Post by Ninmast on Jul 31, 2009 22:36:57 GMT -5
The musty, old mansion had been built back in the late 18th Century and smelled like it hadn't been lived in since. While it had once been lavishly decorated, all of it now sat under heavy, white sheets, like dust-laden ghosts haunting the empty rooms, but too tired to climb up off of the floor to greet the new residents. Eric's mother Julia brushed her finger over an inch of one covered chair frame and rubbed the resulting dust between her thumb and forefinger before reaching for a handkerchief from the pocket of her business suit to clean it off. “You're going to have a lot of cleaning to do,” she told her husband and three children, which elicited a group groan. And she meant it. They would be doing the cleaning, not her. No, working in the real estate as the bread winner of the family, a shining example of the modern woman, cleaning was beneath her.
“Listen to your mother,” Ken, her husband, told the three children. He plucked up a corner of another sheet to examine the furniture underneath. “Besides, you wouldn't want to actually live in a mess like this, would you?”
“I 'unno. It'd make sneezing fun.” Mai was the middle child and the least serious member of the entire family, always ready with some sort of comment for any situation. And as always, she met her father's glare with a big, cheesy grin.
June moved along the walls, examining the paintings hanging there. After a few moments, she wrinkled her nose, a sure sign the ever-demure eldest child of the Kateyo family found something out of place. “Look at these oil paintings,” she observed as she moved back and forth between them, examining them from different angles. “It's like they're hiding their faces from the painter. And they all look so sad ...”
“Oh, don't be dramatic, June,” Julia stated dismissively as she hurried on down the hall, determined to miss every single unique feature of the house just to make sure everything was in order. “They're just pictures. That was probably the taste of the owners back then. We'll see if they're worth anything, then take them down.”
Meanwhile, Eric, the youngest of the Kateyo lot at only twelve (thirteen next month, he would vehemently remind anyone who said so), followed quietly in their shadows, his hands stuffed in his pockets, until one picture caught the corner of his eye. It was of three young women, presumably sisters, sitting together on a love seat, the elder two fussing with the hair of the youngest. June was right. No matter how hard he might try, and no matter the size of the painting, the facial features of the oil painting's occupants consistently escaped his focus. Perhaps it was the lighting of the painting, or the way the unidentifiable faces held themselves, but there was also a distinct air of depression about them. All the same, Eric was drawn to the painting.
Eric loved his sisters dearly, and when they were all younger, they were as close as siblings could be. Nothing could separate them. They did everything together, and it didn't matter what they were doing. He was happy to join in, just to spend time with them. He spent his fair amount of time playing the husband in House or the butler at tea parties or dressing up dolls with them. It really didn't matter. He just wanted to spend time with them. When they started maturing, though, the group started to grow apart. They suddenly wanted to do things without him, and there were suddenly limits on what he could join in on. For the first time in his life, there were girl things for them to do and boy things that he was allowed to do. Sure, they were still “close,” or at least closer than most siblings were, but to him, the distance seemed as vast anymore as the east to the west. The sense of togetherness between the siblings in the picture, he longed for that, would go to any lengths for that, couldn't they understand that?
The rest of the family had moved on through the house and the girls were heading upstairs. Mai paused halfway up and turned back toward him. “Hey, Eric, we're calling bedrooms! Hurry up or we'll get you stuck with the tiniest little closet we can find!”
Images of a broom closet with a cot filled his mind in place of the daydreams he had been entertaining in an instant as he jumped, then bolted for the stairs.
He needn't have worried, though. All the rooms in the old mansion were large, and the room he ended up with, though lacking the french door windows of June's or the view of Mai's, was no different. It was five times bigger than the bedroom he had in their previous house. It was all sheeted over like the rest of the house, but he could guess at its contents rather easily. Though the queen-sized mattress of the canopy bed to his left immediately entering the room was covered, he could make out the bulges that suggested it was still made, and through the plastic wrapped around the wooden poles to keep them undamaged by time, he could make out flowery vine engravings up their lengths. Across the room were double doors that must have led to a closet – and, as it would turn out, a walk-in closet at that – and a covered vanity sat across from a dawn-side bay window, which in turn had a cushioned bench before it. There was a feeling about the room that he couldn't place. It escaped him like a barely-sniffed scent, faint on the breezes of time. He couldn't place it, but he liked it.
“Don't worry, Eric, we'll get all this old junk taken out of here and get your stuff moved in.” His mother had come up behind him without him noticing, peering around at the “old junk” with disgust, her hands placed on the hips of her slacks like she expected it all to march out on its own.
“What?” The suggestion of changing anything struck him as the basest of obscenities. “No! Don't!” He spun around like she was a threat to his very life. “Don't change a thing! Please!”
She patted him on the head condescendingly, treating him like a little child that didn't understand how the real world worked. “Don't be silly, dear. You'll feel better once we get this all hauled out, tear down the old wallpaper, put up a fresh coat of paint ...” She strolled past him and motioned toward the vanity. “Put a television table over there. Take out that window and put something more modern in ...” She came over to the bed and touched it as if she was afraid she might catch the plague from it. “And get rid of this pompous matchstick and get your own bed in here ...”
The idea of changing how the room looked was repulsive. Taking out that beautiful window for something as flat and unfeeling as the woman suggesting it was abhorrent. But the moment she suggested changing the beautiful bed out like it was some sort of trash, he couldn't keep his mouth shut and interrupted her before she could go any further. “No!” he cried, rushing over to stand between her and the bed like he somehow might keep her from it. “I mean, please, I like this bed.”
“Honey,” his mother sighed exasperatedly, “it's old.” She stated it like that was reason enough for them to be rid of it. Old things had no place to her. Just seeing it made her want to rip it all apart and throw in the cold, angular features of the modern world, where “art” wasn't incredible oil paintings on the wall, but twisted contortions of metal sitting gaudily in the entryway, where chairs weren't soft, elegant things to find comfort in, but rigid, unyielding things just like her, with angles never meant for the human body, and where beds were plain, horrid things, stiff and unimaginative, the only decoration permitted being a themed blanket, and only because he was still a child. He knew exactly what she had planned for this house, because she did the same thing to the last one. It had been the most miserable experience of his life. “Besides,” she added, sensing the answer wouldn't suffice for the boy, “you don't know where it's been.”
Eric set his jaw determinedly and made no sign of moving, and again, the woman sighed condescendingly, as if dealing with someone who should know better than to question her superior experience was trying. “Fine, Eric, keep it. But you're going to feel awfully silly in this horrid little hole when the rest of the house is brought up to the modern world!” And with that prediction, she turned on her black, professional heel and stormed out of the room.
It took a week to get all their stuff from their old house into the mansion, and even then, most of it stayed in boxes. It had been a relief to Eric when his sisters reciprocated the same appreciation for the way the house already was that he had expressed, and even Ken showed a backbone against his wife that rarely reared its head in her presence. By the end of the week, it was clear she was the only one who really wanted it changed, but boy, did she ever want it changed. If they had been capable of viewing the events in proper retrospect, then it probably wouldn't have been all too surprising, considering this, that she was the first.
It was a week after they finished moving in, two weeks after they first arrived, when something odd happened. Julia came home early. She rarely came home early, and she never came home crying. When Ken finally got her settled down enough to talk, she buried her head in his shoulder, sobbing. “Oh, Ken,” she cried, “they did it. They finally did it. They demoted me just so one of their buddies could get the position! You should have heard them! They didn't even bother hiding it! They were HAPPY to get rid of me! They said ...” She was interrupted by another sob. “Ken, they said they could stare at my legs just as well without having to pay me so much! They talked about me like I was just some expensive whore!”
“It's okay, hon,” he coaxed her gently. “They'll find out how badly they screwed up when they see their bottom line plummet. And until then, I'm sure you'll make plenty on the new position.”
“No, I won't,” she countered with another sniff. “I walked out. I quit, and I refuse to go back there!”
And that was the end of the discussion. She stormed off to her room and they didn't see much of her for the next several days. When she came out of the room for meals, she wouldn't talk, she ate little and mostly stared morosely at the plate, and at night, when the children passed the door, they could hear her crying all over again.
Then one day, Ken, the girls and Eric had been out on errands all day, and when they got home, it was like coming into an entirely different house. All the boxes that had crowded the hallways were gone, the sheets were all off the original furniture, which had been thoroughly cleaned, and it seemed like every crack and crevice had been completely dusted. They followed the scent of something cooking to the kitchen where they found Julia, stirring something over the stove, wearing a house dress and an apron.
She turned and welcomed them all with a bright, sunny smile. “Welcome home, everyone! I'm just fixing dinner! It'll be ready in an hour or so. I hope you're all hungry!”
The four of them exchanged worried glances before Ken stepped forward, putting a hand on her shoulder. “... Honey, are you okay? You're acting … strange ...”
“Oh, don't be silly,” she answered, waving him off dismissively. “I just got tired of moping around the house and thought I should at least be doing something productive!”
“But …” Ken fumbled. “The cleaning! And the cooking! And ...” He motioned toward her. “And the dress!”
She looked down as if to verify its presence, then looked back at him with a grin as she swished it a bit. “Oh, isn't it grand? I found it in the closet! It's hard to believe we haven't looked the clothes over in there better. They're in remarkably good condition! As good as anything brand new!”
There was nothing productive in trying to talk an answer out of her. As much as Ken probed, she had a perfectly rational, if out of character, explanation for it. Mai got bored listening to the back and forth after a bit and began to wander. She paused just outside the door, however, looking at something. She waved toward June and Eric with her hand, motioning for them to come. June arrived first, gasped, and covered her mouth with her hand. “Oh my ...”
Then Eric finally saw what it was. It was one of the pictures that had been hanging there since their arrival, one of the ones that had never been clear, this one of a woman cleaning a bookshelf. Except now, it was crystal clear, and the face of the woman unmistakable. It was Julia, and instead of seeming depressed, the entire image seemed happy, including the smile on their mother's face, preserved in oils that hadn't been touched since their creation.
Their father refused to even look at the picture, having given up on trying to discuss the point with Julia, and the next day, he went for an interview for a desk job. Not only did he get it, but not three days after he started, he happened to be on hand when the CEO was present and he noticed an error a director made in the numbers. A week later, he was sitting in that director's seat on the board. Julia made a huge meal that night to celebrate.
Eric was sitting in the hall that night, watching his sisters dance about in some of the old dresses from the closets. He wished he could join in, but there were no clothes in his closet that he could wear. The former household had all girls, and thus there were nothing but dresses in his, and he imagined he'd look right silly trying that. After a bit, he gave a depressed sigh and stood, going down the hall and gazing at the pictures to distract himself.
There was a picture in the den of a family at the dinner table that he always liked to look at, but tonight, as he came to a stop before it, the same image greeted him far differently. It, like the picture of the housewife, had sharpened in detail, showing their family sitting down to eat the meal his mother had made them. Everything was in perfect detail. He could even see the shine of the butter on the potatoes. That was when it occurred to him. The pictures weren't changing to suit the family. The family was changing to suit the pictures, the whole house. His mother had gone from practical, no-nonsense businesswoman to doting housewife. His father had been the penultimate stay-at-home dad, and now he was on the board of directors for a major business. The only question was who would be changed next?
He leaned in closer to the painting as his eye caught something else. Everyone else was rendered perfectly clear, but was it just his imagination playing tricks on him having his back to the picture or was he still faded? It was impossible to see his face, of course, though his head was turned sideways somewhat. He was talking to Mai. He remembered the conversation from just a couple hours ago clearly. She was talking about boys; she had seen some walking by the house earlier that day and thought one was cute. June had chuckled politely and told her jokingly to be careful, and Eric had piped up saying, “Yeah, they might think you're so pretty, they'd take you away from us!” To which, Mai giggled, ruffled his hair and told him he just had a sister complex. Of course, now, his part of the picture seemed so blurred that it was hard to tell where his hair stopped and the back of the chair began.
Before he could examine the picture much longer, he heard his mom calling for him, saying it was time to shower and go to bed. Like the water flowing down the drain, the short time he was in the bathroom saw the thoughts of the picture run out of his mind and he didn't think of it again that night.
And he wouldn't think of it again, not for two long weeks, until the night of his parents' anniversary. Julia and Ken were out for the evening and June and Mai were parading about in their dresses again, this time in white ones that seemed vaguely familiar to Eric, though he couldn't place where. Meanwhile, he was just staring morosely into his own closet, where, as if to taunt him, a similar white dress, clearly meant to be worn alongside the other two, hung in plain view.
Mai popped her head in the door and spotted him staring. “What'cha lookin' at, Eric?”
“Huh?” he asked groggily. He had been sitting there for so long, he felt a little lethargic. “Oh, uh, nothing, just my closet.”
She invited herself into the room, her white dress flowing about her feet to one side and cut up to above the knee on the other, and went over to the closet, taking the dress out of the closet and holding it before her. “Ooh, pretty,” she cooed. “Very Alice.” Then she got a cheeky grin on her face. “You should wear it!”
“What!?” the boy asked, shocked though he had been wishing he could do the same. “I'd look ridiculous! And it probably wouldn't fit! Look at that middle!”
Mai giggled in response. “It's called a corset, dear brother. I'm sure there's one in here. Then you can join us! Whaddya say?”
It was then that June knocked on the door, to which Mai, not even waiting for Eric to answer, “Come on in, Sis! It's just us girls!” Which, of course, made Eric blush in embarrassment.
“Girls?” June asked, bewildered by the response as she stepped inside. “Mai, what are you talking about?”
“That depends!” she chirped and held up the dress. “Wouldn't Eric look absolutely adorable in this?”
What disturbed the boy even more was how June seemed to take it as a serious question, examining him. “She can't be serious!” Eric protested. “She's crazy! June, tell her she's crazy!”
“Actually,” June countered calmly, “with a wig and the right makeup, she might be right ...”
The boy stared down at his feet in embarrassment. He couldn't believe they were actually having this conversation, a conversation about dressing him up like a girl. Then an odd quiver went through his body. He did want to be together with them, he thought. Finally, he raised his head again and timidly asked, “Do you think so?”
It was half an hour of eyebrow plucking, pulling and readjusting the corset and preparing the hair later before they were sitting on the love seat in the hall, just in front of the large mirror. As he stared down into a hand mirror, a pretty girl his own age staring back at him as he played with a lock of hair on one side while June put the finishing touches on the other and Mai explained to him the importance of the manicure she had just given him, he had the oddest sense of deja vu, but it passed quickly as he moved the mirror back and saw the three of them side by side, doing something really together for the first time in what seemed like forever. He smiled. To be together with them like this again, a dress seemed a very small price to pay.
And across the house, a picture of three sisters once seen by a boy named Eric his first day in the house cleared, all three smiling blissfully.
*E*P*I*L*O*G*U*E*
Erica turned and waved goodbye to her sisters after getting out of the car, watching them drive off before turning to look at the school ahead of her. It was her first day of Junior High, and her first day at a new school in a new town. Everything felt new and she couldn't wait for it to start. Her thirteenth birthday was in two weeks and she just knew she'd throw a big party at her new home. Her mother, ever the lover of entertaining guests, would no doubt love to make all the snacks and she and her sisters would put up decorations. She'd be the most popular girl in the seventh grade and catch the attention of all the handsome boys with a dress she was saving just for the occasion. And of course, June and Mai would be at the party.
After all, the thought of the three sisters ever being apart was inconceivable.
“Listen to your mother,” Ken, her husband, told the three children. He plucked up a corner of another sheet to examine the furniture underneath. “Besides, you wouldn't want to actually live in a mess like this, would you?”
“I 'unno. It'd make sneezing fun.” Mai was the middle child and the least serious member of the entire family, always ready with some sort of comment for any situation. And as always, she met her father's glare with a big, cheesy grin.
June moved along the walls, examining the paintings hanging there. After a few moments, she wrinkled her nose, a sure sign the ever-demure eldest child of the Kateyo family found something out of place. “Look at these oil paintings,” she observed as she moved back and forth between them, examining them from different angles. “It's like they're hiding their faces from the painter. And they all look so sad ...”
“Oh, don't be dramatic, June,” Julia stated dismissively as she hurried on down the hall, determined to miss every single unique feature of the house just to make sure everything was in order. “They're just pictures. That was probably the taste of the owners back then. We'll see if they're worth anything, then take them down.”
Meanwhile, Eric, the youngest of the Kateyo lot at only twelve (thirteen next month, he would vehemently remind anyone who said so), followed quietly in their shadows, his hands stuffed in his pockets, until one picture caught the corner of his eye. It was of three young women, presumably sisters, sitting together on a love seat, the elder two fussing with the hair of the youngest. June was right. No matter how hard he might try, and no matter the size of the painting, the facial features of the oil painting's occupants consistently escaped his focus. Perhaps it was the lighting of the painting, or the way the unidentifiable faces held themselves, but there was also a distinct air of depression about them. All the same, Eric was drawn to the painting.
Eric loved his sisters dearly, and when they were all younger, they were as close as siblings could be. Nothing could separate them. They did everything together, and it didn't matter what they were doing. He was happy to join in, just to spend time with them. He spent his fair amount of time playing the husband in House or the butler at tea parties or dressing up dolls with them. It really didn't matter. He just wanted to spend time with them. When they started maturing, though, the group started to grow apart. They suddenly wanted to do things without him, and there were suddenly limits on what he could join in on. For the first time in his life, there were girl things for them to do and boy things that he was allowed to do. Sure, they were still “close,” or at least closer than most siblings were, but to him, the distance seemed as vast anymore as the east to the west. The sense of togetherness between the siblings in the picture, he longed for that, would go to any lengths for that, couldn't they understand that?
The rest of the family had moved on through the house and the girls were heading upstairs. Mai paused halfway up and turned back toward him. “Hey, Eric, we're calling bedrooms! Hurry up or we'll get you stuck with the tiniest little closet we can find!”
Images of a broom closet with a cot filled his mind in place of the daydreams he had been entertaining in an instant as he jumped, then bolted for the stairs.
He needn't have worried, though. All the rooms in the old mansion were large, and the room he ended up with, though lacking the french door windows of June's or the view of Mai's, was no different. It was five times bigger than the bedroom he had in their previous house. It was all sheeted over like the rest of the house, but he could guess at its contents rather easily. Though the queen-sized mattress of the canopy bed to his left immediately entering the room was covered, he could make out the bulges that suggested it was still made, and through the plastic wrapped around the wooden poles to keep them undamaged by time, he could make out flowery vine engravings up their lengths. Across the room were double doors that must have led to a closet – and, as it would turn out, a walk-in closet at that – and a covered vanity sat across from a dawn-side bay window, which in turn had a cushioned bench before it. There was a feeling about the room that he couldn't place. It escaped him like a barely-sniffed scent, faint on the breezes of time. He couldn't place it, but he liked it.
“Don't worry, Eric, we'll get all this old junk taken out of here and get your stuff moved in.” His mother had come up behind him without him noticing, peering around at the “old junk” with disgust, her hands placed on the hips of her slacks like she expected it all to march out on its own.
“What?” The suggestion of changing anything struck him as the basest of obscenities. “No! Don't!” He spun around like she was a threat to his very life. “Don't change a thing! Please!”
She patted him on the head condescendingly, treating him like a little child that didn't understand how the real world worked. “Don't be silly, dear. You'll feel better once we get this all hauled out, tear down the old wallpaper, put up a fresh coat of paint ...” She strolled past him and motioned toward the vanity. “Put a television table over there. Take out that window and put something more modern in ...” She came over to the bed and touched it as if she was afraid she might catch the plague from it. “And get rid of this pompous matchstick and get your own bed in here ...”
The idea of changing how the room looked was repulsive. Taking out that beautiful window for something as flat and unfeeling as the woman suggesting it was abhorrent. But the moment she suggested changing the beautiful bed out like it was some sort of trash, he couldn't keep his mouth shut and interrupted her before she could go any further. “No!” he cried, rushing over to stand between her and the bed like he somehow might keep her from it. “I mean, please, I like this bed.”
“Honey,” his mother sighed exasperatedly, “it's old.” She stated it like that was reason enough for them to be rid of it. Old things had no place to her. Just seeing it made her want to rip it all apart and throw in the cold, angular features of the modern world, where “art” wasn't incredible oil paintings on the wall, but twisted contortions of metal sitting gaudily in the entryway, where chairs weren't soft, elegant things to find comfort in, but rigid, unyielding things just like her, with angles never meant for the human body, and where beds were plain, horrid things, stiff and unimaginative, the only decoration permitted being a themed blanket, and only because he was still a child. He knew exactly what she had planned for this house, because she did the same thing to the last one. It had been the most miserable experience of his life. “Besides,” she added, sensing the answer wouldn't suffice for the boy, “you don't know where it's been.”
Eric set his jaw determinedly and made no sign of moving, and again, the woman sighed condescendingly, as if dealing with someone who should know better than to question her superior experience was trying. “Fine, Eric, keep it. But you're going to feel awfully silly in this horrid little hole when the rest of the house is brought up to the modern world!” And with that prediction, she turned on her black, professional heel and stormed out of the room.
It took a week to get all their stuff from their old house into the mansion, and even then, most of it stayed in boxes. It had been a relief to Eric when his sisters reciprocated the same appreciation for the way the house already was that he had expressed, and even Ken showed a backbone against his wife that rarely reared its head in her presence. By the end of the week, it was clear she was the only one who really wanted it changed, but boy, did she ever want it changed. If they had been capable of viewing the events in proper retrospect, then it probably wouldn't have been all too surprising, considering this, that she was the first.
It was a week after they finished moving in, two weeks after they first arrived, when something odd happened. Julia came home early. She rarely came home early, and she never came home crying. When Ken finally got her settled down enough to talk, she buried her head in his shoulder, sobbing. “Oh, Ken,” she cried, “they did it. They finally did it. They demoted me just so one of their buddies could get the position! You should have heard them! They didn't even bother hiding it! They were HAPPY to get rid of me! They said ...” She was interrupted by another sob. “Ken, they said they could stare at my legs just as well without having to pay me so much! They talked about me like I was just some expensive whore!”
“It's okay, hon,” he coaxed her gently. “They'll find out how badly they screwed up when they see their bottom line plummet. And until then, I'm sure you'll make plenty on the new position.”
“No, I won't,” she countered with another sniff. “I walked out. I quit, and I refuse to go back there!”
And that was the end of the discussion. She stormed off to her room and they didn't see much of her for the next several days. When she came out of the room for meals, she wouldn't talk, she ate little and mostly stared morosely at the plate, and at night, when the children passed the door, they could hear her crying all over again.
Then one day, Ken, the girls and Eric had been out on errands all day, and when they got home, it was like coming into an entirely different house. All the boxes that had crowded the hallways were gone, the sheets were all off the original furniture, which had been thoroughly cleaned, and it seemed like every crack and crevice had been completely dusted. They followed the scent of something cooking to the kitchen where they found Julia, stirring something over the stove, wearing a house dress and an apron.
She turned and welcomed them all with a bright, sunny smile. “Welcome home, everyone! I'm just fixing dinner! It'll be ready in an hour or so. I hope you're all hungry!”
The four of them exchanged worried glances before Ken stepped forward, putting a hand on her shoulder. “... Honey, are you okay? You're acting … strange ...”
“Oh, don't be silly,” she answered, waving him off dismissively. “I just got tired of moping around the house and thought I should at least be doing something productive!”
“But …” Ken fumbled. “The cleaning! And the cooking! And ...” He motioned toward her. “And the dress!”
She looked down as if to verify its presence, then looked back at him with a grin as she swished it a bit. “Oh, isn't it grand? I found it in the closet! It's hard to believe we haven't looked the clothes over in there better. They're in remarkably good condition! As good as anything brand new!”
There was nothing productive in trying to talk an answer out of her. As much as Ken probed, she had a perfectly rational, if out of character, explanation for it. Mai got bored listening to the back and forth after a bit and began to wander. She paused just outside the door, however, looking at something. She waved toward June and Eric with her hand, motioning for them to come. June arrived first, gasped, and covered her mouth with her hand. “Oh my ...”
Then Eric finally saw what it was. It was one of the pictures that had been hanging there since their arrival, one of the ones that had never been clear, this one of a woman cleaning a bookshelf. Except now, it was crystal clear, and the face of the woman unmistakable. It was Julia, and instead of seeming depressed, the entire image seemed happy, including the smile on their mother's face, preserved in oils that hadn't been touched since their creation.
Their father refused to even look at the picture, having given up on trying to discuss the point with Julia, and the next day, he went for an interview for a desk job. Not only did he get it, but not three days after he started, he happened to be on hand when the CEO was present and he noticed an error a director made in the numbers. A week later, he was sitting in that director's seat on the board. Julia made a huge meal that night to celebrate.
Eric was sitting in the hall that night, watching his sisters dance about in some of the old dresses from the closets. He wished he could join in, but there were no clothes in his closet that he could wear. The former household had all girls, and thus there were nothing but dresses in his, and he imagined he'd look right silly trying that. After a bit, he gave a depressed sigh and stood, going down the hall and gazing at the pictures to distract himself.
There was a picture in the den of a family at the dinner table that he always liked to look at, but tonight, as he came to a stop before it, the same image greeted him far differently. It, like the picture of the housewife, had sharpened in detail, showing their family sitting down to eat the meal his mother had made them. Everything was in perfect detail. He could even see the shine of the butter on the potatoes. That was when it occurred to him. The pictures weren't changing to suit the family. The family was changing to suit the pictures, the whole house. His mother had gone from practical, no-nonsense businesswoman to doting housewife. His father had been the penultimate stay-at-home dad, and now he was on the board of directors for a major business. The only question was who would be changed next?
He leaned in closer to the painting as his eye caught something else. Everyone else was rendered perfectly clear, but was it just his imagination playing tricks on him having his back to the picture or was he still faded? It was impossible to see his face, of course, though his head was turned sideways somewhat. He was talking to Mai. He remembered the conversation from just a couple hours ago clearly. She was talking about boys; she had seen some walking by the house earlier that day and thought one was cute. June had chuckled politely and told her jokingly to be careful, and Eric had piped up saying, “Yeah, they might think you're so pretty, they'd take you away from us!” To which, Mai giggled, ruffled his hair and told him he just had a sister complex. Of course, now, his part of the picture seemed so blurred that it was hard to tell where his hair stopped and the back of the chair began.
Before he could examine the picture much longer, he heard his mom calling for him, saying it was time to shower and go to bed. Like the water flowing down the drain, the short time he was in the bathroom saw the thoughts of the picture run out of his mind and he didn't think of it again that night.
And he wouldn't think of it again, not for two long weeks, until the night of his parents' anniversary. Julia and Ken were out for the evening and June and Mai were parading about in their dresses again, this time in white ones that seemed vaguely familiar to Eric, though he couldn't place where. Meanwhile, he was just staring morosely into his own closet, where, as if to taunt him, a similar white dress, clearly meant to be worn alongside the other two, hung in plain view.
Mai popped her head in the door and spotted him staring. “What'cha lookin' at, Eric?”
“Huh?” he asked groggily. He had been sitting there for so long, he felt a little lethargic. “Oh, uh, nothing, just my closet.”
She invited herself into the room, her white dress flowing about her feet to one side and cut up to above the knee on the other, and went over to the closet, taking the dress out of the closet and holding it before her. “Ooh, pretty,” she cooed. “Very Alice.” Then she got a cheeky grin on her face. “You should wear it!”
“What!?” the boy asked, shocked though he had been wishing he could do the same. “I'd look ridiculous! And it probably wouldn't fit! Look at that middle!”
Mai giggled in response. “It's called a corset, dear brother. I'm sure there's one in here. Then you can join us! Whaddya say?”
It was then that June knocked on the door, to which Mai, not even waiting for Eric to answer, “Come on in, Sis! It's just us girls!” Which, of course, made Eric blush in embarrassment.
“Girls?” June asked, bewildered by the response as she stepped inside. “Mai, what are you talking about?”
“That depends!” she chirped and held up the dress. “Wouldn't Eric look absolutely adorable in this?”
What disturbed the boy even more was how June seemed to take it as a serious question, examining him. “She can't be serious!” Eric protested. “She's crazy! June, tell her she's crazy!”
“Actually,” June countered calmly, “with a wig and the right makeup, she might be right ...”
The boy stared down at his feet in embarrassment. He couldn't believe they were actually having this conversation, a conversation about dressing him up like a girl. Then an odd quiver went through his body. He did want to be together with them, he thought. Finally, he raised his head again and timidly asked, “Do you think so?”
It was half an hour of eyebrow plucking, pulling and readjusting the corset and preparing the hair later before they were sitting on the love seat in the hall, just in front of the large mirror. As he stared down into a hand mirror, a pretty girl his own age staring back at him as he played with a lock of hair on one side while June put the finishing touches on the other and Mai explained to him the importance of the manicure she had just given him, he had the oddest sense of deja vu, but it passed quickly as he moved the mirror back and saw the three of them side by side, doing something really together for the first time in what seemed like forever. He smiled. To be together with them like this again, a dress seemed a very small price to pay.
And across the house, a picture of three sisters once seen by a boy named Eric his first day in the house cleared, all three smiling blissfully.
*E*P*I*L*O*G*U*E*
Erica turned and waved goodbye to her sisters after getting out of the car, watching them drive off before turning to look at the school ahead of her. It was her first day of Junior High, and her first day at a new school in a new town. Everything felt new and she couldn't wait for it to start. Her thirteenth birthday was in two weeks and she just knew she'd throw a big party at her new home. Her mother, ever the lover of entertaining guests, would no doubt love to make all the snacks and she and her sisters would put up decorations. She'd be the most popular girl in the seventh grade and catch the attention of all the handsome boys with a dress she was saving just for the occasion. And of course, June and Mai would be at the party.
After all, the thought of the three sisters ever being apart was inconceivable.
