Sisterly Love is a serialized novel. To savor the full narrative experience, start at the beginning and work through the chapters in order. You can find chapters on the Home page or in the Archive.
CHAPTER 30
When Summer entered the noisy breakfast room the next morning, she saw a guitar perched on the seat opposite Alan. Someone with shoulder-length hair was seated next to it. She approached the table and saw that Rose, Alan, and the stranger were deep in conversation.
“Here she is,” said Rose jumping up. “I want you to meet Jem,” she said to Summer, holding out an arm toward the stranger. “Brand New Day’s rhythm guitarist.”
Jem got up. He ran his fingers through a heavy mop of gray-streaked chestnut curls.
“It’s a pleasure,” said Summer, extending her hand. “Rose speaks highly of you.”
“Let me free up that chair,” said Jem, clasping the neck of the guitar.
Summer watched him gently cradle the instrument in both hands, as if supporting a newborn baby. He lifted it high over the table. A beam of sunlight caught its shiny hue.
“What a beautiful piece,” said Summer.
“It’s a Pensa MK-1,” Rose offered.
“That sounds dangerous,” Summer said to Jem, unwilling to look her sister in the eye—though Rose had called her in her room late last night, her apology for Sofia had seemed more obligatory than sincere, and Summer was still smarting from the event.
“Only if you don’t treat her with respect,” said Jem, lovingly running a hand over the guitar’s smooth mahogany body.
“Jem’s friend made it for him, right here in Soho,” said Rose. “He won’t let anyone else make repairs to it.”
Summer took the seat next to Jem and expressed surprise that the instrument had been handmade. She thought guitars rolled off an assembly line somewhere in China, but she did not want to appear ignorant, so she asked if it was true that the first chord guitarists learn is E minor. Jem said it was, and seemed pleasantly surprised by the question. He added that it was the reason he started new guitar students on Horse With No Name.
“It gives the chords purpose,” he said, “as the song transitions.”
Summer wasn’t sure she followed, so Jem laid the Pensa across his lap and demonstrated, nodding each transition as he sang: I’ve been through the desert on a horse with no name / It felt good to be out of the rain /
Rose joined in: In the desert you can remember your name / ‘Cause there ain’t no one for to give you no pain
And then Summer: / La, la, la, la, la, la, la...
They laughed. Alan looked relieved as Jem snuggled the Pensa back in beside him, fussing until it rested comfortably against his thigh. The server took their orders, then Jem asked Summer if she was musical like her sister. Summer shot a glance at Rose, who was whispering to Alan and had not heard Jem’s question.
“Rose is the virtuoso in the family,” she began then because she didn’t want to appear deferential to her sister she added that she, Summer, had a penchant for the pen and wrote short stories and poetry, although she was unpublished.
Jem said he liked words but getting them from his head onto paper didn’t come naturally. He told her he had penned a song, some years ago, that had made it into the pop charts but even that “small success” had not quelled an anxiety he had never been able to shed about his songwriting being, he felt, “compromised by a lack of wordsmithmanship.”
“If there is such a word?” he asked, his brown eyes smiling.
Summer assured him there could easily be and that, while wordsmithmanship might not be locatable in the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, authors invented words all the time. She gave as an example the word serendipity, coined, she explained, by Horace Walpole who created the noun from the Persian fairy tale The Three Princes of Serendip—
“Ah, yes. The Princes of Serendip!” Jem repeated with a hint of enthusiasm, “and all those accidental discoveries that worked in their favor!”
“That’s the one,” Summer agreed, surprised at how much she was enjoying Jem’s charm.
Their meals arrived. Jem sliced his fork through a deck of pancakes then leaned toward Summer and asked if she would permit him to inquire about her work as a speechwriter. Rose, he said, had mentioned it.
Summer nodded, “Please.”
Jem said he’d read a book by Martin Luther King Jr.’s speechwriter, who claimed to have been heavily influenced by the lyrical language in the King James Bible.
“They were,” Jem said, “Sui generis,” referring to King’s speeches.
Summer agreed they were indeed in a league of their own. Then she admitted that she had not had occasion to deploy the scriptures in anything she had crafted for Australia’s first woman Prime Minister.
“It’s a different kind of politics, downunder—“ she began.
“Ah, yes,” Alan said, pouring syrup over his bacon, “a much less reliable system, wouldn’t you say, Jem?”
“How so?” asked Summer.
“Anyone can rise to prominence in Australia,” said Alan, “because you only need the support of a small number of people in your party.”
“That’s right,” said Summer, “but if they don’t do a good job the parliament can vote no confidence and get rid of them.”
“Whereas here,” Alan said, “the President is voted in by the people, and the legislative branch can’t do anything to the President.”
Alan said this to Jem, who was spearing a strawberry with his fork and made no response. Alan took his silence as consent and pressed on.
“My point is that we have a better system here because the country gets to directly choose the President, the President gets a guaranteed term to fulfill his mandate, and Congress can’t take it away.”
“His or her mandate,” Summer corrected.
Alan ignored Summer, and Rose jumped in and shared that it hadn’t surprised her when Summer’s boss lost her job. She gave Summer an apologetic look and shrugged her shoulders, as if in defeat, then said that she didn’t think women should be doing those types of jobs because they get periods and are “off the wall” for at least a week each month. She delivered the latter to Alan as he shoveled in a forkload of pancake and bacon.
“And I don’t want a crazy woman hitting the button and setting off a nuclear war!” Rose finished.
Alan laughed. “Don’t worry,” he said, “the button’s ours, not theirs.” He wiped his mouth and dropped the napkin onto his plate then hailed their server.
Summer smarted at her sister’s disloyalty, then reminded herself that everyone is entitled to an opinion, even if Rose’s view was baseless. Rose’s phone trilled and she turned away to answer. Summer watched Alan sign the check. What does she see in him? she asked herself. Rose stood and announced that they had an hour before their shuttle arrived to take them to the airport. They all got up and began to move toward the door. In the lobby, Rose and Alan veered toward reception to settle their accounts. Summer and Jem went toward the elevators.
“The Ithcus Music Festival must be a bit of a comedown for you after playing Woodstock?” Summer said.
Jem grinned. “That was another life.” Then after a brief pause he added, “Ithcus is for Rose, not me.”
Summer wondered if Jem was being diplomatic; he definitely had a gentle style, which she found both unusual and attractive.
In her room, Summer completed her packing then dialed Frankie. It was one o’clock in the morning in Australia. She knew Frankie’s phone would be switched to silent and she prepared to leave a message, understanding that when Frankie picked it up, she would be in the air and out of contact. As she waited for the voicemail, she reflected on the conversation last night when she had called in tears and Frankie had suggested that Summer extract herself from “that” environment.
“Family or not,” said Frankie, “it’s poisonous.”
Summer agreed and promised to change her ticket to an earlier flight back to Australia. But now, she told Frankie that she had changed her mind, that she would be continuing on to Kentucky with the others.
“I’ve made a friend,” she said, excitedly. “Everything’s going to be alright.” Then, hesitating, she added, “Rose is my sister. I can’t abandon her. Please try to understand.”