Being a tease - and perhaps also something more sinister - I made it my habit to bait my bad, envious sister, to tease her with everything I have, but which she lacks in her miserable, wheelchairbound life. Nothing as hilarious as seeing her eyes grow dark with impotent rage when I dangled my most recent acquisition of no matter what right before her eyes.
What she resented the most was my expanding circle of close friends. For me to have what she hadn't, but longed for was too much anyway, but it was obvious to me that my good and trusted friends became unearned feathers in my cap when she considered them, especially the male ones. I had always had a knack of getting friends of both sexes. Some of my male friends were old boyfriends, but not all of them and those were the ones she wanted the most.
"You're always with such interesting men," she said, "I know that some of them are gay, but they are so very good-looking and fun to be with ..."
I just smiled when she talked like that, but when she was at peace and didn't speak her envy, I had a certain way of reminding her of my luck and thereby of her own lack of it. For instance, I could say something like: "What a wonderful man Poul is, so considerate ..." Such a remark was sure to make her eyes glint and change into bottomless pitholes, filled with venom. Had she not been my big sister I wouldn't have recognized the signs of envy in her and I would definitely have been much kinder. Now I knew her so very well from our childhood that I saw what was invisible to others. Also I knew that sibling rivalry set up this scenery and that the situation could be traced to long-forgotten nursery wars of some kind.
"You've hated me forever," I thought to myself this special Saturday afternoon when I play acted the good Samaritan who pays her poor, disabled sister a visit with her new close friend: The utterly handsome, young actor Philip Tracy.
"Hi," I said as we stepped into her "den", which is a smallish room filled with books, computers and computer equipment, "here we are. Philip has looked forward to seeing you."
I laid my hand on her shoulder and smiled as sweetly as I could at both of them: "Phyllis meet Philip, Philip meet my very bright and talented sister Phyllis."
"Thanks, Sissi," Philip said and offered her his hand, "A pleasure to meet you."
"Well," I thought, "he is a good actor, but so am I ..."
"Phyllis wants us to go to her terrace for some refreshments," I said and before she could say anything I wheeled her wheelchair around and started out the door.
"That's quite a collection, you have," Philip said looking back in on all the boring computer stuff.
"Yes," she said, "I love all that ..." With a certain disbelief I saw her usually so glum eyes light up with a genuine happiness and pride. Her face looked pretty in that moment.
"So do I and my kid sister did too ... well, she is dead now."
"Oh, I'm sorry," she said and I had to admit that she looked genuinely alarmed and concerned. Something which also enhanced her good features. As we sat down by the table I felt positively confused as well as left out because they talked like they had known each other for ages, and what's more, they talked of things and events that were quite unknown to me.
"You said that your sister ..." I ventured in order to get back on the conversation, "I didn't know you had a sister."
When I saw the faces of both of them as they turned to look at me I knew that Phyllis by now knew something I didn't, that somehow they had bonded and that I had said or done something improper.
"Yes," Philip said, "as I just told Phyllis while you were in the kitchen, my kid sister died last year. Only 15 years old ..."
"Oh, I'm so sorry, Philip. That young, what a tragedy."
"She was a wonderful girl, a perfect sister" he said. "Just like Phyllis is for you ..."
At that remark I nearly burst out laughing, but then I saw the face of Phyllis. Her eyes were filled with tears and she looked quite different from what she used to do, but it only lasted for a short moment.
After this incident I simply let the two of them talk, make an appointment for going to an exhibition, kiss cheeks on our leaving our happy hostess and all in all bond as best they could. I was too overwhelmed with this outcome of a routine visit to my evil, big sister to do anything but just that.
Philip took me home and we talked of the visit in the car. "I didn't know that you had a sister and that she died," I said. "What happened?"
He gave me a strange glance from his perfect actor-eyes which have ensnared hordes of girls all over the world. "Oh yes, I did, and she was a computer genius like Phyllis."
I nearly laughed out. "A computer genius? Phyllis?" Crazy!
"They also resemble each other in another way," he went on. "She was wheelchairbound like her and for the same reason."
"Oh," I said, quite overwhelmed once again, not knowing what he was talking about.
"Yes, she had an accident like the one Phyllis had and she was paralysed like her."
"Accident?" Suddenly I realized that I hadn't the faintest idea of what he was talking about, because I for some strange reason never had asked my parents or someone else about her handicap.
"Yes, when you crossed the ran out on th road as a small child and she saved your life by running out to grab you and drag you back on the pavement. Cost her the use of her limbs, when she was hit by a car, but you were saved."
"What?! Did she tell you that? While I was in the kitchen?"
"No, I told her that that was the reason my sister lost the use of her legs and got into a wheelchair. She saved her stupid, drunk, big brother who was standing in the middle of the road brandishing a Jack Daniels, but she, the child heroine, got hit by a car. When I told her that she told me what happened to her, but not until then."
I sat like hit by a car myself, quite dumbfounded with surprise. To me it was as if the world had turned upside down: White was black, and black was white, I was bad and Phyllis an angel. I looked at Philip's handsome face and knew that I was never to get as far into his life or good esteem as I had taken for granted I would before introducing him to my evil, envious sister. Also I knew that if I took out my hand mirror from my bag and took a look at myself I would see the face I had always seen in my awful sister.
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