Summer of Sibling Madness

"We're not talking about this remember," she said.

I was about to deliver a rather heated reply to that. Have I mentioned that, as much as I love her, my sister and I can get into some truly incredible arguments? Anyway what stopped the tirade in progress was a knock at the door.

Adele, rolled her eyes and hopped up with a mutter about "Always when I'm eating." I was back to eating my dinner when she opened the door and twin screams sounded behind me. Spinning in my chair, I was expecting murder, death and mayhem. My sister hugging a tall woman and being hugged back was not it what I thought was going to be happening. The woman pulled back from the hug after a second, smiled at Adele. Lifted my sister's chin a little with her finger and then slapped the shit out of her!

"Bitch, if you ever try to kill yourself again ... I swear, I will come finish the job. You hear me, Adele?" The tall woman stepped past my--still holding her cheek and blinking--sister, and began to look around the room. Her eyes settled on me. "And just who is this piece of lusciousness? Have you been hiding some new man-meat from me? Doubly naughty girl."

"I'm Cody," I said, after swallowing far too much food too quickly. I got to my feet. "And you would be?"

She fluttered her long fake eyelashes at me. "Well, the boys in the band call me Mrs. Night, but you handsome can call me MaryDee." She looked over her shoulder at Adele. "Are you going to close the door, or are we going to be holding this party in the hallway?"

Adele closed the door, on autopilot, and then looked to me. She smiled, and then shook her head when I silently mouthed the word "Party?"

"Mary, this is my brother I told you about." She looked to me, and grinned at the look on my face. "I called Mary to see if she would come by and help me decorate."

"Because your sister has all the decorating skills of a penguin. Now, let's see all these ideas you've gather together. Oh, dinner, how thoughtful," said MaryDee. She grabbed the bag of tacos from the table.

As I watched the rest of my taco dinner walk off into the back bedroom with my sister and her friend, I finally started to get over the feeling I had just been steamrollered. My eyes dropped to the woman's ass, by reflex habit, just as she stepped around the corner, and out of my sight. I finally began to take in what she looked like. Black stretch denim hugging her curves like a lover, while a white spaghetti-string tank top left her with her back almost bare and her cleavage prominently displayed. Her hair, in a long Calico colored braid, was hanging out from under a military red beret hat.

Abso' fuckingly gorgeous!

That her beret had sported an "Airborne" patch slowly filtered into my reviving mind. I could hear her and my sister laughing from the backroom, and then they were coming back out into the hall.

"Yeah, I'm sure that would work. I've seen it done in a few night clubs to good effect." MaryDee paused, leaned a shoulder in against the door frame into the living room and looked me up and down. "Oh, hello again angel. Would you mind doing a lady a big favor? There is a fabric store on Lacienica, do you know the one I mean? Good, I need about forty yards of royal blue crushed velvet. Ten yards of white, and five yards of silver. And, if you think you can find something tasteful, about ten yards of white lace. Nothing gaudy, just old school granny style bobbin lace. Can you remember all that? Excellent! Here, put it on this. There should still be about a grand left on that card."

I took the silvery credit card she shoved into my hand. Looked at it, blinking, for a second then got out my wallet. I was about to leave, to go get me something else for dinner as much as anything, when I remembered.

"I won't be able to sign for this card," I said.

"Honey, I wouldn't have given it to you if that would have been a problem. The sweet gray haired ladies that work there will know who sent you the moment they see that card." MaryDee smiled then crossed to stand right in front of me. A business card appeared in her right hand with a magician card trick type flare. "If you have any problems just call me."

She winked.

With that feeling of having been railroaded out of my own apartment lurking in the back of my head, I started down the steps. I stopped as visual memory caught up with me. I pulled the Silver ... no Platinum Visa card and business card from my wallet.

"Oliver West...?"

** ** ** ** ** ** **

Over the next three days I could have gotten more rest in a New York subway station. I spent almost every waking moment, when I was not at work or at school, trying to hold onto my sanity. Between them Adele and Mrs. MaryDee Night, oh my lord, turned what had been a simple modernistic apartment into a scene right out of Elvira's Haunted Hills. A movie, which by the way, I swear was playing on repeat for most of that three days.

The black walls were just the start of things.

There were huge drapes of cloth hung from walls, draped from the center of the ceiling to the corners, laid across the backs of furniture. If it could be covered in some form of dark velvet or scratchy lace it was covered. Then the two of them disappeared for half a day and I thought I might have a break.

Nope.

"Cody," said the sassy voice on the other end of the line. "Darling, would you be a dear and come help us get this stuff up the stairs. I'm in need of a big strong man to help me move... a few things."

Take a breath. Let it out slowly.

"Yeah. Be right down," I said after a short ten count.

"Oh, thank you." All Marilyn Monroe purr. "I'll find some way to make this all up to you, I swear. You have been such a doll. Yeah, he's coming down."

Click.

Now, I want you to know that at no point have I regretting saving my sister's life. I have not regretted that at all. Nor have I regretted asking her to move in. I did ask her to do that didn't I? I can't remember. Anyway, there are no regrets about any of that. But why, oh why, did I not put my foot down over the black wall paint? That was the critical moment when my life began to go insane.

With a sigh, I stuck my feet in my shoes and headed down to help bring up ... stuff.

Hindsight it's such a bitch.

Okay, somebody rented a U-haul. Well of course they did. You can't hope to move that much second-hand furniture and thrift store finds without a U-haul. I wanted to sigh, but what was the point. I did manage to smile when Adele looked out the back of the truck and grinned at me.

"We brought dinner. You do still like Chinese, right?" She asked me as she handed out a black and silver ceramic urn. There I was leaned forward to take it, my hands full, when a hand caressed my ass right down the middle. Turning, startled, I saw MaryDee grinning at the look on my face.

"If he doesn't I might could get him something in second-generation Italian for him to snack on."

Ignoring the flirty ... woman ... I headed back upstairs with the urn. Sitting it down in the living room, I turned to go back and found MaryDee was right behind me. She sat down the headboard of an antique brass bed with an ease that showed a lot for strength in her tall frame. That face, which I had at one point thought so intriguingly sexy, was very serious.

"Cody, I want to talk for a second. About Adele."

"What about her?" I asked.

"About what she tried to do. Has she told you why?"

I shook my head. "She said she didn't want to talk about it. That it proved she was a failure because she didn't succeed."

MaryDee stood silent for a second then nodded.

"I can see how she might would think that. In her place, with the problems she had, I probably would have done the same as her. But I would have succeeded. I'm a bit more a gun-in-the-mouth type than pills and razor blades. Look, I know what drove her to that point, it's her story to tell so I won't speak of it ... but, you need to know this. You were at the very heart of it."

"What?"

There were hurried steps on the stairs.

"Hey are you two making out up here? It's starting to sprinkle. Come on, get it in gear." She sat down one of the rails of the bed then rushed back outside. MaryDee went to follow her but stopped at the door. She looked back at me and that flirty smile reappeared.

"Later," she said softly so my sister just below her wouldn't hear.

I walked to the door then out onto the landing, looking down at the two of them rushing through the drizzle to the U-haul. They were laughing. My sister was laughing. I heard the subject and my face flushed a bit.

My sister was laughing.

"I was at the center of it?" I asked myself, in a soft, breathy whisper.

A cat call from MaryDee broke my chain of thought. The lewd sexual suggestion that followed it, from my sister, was purely vulgarity. And physically impossible.

** ** ** ** ** **

"No ... no, seriously. I felt like my eyeballs were ... floating! And there I am, the ladies room was packed, with a line out the door, half way down the hall and nearly across the street to Macy's. So I was like, 'What the hell, any piss pot in a storm right?' I mean my birth certificate still lists me as being a male. So I tuck my purse under my arm and, while whistling Karma Chameleon, I walked into the men's room." MaryDee smiled and shook her head. With a twinkle in her eyes she took a sip of wine. "You could hear the guys yelping, from catching their sacks in zippers in fear that a ... lady ... might see them with their cocks out. One of them though, and there is always one, comes over towards me. 'Hey, doll. I think you wandered into the wrong watering hole.' giving me this leering smile the whole time."

Adele started to laugh giving me the clue that she had heard this part at least once before.

"He's standing there with his pants still unbuttoned, half unzipped, his tighty-whities showing in all their stained glory. He was looking at me like I'm his personal fuck slave and that I just simply walked in here to drop to my fishnet covered knees and blow his cock. So ..." MaryDee glances over at me to make sure I'm still listening. "I smile at him, slip my shoulder so the spaghetti strap slipped off down my arm and half my right tit was ready to pop out. I saunter past him, raking my hand across his crotch as I pass, to a urinal. Up flips the black mini skirt, out pops Mr. Friendly and I let fly with the longest piss of my life. And I was making sounds like I was coming, it felt so damn good to finally go. Meg Ryan, in When Harry Met Sally, had nothing on me, honey. Anyway, after I finally get finished, I turned to look and the restroom was empty. With a packed sports bar, full of beer drinking guys needing to piss, I had cleared the men's room."

My sister was laughing so hard she leaned just a bit too far in her bean bag chair and tumbled to the floor. That took me beyond chuckling to laughing myself. But then the two bottles of champagne, the better part of a bottle of rum, and two passed around joints of some exceedingly good weed could make anything funny. Hell, between MaryDee's seemingly endless supplies of bar stories, and my sister's surprising stories from her high school years, they were making my sides hurt.

Sitting on the carpeted floor in the back bedroom, Adele's room to be, surrounded by boxes that we had given up on opening about two hours back, I began to see my sister. Not as the often bratty little hellion she had been through our youth. Nor the drama princess she spent so much time being in high school. This was Adele. This was my sister as she really was. Laughing with friends. A little dark and maybe a bit twisted she might be, but a woman grown. With her twenties just a year or so from being upon her. All of her life ahead of her to enjoy ... and she tried to kill herself?

And I'm at the center of it?

Suddenly the enjoyment of this impromptu party faded from me. Why? Why had she done that? If I had been just minutes slower getting home I would be visiting a grave to put flowers on fresh earth. Mourning a sister, cold in the grave, instead of sitting and drinking with her till my head was spinning. Why? And she didn't want to talk about it? I looked over at MaryDee, she ... He? She? ... what the fuck ever! ... knew, but wouldn't tell me cause it was Adele's story to tell.

But Adele didn't want to tell it. Not to me. Not to me, who was somehow in the center of it? Bullshit!

MaryDee looked over at me and saw the look in my eyes. I saw that a lot of her inebriation was an act because it fell away almost instantly. She glanced over at Adele then back at me. After a second she nodded.

"Well, speaking of rising sea levels I've got to visit the little tranny's room." The slight stumble as she got to her bare feel may have been an act, but then she had drank at least the better part of one of those bottles of champagne by herself. Plus, come to think of it, several shots of rum. "Feel free to talk about me behind my back; I love attention from ... behind."

When she was out the room I listened to the growing silence that enveloped my sister and me. There was one of those pin drop moments, broken only by the humming of a song from down the hall. I was just starting to recognize the tune when Adele looked up at me, then away really quickly.

"I probably need to go throw away these bento boxes, before they leak soy sauce everywhere. Oh, damn." She groaned as she tried to get up out the beanbag chair and failed. "Why the hell did I eat so much chicken lo mein?"

"Adele, why did you try to kill yourself?"

She stopped trying to get up for about a second then decided to ignore me and got to her feet. I saw her start to fall and was up and next to her in less than a second. I caught her arm and pulled her in as her balance shifted. It was then that my own inebriated balance decided to play a part and, with us tangled together, we both tumbled, onto the mattress we thankfully hadn't gotten to put the bed together for yet. I tried to turn as I fell, and I felt her grab at me to try and stop her fall, but gravity and alcohol again displayed their dominance over human wishes. As the springs bounced and compressed under us, I found myself looking up at my sister's face. Her eyes were wet with tears.

She tried to pull away but I caught her and didn't let her move.

"Why?" I asked, softly but determined.

"Don't, please," she begged. I held tight, refusing to give in. She looked away unable to meet my eyes. "I was just in a bad place in my life and that seemed like the only thing to do. Leave it at that ... please."

"Was it about Kelly? I know her getting killed in that car crash hurt you, but it wasn't that badly was it? Were you two lovers?"

"No! I'm not a lesbian, Cody. Now let me up please." She tried again to move but I didn't let her. "Please!"

"I will when you tell me why?" I promised.

"Then we're never going to get up again because ... I DON'T WANT TO TALK ABOUT IT!" she screamed at me.

"Why!" I demanded.

She fell silent and looked away from me.

"Because she was in love with someone the world said she could not have." I looked over at MaryDee standing in the door, leaning against the frame, watching us. She smiled and walked over to join us on the mattress. More crashing down next to us than sitting, she put her back to the wall and picked up the nearly empty bottle of rum. "She was in love ... but couldn't tell him how she felt. The civilized world frowns upon such things, you see."

MaryDee killed the last of the rum in one long pull.

Adele sniffled and when she tried to sit up I let her, but didn't turn loose of her arm. I pulled myself up till I was sitting with Adele between MaryDee and myself. My sister looked so very nearly as pale she had in the hospital and it rung my heart. I noticed her rubbing at the two pink, crisscrossing, half-healed scars on her wrist. I grabbed her hand when the nails began to dig at the reddening lines.

"Please talk to me." I pulled her around to face me by that hand, and then kissed the fingers. "Sis, I love you ... please tell me why I nearly lost you," I begged.

Adele looked up at me like I had struck her.

A thunderous pop sounded next to us startling us both. Looking over, MaryDee was trying to follow the flight of the third champagne cork to pop tonight as it bounced off the wall. When she looked down she saw us looking at her and look a sip, wine bubbles spilling down her chin to land on her breasts.

"Here, my Lovely. Some liquid courage." She handed the bottle to Adele. My sister looked at it almost as if she didn't recognize what it was then took a long slow sip. Then a second. As she wiped the bubbly foam from her lips she handed it to me.

"You're going to want a sip, or two, if you're going to hear me telling you this," Adele said completely monotone.

"Want me to break the news, my dear?" MaryDee offered. "I can deliver the Candy-gram to him without all the song and dance."

Adele sat quietly for a second then nodded. She grabbed the bottle back from me and took a long sip, all but snorting bubbles out her nose as her mouth fizzed up too full.

"Well," MaryDee began "About a month before our silly fish here tried to put an end to every little problem, except where to send the flowers, she was at a party at my place. She was far drunker than she is now. She was all 'tears in her beer' that night. A total downer for the party, but then it was winding down by that point anyway. Anyway, I got her into one of my back bedroom so she could sleep it off." Mary reached over and took the wine bottle from Adele. "I was bringing her back a bottle of water and some aspirin for the hangover, when I heard her crying. Not in the bedroom, but in the bathroom across the hall. You see that bloody scene at your mother's house was her second attempt to kill herself."

"What?"

Adele nodded.Took a sip then handed the bottle back to MaryDee, who used it to point at my sister.

"Luckily for you my pink Lady Chic razor was totally inappropriate as a tool of self-destruction. Silly twit."

I will swear to my dying day I did not laugh. My lips may have twitched but I did not laugh. The 'eat shit' look, that Adele gave me at that point, would have been appropriate for me belly laughing on the floor, not for lip twitching. MaryDee looked back as me and nodded agreeing that it had been a silly thing to do.

"Anyway, I walk in and she is sitting on my lovely Italian marble floor trying to figure out why her wrist is so kissable smooth and not bloody. I took it away from her and got her back across the hall, then sat down to find out what the hell was going on. That was when she told me." MaryDee lifted her hand laid it on my sister's shoulder and pulled Adele to her easily. My sister laid her head in MaryDee's lap and the lady began to pet that dyed, blue-black hair softly. Adele snuggled her face into the warm skin and frilly-white seam of those "tight" denim jeans shorts MaryDee had worn today.

MaryDee looked up from caressing my sister's hair, her eyes settled on me. "She told me she was in love. I guess, her knowing all the crap I had been through in my early years, prompted her to be truly honest with me."

My sister whimpered.

"Shush, lovely. It'll be alright." Her eyes came back to me. "You see, Cody, she's in love with you." A soft smile, with neither pity nor amusement, graced her lips then. "Her beloved older brother. Quite possibly the only man, other than her father, that a woman in this modern 'dare-not-to-offend' world, could say she was in love with and the world wouldn't wave a flag to support."

I might have very well sat there for the rest of the night waiting for that to sink in had not Adele begun to really cry. After the earlier laughter tears from her were more than I could take.