Linda Gelhert was only into her third hour in Susan Johnson’s house when her older sister decided she would never survive the ten days Linda was planning to stay. It wasn’t that Linda was under foot or bothersome, she wasn’t, quite the contrary, she was precisely her vocation, the ever neat, ever organized, ever quiet, ever dull librarian she had always been. The two sisters had nothing in common, now or ever, but for common parents — and Susan had never been entirely convinced of that. Linda was intellectually, physically and emotionally Susan’s opposite. But the biggest difference between the two was physical. Where Susan was tall, curvaceous and blond, Linda was shorter, very thin and dark, so short, thin and dark that Susan often thought of her sister as a shadow, a say nothing, do nothing, always following shadow. More than anything, Linda Gilhert was irritating, not for being who she was, but because she was nothing, empty, uninteresting and her constant sighs of faux anguish were just the worst of a continuum of irritating behaviour. Beyond these superficial observations it was hard to be more specific, and there was no reason to want to be. Linda Gelhert was a person to be endured and forgotten and Susan knew it when she agreed to let her sister stay with her, for ten days!
Cara was a godsend. Whenever she could, she took her Aunt Linda to the mall, the book stores, for walks and she even took her for a paddle round the pond in the park. But it wasn’t enough. Susan still felt harried and harassed by her younger sister, the shadow, who seemed a spectral figure never far from her side.
Then the subject came up. It was at dinner on the fourth night and it was Cara, natch, who asked the question, “Aunt Linda, why haven’t you ever married?”
The question seemed to surprise Linda so much that it appeared that she had never given the matter a moment’s thought. “Well, I don’t know,” she said, unsure of herself, “perhaps because I’ve never met the right person.”
Despite her mother’s scowl, Cara persisted, “Do you date much?”
“No, almost never,” she said quickly, matter of factly, then she seemed to grow deeper in thought, “in fact, I can’t remember the last date I had. Must have been years ago.” If it bothered her, it sure didn’t show.
“Hard on the sex life,” Cara couldn’t resist the comment. She didn’t look at her mother, but she could feel her angry glower.
“Cara, please.”
“No, it’s all right, Sue, she’s right, it is hard on the sex life,” she seemed almost happy with the observation and she was because it provided the chance to bring up something that was on her mind, something not yet addressed, so she added, “which brings me to something I wanted to ask you about.” Linda took a long drink from her full wine glass, then motioned to Cara for more. “It reminds me of what some guy used to say on one of those comedy programs, ‘you look marvelous!’ Remember it?” Linda took another drink, “Well, Susan, ‘you look marvelous.’ You have changed so much since the last time I saw you, new hair do, new clothes, you’re slimmer, sexier — it can only mean you have a man.”
Susan was about to say something when Cara cut in. “Tell her, mum, tell her about the man you’ve gone out with. He’s a sexologist, Aunt Linda. He took mum in hand, no pun intended, and made her into a new person.” Cara was only teasing, of course, anxious to keep the conversation on an interesting subject, not the ‘what-is-Helen-doing’ type of question that had dominated dinner conversations up to now. Later she wondered why she started the lie, but she would never know, it just came out. “With her new knowledge, she’s helped others, too.”
“Well, I don’t know if you …” But Susan was cut off again.
“Hey, Aunt Linda, I just had an idea, maybe mum could help you! Mum’s good. If you want help, like in getting dates, I’ll bet she can give it to you.”
“Cara, I don’t think I can help anyone …”
Cara waved at her mother as if dismissing not only her comment, but also her presence, “Oh, sure you can. You were helped by that sexologist and I know you have helped others, so the very least you could do is to help your own sister,” then Cara paused for deliberate affect, “That is, if she wants help.”
Susan fell silent, giving the smiling Cara as angry a look as she knew how.
And that was it, until the next evening, an evening after Cara and her Aunt Linda had spent most of the day together.
“Tell her, Aunt Linda.”
Linda was on her second glass of wine but still looked unsure of herself. She turned to Susan, “I want your help.”
Susan’s eyes narrow as she looked at her daughter who seemed to be enjoying herself far too much. “What kind of help?” Susan asked the question cautiously, directed the words more at Cara then at her sister.
But Linda answered, “Sex help. Cara’s right, it’s about time I tried to figure out what the whole sex thing is about. So far, I’ve been a miserable failure. It’s a complete mystery to me, always has been, right from when I was a child.” Then she looked intently at her sister, “If you can help me, Sues, well, God knows I need it.”
Cara’s smile was as wide as Susan had ever seen, “She can help you, Aunt Linda, I know she can.” There was a deliberate child-like innocence to her words, and she smiled at their affect.
“Cara, please.” She could see Cara’s hand in all of this, she could see it, but she couldn’t see how she could stop it.
Cara pressed her advantage, she quickly affected a petulance, knowing her mother had a hard time dealing with it, “Well, you can, you can help Aunt Linda, you can help her like you helped Mrs. Cotteral.”
“Who?” Susan had no idea who her daughter was talking about.
“Mrs. Cotteral, remember?” Then Cara turned to her Aunt and said, “Let me tell you about what mum did for Mrs. Cotteral, it was amazing.” Then, as Susan tried to stop her daughter, then finally fled the room in frustration, Cara recounted precisely how her mother had helped Mrs. Cotteral over-come her debilitating sexual inhibitions — just a few days before.
Aunt Linda was enthralled.
It was the next morning, they were in the hallway after Cara had just left for collage when Linda brought up the subject again. “I’m interested, Susan, I really am interested in what you can do for me. When it comes to sex, I’m a loser, no it’s worse than that, I’m not even in the game, not even in the stands and I didn’t think you were either, I didn’t think any of us were. I thought we all were sexually dead. Am I wrong?”
Susan could see the genuine pain on her sister’s face and took pity on her, “I have learned a little, nothing ah … academic, but maybe it can help, it certainly helped me.”
“Then let’s start. What do I do?”
Susan could see no way out. She knew her sister needed help, that couldn’t be more obvious, she knew her entire family needed help, and if she could help her sister then she had to try, so she asked, “How badly do you want to change?”
“Bad, Sues, bad.” She left no doubt.
Susan nodded as if already knowing the answer, then said, “Look, Linda, I only know one way to do this. It’s weird and it can get a little messy, but if you really want my help I can try. But look,” and she took her sister by the shoulders and looked intently into her eyes as if to stress the seriousness of the situation, “I’m doing this for you and I don’t want you thinking badly of me for trying.”
Linda cautiously entered her sister’s arms, “I’ll never think badly of you, Sues, I need you, I need your help. I don’t know the first thing about sex, I’ll do everything you say.”
“Well, everything can be pretty weird, are you absolutely sure?”
Linda let go of her sister and took three steps back, “Look at me Susan. You can see it; I’ve seen the way you look at me. I’m dead. I know it. If sex can wake me up, then I’ll try it, God knows I’ll try anything.”
Susan could see tears well in her sister’s eyes so she quickly closed the space between them and took her in her arms and when she did Linda began to sob and shake and grip her sister with such desperation that Susan had no doubt that she had to do whatever she could to help her sister and whatever she could do was precisely what her daughter had done for her just a few nights before. “Come with me.”
They stood in front of the full length mirror in her bedroom. “Take off your clothes?”
“What?”
“Take off your clothes.” Susan repeated the words more insistently, trying to show more confidence than she felt. Why had this been so easy for her daughter? “The idea is to look at yourself in the mirror, to find where the beauty is in you. That will give you strength to go on. So take off your clothes.”
Linda gave her sister an uncertain look then did as she was told and just as Cara had done to her, Susan stopped her sister at her underwear. She debated the next move, but as she looked at the figure in the mirror, the lonely, shy, slightly emaciated figure of her sister, she decided her commitment to her sister had to be total, she had to do everything she could, everything her daughter had taught her or not to bother at all. So she did as her daughter had done, she took off her clothes.
When they stood together, side by side, Susan had a sudden flash of regret. She saw in herself what she had discovered just a few days before, a body, blemished and imperfect, but a body charged with the potential for passion. The figure standing beside her offered no such promise. The figure was rigid, and nervous and timid and reluctant and entirely devoid of even the slimmest prospect of sexuality.
“You’re pretty, Susan, you’ve always been the prettiest of us.”
Susan felt a jolt of sympathy, which she instantly converted to determination to deceive. “Maybe, Lins, but you’ve always been the sexiest.” She got behind her sister and fixed her head in a resolutely proud position, then she gently pulled her sister’s shoulders back and gently cupped her breasts lifting them up. “See, now that’s a sexy woman.” She said the words without conviction, but pregnant with hope.
Linda’s eyes were searching her body, trying to discover anything that would give her that hope, “I don’t see it, Sues, I see nothing there but a skinny, sexless, twig.”
Hard to argue, thought Susan, but she laughed as if her sister had been joking. Then she asked the stage 4 question, “Do you masturbate?”
“No.” There wasn’t even a blush, a reluctance, just the two letter fact.
