18

“Noise,” said Kelli.

It was pitch-black outside. Two hours from sunrise, I’d soon find out, and I couldn’t believe she was out of bed after the night she’d just had. We’d spent nearly five hours together on the bathroom floor as I’d rubbed my sister’s back and talked softly about subjects I knew would comfort her — our mother, our splendidly bearded cousin Leo, Jessica Hendy and her little boy. It was only around hour three that the intervals between spasms of retching eventually began to space themselves out long enough, like pregnancy contractions in reverse, for Kelli to raise her head from the toilet, shoot me a miserable look, and make the inevitable inquiry as to when our mother was coming home. Soon after that, I was able to pop a Gravol into Kelli’s mouth and coax it down with a sip of water. It was approaching midnight by the time the bilious desperation in her eyes began finally to fade. She even allowed herself to lean back from the toilet and rest against the wall. The toilet paper roll was directly behind her head and it made for an impromptu cushion.

Twenty minutes later I had her in her nightgown and in bed, with a big plastic tumbler of water and a bendy straw on her nightstand and a bucket from the laundry room positioned well in reach. But she’d closed her eyes the moment I pulled the covers up over her, griped sleepily when I insisted she take a final sip of water, and then conked out, exhausted.

Which was why it was so alarming she’d be out of bed and standing over me now. I went to pick up my phone to check the time, but it wasn’t on the nightstand.

“Did you puke?” I asked, scrambling out from under the covers. “Do you have to puke? Where’s your bucket, Kelli?” For a moment, I was convinced Kelli had climbed out of her own bed just to stumble down the hall and vomit all over mine.

“Broke,” said Kelli. “Brok-en.”

“What’s broken?”

Kelli abruptly sat down on my bed. She was still weak, I realized, from her night of vomiting.

“Kelli, you need to go back to your own bed.” She looked ready to sink down onto my pillow and start snoring any moment.

“Bed,” Kelli agreed, but looked irritated as if to say, What’s wrong with this one? I heaved her up and steered her into the hall. “What broke, Karie, what brok-en?”

“I don’t know what’s broken. That’s what I’m asking you.”

“Outside.”

“Outside?” I maneuvered Kelli back into bed and went to her window. The street was silent and dark except for the stretch of mellow golden pools cast along the sidewalks by the streetlights. Framed in Kelli’s window, the street looked for a moment like a stage, or a movie set — waiting for a show to start. I imagined Fred Astaire materializing out of the darkness, tuxedo tails flying, tap-dancing his way into one of the golden pools and bowing deeply.