Mess

92 E verything is shiny at my sister’s new house. Everything is clean and perfect. Except me. I am visiting from across the country and I am a mess. My nose is running, my eyes are dripping, I have a rash on my chest and stomach, and my back right molar is infected. I am oozing and snorting and flaking all over her new carpets and freshly painted walls. Even the foldout couch in the guest room is new, and I am drooling on her lumpy but not uncomfortable mattress and the new sheets to go with it. I suck on ice for my painful tooth and leave wet rings from my glass on the furniture. I walk around with paper towels in my pockets and in my hands, wiping, wiping, trying to remove my presence. She has five cats, and when the old one, the one that has cancer and pancreatitis and something else, projectile vomits in the bedroom, my sister and her husband just tsk and murmur, pet the poor kitty and clean. They don’t mind cleaning it up. She doesn’t seem to mind me either, but I am anxious. I am afraid to sit on the furniture. I am afraid I will leave stains on the plush-covered La-Z-Boy or scratch the cordovan leather couch. It is beautiful here and very fresh, and I am crusty. I follow my sister outside in my socks to hear her strike her new wind chimes, and they are deep and sonorous, but reentering the house I track in dead leaves and sticks. I think they are dead leaves and sticks, but when I bend over to pluck them from my dirty white socks, it seems they are the legs and wings of grasshoppers. I am a mess and I have killed things. My sister tells me I must wash my hands for as long as it takes to sing “Happy Birthday.” That is how long it takes to get them really clean. I use her name in the song when I sing, to remind myself why I am doing this, and to take it seriously. Still, when we go to the movies, she wants her own popcorn, separate from mine. I shouldn’t eat popcorn—it hurts my tooth—but I don’t want her to ask why I’m not having any, so I buy a bag and suck DIANA WAGMAN MESS 93 Wagman on each piece one at a time. Then I choke on a kernel and cough and sputter and finally sneeze in the middle of the movie. The paper towel in my pocket is very old by this time. I have wiped up many things with it. My nose was possibly the first. It is certainly the last. She loves me. I am her only sister. She is my only sister that I grew up with. I have other sisters, from my dad and his young wife, but I never lived with them. I only ever lived with her. She and I have the same mom and different dads, but she is my real sister and the others seem somehow less related. They are so young. They are almost strangers to me; they have a past I don’t share. I share my childhood with only this sister. My sister is a great teacher. She is so smart and funny; her students love her. She has gotten me a two-day guest lecturer gig at her university and her department has bought my ticket to Ohio, where she and her husband live in their new house. I am happy to be there. It is good to have even a couple of days of work and especially to come and see her. If she hadn’t hired me, I would never have made the trip to Cincinnati from my home in Los Angeles. I miss her. In class, I do a workshop with the students. My jokes fall flat. My desperation is obvious, even to eighteen-year-old freshmen from cornfields and nascar tracks. I need to succeed here, and I am too much of a mess to do it. I’ve...