By J.V. Skuldt
Art: “The Choice” by Edie Meade

Maybe it was the dust, the mildew-edged boxes, or just the sheer stress of trying to sort through a lifetime of artifacts, but Jody came home from her parents’ with a hatchback full of random keepsakes and a screamer of a migraine. One eye already forced shut with pain, she grabbed a single box from the back of the car and headed into the house. Inside Kevin sat in the kitchen with his laptop. Jody dropped the box next to him.

“You look awful,” he said, glancing at the box then at Jody.

“Thanks. I want to take an apple corer to my right eye,” she answered.

Instead Jody took a Coke from the fridge, headed to their bedroom, swallowed the tiny pink miracle called Rizatriptan, and sprawled on their bed. Migraines: Jody’s inheritance from her mother. Along with terrible eyesight and two baby teeth missing their adults. Eventually those baby teeth, with their soft impermanence, rotted and had to be extracted, leaving two pink gaps just beyond the edges of her smile. A smile that had required years of orthodontia to straighten into presentable—the crooked gift of her father. Her sister, Elise, on the other hand had never needed braces or glasses—or, for that matter, the orthopedics that Jody had worn in her sneakers since age 11. Jody had been the repository of their parents’ bad genes. That had been the family joke.

The bedroom door ajar, she heard Kevin’s expletives as he rummaged through the box. That’s right, Jody thought, pulling a pillow over her head, that’s what you get for being a man of your word. Well, it’d been more of a passing comment than a promise, but there you go. Sure I can transfer those tapes to computer files!

In a fit of nostalgia at Christmas two years ago, Jody and Elise’s dad had dragged out the very same box to revisit their collective past. Maybe just to check if it was still there. Their father had been an early-adopter of the camcorder—walking around their 1980s childhood like he was looking for breaking news. Hounding them with questions.

Elise, what do you want to be when you grow up?

Jody, what do you want to be when you grow up?

They’d adopted the attitude of newscasters. Nonsense answers delivered in deadly seriousness.

Princess / ballerina.

Lawyer / tennis-pro.

Always odd combos. Never just: policeman, teacher, bus driver, astronaut. Like neither of them could settle on what they wanted. But here was Jody, artist / housecleaner. Who says dreams don’t come true?

Unscripted moments were what their dad liked best though. Tucked around the corner capturing Elise and Jody unaware, hunched over Parcheesi or a quiz from Seventeen magazine. “10 Questions to Tell if He Really Likes You!” Focus going in and out. Elise five years older, conveying all the wisdom of the world.

Jody had wholesale bought that—the all-knowing Elise. Why not? Jody thought beneath her steamy pillow, pain gnawing her brain like a small, hot animal. Elise had taught Jody basically every necessary thing. How to play gin rummy and roller skate, what to say when a guys asks you to go out with him. How to shave your legs and do a French braid. How to make dorm grilled cheese with foil and an iron.

She heard Kevin grumbling. “Holy crap, how many of these are there?” Poor Kevin. He had had no idea the level of her dad’s obsession. Hours, my love. Days. Years. Then from the kitchen warbled a wobbly version of “Yankee Doodle Dandy.” Awesome, he’s gotten into the recital tapes. Because what a migraine really needed was a badly played flute. The voice of her dad jumping in at the end of the tune.

Jody, are you going to be as great as Jean-Pierre Rampal?

No.

She’d brought her parents’ ancient VCR from their house, too. And glory be, it sounded like it still had a little life in it. How do electronics decide when to die? It had worked at Christmas two years ago, so why not now? But rewind before that Christmas, back past Thanksgiving. Rewind more, before Halloween to find out when Elise’s body had decided to die. When the ER doctor had showed them a picture of Elise’s skeleton hung there like a moth-eaten sweater. Earlier on that night two years ago, Jody had driven to their parents’ where Elise lived in their lower level and was having serious difficulty getting out of bed. By the time Jody arrived, Elise had scrounged in her nightstand for a handful of expired prescriptions, downed a double dose of muscle relaxers and a troubling amount of Tylenol with codeine, and crawled upstairs with what she assumed must be a broken rib. Jody had joked that the ER can’t do much for a broken rib, but they’d probably keep her for suicide watch. Ha ha ha! Jody, you are hilarious. Oh, but wait . . . here comes the real punchline!

“It is a broken rib,” the ER doctor had said, looking almost sheepish. “Several actually, and compression fractures of the spine. In the setting of a previous breast cancer diagnosis the lesions are most likely cancer.”

What are you going to be for Halloween, Elise?

A ghost.

Jody rolled on her side, pulled in her knees, and clamped the pillow to her head with her right arm. She just wanted sleep, the one place where this pain might wander off and get lost. But the noise from the kitchen. Kevin banging around, pots clanging on the stove, cupboards thumping shut. Jody swatted unsuccessfully at the bedroom door, a few feet from their bed. 
                          *

Whenever Jody herself was leveled by this beast, she was also flooded with a guilt-and-pity cocktail on behalf of her mother and all of her days devoured by this hereditary phenomenon. Jody’s grandmother, too. The three of them stitched together by a migrainous genetic thread. Had there been an old Norwegian a century ago who’d hid from daylight beneath her grass roof, waiting out an agony like a needle through the brain? Jody remembered rubbing her mother’s temples in the dark bedroom, attempting kindness but squeamish about oily scalps and flaky skin. Elise had done more of this. Mothering even their mother. She’d been a champ about folding laundry and emptying the dishwasher too. But she’d really bailed on the whole grow old with your sister, hadn’t she? That had been her idea in the first place—her joke. We’ll be old widows in a house full of cats.

It’d been the same with boys—Elise delivering expert advice accumulated through a plethora of boyfriends and dates, then shaking them off until there were none left. It was a bait-and-switch Jody hadn’t expected, as she stumbled blindly into marriage herself without her older sister paving the way. The consolation had been Elise’s devotion to their parents, returning to that firstborn family trinity. The able-bodied partner to their parents’ decline. She’d call Jody to let her know what was needed. How they’d celebrate a birthday. How they’d decorate for the holidays. What the report was from Dr. Shah. What they had to avoid now. Sodium. Caffeine. Sugar. Joy.

Even in its disappointments it had been a system with its benefits. Elise in the building and Jody providing reinforcements meant staving off the dreaded assisted living that much longer. But then Elise left the building. Left the body. Or rather, the body left her.

Then Kevin was in the doorway whispering to her. Jody lifted the edge of the pillow to hear him.

“Sorry, Jodes,” he apologized. “I’m just gonna go to the store. We’ve got no noodles.”

“We need noodles?” Jody asked, bewildered and out of it.

“For spaghetti we do. Just didn’t want you to worry if you woke up and I wasn’t here.”

She heard him retreating down the hallway. Spaghetti. A wave of nausea washed over her at the thought of it. But bless Kevin and his spaghetti. That was another thing Elise had taught her—boiling noodles. They were seven and twelve. It was mac and cheese. Wait till the water boils. Then dump in the box and stir and stir so they don’t stick. Oh, and oil and salt the water. This is a life skill. You can live on boiled noodles.

Jody had tried to be the older sister for a while. Tried forcing salmon and broccoli on Elise in a late-stage effort to beat cancer with diet if chemo and radiation weren’t going to do the trick. Chastising Elise and her bag of mini mixed candy bars, Jody had pleaded, “That’s not good for you, Elise.”

“What? They’re fun-sized,” she’d answered, popping a little square of Snickers into her mouth.

“Cancer feeds on sugar.”

“Nope. It feeds on bones,” she had instructed, caramel and melting chocolate garbling her words. Easygoing Elise could be a real stubborn piece of work if she wanted to be. Almost gleeful, she had added, “Cancer is feasting on my bones!”

A point had come when Jody was grateful for any food Elise would eat, even if cancer was eating it too. Along with her bones. How does cancer eat bone?

Jody was desperate to doze off, but that was the Catch-22 of a migraine. Sometimes the pounding was so intense she couldn’t even sleep. Unsatisfied to merely vice-grip her brain, it was going to keep her from the relief of oblivion. When they’d shared an apartment after college, sometimes Elise would creep into the darkness of Jody’s room and run her perfectly manicured nails along Jody’s scalp. Sometimes it was the only thing that helped. When they were young, Elise had had to creep into their shared bedroom, too, because she got to stay up until nine, which Jody had hated. Laying alone in the dark, she would hear her parents and Elise down the hall watching Cheers or L.A . Law or 60 Minutes, laughing and chatting. Later, their mom would give Elise a kiss in the doorway of their bedroom and say, “Quiet. Don’t wake Jody.” But Jody had almost never been asleep. As a kid she could hardly sleep without Elise in the room. Even then, Elise had scratched Jody’s ill-fated, aching head. But on happier nights she had whispered their futures while they lay across the room from each other in their twin beds: I’ll marry Bo Duke and you’ll marry Luke. I’ll open a restaurant and you can seat people and wait on them. You’ll marry Ric Ocasek and I’ll marry George Michael. You’ll be a painter and I’ll be fashion designer. We’ll both live in France. Jody had always envied Elise’s fearlessness about the future.

As a kid Jody had been jealous nearly all the time. Mostly of things that had more to do with birth order than anything else. Later bedtime. Later curfew. First allowed to date. First allowed to go to a concert. Get a job. Drive. It hadn’t just been the firsts, though. Of course, no braces, migraines, or corrective insoles. And then the steady stream of boyfriends in the driveway and flowers on Valentine’s Day. More though, there had been the easy closeness with their parents. As a foursome they were all close enough. But within the unit were other pairings that were their own. She and Elise, the girls. Their parents, of course. And for five years they had had an only child. But in all of Jody’s existence, there had always been Elise. Jody couldn’t lay it all on the firstborn doorstep though. Elise had been the easy child, compliant and helpful. Riding along to the grocery store when their dad was on a mission for dinner’s missing ingredient and a gallon of milk. Coloring their mom’s hair or vacuuming before she got home from work. Swatting Jody’s finger out of her nose before their dad hit RECORD. Simmering in that family stew was the unspoken truth that while no parent would want any of their children to precede them in death, Elise was the one their parents couldn’t imagine living without. With meat, potatoes, and carrots, you have a stew. You can pick out the peas.

Jody had seen this when she returned empty-handed from the ER. Her mom’s sharp inhale when Jody had told them what the awkward ER doctor had said. Her dad’s silent staring at his feet. She’d never felt like such a failure, inflicting on both of them the worst news of their lives.

Though there had been plenty of opportunities when they were children. There was the time she and Elise had been in the neighbors’ treehouse with a pile of kids of assorted ages making spit-shake pacts to be friends for life. Then the sun began its descent and the mothers of the suburbs looked out their kitchen windows for their progeny returning for dinner. The gang had started scrambling down the long rope ladder until only Jody had been left. And she couldn’t do it. No matter how much Elise and the others reassured and cajoled, Jody had stared from that height and could not force herself onto the dangling ladder. Pretty soon reassurances had turned to annoyance and then to abandonment, as kid after kid left for their own back doors, until only Elise had remained, irritated and embarrassed.

You’re not even the youngest kid, Jo!

And still encouraging.

Come on, Jojo, you can do it! I know you can.

Finally, Elise had cut through the woods to their house where their dad was already home from work. When they came back, the man actually had the camcorder with him. The resulting video was grainy in the late-summer light, almost entirely black, as it showed the treehouse and the thick darkness of the foliage up from the ground. Only a square of light where the ladder led into the structure and to the sky beyond. The dark silhouette of Jody’s head peered down, and her dad’s voice.

Hey Jojo, what seems to be the problem?

I got stuck.

She lay there in sheets she hadn’t washed in months thinking about that memory conjured from their video-watching marathon, attempting to scratch the migraine from her own scalp. Ultimately that story had become part of the family comedy. A small mercy of their family was the ability to transform the darkly humiliating into manageable hilarity. But at the time Jody used all her grade-school strength not to cry when their dad climbed up and carried her impossibly down that ladder. She shifted in her rumpled bed. Trying not to cry can give you a real skull-splitter. Why did they call it skull-splitting? It didn’t feel like her skull was going to split. It felt like her brain was rotting inside her skull. It felt like she was dying.

In the hospital when Elise was actually dying. But hadn’t she always been dying? Weren’t they all always? Just measuring it in hopeful years instead of days? That’s what Jody had thought as they all sat around that miserable Christmas after diagnosis watching video versions of themselves ripping open presents from Christmases past. The joyful surprise never diminished but remained preserved like a new, unknown thrill every time. She’d thought, You poor little bastards, you have no idea. And then there Elise had been, after 42 years of living, suddenly dying. But of course, they’d each been doing that all along. Hey little fool, that big box in the Santa paper? Inside is a Nintendo, and the little box that came with it is Q*bert. Oh, and you will be dead in thirty years. But yes, go ahead. Be surprised.

What had surprised Jody was the lack of words, how all at once they’d had nothing to say. At the hospital when Elise was dying. The one time—if ever there was one time—to say everything and anything. Pack it all in. Every grateful thought. Every funny memory. Every scrap of forgiveness that needed to be stitched onto the fabric of their family history. But she couldn’t do it. Couldn’t admit what they were actually doing.

Instead, Jody had filled the absence with a running commentary on the bizarre, insomniac world that was hospital life. There was the overly chipper nurse who prefaced every interaction with, “Aw, honey!”

You’d think this was a diner and she was bringing us biscuits!

Or the one who delivered water every time she came in, whether they’d asked for it or not.

Good Lord, we’ve practically got a bowling alley of pink plastic pitchers!

Or the infernal monitor that hung over Elise’s bed like a monstrous TV and alarmed if she so much as stirred a toe and absolutely every time either or both of them were drifting off to sleep.

I am going to fresh-frickin’ rip that thing off the wall!

Eventually Jody didn’t even get Elise’s slim smile.

When the time came—as they say—even then Jody couldn’t muster the things that needed to be said. Elise, I love you. You were my first friend. You are my best friend. All she had kept saying was, “No, no, no, Elise, not yet. Please, what am I supposed to do?” Way to make it all about herself.

In fact, a couple days before the time came, whether Jody was ready or not, Elise had used up some of her last words to ask Jody what she thought it would be like. At first Jody, like an ass, had replied, “What’s what like?”

How was she supposed to answer that?

How would you answer a question like that, Elise?

Jody couldn’t. But in fact she had.

“Remember that time Mom tagged along for one of Dad’s work trips? I think it was Texas, and I was, like, in first grade, and we had to stay with horrible Miss Franklin and her incessantly clicking dentures?”

“She smelled like mildew and Johnson’s Baby Lotion.” Elise had said. “And she wouldn’t let us watch Dukes of Hazzard and fed us boiled chicken, and “dessert” was canned peaches? And she even made you go to bed at 7:30 and pretty much by the second day we were in her bay window every night watching for Mom and Dad?”

“Who boils chicken?” Elise had mumbled.

“Right?” Jody continued, the pressure building behind her eyes. “But then one night, the big Oldsmobile wagon turned into Miss Franklin’s driveway, and we were so relieved we were jumping up and down and hugging.”

The underwater darkness of Miss Franklin’s spare bedroom had been vivid in Jody’s mind as she retold the story, and the crying every night in the double bed under a blanket that smelled of cedar and mothballs, of Elise brushing Jody’s bangs across her forehead until she’d fallen asleep, and then the relief and joy of seeing their parents pull into that driveway.

“I think it will be like that,” Jody had said.

“Only it’ll be Jesus behind the wheel,” Elise had added, giving Jody her last slim smile.

It had been heartbreaking to think of then, but Jody had had no idea what it would be like to remember it—or anything else for that matter—a month later, head throbbing beneath a flat pillow that smelled only like her own unwashed hair. Here was another thing about the whole birth order: everyone who came before you had some identity that precedes you. But you. You only know yourself with them always having been.

That’s what killed Jody when the breath rasped from Elise one last time. Jody would never call Elise’s cell and hear her ask, Hey Jojo, what’s the poop?

Or bring Elise a Mochinut and bubble tea. Hear, Jojo, you’re the bomb! Or fret about sending her work to a gallery. Don’t worry Jojo, you’re the greatest artist to grace the earth!

Every single one of those had had a last time. She just hadn’t known it. Jody thought she was sleeping or had been when she heard Kevin again in the kitchen. The migraine had finally retreated but left her brain a razed village inside her skull. Water running into a pot. Spaghetti. She heard the pot bang. And Kevin swear. And then.

The water’s cold. But it’s fine. Elise in her kitchen.

Come on! You’ll get used to it.

They had spent summers near Eagle River in a borrowed cabin belonging to the family of their old neighbor Miss Franklin. Now Jody knew what a vintage gem that cabin had been, with its knotty-pine paneling, red gingham curtains, and fieldstone fireplace that made the whole place smell like wood smoke. But at the time pretty much the only thing Jody liked about it was the sleeping loft that looked down onto the living room. Up there she and Elise camped out in sleeping bags on twin mattresses on the floor, heard in half wakefulness their dad every morning rustling around with poles and tackle box, while the sun hinted its presence behind pine trees across the lake. From her angle at the end of the loft, Jody watched him through the giant front window march down the stony steps to the dock, then row himself away into the misty surface of the water. She wished she had a video of that. 

When he returned, and she and Elise and their mom had roused themselves, they would all eat pancakes made from a box of Hungry Jack. Then she and Elise would put on swimsuits that were not quite dry from the day before and head down to the dock themselves. Eventually their mom would follow and lay herself out on the aluminum, folding chaise, their dad not far behind, camcorder in hand. Elise always tore down the slope, charged onto the dock, and leapt into the water—indifferent to its shocking coldness.

Jody, on the other hand, had hovered miserably by the shore in her clammy, damp suit, ankle deep trying to ease herself into the icy water. She’d stand there, minnows nibbling her toes, while Elise cajoled.

It’s better if you just jump in!

Those little fish had freaked Jody out. Why’d they want to gnaw on her flat, pale feet anyway?

I can’t!

Sometimes when she hadn’t been able to take it any longer, Jody would lunge-stumble from the shore, panting with the cold, attempting to join Elise treading in the deep by the end of the dock. But the opaque murky green water farther out, the tangling weeds and lily pads, the knowledge of muskies and northern pike swimming stealthily among them, usually meant the whole venture would be short-lived at best. Jody would spend most of the week laying on the dock, hoping to draw the heat back into her body from the sun-warmed wood and to avoid the giant swooping dragonflies. Not the delicate green and blue ones that skimmed the water. No, these had been black and sausage-thick, like hot dogs with wings, and they dive-bombed Jody even when she pressed herself flat to the dock. Eventually, at the end of her rope, she’d find a big stick from the wooded slope, and then stand at the end of the pier swatting frantically and feeling miserable for knocking living things out of the air. 

That got caught on videotape, too, her dad chuckling helplessly in the background at his scrawny, helpless 6-year-old or 8-year-old or 10-year-old wielding her weapon.

What are you doing, Jojo? You look like Don Quixote!

Jody could see it from inside the memory and from without. Both the sight of herself in the distance flailing at the end of a dock and the actual thump of thick insect bodies against her skin. The child with the terrible pixie haircut and saggy swimsuit fifty yards away and the heat of the sun burning the back of her neck. The voice of their father resonant, young, travelling like bird-call across the open air and the same words crackling flatly through the TV.

There are my Olympians! Who’s going to swim to the other side?

And Elise cannonballing past Jody again and again, submerging, resurfacing, spitting and sputtering water, and swiping her wet plastered black hair back from her eyes. Elise rasping air through shattered lungs, the infernal beep beep beep of the damn monitor. Their dad calling to them. Jody pale and glowing in the sun, toes curled over the edge of wood planks, Elise treading below in the murky green.

Who’s going to swim across?

Elise calling to her.

Jojo, jump in!

I’m scared.

You’ll get used to it . . . It’s only cold for a minute!

Jody could hear Elise down the hallway, in her kitchen, calling her from the
water.

Come on, Jojo! You can do it!

But for as many summers as they had vacationed at Miss Franklin’s cabin, Jody never quite got past the fear. It wasn’t just the shock of cold or the water up her nose. Or her own weird descent into the watery darkness as she held her breath. Jody had even hated Elise in there swimming happily. As the videotapes would attest, Jody was no Jean-Pierre Rampal, and Elise had been no Olympian. But she had been a strong swimmer, plunging herself beneath the water—eyes open, frog-kicking herself long distances. And Jody had always remained on the dock wishing Elise wouldn’t do that. Jody had also wished she herself was a better swimmer. Or a braver one. Mostly, though, she had longed for Elise to come up onto the dock so they could lay on their backs and look at the bright, blank sky—only interrupted by the occasional swing of Jody’s stick. Jody hated when Elise went under. Disappeared and remained submerged so long. Too long. Until Jody began to feel the sick-sad panic of Elise tangled helplessly, hopelessly in the weeds. It was a minute. It felt like eternity. Jody standing there wavering with toe-curled, angry anxiety, debating if she’d have to—if she even could—jump in and save Elise.

But Elise had never let her down. She’d always burst the surface, like a resurrection. Suddenly. Exultant. With a gasp.

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J. V. Skuldt has her MFA from Eastern Washington University and was formerly managing editor at The University of Wisconsin Press. Her work has appeared in Every Day Fiction, SmokeLong Quarterly, and The Wisconsin Academy Review, among others.