Destination

She’d actually had some practice over the autumn, albeit on a dozen easy victims. When the eaves of her house were invaded by the very squirrels she once fed, Miriam lured them with peanut butter into Havahart traps that she bought at a discount with her PETA membership card. In the beginning, she drove them to the next county and released them. But when the carpenter took her on a crawl of the attic and handed her the repair estimate, Miriam quit ferrying and filled a wheelbarrow with water. After lowering the traps in, she’d look away for the time it took, singing to drown out the bubbles of distress—usually something upbeat, like Sinatra or Bobby Darin. Longer than always is a long, long time.

Yes, Miriam could kill—squirrels, anyway.

“You do remember it don’t you? That night we promised?” Estelle is staring at her.

“The actual pact? No.”

Miriam sees a salesman circling, working up to either chase them off or begin his spiel. She sits up and quickly reaches for her purse. Pulling out a pocketbook she opens it with a snap. When the man nears, she presses a forefinger into the mattress, declaring, “I’ll take it.”

She hands over her credit card, and when he begins to open his mouth, Miriam shakes her head as if regretting he won’t be allowed to speak. He slowly backs away to get his forms and run her MasterCard through his machine.

Blow-up mattress—$1,979.00. She considers the look on Estelle’s face.

“Priceless.”

“What?”

“Never mind.”

“Miriam, stop doing that.”

“Doing what?”

“Mumbling things and then refusing to repeat them. It’s rude.”

“Sorry. Where were we? Do I remember the pact? Frankly, I don’t. I remember being at Naledi and all the strange weather that year … but one particular conversation?”

Estelle sighs. “Selective memory?”

“No need to snipe. I’m not backing out.”

“But you must remember something.”

“That it was the summer after Mama passed.”

“And precisely why we agreed to spare our own children that sort of awful death watch.”

One evening thirty years before, between one highball and the next, back when they could put it away, Penny draped herself in a rocker on the porch that smelled of ozone and mice and came up with the pillow pact.

Miriam tries to recall Penny’s words, tries to conjure her voice, but memories form stubbornly silent as old Super 8 movies. She can see Penny as she was—tan and boyish in her capri pants, one espadrille swinging loose from a toe as smoke from her Virginia Slims gave shape to her stories and dead-on imitations. Had Penny spoken the words of the pillow pact in her own voice? A born mimic, she seldom used her own.

Penny loved to do the cranky Czech who ran the resort, and the vacationers that arrived each Saturday, providing new material. That year there’d been a high-strung minister in number four whom Penny imitated in stuttering, irreverent sermons. And the couple from Georgia whose fisticuffs always ended in noisy lovemaking, the husband drawling, “Who’s your big bear? Who’s Sugar’s big bear?” The dog-crazy opera singer from Ontario whom Penny did not try to emulate, preferring to wag her bottom like one of the soprano’s dachshunds, yipping and howling the score of Der Fledermaus.

“Miriam, are you even listening?”

“Uh huh.”

What words and phrases Penny spoke Miriam cannot recall, but Estelle is unable to forget. Conversely, Estelle struggles to remember Penny’s face, but not one feature will surface, she cannot envision the mouth that formed those ineradicable words.

Estelle begins again, nearly word for word, her voice enough like Penny’s to be haunting. “What if one of us was struck by lightning, stunned into a vegetable? What if one of us catches something fatal?”

Miriam is thinking of Penny’s curls bouncing as she performed her Harpo act—the minute something physical needed doing around the cabins Penny would grow mute, teetering atop tables to change flypaper, leaping to tennis-racket bats, puffing air into swimming mattresses. Penny’s cheeks always went apricot in the sun and she never wore a stitch of makeup at Naledi. They called her Pretty Penny. To her many nephews she was Aunt Pretty and is called so still, when she’s decidedly not.

Miriam’s vivid screen of memory blurs as Estelle insists, “You remember her saying ‘I’d do the same for you. If two of us did it together, like a firing squad—if two are pressing the pillow
or feeding the pills … neither can really be responsible. That’s not murder.’”

In the echo of Penny’s words, they turn to see the clerk, frozen in mid-step like a mime. Miriam motions him forward and takes the papers. She fills in an address form, signs the delivery order and folds away her receipt.

Once outside the shop, they roam to the moving walkways, glad to be carried along rather than rely on their legs. They falter some when approaching the ends, stepping off and on with trepidation, neither quite able to take the other’s elbow.

“It’s discombobulating.”

Miriam frowns. “Is that really a word?”

“I think so.” Estelle squints. “I’d been searching for a word for us … for today. There are names for such things you know—infanticide or matricide. But what about a sister? Is there such a word as siblicide?”

When Miriam doesn’t answer, Estelle looks up to discover they are gliding alongside a great span of windows, revealing her first glimpse of snow in years. It looks like plastic flakes swirling in a souvenir globe.

In the main terminal they sink down escalators and weave underground before rising back up. At the taxi queue, a digital sign loops the time and weather. As they mine their bags for scarves and gloves, Estelle shakes her head. “Five degrees! It’s too cold for jewelry.” She pulls gold clips from her ears and winces, “I’d be dying too, if I had to live here.”

Miriam secures her collar. “Is that your idea of humor?”

After they give the driver the address, Miriam closes the Plexiglas slide. They are out of sight of the airport before she rallies the courage to open the overnight bag on her lap, tipping it carefully to expose the white zippered bag within. To her horror, Estelle plucks it out and opens it. Three syringes roll onto her palm, along with one of the vials.

The liquid is a deep amber—the color of Penny’s stained fingertips. “Oh, my. This is how? I thought they would be pills. You mean we have to … ?”

“Inject Penny? Not directly, just her IV.”

Miriam gently takes the vial and syringes. “You’ve no idea how hard it was to get all this. I had to drive to Quebec.”

“No. I didn’t know. Goodness. I guess I thought there’d just be some plug to unplug if it comes to that. Some machine to switch off.”

“For God’s sake, Estelle.”

Estelle begins absently tracing circles on the glass. “Oh, Mir … I wish we could go back.”

“Back?” Miriam considers her sister’s far-off expression. “Oh. You mean summer.”