. She could offer to help with bills instead of freeloading. She's twenty-two: old enough to vote, old enough to drink-"

"Something you've been doing a lot more lately, I might point out. Funny how you can always find the money for that."

"Oh, so this is all coming back to me again?"

Unwilling to listen to any more, I turn, pull Lynn back down the hall into my room, and shut my door. Now the argument is barely audible. I open the TuneIn app on my phone and set it to the solo piano channel I listen to when I need help relaxing. The soothing melody of a Wayne Gratz piece drowns out what remains of our parents' fight, and I yawn, suddenly aware of how tired I am.

I push back the covers and scoot toward the far side of my bed. "Just crawl in," I tell her, patting the bed in front of me. "They'll be fine by tomorrow, you'll see."

Lynn sits down, fusses with her prosthetic for a minute, then I hear it thud on the floor. She tugs her Snuggle bear shirt out from under her butt and swings around, sliding her legs under the sheet. "Think it'll be hot under here with the two of us?"

I know what she's asking, but of course my mind instantly goes there, because I'm a horrible excuse for a sister and a human being. "Probably, yeah."

She takes hold of her shirttail. "Um...is it okay if I...?"

No. No, it is not okay, Lynn. You should sleep with your shirt on. I'll be just fine. I'll bump the A/C down a couple notches, and that will offset any increase in the room's ambient temperature. That's what I should say. Instead, I manage to croak, "Sure," and watch as she peels the shirt over her head and tosses it down to the foot of the bed. Well...follow the leader. Mine joins hers, and already I feel the temperature spiking.

She lays down on her side, facing away from me, and thankfully doesn't move to take anything else off. For all I know, there isn't anything else for her to take off, and that warms me all the more. "Just hold me for a little bit, okay?"

I assume a position on my side as well, facing her, then scoot closer until my breasts are nearly touching her back. Somewhere in my chest, a professional wrestler choke-slams my heart over and over again, trying to get it to tap out. I smell Pear Berry body wash as errant strands of her hair tickle my nose. I close my eyes and try to think of something, anything, besides the fact my sister's bare skin is centimeters from my own, and I'm just about there when she grabs my hand and I panic.

Shit! Did I do something without realizing it? No, I have my hand parked right on my hip, where it's going to stay until my alarm goes off. I freeze, breath held, as she pulls my arm around her side and rests my hand on the smooth flatness of her stomach. Then, because she hasn't already done enough to send my Panic-O-Meter into overdrive, she inches backward until she makes contact with my chest and I am well and truly spooning her with my mouth against the back of her head. Every breath I take makes strands of her hair dance. What the hell is going on...?

"G'night, Collie," she whispers. "Love you."

"Goodnight," I whisper back. "Love you too." Unable to control myself, I shift my head and kiss the back of her neck tenderly. She squeezes my hand, moves it up an inch or so, and settles back against me with a contented sigh.

At some point I must have fallen asleep because my next memory is of my alarm blaring and the two of us stirring. She waves a hand around my nightstand to turn it off, but she doesn't know where the clock is, so I have to lean up on my shoulder and reach over her with my right arm, mashing my tits into the back of her head as I stretch. Even groggy with sleep, I can't control my thoughts. What if she turned over, right then, and kissed one? What if she wanted to make out in bed for a little bit before we got up? What if things went...further than that? What if we-

I smack the button and my alarm quits blaring, so I quickly roll back off her. "Sorry," I say, "didn't mean to squish you."

"It's okay. I didn't know how to turn it off." She rolls over on her back, and the sheet slips down a few inches. She stretches her arms above her head while yawning, and both breasts peek out from under the sheet, a fact I attempt studiously to avoid allowing my brain to register. After a few seconds, she lowers her arms, sits up, and flips herself around to face me. I blush, caught red-handed in my ogle.

"You should have said something if you were hot."

"I'm fine."

"Collie, your face is more flushed than a public toilet."

"I know, I know. It's... You're right, I'm warmer than I thought."

She laughs. "You shouldn't try to lie to me. I can read you like a book."

Face still burning, I grab my shirt and slip it over my head while she works, bent forward, to put on her leg. I can't see it from this angle, but in my mind I picture her right breast pressed up against her thigh, which brings me back to the feeling last night as we slept, spooning skin-to-skin.

She stands, bends to stretch her lower back, picks up her shirt, slings it over her shoulder, and walks, topless, to my door.

"You, uh, planning on flashing the world there?"

"Dad's gone already, I heard him leave earlier. Mom's always at grandma's by now, so the only person here to see is you, and it's nothing you haven't seen hundreds of times before." She walks through the door and down to her bedroom to acquire her clothes for the day, and I lay back on my bed with the biggest grin imaginable on my face, fanning myself with the sheet.

It's not what they normally mean by the phrase, but I could, in fact, testify under oath that I just slept with my sister.

Everything tingles, which take to to be an omen. Today is going to be a good one. Today is the day I will answer Lynn's question correctly and win whatever she's offering.

* * * * *

"Today's is a little longer than usual. Are you ready?"

"Ready as I'll ever be," I say, pouring shampoo into my hands.

"Soul and body have no bounds: / To lovers as they lie upon / Her tolerant enchanted slope / In their ordinary swoon / Grave the vision Venus sends / Of supernatural sympathy, / Universal love and hope;"

How the hell does she remember all these? I rack my brain, but don't recognize this one from any of the (admittedly few) entries I've read in my book so far, or from Perler's class, and am reduced to a shot in the dark. "Umm... Coldridge."

"Coldridge? Who's that?"

"You know, he did the...that one poem. You know, where the old sailor shoots the bird?"

"That's Coleridge, Collie. Samuel Taylor Coleridge. 'Rime of the Ancient Mariner'. Is that who you're talking about?"

"Yeah, him."

"Hundreds of lines in that poem, and you only remember it as the one where a guy kills an albatross? Are you trying to make my heart hurt?"

"You're just stalling because you don't want to admit I'm right. No need to be mad, just say the words."

She makes a buzzing noise with her mouth. "Sorry, the correct answer is not Coleridge, it's W. H. Auden. Thank you for playing, try again tomorrow."

Well, shit. I shampoo in silence as she brushes her teeth. "How many of these do you have memorized anyway, just out of curiosity?"

"As many as it takes for you to learn, my Padawan." Having so informed me, she slips from the bathroom to acquire sustenance.

* * * * *

I discover William Butler Yeats on my break at work. Or rather I re-discover him, since I remember Perler going on at length about how he was the greatest poet of the twentieth century or some nonsense. Our textbook contained two samples of his work: one was about his intent to go to some island, live in a mud house and raise bees; the other involved counting swans at some lake. Is it any wonder nobody takes poetry seriously when it's crap no student today could identify with that they make kids read?

The first one in my book, however, is new to me. Called "No Second Troy," it might have been written by a completely different person. The Yeats who wrote those other two poems? He was one dull son of a bitch. This Yeats, on the other hand, was beyond pissed at some woman who probably wouldn't put out for him. The final line proposes she'd wrecked his life because, as his Helen, there was nothing else for her to destroy but him. Whoever she was, I hope she had aloe and ice water handy after she read that sick burn. What catches my eye, however, is a single line: 'Had they but courage equal to desire?'.

Taken in context, the line refers to the foolish men under her sway whom she had spurned to undertake some violent action, and serves as rhyme for 'fire' two lines later.

Out of context, on the other hand, the line seems written for me. What, I ask myself, could I accomplish, could any of us accomplish, if our desires were equal to our courage to face them? I ponder this for the rest of my shift, my brain turning and returning to a potent question posed by a man now dead for some seventy-five years. Customers come and go, but nothing registers at all as my plan pushes everything else in my mind aside.

Lynn's right: we can't control what inspires us. My challenge to seize the day has arrived.

* * * * *

Lynn climbs into the passenger seat beside me, and suddenly all of the butterflies on the continent return to my stomach to nest, or roost, or whatever a flock of butterflies does in one's gastrointestinal tract. "How did work go?" she asks, pulling the seat belt over her shoulder.

"Not bad. How was school?"

She gives a non-committal shrug. "Eh, you know. School."

"Perler again?"

"No, he's fine. We're studying Auden now, hence this morning's question." She turns and stares out the window, watching the buildings on the street pass by as I accelerate to merge with traffic.

"Then what?"

She doesn't answer me for a long time, then I hear her sniff and she rubs her nose across the sleeve of her t-shirt. "Nothing."

I have a feeling 'nothing' is, in fact, connected to something she cares an awful lot about, so I probe. "Worried about Mom and Dad?"

She barks out a laugh, but doesn't turn around. "Well, yeah, but that's... I wasn't even thinking about them until now. You should be, if they're going to charge you rent. Even though that's a total crock of shit."

We'd see about that. I wasn't about to directly confront Mom or Dad about the issue, but I figured I'd be a little passive/aggressive so this morning before I dropped Lynn at school, I left a check for $200 with 'Rent for May' in the memo field in the middle of the table. Surprisingly I haven't gotten a text or a call about it, so I'll cross that bridge when it comes. I was nervous when I left, but honestly I don't care all that much. Two hundred a month is peanuts when you live at home and gassing up your car every two weeks is your only regular expense.

Had I but courage equal to desire? Challenge accepted, Mr. Yeats. It was time to find out.

"Lynn, I've got something I need to ask you."

"If this is about college, I don't expect you to follow me to St. Joe's." She finally turns and looks at me. "Although I do expect you to visit from time to time. It's only an hour or so away."