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A few minutes later, Dana let herself in the unlocked front door. Water dripped off her duck boots onto the flagstone in the entryway. She bent to remove them before walking across the hardwood toward me. “Are you sick?” she asked, looking down at me over the back of the sofa. I swiped my finger across the touch pad, desperate to click off the web page showing pictures of nurseries. Other than my best friend, Sharon, I hadn’t told anyone that Kyle and I were doing IVF. I was embarrassed to be failing at something so basic.
Dana leaned closer. I slammed the laptop’s cover down. It closed with a loud click. “Holy shit, you were watching porn.” As usual, she had an enormous grin that made me wonder if she was stoned even though she swore she’d stopped smoking in high school.
“Homemade,” I said. “Kyle and I set up a camera in our bedroom.”
“Ewww.” She crinkled her nose. Unlike mine, which had two moguls across the bridge, hers was straight like our mom’s. Looking at it gave me hope for my baby-to-be. Maybe he or she would have a perfect Greek nose too.How’s that for positive thinking, Dr.Evans?
Dana slipped out of her ski coat and tossed it toward Kyle’s recliner. It landed on the floor. Leaving the jacket where it fell, she plopped down on the couch next to me. “So what are you doing home?”
I stared at the coat, telling myself not to lecture her about what a slob she was. When we were growing up, she left cups, plates, and pieces of her clothing scattered all over every room, where they remained until my mother or I picked them up. “How did you know I was here?”
“I stopped by the office. Page told me you weren’t there.” Dana worked in the equipment-rental shop at Mount Stapleton and oftenhad a day or two off during the week because she worked all weekend. She pulled off her hat and ran a hand through her short, flattened black hair until it spiked at the top. She continued talking, but all I could think about was her balled-up jacket lying on the floor, taunting me. I jumped up, picked it up, and hung it in the closet while Dana watched me with an amused expression. “Ninety seconds,” she said. “Surprised you left it there that long.”
Eight years younger than me, my sister had been pushing my buttons since she uttered her first word. “Mine,” she had said, ripping my favorite doll out of my hands.
She waited until I sat again. “I have big news.” The gold specks in her olive-green eyes sparkled the way they always did when she was excited.
All my muscles tightened with certainty she was about to tell me she was pregnant. Wouldn’t that be something, my commitment-phobic, eternally single sister who swore she didn’t want kids unintentionally getting knocked up by a one-night stand while Kyle and I had been trying for years? I straightened my back, bracing for the blow. Dana grinned. “I’m getting a puppy. Remember that woman, Marie, I saved from choking? She breeds golden retrievers and is giving me one. Sometime in March.”
I relaxed. “She’s giving you a dog?”
“I told her I always wanted a golden, and she said she’d give me one as a way to thank me for saving her life.”
Dana had been riding the gondola at Mount Stapleton when a tourist sitting next to her choked on a granola bar. My sister gave her the Heimlich, dislodging the grainy snack from the woman’s windpipe. Dana’s friend captured the entire incident on video and posted it on social media. The local news stations all ran with the story. For a few weeks, Dana had been a big hero in our tiny mountain town.
“Will your roommates be okay with you having a dog?” My thirty-one-year-old sister lived with a bunch of twentysomethings, who, like her, all worked at Mount Stapleton during the winter. In the summer,Dana lifeguarded on the Cape. Honestly, they were jobs she should have outgrown years ago and that didn’t put the four years she’d spent studying computer science at the University of New Hampshire to use.
“They don’t care.”
“Is it a good idea for you to have a puppy? They need a lot of attention when they’re being trained. They can’t be left by themselves, or they’ll destroy your place.” I glanced toward the gnawed bottom shelf of the bookcase, which Cole had feasted on the first year we had him.
Dana fiddled with the zipper on her sweatshirt. “I’ll figure it out.”
I knew she didn’t have a plan. She never thought anything through. I imagined the poor dog whimpering, locked in Dana’s room with no food or water, or worse, left outside in the bitter cold. I counted to ten before responding and said in what I hoped was a nonjudgmental tone, “Dogs are a lot of responsibility.”
“Don’t be a killjoy, Nikki. I’m excited about this.” She jumped to her feet and bolted for the kitchen.
I remained on the couch until my desire to lecture her on how irresponsible it was for her to get a puppy passed. When I finally followed her to the kitchen, I found her standing in front of my refrigerator, rummaging through the contents. “I’m starving,” she announced, pulling a large red bowl from the back corner of the bottom shelf. “What’s this?”
I had no idea. Whatever was in the bowl was something Kyle had made when I was at paint night last week. “I’ll make you something.”
“What do you think about Deeogee as a name?” She ripped off the tinfoil covering the dish, revealing a brownish-greenish mush.
I gagged when I smelled it.
“Guacamole?” Dana dipped her finger into the goo.
Horrified, I watched her lick it clean. Maybe it wasn’t rank. Maybe I was sensitive to smell because I was pregnant? Could it have happened that fast?
Dana’s face contorted, and she rushed to the sink to spit out the gunk in her mouth. “Definitely not guac,” she said.
As I dumped the guck in the bowl down the drain, Dana returned to the refrigerator. For several seconds, she stood in front of it without opening it. A card Dr.Evans had given us to remind us of our next appointment and a New Horizons IVF magnet hung on the stainless steel door, where Kyle had placed them yesterday. My heart raced. I didn’t want my sister to see them because I wasn’t ready to tell her that I was trying to get pregnant. It wasn’t that she wouldn’t be supportive. It was the opposite. She’d smother me with support. I imagined my inbox filled with articles about how acupuncture could cure infertility or drinking apple-cider vinegar while standing on your head was sure to get you pregnant, or worse, she would relay stories about sixty-year-old grandmothers in India giving birth to beautiful, healthy babies.
“Let me make you a grilled cheese.” I wanted to get her away from the refrigerator.
“Kyle had a hat trick. Good for him.”
“What?” I bumped her out of the way with my hip so I could pull out the cheese and butter. She reached over me and tapped an article hanging on the fridge. In our sleepy small town, real news was hard to come by, so the local paper covered the hockey league Kyle played in all winter. Last week his picture had accompanied the story because he’d scored three goals. He hung it up along with the league standings that showed his team in first place. I imagined years from now his hockey clippings would hang side by side with our child’s drawings and report cards.
