My sister calls and says she has something to give me.  Oh Lord, I think.  Ten minutes later she’s at my front door.  Stole.  Two-inch heels.  Smelling of jasmine and nectarine and coconut oil and exotic fragrances I don’t even recognize.  Elvi looks about twenty pounds heavier than she was last month, though maybe this is just the stole.  My husband joked that she is part of the fur-of-the-month-club.  In her right hand she holds a red Macy’s bag.  Here we go again.
    I open the door, and she steps inside, lifting her head as if she were walking onto a stage, or the deck of the Titanic.  Elvi has something to prove; she always wants to impress, to electrify.  She wants my acceptance.  Our mother was the same way.  Everything had to be the best.  I can see her eyes drilling into us with judgment.  She measured our worth in pearls and jewels by the pound.  She said we came from blue bloods, but by now that blood has thinned to gray.
    “Look inside,” Elvi says, jutting the bag out with one stiff arm.  She winks.
    “Elvi,” I say.  “I don’t need anything.  You really don’t have to.”
    “Just open the bag, Channing.  It’s a Pierotucci. ”
    I do, and under the film of white tissue paper is a red and yellow striped bag with aqua-marine straps.  It smells fresh, like scorched cow.  My first thought is, wow, what a nice bowling ball bag.  It’s hideous.  Revolting.
    “Oh Elvi, thank you so much,” I say.  “I am delighted.  What have I done to earn this?”
    “Well, you had us over for dinner a few weeks back.  You know Dwayne had a fabulous time, and he said that the ham you made was to kill for,” she says.
    “That’s certainly worth a bag right?”  The thing, as ugly as it is, must have cost at least eight hundred.  “Why don’t you come on in and get a drink?  It’s cold out there.”  She rubs her arms dramatically, as if she just realized.  I cradle her stole and drape it over the chair in the foyer.  I have to admit it’s a beautiful piece.  So she’s one for two.  I’m sure she’s dying for me to ask about the stole.  I don’t have to:  I know it is brand new, that she just purchased it forty five minutes ago along with the bowling bag.  But I decide to see how long it will take her to bring the subject up unprompted.
    I walk into the kitchen, and stream water from the faucet into the kettle.  Turning the kettle on high, I take out two mugs from the cupboard.  The white mug is adorned with two mallards flying off into the sunset.  The black mug features the logo from a defunct radio station.  I let Elvi drink from that one. 
    I can feel the nervous energy shake and spasm behind me.  She can’t stand it.
    “So what did you do today?” she asks.  This is her lead-in; she wants me to follow up, ask what she did today.  I tell her I’m off this week, that I’ve been working on our taxes and doing odds and ends, that I just haven’t wanted to go near the stores.  I don’t look at her.
    “I’m so sick of the mall, especially after Christmas,” I say.  I hope she gets the message, but I’m sure she will shake it off as a buffalo shakes off a gnat.  “But I did have to get some tangerines and grapefruit from the store.  They just taste so fresh at this time of the year.”  I don’t ask her about her day.
    At this, she literally grabs the sleeve of my sweater.  She holds my arm out and looks me directly in the eye.
    “I found the greatest deals at Macy’s today,” she says.  “They had a ‘customer reward’ sale.  Can you believe that, at Macy’s?  Clearance!  Forty percent off everything!  Plus I had that gift certificate already!  I mean, it was a literal coup.”  She rattles off a dozen purchases:  skirts and blouses that she will never wear, shoes that she will adorn her feet once and that will then sleep for eternity at the bottomless depths of her closet, hats that she will bestow to cousins or nieces, the bag (which I will give to my daughter), and of course the stole.  It all leads to the stole.
    She wants me to ask:  “How did you find it?”  She wants me to be jealous. 
    But I just grunt a “hmpfh.”  The water cracks and pops and the kettle whines.  I turn my back on Elvi.  I lift the kettle from the hot burner and place it on a cold burner. 
    “It was the only one left.  It must have been a mistake on their part.  It was just sitting there on the rack, hidden.  Channing, I tell you, I have never been so lucky in my entire life.  This is the most beautiful, sexy, stunning piece I own.  I can’t believe my luck.”  I know she will wear it maybe twice in the next ten years.  Actually Elvi is usually adorned in her hand-me-down dress that looks like a hand-made quilt, wearing her toe-rings and glass beads.  Or if it is cold, like today, Elvi will wear her husband’s flabby old shaker sweaters and a mustard stained pair of khakis.  She often hangs the expensive clothes in the closet where they will molder for years.  Then with a wave of the hand she’ll confer them to a relative.  I own nicer clothes than Elvi does. 
     “That’s wonderful Elvi,” I say.  “What kind of tea would you like?”
     “Didn’t you hear what I said?”
     “I heard you.  I’d just like to drink some tea.  I’m cold.  Then we can—”
     “I found a stole at forty percent off!  My God!”
     I nod, turn, plop two tea bags into mugs, and pour the searing water.
    Three years ago we had a scene.  Only at that time it was a car.  A new Mercedes.  Channing already owned a one-year-old BMW.  She works as a guidance counselor at a local high school.  My husband Ballard and I sat her down on the sofa in the living room.  We have a nice house, but it’s not ostentatious.  It’s not a nine bedroom million-dollar McMansion with a tenth of an acre lot like most of the houses cropping up in this area.  Split level.  Four bedrooms, three baths.
    “Elvi,” I told her.  “You have to return the car.  You can’t afford this on your salary, and Dwayne doesn’t make enough selling stereo equipment to pay for the muffler of that thing.”
    She screamed at me, at us.  Elvi said we were not being supportive of her choices, that we were treating her like a child, that she only came over to share her joy with us. 
    “I thought you would be happy for me,” she said.  “I should find someone else to share my ecstasy with.”
    At this point she had already defaulted on one mortgage and lost the townhouse.  She was renting a one-bedroom apartment above a bakery (all her clothes smelled like cinnamon buns and rye bread—it could have been worse) with her husband.  She was also twenty thousand dollars in credit card debt. 
    “I am happy that you are happy,” I said.  “But why do you need a Mercedes?  You have a great new car that is already too expensive for you.”
    “Godamnit, Channing, you look down on me,” she said.  “I just like it.  Okay?  You know?  And I don’t have to explain it.  To you.”
    And with that she bolted from the sofa and screeched away in her brand new Mercedes like some pissed-off rebel sixteen year old.  Ballard fixed us both another drink.  Six months later the Mercedes was impounded.  A month after that the BMW was impounded.  Until she bought the used Toyota Tercel that sits in my driveway, Dwayne drove her to and from work, and to and from the mall as if she were a pimply-faced thirteen year-old.  Talk about enabling.
    Three years ago Elvi realized she had a problem.  After the shrieking subsided it dawned on her she would lose her marriage, that she would have to declare bankruptcy.  Consolidating her credit card debt was just the beginning.
    The first time she attended Debtors Anonymous I tagged along.  Just the first time, I told her.  They met in an auxiliary high school gym, the Klieg lights blaring from above, an amber resin glow emanating around us.  The counselor sat on a wooden fold-out chair, and the debtors sat in a horseshoe of metallic chairs. 
    When Elvi introduced herself she talked about the cars, the clothes, the debts, the defaults.  “Luckily I have a sister who is supportive enough to come along with me.  I don’t feel alone in this battle,” she said.  The others resounded:  “You’re not alone here.  Nobody is alone here.”  For a moment it seemed as if it really could be Elvi’s little cocoon. 
    Elvi spoke of her self-esteem problem, how she secretly wants acceptance.  She talked of mother, of our siblings, of her husband.  She just wants love in her life, she said, and this was her odd way of expressing her need.  Elvi said she would think about clothes, about shopping all day.  In her office she would surf the Internet, window shop.  “It’s so easy to do.  I ordered over twenty five thousand dollars of goods from my office in the past two years.  I was supposed to be working.”
    Later she heard similar stories from women who hoarded jewelry, from men who went fifty thousand dollars into debt buying rare coins, or cars, or expensive audio systems.
    It seemed like a good start.  But a month later Elvi stopped attending debtor’s anonymous altogether.
    “Elvi, you have to keep going,” I told her.
    “The hell I do,” she said.  “Her eyes had a possessed quality.  They’re just a bunch of whiny losers.”
    I told her that they seemed like decent people with an addiction, that her problem wasn’t cured yet.  By a long shot.
    “Yeah, well, Dwayne needs me at home,” she said.  “He’s alone too much as it is.”  He was unemployed at the time.
    “How are you going to pay the rent?  All your money is going into these credit cards and debts.”
    She said that she had enough to make due, that I’m not her parole officer or mother.  She made her point.
    But six weeks later she and Dwayne were living in our basement.
    I learned a lot about myself during that time.  I discovered how strong my own will is when I set my mind to something.
    “Your rent here will be doing what I tell you to do to fix yourself,” I told Elvi.  “I don’t want your money.”  She snuffled.  She said she was so embarrassed.  She said part of her wanted to die.
    “You want to die?” Dwayne said, squinting.  He was eating a bag of cheese curls and staring at our fish tank.  He already weighted two ninety and by the time he and Elvi could afford their own place a year later he had gained an additional forty pounds.
    “Oh shut up, Dwayne.  I’m just upset right now.  Cut me some slack.”
    I was very proud of myself that year.  I went to the library and did my research.  I read self-help books about spendaholic behavior.  Then I set the wheels in motion.  Elvi complained and moaned but she listened, and for the most part she did what I told her.
    First, we cut Elvi’s credit cards up into fifty pieces, cancelled each one for good measure.  I helped her establish a budget, made her mark each purchase in a little red notebook.  And she could only use cash.  By the end of the year she had improved; I let her spend “treat money” on occasion.  But the biggest step I took was to get her diagnosed as OCD, to get her medicated.  She was compulsive, and the meds helped.
    Elvi opened up to me during the year she lived with us.  My husband hated the invasion of his privacy, but I told him he just had to live with it, and he did.  She told me that buying was such a rush, that sometimes she would feel a palpable high when she made an exciting purchase, only to crash hours later.  She was honest with me.  I felt close to her. 
    “But I feared that bill.  Boy, that made my heart race,” she said.
    I felt such a mixture of pity and anger for Elvi.  Somehow I knew exactly how she felt.
    The next morning I drive over to my sister’s house.  I think about telling our other siblings what happened.  I don’t.  I think about calling first, but instead I just hop in my Volvo and drive.  I don’t even tell Harvey where I’m going.
    When I get there Elvi doesn’t want to let me in.  She says she has a lot to do, that she has to run errands, that she just woke up.  The last part I believe:  through the crack in the door I can see her bloodshot eyes, the sags of red flesh rimming her eyelids.
    “Let me in Elvi,” I say.  “Open the damn door!”
    I’m tired of her backslide.
    She opens the door, and I shove my way in.  Her apartment is almost pitch- black.  I pull the shades near the door and dust swirls everywhere, as if it has been months since light entered the room.  Elvi hacks.  The apartment feels subterranean, cave-like.  The plants I gave her as a house-warming gift eighteen months ago have withered to flaking brown stalks.  Dwayne lounges in his olive green boxers and a wife beater, unshaved, smoking a joint and drinking tepid water from a stained white mug.  Bolts of sweat race down his face.  Elvi is wearing a black nightie and her hair is a rat’s nest.  The entire rear wall of the efficiency is stacked with clothing boxes, clothes waterfalling out of each one. 
    “What in God’s name has happened to you?”  I ask.
    Elvi sits next to Dwayne, burying her head in his chest and shaking. 
    “Give her a break, man,” Dwayne says.  I’m tempted to just ignore him, but this is too much.  He’s out of bounds just by sitting there like a lump.
    “Dwayne, I’m not a man.  You’re part of the Goddamned problem,” I say.  I can feel my temple throb and pulse.  A wicked stench permeates Elvi’s apartment.
    Dwayne scratches the back of his neck.  I can smell his B.O. from where I stand.  I’m afraid to sit anywhere in the apartment.  Elvi blows her nose into Dwayne’s t-shirt and Dwayne throws his arms behind his head in frustration.
    “I’m sorry Channing.  I’m—”
    “Just…It’s okay,”
    “I’m trying.  It’s just whenever I go in these stores—I’m really…”
    “You forget,” I say.
    “I get so excited.  The salesladies are so perky.  The stores are a hundred times cleaner and brighter than anything.  It’s something.  Heaven.”
    Dwayne narrows his eyes at me as if he just then realized he should be annoyed at my presence in his apartment on a Saturday morning.  He is still jobless, but Dwayne has surely made more money on unemployment than he ever did in a job.
    “You know, she is trying,” Dwayne says.
    “Yeah?”  I ask.
    He takes a drag from his joint and picks a seed from his teeth. 
    “She has cut back on lunch.  She doesn’t waste any more money on sandwiches or chips or soda,” he says.
    “That’s just wonderful,” I say.
    “Yeah, and she cut up her credit card.”
    “What credit card?”  I ask.  This was the whole problem, I say.  She wasn’t supposed to have anything to cut up in the first place.
    “Don’t be mad, Channing.”  Elvi tells me she hid one.  Then she got two more when she moved.  But she sliced one of them up and stuck it in an ice tray.
    “You need help,” I say.  “That was what was working.  Are you taking your meds?”
    “No,” she says.
    “Jesus, Elvi,” I say.
    “No.  No…I.  What was working was you.  Teamwork.  I need to live with you again,” she says.  “Like old times, the way it was before.”
    Elvi is clutching her husband’s flabby chest, holding onto his t-shirt for dear life, terrified.
    “That’s impossible,” I say.  “So we need to figure this thing out another way.”  I tell her I’m not leaving until she comes up with a solution.  I hate treating her like a child.  It is insulting to both of us, but if I must insult, then I must.
    Elvi shrugs and says maybe she can return some of the stuff, that maybe she can get something back. 
    “That’s the best idea I’ve heard from you in a long time,” I say.  “Get cleaned up.  Let’s go.”
   
    We can’t fit all the clothes into my car, but we try.  In the trunk, we stack the Macy’s boxes.  In the back seat it’s Hecht’s boxes and the Lord and Taylor’s and a few boutiques.  I drive to the mall.  Elvi almost looks relieved.  She sits next to me, breathing deeply, and sighing through her nose.  She fans herself with her hands. 
    Inside, most of the department stores will only give store credit.  I don’t help Elvi with this, and I don’t want to be party to any kind of trade of goods.  I stand there and watch, testify.  Two of the stores do give Elvi her money back, but only after she cries, only after she admits to her problem.  Elvi says she has never been so embarrassed in her whole life.  I feel bad for the cashiers.  College students.  We return to her apartment, still loaded down with boxes of skirts, shoes, sweaters, jackets, bags.
    “You can always donate them to a charity.  Sell them on E-bay.  Take them as a tax write-off,” I say.  “Get something back somehow.”
    Elvi winces and shakes her head, and says she’d rather give them to relatives.
    We’re sitting in the parking lot outside her apartment building.  Two young guys wearing sweat-stained bandanas and cut-off jeans are leaning against the building and smoking cigarettes.  A lady carries an armful of groceries past the car.
    “What are we going to do with you?”
    “I don’t have a clue,” Elvi says.  She leans her head against the window.  She says she knows she needs to take her meds again, that she just gets in her states.
    “You were never like this,” I say.  She knows what I mean.  When we were kids Elvi was the A student, the one who made our parents proud.  I was average, if anything.
    “I always wanted to be good,” she says.
    “You are good,” I say.  “You don’t have to do anything.”
    “No, I mean, I want to be seen as important, as a special person,” she says.  Her eyes are closed, and her seat belt is still on as if we are still moving.  Usually she wants to talk on the phone, especially if it’s important.
    I tell Elvi what she should hear.  I try to be a good sister to her, but I usually do feel as if I failed her.  Maybe she’d be better off with a brother to kick her in the ass.  I just lose my patience after a while.  Elvi knows this.  This is how she gets credit cards.
    She opens the car door and says that I’m right, that she’ll return to those therapy groups, get back on her meds.  Elvi leans toward the trunk, as if to retrieve her clothes, and I’m ready to open the trunk for her.  Just then she stops, stands there in the parking lot, stares into me. 
    “You do what you want with the rest of this stuff,” she says.  “We’re about the same size.  Give it away or keep it.  I don’t care.”
    “Okay,” I say.  “I can do that.”
    She walks inside her apartment building.  I wave, but she doesn’t turn around.  When the door clicks behind her, I feel lonely somehow, as if I have left a part of myself behind.  I stand there for a minute just soaking this in.
    During my drive back home I call Harvey and tell him where I was during the drive back home.  All I can think about is Mother, her hands bejeweled, rings on each finger.  Her neck throbbed from the weight of silver and gold.
    “That’s what I figured,” he says.  “No problem.”
    “Yeah,” I say.
    My hands and feet are involved in the driving process, but I’m thinking about the clothes.  I can imagine the sweaters stacked in my home, the shoes adorning my feet, the jackets hanging comfortably from my arms on a cool fall evening.  I imagine Elvi’s loot with the rest, with the bags and boxes of blouses and skirts and furs and hats and shoes in my closet.  Everything is under-wraps, protected from the dust.  Nobody needs to know, I think.  Not a person in the world.