Welcome Home, Stranger by Kate Christensen

Author:Kate Christensen [Christensen, Kate]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2023-12-05T00:00:00+00:00

Twelve

Just after six, as I’m putting a weird sort of casserole I just invented into the oven, my sister bursts in the front door. Under her leather jacket, she’s wearing a gauzy little hippie blouse over a tight white tank top and low-slung skinny jeans. Her face is tense and wild-eyed. She’s carrying a plastic grocery bag.

“Celeste,” I say, “are you okay?”

She sinks onto the couch and runs her hands through her hair, kicking off her stiletto-heeled ankle boots and stretching her bare feet onto the coffee table. She looks at her toenails as if they hold the answer, reaches into the plastic bag, pulls out a bag of Humpty Dumpty potato chips, sour cream and clam flavored, and plunks it with a six-pack next to her feet on the table.

“Dinner’s just about ready,” I say. “Are you hungry?”

“Starving.” She rips open the bag, pulls a can from the six-pack, and cracks it. Humpty Dumpty chips! Things are dire indeed.

“What are you drinking?”

“Spiked seltzer,” says Celeste. “It’s like a wine cooler, remember those? But better. Want one?”

“No, thanks,” I say, although I’m feeling tempted. I have to admit, if only to myself, that it’s getting harder by the hour to justify my self-imposed sobriety. While “No thanks” has been my reflex for years, whatever foundation it was built on has evidently eroded over the past few days, until there’s barely anything undergirding it anymore. I’m not an alcoholic like my mother was. I wasn’t even a problem drinker. I’ve always been able to stop after one or two drinks and call it a night. There’s never been any urgent reason not to drink, except that I didn’t want to give myself the pleasure, open myself to other yearnings.

Celeste collapses into the oil puddle of the couch’s back. “I don’t want Neil and the kids to come up to the camp with us. I’ve already told them.”

“Okay,” I say. “It’s your decision. But you might regret it.”

“I never regret anything, Rachel. I hated it up there. I don’t want to expose my kids to that place. And Neil, he’ll just make everything worse. He can’t understand. His family was always so perfect.”

She seems to be waiting for me to ask her something, or to respond in some specific way, as if there’s something I should know here, but I have no clue what that is. So I say, “Okay, it’s entirely your decision,” and she sighs, stares at me with evident disappointment, and shoves another handful of chips into her mouth.

For a few minutes she crunches away as we look out the window together. I figure she’ll tell me what’s going on when she’s good and ready, so I’m quiet, giving her room. She takes a swig of hard seltzer, burps loudly, and wipes her mouth on the back of her hand.

“I confronted Neil about his drinking.” Her voice is high and sharp.

I’m genuinely startled. This wasn’t at all what I expected. “What did you say?”

“That I really love him, but it’s like he’s checked out all the time.

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