A Deterioration
By Aarron Sholar
It was probably 10 a.m. by the time I rolled out of bed. I meandered down the carpeted steps in my PJs, the shiny wood of the railing squeaking beneath my skin. I worked late the night before, and now I worked in an hour. I was slow, just functioning enough to wander downstairs, grab some food, get dressed, and drive to work in the minivan my sister and I shared. I didn’t even get to the main floor of the house when my dad came up to me, stopping me on that final step. My dad gave me that look, the one I’d seen in movies and TV. His mouth opened: she’s been in an accident. Is she alive Is she okay Where is she What happened. A second later: she’s okay. He continues— she’d been intoxicated and took off with the van to go to her friend’s house. She would defend herself: the covid ban was just lifted so I can leave if I want. For only a couple of seconds I had to wonder whether she— my sister— was alive.
My brother pulled into the driveway; turns out he’d met her at the hospital after her car accident. He was the only one awake when at 3 a.m. that morning, when she’d called us all initially. I barely woke up to see the call but ignored it and fell back asleep. My parents of course were not awake that early; my dad worked, and my mom had probably fallen asleep just a few hours before. Plus, they turned their cell phones off at night. She was scratched up, bruised, had those little bandage strips that never looked like helpful bandages to me on her forehead. The family’s minivan was done for, the hood butt-cracked in half by a tree, the engine destroyed, but she was alive. She was standing in front of me, barely hurt. Although, I can’t remember if I gave her a hug or not.
~
At the squeak of the garage door opening, my mom, older brother, and I piled in front of my dad’s navy-blue Jeep. He opened the door and scooted out, walking over to the other side and opening the back passenger door. Through the window I caught a glimpse of a small child, short with bright blonde hair, plain blue overalls with melted M&Ms all over them, and a smile just a chocolatey as she gripped the brown pouch— three years old. As my dad unbuckled the girl and pulled her from the car seat, my mom behind me asked why he’d given her candy. Because she wanted it my dad explained. We opened the door into the mud room for him, and he walked into the middle of the kitchen and set the child down. She took off. She thumped her way towards the step-down family room, unsure about the step that would be remodeled years and years later. She turned and headed towards the dining room. She zipped past the fancy table that was only eaten on during holidays and stopped at the bottom of the cream carpeted steps. She stepped onto the first one, put her hands on the other in front of her, and crawled up. My brother crawled up after her. I watched her enter and exit every room, her feet carrying her fast enough that it looked like the chase scenes from Scooby-Doo. When she was done, she stopped at the top of the steps, silent. She just looked down at me. My brother then scooped her up to carry her back down— she must not be able to go DOWN the steps yet.
~
My mom has a picture of the two of us years later. We’re sitting on the black leather recliner we had, clad in feathery top hats (pink for her, purple for me), boas whose feathers left trails around the house behind us, (also pink and purple), and some probably ridiculous shirts that were buried deep in the costume bin. Our childish smiles say that we’re proud of our outfits, maybe because we were at least able to color-coordinate our hats or maybe because we were glad to get the praise from our mom in the form of a picture. Five minutes later, we’ll strip the purples and pinks from our bodies and put different colors on. This will continue until dinner’s ready.
~
Years later, once my brother is moved out of my parent’s house and I am one month out from moving halfway across the country for graduate school, my sister will stop coming to family dinners every night.
Where’s Annie? Is she coming?
No, she’s at a friend’s house.
~
Once a year, my family would go to Ocean City, MD for a week right before school started. My uncle and aunt would even come down from Michigan to join. They’d drive down, spend a night in our house, and then everyone would take off the next morning. My uncle and aunt would drive my sister and I down early in the morning so we could get a couple extra hours of beach time, and my mom, dad, and brother would follow a few hours later. The day before the trip to the Eastern Shore, my sister and I would sit in front of our family desktop, burning our favorite songs onto a CD to play on the drive down. Later that night, we’d eagerly stand at the edge of the driveway, peering down the street at every pair of headlights that shone at us. We’d greet my uncle and aunt at their car and carry their luggage inside.
When we were even younger and smaller, the two of us shared a bed at the beach. We’d fight over the covers and fall out of bed in the middle of the night all week (our beds back home had railings on them, and these rentals did not). As we got older, we were allotted separate twin beds. At some point, we had acquired a small speaker that slipped into the headphone jack on our iPod shuffles—I’d put my modified iPod on the end table between the two beds and play the same music we’d burned onto the CD. The songs comprised mostly of silly YouTube parodies, which I’m sure my parents were sick of hearing. One year, we even housed a pet Diet Coke can we’d found on the beach. It swam in a bucket filled with Atlantic water for the week, until we had to “kill” it before we left for home.
~
Mom got a new car; she was tired of driving the minivan around everywhere. The minivan went to my sister and I to share between me going to work and her going to school and work. We cleaned out the car right before we started driving it daily, and the filth quickly reemerged. The center console soon had a nice layer of something all over it, my sister always left half-eaten food in the car, and eventually the car began to absolutely reek of weed. If I had to drive this thing too, I didn’t want to smell it or have a cop smell it if I ever got pulled over. She began to pile air fresheners into the car, hoping to dissipate the smell, but it just continued, now amplified by the smell of flowers.
~
Dad was a loud, aggressive man growing up— if you got in trouble, you’d know it. Mix a loud father with two tiny pre-teen and teenage girls, and you get a mess, a crying and emotional mess. When we shared a room, and I’d wander in to find my sister bawling into her High School Musical pillowcase, I’d kneel by the bed. I’d talk to her, say silly things, be there for her, as my mind urged me to do. If she came in and I was the emotional one, she’d join me too.
~
One day, I was driving the two of us in the minivan. I came to a stop sign and glanced towards her as I looked both ways.
So, I met up with this guy, and I have a boyfriend—
Ooooo, what’s his name? Is he cute? Tell me EVERYTHING!
His name is Q, and he’s cute to me I guess. We just got together.
I asked her the same questions when she would, years later, reveal a boyfriend to me. One time, she even came along with me on a date while we were on the yearly beach trip. I told my parents we were going to meet up with a friend of mine from college (the campus was only 30 minutes away), and so they ventured off to have their own date night at somewhere that was too fancy for the whole family. My sister and I went on this date, walking the Ocean City Boardwalk, riding the Ferris Wheel, and eating at a local diner. She took pictures of me and this guy to commemorate just how awkward it all was.
~
Something about her changed when she started at community college—almost like her rebellious teen phase came late. This change was right before the van smelled of weed 24/7, when she started to sneak boys into my mom’s shower and raid the alcohol cabinet above the fridge while my parents were on vacation, and when she started to distance herself from me. When I moved three hours away for college, she wrote me a little note in Crayola marker expressing how lonely she’ll be now that I’m away. She would text me all the time, Skype me even. It was like we were still together at home. But once she hit college, it’s like our whole world, our connection, stopped—
~
I wait a year or two— she never reaches out to me unless I do first.
~
When I hit grad school, I try to revitalize it, our connection. But at that point she had butt-cracked the van, gone to court and complained about paying court fees, complained about the car my parents bought her so they didn’t have to drive her everywhere anymore (they refused to co-sign for her; we don’t want to be liable if you kill someone, they said), complained about paying to have a breathalyzer installed for a year, and now complains about being on parole.
~
But I still try to revitalize it— I send her a picture of AJ, my newly acquired boyfriend. He’s cute she tells me. That summer, when I visit my family, I bring him along. We meet her at the mall with her other friend. She sees me and runs up to hug me. I hug her back and step to the side, gesturing to AJ. This is AJ. Silence. She just waves and ignores him the rest of the day.
And I try again—I text her, keeping her updated on my life,
Haha so guess who accidentally
ended up with a yeast infection?
*nervous emoji*
You got that because someone was nasty
messing around down there. It’s AJ’s fault,
he should pay for the treatment.
No, if anything it’s MY fault.
I know what caused it, I just thought it
was funny, it’s not his job to pay for
my body’s needs.
He should pay for it, end of story.
And I try one final time—AJ and I return to my parents’ house for the holidays. It’s Christmas Eve, and we’ve come by the house to mingle and have some drinks. I turn the front doorknob and it’s open, so I walk right in, AJ in tow. I close the door behind us and yell helluuuu! as we take off our shoes. From the kitchen, we hear my sister: stranger danger! There’s a brief pause before we hear my mom: there’s no strangers, that’s Aarron and AJ. That night, she doesn’t say hi to my boyfriend, just like when she first met him, and she greets us with the same words and tone the following Christmas morning, but she emphasizes: Aarron isn’t the stranger, it’s the other one!
~
The following summer, I don’t see my sister once when the two of us visit. We visit the house multiple times, and the whole family even goes out to eat, but she was too busy hanging out with a friend to stop by just once.
~
Is she choosing to distance herself because she has new people to lean on?
Is it no longer cool to be friends with your older siblings?
Does she feel I replaced her with this man I love so much?
Is it because I moved states away?
Is it because I didn’t answer the call that night?
Is it because I don’t like this irresponsible person she’s become?
Is it because I didn’t and refuse to take her side of innocence regarding the minivan?
~
My parents have a literal lock and chain around the alcohol in the house now; there are cameras throughout the rooms so they can go on vacations with less worry; her little coupe car has more dents in it than when she bought it; she continues to complain about her parole—
~
When my sister gets the breathalyzer removed from her car, my parents tell me that they’re worried for her. I worry for her too, every night— every night, I am on that bottom step.
Aarron Sholar’s works have been nominated for The Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. He is a transgender writer who has pieces published in The McNeese Review, The Under Review, Sunspot Lit, Broadkill Review, and others. He holds an MFA from MSU, Mankato and a BA from Salisbury University. He serves at the Prose Editor for Beaver Magazine.