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step.”
    I smiled. “We were underfoot around here while they rebuilt our house, remember?” As if he could forget. “And, anyway, Sushi is a regular canine memory expert. Watch…she’ll go straight to where her water dish used to be.”
    Which the little dog did, trotting down the long gleaming hallway toward the kitchen.
    Chuckling, Bob shut the door. “I’ll remind Peg not to rearrange any of the furniture while we’re taking care of her.” He was the only one on earth who could call my sister Peg and get away with it.
    To the right of the entryway yawned a formal living room, tastefully and expensively decorated, a wonderful room for entertaining. So, of course, nobody ever went in there except Peggy Sue’s cleaning woman. To the left, a formal dining room, also exquisitely furnished, the perfect place to share a sumptuous meal. Nobody but the cleaning woman ever went in there, either.
    Nostrils flaring, I followed the delicious aroma to the kitchen, where Peggy Sue was retrieving a pan from the stainless steel oven in a kitchen so modernized and gadget-arrayed that it would make Martha Stewart’s mouth water. Like mine was at the sight of Sis’s homemade lasagne.
    Peggy Sue—wearing a tan/light pink plaid jacket and matching wool slacks (my guess: Burberry), pearls, and pumps, her brunette hair perfectly coifed—looked like a high-power broker, and not the homemaker and sometime volunteer that she was.
    I’m not knocking my sister. If you got it, baby, flaunt it, flaunt it! And by “it,” I mean green stuff, and I’m not talking broccoli.
    Peggy Sue announced, “Dinner’s ready.” To her husband she commanded, “Call Ashley.”
    And Bob left the kitchen to get my niece, who, like every teen, was holed up in her bedroom. Back in my day, my bedroom was where Mother would send me for punishment, a sparse little chamber overseen by Madonna and New Kids on the Block posters, with no TV and no phone. Today a girl being sent to her room meant banishment to a barren landscape populated only by computers, flat-screen TVs, and iPods.
    The horror.
    Ashley arrived in short order. Tall, slender, brunette, and as beautiful as her mother (which was saying something), my niece could easily have earned my resentment for the comfortable, coddled, privileged, lucky, painless ride she’d had in life. But I imagined that having Peggy Sue for a mother had its drawbacks, and since I’d come back home to live, Ash and I had connected more and more, like sisters. Or like I would imagine sisters connect, when one of them isn’t Peggy Sue.
    Soon chair legs were screeching on the tiled floor as everyone took their proper place at the table that separated the kitchen area from the great room with its overstuffed leather furniture, huge flat-screen TV (turned off), and fireplace (roaring). Over the fireplace hung a huge portrait of the family, Photoshopped into sheer perfection.
    Utensils clanked, glasses tinkled, and everyone made yummy sounds as they dug into the Caesar salad, garlic bread, gourmet olives, and lasagne.
    I said to Peggy Sue, with the stiff awkwardness that I call my own, “Thank you for fixing dinner for us, Sis. It’s delicious, and Mother and I really appreciate it.”
    Peggy Sue waited until she had completely chewed and swallowed (unlike me) before she said, “Chicken cacciatore would have been a healthier choice…but you wanted lasagne, so lasagne you got…even though it’s heavy and fattening.”
    Wouldn’t “thank you” have been sufficient?
    The eighteen-year spread between sisters—both in age and social attitude—conspired against us ever being on the same wave length. For as long as I can remember I seemed to be a constant disappointment to my painfully perfect older sister. And my ramshackle self must have been a crushing blow to her.
    Is it possible to love someone but not like them?
    Ashley filled the strained silence by announcing, “I’m going to see Rocky Horror Picture Show on