Sisters

“What time are you coming out tomorrow?” she asked. She already missed him. She always missed him on the nights they didn't spend together, but it made the nights they did spend with each other even sweeter.

“I'll get there in the afternoon, before the party. I thought I'd give you some time alone with your sisters. I know how you girls are. Shoes, hair, boyfriends, dresses, work, fashion. You have a lot to talk about.” He was teasing her, but he wasn't far off the mark. They were still like a bunch of teenagers when they got together, they laughed and talked and giggled, usually late into the night. The only difference now from when they were young was that they smoked and drank while they did it, and they were a lot kinder about their parents than they had been as kids. Now they realized how lucky they were to have them, and how great they were.

As teenagers, she and Tammy had given their mom a tough time. Candy and Annie had been easier, and had enjoyed the freedoms that Tammy and Sabrina had fought for earlier—and that in some cases had been hard-won. Sabrina always said that they had worn their mother down, but she had held a hard line at times. Sabrina knew it couldn't have been easy to raise four girls. Their mom had done a great job, and so had their dad. However, he often left a lot of the difficult decisions to their mother and often deferred to her, which always made Sabrina mad at him. She had wanted his support, and he refused to get in the middle of their battles. He wasn't a fighter, he was a lover. And their mother had been more outspoken and more willing to be unpopular with her daughters, if she was convinced she was right. Sabrina thought she had been very brave, and respected her a great deal. She hoped she'd be as good a mother herself one day, if she was ever brave enough to have kids of her own. She hadn't decided yet—it was another one of those decisions she had decided to put off for now, like marriage. At thirty-four, she hadn't found her biological clock yet. She was in no hurry.

Tammy was the one who was nervous about missing out on having kids, if she didn't find the right guy. At Christmas, she had admitted that she would go to a sperm bank one day if she had to. She didn't want to miss the chance to have children, just because she never found a man she wanted to marry. But it was still early days for that, and her sisters had urged Tammy not to panic, or she'd end up with the wrong man again. She had done that often, and now seemed to have given up entirely. She said the men she met were all too crazy, and Sabrina didn't disagree, from what she'd seen of them over the years. She thought all of Tammy's men were creeps.

Fortunately, there was nothing crazy or creepy about Chris. They all agreed on that. If anything, Sabrina was a lot crazier than he was, at least in her reluctance about marriage. She didn't want a husband or baby yet, just him the way things were, for now, and maybe even forever. She didn't want anything to change between them.

“What are you doing tonight?” she asked Chris on the phone as she sat in traffic. It was going to take forever to get there at this rate, but it was nice chatting with him. It always was. They rarely had arguments, and when they did, they blew over quickly. He was like her father that way too. Her father hated arguments of any kind, particularly with his wife or even his daughters. He was the easiest man on the planet to get along with, and so was Chris.

“I thought I'd cook myself some dinner, watch the game on TV, and go to bed. I'm beat.” She knew how hard he'd been working on an oil company case. It was about environmental pollution, and the case would go on for years. He was lead counsel on the case, and had gotten a lot of publicity for it. She was very proud of him. “How's Beulah doing?”

Sabrina glanced at her in the passenger seat and smiled.

“She's falling asleep. She was pissed at me when I got home. I was late. You're a lot nicer about that than she is.”

“She'll forgive you when she gets to play in the grass and chase rabbits.” She was a hunter in her soul, although she was a city dog, and the only thing she ever got to chase was pigeons in the park when Chris took her for a run. “I'll give her some exercise tomorrow when I come out.”

“She needs it. She's getting fat,” Sabrina responded. As she said it, Beulah jerked awake as the car lurched forward, and glared at her, as though she had heard what she'd said and was insulted again. “Sorry, Beulie, I didn't mean that the way it sounded.” The dog curled up on the seat then, with a loud snort and went to sleep. Sabrina really loved her and enjoyed her company. “I hope Juanita doesn't attack her again,” Sabrina said to Chris. “She scared the hell out of Beulah last time.”

“That's embarrassing. How can Beulah be afraid of a three-pound dog?”

“Juanita thinks she's a Great Dane. She always attacks other dogs.”