April Showers

    It was a drizzly day in April when I walked in on my sister, coincidentally also named April, having sex with my fiance. It was hard to say who looked the most surprised, her or Calvin, or even who looked the most guilty. Calvin, at least, had the decency to look away from me while covering his lower half up with a sheet I had gotten at our bridal shower. As if I was the intruder, the one who shouldn’t be seeing his private moment or private area. April just stared at me, a deer in headlights. Her large green eyes were one of the things that people found the most appealing about her. “Don’t worry about it, Lainey, they’re neotenous. That means that people can’t help but think they’re attractive. It’s science.” That’s what she always used to say to me, making me feel small and silly for being jealous of the attention that she received that I never seemed to be able to get. April wasn’t a biologist or a science genius by any stretch, but she had read that fact on a click-bait website once and never let it go. It’s science. 

    Certainly the feeling of my heart dropping through my rib cage into my abdomen was science as well, if I cared enough to look into it. April just continued looking at me, her mouth puckered into a slight o, still puffy from the lips of the man I was supposed to be marrying in just a few months. Said man had propelled his body off the bed and was clumsily tugging on a pair of khaki pants, using the dresser to steady himself. A few glass bottles clinked as the dresser shook, and the sun that glinted off of them also glinted off of the ring on his left hand. When he had decided to wear a ring before we were officially married, I thought I was one of the lucky ones. Look at this man, so progressive, ready to show his commitment in advance, throw off the norms of society. It was just the kind of thing that my mother would have loved and my father would have scoffed at. April had helped me pick out his ring at a jewelers. It felt high pressure, since he would be wearing the same ring while engaged and married, versus the two rings that I got the privilege of wearing, and if I so chose, switching between. Naturally, I had to bring my sister. We weren’t twins, as evidenced by all of the physical traits that she had that I could never dream of. I squinted at my parents from puberty on, wondering how they could produce children only 12 months apart and only give one of them good genes. Surely the same genes would work no matter when they were accessed, right? Wrong.

    My sister had the longest legs, the shiniest hair, the prettiest eyes, while I was stuck looking like the stock model white female. I couldn’t even begin to count the number of times that someone had approached me, ‘do I know you from somewhere? You look so familiar.’ Probably close to the same number of times someone approached my sister to tell her she should be a model. This paradox of genetics pitted us against each other until we graduated high school. Once the constant pressure to impress all of the same boys and girls left and we only had to worry about people in our own circles that may never meet, we could focus on the parts of our relationship that were good. And it turned out, there were a lot of them. We liked the same wine, the same mellow rock music, had the same favorite deli, the same fear of ostriches, the same love of long skirts and brightly painted fingernails. Unfortunately, by the time we reached our mid twenties, we also shared a tragedy. 

    We drove together to our parents funeral. Calvin was coming from a different direction than me, and I said I would drive home with him, and April came to pick me up. Despite our similarities, our reaction to grief was so different. I had been flailing like I was a plastic bag stuck in a tree in October, and April hadn’t shed a single tear. She held herself so stiff that I thought if I touched her she might crack like a peanut brittle. And then thinking of peanut brittle would send me into another showy fit of sobs, remembering that our mother used to make it for the holidays, remembering that we would never have another holiday with them. We both buckled up tight as soon as we got in the car. It was unclear if our parents were wearing their seat belts, unclear if that could have saved them, but as she drove ten miles under the speed limit to the graveyard, we let ourselves sit in the false sense of security. The funeral was closed casket and short, with an odd assortment of people that had known my parents; coworkers, neighbors, and the real estate agent who had sold them their house twenty-five years ago and never stopped showing up in their lives. We didn’t do an ostentatious funeral procession, opting to watch the wooden boxes that contained the remnants of the people that raised us get lowered in the ground. Calvin had met me there, reaching out for my hand and gripping it firmly, a show of solidarity that felt very comforting then. Nonetheless it made me think, even then, about how surprising it was, what a turn of events, what an odd parallel lifeline, that I was here with someone devoted to spending his life with me, while my beautiful sister stood alone, flanked only by me. Or was she? Were she and Calvin already carrying on? In some top secret way that I was too oblivious to notice?

    The thought made me nauseous, and I stumbled into the door frame slightly, catching myself with my hand on a hinge. As if waiting for me, April finally moved, pulling the sheets up to her chest. My sheets. My bed. Nausea and anger waged a battle that would be miserable no matter who the victor is, but I remained silent. 

    Calvin, always the talker, came over to me, voice smooth as the silk of his boxers, and reached out a hand to me. 

    “Elaine…” 

    “There’s nothing you could say that could make this okay.” My voice came out punctuated with hiccups, and then I pitched forward and threw up on his feet, in the most dignified and classy move I could have made. Was it my proudest moment? No. In my top five? Probably. 

    His eyes widened, and it was as if I was just now noticing they were almost the same color as April’s, with the same dark lashes. Another wave of nausea rose up in my throat. 

    April had gotten up now, tugging on her dark slacks and a blouse that did absolutely everything for her assets, and nothing for the waves of insecurity that were threatening to overtake me. 

    There was a crash of thunder outside, and it was so melodramatic that I almost laughed. If there was a way that I was going to find out that the person who had been with me since birth had stolen the person who was supposed to be with me until death, this was about the way I should have expected. 

    “You’re right, there’s nothing I can say. Nothing we can say to make this any better. I’m so sorry. I never expected this to happen. It’s the biggest mistake I’ve ever made.” 

    “-I never expected this to happen. We just couldn’t resist anymore.” 

    They started the sentence on the same words, but ended on such wildly different pages. 

    I took a step back, breathing slowly through my mouth, my hand pressed tight to my stomach. What even had I eaten? I felt as though I hadn’t tasted anything but romaine lettuce and applesauce since February, all in preparation for my June wedding. 

    My fiance (should I still call him that?) and my sister stared at each other for a moment. 

    “I’m in love with your sister, April.”

    “I’m in love with you, Calvin.” 

    If they kept this up, they could take it on the road. A traveling show of infidelity. It struck me how completely implausible my life had become in a matter of minutes. I had thought I was just stopping home from a long day of work to pick up the lunch that I had forgotten in the refrigerator and spend a few minutes loving on Schnitzel, my little wiener mutt. And now look. 

    A flash of lightning made the room seem eerie, and my father’s words ran through my mind. You seem to find drama wherever you go, Laina. It was beginning to look like he was right. I knew he was rolling in his grave, twenty miles away from here. 

    April started shaking her head back and forth very quickly, wringing her hands in front of her blouse that I knew was expensive. Nothing but the finest clothing for April, connoisseur of fashion, and apparently, men. I blamed that on my mother. As a child it was nothing but the best for her, only the fanciest, least-appropriate-for-playing-in-the-dirt clothing for the eldest daughter. By the time they got to me they were somehow already faded from being washed so many times, the patterns and colors slightly washed out. I, of course, made such a mess of my clothing. Always a nosebleed, some mud or grass stains, ketchup from a hot dog that I just couldn’t wait to eat before my mother wrapped me in a napkin. It didn’t make financial sense for them to buy me my own clothes, they said. You’ll just ruin them. So I made them my own, with paints and stickers and stains from every place I had ever gone. I wasn’t going to be stifled just because my clothing wasn’t my own. 

    “Calvin, I thought-.” 

    “I don’t know what you thought, but it was wrong.” I felt a quivering in my poor tattered heart and immediately swallowed hard to keep my tongue in check. Not the time. He turned to me, now. “I know I can’t take it back. I wish I could. I’m so sorry. I’ll move out, today. This is all on me, okay? Not on you.” 

    I stared at him, at my sister rubbing her hands up and down her arms, her manicured nails making tsk tsk noises on the fabric of her shirt. 

    When I finally spoke, it was not to address him. He stood to the side, tears lining his eyes, and the guilt radiated off of him like mist on a sidewalk. 

    “April, you could have anyone...you know that…. Why would you do this to me?”

    She shook her head, her eyes wide and unblinking. “I just couldn’t help it.”