The Almost Archer Sisters (24 page)

“Peachy! Hi! Where are you?” I could hear a loud TV in the background.

“What did you tell your friends about Mom?”

Beth exhaled.

“I don’t remember, really. I think, a long time ago, I think I might have told Jeb that I was the one who found her. I don’t know why. Then it never came up again. And then, knowing I had said something to that effect, I guess I just felt I should leave it alone. That’s why I told them not to bring it up. I couldn’t remember what I’d said. Why? What happened?”

“Why would you lie about something like that?”

“I don’t know,” she mumbled. “I’m sorry. I always felt ashamed that I didn’t go up first. You were so little.”

“So were you.”

“Yeah, but I was the oldest. I should have—”

“What are the boys doing?” I cut her off. I couldn’t have a conversation like this sitting in Nadia and Jeb’s guest washroom.

“The boys are here with me. We ate hot dogs. We’re watching
Dukes of Hazzard
. The TV show,
not
the movie.”

“They should be in bed by now.”

“I know, I just—”

“Where’s Beau and Lou?”

“I don’t know. I saw them take off a couple of hours ago. Peachy, what happened? Where are you?”

“Jeb and Nadia’s. I’m in the bathroom. Hey, do you know the address here?”

She told me. I wrote it on my hand.

“Peachy, don’t leave by yourself. Not that Williamsburg’s dangerous,” she said. “Unless you don’t want someone to steal your style. Listen, get Kate or Jeb to call you a car—”

“Okay, I gotta go,” I said. “I mean, I really gotta leave.”

“Peachy, don’t hang up. What’s going on? Did Nell come up? What did you tell them? I’m so sorry—”

“Stop with the sorry. I didn’t tell them anything, Beth. Okay? I said nothing. But I don’t understand why—listen. Fuck. I gotta go.”

I hung up. I felt cornered between exposing Beth’s lie and the inability to betray her. If I went back to the table, they’d force me to choose, and since I was a terrible liar and hadn’t been properly prompted on all of the finer details from the site of Nell’s new deathbed, I had to leave. There also was a part of me that preferred Beth’s version to linger a little longer in this milieu, because I didn’t want to betray Nell, to use her awful tragedy as my dinner party lubrication. It was my story too, my mother, and I didn’t want to abandon her sadness here, to be kicked around after I left, like it was a dead mouse being toyed with by dumb cats.

I dialed another number and Jonathan answered after one ring. I told him I was stuck at an awful party in a dangerous part of the city and that I needed a cab to come and get me. He said no worries, a friend of his had a car company not too far away, so sit tight, he said, one will be there in a minute.

“Also, in the future, you don’t have to tell me you’re Beth’s sister first when you call. You just say it’s Peachy from now on.”

“Okay.”

“See you soon.”

“Thanks. Bye.”

Three minutes later, the doorbell buzzed on the other side of the bathroom door. I could hear Nadia clomping toward me, then faint knocking.

“Peachy, darling, dere’s a man here who says you ordered a car.”

I opened the door and took Nadia by the arm, using her body to shield me from the dining area as we walked out.

“Thank you for the lovely evening, Nadia, but I really have to go now. Bye, everybody!” I yelled over her shoulder to mild protestations.

“Nobody meant to make you upset,” she said, framing my face like I did with the boys using my two hands. I nearly started to cry from missing them.

“I know. But I have to go.”

“What are you doing tomorrow? Let me take you to lunch or someting. I will call you, okay?”

“Okay,” I said, accidentally kissing her goodbye on the mouth.

I
T WAS ALMOST
ten o’clock when I woke up. I wasn’t hungover, but I felt drugged and disoriented from the unnatural amount of sleep I had enjoyed. Almost ten hours, I realized, patting around the quilty mountains for Jake’s phantom limbs. I had slept so long and so deeply my entire right side had gone numb. For the first time in almost ten years, I had woken up alone. A person could get used to falling asleep alone, but waking up alone felt altogether odd to me. Odder still was not having to spring out of bed to rouse the others. I didn’t have to set a table or stir up eggs. I didn’t have to yell up for Beau, twice, sometimes three times. I didn’t have to take Sam’s temperature, or check his bed for pee, pulling the plastic liner off and flipping it if the mattress was damp. I didn’t have to let Scoots out, then in, then out again. I didn’t have to feel guilty about dumping his fresh food in last night’s crusty bowl, always meaning to wash it later, which I sometimes did, but mostly didn’t.

There was nothing in Beth’s apartment for breakfast except
booze and cheese, so I boiled some water for tea. I was eating my second peach when Nadia called. She reiterated an unnecessary apology about last night and told me to expect her at Beth’s in an hour for some shopping and sightseeing. I was excited to be hanging out with Nadia rather than Kate, who I would have eventually shoved in front of a subway car if I had to pass any more time in her presence. I took my tea out onto the fire escape. The city streets below made me feel like I was hovering above the deck of a crowded cruise ship.

“Ahoy,” I yelled like an idiot.

I thought about Beau’s anger, which, judging from my dreams, had reached New York and stirred me in the night. I remembered nothing in particular. No dream scene stuck out. But I woke with the sense that I’d done a lot of running and screaming, that there’d been fights of some kind, and that I had ground my teeth on account of how tender my jaw felt that morning.

The sun beat heavy on my pale shoulders and I ducked back inside. As I made my way to the computer to check the email, I tripped over an area rug and spilled my tea across the white fat couch.

“Fucking fuck,” I screamed. I had seen myself doing this, had envisioned it several times before it happened, my body likely doomed to fulfill that destiny. I scrambled to the fridge for something like soda water, snatched the Perrier, and poured it on the cushion. Then I pulled at the paper towels off the rack, yanking the spool across the living room floor. I sopped and prayed, prayed and sopped, and the brown turned to beige then to a blush only detectable if mentioned, which it would never be, I thought, flipping the cushion over, only to expose an even bigger stain, far less faint, on the other side. Expensive red wine, I thought. I also found a tiny packet of white powder folded in Saran Wrap and lodged in the couch fold. I knew what it was. I had never seen Beth do hard drugs before, but after nosing through her medicine
cabinet this should hardly surprise me. Yet, I winced at the sight of the packet. I bit it open with my teeth, careful not to spill any into my mouth, and poured it down the sink under running water. This was something I’d need to discuss with her, I thought. Or better yet, I’d discuss with Lou, who could, in turn, discuss it with her, my ability to conjure any benevolence toward Beth still badly impaired.

T
HE
N
EW
Y
ORK
subway was cleaner and more navigable than I had imagined. Nadia impressed me with how she knew exactly where we were going, what hallways to go down and staircases to go up, minus any maps. The way she walked, her slightly imperious strut, made her look like the opposite of a lost and stupid target, and I tried to copy it. But my outfit betrayed me badly. I saw no one who looked like me, a tourist in discount black sandals with the worn, sloped heels of someone who chased after children full-time. My five-year-old jeans, belted high at the waist, bagged low under my bum. My purse, utilitarian beige, had about as much style as an old rotary phone and weighed the same too. Even magnanimous Nadia seemed to cringe when I reached for my denim jacket, saying, “It’s too hot for dat. You won’t need it,” though it would have gone a long way to conceal what I once thought was my best blouse, which the kids named the Babysitter shirt, because when I wore this V-necked, long-sleeved red confection with its hint of Lycra shimmer, it signaled that Beau and I were going out. But here, in Midtown Manhattan, it signaled too much effort too early in the day. Even I knew it, glancing around the subway at the put-together women who wore artfully knotted scarves, patterned skirts, and brand-new high-heeled shoes.

When Nadia told me she was taking me to Macy’s first, I felt the rush of childhood joy, though I only knew the place from
Christmas movies and parades. But what does a person wear on a date? How could I have never been on a date? Beau didn’t date me; he knocked me up and married me. No boy had ever pulled up our long gravel driveway to pin something gaudy to my chest.

“What you need is one nice outfit, Peachy,” Nadia said. “And den we can accessorize around it. What plans do you have for tonight? Kate tells me you are meeting a friend you know from here.”

She seemed to have no idea I planned on meeting Beth’s ex. In fact, it occurred to me that Nadia wouldn’t think much of Jeb, Kate, and Beth’s ridiculous prank, so they probably never told her about it.

“That’s right. An old friend. And I think dinner’s just going to be casual. Not too fancy. But I want to look, I don’t know, pretty.”

“Dat won’t be too hard.”

I blushed, confused by a crush that was anything but sexual. Nadia was dressed in smart black culottes over which was draped an oversized blue caftan, cut off at the thighs. Her hair was tied back and low with a frayed ribbon. I rarely shopped with other grownups, and never without the boys. Shopping to me was having an exit time and a list, keeping one keen eye on both kids, the other on the clock. If I found something I wanted, which was usually something I needed, I’d stuff all three of us in a changing room. I’d tell them to pretend it was a fort they had to hold down if I ran to the rack for a bigger size. How many times had I brought home the wrong color, thinking the navy was the black, the ivory was the white, shopping at lightning speed to keep the kids on their schedule and Beau and me out of debt. But I loved shopping for them, picking out their cute outfits, their stripes and pants and matching socks, the smell of chemicals on new cloth bringing me back to those days before back-to-school, when Lou would do his damnedest to outfit Beth and me as best as possible. He would watch what the other
mothers were buying for their girls and trail behind them like a seagull following a cruise ship, pecking at their castoffs. My fingers grazed a pair of jeans that were a size zero, a category I had heard of before, but rarely spotted in places I shopped for clothes.

“These could fit Sam,” I said.

“Yeah. Or dey could be leg covers for your kitchen chairs,” Nadia snorted.

Nadia yanked a half-dozen pairs of pants, two dresses, and lots of tops off the racks, smacking them up against my body while avoiding my eyes.

The hour passed with increasing frustration. It wasn’t that nothing fit, but nothing looked like it was supposed to on my body. The waist would jut out if the pants fit my ass, or the shirt would tug too tight across my shoulder blades, or it would pucker across my tits too much.

“Do you know your size?” the salesgirl finally screamed over the change room door, behind which I stood, spent clothing piled around my ankles.

“I thought I did,” I yelled back. “I thought maybe I was an eight or maybe a ten. But now I don’t know.”

I looked down at the sartorial carnage. I must have tried on a dozen pairs of pants and jeans and cords in those sizes, reluctant to ask for a twelve or fourteen, even if they made them in those sizes, which they did not. I felt like the fattest, poorest kid in class, fully expecting to be chased back to Beth’s place by a taunting pack of elegantly dressed scarecrows. I sat my ass on the little shelf, pants shackling my ankles, and started to tear up. I had in mind a picture of me that perhaps didn’t exist, someone pulled-together, confident, and happy.

“Hello in there? I could start removing some of those castoffs if you don’t mind,” said the saleslady. Gathering up the clothing, I angrily flung them over the top of the door and fell back on the shelf feeling like the cornered dunce.

“Open da door please, Peachy,” Nadia demanded. She’d been gone for a while, during which time I had lost the battle with the long-legged jeans.

“Here.” Her hand proffered a springy pile of heavy material. Its comforting pattern looked like the close-up of a painting of a lake, all curvy blues and greens and creams. “Dis is it. Dis is da ting.”

“I can’t afford that,” I said directly into the dress’s price tag.

“Dat’s good news, because I can,” she said.

“That’s ridiculous,” I said. “I don’t want you to buy me anything.”

“Just shut up and try it on.”

The price was the equivalent of a fancy barbecue with a burner for corn, or a pair of cross-country skis, two things I recently wouldn’t allow Beau to charge on the credit card, claiming it was only to be used for emergencies.

“What emergencies?” he whined.

“Fire burns down our house and we need to stay in a hotel.”

“But we’d stay with Leo and Lucy,” he said.

“The hell. What about Lou?”

“The fire wouldn’t reach the trailer, dummy.”

The dress folded heavily around my body, the cut and weight of the material containing me making me feel grown-up. I held out my arms as Nadia expertly threaded one strap through a hole and wrapped the other around the thinnest part of my waist. She lovingly tied a bow and let it gingerly drape a hip, and I watched my face instantly unbuckle out of its pretantrum angst and melt into the relaxed grin of a person falling a little in love with themselves. I traced my fingers up and down the valley between my breasts.

“Holy shit.”

“If you won’t let me buy dat for you, Peachy, den we’re going to have to make a run for it,” she said.

The salesgirl, arms full of castoffs, moved toward us as though in a trance herself.

“Diane?” she asked, taking in my body in that dress.