When my sister calls to tell me she's homeless, I'm cleaning up dog puke in the kitchen. 

"You're not with Mom?" I ask.

"No," she answers. "Not right now."

Lis is homeless right now but not on the street. She's discovered an empty room above a hot dog joint by Northwestern University. It has a sink that works, but no bed.

Last night when I went to sleep, I'd assumed the rest of my family had beds, too.

"At least I can wash my face," Lis says. "There's a sink; I have a washcloth in my bag."

My sister is a fanatic about washing her face. At four-years-old, she woke one morning with blood on her mouth, on her pillow. My parents took her for tests, to see doctors; she drank chalky drinks so specialists could peer inside of her body. No one found anything amiss, and the red drops stopped staining her Winnie-the-Pooh sheets after a few months. Since, though, she keeps her face clean—with baby wipes and napkins, washcloths thrown in bags.  

"That's good," I say. None of this is good.

"This guy, Cas, owns the place," she tells me, reciting a fact."He's letting me stay in the room upstairs."

I'm not sure I want to hear about Cas, the owner of this grill, this "Dawg Eat Dawg." This new home for misplaced sisters.

She's telling me he feeds her: cheese fries, hamburgers, chicken gyros with tzatziki sauce.

"For free," she adds. Lis is like a stray cat—not hungry and not home.

"He's tall and okay-looking, I guess," she says. "Like 48 or something? He's Greek."

(Should his Greekness matter? Is he some new minor god in her life?)

"He's got brown eyes, beady looking. Like a rat on crack." 

A rat on crack. I don't know where Lis comes up with this stuff. My sister has never done crack—I know this. She smokes pot and drinks insane amounts of Southern Comfort. She is Janis Joplin in Versace jeans.

"Oh." I don't know what to say. "It's nice he's letting you stay there for a while."

My homeless sister has met a strange Greek hotdog-man three times her age. She's relocated from our wealthy white colonial on Chicago's North Shore to an abandoned rathole with no windows.

Even in this family, I'm at a loss for words.

"Guess what?" She singsongs, excited. I know she's drunk, and I don't want to guess; I don't want to know. Has she found another Greek guy? One who owns a liquor store?

"What?" I ask. I'm crumpling up paper towels and throwing them into the garbage can.

"Guy Fieri was here a week ago—I just missed him! For 'Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives'!" She's breathless. "There's an autographed picture on the wall." 

Lis loves that show, loves Guy's red Camaro.

"Oh," I say. "Cool."

"Just 'cool?'" She's incredulous. "That's it?"

"Yeah, Lis. I mean, you do know you're on the street, right?"

(How the hell am I going to get her home?)

She sighs, presses a random button on the phone.

"How the hell are you getting home?" I ask.

I open the refrigerator, grab a beer. It's only noon, but time seems insignificant right now. "Where's your car?"

(Why does she not have her car?)

"It's at Mom's," Lis says. "She hid the keys."

Her semi-new Lexus SC 300 is at my mom's house in Northbrook. Lis is in Evanston. Me? I'm in Tucson, Arizona—twenty-five hours and forty-one minutes away from the Chicago suburbs.             

"I don't know. I mean, what am I supposed to do?" Lis asks me.

I can see her twirling her braid, playing with the coin-release on the phone. Her fingers punching in my phone number. "I can't live here forever, you know."

(Yes, I know. Of course, I know.)

"I know—so you have to go home," I say. This should be obvious.

"I can't," she says. "Mom threw me out."

"Mom threw you out?"

My mom lives surrounded by Lis's empty whiskey bottles. She endures my sister's maniacal, drunken tantrums, her guzzled-up nights, her sleeping, unemployed days. She watches my sister's looming cigarette smoke seep into her neat-as-a-pin, just upgraded kitchen.

She's put up with this for two years straight—after surviving a twenty-five year marriage to my father, who passed out nightly, blind drunk. In the mornings, we'd find him with his cheek in a pizza box, sausage and onions congealing on the floor. 

My mom suffered all of this, and now she's settled on "tough love."

I'm almost proud.

"I think I'm going to ask Cas for a ride to some hotel," Lis says.  "Can I use your credit card?" My sister is a 17-year-old spoiled brat. I love her because she is like me—but for the fact that I ran away, on my own, and always had beds. 

Right now, I can see her twisting the phone cord, batting her eyelashes, looking out at the city street.

"Yeah, OK. Just call me when you get there." 

How long has she been living in some crow's nest near downtown Evanston?

"How long have you been bed-less?" I ask.              

"What day is today?" 

"Tuesday."

"Then…" I can hear her thinking. Neither of us is good at math. "Six days."

Six days?

We don't talk every day, that's true. But I think a change in status from indulged to vagabond should warrant a phone call. Sooner than six days.

(Why did she wait this long to call me?)

"Why did you wait so long to call me?" I ask.

"I've been OK," Lis says. "I didn't want you to know."

She didn't want me to know, but now she wants my credit card number.

My sister and I are mostly best friends. We're the only two kids from the binge drinking funhouse that was our childhood. But since I left for Arizona, Lis has been more reclusive, moodier, flippant. As if she needs to impress me. 

I'm not impressed. I'm nervous and drinking a beer at noon.

(What is she doing right now?)

"What exactly are you doing right now?" I ask.

"I'm smoking and talking to you on a payphone. But I need a bed," Lis says.

She needs more than a bed. She needs a roof and a job and a cell phone.

"Yeah, OK, I know. But what've you been doing for the past six days? I mean, how do you even have cigarettes? How are you drunk?" I'm interrogating her; I need details.

"I had some money. I have cigarettes and Southern Comfort," she says. "And I'm also not drunk. Just buzzed."

I drink some beer, review the particulars: Lis is on the street, in a dirty payphone booth, probably fiddling with her Prada change purse and wearing an Eddie Bauer flannel. She has Camels and whiskey and a room with a faucet. I'm sure she has her red leather journal and probably some damn good onion rings.

"Are you going to call Mom? Will she let you back in?" I ask.

Why did my mom not tell me about this homelessness? I just talked to her yesterday. She was at Target buying Tidy Cat and orange juice.

"No. Mom won't let me in," my sister sighs, frustrated. "She said, 'Get out'—so I went out. Then I tried to go back in and get Squeeks and my cashmere blanket, and she called the cops. I'm supposed to go to court because she's getting a restraining order."

She sounds faintly annoyed, as if it will be a bother for her to go to court.

Squeeks is her ten-year-old calico cat. She begs like a dog—on two legs, wringing her paws. Squeeks eats pea pods from Chinese food; I'm not sure how Lis discovered this. The cat doesn't meow; she makes a sound like a dying accordion. She's the reason Lis didn't go to college.

"No way in hell I'm leaving Squeeks with Mom," she'd said, adamant.

So much for Brandeis.

I put the roll of paper towels in the cabinet and open another beer. "Did you call Dad?"

The divorce was final two years ago. My parents stayed married until my sister turned fifteen to ensure complete, dysfunctional childhoods for both of us. To say we're relieved doesn't do justice: Lis and I are ecstatic about the divorce. 

"Lis?" I ask. 

There is silence on her end. I can see her kicking her Birkenstock on and off, on and off. Shifting from one stork leg to another. She's always been so damn skinny.

"Lis?" I hear cars whishing by the phone booth, a car whishing by my window.

Of course, she didn't call our father. He doesn't care where she is or what she's doing. I shouldn't have asked. He cares about grades and school, not life in general. Lis was a "C" student. She wasn't on his radar unless she was breathing too loud, or existing in general. Then, she was in trouble.

("Why did you even have us if you don't like us?" I'd asked him once. "God put us here to procreate," he'd said. "To pass on genes.")

"No," she says. "I didn't call Dad."

The operator is on the phone; she needs another quarter.

"I don't have any more change," Lis says. "I gotta go."

"You can call back collect," I say.

"No, I need to get out of this phone booth. It's smelly and hot."

I believe this is true. I've never been in a pleasantly scented phone booth.

"OK," I say. "Call me when you get to the hotel."

I can hear her nodding. 

I know she is not carefree and indifferent. Lis is sad and scared and wants to go home. Right now, she's not that impressed with Guy Fieri. She needs her blanket and her cat, and her bed. She's wondering if my mom will let her come home again.

Lis hangs up the phone. My apartment floor's clean, and the dog is asleep. The beer can's empty, so I open another.

I call my mom.

 

***

                                                 

Two years later, my mom and I are on Lake Street in Evanston. There's a vinyl store I want to check out near Northwestern University. My mom's driving; we're listening to NPR.

Lis and I used to come down here in high school with friends. Gillson Beach is just five minutes away, and there's a fantastic headshop called "Candy Land." The owners, two Indians, sell beads and incense, jewelry and flowered skirts, hookahs and stash boxes. We loved it.

We're near the shop, a few blocks away. My mom's tailing a Beemer in her Mercedes Roadster, vying for best, fastest car. She always drives like this; it's a matter of status—competition—not a simple trip to the store.

I see a neon sign flickering "Pepsi." I'm thirsty. Then: "Dawg Eat Dawg" flashes blue, white, blue-white.

Oh. My. God.

I didn't know Lis stayed so close to Candy Land. It makes sense, though—a neighborhood we knew. 

"Mom?" I ask. I'm sifting through her thinking, her mood. She's staring out the front window, cursing the Corolla that's in front of us. I wonder if she ran the Beemer off the road.

"What?" The Corolla slams on the brakes, my mom slams on hers.

"Mom, that's Dawg Eat Dawg we just passed," I tell her lightly, a casual observation.

My mom is silent, still staring ahead. I don't know what she's thinking, how she feels. I'm relatively sure she didn't want this information, didn't ask for this knowledge.

"Let's stop," I say. "I'm thirsty, anyway. And it's lunchtime."

I'm hungry, too—and I want to see Cas. I've read about him in Lis's journals, her minor Greek god, her homeless-time hero. I think it's a good idea.

"I don't think this is a good idea," my mom says, but she turns around in an alley, signals left on Pine, turns back onto Lake. There's a spot right in front; it requires parallel parking, but my mom does it well.

I open the door, go inside; my mom trails me, a paper doll, a silhouette.

I see Cas; I know him on sight. The rat on crack eyes.

He doesn't know me as I walk to the counter. Why would he? I never called, never wrote. Never thanked him. My sister wrote nothing but nice of Cas in her journal. He was a kind man who tried his best to help a houseless, bed-less, twenty-three-year-old girl. Cas fed her, gave her a sink.

The place is a dive, though. Guy Fieri was right. It's barely four booths, and none of them match. The menu's chalkboard letters droop; the floor is sticky. The place smells spicy and charred—the smoky hot dog air only Chicagoans know.

I walk to the counter, order a hot dog—no ketchup—and cheese fries.

"And a Bud Lite," I say.

"No liquor license," Cas says.

"A Pepsi," I say. I remember the sign.

My mom wants nothing. She is sitting alone in the booth by the window, crinkling up napkins. I order her a cheeseburger anyway, just in case.

"Thanks for taking care of my sister," I tell him.

He squints his eyes. "Oh," he says, pauses. "Yeah." Startled. "Lis?"

"Yeah," I say.

"She was a good kid," he blinks. 

"Yeah. My little sister." I'm blinking, too.

"How's she?" He's flipping fries, fingers slick with canola oil. He wants to know.

"She died of cirrhosis last year," I tell him. "In November."

He stops flipping the fries, looks at me.

My mom sits silently; Cas glances over. She's consumed by guilt and her own tough love.

I've told her I'm proud of her, that she tried her best. I've reminded her that she dropped the restraining order, let Lis come back home. I tell her that I love her—have tried to love her for both of us.

My sister died at home, in her bed, with Squeeks.

 

 

***                      

          

The last time I see Lis, I'm home from Arizona for Thanksgiving. She's a wraith, weary and dull. Her skin is only twenty-four years old, but it's yellow and papery thin.

My sister is a skeleton with a hoodie on, a bird fossil that belongs in a museum. She sits surrounded by half-eaten packages of gummy bears, torn open bags of Jay's BBQ Chips. 

She didn't have turkey for Thanksgiving dinner—not even mashed potatoes. As a kid, she'd pile the potatoes on her plate, leave no place for anything else. 

("Clean up that damn plate, so you have room for other stuff," my dad told us as kids—if he was still awake for dinner. "Your mom cooked this turkey, and you'll damn well have room for it.")

But this year, she doesn't come out of her bedroom, so I go to her. I sit in her room with my plate, next to her bed. The room is a mess, its blinds closed, its disastrous carpet with cigarette burns; ashes from incense. Her Grateful Dead posters hang halfway, corners peeling. She keeps the television on but only watches Cubs games.

She's obsessed with the Bible now, scrawling chicken-scratch Scripture notes and tacking them to walls. She hated church growing up; I was the one who loved it, the one who no longer believes in god. 

I'm sad for her, sad for us. For our childhood, for the Southern Comfort, for what, it seems, we've become. And so, I watch her die. Try to hold her life, in mine, like always; our conversations the same, just slower, more tedious. It isn't fast or slow; Lis disintegrates. She leaves me alone like I'd left her.

 

***

 

"Lunch is on me," Cas says.

I eat my hot dog, cheese fries. Good food, greasy. Real cheddar cheese, pepperoncini, and pickles. My mom's cheeseburger sits; it's a dismal lump of meat and mess—a sacrificial pyre of sustenance.

When we leave, my mom crumples up two $100 bills and pushes them into the tip jar with a hard, decisive twist.

"I would've given him more," she says. "But it's all the cash I have."