Fried Rice

The nuns at St. William’s finally came up with a system they thought was fair. Instead of keeping kids strictly with their grade level, they started separating us by how we tested in Math and English. If you were ahead, you moved ahead. If you struggled, everybody found out about that too.

I was one of the smart kids in my class. In sixth grade I had a 95.2 average and a D-minus in conduct. I was smart, but I was no nun’s idea of a pleasure to have in class. I was mouthy, restless, difficult, funny, disruptive, and resistant to authority, which is exactly what Sister Seraphim wrote on my sixth-grade report card.

Then Kathleen ruined everything. She was two grades behind me, but after the testing they bumped her straight into my classes. Just like that, my little sister was sitting there with the older kids like she belonged there more than I did. Of course she did. That was Kathleen, a complete pain in my ass.

Kathleen could always read. She could read before I could, and I could read at four years old. The first class we had together was brutal. I was in seventh grade and she was in fifth, but not in English. We were both in eighth-grade reading, struggling through some Civil War novel called Across Five Aprils. On tests, I’d get a 92, she’d get a 95. Or I’d get a 95 and she’d get 100. Dammit.

When she was in 8th grade our nuns decided we’d have a teen choir complete with groovy songs like “Sons of God” led by our principal, Sister William Marie, aka Big Bill. Kathleen took guitar lessons in school and would proudly walk up the aisle of church with the guitar slung over her back like she was James fucking Taylor.

The summer I was going into my junior year at Bishop Timon, Kathleen missed a full scholarship to Mount Mercy by one spot. We were disappointed for her. My father decided that if they couldn’t afford Catholic high school for Kathleen, they shouldn’t pay for mine either. He told me that it wouldn’t be fair to her if they continued to pay for my tuition if they weren’t going to pay for hers. So, either I would have to transfer to West Seneca or pay the tuition myself.

“What? I’m fucking 15 years old. What the fuck? How the hell am I going to do that?”

Whatever means necessary. I did.

When Kathleen was a sophomore, my classmate Joe Metzger asked her to our senior prom.

I couldn’t even do prom without her being there.

At some family party years later, we were talking about that prom because I’d had an allergy attack that night. Kathleen remembered she had Allerest for me and that it was a holy day of obligation and we all skipped mass because we forgot it was Thursday.

I said, “Jesus Christ, Kathleen, how do you remember all that shit?” Meanwhile, I was trying to remember where I left my car keys.

At home, my mother would leave instructions before work about dinner. We had our usual things to cook – spaghetti and meatballs, meatloaf, chili, soup. Kathleen, theoretically, was in charge. She somehow managed to pawn the responsibility off on one of the younger kids while she disappeared into her room listening to Gene Pitney records that nobody else in America under seventy seemed to enjoy. A Town Without Pity? What the hell?

She liked sappy ass songs like, “Sylvia’s Mother says Sylvia’s busy, too busy to come to the phone.” Kathleen liked songs that sounded like they were playing while somebody got a Dear John letter at a train station.

You know how many times we went to McDonalds? Once a year. My mom would wake us up at about 6 in the morning on the 3rd of July and pile all of six us kids in her ’65 Rambler and go to the U-PICK for strawberries. She had precise instructions. Make sure they’re all ripe. No white in them at all. Don’t pick the big ones, the little ones fill the baskets better. Make sure you pile them high. No flat baskets. We’d pick all morning. Then we’d go to McDonalds. After McDonalds, we’d go process them into jam or cut up and filled in freezer bags for pies and strawberry shortcake.

One year, Kathleen somehow managed to pass out in the car after attempting to pick in the sun for a couple of hours and got excused from future trips permanently.

It was one of the great strategic victories in family history.

Cooking wasn’t Kathleen’s thing. But it was a family thing. Nobody had the money to have anything catered. Weddings, funerals, graduations, big parties—we cooked. German potato salad. Pineapple upside-down cake. Shrimp fried rice. Roasts. And for the relish tray, my mom’s homemade dill pickles were the only thing that mattered.

Kathleen brought the napkins.

She wasn’t shy. She was quiet. The rest of us were loud. Loud opinions. Loud arguments. Loud laughter. In a room full of us kids, the person telling the joke was usually the one laughing hardest. Kathleen would sit there with her arms folded across her stomach while the rest of us carried on. Then this smile would slowly spread across her face and she’d start silently shaking before finally letting out this little gasp when she couldn’t hold it in anymore.

Her daughters noticed it first. She couldn’t remember words like apple. Her checkup was devastating. It was known as Pick’s Disease or early onset dementia. I had an inkling of what was in store because I had a high school classmate die of the same disease – he choked to death on a ham sandwich because he forgot how to swallow.

Now my sister had it.

She beat me on every test. She could read before she could walk. She remembered a Thursday holy day of obligation from forty years ago when I couldn’t find my own car keys. And the disease took her words first. Not her memory. Her words.

I wondered about some of the instances of our recent past, for example, her arguing with my mom about whether to take leftovers home. She was supposed to lay out my mom’s medications while my mother was dealing with dementia as well. Sometimes they’d been forgotten. She was Alma’s primary caregiver and needed care herself. And yes, I was mad at her. How could you forget mom’s medication?

It was not a rapid decline. It was slow and it was noticeable. She knew who her daughters were, knew her grandchildren, but wasn’t paying attention to one of them getting too close to the pool.

I went for a visit in the summer and helped her get a plate together. I had to ask yes/no questions. Chicken? Yes. BBQ sauce? No. Salad? Yes. Corn? Yes. Macaroni Salad? No. Coke? Yes. You get the drift.

I got newfound respect for my brother-in-law, the same guy who took her to prom almost 40 years earlier. He took care of her and wouldn’t leave her side. I don’t know where he found the strength to do what he did.

Kathleen couldn’t say a word, but I saw it in her eyes anyway — that same look she always had, like she knew something the rest of us didn’t.

At the funeral, our sister delivered the most beautiful eulogy I’d ever heard.

I made the fried rice.