The Sisters of Glass Ferry. Kim Michele Richardson
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herself together. On a windy day like today, the river stole most of the angels’ share, the old distillery’s scent—lifted the sleeping bourbon’s vapors from its aging oak barrels and carried the breaths down the river. Her daddy and granddaddy and most of the men in Glass Ferry had worked the bourbon all their lives. The Butler family had owned the finest stills in the land, and they had all breathed and worn that angels’ share on their flesh and in their bones.
River breezes slapped against the house’s brick façade, softly fanning Flannery’s face. More than anything she wished to escape to the mud banks of the Kentucky—escape to the sweet times before her losses had started to pile up. Step onto her daddy’s old ferryboat like when he was alive, sip the glass-eyed silence of the winding, stretching river, let the sweetness of its perpetual summer lap at her dangling bare feet and calm the tangled thoughts. Hear the lazy putting of the boat’s engine as it scooted down the river. Going down there now for anything as horrible as that car, that Mercury dredged out of there—she couldn’t bear it.
A cardinal landed on the willow tree in the yard, singing to its mate. Sunlight cast soft bands across the bird’s black-masked eyes and standing red crown. A wonder lit Flannery, and she found herself holding fast to each rippled note, each light, painfully aware of the earth’s workings. Its comings and leavings and pulling sighs. Patsy’s and hers and others. It was as if she had suddenly knocked her funny bone against the sharpest corner of the world.
Flannery smarted at the realization that she, like the bird and those others who’d left the earth, maybe Patsy now too, were just blurs in a passing fury.
She could see it now and could almost welcome it without fear, and thought this would have been something fine to share with Patsy—a meaningful conversation like they’d had after Honey Bee died, a pledge given to each other before they’d given up on sisterhood.
“A dear sister,” Patsy had called her, “my best friend. Always,” on the eve of their daddy’s funeral.
How she missed them both. Wished she could say those words back to Patsy, wished for so many lost years.
Plucking up the pill bottle, Flannery tapped it onto the ledge, dulling the marvel of clarity. She lifted it higher and shook the pills. Looking at the new like that had her thinking about the old and that last day with Patsy, Danny, and Hollis, and their final moments on Ebenezer.
She shuddered as she remembered standing in the dirt just outside this very window, right there by the long-legged willow in 1952.
* * *
That night, Patsy and Danny’s double dates for the big prom canceled. Carol Jean’s mama called at the last minute and told Patsy she had put her daughter to bed after her girl fell ill with a nasty rash.
Hollis and Danny pulled up to their house to collect Patsy a few minutes after Mama pulled away. Flannery kept checking her watch, eager to leave.
“Dad said I had to drive you two to the dance,” Hollis said. “Guess I’ll suffer playing chauffer tonight since you tots don’t have your operator licenses.” He grinned at Patsy. “But I expect a nice tip.”
Patsy shot Hollis a hostile look, then just as quick sent Flannery an innocent shrug.
Flannery stood in the driveway like an ugly dogtooth weed amongst the bright sunny merrybells. An awkwardness gathered in her nyloned legs and had the gravel biting under her squeaking, grease-stained oxfords, while the party’s dusty regrets slapped at Flannery’s face and pride.
“We sure wish you could’ve come with us, Flannery,” Patsy said again, brushing ghost lint off the skirts of her endlessly layered lemon-colored prom dress and fiddling with her dipping neckline. She peeked over her ankle-length skirts down at the flirty, round-toed Mary Jane pumps, daintily angling one of her cream-colored leather shoes, with the rosette bow Mama had fashioned onto the straps, to one side and then another.
The month before, Mama had driven the girls up to Lexington to buy a pair of dress shoes for Patsy’s prom. They ate toasted cheese sandwiches at the crowded Woolworth counter and stopped at the inexpensive store, the modest Wennekers Sample Shoes.
But Patsy turned up her nose at the nice four-dollar heels Mama’d held up. Teary-eyed, begging, Patsy had wheedled Mama into trying the big store next door. Inside the fancy Purcell’s department store, Patsy found herself a “dreamy” pair—a pair that cost Mama a whole eight dollars, twice the amount she’d paid for the two sets of saddle shoes the girls wore nearly every day.
That was the Patsy Flannery now knew. All dolled up like Suzy Parker on the slick pages of Mama’s Life magazine. Patsy with the long, penny-glint, feathery-kiss curls and red bow-tie lips, in a tad-too-tight-to-be-polite sweater, looking all glam and glorious, while Flannery hid her knobby knees and flat tires behind baggy, rolled-up boy jeans and Daddy’s old shirts. Her long drab tresses swept back and ponytailed.
“A tadpole in a pond of goldfish,” Patsy had once said to another girl when she thought Flannery wasn’t around.
Patsy got all the boys, too. It didn’t matter how often Flannery stood in front of the mirror, suctioning her palms, pumping ’em, chanting, “I’m a lil’ teapot, hear me shout; fill me up, and spill ’em out.”
When Patsy turned twelve, she developed her curves. Mama had noticed and went straight out and bought a brassiere for the eldest. Patsy had her first kiss with a freshman, while Flannery was still trying for her first wolf whistle on the cobbled walks of Glass Ferry.
It used to be the girls would go to school and back on their bikes, but in the last year, Patsy caught her rides in automobiles with others.
Patsy complained to Mama that it was because Flannery’s bicycle was too loud. That the clothespins and trading cards her sister attached to the spokes supposedly hurt Patsy’s sensitive ears. “Real ladies don’t bicycle and wrinkle their skirts like that,” Patsy cried.
But Flannery knew the truth, always knew Patsy was more than happy about the boys lining up by the school walk in the afternoon, begging for the favor of toting her home, picking her up in the mornings down the road and out of sight of Mama’s prying eyes.
Most folks said they didn’t look like twins lately, and at that time it didn’t feel to Flannery like they were even sisters.
When they were little, if the kids at school saw one of them alone, they would have to ask the twin to “grin and bare it.” A school and town-wide joke and the only way to tell the girls apart. Flannery had a big dimple on her left cheek that showed only if she smiled, while Patsy’s was tucked in the same spot, only hidden on the inside of her cheek. It was as if Patsy had been in such a rush to leave the womb to claim her firstborn status, her earliness, she couldn’t even wait around long enough to let God finish filling in the muscly hole.
Lately though, everyone was stumped. Flannery had lost her dimple and couldn’t find any reason to get her smile back. And it no longer mattered.
Patsy claimed she couldn’t help it—couldn’t help poking herself into all things ahead of Flannery. It was her birthright, after all, having made her royal entrance a full eight minutes prior. Her duty to be the queen and Flannery her servant.
But Flannery had her fill of it lately, especially since she was coming into her own—her womanhood. She’d noticed the boys’ butterfly eyes lighting over Patsy, then skittering over her, before landing back on her twin. That in itself wasn’t bad; that in itself gave her hope. She was sure one day those fleeting looks would light upon her and linger longer.
Flannery had been seeing it happen a little with Wendell Black.
Still, Flannery missed her sister, the one she’d known before troubles took hold, back when they shared the same skin in matching smocks, homespun clothes, smack down to the identical socks Mama would knit for them. They’d pile into bed together even, talking sometimes until early morning or until one of them lock-jawed herself silly into a sleeping yawn.
Patsy had stuck up for Flannery. She was protective of her younger sister, even