Everything Goes

         Re-no Swee-ney, Re-no Swee-ney, Re-no Swee-ney  – my shoes tapped out the rhythm of those words all the way home where my big sister Kerri would be on pins and needles waiting for the news. We’d hardly slept all week, waiting for the results of the school musical auditions last week. “With that voice, you’re a natural,” she said. “Just don’t forget that when you’re up there.” The cast list for “Anything Goes” had finally gone up today with my name at the very top. I would be Reno Sweeney – the sexy evangelist turned nightclub singer and star of the show. But from half a block away, Kerri’s furious screaming told me there would be nothing to celebrate.

         Kerri fought with her boyfriend, Erik, sometimes, but they’d never screamed at each other like this. Ragged-voiced, she kept saying, “How could you?” But he had gone silent.
    “You knew that money was for Kenzie’s tuition, you idiot. What am I supposed to tell her?”
      He muttered something that didn’t carry half so well as “idiot.”
      “Because I don’t want her to work at Waffle House all her life, that’s why.” She was sobbing now.
    Erik mumbled something else and then there was silence. The entire world seemed to be holding its breath for that sinking moment. Kerri stopped crying, and then, in a low voice that might have well been a shriek, she said, “Pack your junk and get out.”
    Erik’s voice grew whingy and placating, “Come on, baby, you know I didn’t mean that. I just made a mistake. Just give me a little time. I can fix it.” But I could have told him that when Kerri used her Very Calm Voice it was already too late. By now, my shoes had stopped tapping Re-no, and were plodding out The End, The End, The End.

         Kerri believes in new beginnings. We’ve had seven of them in three years. The first move seemed right – leaving behind the big, dark house on Lander Street where our parents were everywhere. We’d come home one spring Saturday to find the house full of smoke. Mama had left her famous lasagna in the oven. Dad had left the garage door wide open. They hadn’t meant to be gone long, probably just long enough to drop off the cake she’d been carrying in her lap. No one knows why the ancient, sure-footed Rover went through the guardrail over Innes Creek. It was a dangerous curve. Dad had always been warning Kerri and Mom about it. If anyone saw anything, they never came forward. We stayed in our memory-haunted house for a few months, but then we had to find somewhere we could breathe.

    The first time, we moved only 40 miles, but we saw them there, too. The next time it was 200 miles. But Kerri couldn’t seem to settle down. We moved two states over to the town where she would have been starting college that fall, such a pretty place. It was too painful, though, Kerri watching campus life while she worked at a dry cleaner and looked after a difficult little sister just starting high school.

    We kept moving whenever something went wrong. Maybe she didn’t like her job or maybe our apartment was crappier than usual.  Sometimes the kind of people she had always been friends with treated her like she was invisible. Whenever the world sucked, Kerri wanted a new beginning. I wonder how long we’ll be running before we end up in a different country altogether. What will she do when we are bound by continental edges? She won’t accept that the hole will be just as raw and aching wherever we go.

         I can hear her sniffling in the kitchen. She hates for anyone to see her cry. Opening the door and sneaking up the stairs doesn’t make much noise. With any luck, all the packing can be done before she comes to break the news. She’ll see she doesn’t have to tell me. That will be easier. There isn’t much to do. After a while we just keep everything in boxes and suitcases. In a few weeks it will be Fiona Hammond singing and shimmying on the chamber of commerce stage, not me. But I refuse to be disappointed; I have already learned that everything goes.