The Never Never Sisters (11 page)

THE SOMETHING FUNNY
my mom had promised for the party was, in fact, pretty funny, which was not standard
for my mother’s predictions. She had selected a photo of my dad from twenty years
ago in which he was waving at someone, right palm up, and made it into one of those
life-sized cardboard photos. It was positioned right at the entryway with a sign around
its neck that read
FLAT FRANKIE
.

Dave started laughing. When I didn’t join in, he poked me in the shoulder. “Come on.
That’s hilarious.”

“It is.” I didn’t have high hopes for the evening. All he’d wanted to talk about in
the cab ride over was Sloane: What time would she get there? How would she act? How
should he talk to her?

“She’s not a bear, Dave. You don’t have to clap or wear bright clothing or something.
Just say hello.”

“Like she’s a normal person?”

“She is a normal person.”

“Are you kidding me? Angry, fucked-up and here-under-suspicious-circumstances Sloane?”

“Start with hello.”

He held up one hand, smiled fake-brightly and said, “Hello,” awkwardly with a frozen
smile on his face.

I didn’t laugh. “Has Brian been better?”

“Brian?”

“Your liaison?”

“Better at what?”

“You were talking about what a crappy liaison he was. Has he upped his game?”

In his pause, I anticipated another Brian story—how he’d blabbed about alcoholism
and gambling at the Native American Lawyers dinner, or made a speech about moneygrubbing
and Palestinian rights at the Hillel Club. Instead, Dave jerked his head to the side
like he had water in his ear. “He’s been fine. He’s adequately performed his job.”

“Meaning you’ve been fine not talking to anyone else at the office.”

“Paige?” He squeezed my shoulder. “It’s a-a-l-l working out.”

I knew I’d overplayed it; instead of feeling like the wronged party, I was the hysterical
nonsensical one.

I high-fived Flat Frankie and forced myself to laugh. I was choking on the ha-ha’s
when one of the waiters my mom had hired for the evening arrived to usher us to the
patio. He was wearing an outfit remarkably similar to mine: white pants and a green
jacket with a mandarin collar.

Walking behind him, Dave stopped to whisper in my ear. “Do you get an inside line
on the color scheme?” I faked another smile and pulled my own jacket closer.

“Paigey Turner the Page Turner!” Darren Rabinowitz knew I hated my married name, knew
I didn’t use it, but its appeal was just too great for him to pass by. He was fond
of phrases like “Where’s the party at?” and “Happy Turkey Day!” and would utter them
in his fifty-nine-year-old booming voice. Once, two summers ago, he’d called Cherie
his “boo.”

“Hi, Darren. How are you?”

“Good, excellent. You? Looking lovely as always.”

“Fine, fine.” We pressed our cheeks together. It was funny, the things I knew about
him—the testicular cancer scare, the money he’d “borrowed” from my parents during
the real estate bust seven years ago that now no one expected him to repay. I didn’t
even want to know the things he’d been told about me. Cherie, I assumed, did with
my stories what my mom had done with Binnie’s, dutifully reporting in on everything
from my late puberty (sixteen—cause for some concern at my house) to when I got dumped
the morning of the senior prom.

He had probably learned these things over a salad and roast chicken at their dinner
table, half listening, occasionally offering judgments. Yet he and I never discussed
any of it and never would. It was always this—phony reassurances that all was fine,
fine, as the other one thought,
Yeah, right
.

Cherie kissed me, murmuring something in my ear about what a weird, weird week it
was. I nodded before wishing my dad a happy birthday and then saying hello to Michael
Oster, Binnie’s husband. He absented himself from the cluster with his in-laws and
planted himself next to Dave as if staking a claim, no doubt relieved Dave was there
to buffer the steady, slightly nagging chatter of Cherie, Michael’s mother-in-law.
Binnie floated up, kissed Dave’s cheek and managed to slightly lift up the corners
of her mouth in my direction.

“Dave, we were just talking about summer homes. The Rubens bought one in Amagansett,
on that block where that old tree fell last June.” Binnie and Michael had the forced
repartee of actors playing a married couple in a commercial for floor cleaner—all
talk of broken washing machines and benign gossip and changes in the teaching roster
at little Barclay’s preschool.

“Oh?” Dave looked interested, and I couldn’t tell if he was pretending.

“So, what’s up?” Michael said. “Why haven’t you been out east for even one weekend?”

“Work,” he said. “Lots and lots of work.”

“What are you guys drinking?” I stepped in to change the subject for him.

Binnie held up her glass. “Pomegranate and coconut something.”

“Oh, because of the—” I gestured at the burgeoning bump in Binnie’s midsection, which
would be her third. Hopefully, this one would be as blond and precocious as the first
two, or heaven help us all.

“No.” Michael held up his drink. “Apple juice infused with ginger. It’s a dry party.”

“You know”—Binnie gestured with her glass vaguely in the direction of one of the chaise
lounges—“thanks to—”

Sloane sat alone on one of the chairs, wearing the same T-shirt and cutoff shorts
she’d worn all week. Her knees were hugged up to her chest, and although she had a
cigarette in hand—a tiny little orange light that burned in the darkness and I assumed
was the reason for her exile—she looked like a ten-year-old who’d been stashed at
a kids’ table.

I walked over. “Hi.” I sat down on the chaise next to her, surprised when her features
relaxed into relief for half a second when I did. “You having fun?”

“Well . . .” She fluttered her eyes beneath her lids for a moment. “No.”

“Hi.” Dave was right behind me, hand extended to Sloane. “I’ve wanted to meet you
forever. I’m Dave.”

“The husband.” She switched her cigarette to her left hand and shook with her right,
unfolding from the little ball she’d been sitting in. “Hello.”

“The husband.” He plopped down next to me, depressing my cushion with his weight.
“So how does it feel to be back? Is it weird?”

“A little, maybe.”

“Must be. Seeing everyone after twenty years, watching people age in flashes like
Rip Van Winkle. You’ve got a great family, though.”

“Dave.” I pushed against him with my shoulder so he’d shut up.

Sloane sucked on her cigarette, which was back in her right hand. “I hear you’re part
of the family business?”

“What?” Dave seemed taken aback.

“You’re a lawyer.”

“Guilty. I’m at a firm in Midtown.”

“Neat. How’s married life?”

“Married life?” He watched her for a second, and I thought he was trying to figure
out if she was challenging him.

“She’s about to embark on it,” I reminded him.

“Oh, congratulations.” He put his arm around my shoulders and kissed my cheek. “It’s
the best. I’m the luckiest.”

“Aw,” Sloane said in her monotone. “Sweet.”

“Hello!” My mom rushed over, leaned down to kiss Dave’s and my cheeks and stood over
the three of us, hands clasped. “Look at this: the kids—all together.” She beckoned
to someone with the crook of a finger on her right hand.

“I’m getting to know my new sister.” Dave’s head bent up toward my mom. “Right, Sloane?”

“Right.”

“Excellent.”

“Hi there.” My mom spoke loud enough to address a stranger ten feet away who was wearing
a dark suit with four cameras around his neck. “Can you get a picture of these three?”
I did a quick estimation of the party’s hired help–to-guest ratio: four to one. “Not
just one, actually, but as many as you can.” She leaned closer to him, put her hand
up to cover the side of her mouth and said, conspiratorially, “I don’t really care
about anyone else’s picture, actually.”

He nodded and winked, and she pulled my arm, whispering, “Get up!” and smiled gently
at Sloane. “Over there, by the view. Paige, oh my god, you’re dressed like the caterers.”

“I’m not.” I glanced down. “This is emerald. They’re wearing . . .”

“Emerald. They’re wearing emerald.” Dave put his hand on my mom’s arm. “That life-sized
picture of Frankie is so funny. What did he say when he saw it?”

“Oh, he couldn’t believe how much hair he used to have. Get together, you three.”

Dave put an arm around me and one around Sloane and hugged us toward him so closely
that I could smell the minty spice of his deodorant. I smiled into the flashes, having
no hope for the resulting images: Dave’s smile the only genuine one and Sloane’s outfit
awkwardly casual compared to ours.

“Oh,” my mom responded to someone’s signal across the patio. “Dinner’s ready!” She
hurried away, and the three of us moved over to the outdoor table, the photographer
dutifully recording our steps.

“I feel like I’m walking the red carpet,” said Sloane under her breath to no one in
particular.

“Casual, I promise,” my mom had sworn during the planning stage, and yet there were
seating cards, designed, I was certain, to offer both protection and proof of Sloane.

My mom had placed us at my dad’s end of the table, which was always the quiet side.
The kids were next: a spectrum from Reinhardts to Rabinowitzes, with Dave and Michael
the bridges. Beyond them were my mom and Cherie and booming Darren, the constant,
spirited yammerers.

Normally, I would have fought against being shelved with the duds and would’ve pushed
into Dave’s conversation or leaned over to chat with Cherie, who could converse for
hours about anything from the cleanest way to remove a splinter to the difference
between seltzer and sparkling water.

I stayed silent, however. So did Sloane, even though my mom kept trying to draw her
into the conversation. Sloane’s and my eyes met once, and I interpreted her glance
as an admission and acknowledgment that we were each having a less-than-fantastic
time.

The toasts started, as they always did, right after the singing and the cake. Darren
went first—with a golf story that was as generic as it was loud—something about my
dad going par three and the green or the sand. Cherie, who did not technically give
her own toast, kept butting in to Darren’s: “Why aren’t you talking about the time
we went to Mexico?” and Darren would boom, “Okay. We went to Mexico.” And Cherie would
say, “Not like that. Tell the funny parts,” and Darren would say, “You tell it, then,”
and she would.

Michael and Binnie together recounted the Orlando Motor Inn incident. (That vacation
had happened before Binnie even met Michael, but by now he’d heard enough about it
that he’d probably forgotten he wasn’t there.) The story was that we’d all gone swimming
in that fluorescent blue pool and when we got out, dripping wet, there had been no
towels. My usually mild-mannered father apparently found this unforgivable and expressed
his displeasure in such a volcanic way that we were all still discussing it.

Dave rose with raised glass, bouncing a little on the balls of his feet. I was surprised
by how self-conscious he was as he told my dad he was “the best dad I know.” Dave
was usually a smooth public speaker, and it wasn’t like he was covering unexplored
territory: Dave’s own dad had spent the majority of Dave’s childhood sitting in a
Barcalounger, flipping the remote and grunting for corn nuts. Dave talked to him about
twice a year.

I wondered if Sloane was thinking the same thing I was—that Dave probably appreciated
our father more than we did. Involuntarily, I smiled at her—my lips twisted in a guilty
grin. Wonder of wonders, she smiled back.

Dave sat down, which meant I was up. I watched Sloane pick at the loose fabric of
her place mat. She couldn’t have known that toasts are de rigueur at Reinhardt parties,
and if she had, it’s not like she had stories to share.

I willed Sloane to look at me. She didn’t, so I leaned over her mat and put my flattened
palm down on it, raising my other hand like an orchestra conductor:
Rise!
She furrowed her brow, but I did it again until she pushed back her chair and slouched
to a stand.

I’d written a poem for the occasion, albeit an awful one—the worst stanza of which
rhymed “hardworking lawyer” with “moral as Tom Sawyer.” It had occurred to me, as
I watched my dad puff out sixty-three candles, that Huck Finn, not Tom, was the moral
one. Wasn’t that the whole point of the thing? Now Huck Finn—that would have introduced
a wealth of rhyming options.

I raised a juice glass and waited for Sloane to do the same. I had no clue what to
say, so I said something about how he worked hard enough so the rest of us didn’t
have to. I said how generous he was, although really, I don’t know if he was intrinsically.
(I’d always suspected that if my mother had met an early and unfortunate death, my
dad would have done a full-on “Father of Cinderella,” and we’d have been pulled into
the embrace of a wicked stepmother. I left that part out of the toast.)

Then Sloane mumbled something about how nice it was to be celebrating with everyone
together in one spot. It wasn’t much, but when she spoke, it was like that pivotal
moment in
The Elephant Man
—
I am not an animal; I am a human being!
Everyone gasped and sprouted tears, and Sloane waited until after the kissing and
the aws
died down to give me the most potent grateful glance I’ve ever received.

She cares,
I thought.
She actually cares under there.

My mom, the anchor of the toasts, pushed out her chair. “Frankie,” she said, “I’ve
done my share of stupid things.” Everybody laughed. “Hey—you all don’t have to agree
so readily. But the first smart thing I did was marrying you. The second smart thing
I did was stay married to you.”

“Surely, you’ve done more than two smart things?” Darren boomed this.