THE OVERLOOK
By Tom Clavin
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There was a strong positive reaction to last week’s “At the Movies” column, and I hope readers will be okay with one more personal essay. This one is in honor of my sister’s birthday this coming Saturday and a somber 10th anniversary next week. It is adapted from Promise: A Collection, which can be found on Amazon and (I think) other online book retailers.
When I visited my sister for her birthday in May 2015, she spent much of the afternoon sleeping. Every so often her legs twitched under the blankets. She was dreaming or perhaps reacting to my voice when I tried to speak to her. I was reminded of when my kid sister was a kid.
She was four years old when my family moved out of the Bronx to Long Island. Even then, she always did things impetuously. The day we moved in, she rushed around the rudimentary ranch house checking out the rooms. She opened one door and stepped in, expecting another bedroom or closet, but it was the door to the basement. She tumbled down the steps. I heard thumping sounds and my mother screaming. My father ran down and carried her up into the kitchen. Nancy had a big, angry lump on her head. The first afternoon in our new town we spend at Good Samaritan Hospital, until she was cleared to go home.
She was a runner, because that was the only way to keep up with what she wanted to do, or she just had no choice. At ages six and eight and 10 she was all skinny arms and legs. Sometimes she would get tangled up in her own feet and go down, but she bounced back up. One day I saw her running on the sidewalk past the house, and a minute later she ran back. When I asked, “Where are you going?” Nancy laughed and replied, “I don’t know, but I’ll get there before you do.”
I was pleased with my parents for producing her. I was almost four when my father took me to the hospital to see my missing mother and new sister. Nancy didn’t look like much at the time. I would have much preferred a puppy, but she turned out to be an even better companion, especially after she learned to talk and walk and play games. We had chicken pox together and enjoyed sharing the ice cream and other attentions our mother lavished on us.
Nancy liked to laugh. She thought a lot of things were funny, sometimes to my detriment. A favorite joke we played was when the family was about to take a drive and the kids – there was now Jimmy, born 16 months after Nancy – got into the back seat of the old Chevy, my mother settled in the passenger seat, and then my father got behind the wheel and closed the door. “Owww, my hand!” Nancy cried out. My high-strung father fell for it every time. He flung open the car door and jumped, expecting to see his daughter’s hand swelling and throbbing like in a cartoon. She began to laugh. Furious, my father got in and reached back to give Nancy a slap. His aim was always off too, and as the biggest target I wound up with the red cheek.
She was quick to laugh but not to cry. In later years when life toughened her up Nancy wouldn’t cry, but even as a kid she would pick herself up after every tumble without a tear. One evening, I barely noticed she was watching a TV movie, “Brian’s Song,” and suddenly there was a strange, scary noise: Nancy was sobbing as James Caan breathed his last. She rushed to the phone on the kitchen wall to call a friend, and for an hour they wept together, a lifetime of tears shed in one night.
She had my back. I’ve always been more witty than smart in that I can be sarcastic at the wrong time. My father’s anger could intensify when he was drunk at night, and there were times when I was 11 or so when I responded . . . let’s say unwisely to something he said. He’d push open the front door and pick me up and throw me out onto the lawn, then lock the door. During the warmer months this was no big deal because I’d simply sit on the curb gazing at the sky or sometimes wander around the neighborhood until Nancy opened the door, signaling the coast was clear. But this wouldn’t work in the middle of winter nights, so a few minutes after I’d been tossed my sister would discretely go into my bedroom and open the window, and stepping on a small wooden box left under it I’d crawl in and go to bed.
Like with the car trick, my father never caught on. Nancy also did this, I think, because by then she’d really come to despise the man. A few years later, when it was my turn to get drunk and raise a ruckus, she was the one who covered for me and came in during the night to make sure I hadn’t died in my sleep.
Nancy was unlucky in love. She was engaged to her high school sweetheart, but he took a powder. She rebounded to impetuously marry a guy who turned out to not be the best provider. She gave birth to two sons and raised them and worked hard and paid the mortgage and the bills until all this and her husband’s illness really slowed her down. When he died in 2012, she was sad but stoic. The only other time I saw her cry was at our father’s funeral.
That is, until the fall of 2014, when Nancy was diagnosed with cervical cancer. She underwent months of radiation and chemotherapy, enduring the nausea and pain and going from 118 pounds to 93, returning to being skinny arms and legs. For a few weeks, there was encouraging news. Then, of all places, she was in Good Sam, weak and again in pain, and we were told that the cancer had come back with a vengeance. I took her to Memorial Sloan Kettering. When the oncologist there confirmed that it had spread, she cried. All her big brother could do was hug her and, for once, be at a loss for words. Conversations ended like they always had, “I love you,” but now there was a special urgency.
Her last few weeks were spent at a hospice facility. That is where I visited her, watching her legs twitch, remembering her run, hearing her say about where she was going, “I don’t know, but I’ll get there before you do.”
Sadly, four days after her 57th birthday, my sister did.
Tom Clavin is the author/co-author of 25 books, including, most recently, Bandit Heaven and, with Bob Drury, Throne of Grace, both published by St. Martin’s Press. To purchase copies, please go to your local bookstore or to Bookshop.org, Amazon.com, BN.com, or tomclavin.com.
Another personal column from Tom Clavin, this time about a beloved sister. Fair warning, you will shed a tear, or more.
Thank you for sharing those intimate moments. I know it can be hard.