Maria Flook - My Sister Life: The Story of My Sisters Disappearance

Searing. Harrowing. Flook narrates painful events with remarkable poise a voice that is lyrical authoritative. A powerful and disturbing book.

Michiko Kakutani, New York Times

Maria Flook has taken home the brass ring with her searing family biography. A fierce, riveting tale.

Vanity Fair

A box of dark treasures. A beautifully wrought story of the way things go wrong and the way people survive and exploit their detours of fate. Maria Flook writes with breathtaking artistry and precision. This book holds you in troubling and unpredictable ways. It is a mesmerizing work of nonfiction.

James Ellroy

Flooks fiction has always galvanized me with its irrepressible lyricism and high voltage. My Sister Life brings the same qualities to the nonfiction form with arresting results. Read this book.

Rick Moody, author of Purple America

This disturbing book by one of the most powerful American writers at work today takes us through the richocheting doppelganger-ing lives of two sisters and their eerie shipwreck shadows. I wished very much this book were fiction, but it is not.

Annie Proulx, author of The Shipping News

Striking authenticity crackles with emotional insight and with astonishing powers of recall and compassion burning with harsh truths about the irreparable wounds marking all families. My Sister Life testifies with raw eloquence to Flooks unwavering commitment to her lost sister.

Elle

Flook, one of our best writers of fiction, gives us a starkly beautiful book, full of redemption utterly memorable.

Howard Norman, author of The Bird Artist

A compelling story the book takes flight. An unpredictable tale of wayward parallel lives.

Boston Globe

Family Night

Open Water

You Have the Wrong Man

This is a true story.
Names have been changed in respect
to individuals and institutions who do not wish
their identity revealed.

A hardcover edition of this book was originally published in 1998 by Pantheon Books. It is here reprinted by arrangement with Pantheon Books, a division of Random House, Inc.

MY SISTER LIFE . Copyright 1998 by Maria Flook. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. For information, address Pantheon Books, a division of Random House, Inc., 201 East 50th Street, New York, NY 10022.

BROADWAY BOOKS and its logo, a letter B bisected on the diagonal, are trademarks of Broadway Books, a division of Random House, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Flook, Maria.
My sister life : the story of my sisters disappearance / Maria Flook.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-307-79500-7
1. Flook, MariaFamily. 2. Women novelists, American20th centuryBiography. 3. Teenage girlsUnited StatesFamily relationships. 4. SistersUnited StatesBiography. 5. Missing personsUnited States. I. Title.
PS3556.L583Z47 1999
813.54dc21

{b}

98-30823

v3.1

Several people have helped me in the writing of this book, and to collect shipwreck documents, hospital files and court records. My thanks to Claudine OHearn, Kim Witherspoon, Susan Norton, Emilia Dubicki, Jim Peters, Nancy Rosenblum, Tim Barry, Michael Stein, Renee Bowles and George Michelson. Special thanks to John Skoyles.

My deathless gratitude to Daniel Frank, my editor.

For A.D.

We have collided with another ship.

Please. Ship in collision.

THE
MIRACLE GIRL

1964

M Y SISTER K AREN disappeared when she was fourteen years old. The Wilmington Journal ran a photograph of Karen with the word RUNAWAY ? beneath her face. The next day they ran the same picture. The caption asked, DEAD OR ALIVE ?

I was twelve years old. Karen told me, Im going to the corner, want anything? You want your Teaberry gum? Do you want a Hearns cake?

I sat at the kitchen table, writing five sheets of detention homework. My sister was dressed up, wearing smoky nylons and low heels that shifted her posture forward. Her lipstick was frosted salmon-pink. Her matte powder erased her features.

I dont have money for sweets, I told her, fishing.

Karen said, Ive only got a dollar. Thats not enough for both of us.

Forget it, I said.

Im going to the store, Karen said again. She pinched the doorknob for a long time, I thought, before turning it. I saw the kitchen clock above her head; its second hand had become bent. As it circled the numbers, the needle scratched a silver gouge in the clocks white face. Then my sister went out.

W HEN K AREN HADNT RETURNED after forty-eight hours, the Penny Hill police recognized that it wasnt a typical pout session or simple teen whimsy. Federal investigators were directed to our street. My father, Ray, laid out some of Karens report cards with the teachers comments. The FBI agent picked up one yellow booklet and read the teachers remarks, Karen is an agreeable student but too retiring. She should be encouraged to participate in class discussions.

This says your daughter is the shy type?

Shes quiet, Ray said.

These shy kids dont usually take off. But sometimes a wallflower turns into a wild seed, the agent said.

Ray didnt like what the agent was suggesting, and he asked me to leave the room. I wasnt reluctant to leave because I could hear everything the agent said by standing inside the dining room chimney. Inside the mortared shaft, their conversation was amplified. I heard my mother sniffling. She ripped a tissue from its hollow box, and another. Veronica was giving a performance. The agent asked about our two older stepsiblings, each of them married and living on their own. Had Karen ever confided in one of them and run off to one of their homes?

It wouldnt be an option, Veronica said.

Veronica was painting an icy picture of our familys splintered relations; she was implying that when people jump ship, its every man for himself.

The FBI agent asked, Does Karen have a nickname she goes by?

Peaches, Ray said.

Oh, please, Veronica said. Only Ray called her that.

Thats right, I call her Peaches, Ray told the agent.

The FBI man asked, Was your daughter a virgin?

Veronica asked Ray, Whats your guess? Her voice had an edge.

These days, I dont know, my father said, and the FBI agent chimed in with his similar beliefs. These days, he echoed Ray. The agent was careful to indict the age and not the girl herself. He wanted a list of Karens boyfriends.