Mary Lewis has an MFA in creative writing from Augsburg University, an MS in Ecology from the University of Minnesota, and she taught in the Biology Department of Luther College in Decorah, Iowa. She has published stories and essays in journals including Antigonish Review, Blue Lake Review, Book of Matches, Litbreak Magazine, North American Review, Persimmon Tree, RiverSedge, r.kv.r.y. quarterly, Sleet Magazine, The Spadina Literary Review, Superstition Review, Toasted Cheese, Wordrunner and The Woven Tale Press. Forthcoming: Allium, Evening Street Review.

A Bag of Peas

Trisha stumbled up the stairs to Lydia’s third floor apartment over Valdres Pharmacy and Toy Store. She could have grazed the stairs like some gazelle, but the day was long and hot, and she didn’t want to put in any more effort. She’d helped frame a new three-car garage up on Hauzher Addition for Burman’s Construction. Of the four-person crew, she could take the heat best, but even she was feeling dizzy by the end of the day.

When Lydia opened the door, Trisha had her foot ready, but didn’t need to use it. Lydia tilted her head like she always did when she was puzzled, exactly like a beagle, with her long hair hanging down instead of ears. It was worth the trip to see that again.

“Lydia, I’ve got the calendar here. Thought we might as well do it in person.” She was no more willing to dive into this than her sister, but it was the handiest excuse for coming over.

Lydia backed up as Trisha swooped in. “We could have done that over the phone.”

“So much easier this way, you have a minute?”

She never did; why should she ask? But she had to tell someone, and it had to be Lydia. No sense asking herself why. Maybe she needed an adversary to push against, to wear herself out, or perhaps it was her longing to see eye to eye on one deep thing with her one and only sister.

Trisha walked past Lydia into the west-facing apartment, where sun snuck in along the edges of the window shades, neat piles of papers on the table in front of it. Trisha sat down at the table, leaving Lydia at the door.

Lydia walked toward the table. “I’ve got a ton of papers to grade.”

“And I’ve got a kid to get back to and a husband who can’t steam veggies even though he works in the produce section at Foodrite.”

Lydia stood over her. “Can I get you something? Iced tea? Acetaminophen? A bag of frozen peas for your steaming forehead?”

Trisha grunted and took out the calendar. “I can do the weekend if you’ll drop in on Monday and Wednesday. Home care is coming Tuesday and Thursday. Mom seems normal most of the time, but the other day she opened the fridge to look for a book.”

“Did she figure it out?”

“Yes, and said how silly she was, but it scared the hell out of me.”

“We’ll know if Next Step will accept her application this week, won’t we?”

“So, they say, but they always need some new damn piece of information, like what her stingy teacher’s annuity paid last February.”

Trisha pressed hard with her pen on the calendar. Sweaty from the day, her arms stuck to the paper. Lydia still hovered. She knew that would annoy Trisha.

Trisha muttered, “Have a seat why don’t you?”

“I need a break from sitting.”

“Well, I need a break from racing around all day in this awful heat. Shouldn’t hit ninety in May.”

“Just cool off for a bit,” Lydia said, still a voice from on high.

Trisha squirmed in her seat the way she did in grade school, dying for recess, but she couldn’t bring it up right away. “Say that to those sixth graders of yours. Poor kids, with the world we’re giving them.”

“Doom and gloom Trisha, as usual.”

She turned in her chair to look up at Lydia. “I worry about Nicky, and I have no idea what his life will be like when he’s my age. How can we bring up children at all knowing what they’ll be up against.”

Lydia stood there like she was playing statue. “But you just said you didn’t know.”

“Not specifically, but hotter summers, worse storms, fires, rising seas, shall I go on? Dying species. Climate refugees. The burden on the poor while the rich live it up.”

“So it’s going to be one of your end-of-the-world vents? Wouldn’t it work better with your nature friends down at the Co-op? I’ve got work to do.” Only now did she sit and dig into her piles. The few streaks of sunlight fell over her back like she was a basking turtle, but it was Trisha who felt the heat rising to her scalp.

Yes, she should have gone to see Brenda or maybe Jane who would hold her hand and peer into her face with pained eyes.

They sat in silence. Just because Lydia stopped talking didn’t mean Trisha would fill in. She wasn’t going to say anything, but Lydia kept on not talking.

“You know that makes me mad and you do it so hard.”

Lydia barely turned her head. “What do you want me to say? That I’m going to get a Tesla and eat grass?”

Better than nothing, at least she was talking.

“Lydia, my sister with whom I share half my genes, we should be able to talk don’t you think? About something important.”

Lydia stayed hunched over her papers. Trisha could only see that part of her face that bunched up the way it always did when she pressed her lips thin. She had practiced it since she was a kid, when she wouldn’t let anyone in the family talk while she counted the holes on the buckle strap of her shoes, and would have to start all over again if there was the slightest interruption. Mom and Dad had used positive reinforcement and promised gifts of games, dolls, if she would stop, but that did no good. Trisha as the good kid didn’t get anything.

“Well OK then, I know you’re busy.” Trisha stood up, and made a lot of noise swinging her backpack to her shoulder and heavy-footing toward the door. That would give Lydia plenty of time to stop her, but she didn’t use it, so Trisha had to go back to the window.

Lydia lifted her head and looked straight at Trisha. “Your face looks blotchy. Must be the heat. Look, I really meant it about the peas.” She got up and went to the freezer. “Here, it’ll feel good.” She found a dishtowel to put around it, and set it on the kitchen counter.

Like some bait, Trisha took it and held it against her face. The heat sank away. “Thanks.” It wasn’t so hard. 

Lydia went back to her papers. “Get something out of the fridge if you want, I’ve got a couple of Meals on Wheels no one wanted.” On weekends Lydia scurried around delivering to shut-ins.

Trisha put down the ice pack and opened the fridge door. She took out one of half a dozen mixed fruits in plastic containers, then opened it over the sink, spooning out pineapple and peach-like chunks.

From her desk Lydia said, “You don’t have to eat over the sink.”

“Would you rather I spilled onto your papers?” She walked toward Lydia, slurping syrup from the container, dripping some on her chin, wiping it with her hand. She pulled up a chair, but didn’t use the table while she continued eating.

Lydia flipped over another paper without looking up. “See, you are being very neat.”

“You know Tony hates it that I work in construction, like it makes his penis shrink or something.”

“You were always good at starting a conversation.”  Lydia’s red pen hovered over a paper in front of her.

Trisha sucked in the last pineapple wedge. She was going to say, “But it still functions.” Not ready yet. She sat still, except for chomping on the squishy yet fibrous morsel. Lydia flipped through two more tests, then got up and moved toward the kitchen.

“Where did you put that ice pack? You ought to keep it on.”

Trisha didn’t need to answer, because right away Lydia found it on the counter. Only then, ice pack in hand, did she look at Trisha as though she was a new object she hadn’t noticed before in her home. “Trisha, you had skin problems before you had Nicky, remember? I gave you a sack of veggies then too, maybe broccoli?”

Same apartment, same fridge, Lydia had seen her flush. The first outward sign of her pregnancy, six years ago.

“Some memory. Good thing you’re a teacher.”

Trisha’s body sprang into a long diagonal on her chair like Alex in Flashdance, lifting up her face to receive her ice pack and the next question.

Lydia draped it over her forehead and eyes. “Trisha, are you…?”

Trisha grabbed the seat of the chair with both hands to bring her shoulder blades closer together and notched her neck over the back of the chair, balancing her ice pack over her unseeing eyes. “It’d look more convincing without my coveralls.” She wouldn’t have to tell her.

When she rolled off the chair she walked in a circle around the kitchen floor, like she had to step on this and this tile in a certain order, before coming face to face with Lydia. “So, you see, I’ve got a problem.”

“I’m assuming you don’t want me to congratulate you.”

Trisha calmed her face, let her body stand loose. “Not until I’ve taken care of it.”

Lydia grabbed her by the shoulders. She hadn’t done that since they were kids, when Trisha tried to run away from home. “No Trisha, you can’t do that.”

“Why the hell not?” The heat in her red face spread down her neck and through her fingertips as though flames flared there.

“Does Tony know?”

“Nope, and he never will.”

Lydia shook Trisha’s shoulders but Trisha leaned into her sister’s hands, wanting to feel the fingernails. The second after she did, they were gone. Lydia had thrust her away, and Trisha struggled to stay on her feet.

“You want a fight, don’t you?”

Trisha held onto her chair to keep from falling over. “I want to tell you something, and for you to listen.”

“No, you want a fight and maybe you want me to convince you not to do it. That’s a lot to expect from a sister, even an older one.” Lydia made a triangle with her long skirt and her splayed out legs. “But mostly you want to convince me I’m wrong.”

Trisha came so close Lydia’s skirt grazed her feet. “Tell me one thing; do you still think the way you did since that sect at school got their hands on you?”

“Why do you go there again and again, thinking I’ll change my mind? Did you ever consider changing your own?

“So to be clear, you think anyone who is impregnated must carry that egg in her no matter what her age or circumstances.”

Her skirt shifted, but she didn’t move. “A life is a life.”

It sounded singsong to Trisha who had more to say. “A ten-year-old raped by her father.”

Lydia walked to her table of papers, leaving Trisha standing in the middle of the kitchen, then pulled up the shade over the window. The sun swam in a glow at the horizon. “You know where this leads, so why do it? Can’t you just accept we don’t agree?”

“No damn it, I want you to honor that ten-year-old child.”

Lydia straightened some papers on the table then said softly, “And I want you to honor that tiny life inside her.”

It was never going to happen, but she couldn’t stop the desire to make it so. Why should it mean so much to her, she asked herself for the hundredth time. She leaned against the counter, and its metal edge dug into her back.

Lydia walked straight to Trisha and cupped her hands onto her forehead to make a shadowed space for their faces. “You were always such a stubborn kid, doing whatever you wanted.”

“Like you weren’t? Remember the buckle shoes?”

Lydia released her hands and backed off. Trisha watched her mouth straighten into that line. But then it softened and curved. She couldn’t remember when she’d seen that before, if ever, and kept watching it until Lydia spoke again. When she did her voice was gentle, though her words weren’t: “Maybe you should go home now and get that abortion you want. I won’t tell anyone.”

Trisha decided to ask one more question. When Lydia was in college she went through a bad breakup, and she had come home to share their bedroom once more.

Trisha picked up the bag of peas again, now limp but still cool, and held it against one cheek. Then she went to the window to watch the afterglow of the sun. “Remember when you came back after your breakup with whatshisname?”

Even without seeing her face, she knew Lydia’s thin line was coming back.

Trisha said, “You were recovering, weren’t you?”

She’d never confronted her before, but she had always known.

Behind her Lydia spoke, “It was a long time ago.” Her voice was as distant as her words, but it was enough.

Minutes passed, a breeze fluttered at the window, now in darkness. Trisha turned to go, but Lydia stood in her way, holding out her arms. There was nothing left to do but reach out with her own.