Free Time Flies by Claire Cook Page B

calling my sister, as opposed to actually calling her. Even without B.J. reminding me, I knew I had to do it. With all the amazing advances in technology over the years, there was still no more reliable form of communication than a small-town grapevine. By now someone Marion had run into at Marshbury’s only grocery store had probably already told her I’d bought a ticket for my class reunion.
    The longer I waited the worse it would be. Marion was only going to get more and more pissed off that she hadn’t heard from me. What else was new. Even as kids, I’d never been able to please her. She was always bossing me around, telling me what to do, what to wear, what to say, as if I was somehow a reflection of her .
    And when I’d finally had enough, and who could blame me, and yelled “I hate you” or threw a hairbrush at her, she’d sigh andsay, “Oh, grow up,” as if she hadn’t been the one to start the whole thing.
    Our mother lumped us both together like we were joined at the hip, which didn’t help. Girls, can you set the table? Girls, can you peel the potatoes and put them on to boil? Girls, clean your rooms—now .
    I found the way to my father’s heart by helping him wash the cars, shovel the driveway when it snowed, and load up the trunk with trash for a trip to the dump on Saturday mornings.
    “Great,” Marion would say as she flapped her hands like an idiot to make her nails dry faster. “Turn yourself into a boy so he’ll like you better than me. Be the son he never had.”
    “I hate you,” I’d say.
    “I hate you more,” she’d say. Then she’d shake her hands harder. “You’re such a child .”
    When Marion finally went off to college the year I started high school, I was delirious with happiness. B.J., who was still Barb then, and I waited until my parents were out and then rifled through every square inch of her room, the scent of our Coty Wild Musk oil overpowering the powdery residue of her Love’s Baby Soft perfume.
    I stood in front of the mirror on the back of Marion’s closet door and held up a preppy, navy-blue wraparound skirt. The ties ran through double metal loops at the sides and it had large hip pockets and a bouquet of three big tulips, two red and one yellow, appliquéd over the left thigh.
    “Far freakin’ out,” B.J. said sarcastically. “Come on, even Marion had the sense to leave that nowhere skirt behind.” She adjusted her own chocolate-brown shawl over her black Danskinleotard, then reached down to make sure the long fringe on her suede belt was splayed evenly over the right thigh of her perfectly patched dungarees.
    I ditched the skirt and threw my chevron-striped pom-pom poncho onto Marion’s bed so I had full use of both hands. I found her stash of cotton balls and dabbed my face with Bonne Bell 10-0-6 lotion from an almost empty bottle, then helped myself to a forgotten strawberry Lip Smacker. I slid her white vanity chair over to her closet and climbed up. Way in the back corner I found her old pink jewelry box tucked behind some stuffed animals.
    After I climbed back down with it, I couldn’t resist winding it up. When I opened the lid, the tiny ballerina circled to the tinkling notes of “When You Wish Upon a Star.” I hated that her jewelry box still worked and my identical one, possibly a casualty of overwinding, no longer did. I wondered if I could get away with switching them.
    I shook my head and reminded myself that Marion hadn’t been all bad. When I was a little, little girl and my mother wasn’t feeling well, sometimes she’d help me unpack my book bag after school. “Good job,” she’d say as she attached my best paper of the day to the refrigerator with one of our two identical Bozo the Clown kazoos that doubled as magnets. And then she’d get us cookies and milk and actually sit with me at the little kitchen table until we finished them.
    My eyes teared up at the memory. I went out to the garage and found a cardboard box. I gave