Read Online Sweet Karoline by Catherine Astolfo - Free Book Online

not to leave when Granny and Gramps moved back to the U.S.
    I met my paternal grandparents exactly four times that I can remember. Suddenly they were both dead of cancer a few months apart and our lives were irrevocably changed.
    Dad, the only child, inherited his parents' house and a monthly stipend from their investments that could keep our family in an elevated status. In Canada my father was a teacher and my mother was a nurse. Neither profession was well paid in the United States.
    When we were transplanted to the U.S. to take advantage of the inheritance, my mother and I were, in the beginning, very unhappy. My mother was unable to work as a nurse. My father, with his dual citizenship, landed a plum job in L.A. teaching at a college, so he was gone all week like many of the others. And we missed Elizabeth's calm presence.
    At nineteen she was already grown up in her mind—and mine—and engaged to her high school sweetheart. Both my mother and I grieved for her every day until Karoline became a fixture in our household.
    Suddenly Mom and I replaced Elizabeth as easily as changing our clothes. My sister was such an independent, self-confident creature, whereas Karoline was warm and lively and fiercely connected. She nosed around our house like a pet, doing a loyal bulldog impression with her beady eyes and protruding teeth. She had an interest in the minutia of daily living that was contagious. Karoline was confident in her intelligence, in her ability to know or discover the answer to every question.
    In our youth and up to the incidents over this past year, I worshipped Karoline. I thought of her as the smartest person on the planet. When our relationship disintegrated I realized that I had never told her how much I admired her. Now I never can.
     
    By the time Halina and my parents arrived, Karoline's mother had the funeral already planned. The casket chosen. The cemetery in Bell Canyon would provide the space for my friend's new residence. Halina must know how much her daughter would have hated living forever back in that boring little town.
    Halina put Karoline away in shame and horror. Shame that she had committed this selfish act of suicide. Horror at the idea of jumping from a balcony. So ignominious. Thoroughly thoughtless. At least she could have taken pills. A far less messy result, easier to explain to the neighbors. Or Karoline could simply have gone home and buried herself under Halina's grasp. At last the ugly little duckling had done something worthy of Halina's attention, even if it continued a misperception of Karoline and me.
    Of the funeral and the reading of the will and the burial, I remember very little. I allowed my parents and Halina to haul me around that week. Back in Bell Canyon, the pillow in my old room afforded me no rest.
    People stared. Their mouths flapped. Everybody's talkin' at me, I can't hear a word they're sayin' . They touched me with ice-cold fingers, patted my hand, my shoulder. I wanted to scratch out their eyes, their ugly piggy eyes. The rage inside me pounded against my skull, hammered in my chest.
    I lowered my own eyes so the people would think I'd been crying. I didn't want them to see the hatred and fury that would surely turn them to ashes on the spot. Karoline would detest this ceremony. She would roll around in that grave for centuries to come, writhing with contempt. Here she was, back in the Canyon, the little white bread community from which we had escaped. All the people whom she had scorned now looked down at her both literally and figuratively. A disgraced suicide. My sin and her humiliation.
     
    Dear Diary,
    She often reminds me of a puppy dog. Curled up at your feet at night, completely oblivious, licking your hand for attention, jumping and rolling over when you tell her to. Attached to her master for no real reason other than animal comfort. If someone came by who offered her a better treat, she'd be off like a shot.

 
    Chapter 6
     
    The old adage that