THE SISTER AND BROTHER ACT NEVER LEAVES THE STAGE

Author: By Jessica Treadway

Date: SUNDAY, February 22, 1998

Page: F2

Section: Books

I don't know exactly what was at work in either of our minds, but I am sure it had to do with our sisterhood. Jealousy, pride, need, loyalty, mutual intuition: These are siblings' stock in trade. And ever since Cain slew Abel for offering the better gift, the relationship between brothers and sisters has made for drama both on and off the page.

George Eliot knew this when, in ``The Mill on the Floss,'' she penned the story of Maggie and Tom Tulliver, who found peace from their troubled mortal union only by dying together. Faulkner knew it when he created the tempestuous Compson clan in ``The Sound and the Fury.'' On the more positive side of the ledger, think of Harper Lee's Scout and Jem in ``To Kill a Mockingbird,'' or of Louisa May Alcott's ``Little Women.'' (Was there ever a girl with a sister who didn't read Beth's death scene without dropping a tear on the page?)

My favorite pair of fictional siblings comes from Betty Smith's classic ``A Tree Grows in Brooklyn,'' which tells the story of Francie Nolan and her younger brother, Neeley, as children in Williamsburg, circa World War I. According to neighborhood custom, on Christmas Eve all the poor kids gather around the unsold Christmas trees. The merchant ``chucks'' trees at the children, and if you don't fall down under the impact, the tree is yours.

Francie has picked out the biggest tree to try for, but when she steps forward everyone laughs, and the merchant says she's too little. But she pulls Neeley forward and insists, ``Me and my brother -- we're not too little together.'' Impressed, the man throws the tree at them, and to Francie ``the whole world stood still as something dark and monstrous came through the air. The tree came toward her blotting out all memory of her ever having lived. There was nothing -- nothing but pungent darkness and something that grew and grew as it rushed at her. She staggered as the tree hit them. Neeley went to his knees but she pulled him up fiercely before he could go down.''

They win the tree, and the congratulations of everyone on the street. It is a triumphant moment for the Nolan kids in a life otherwise characterized by want.

Many contemporary short stories feature pairs of same-sex siblings in which one -- usually the narrator -- is the self-appointed caretaker of the other. One of the most poignant stories I have ever read is Amy Bloom's ``Silver Water,'' from the collection ``Come to Me,'' in which Violet recounts the experience of living with an older sister, Rose, who suffered a psychotic break at age 15. ``Silver Water'' follows in the literary tradition of James Baldwin's ``Sonny's Blues,'' in which the narrator feels responsible for saving his younger brother from a life of heroin and despair. The feeling goes back as far as he can remember: ``I had been there when he was born; and I heard the first words he had ever spoken. When he started to walk, he walked from our mother straight to me. I caught him just before he fell when he took the first steps he ever took in this world.''

Susan Minot's ``Monkeys'' is a collection of stories about the seven Vincent children and their parents. ``The Navigator'' depicts the family on a riverside picnic after the kids have staged a breakfast intervention with their alcoholic father, who is deeply hung over from a blackout binge of the night before. After Dad promises to stop drinking, their mother brightly proposes the picnic. It's a beautiful day, and last night's crisis has been left behind on the shore. ``It was quiet and pleasant and there was no noise except the drone of a motorboat somewhere out on the water.

``Then they all heard the sound.

``Some heads jerked toward Dad; some looked down. . . . Mum didn't move, lying on the life jacket, eyes hidden behind her sunglasses. Sophie hugged her shins and bit her knee. Gus's neck was twisted into a tortured position; he glared at Dad's back.

``. . . The silence was no longer tranquil.''

For the Vincent kids, the crack of a can of beer being popped open is as loud and dire as gunfire. Minot portrays their collective dismay with a stunning subtlety that makes the reader's heart drop in empathy for what they've all wished for so fervently, and again lost.

Fiction, of course, is not the only arena in which writers explore the pros and cons of the sibling bond. Maria Flook, in her unusual new memoir ``My Sister Life,'' tells about growing up in the shadow of her absent older sister, who disappeared at age 14, when the author was 12. Flook writes: ``With Karen gone, I was left vulnerable to my own reckless actions, like a bouncing ball without its backboard. . . . I thought what had happened to Karen could happen to me. I recognized a mysterious `sister life' unfolding parallel to mine. . . . Karen and I were one.''

In life and literature, the relationship between brothers and sisters can be fraught with pain, disappointment, envy, and guilt. Our siblings are not always there to stand beside us when the tree is thrown; indeed, sometimes they are the ones doing the throwing. But perhaps Maria Flook has the last word when she notes, of her ties to her sister, that ``little remnants of her soul had entwined with mine.'' The knot may be loosened, but it is never quite undone.