My Sister Sophie

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We made things together my sister and I. I was older so I broke sticks and made faerie houses next to the trees in our backyard. She would make the tiny furniture and put roofs of grass. They were real enough to be visited or inhabited in her mind. I never doubted her. I could practically see the little ones or at least imagine them coming out at night with lamps and settling in.

I just liked helping her.

Then she started to draw when it was too wet or cold as it gets back East. She would sit in her room on the floor and draw until mom had to call her away for a meal. Her floor would be covered with pictures and crayons and pencils and finger paint. And tables everywhere, kid-size, covered with paper and drawing stuff. Then, after she ate, back to drawing.

I would watch sometimes but not help her. She was in her own world.

A neighbor, Gina, would draw with her sometimes but she would run out of steam quickly and start to talk and my sister would just draw, producing a big sigh from Gina who would then leave.

One day, perhaps out of frustration or spite, Gina took a picture that Sophie had and humphed out of the room.

That started what would be a splintering of our family. Just that one picture.

*

The psychiatrist had asked my mother (Dad was away on business so I went with her.)-“Your daughter, Sophia…

“Sophie. Sophie.” My mother corrected.

“Yes, Sophie..Likes to draw,” the psychiatrist said tilting her head to use her glasses to look at a file she had and then tilting downwards to look at my mother who sat up straighter and more forward.

“Yes, she does like most girls her age…”

“Like most girls her age, “the psychiatrist said, again repeating my mother. There was a pause, another glance at the file, a look at my mother and then a look above her like she was searching for something way off in the distance.

“This one, this one here,” the psychiatrist said pulling out a crayon drawing and looking at it with a frown and then handing it reluctantly to my mother. It was of a black dog. The dog appeared to be laying in a red pool, its eyes were closed. A roughly drawn green car, its front wheels and hood were drawn menacingly on the page taking up more than half.

“Yes, yes. Gina’s mother showed it to me. It was the one Gina stole, took from Sophie.”

“Stole from Sophie.”

“Look, let’s get to what the issue is or what you think the issue is,” my mother said, a controlled but evident frustration in her voice.

“The issue is. The issue is…”

My mother’s frustration burst out-“The issue is their dog was run over. Gina’s dog was run over by a green car…”

“A green car…”

“And it was a total coincidence…” My mother stopped suddenly and her face flushed with anger. “You aren’t telling me that my daughter caused this dog, this poor little dog, somehow she threw the dog out in front of…”

“Mrs. Broward…I am here to listen and see if there is anything I can do to help the situation.”

“What situation?” My mother was becoming unglued. I wished that my father was there to counter-weight the obvious over balance that was occurring in the room. But I was eleven. And only sitting there because my mother needed me to and had no babysitter. I was no counter-weight.

“Gina and Gina’s mother both told me that Sophie spends an inordinate amount of time drawing, making fairy castles, talking to herself, really almost entirely in her own world, hardly socializing at school…”

My mother had had enough. She stood up. “Pardon me, but I don’t give a damn what Gina or her mother or anybody thinks Sophie does or does not do. It is none of their business. Now please give me whatever else you have on my daughter in that file.” She held out her hand and looked menacingly at the psychiatrist who folded the file and put it in her desk, locking the drawer. For a moment neither said anything. The psychiatrist quickly reached over and snatched the dog picture out of my mother’s hand.

Then the psychiatrist put her chin in her hands and said-“Well, I think we have learned a bit, quite a bit today Mrs. Broward.”

“I am not sure who “we is” doctor but we wont be needing any more of your services."

My mother walked out and I had a hard time keeping up with her. She stopped and took a drink at a water fountain.

“What is this place anyway?” she asked after wiping her face with her jacket sleeve.

We got in the car and she started the engine to warm us up. She started to shiver and actually shake and then to cry and then to sob. I watched her and gave her some Kleenex I had in my jacket. After awhile she settled down enough to drive and we drove home.

I heard her calling my father that night.

“I need you to come home. I have a bad feeling about this.”

My father did come home after his business trip and things sort of went back to normal. He was a counter-weight. We went away for a five-day trip to the Poconos and Sophie and I had fun driving a go-cart and swimming and camping out two nights in the back yard.

Sophie would make up stories about the stars which shone brightly. She put us in one story.

“And you, Sir David Shines A Lot, will swoop down on the bad Black Stars and save Paints the Sky-that’s me, right over there and I will fill up your sky and you and Mrs. Sir David Shines A Lot and all the little Shines A Lots will live in a beautiful world.”

“And where will you be?” I asked her. The night swallowed up her answer and I heard her sleep-breathing calmly, but I stared at the stars.

*

My mom and dad had a big fight which ended up with my mother grim-faced and my father being more father-like at the dinner table.

“Sophie and I are going to visit Dr. Sykman to settle, no talk to her and that way we don’t…”

My mother interrupted-“Charles, we don’t need to tell them..”

“I think we do. I know we do.” He took my mother’s hand who pulled it away. She looked down at her uneaten food.

“We are seeing her so that our family does not need to be visited, visited to see how we are."

I had to jump in. I was twelve. “We are fine. Mom. Dad….What…”

“Son, it will be fine. Sophie and I are going to see her and bring some of her great pictures and paintings, too.” Sophie didn’t look up. She appeared not to be listening. ‘Okay? Then that is settled.” He started to eat.

Sophie came over and wrapped her arms around mom’s neck and they embraced.

“We aren’t losing anyone.” My father announced.

*

Some years later I found out that my father was on the “fast-track” as they said back then to an executive position and that he felt under pressure to “tidy-away” any distractions that could come up to de-rail this. I didn’t know it then but I am sure that was part of the loud voices heard between my parents over those weeks and months.

Father took Sophie to the psychiatrist, Dr. Sykman. He came back stern faced and went straight to the small glass bar in the living-room and poured a drink. My mother came in and sat with him. Sophie went right up to her room to draw, of course, and I went out to bike while the sun was still out.

The next day was Saturday, and we always had a big breakfast made by dad. Pancakes, eggs, Canadian bacon, sausages, toast, everything. Sophie and I came down and it was the same except my parents weren’t talking. We sat down.

We ate and then my father spoke.

“You guys can eat while I say this and Sophie, I apologize that I bring this up but I think the family should know.” He took a gulp of coffee and a bit of toast. My mother looked tired, very tired. Sophie looked the same. She always ate slow, but she was eating.

“Yesterday, Friday at about three…”

“Jesus, Charlie!” My mom burst out.

“Okay, okay. I will cut to the chase. Sophie and I brought pictures to Dr. Sykman and she seemed to be okay…”

“Who cares what…”

“Leslie, let me finish. And everything was going well, pretty good until at the end Sophie gave her a “special picture” and that pretty much ruined the…why don’t you show them the picture, Sophie.”

Sophie ran upstairs.

“The doctor didn’t keep it for her file?” my mother said sarcastically. My father just shook his head.

Sophie came back with a small black and white picture. She gave it to me.

“It’s hangman. It’s the game hangman,” I said. “So what Dad?”

Dad took the picture and held it up for us.

“See the glasses, see the person with the pulled back hair? The nose? That is Dr. Sykman. See that she is hanging…hung?”

“It was just a picture, Charles," my mother said.

“Well, that picture just means that instead of being in the clear we are, Sophie needs to see her or someone regularly and expensively…”

“To remedy a child for drawing! Jesus.” My mother stood up. “Just because Sophie can express herself quite well in ways most people cannot and more honestly too and bravely doesn’t mean she has to go to some demeaning know best…”

“Ok, understood, dear. Let’s eat and enjoy. I just wanted us to hear this together as a family. And I agree. Sophie is talented and brave. But she is part of the world, too.”

“She makes worlds, my mother said, “and that is her gift.”

I thought about those word a lot after the world splintered. Like, when someone makes worlds, or even one world, does that send the one they, we are in, spinning? Can both happen without the spinning and splintering. Living in a shared world and making a new world?

*

The knock on the door startled all of us. After a few weeks nothing had happened. Sophie wasn’t seeing the doctor. She kept drawing. Even making clay sculptures. I really liked some of the strange figures she made. Mom and Dad seemed to sitting closer on the couch when we just were there as a family or watched tv.

And the knock was on a Sunday.

Dad went to the door and then Mom. Sophie and I stayed on the floor where she was helping me with a tinker toy creation. She was really good at solving problems when I got stuck building something. I learned a lot from her.

There were voices, my mom’s got loud. My dad calmed her down. Then she ran upstairs crying.

The two men and a woman went back out, but they stood on the porch.

“Who are they Dad?’ I asked.

“They are here to help Sophie,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

Sophie, run upstairs and see your Mom.” Sophie ran upstairs, unperturbed as always.

“Doctor Sykman killed herself.” Dad looked at me expectantly. I couldn’t think of anything to say. I didn’t like her.

“So, she was upset about Sophie’s picture and her bosses think Sophie should come away for a bit." I didn’t get this at all. I felt stunned. Like nothing made sense.

But my mother was a fighter. She came down with her grandfather’s old square barreled pistol which I don’t think had been fired since I was born or maybe the Civil War, and went out to the porch and pointed it wildly at the people.

After that things happened fast but I remember them in slow motion. Lights, police, my mother screaming and then being given a sedative. Sophie coming down the stairs calmy with a tiny suitcase. The one thing she didn’t do is look at father. She looked at me and smiled.

I went and stayed with my cousins for a month. My mother visited me there and said she was going away for a while. I asked when Sophie was coming home and she cried.

When I came home the first Saturday, I came downstairs and there was Dad cooking and there was Sophie! Except she wasn’t Sophie. She had dark circles under her eyes and her hair and skin looked different. When she saw me she came over and hugged me. She even smelled funny.

Of course, dad had to have a meeting.

“Okay, guys, we are back. And your mother will be back when she… Okay. Sophie is visiting today and then she goes back and soon she will be back for good and going to a special…Well let’s eat.”

When dad was cleaning up Sophie and I went up to her room. I expected her to immediately cross leg down and start drawing but she stood uncomfortably and then whispered something I would never forget-“Save me. Save me.” I hugged her and asked her where she was. She shook her head.

Dad called from downstairs.

“Hey, guys, let’s go for a drive before I have to take Sophie back, okay? Okay. Ice cream?

*

Those visits continued until I went to Boarding School. Sophie “grew up” but she wasn’t Sophie anymore. After awhile she started to live at home with Dad and went to a “special school” which there were a few of on the Main Line.

I would come home on holidays and Sophie was glad. Mom and Dad divorced but she would visit sometimes and she and Sophie would stay together for the whole day, just being together not even saying much. Mostly holding hands, maybe taking a walk.

When my mother would leave she would hug Sophie.

“I am so sorry I didn’t stick up for you. I am so sorry.”

*

I went to art school hated it, hated the criticisms of most teachers and then fell in love with architecture. Must have been the tinker toys. And Sophie who taught me how to see things. And create things and spaces.

I thought about her a lot. Maybe some people who are gifted at bestowing life, however they do it, with art, or acting, or just being themselves, should also be granted the right to take back life.

Sophie didn’t kill Dr. Sykman. Dr. Sykman killed Dr. Sykman. But the world needs answers and more than that it needs someone to blame, to pin it on.

And, how dare someone cause beauty and life!

So, I went off to cause beauty and life in my way, with architecture. I met a special woman and proposed right before the last and final splintering.

*

Angie and I were on our way for Saturday breakfast with Sophie, Dad and Mom. They all wanted to meet Angie.

We pulled in the driveway and Dad was standing there which was odd. I knew with no words being spoken what had happened.

I went upstairs where mom was holding her in her arms in her bed. Mom had her paintings and crayons around her.

“She just didn’t wake up. She just didn’t wake up. She gave up. I think it is probably for the best. It was no way for her to live. She can go on peacefully and draw all she wants now.”

I sat with them both while dad called for someone to come get her.

After they took Sophie, Mom hugged Angie and said she had to go.

“Sophie would have loved you. She sure loved this one. She called him Sir…”
“Shines A Lot,” I said thinking of the stars and how she didn’t answer me.

*

We had three girls. I built a faerie village for the first one, a sort of faerie house that the first two could play in, then a bigger art house where all three could draw, paint, play, whatever. Dance.

Of course, our first daughter was Sophie. Had to be. And Angie is a teacher who stands guard over the imaginations of little people

No one would dare get in her way.

Mom would love to see her protect them and her students.

But she is with Sophie watching her draw and paint in the sky.

She gave up, too. But they are both free.

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