The Never Never Sisters (5 page)

I HAD TWO
hours until my first appointment and decided to use the time to organize my office
bookcase by color. I pushed aside the azure
Getting to Yes
to make room for indigo
Love Poems and Memories
. Maybe because the blue reminded me of the speckled linoleum at the Patty Melt, it
popped into my head as a tidy little thought: I still had questions about Dave’s story.

Something—shame? fear?—had kept him from opening up about the whole story behind his
suspension. Since the Patty Melt, he’d been hyperfocused on work. “Don’t even bother
knocking,” he’d said.

My phone rang with an unknown number, which was somewhat of a relief from the tension
building in my stomach.

“Dr. Reinhardt?”

“This is Paige.”

“Paige, it’s Helene Jacoby from the other day.”

“Hi, Helene. You know I’m not a doctor, right?”

“You’re not?”

“I do have a master’s in counseling, though.”

“Fine, that’s fine. We want to come in again.”

“Great. Scott . . . too?”

“Yes, he’s totally on board. We both felt very comfortable with you and liked your
style.” I suppressed a smile at her word choice; at that exact instant I was trying
to discern which of two book spines had more red in the purple. They thought I had
style—wait till they saw the bookcase.

“The thing is—Scott’s feeling stressed about work. Do you ever meet on weekends?”

Little did Helene know that this particular summer I would’ve been grateful if they
wanted to meet on Saturday nights. “Yes, if I’m free, I’m happy doing that.”

“I’m traveling for work, so how about next Saturday?”

“Fine. Does eleven o’clock work?”

“Great. See you then.”

I hung up, feeling somewhat encouraged and energized. Obviously I could still read
people—I’d sensed in that first meeting that Scott’s discomfort might be related to
missing work. Whatever his concerns were, whatever his hesitation, we’d get to the
bottom of them. As long as he was willing, I could coax him along.

I stepped back and assessed the bookcase. Objectively, the color progression was far
more soothing, key for a therapist’s office. I wasn’t sure Dr. Max, who shared the
space with me during evenings and who owned some of the books, would agree, though,
so I opened my one locked drawer and took out an entire bag of gummy bears. I would
leave it for Dr. Max with a note with a smiley face. I was pretty sure the sugar would
erase any objections.

I don’t remember who started the tradition or when, but Dave and I got a kick out
of trading terrible pickup lines. Dave was much better than I was, and I sometimes
wondered if he’d spent a past life trolling in European discos; he’d lift one eyebrow,
lean a little too close and breathe right in my mouth: “I lost my number. Can I have
yours?”

Last Hanukkah, he’d handed me an envelope from Murray’s Cheese, promising one cheese
selection a month for a year. At first I didn’t get it, but on the card he’d written:
Are those space pants you’re wearing? Because your ass is out of this world
.

I looked up, and he wiggled his eyebrows and leaned close. “Get it? Cheese of the
month? Get it? Get it?”

The cheese usually arrived on the first Thursday of each month, so I checked for it
when I got home for lunch. Alas, the box hadn’t been delivered, so I went up to the
apartment without the guaranteed laugh that we both needed.

Per Dave’s instructions, I didn’t bother shouting a greeting to him before going straight
into the kitchen. He had left his work phone on the kitchen counter, right next to
an opened box of cereal and two empty soda bottles. When I opened the fridge to get
some water, I felt the phone’s long vibrations—a mini earthquake rattling the hundreds
of tiny Cap’n Crunches next door.

Four (4) missed calls
. The Argentinians, Dave had explained that morning when I’d finally asked who had
been calling so incessantly. A blowup on one of their filings—extremely poor timing,
yes, but it was what it was. There had been a jolt of something on his face—annoyance
or fear—that made me wonder if it was
his
screwup, difficult as that was to imagine.

I would tell him about this exact moment a few months later—my nonchalance as I cupped
his work phone in my right hand, slowly typing in his password with one thumb, my
left hand still on the fridge. If someone had forced me to articulate what exactly
I thought I was doing, I would have said,
I’m helping
. It seemed obvious—to find out who called and report it to Dave when I returned his
work phone, which he was probably missing like an amputated limb. I think this was
when the questions started to bubble, although they were deceptively tiny, offering
no hint of how angry and loud they would become as they roiled up to the surface.

I assumed his password was 4165—our birthdays combined and transposed—our universal
code for the ATM, our luggage tags, our online grocery delivery account. I used it
as my password for everything, even though I had recently read that you weren’t supposed
to do that.

Maybe Dave had read the same article, because 4165 didn’t work. I tried other combinations:
our anniversary; Dave’s birthday; Burp, the name of Dave’s childhood dog (which said
everything I ever needed to know about his family); Hana, the lush Hawaiian coastline
where we went on our honeymoon and Dave’s favorite place on earth; his initials; his
mom’s maiden name; my name; my birthday.
Access Denied. Access Denied. Access Denied.

My phone rang from within my bag, and I knew without checking that it was my mom.
“Hold on a second.” I pressed
MUTE
and pinned the phone under my armpit, her tinny stream of conversation still audible
as I turned the doorknob to Dave’s office. “Here.” I stood in the doorway and reached
out my right arm, his work phone still in my palm. He jumped from his chair to retrieve
it. “You got more calls, and what on earth is your new password?”

“What?”

I grabbed my phone from under my arm. “Paige?” my mom was saying. “Paige. Paige? Hello?
Paige? Paige?” I pressed
CANCEL MUTE
and closed my eyes against the headache that had started earlier in the day. “I’m
here. Hold on. Just talking to”—Dave shook his head, eyes wide, hands crossed over
each other, and I remembered he wasn’t supposed to be at home—“myself.”

I shut the door on gesticulating Dave and walked into my bathroom to grab some Advil
from the medicine cabinet.

“Talking to yourself? Well,” said my mom, “should I be worried? What about?”

“Cell phone passwords.”

“Really? I thought you were a better conversationalist than that.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence.”

“Are you lonely, doll?”

“No.” I shook out two pills into the palm of my hand and gulped them down without
water, gagging only a little.

“Sometimes people talk to themselves when they’re lonely. You’re going to get mad
at me, but you know what would help—”

“I can guess—a baby?”

“A baby would give your life purpose. It’s the most fulfilling thing.”

“Isn’t having a baby to cure loneliness the worst reason?”

“If you’re sixteen, maybe.”

I walked out of the bathroom with the goal of lying down on my bed, only to stub my
toe on the two boxes I’d moved from the closet two days before. My mom’s pressure
to procreate wasn’t the garden-variety Jewish-mother type; although I could appreciate
her motive—replacement, “do-over”—it was no less annoying.

I had no plans to tell her that I’d started to peek into strollers as I passed them
on the sidewalk to see the babies inside, stretched out asleep or grasping fruitlessly
at air. Or that Dave and I had both started to warm to the idea of having one.

“Please stop.” I rubbed my toe, then switched to speaker phone so I could browse e-mail
messages. I usually ticked off quite a few mindless tasks while my mother and I chatted.

“Would you believe I didn’t even call to nag you about this?”

“Yeah?” My e-mail checked, I opened the lid of the box containing my childhood mementos.
The first thing I saw was my old pink journal. On the cover, I’d written
Paige Reinhardt
in carefully practiced bubble handwriting. The second box was Dave’s, and it had
his hallmark lack of organization: an avalanche of loose photos chronicling everything
from the bowl-cut years up to law school.

What was the rule about throwing away stuff? If you hadn’t used it in a year . . .
I stacked the boxes together and with my foot push-kicked them across the floor to
my closet. “So, you’re not calling to nag me about grandchildren. And I returned your
scarf last week. What else could it be? I’m on the edge of my seat here.”

She chuckled and then shut off her laugh like a faucet. “She’s coming. On Saturday.”

“Sloane?” It was odd to speak her name aloud; my voice seemed to belong to someone
else at that moment. “As in the day after tomorrow?”

“Yes. Your dad just spoke to her.”

I clicked her off speaker and pressed the phone to my ear. “How was she?”

“Fine, apparently. But you know, this is
Dad
.”

“Hardly the world’s most astute social detective.”

“To say the least. She’s taking a red-eye from California, so I thought maybe we could
have breakfast here the morning she gets in.”

“What about Nantucket?”

“Obviously we won’t go
now
.”

“How long is she here for?”

My mom paused. “He wasn’t sure, so we’re planning on staying in the city for the time
being. I’ll put together something little for Dad’s birthday.”

“Did he get any other information?”

“No.”

“He’s useless for these types of things.”

“I know. But apparently she was asking about you.”

“That’s . . . new.” I was being charitable. In truth, it was a little creepy.

She sighed. “All of this is new, hon. Can you do Saturday?”

“I have clients in the morning.”

“On
Saturday
?”

I shrugged into the phone. “I can make it. I just have to leave in time for their
session.”

“Fine. I was thinking we’d just keep it the four of us.”

“It’s five with Sloane.”

“I meant the four of us—you, me, Dad and Sloane.”

“No Dave?”

“It might be a lot to spring on him. I mean, who knows how she’ll be? Tired from the
flight, probably . . .”

Tired—the ultimate euphemism. “He won’t care. He has work anyway.”

“Good.”

“Is this—you’re happy, right?”

“Of course. She’s coming home. It’s all I’ve ever wanted.” Her voice did a little
brassy vibrato on the last few words, like Ethel Merman. “I’ll leave you to your conversation
with yourself, my dear. The lull of empty chatter.”

She’d said the phrase so carelessly, the way you hum a catchy melody, like it meant
nothing.

Sloane was somewhere across the country, folding and packing T-shirts, probably smiling
to herself about all the havoc she could wreak. And the rest of us would be defenseless,
so used to exchanging empty chatter that we wouldn’t know how to call out to one another
in warning.

THE FIRST TIME
I ever saw Dave’s “pissed-off” face was about six months after we started dating.
He looked so dramatically sulky—pouty lips, stern eyes, eyebrows slanted down—that
I thought he was
pretending
to be annoyed about my plans to meet an ex-boyfriend for drinks. (I had since admitted
to Dave that I was wrong about that fight; we were still in the early stage and had
the roles been flip-flopped, I would have been insecure too.)

Still, that face. I probably found it cute at the time, but I was long over that now.
I smiled back to mitigate the flash of resentment I felt.

It was late afternoon on Friday, July 4; Duane Covington and all other corporate Midtown
offices had shut down hours before, but Dave, stubbornly, perversely, remained in
the office/guest room, turned three-quarters away from me, his arms folded over his
chest and his lower lip stuck out.

“So basically,” I said, “you’ll shower and leave the house for my parents but not
for me.”

He sighed, deeply and slowly, an inhalation that seemed to take roughly five seconds
to travel up through his nose, expand visibly through his chest and be expelled, in
a rush of dramatic frustration, through his mouth.

“That’s okay.” I leaned against the doorframe of his office and tried not to be bothered
by the vaguely moldy smell that had bloomed over the past four days. His current diet
was Coke, Eskimo bars, Cap’n Crunch and Pink Floyd on a loop—nothing capable of decaying.
Was the smell possibly from
him
? “I understand. Not gonna pretend it’s not annoying, but I get it.”

“So you’d prefer that I fake it with you?”

“Of course not.”

“Then schlepping to see some lame fireworks along with five million strangers is about
the least compelling thing I can think of to do right now.”

“I understand why we can’t leave the city for the holiday weekend, even though everyone
else has—”

“You could’ve gone.”

“Right. Like I’d desert you now.”

“Come on, Paige. It’s not about me. You have to stay for Sloane anyway.”

“You’ve been in this room for four days. You need to leave. Just for an hour or two.”
I desperately needed an evening out as well. “Welcome to tough love, Dave. How many
times have you left the apartment since Tuesday?”

He shrugged.

“You’ve left once.”

“I’ve left twice.”

“What was the second?”

“Mail room.”

“As in the one in the lobby of this building?” Eyebrows raised, I walked over to his
desk, where a newspaper was carefully folded up next to his keyboard.

I pressed my finger hard against the headline about the financial scandal, and Dave
recoiled, like his nerves had annexed the paper. “Did you just wince?” I poked the
article and kept my finger on it, feeling like a locker room bully. Dave regarded
me warily.

“Are you getting your work done?”

“Yes.”

“Has anyone complained that you’ve missed deadlines?”

“No.”

“Has Herb said anything new to make you worried this won’t blow over?”

“No.”

“I am doing my best here not to push you.” No response. “But it’s time. You. Need.
To. Go. Out.”

Dave tilted his head to the side for a moment before giving me the briefest nod. Displaying
a shred of self-awareness that I had feared extinct, he got up out of his chair and
walked past me. Two minutes later I heard the shower running.

My victory was short-lived. Dave emerged from our bedroom freshly shaved and cleanly
dressed in a button-down shirt and Bermuda shorts, staring down at his work phone
and grumbling about missing a call while in the shower.

I ignored him and grabbed our picnic basket with two hands. I had ordered it in February—right
after we put down our deposit on the Quogue house—fueled by fantasies of sipping wine
on the beach, our grapes and cheese protected from the sand by a little red checkered
blanket. The thing was ridiculously heavy, intended for riding in the backseat of
a convertible along roads bordered in sea grass. We were taking the subway; Dave had
made clear that if he was going to be so stupid and weak as to agree to leave the
house, he refused to be so stupid and weak as to take a car through the July Fourth
traffic.

I knew if I asked Dave to carry it, he’d find one more thing to complain about and
the night would be totally shot, so I lumbered along as best I could, gripping the
ridiculously small handles, the wicker slicing my knuckles, while I tried unsuccessfully
to make light conversation.

When we emerged from the Forty-second Street subway station, it was so bright and
sunny, I could smell my own heating flesh. As we walked, sweat pooled under the back
pockets of my cutoffs and trickled down my legs. I didn’t comment on the damp stains
at Dave’s armpits because he’d found enough to complain about: the crowdedness of
the train, the heat and my plan that we should go all the way to Pier 84. “You know
we could’ve seen them just as well on TV,” he said, “without having to travel through
Hades.”

I ignored him, but when we finally got to Twelfth Avenue, I dropped the godforsaken
picnic basket, opening and closing and shaking out my stiff fist, and looked around:
people in flag shirts, people clogging the intersections, people taking pictures,
people in tank tops and bare chests, squinting into the heat.

“Holy crap,” I said. “I feel like an extra in
Gandhi
.”

“This”—he surveyed the crowd—“is my personal hell.”

“Where should we sit?” I tried to find an empty patch, but all I could see were little
red, white and blue bodies dotting the ground. I charged ahead, finally finding a
two-foot patch of space in the middle of a cluster of several families.

With Dave standing above me, I plunked down the basket and spread out the checkered
cloth, placing on top of it the quinoa and three-bean salads and roast beef sandwiches.
When I took out the small bottle of champagne and the strawberry juice, I placed it
upright and in the center of the blanket. This was supposed to make him smile, but
he hadn’t even noticed.

Before I met Dave, I’d never taken a sip of alcohol. I felt comfortable enough with
him to ask what I’d always pretended to not care about knowing: What did it taste
like? (Surprisingly thirst quenching, he said.) What did it feel like to be drunk?
(Fun, he said, or painful; it all depended.) His answers only inspired more questions,
and I finally proposed outright that he help me learn for myself.

He bought one bottle of champagne, two pints of strawberries, borrowed a blender from
somewhere and made a passable puree. He didn’t have much experience with champagne
cocktails, but he thought, correctly, that I might enjoy the taste. It’s funny now
to remember what I pictured before that first sip—some sort of Hieronymus Bosch scene
of mass projectile-vomiting mayhem.

I sipped, though, buoyed by his emotional support. Dave had sworn he’d cut me off
if I turned out to have an insatiable appetite, but I didn’t. We had two strawberry
Bellinis each: perfectly enjoyable and perfectly easy to put down. I was free, and
Dave had broken the spell.

“Looks good,” said our neighbor to the right, who was chewing on a cart hot dog. He
and his entire family were, I guessed, from the Midwest—all polite, milk-fed smiles
crowned by four identical green foam visors shaped in points like the Statue of Liberty’s
crown.

“Nothing like a New York street dog,” I said, keeping my tone sunny and friendly.

Dave met my eye for a long beat in a way that highlighted my phoniness—did I really
believe there was nothing like a New York street dog? Had he ever even seen me eat
one? “Hmm,” he said. “Maybe I’ll get one.”

“If you’re hungry,” I said, unable to keep the steel out of my voice, “why don’t you
eat some of the picnic I prepared just for you?”

He picked up the container of three-bean salad, eyed it suspiciously and plopped it
down. “Doesn’t really appeal.”

I felt the Midwest family looking at us, curious.

I leaned in close to Dave. “What the fu—” Five feet away the kids sat on their blanket,
cross-legged, eyes wide, like Dave and I were performing in Shakespeare in the Park.
“What the hell is your problem?”

The Midwest mom, inches from me, drew up her shoulders.

“You know my problem,” said Dave. “You’ve had a front-row seat. And yet here we are.”

The Midwest guy cleared his throat.

“Not really. I don’t know shit. Sorry.” I directed that to the family. “You’ve totally
clammed up. It makes me wonder, Dave. It really makes me wonder.” I realized then
so simply: it had.

He picked up the champagne and put it down. “What world do you live in that you’d
think I’m in the mood for champagne and fireworks? Thank you so much for your feeble
attempts at support. I know it’s a stretch for you, and I suppose it’s the most I’m
going to get.”

“What are you talking about? I’ve done everything you’ve wanted. I’ve left you alone;
I haven’t told anyone about your mysterious work stuff. I’ve stayed in town with you
this whole summer—”

“A huge sacrifice. That I never asked you to make.”

“That’s not fair. Even before your whole”—I pressed my index finger to my lips—“
thing
, I’ve just been alone, hanging in the winds for months. It’s not easy to be totally
dependent on your schedule.”

“Then don’t be. Find something to do. Are you even listening to yourself? How alone
you’ve
felt. What
you
want to do. Notice a trend?” He was practically spitting out the words. “I know it’s
an impossible lesson for you to wrap your head around, but not everything is about
you.”

I stood up. “I don’t even know what you’re talking about.”

“My whole life, Paige, has been ignoring what I want to make you happy.”

Arms shaking, I grabbed the wicker picnic basket. I was aware that we had an audience
by this point—there was a silence all around us that hadn’t been there before. I thrust
the entire basket at the Midwest family. “Enjoy,” I said, and pushed away through
the throngs of sweaty, increasingly drunken people streaming in the opposite direction.
I was almost at the subway when I felt a hand on my shoulder.

“Hey,” said Dave.

I ignored him and pushed faster through the heat.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “Paige! Wait a minute!” And then he ran away to grab the door
of an opening taxicab. Five girls spilled out, laughing and readjusting from the journey,
yanking up tube tops, pulling down shorts.

Dave held open the door. I hesitated.

“Come on.” He gestured that I should get in. “I apologize. I shouldn’t have snapped
at you. I’ll follow you to the subway if you insist, but wouldn’t this be better?”

I slid into the back, my eyes laser-beaming ahead toward the windshield. Dave gave
the driver our address.

“I’m losing it, Paige.” Dave turned to me. “You know how much my job means to me.”

“I thought you were fine.”

“Not.” He cleared his throat. “I’m not.”

“No kidding.” We were stopped in traffic, and a stream of people passed directly in
front of our cab as they jaywalked across the street. “You need to get a grip.”

“I know.”

“This is a job, Dave. A stupid job. You can always go in-house for my dad. I mean,
it’s not like we need to worry about—”

“It’s what I do.”

“Worry?”

“No. The job you just called stupid.”

“It’s not who you
are
, though.”

“It is.” I searched his face for signs that he was kidding and found none. “Come on,
Paige. Be honest.”

“Your job is the most important thing about you? No.” I shook my head. “That’s crazy.”

“It’s not. You haven’t known me any other way. It’s not like you married some . . .
guy who paints street murals.”

He slumped against the cab door, as if exhausted from his great exposé. It wasn’t
my truth, though, and this—one-dimensional and hopeless—wasn’t my Dave. Had this guy
asked me out four years prior, I would have given him the wrong number.

I could see, though, how being so ambitious and devoted could result in Dave’s now
being completely unmoored, how someone’s strengths could, in great concentration,
become his weakness, curdling those same characteristics you initially found so attractive.

I checked myself for the unfairness. Had Dave upon meeting me known how frequently
I’d make him rehash things he didn’t want to, or, for that matter, had he seen me
first thing in the morning instead of after an hour of grooming, he probably wouldn’t
have asked for my number in the first place.

We were past all of that now. We had committed to each other, for better or curdled
worse.

“Trust me.” Dave’s gaze charged into mine as though he knew exactly what I was thinking.
“You can’t understand what this is like for me.”

“I think your perspective is off.”

“No, I mean, it’s good that you can’t. Your life has been simple, easy. I don’t fault
you for it. It’s the kind of life someone should have.” His voice broke on the next
words. “But I was nothing before this job. Just hard work poured into one goal. I’ve
done everything anyone has ever asked of me at work. And now”—he snapped his fingers,
which were in his lap—“it’s gone.”