Dolly All the Time(79)

“I think you do. And it makes me feel bad. And I’m supposed to be talking about how I feel. So would you stop acting like I’m being annoying?”

I turn to her.

“I actually practiced this conversation with my therapist. She was a lot nicer than you, playing you.”

My eyes go wide. “You’re in therapy over me?”

“Yes,” she says. “My therapist thinks you resent me, and I think she’s right. I got to go away to college and you stayed. I got to have a childhood and you worked. Dad shouldn’t have let that happen. And Mom, well, she sucks. But I can feel how much you resent me for things I don’t even know about, things that are happening now and things you did for me when I was a kid that I never asked you to do. You’ve dug into your role so deep—this whole oh-look-I-can-fix-it-all role. You don’t know who you are without it. So we stay here, stuck in this dance where you’re the hero and I’m the worst. And honestly, Dolly, no one’s winning.”

I don’t turn to her because I have tears in my eyes. And the degree to which I cannot handle her seeing me fall apart, like the literal way that would topple our precarious family dynamic, proves that she’s right.

“You took care of me,” she says. “You took care of all of us. I don’t know how I’m supposed to thank you, especially now that you won’t even let me in.”

I’m quiet for a while. I think back to the beginning of our family, before the accident. I was always pitching in with the baby or making Patsy’s and my lunches. And it wasn’t to be loved. I felt loved in our house. It was to feel safe. My mom would get up from the dinner table and go for a long walk without saying anything. She’d put Christopher on his back on the sofa and wander out into the yard to talk with a neighbor, and I’d race over to make sure he didn’t roll off. I monitored electrical outlets as soon as he could crawl. I did a seatbelt check every time we got in the car, but I wasn’t around that day. I was my mother’s understudy long before she walked away from our circus.

“I think I always knew,” I say. “That she didn’t want to be our mother. That she’d eventually leave.” I let the tears spill down my face and turn to her. “Like I wasn’t even that surprised. But I put myself away that day. I stopped wanting things for myself and started making all of my decisions for you guys. And I’m proud of it, you know? And then so soon after I finally had time to figure out what I wanted, I had Gus. I’m proud of him too. But…”

“But you never got to be selfish. And you totally resent me for it,” she says.

That sounds impossible, but it feels true. Like the place in my body where I store my anger knows this. “Maybe.” I wipe my eyes with the sleeve of my sweater. “I’m sorry.”

Patsy puts her arm around me and I let her. “I think your whole identity is tied up in doing everything for everyone. Would you still be Dolly if I brought a stupid pie?”

I laugh. “Now we’ll never know. You must hate coming here.”

“I hate coming here because I feel bad that I have my own life and you don’t.”

“I have a perfectly good life,” I say.

“In Boston? Or do you secretly want to live here? You’re here a lot.”

“Yes. I wish I could have a life here.”

“A bakery at the fish house,” she says, because your sister always knows your dream.

“Yes,” I say. “Dad is so stubborn.”

She gives me a look over her tea.

“Okay. I’m stubborn too,” I say.

“I want you to text me when someone needs something and give me a chance. I don’t want you to protect me and then resent me. I just want to be sisters. I want to joke around about Mondays and Mom coming back again.”

“We haven’t done that in a long time,” I say. I rest my head on her shoulder. “My favorite thing about myself,” I say, “is that I don’t need help. I make do. I’m someone who can make something out of nothing. This summer I loosened up on that a little, sort of pretending I was a different kind of person. I wasn’t gripping my righteousness so tightly.”

“Did you like being that person?” she asks.

“I actually felt like myself, just not so tired. Not thinking of every single other person before myself. I’d like to figure out how to be her all the time.”

We’re quiet for a bit, listening to the waves in the distance.

“Can we talk like this again?” I ask. “Like, can you call me after therapy, or in the middle of the night or whatever?”

Patsy nods. “I wish I could just stay here tonight. Jeremy’s been snoring and Maggie’s been sleepwalking, and I’m so goddamn tired.”

“This is why I live like a nun,” I say.

She laughs. “The inn is so loud. It was hopping when we got in last night, people home for Thanksgiving. Busy Whitfield was there dressed in head-to-toe silver. Shoes, dress, jewelry, though it was probably platinum.”

“Why would the Whitfields be here? They don’t come for Thanksgiving.”

“What just happened to your voice?”

“Nothing.”

“Dolly, you look like you’re about to cry. What’s going on?”