The Never Never Sisters (31 page)

IT WAS MY
first real run of fall and the air was chilled enough that my breath emerged in smoky
puffs. I was happy for the change of season—not just because of the tumult of the
summer, but because the first days of autumn for me always evoked thoughts of homemade
applesauce and crisp blue skies instead of the bleak winter to come. I’d be disappointed
in a matter of weeks—cursing needing a coat and the fact that the park would be dark
right after lunch, but I was incapable of feeling that now. I decided to continue
walking the loop, my steps padded by the yellowing leaves paving the path.

I fished my mobile out of my pocket and dialed Sloane. “I got the tickets,” I said
as soon as she picked up the phone.

“Excellent! We’ve been talking about all the places we’re going to take you.”

“Such as?”

“The shop. And there’s this taco truck that we found . . . oh, and a Japanese teahouse,
which is wonderful. And then the Halloween party on the beach that we go to every
year.”

“Maybe we can do one of those celebrity bus tours.”

“Maybe not.”

“You’re still planning to come out here for Thanksgiving?”

“I’m not promising anything.” She waited a beat. “
She
made another comment on my blog, you know.”

“What did she say?”

“I’m surprised you don’t know, seeing as you’re the brilliant mastermind behind her
finding the site in the first place.”

The first time my mom had commented on Sloane’s blog, Sloane had called me up, furious.
“Sounds delicious?” Sloane had said without other greeting or explanation. “Sounds
delicious? Can you believe that? Who
says
that?” Two months later, I believed that Sloane’s complaints were getting less vocal,
more begrudging. Or perhaps I had just built up a callus to them. Regardless, I was
committed to slowly, subtly pushing Sloane toward our mom. Minds could be changed;
ties that seemed broken could be healed. I had seen it.

“You’ll promise to discuss Thanksgiving, though.”

“Whatever.” She shifted her tone back to friendly. “So, did you get the papers?”

I was about to answer when I sensed someone walking beside me. I glanced to my left.
“It’s Percy!” I told Sloane, the panic crisp in my voice. “Percy Stahl is here in
the park.”

“Tell him hi.”

“Sloane says hi,” I said to Percy.

“Hi,” he said.

“Hi,” I repeated into the phone. “I’ll call you back, okay?” I hung up the phone and
wiped my palms against the slickness of my running tights.

This was not the first time since July that I’d seen him around the loop—he’d taken
to running counterclockwise, in the opposite direction from me, or maybe that had
always been his routine. Once or twice I’d looked the other way and avoided his eyes,
but on occasion mine would connect with his. I couldn’t figure out his expression.

Over the past few months, I’d told myself that I’d conjured my feelings for him—that
Percy Stahl was a nice-looking stranger in the wrong place at the wrong time. It was
an argument that apparently required a distance of greater than ten feet between us
to be convincing.

“How are you?” I could tell from his loaded tone that Percy was aware that Dave and
I had split up.

After all of my weeks of searching and questioning, I had been surprised by the certainty
and immediacy of my wanting out: I couldn’t square the man I thought I’d known with
what he’d done. I couldn’t get a clear read on him—had I ever?—and within weeks of
his moving out, I could barely remember believing that I had.

Percy’s expression was so sympathetic that I suspected he had even heard the details
from Sloane and Giovanni: How, when Dave moved out, I cried for a week. How, for about
six weeks after that, I barely left the house, too embarrassed at others’ disappointment
at the failure of my young perfect marriage. And then, how one day in the not-too-distant
past, I started to feel clearer and calmer.

With late August, my clients had returned, and Dave was distracted too—by his firm’s
implosion and the kaleidoscope of spin-off firms, which I was, frankly, glad to not
have to track out of pretend spousal interest. Maybe that was how we’d managed to
agree that we wouldn’t fight or drag out the matter; we would put the apartment on
the market, sell to the highest bidder, split the proceeds, cut the cord.

I’d moved out last week and had spent the days before filling up my own boxes, taping
and stacking piles of things that I feared I’d always want to forget. I had paused,
though, when I got to the box of my mother’s journals.

I had vague romantic notions of sharing them with Sloane someday, but I knew no one
was ready for that. Still, I couldn’t throw them out; I liked the idea of occasionally
glancing at their neat spiral spines, recalling how the pureness of their honesty
had helped both me and my mom, years apart.

My truth about Dave had settled with the finality of a pebble tossed into the stillest
pond. He would not be the love of my life; he would be my ex, the guy who was decent
during our divorce after that sliver of a marriage. The one who would wind up being
shockingly easy to let go.

“I’m fine,” I said. “I’m going to California in October.”

“I heard about that plan.”

“How are you?”

“Good. Just filing my toenails. Polishing my one table. Washing my jeans, you know.”

I laughed. “The important stuff.”

“Right. By the way, Selena really thinks you’re helping them.”

“I’m glad.”

Sloane had asked me whether I could stomach being a marriage counselor in light of
the demise of mine. “Of course,” I’d automatically responded before reflecting that
she did have a point. Fundamentally, though, I still believed in the institution—its
beauty and its ability, in the right case, to tether people together through hardship.
I still asked people what they wanted. It was a good question, I had concluded, as
long as you knew not to impute too much permanence to the response.

A yellow leaf spiraled off a tree and landed in our path. “I’m happy it’s fall,” Percy
said.

“Me too,” I said. “The best transitions are ones where you know exactly what to expect.
The same every year.”

“Not necessarily,” he said. “I bought a lamp. Spur-of-the-moment purchase. It’s given
me no end of joy.”

“Wow. What’s next?”

He shrugged. “I’m thinking a bar stool or two.” Before I could respond, he stopped
and stood directly in my path, right where the leaf had landed. “I’ve thought about
you.”

“Oh.”

“I haven’t wanted to intrude. I figured you were dealing with what you were dealing
with.”

This was the hard part: to recognize my pull toward Percy and will against it. If
I hadn’t known my husband, how could I trust myself with someone who was essentially
a stranger? Without warning, he reached out his fingers and brushed my cheek. “Eyelash,”
he said, holding it out for me to make a wish. We both glanced at his finger, and
I let myself feel the bolt of certainty.

We think that truths are immutable—we rely on them like bedrock—but they last for
mere moments, shifting and changing and dragging with them our lives as we’ve known
them and sometimes, those whom we love. In that moment, I wanted—I trusted myself
enough—to risk it, whether I turned out to be right or wrong about Percy.

Percy’s eyes focused on mine the way they had that night in the hammock. Just like
that night, I felt a charge in the air as we stood in the public openness of the park
road. I hesitated, because after the contracts and sworn statements that I’d signed
in the past three months, with the newsprint still darkening my fingernail beds from
a week of packing up my belongings, a kiss seemed rushed, too much.

He didn’t lean forward, though. He stepped aside and one pace ahead and turned, holding
out his hand. “Let’s just walk,” he said.

So I held out mine.

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1. What was the original inspiration for the story?

It all started with Dave and his betrayal. If you think you know someone better than
anyone and then you learn something that disrupts your narrative about that person—what
do you do? Your choices are either to change your narrative or do backbends trying
to smoothly incorporate the new fact so that it fits into what you’ve previously believed.

I think people probably do both—and maybe degrees of each every day, and I wanted
to explore that. The story grew to encompass Paige’s relationship with not only Dave
but also Sloane and Vanessa and even Franklin. But Dave was the springboard for that
more global examination of how trust is earned and of what we tell ourselves about
the people in our lives whom we think we know.

2. There are a lot of communication problems in the book—occasions where characters
either don’t say what they’re thinking or say too much or build walls in the face
of someone else’s admission: Paige and Vanessa, Paige and Dave, Sloane and . . . almost
everyone. How do you see conversation (or lack thereof) fitting into the development
or erosion of connection between characters?

Obviously conversation—and more specifically the exchange of crucial information—is
a key to connection. The right information communicated between the right people is
how intimacy is formed. Don’t you feel closest to the people with whom you can be
completely honest, and who you feel can be honest with you? Navigating this—what you
share with those close to you and what you keep for yourself—is, I think, definitely
more art than science for most people. We share because we’re moved to by a moment
or someone else’s admission, but there are also times when we divulge—or don’t—as
a matter of strategy and, of course, those choices help relationships move along or
stall.

At the beginning of the story, Paige would claim that she knows everything that matters
about both her mom and her husband. She’s willing to accept certain areas of silence
between them because they’re not critical to her
here and now
, but as she delves deeper into family secrets, she starts to see that those silences
have had a great impact. And that she’s troublingly capable of maintaining her own
strategic silences too.

When you really start to think about it, there’s a necessary leap of faith in all
relationships. You can’t know everything about a person, and even when you think you
know someone’s heart and soul, you can’t know all of his or her thoughts.

3. And the corollary to that leap of faith seems to be the ability to forgive. At
the end of the book, Paige has loosened the strings of some of those crucial relationships
and reinforced others. Without giving too much away, do you agree with her choices
on what can be forgiven?

I don’t know that I would’ve made the same choices as Paige, but I definitely respect
her process. She (finally!) went with her own gut decision, which was a big deal for
her. Her upbringing was a real mix of being overly coddled and also exposed to some
pretty heavy stuff—and she desperately needed to make this decision by and for herself.

I purposely didn’t give Paige and Dave any shared burdens or distractions (dependents,
financial stresses, bad health). I wanted the book to take place while they’re still
in a honeymoon period so that, on the surface, at least, they’re two happy people
with everything going for them.

There’s this romantic ideal about two people going off into the sunset on a horse
(or in a carriage or a flying convertible like in
Grease
). But you know once they’ve been on that horse for a while, someone will get thirsty
while the other will want to keep going until they reach the destination. Someone
will want to help that guy on the side of the road, and the other will think he’s
a serial killer. Everyone makes bargains in their relationships. Everyone lets their
principles slide or evolve at some point to make things work—it’s just a question
of knowing where your lines are at any given moment.

4. It was so interesting how Paige, a marriage counselor, helped couples find their
way back to each other as she grappled with issues in her own marriage. At one point
she says to Percy, “I’m not like my clients.” Did you make her a marriage counselor
to provide that contrast?

This is an especially funny question because Paige did a lot of floundering in the
early drafts, before she became a marriage counselor. She tutored a bit for standardized
tests. She dabbled in grad school (medical, dental), and she spent a lot of time and
effort beautifying and mixing up health shakes filled with things like flaxseed and
kale protein powder. (I don’t know if there is such as thing as kale protein powder,
actually. But it does sound healthy, and it would have totally been up Paige’s alley.)

None of that felt one hundred percent right, though. Paige had to be a woman of opinions,
someone who thought she’d figured out all the answers for relating.

Paige’s job change felt very natural. It made a lot in the story click and, really,
she was much happier and stronger as soon as we gave her that job. (My editor and
I both breathed a little sigh of relief.) Frankly, it was nice to anchor her a bit,
because she gets a lot thrown at her, including that being a marriage counselor doesn’t
give you an automatic answer guide to your own relationships.

5. I really enjoyed Giovanni. Whenever he showed up in the book, I laughed. Was that
a deliberate choice to make him light?

I’m so glad! Giovanni made me laugh too. He was probably the most fun to write. (Although
Vanessa was a close second.)

I’ve known (and envied) people like Giovanni, who just don’t seem to get in their
own way. Initially Paige underestimates him because of the games and the jokes, but
he’s very good at distilling things to their core simplicity and talking about them.

And, yes, Giovanni provides some much-needed contrast to the Reinhardt women. He’s
reductive where Paige is alternatively oblivious and hyperaware. He’s sunny where
Sloane is moody, and he’s an open book, in stark contrast to Vanessa. I think he and
Sloane will be just fine.

6. What surprised you the most in writing the book?

I love this question because being surprised while writing a novel is unavoidable,
as well as one of the best parts of the process.

Aside from how very many drafts it took, I’d say the biggest surprise was the evolution
of certain characters. A lot shifts as I write, but one constant here on the journey
from idea to completed manuscript was the substance of Dave’s “lie” and how it impacts
Paige and Dave’s marriage. I was not expecting to become as fond of Dave as I did,
or that there would be such genuine compatibility between him and Paige. I’m so glad
I stuck it out with him, because it complicated Paige’s choice and forced her to explore
her personal belief system: what makes one transgression forgivable and another not?
I’m very curious how readers felt about Dave throughout the book, so please—shoot
me an e-mail. I’d love to hear!

Vanessa surprised me too. She’s tricky: she builds massive walls but is also incredibly,
piercingly honest, especially in her journals. I loved writing those entries. I think
a lot of people tap into something different with respect to voice when they write,
and that was a very liberating way to explore her thought processes.

Obviously this is primarily Paige’s story, but Vanessa helped
The Never Never Sisters
come together. She mines a lot of the themes in the novel—how the struggle to find
your own truth dovetails with the struggle of those closest to you, how one’s own
narrative and identity impact parenting style and experience and the role of familial
expectation in all of it.