Sybil at Sixteen Read Free

in town this week, too,” Thea said. “I’m going to his family’s for Easter dinner.”
    â€œSounds charming,” Claire said. “Give them all my love.”
    â€œI think they’d prefer it if I didn’t,” Thea said. “We all get along a lot better when they forget you and I are sisters.”
    â€œIs Schyler in town, too?” Claire asked. Schyler was Scotty’s older brother.
    â€œI don’t know,” Thea said. “You never know with Schyler where he’s going to be.”
    â€œDo you ever see him in New York?” Sybil asked. She wished she knew more about Claire’s life in New York. There was a time when she knew everything there was to know about Claire. But that had changed with Claire’s elopement, just as Evvie had become less open once she’d fallen in love with Sam. Only Thea had stayed the same, and Sybil suspected Thea was unaware of how much was going on that she wasn’t privy to.
    â€œHe passed through last month,” Claire replied. “We got together for dinner.”
    â€œWho?” Evvie asked. “What? Who had dinner?”
    â€œEvvie!” Sybil shouted, and as they hugged, she could feel tears rolling down her cheeks. “I’m sorry,” she said, wiping them away. “Being such a baby. It’s just seeing you all here together. It got to me.”
    â€œWe understand,” Evvie said. “You should have seen the three of us on the plane. The other passengers didn’t stand a chance.”
    â€œFour of you,” Sybil pointed out. “Sam was there, too.”
    â€œSam was very quiet,” Thea said. “I noticed that.”
    â€œSam’s always like that after he visits his grandparents,” Evvie declared. “And what a visit it was. My first Passover seder as a full-fledged Jew. It drove them crazy. I’d been rehearsing for weeks. I knew prayers they hadn’t even heard of. They wanted to quit after dinner, but I insisted we plow through the whole thing. It takes forever if you sing every song, pray every prayer. Sam wanted to kill me.”
    â€œDid you have a good time?” Claire asked.
    Evvie laughed. “I loved it,” she said. “Not just the driving them crazy part, either, although I admit that was fun. I’ll always be the shiksa to them, at least until I give them some nice Jewish great-grandchildren. But I really felt part of something during the seder. You know how this family can be sometimes, so connected, so organic and whole? That’s what it felt like. In a funny way, it felt like coming home.”
    â€œI understand that,” Sybil replied. “This house feels that way to me, like it’s where I’ve always belonged.”
    â€œI always feel that way,” Thea declared. Her sisters stared at her. “Well, I do. I know you have Sam, Evvie, and, Claire, you’ve always tried not to fit in, but for me, Nicky and Megs and all of you, even you, Claire, you’re perfect. You are my home, no matter how many different places we live in, no matter how our lives are changing. Sometimes New York seems so big to me, or hostile, or frightening, or I think about the pressure I’m under to get perfect grades, or, don’t laugh, I think about Kip, or that house we had that year when things seemed so full of promise, and instead of getting scared, or sad, or lonely, I surround myself with you, all of you, and Nicky and Megs, and everything’s all right again. I’m home. Megs is baking bread. Nicky’s deal is about to break big. We’re playing Little Women again, and I’m still Jo. And it makes everything all right for me and I can go on.” She looked almost defiantly at her sisters, but none of them said a word.
    â€œWere things ever that good?” Sybil finally asked.
    Evvie nodded. “They were,” she said. “Not consistently, but at their best, things were