When We Were Sisters

None of the homes I had stayed in previously were available after Olive’s death. The county looked for mature, experienced parents committed to helping me and thought a therapeutic foster home with one other child would be helpful.

The right parents were Dick and Lillian Davis, and the other child was Cecilia Ceglinski, nearly thirteen. Within moments of our meeting Cecilia demanded that the speechless me call her CeCe. By then she had already decided that someday she would be famous enough to jettison her last name.

On the day I was taken to the two-bedroom concrete tract house in an older neighborhood of Tampa, Florida, social workers were still attempting to find my mother, whose rights hadn’t been formally terminated. I knew from conversations I overheard that my chances for adoption were slim to none. I was too shy, too withdrawn, and while authorities no longer believed I was autistic, that diagnosis remained as a question in my records and was guaranteed to give even the most enthusiastic adoptive parents pause.

I was all of nine, but the people in control believed it was enough at that moment that I was safe and well fed. After their own children left, Mr. and Mrs. Davis had welcomed more than a dozen children into their home. They were strict but fair, affectionate but not demanding, and they were happy to work with other professionals to provide the best for their kids.

Cecilia had already lived with the Davises for four months before I arrived to take the place of an eleven-year-old girl who had wreaked havoc. Cecilia claims that no matter what was wrong with me—and in her estimation there was plenty—she saw right away that she could finally sleep with both eyes shut. If I was too scared to get up and use the bathroom at night, I was unlikely to murder her in her sleep.

Cecilia isn’t prone to downplay anything in her life. In the retelling a casual date becomes a marriage proposal. Polite applause becomes a standing ovation. I’m one of the parts she doesn’t have to exaggerate. She saw something in me that convinced her I needed her. No one but Maribeth, her drugged-out mother, had ever needed her for anything.

Cecilia looked at me and saw a project that might have a happy ending. That was enough.

My grandmother had named me Roberta Ingrid after two maiden aunts who had raised and molded her into the woman I feared. Cecilia was the first to call me Robin. The day we met I was wearing a red sweater. With my pale brown hair and red breast she thought I looked exactly like one.

When I turned eighteen I petitioned the court to make Robin official. By then Cecilia had been there first to remove Ceglinski.

Kris claims I’ve always allowed Cecilia to make the important decisions in my life. If he knew how hard she lobbied me not to marry him, he might feel differently.

I thought about that now as the house grew quiet and I heard Kris turning out the lights downstairs before he came to bed. Earlier Donny came back from town with enough takeout to last for several days and casseroles to carry next door tomorrow. My children devoured rotisserie chicken and sides. Kris finished a beer and picked at whatever was in reach, and the rest of us enjoyed vegan dishes from an Indian restaurant. Then, after sisterly advice on how to take care of myself for the next few days, Cecilia and Donny left to fly back to Arizona.

I’m sure my husband is delighted they’re gone. Kris is always polite to Cecilia. Cecilia is always polite to Kris. Their pseudotolerance comes down to insecurity. Neither of them is sure who will win if I’m forced to choose.

I was carefully smoothing a nightgown over my hips when Kris came into our bedroom. His wheat-colored hair was standing on end, as if he’d run his fingers through it repeatedly, and he looked exhausted, which was no surprise.

“Did you tell Nik he could stay up and read?”

I had expected something a little warmer, but I wasn’t surprised by his question. Even when Kris arrives home early enough to see his kids, he’s usually on his computer or the phone and they’re already asleep by the time he comes upstairs.

“He’s always allowed to read if it’s a real book and he’s in bed.”

“I asked him what he was reading, and he said, and I quote, ‘A book. Can’t you tell?’”

“He jumped on the one Cecilia gave him tonight. He started reading the moment he got into bed.”

“Let me guess. A rock star biography.”

“Boy band. It’s a Horatio Alger story updated for the twenty-first century. Kids from a tough neighborhood who find their way out through talent and drive.”

“Well, he needs sleep more than he needs fairy tales.”

I didn’t remind him how close the book was to Cecilia’s life story. “I’m sure you made a hit if you called it a fairy tale.”

“I’ve already had more conversations with our son today than I needed.”

I tried to sound pleasant, although it was getting harder. “Is that how it works? We get to choose a number? Because some days one is too many.”

“He’s hostile and rude. Oh, and let’s not forget sarcastic. What’s come over him? Or do you even know?”

“I have some good ideas.”

“He seems to think he can get away with it.”

My head was starting to throb again. “I hear an indictment of my parenting skills.”

He didn’t answer directly. “What are you doing to change things?”

I swallowed a reminder that the decision to have these children had been mutual. “Truthfully, nothing seems to work. He’s never made transitions well, and becoming an adolescent’s a big one.”

“We need to set rules and stick to them.”

“We, Kris?” I sat on the edge of the bed and reached for the jasmine-scented hand cream I use at night.

“We can figure them out together.”

“And I can enforce them.”

“Well, according to your little zinger earlier, you’re not going to be around. What was that about, anyway?”

“Do you really want to get into this now?”

“I have to leave early in the morning, and I won’t be home until it’s time for shivah. So now makes sense.”

He sounded angry, or rather, controlled, as if he were afraid the anger would erupt in unpleasant ways and he was working to contain it.

I capped the hand cream and lay down facing his side of the bed, propping myself up so I could see him better. I waited until he changed and got in beside me. All these years of marriage, and I still find my husband attractive. Kris has strong Slavic features that accent wide-set hazel eyes. Despite hours at a desk he usually finds time midday to go to the gym, and he watches his diet.

I would have preferred a more romantic homecoming, but the only fairy tale in our house tonight was the one Nik was reading down the hall.

“Cecilia is coproducing a documentary about foster care with a well-known filmmaker named Mick Bollard. We watched one he did on Ronald Reagan, remember?”

“No.”

In truth I had watched it, and Kris had walked in and out of the room with his BlackBerry. I wasn’t surprised he didn’t remember.

“Well, he’s amazing. For this one he wants a celebrity who actually was a foster child to be part of it. Cecilia’s...” I tried to figure out how best to explain this. “She’s come to realize she needs to tell her story. For herself as much as her audience. So they’ll be filming in places where she lived, and she’ll talk about what her life was like there. Of course it’ll all be interspersed with history and facts about child welfare. You know how that works. But she may do a lot of the narration, and her life will be the thread that’s woven all the way through.”

“Why does that have anything to do with you?”

“Cecilia wants me to be the production stills photographer. They’ll need photos for publicity, and Donny’s already spoken to publishers about a book on the making of the documentary. The right photograph can convey the point of an entire film. It’s an exciting challenge. She showed my work to Mick Bollard, and he’s enthusiastic.”

“There are a thousand photographers who could do that. A million.”

I tried not to let him see his words had hurt. “Of course. There may be that many, and, who knows, all of them may even be better than I am. Although if somebody like Mick Bollard thinks my work’s good enough, that’s a pretty good sign I have talent, wouldn’t you say?”

“You know I didn’t mean it that way.”

“How did you mean it?”

“There are other photographers who have the credentials besides you. And a lot of them would probably kill for this opportunity.”

“So why me?”

“Listen, it was rhetorical, okay? I know why you. Cecilia’s been trying to get you to work for her as long as I’ve known you. Longer, even.”

“And I have carefully not done so. Not because I’m not good enough, but because my life has gone in other directions.”

“And...”

I knew what else Kris was referring to. Years ago, during my college internship with famous celebrity photographer Max Filstein—an internship Cecilia had arranged for me—Max had given me some sage advice. In between critical tirades he’d admitted I had talent, yes, but he had insisted I should never focus it on my sister. Because even though I had a gift for exposing souls, when it came to Cecilia, I was clueless.

Max still calls regularly and rants about the way I’m wasting the skills he taught me. These days I take photos of my flowers and shrubs for gardening magazines, and sometimes I do photo shoots for local families or school fund-raisers. Once I opened an envelope to find magazine photos of my old roses torn to shreds with Max’s business card nestled among them.

“I think enough time has passed that I can do this and do it well,” I said, hoping it was true.

“How long is she talking about? A week? Two?”

“Live filming begins in a little more than three weeks and goes through January. Maybe a bit into February.”

He made a noise low in his throat, as if to say, you’re kidding.

“There will be times when I can fly home to visit. Thanksgiving for sure, and I told Cecilia we’re going to the Czech Republic to be with your parents for Christmas. I told her those ten days are nonnegotiable.”

I hoped Kris would see I was already thinking of him. His father, Gus, was teaching for a year at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, a triumphant return after years of exile. It would be the family trip of a lifetime.

“Don’t you think that whether you’ll go to Prague is kind of beside the point, Robin?” Now he was unable to hide the anger in his voice. “In the meantime you’re talking about leaving the kids and me at home taking care of things for months while you trail your sister all over the country or wherever the hell you’ll be going.”

I was sorry Cecilia’s offer had come up now. I should have presented the whole thing with more tact, and I should have considered it carefully for more reasons than I was willing to go into with Kris. But I’d lashed out at him earlier, and this is what I got. Of course no matter how I phrased it, I was dropping a bombshell.

“I haven’t decided yet.” I hoped that would delay the discussion, but it was not to be.

“Then please decide not to go, okay? It was hard enough handling things while you were in the hospital.”

Suddenly he wasn’t the only angry person in our bed. “Really? I’m so sorry I inconvenienced you. Maybe I should have stopped the car that plowed into us with my superpowers. Or maybe I shouldn’t have gone to dinner at all, considering that I had to beg poor Michael to babysit because you had something more important to do.”

He stared at me, and I stared right back.

“Let’s face it,” I went on. “Everything is more important than spending time with your kids, Kris. Everything except me and what I need. You wonder why Nik is surly? Maybe it’s because he’s beginning to realize he won’t have a father to guide him through the difficult waters ahead. While you’re at it, take a look at your daughter. Girls develop so much faster these days, and when it comes to men, Pet will need help figuring out how to separate the wheat from the chaff. She’ll need a role model. And what kind of role model is a man who’s too busy to spend time with her?”

“Is that what this is about? You’re trying to force me to be a hands-on father? You couldn’t just ask?”

“I have asked until I’m blue in the face. But believe it or not, this decision is mostly about me. I willingly gave up my career when we had Nik. But I never said that would be permanent. Now I have an amazing opportunity—”

“To photograph Cecilia’s life—”

“It was my life, too! Cecilia’s life and mine intersected for years, remember? She says she needs to go back and confront her demons. I’m not sure I don’t, as well. This life with you and the kids isn’t the only one I’ve had. And even if I can’t remember the accident, I bet that life was flashing in front of my eyes as the SUV got closer.”

Regret transformed his face. For a moment he looked more like the man I married, the one who wasn’t too busy for conversations like this. “I’m sorry for everything that happened. More than you apparently believe. I’m so grateful we didn’t lose you. But my childhood wasn’t all milk and cookies, either. We didn’t know what a leftover was. Some months my family had to choose between electricity or heat. So you know why I work as hard as I do. I want us to be secure, not to worry about whether the kids will get scholarships to a good school, not to worry whether Pet can afford a nice wedding if she wants one.”

“Right now Pet needs a father, not a husband.”

“You’re determined not to understand, aren’t you?”

“I do understand. But you can’t see what your determination not to be like your father is doing to us. Gus is an idealist, an artist, a dreamer, and when you were growing up he didn’t always worry about paying your gas bill. But he was there for you, Kris. He adores you. Cecilia was there for me, and not only don’t I want our children to grow up with an empty space where their father ought to be, I want to do this for my sister. I want to be there for her.”

If he was moved, this time he didn’t show it. “You said you haven’t decided.”

“That’s what I said.” I hesitated before I shook my head. “But I want to do this. I need to. If I decide to go ahead I won’t simply walk out on you. I’ll find help, and I’ll come home whenever I can. I’ll call and text and email, and the kids will always know I’m there when they need me.”

“What good will that do if you’re a thousand miles away? They’re too young to be here alone.”

“I can hire somebody to be here when the kids come home from school. I’ll make sure she cleans and has dinner on the table by the time you get home to eat with them, too. But I need to do this. The night of the accident? Everybody at dinner had moved on with their lives, and they were all so excited, even if they were feeling overburdened. And me? I had nothing to contribute except the name of Nik’s orthodontist.”

“You could have dropped Cecilia’s name. That always gets attention.”

I just stared at him.

“I’m sorry,” he said stiffly before he rolled to his back and stared at the ceiling instead of me. “But you just don’t have a clue what this will do to my career. The only reason I’ve been able to get where I am is that I work harder than anybody else.”

“At the expense of your family.”

“For my family!”

“No.” I turned away and flipped off the bedside lamp. “I need a good night’s sleep. I couldn’t get one in the hospital.”

“You’ve pretty well guaranteed that neither of us will get one tonight.”

I heard him get up and leave our bedroom. I wondered where he planned to sleep, but I didn’t get up to look for him, to try to smooth things over so he would come back to bed. This couldn’t be smoothed over. Because even though I hadn’t said it in so many words, I had made my decision.

I fell asleep thinking not of Kris or Cecilia, but of Talya. My friend had been so excited about her new job, with so much to talk about. What would I talk about if our monthly neighborhood dinners reconvened?

My trip into the past with Cecilia, or my impending divorce?

7

Cecilia

I have four homes. That’s excessive, I know, but I figure I’m making up for all the ones I never had growing up. Real estate and art are the only investments that make sense to me, and I love to watch run-down properties come back to life under my loving care, along with the talent of architects and designers. But I never give any design professional carte blanche. These are homes, and I want them to reflect my taste. I don’t care how much time or money that takes.

My home in Manhattan is a neo-Georgian brownstone, and my condo in Nashville is at the top of a high-rise with a sweeping view of the city. I probably spend most of my time in the ecofriendly contemporary I designed and built in Pacific Palisades because I conduct more business in Southern California than anywhere else, not to mention that looking over that stretch of coastline—fondly known as the Queen’s Necklace—is a great way to rev my creative juices.

Each house is completely different, and I love them all. But my favorite sits directly on the Gulf of Mexico, on Sanibel Island in Southwest Florida. If I could only have one place to call my own, I would be happy forever at Casa del Corazón.

I’ve been in Sanibel a week, but I never tire of waking here. If I’m up early enough I can look left to watch the sun rise down the beach, and if I’m home early enough I can turn right and watch the sun set. When I bought this slice of paradise I knew I wouldn’t have to choose between them.

Donny flew in yesterday evening, and a few minutes ago he joined me on the screened porch off my great room to watch the show begin. I was surprised at his interest, since I never think of him as a morning person. But despite years of working closely together there are probably many things we don’t know about each other.

One thing I do know? We’ve kept it that way on purpose. Neither of us wants to ruin a great working relationship with a lousy personal one.

I do have a talent for lousy personal relationships. Married once and quickly divorced from a country singer—which is how I picked up the condo in Nashville—I’ve known a lot of men and slept with a few of them. The better I know them the less I like them. There’s a lesson there.

When the sun proved it could be counted on, I put my arms over my head and stretched. “Sometimes I go down to the beach and walk toward the sunrise and pick up shells along the way. No matter what time of year it is, there are always at least a few other people doing the same thing, and when the sun peeks over the horizon, they almost always applaud. It’s like a prayer.”

Donny was standing silently at the railing looking out over the water, a cup of cooling coffee in his hands. “My kind of prayer. Heartfelt and doctrine-lite.”

“Not a churchgoer?”

“No more than you.”

“I sneak in and out when I have the chance and sit in the back. I figure it can’t hurt and might help.”

“You’re nothing if not flexible.”

I laughed because that’s absolutely true. You can’t be rigid in the music business, not if you expect to get anywhere.

He stopped ogling the horizon and turned to me. “I’m heading for New York about noon. Can we carve out some time to talk now? We have a lot to go over.”

“Ginny cut up fruit and warmed muffins a while ago. Everything’s ready in the kitchen, and if you eat up here with me, that will save her from having to take a plate to the guesthouse.” Ginny is a local woman in her fifties, tanned and wiry, who takes perfect care of the house and cooks whenever I’m in residence.

“You ate already?”

I shook my head. “I’ll eat with you. We can talk over breakfast.”

In the kitchen I poured myself a cup of green tea and grabbed a muffin. Ginny’s struggling to become a vegan cook, which isn’t easy on an island where two small supermarkets stock limited options. Nevertheless she has learned to make delicious muffins because she knows how much I love them. The muffin today is pumpkin apple spice.

Donny poured a new cup of coffee from the pot Ginny had brewed just for him—I don’t drink the stuff. We filled bowls with cut fruit and berries, and took breakfast outside to the table on the porch where we had greeted the sun.

My house, gated and private, is flanked by porches overlooking the beach, and a stone and tile courtyard in the front. The guesthouse, where Donny stayed last night, is on the beach side, with its own shady patio off the pool and a well-stocked kitchen tucked on one end. Choosing a place to eat at Casa del Corazón is a joy.

We settled in and chatted about his plans for the rest of the week, and then about negotiations he was conducting with Cyclonic Entertainment for my next album. I love the music of Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith, and I want to do my own adaptations of songs like “See See Rider,” and “Down Hearted Blues.” Lately I’ve been branching out from my standard sound, characterized by more than one reviewer as gospel rock. I’m carving personal niches in bluegrass and jazz, but the blues of the 1930s fit perfectly with the songs that made me famous, songs about strong women who don’t take shit from anybody and don’t need a man to be happy. If the right man arrives? Just something to think about.

Donny cradled a coffee mug in both hands against his chest, as if he needed protection. “If Cyclonic agrees to let you do a blues album, they’re talking about another tour to promote it.”

Donny and I work on the fly, so we find moments to confer whenever and wherever we can. But this quiet time with only waves and seagulls as accompaniment put a fresh spin on the conversation. I wasn’t in the mood to make lists or demands.

“I don’t need another tour. I need more of this.” I waved my hand in the direction of the gulf to make my point. “More sun and sand. More breathing.”

“Then you’ll need to think about what you can offer as a compromise. Limited cities. Smaller venues if that feels more comfortable.”

“How does limited and smaller equate with what I just said? I’ll repeat. I don’t need another tour.”

“Any tour at all? Or just the exhausting variety, like the last one?”

“Right now I need to get through the next few months. This documentary’s not going to be a piece of cake. I don’t know how I’ll feel when it’s over. I might need a straitjacket by the time I’ve spilled my guts and revisited all my nightmares.”

“You can pull back.” He reached over and rested his hand on mine, an unusual gesture from a guy who’s 90 percent business. “Mick told you that. He’s not expecting you to reveal anything you don’t want to. The minute things start to get tough you can stop. Mick can turn a conversation about your favorite shampoo into a masterpiece.”

I decided to keep things light. “Shampoo? Perfect, because I’m still a foster kid at heart. Most of the time I use whatever’s on sale or dip into my storehouse of hotel amenities. Try Rose 31, courtesy of the Fairmont. I think there’s some in the guesthouse.”

He lifted his hand to grip his mug again. “That’s the kind of thing Mick will relish. I guess I’m just saying that if you don’t want to reveal the worst moments, you don’t have to.”

“And to think you got your start as a promoter.”

“I’ll tell Cyclonic the tour is off the table for now, and we’ll see what they come back with.”

“I wonder if I’ll know when to stop touring or recording or even singing in the shower. Don’t you wonder if you’ll know when to let go for good?”

“Sometimes.” He sounded like he was trying to be agreeable.

“I’m serious, Donny. When will you have another chance to watch the sun rise with a cup of coffee in your hands and nowhere you have to be right away?”

“Could you be happy without performing? Because it jacks you up. Every time. You fly high for hours afterward.”

“But I don’t want this to become an addiction, you know? I already have a recurring nightmare. I’m in the audience at a stadium in some city or another, and I’m sitting in a wheelchair down at the front because I’m so old I’ve forgotten how to walk. But that doesn’t seem to matter because I’m still trying to find a way to get up on the stage and perform.”