True Stories by Helen Garner

I had the best roller-skates, I thought,’ says Three. ‘Mine were German, and yours were only English.’
    Are we in competition? And if so, what for? What’s the prize?
    Likeness
    Once, during a visit, Three and One were standing behind Three’s children who were watching TV. One grabbed the scarf Three had on, and Three put on One’s denim jacket. Three called out, ‘Hey, you kids!’ The kids gave a perfunctory glance, looked back at the television, then swung round in a slack-jawed double-take. Yes, just for a split second they couldn’t tell the difference. Why did Three and One find this satisfying?
    What if each sister should keep an album of unflattering photos of the others? ‘Ooh, she’ll hate this. She looks like something by Francis Bacon.’ No, we’re really not that kind of family. But we all examine photos with meticulous care, glancing up with narrowed eyes at the subject, and down again.
    We look like each other. Strangers stare at us in the street and say, ‘You wouldn’t be So-and-So’s sister, by any chance?’ For some, obviously, this is more flattering than for others. One, as eldest, embodies a version of the others’ fates: a heavy burden. Covertly we check each other for signs of ageing, signs of giving in. When One started to wear what in our family are known as ‘old duck sandals’, a tremor of apprehension ran down the ranks. But our ex-sister-in-law saved the situation. She looked at the sandals for a long time, then said, ‘Yes, they’re daggy all right. But they’re so daggy that they’re almost clever. ’ A week later Four turned out to a party wearing an identical pair.
    On tape our voices sound eerily similar.
    Each sister manifests for the others a version of our common looks. Each performs her version of the inherited character. Each is a cautionary tale for the others, in different ways and at different times.
    One day, when one of my sisters came and complained to me bitterly and at length, laying out in front of me what our mother used to dismiss as ‘some great tale’, I watched her in growing dismay. I saw the expressions that passed over her face and felt the sympathetic movements of my own facial muscles. I saw myself , my rigidity and pride, my pleasure in being aggrieved, my drive to power. And then, as we were saying goodbye on my verandah, under a climbing rose in bloom, each of us turned as if choreographed, picked a flower, and thrust it through the other’s buttonhole. Perhaps after all we are not so horrible.
    And it did happen that the ‘rejected’ one, when her life seemed to have collapsed, went to church one Sunday morning, wanting to be absolved, comforted, blessed, she didn’t care any more who by. She went up to the communion rail and got down on her knees. She looked up, as the chalice approached her, and saw that the robed person offering her the wine was her sister.
    â€˜I saw you recognise me,’ says One. ‘It rocked you—I saw it go through you like a lightning bolt. I thought you were going to keel over.’
    â€˜I didn’t even know you were in the church,’ says Three. ‘And when you put out your hands and turned up your face, for a second I thought it was myself.’
    House
    A certain humility is appropriate in a sister’s kitchen. Respect is owed to the one wearing the apron. We enter each other’s kitchens, however, as if we were coming home to our mother: straight to the biscuit tin, the nut jar, cram in a handful and stand there chewing, leaning on the cupboard and talking.
    Our kitchen and household customs, while not identical, resemble each other strongly: the use and abuse of the dishcloth, the order in which things are done, the theory of storage.
    But when Three has been minding Five’s new baby, Five remarks, upon changing a nappy after the baby-sitter has gone home, ‘Three always