How to Be a Sister Eileen Garvin (online e reader .txt) 📖

she was ready to hustle. There was no “Hi-honey-how-was-your-day?” Margaret would have liked to grab me by the arm and shove me into the car so that we could hurry off to the next activity, whatever it might be. The specifics didn’t matter. We just had to get on with the agenda for When Eileen Gets Home to feed the hungry beast of her anxiety.

I was usually hot and irritable after climbing up the hill from Pioneer Square. My childhood fear of the bus made me choose the walk instead of enjoying the convenience of public transportation. My journey home took me through Occidental Park, a crowded twenty-four-hour party of junkies and drunks who hollered at me and everybody else walking by. Sweating, tired, and worrying about how my job might disappear overnight, I rounded the corner to my street and found my edgy sister waiting for me on the front steps of my apartment building. As soon as she caught sight of me, Margaret hopped up, nervously twisting her fingers together, and said, “When Eileen gets home, you’re going to go out to dinner, Eileen. When Eileen gets home. When Eileen gets home, you’re going to go out to dinner, Eileen.”

If I were rewriting the screenplay of my life, this is where I would say something kind and helpful. The camera would zoom in on the younger, empathetic sister comforting her disabled sibling. We would share a moment as the sun set behind us and dramatic music came up. Our mother would look out the window at this scene and get tears in her eyes to see us connecting, our sisterly bond overcoming the obstacles created by the disorder of autism.

But this was my real life. Even though I’d been thinking to myself all the way home about how I needed to be patient, I said something like “JesusfuckingChrist, Margaret! Give me a minute!” and stomped into the building with my nervous sister on my heels. And there was my real-life, calm, patient parent holding open the apartment door, kindly urging me to get the lead out so that we wouldn’t have a scene. “She’s been waiting for you so patiently, Eileen,” Mom said.

Feeling guilty, I grumbled, “Yes, Margaret. We are going to dinner. Just give me a minute.” And then I swore not-so-under my breath as I made my way upstairs to change my clothes.

Part of the reason that I was so angry was that I didn’t want to give in to her anxiety. I wanted her to try being okay, without the repetition. I wanted to be the person to break through her crazy-making routine and help her be normal. I wanted that romantic movielike fantasy to be true. But she followed me up the stairs and kept saying what she was saying until I gave in and repeated it back. “Yes, Margaret. You are going to go out to dinner when Eileen gets home.” Pacified, she sat down on the couch and waited for me with her hands squeezed between her knees.

ONE EVENING DURING this challenging visit, I decided that When Eileen Gets Home, we should go to the Fremont neighborhood on the north side of Lake Union for dinner. Brendan and I had found this great little café, a just-discovered hot spot. The place had made a name for itself for the cheap, tasty Italian food, but also for the atmosphere, which was one part white linen napkins and two parts funky grunge bohemia. You could get a decent bottle of wine, but you could also draw on the paper tablecloth with crayons. It made all the lists that year for Seattle’s Best Places.

I knew it was a gamble going there. For one thing, I knew we would have to wait. Waiting is not Margaret’s strong suit. But they did serve Italian food, which is one of the few things I knew she would eat besides macaroni and cheese, so I thought it was worth a shot. Plus, I wanted my mom to see this place. I knew she would love it as much as I did, and the only way I was going to get her there was to take both of them.

Here lay the crux of the problem. During the course of my entire life, I had never had my mother’s attention to myself. The closest I came was spending time with her and Margaret. And after I had moved out of the house, my mother only came to see me when she brought my sister. We could go anywhere I wanted, and my mom would even pick up the tab. But no matter where we went, Margaret was coming along and would inevitably contribute a bit of ruinous behavior to the evening that would make me wonder if I should have just stayed home alone. At the time, I was young and stubborn. I was also filled with what felt like hope, but was really denial, that this time Margaret would behave beautifully. This time we would have the kind of normal mother-daughter-sister vacation that I’d seen in the movies. I know now that this was the wrong way to look at things, but I didn’t know any better. It was my best attempt at optimism, even though it never worked. So off we went to Fremont in search of a café called Bizzarro.

It was a busy night at Bizzarro. I put our name on the waiting list while my sister and mother sat outside. The café was so small that there was no lobby. We waited on a rough bench by the front door in the warm summer air, time dragging the sun lower and lower in the summer sky. I have a picture of this evening. Margaret has a huge smile on her face, and I am looking less than thrilled. I can’t remember what she had done, but I can guess that she was torturing me with loud displays of something: Spanking? Hooting? Pinching?