It never rained anymore—it sweated. Moisture hung like a curtain of milky cataracts over the day, waiting to be lifted. Dampness had oozed into the bricks of my apartment building, found its way into cracks of the bathroom, and turned the caulking black. Not quite black mold, not yet. The heaviness weighed me down, and I had to drag myself out of bed, no longer hopeful for the catharsis of a thunderstorm.

The painters had finished yesterday, and I needed to reassemble the apartment. Even after I had pointed out the blackness creeping up the walls and ceilings of the bathroom like a spider’s web, my husband Danny refused to admit he could see any problem. “The place looks fine. It’s too much work. And to do it now, ahuvati?”

I had convinced him by telling him that it would be the last time. He looked puzzled, age-earned wrinkles almost obscuring a furrowed brow, not sure if the misunderstanding was due to language differences. He’s not a native speaker.

 “What do you mean the last time? Our lease says every three years. No?”

 “No one does it every three years, ahuvi. Six is the norm in this country, sometimes seven, or even nine,” I said, speaking slowly to force a gravitas that the meaning did not warrant. He couldn’t argue with that. Assimilation depended upon following the customs as well as the laws of America—even if I made up half of them—and he was slow to assimilate.

“Ah. I see. I’ll be too old by then to move furniture,” he said, pleased with himself for understanding. Though he still didn’t get it, his soft eyes stopped me from correcting him. He was twenty years my senior, and I didn’t want to remind him of his mortality.

Language differences saved our relationship. It was easier to defuse arguments by blaming syntax rather than rudeness. In America, double negatives are sarcastic, I would say. In Israel, the meaning is not so harsh, he would respond. That night, I rolled on top of him and squeezed him as hard as I could, so eager to bring him pleasure that I almost lost the moment for myself.

“Unbelievable,” he said with a smile but eyed me suspiciously.

“What, no good?” I asked, mimicking him by making a swooping gesture in the air with my hand. He didn’t catch on, or if he did, he chose to ignore me. To him, body language was the punctuation that clarified the meaning.

“Yes. No,” he fumbled, less adept at answering questions posed in the negatives than asking them. “But why so urgent? Surely not the last time we will share a bed?”

How could I explain that anytime could be the last time? You never know until it doesn’t happen again. Time is cruel. It gives us hindsight but not foresight.

As we laid in bed, he tucked me under his shoulder, and I breathed in the lemon-scented gel he used daily in a losing battle to prop up his hair. The gel had seeped into the pillowcases and sheets and almost masked our musky smells. Danny and I were past our reproductive ages and still trying to make the baby we had been denied. But there was no better way to hold onto life or stave off death.

Relaxed, I fell asleep quickly but awakened with a jolt, and my morning thoughts turned—as they always did—to Cathy. It was the first anniversary of her death, and I was hosting the memorial service. Cathy was my younger sister; everyone called her “slow” before the PC police softened the language without addressing the problem. She was always one beat behind. Reading was difficult for her; math was incomprehensible. Where I was tall—too tall—and awkward, Cathy was soft and inviting. Where I was angular and flat, she was bendy and bosomy. The only thing she was good at was attracting boys. She was eager to please, and it didn’t take the boys long to figure out that she would never tell.

I protected my chastity, wanting the first one to be special—not one of the pimple-faced, beer-guzzling boys who pumped gas and would never leave our hometown—while Cathy gave it away to anyone who paid her the slightest bit of attention. As Cathy gained a reputation for easy sex and sloppy drinking, my embarrassment grew, and I feared the hometown gossips would assume it ran in the family.

I spent high school with my head down in my books, working for the scholarships that would enable me to leave. My mother pleaded with me to spend more time with Cathy, hoping that my solemn, studious nature would rub off of her. But Cathy and I occupied separate universes and rarely intersected. In the morning, I would catch a glimpse of her as she snuck into our bedroom, her hair and clothes in disarray, and stinking of booze. When I returned from school, which she rarely attended, Cathy was just waking up. After a quick shower, she ran out to meet her friends and didn’t come back till the following dawn.

Propelled forward after graduation, I landed in an environment where brains, not beauty, were rewarded. At an academic conference, I met Danny, and my reconstructed life was complete. We lived a life free of responsibilities—and though not our choice—free of children. When I went home for visits, I traveled solo, too ashamed of Cathy to let Danny meet her.

Though Cathy lived in our family house—the nucleus of my ever-expanding circle—she was often missing in action. “Haven’t heard from her. I think she’s in rehab again,” our mother said, in a threadbare voice and a heart worn out by too many disappointments. “Please, don’t stop reaching out to her,” she implored. But my half-baked efforts went unanswered. And over time, sporadic telephone calls, text messages, and finally, only the occasional group email formed our tenuous connection.

##

I didn’t see Cathy again until my mother’s funeral. “Please, this we must do together,” Danny had insisted. Still trying to impress the high school crowd that had rejected me, I put on the black Chanel suit—with signature braided trim and military-style toggles—I had purchased at a vintage shop. A cream-colored silk blouse and black patent leather pumps completed my look. It was the outfit I wore to university conferences and award ceremonies, not my usual rumpled style.

Cathy wasn’t in the family home when we arrived, so we played the familiar waiting game. Would Cathy be late? Would she show up at all? If she showed up, would she be high? Drunk? In a program? Off her meds? When Cathy did arrive, she was subdued and disoriented but sober.

“Cathy, this is Danny,” I said and hugged her, feeling sharp bones. She was thinner than the last time I had seen her but still had firm, friendly bosoms spilling over a push-up bra. When she smiled, her matte make-up creased, revealing the lines around her mouth. But her eyes, puffy and almost hidden by the heavily applied black mascara, were beckoning, bedroom eyes. She had reached that age—so cruel to women of the peaches and cream complexion—when the first blush of sexual attractiveness morphs from dewy to damp and finally, to putrid.

That night, as Cathy and Danny talked over cheap table wine and Pyrex dishes of casseroles, she reached over and touched his shoulder. Her way of making a point. Then she parted her lips. Her way of flirting—cheap and obvious—and it got the desired result. Danny smiled, enjoying the attention. He quickly recovered and pulled back enough to signal he wasn’t interested, but not before I caught the look on his face. Embarrassed, he coughed and looked down.

“I’m sorry,” Danny had said later that night. “I don’t know what got into me.”

“I do.” Even faded, Cathy’s charms were irresistible. “She came on to the few boyfriends I had in high school, though they weren’t her type. Just to spite me, I guess,” I said with a smirk.  

Later that night, while Danny sat on the porch smoking, Cathy came to the doorway of the room where Danny and I were spending the night. It was the bedroom Cathy and I had shared growing up. Trying to compromise between Cathy’s fondness of flowers and my predilection for stripes, our mother had selected a decorating style that neither of us liked. On the walls, bouquets of pink roses cascaded down thick alternating bands of light blue and white. In the faded and peeling wallpaper, I felt the love and hope of the mother who had never given up, and I was enveloped in a cocoon of forgiveness.

“Is it okay to come in?” Cathy asked.

“Of course,” I said softly. “It’s your room, also.”

“Not tonight. I got the couch.” Cathy said. She looked down and picked at her ragged cuticles framing chipped red polish. “I’m sorry about before.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

 “I miss her so much,” she said and began to cry.

“So, do I,” I said and reached out to hug her. I was immediately repelled by the faint but unmistakable smell of gin. “Cathy! It’s Mom’s funeral, for God’s sake,” I said, my voice shaking with rage.

If I had expected her to be contrite, I was mistaken. “Still Little Miss Perfect, aren’t you?” She shrieked and stormed out of the house.

Cathy did not return that night or the next morning, and I left without saying goodbye. Even after hearing rumors of her drug addiction and homelessness, my heart continued to harden, and eventually, it calcified. To assuage any vestige of guilt, I convinced myself that the disinterest was mutual.

##

Her death had been ruled a suicide, a deliberate drug overdose. It would’ve been easy for the coroner to have ruled her death as accidental. Many in my hometown had died from opioids. But Cathy had left a note that simply said: I’m sorry. So, for a year, she had been in purgatory because her death had been by her own hand.

By her own hand. That is what the others believed. When it’s a suicide, the death is contaminated. Services are hurried. Mourning is deferred.

“It’s a selfish act,” Danny had said. “The one who was suffering is freed of his pain. But it is transferred to those he left behind. The family, the friends.”

“Isn’t that harsh?” I asked.

“Many young men died in my country in too many wars. Life is precious. Suicide is cowardly.” My gentle Danny had revealed an impenetrable hardness.

“I understand, but—”

“. . . to give that pain to your parents, your friends.”  

“Still?” I asked, hoping for a crack.

On this topic, Danny was intractable. “It is why you suffer, no?”

##

For a year after Cathy’s death, I anesthetized myself to sleep every night, and every morning, as the soothing light of the nascent sunbathed over me, I would forget. But the relief was temporary. The sun quickly turned angry, shooting its rays like daggers to my gut, and I doubled over in pain from the relentless reminder. And for a year, Danny—with the persistent biting of a mosquito—had worn me down until I finally agreed to host the memorial service.

“Do it for yourself, for your mother, if not for Cathy,” he had said. “She had no one else after your mother died. I will help if you want. With this, I’ve had much practice.”

I bought candles and white linen tablecloths. But when Danny brought me videotapes and photos of Cathy—some salvaged from mom’s house before it was sold, and some sent in by friends—I balked. “No. Please. I can’t.” And he backed off.

The day of the memorial, Danny approached me. “The others have forgiven her for taking her own life. So now, you too must forgive her,” Danny said.

“That’s not—”

“Anger is not an emotion to nurture. It is a cancer, destroying everything—good and bad—in its path.”

“I’m not angry,” I said, in a voice so loud it belied my words.

“Then why?”

“Cathy didn’t commit suicide. I killed her,” I said, exhaling sharply.

“No.” Danny narrowed his eyes.

“I killed her. With my indifference. My selfishness. My pride.”

“Which is why … but no, sorry, no,” Danny said, shaking his head. “It was still her choice.”

“And now, it’s too late to beg for her forgiveness,” I said, lowering my voice.

Danny brought me close to him and whispered in the language I was still learning.  

“Come, ahuvati,” he said. “Let’s get ready.”

Danny had sorted through the videotapes and still photos and put them on a DVD to be projected onto a flat-screen TV. I lit dozens of tea candles and placed them on bookshelves, window sills, and bridge tables covered in white linen. Pinpricks of lights cast shadows on the freshly painted walls of glossy white. By late afternoon, the house filled up with people—floating specters of a past that wouldn’t stay buried—rattling gold and silver chains on their wrists and necks. Some were former classmates who had long since abandoned Cathy. Others were Christmas card relatives, more curious than sorrowful. And there were a few steadfast friends who had stayed in touch.

We couldn’t mourn Cathy’s death, so we celebrated her life through the gauze-covered camera lens that sanitizes the past. Cathy holding my hand as I walked her to school. Cathy getting ready for prom. Cathy wrapping my Christmas present. I struggled to remember what she had given me. Cathy wearing my favorite cardigan sweater, Cathy trying on my glasses. Me helping Cathy with her homework. Cathy and I braiding each other’s hair, painting each other’s nails. Cathy studying, with a twisted face, biting her lips, mouthing the words, blocking her face when she realized Mom was videotaping her. Cathy drunk. Cathy high. Cathy fat. Cathy thin. Thinner. Her once golden hair stringy, her eyes dull.

Danny waited until everyone had left, then handed me a box a social worker had retrieved from the bedroom of a halfway-house—Cathy’s last known residence. Cathy had covered the box in Christmas-red foil wrapping paper and tied it up with a silver satin ribbon trimmed with lace. I untied the bow and removed the cover. Danny and I sat, side by side, as I flipped through pages from newspaper and magazines—my accomplishments, my awards, my triumphs—carefully clipped and yellowed with age. A record of my life without Cathy. Local girl makes good. Fulbright scholar. Publishes first novel. Second. Wins Pushcart Prize. Cathy had highlighted in yellow every mention of my name.

“She forgave you,” Danny said, not realizing that it was the worst thing he could have said. It was a forgiveness I couldn’t give myself. A forgiveness I didn’t deserve. I needed her anger, needed to swallow it, nurture it, keep it in my belly where it could grow until it devoured me. No, thank you, Cathy. Take back your forgiveness. I don’t want it!

“I killed her. Then, I denied her the mourning she deserved. Even after death, I was cruel to her,” I sputtered.

Danny dropped down his head and shook it from side to side. “So, you must do the one thing that is most difficult for you to do.”

“And that is?”

He jerked up his head. “You must forgive yourself.”

I carefully placed the newspaper clippings into the box, returned the cover, retied the silver ribbon, and set it aside. “Not yet. Too soon. I have time.”

– Anna Zetlin