The Never Never Sisters (6 page)

I felt cut by his words. Sloane’s disappearance and the void that followed had been
neither simple nor easy. But how would Dave have known how panicked I now felt about
her arrival? It was news to even me. Apparently, there was a leak in the neat little
“Sloane” container in my brain. It was like I’d opened up my bag to find that my thermos
had dripped milky, sweet coffee over everything inside, leaving it damp and permanently
pungent. I put my hand on his leg. “What you’ve built is not gone, Dave. But even
if it were, you can build it again somewhere else.”

The cab picked up some speed, edging north on the West Side Highway. Dave fiddled
with the seat belt nylon and stared straight ahead. “I feel like I’m drowning.”

At home, Dave slouched on the couch and turned on the fireworks. I scanned the shelves
of the refrigerator for food, picturing that Midwestern family looking up at the exploding
reds and blues, tentatively nibbling at the roast beef sandwiches, weighing the temptations
of the food against the likelihood that I cooked with arsenic.

When I heard the booms of the 1812 Overture, I stuck my head into the living room
to watch, but Dave had switched the channel to financial news. I tiptoed past him
into his office. Not that I wasn’t allowed in there—I just thought it’d be easier
to avoid the discussion. At his desk, I unfolded the newspaper that had earlier made
him flinch. We didn’t have a subscription to the
Metropolitan
, and I wondered: if Dave hadn’t left our apartment, how had he managed to pick up
a copy? I started to read, hoping it could tell me something about my husband’s state
of mind.

Donald DeFranza was almost home, his key in his hand, about to unlock the front door
of his luxury four-story mansion in Englewood, New Jersey, when they swarmed. As his
two young children and wife watched horrified from the living room window, DeFranza
was surrounded from all sides by federal agents. Before they could touch him, though,
he collapsed on the front steps.

“It was crazy,” said Byron James, his neighbor. “The feds came up on him and the guy
just fainted. He would have cracked his freaking head open, but he fell right over
one of the shrubs. Lucky, I guess.”

Or not. The first words DeFranza heard when he came to? “You’re under arrest!”

Authorities have not yet released many details on DeFranza, thirty-five, the latest
Wall Streeter caught in the insider trading scandal hovering around Jelly Rocher of
Mission Fund. Some are speculating that he followed the same path of Morgan Bell and
Ricardo Lalouse before him: paying contacts hundreds of thousands of dollars for illegal
tips and then using that information to line the pockets of Mission Fund executives.

Experts say DeFranza is a bigger catch: “This is potentially huge,” said an unnamed
source who worked with him. “DeFranza is big, he traded big, and he was a favorite
son of the big guy himself, Rocher.”

When I went back into the living room with a pile of take-out menus, Dave switched
back to the fireworks. “Lots of exciting new shapes this year,” he said.

“Such as?” I tried to inject some enthusiasm into my voice.

“Watch and see.”

I stood above him for a second before sitting. “I’m sorry for forcing you out tonight.
It was selfish.”

“It’s okay,” he said. “We both sucked.”

We rarely bickered, Dave and I. I’d listen to couples air grievances all day and tell
them that conflict was natural in the face of living so closely with someone. There
had been times I’d go home and wonder—where was ours?

I’d asked him that once and he’d shrugged. “I’ve fought with other girlfriends. You
and I just get along.” It did make sense, that some people were more compatible than
others—
liking
each other in addition to loving each other—or maybe it was a testament to my insistence
that we try to understand where the other was coming from, as annoying as Dave might
say it was in the moment. Whatever it was, I was grateful. I hated arguing.

Dave sorted through the menus with feigned interest, and I joined him, picking up
one from the roast chicken place. I stared at the red drawing of a waving, headless
chicken and thought of the newspaper article I’d just read.

The image that had stuck even more than the poor guy fainting in the shrubbery was
DeFranza’s wife at the window, watching the arrest from inside. Had she always been
aware that she’d made a deal with the devil? That the four-story manse in Jersey was
funded at least in part by stealing and lying? Had she tried to persuade him against
breaking the law, or encouraged him, crossing her fingers that they wouldn’t get caught?

Had she been floored, unable to link the scene playing out to the decent man she knew?

And, more important, what on earth did she do now?

Vanessa

PEOPLE WHO SAY
money doesn’t buy happiness are idiots; money
literally
buys happiness. Take, for example, the Saskatoon berries I had express mailed from
the Pacific Northwest. It took twenty-four hours from the time I realized I needed
them to the minute I held them in my hands—the shipping costs were astronomical and
I will take them to my grave.

When the alarm went off at five in the morning, Frankie sat up in bed. “What happened?”

“The Saskatoon berry jam needs attention.”

“What?”

“The jam that is currently
in
the slow cooker and must come
out
of the slow cooker. Flavor: Saskatoon berry.”

“Ness, get a hold of yourself.” This was rich coming from a man who, upon making it
big, bought four versions of the exact same suit.
Yes, Frankie.
I’m
the one who doesn’t know how to relax
. “Are you having a breakdown?”

Frankie must have been thrown by the word “Saskatoon.” He didn’t accuse me of having
a breakdown the night before when I discussed the menu: schmear and bagels, frittata,
fruit salad and crumb coffee cake. There were only four of us, and it would’ve been
understandable if he’d questioned the sheer volume. He didn’t—because all of those
words, unlike Saskatoon berries, were familiar to him.

I’m not trying to sound like a sexist, but it’s a matter of wiring. Fathers are incapable
of remembering details the way mothers can. Sloane had tried Saskatoon preserves once,
at the Museum of Canadian Wilderness, and had loved it so much, she’d insisted on
a Saskatoon cake for her seventh birthday. I improvised: red food coloring in vanilla
cake mix, with canned Saskatoon jam (from the museum gift shop) spread between the
layers. An instant hit.

Frankie, not recalling any of this, was nervous enough to follow me out of the bedroom
and into the kitchen. It was still dark outside, and we both squinted when I switched
on the track lighting. “Frankie, I promise. I’m fine.” I bent down to try to preheat
the oven to four hundred fifty, which was difficult because my glasses were in the
other room. “I just want to meet her halfway. More than halfway.”

“That should be relatively easy, given that we bought the ticket.”

“Because we
insisted
on it, as we should have.” I glared at him a bit. Frankie’s inner compass veered cheap,
although through the years I’d gently nudged him away from drying up into a complete
miser. “She’s putting herself out there. You don’t reach out and take the time to
visit someone unless you really want a relationship.”

“You don’t know what she wants out of the trip.”

“And you do?” I lifted the washcloth off my bowl of rising coffee-cake dough and stuck
a finger in. Nice and springy.

He scratched the back of his head. “I guess I’ll go shower.”

I shouted after him, down the hall. “Your outfit is hanging on the back of your closet
door.”

I picked it out not to be bossy, but because I knew that left to his own devices,
Frankie would wear a suit and send entirely the wrong message: formal and about to
leave for the office, not dear old dad enjoying weekend breakfast with his family,
remembering fondly the time we tried the Saskatoon berries.

Frankie really was wrong to be worried. I had been stressed at first, but now that
Sloane was hours away, I felt good. I was about to hold in my palm what I’d dreamed
of for years.

MY MOM OPENED
the door at eight o’clock, not in her usual morning robe, but fully dressed—leggings,
a black button-down shirt and espadrilles. She smiled, the expression tense and brief.
“Was the Boy hurt about not coming?”

“No. He understands.” When I’d left that morning, Dave had shaken his head in sympathy.
“Good luck,” he’d said in a tone of voice that could be described only as one part
pity, two parts relief.

I put my head close to my mom’s. “How’s the scene in there?”

“Great.” Again, the smile. “She got here about five minutes ago, and she’s in the
kitchen getting coffee.”

“But how does she
seem
?”

“Really great. Come see.” She put her hand on my back and pushed me down the long
hall.

Sloane was leaning against their kitchen island, one leg crossed over the other, a
mug of coffee in her hand. The teenager—stringy, sullen—had morphed into a ropy, sulky
woman with crow’s-feet deepening her olive skin and a few threads of gray in her long
onyx hair.

“Hey.” She nodded dismissively and I felt myself shrink back to my stoop-shouldered
preteen self.

“Paige is so excited you’re here!” My mom pulled me closer to the island and stepped
toward Sloane, only to retreat like a kid playing in the surf. She clasped her hands
together and separated them and hung them at her sides before finally anchoring herself
in the work of ripping foil covers off platters of lox and bagels. As she did it,
a grin hinged crazily over her mouth, like a child performer who’s been coached to
Smile! So it looks like you’re having fun!

“I am.” I looked right at Sloane, not because I wanted to, but because watching my
poor mom was making me nervous. “What made you visit?”

“Paige.” My mom folded a sheet of tinfoil in half, smoothing down the edge. “Let her
settle in. She just got off a plane.”

“It’s okay.” Sloane shrugged, twisting one of the pieces of lank hair around her finger
and pulling. She needed a better bra. “It had been a while. I thought it was time.”

“Right.” Talk about a nonanswer.

“How was the flight?”

“Fine.” She drained her coffee cup and looked around for the pot for a nanosecond
before my mom swooped in with a refill.

I went over to the cabinet and fetched a cup. “Where’s Dad?”

“He’s on a call. For work.” Sloane’s voice was even, and I couldn’t tell if there
was a slight edge of mockery.

“But he’ll be out in three minutes,” said my mom.

“He’ll be out in three minutes,” repeated Sloane, glancing at her watch as though
she intended to hold him to that. “So, how’s life?”

“Good.”

“You got married?”

“Yeah. Two years ago.” We didn’t know Sloane’s exact address when the invitations
went out, and after much debate and some fruitless Emily Post research by Lydia the
wedding planner, ultimately ended up scanning Sloane an image of the invite through
an e-mail that might or might not have been hers. She hadn’t sent an RSVP.

“Congrats on that.”

“Dave is wonderful,” my mom said. “You’ll love him.”

“I’m sure.” Sloane raised her eyebrows and nodded.

It was my turn to ask about her life, but I was afraid of the answer—inclusive of
angry words, no doubt, like “rehab” and “benders” and “dealers” and “fault” and “blame.”
Most certainly, her response would rip off the thin veneer of civility we had established
so far. “Are you still in California?”

She nodded, willing to cop to that, but didn’t supply any additional information,
like, say, a city or even which general area within the state. My dad, looking a bit
burdened, walked into the room, wished me a good morning and ignored everyone else
as though we were his usual breakfast crew. He grabbed the paper off the island and
sank down in his regular chair at the table, unfolding it before him.

“Franklin,” my mom’s voice sounded in warning. “No. Paper. At. Breakfast. Today.”

“Christ on a crock, Vanessa.” He didn’t even look up. “I heard you the first fifty
times. I’ll stop when we eat.”

“On a crock?” I said. “Did you just make that up?”

“I remember that,” said Sloane. “You reading the paper at the table every morning.
You still do that.”

“That’s right.” My mom brightened as if Sloane had recited an ode to family in iambic
pentameter. “That’s exactly right. He reads the paper every morning.”

I did not point out how pathetic it was that our family tradition, the thing we could
all reconnect over, was my dad ignoring us in favor of the news of the world. Although,
to be fair, the way he read the newspaper—as though it offered a sound and sight shield
to everything within a two-mile radius around him—probably was unique.

I sat down and then Sloane did, and my mom walked to the table with a large bowl of
something red and gelatinous. With obvious pride, she placed it next to the bagels.

“What’s that?” I bent my head closer, sniffed.

“Saskatoon jam!” She said this happily, like it meant something.

“Oh,” I said. “Yum, yum.” My eyes met Sloane’s, and she made a funny face, jam skeptical.
I had to bite down my smile. Sloane and I would not be bonding at my mother’s expense.

“You’ve changed your hair. You’ve got that whole”—Sloane moved her hand in a circular
motion parallel to my face—“blond thing going on.”

Blond thing?
“Um. Yeah. I’ve changed a bit since puberty.” It came out sharply enough that the
three of us looked around nervously. Sloane grabbed a bagel, slowly spreading cream
cheese with one side of the butter knife, and my mom rushed into the uncomfortable
quiet like the cavalry.

“Paige is a therapist now.”

I felt my eyebrows descend, low enough that their wiry translucence branched into
my field of vision, reminding me I was due to get them done.

“Wow.” Sloane’s voice was monotone—not overtly aggressive enough for me to respond
in kind.

“Marriage counseling,” said my mom, speaking again for me.

“A marriage counselor.” Sloane smiled benignly, and my mom smiled too before tittering
nervously.

“O-kay.” The tittering had apparently annoyed Sloane, who jerked away from both of
us.

My mom and I exchanged a glance, and my dad tried to fill the silence. “So where are
you staying?”

“We’re staying downtown,” said Sloane. “With a friend.”

If anyone else noticed the “we,” no one said anything about it.

“You know we have a lot of room here. We’d love it if—”

“I can see,” said Sloane, turning around and taking in the vaulted ceilings, “but
it’s very comfortable where I am. This place is insane, though.”

“It was just luck.” My dad cleared his throat. “I had nothing to do with it.”

“That’s not true, Frankie,” said my mom. “If you hadn’t done such a good job at the
bank to begin with, Brent never would’ve poached you from them to work at Moonstone.
If you hadn’t done such a good job working at Moonstone, it wouldn’t have been ripe
for the offering.”

She always said it like this, as though my father had caused the boondoggle, his one
sure step leading to the next—
this is the dog that worried the cat that killed the rat, that ate the malt that lay
in the house that Jack built.

It was sweet that she saw him as a superhero, but in reality, my dad’s life as in-house
counsel at a bank had been identical to his life as in-house counsel at Moonstone,
down to the allotted weeks of vacation and pay grade. He hadn’t gone there to strike
oil; it was just what had happened.

Sloane swiveled her head as though at an open house, and my parents watched her like
nervous sellers.

“What do you want to do when you’re here, Sloane?” My voice must have been too sharp
again, because one, two, three, their faces whipped toward me.

“I have some plans.”

“Anything interesting?”

“Um, some tourist stuff.”

“Like . . . what?”

“I really want to check out some of the
SummerEyes
sculptures. Have you gone yet?”

“No, not yet.” I tried to catch my mom’s eye. Coming to New York for that particular
art installation was kind of like going to Hawaii for the films. New York’s latest
public art project, the
Eyes
, was the misbegotten plan of some artiste wunderkind who’d spent taxpayer dollars
commissioning one hundred sculptures of eyeballs in parks all over the city. He’d
been pilloried when his pièce de résistance—an overbudget giant unblinking bloodshot
papier-mâché pupil just north of the zoo��was blamed for causing its fourth panic
attack. “I don’t know if I’ll ever make it. They’re supposed to be terrifying, actually.”

“I don’t know.” Sloane shrugged. “Some of them sound worth checking out.”

My mom leaned forward tentatively, hoping to bond over the artistic merit of the
Eyes
, and I felt a surge of protectiveness toward her and a stab of anger directed at
Sloane. It was difficult to tell which was stronger.

Sloane offered to walk out with me, but I managed to duck the invitation by agreeing
that of course we should all have another breakfast on Monday, but I had to leave
for a session. I darted out as they continued to discuss their calendars, which were
surprisingly complicated given that my mom didn’t have a job and Sloane was here on
vacation.

I was in the elevator, praying for the doors to just close already, when a hand waved
through them. They receded and Sloane pushed her way in, muttering something under
her breath about never getting out of there. Then, a little more clearly, she asked
which way I was headed.

“Up to Sixty-eighth Street.”

“Good,” she said, checking her watch. “You can come with me to meet Giovanni.”

She was sufficiently declarative to render me defenseless, so I followed her out of
the building. As soon as we were on the street, she pulled a single cigarette and
a lighter from the pocket of her shorts. I smelled the smoke, dry and corrosive, and
fanned the air in front of my face, but Sloane was undeterred by my discomfort. Halfway
up the block, her cigarette burning from her lips, she pointed. “There.”

Two men stood, waiting, the heat outlining them in hazy waves so they looked like
something out of a mirage. When we got a little closer, about twenty feet away, one
still appeared as if from a mirage. He was built like an Adonis in perfectly broken-in
jeans—broad shoulders, brush of blond hair, a T-shirt that both clung and draped.
Jeans. In ninety-five-degree heat. Obviously, he wore them because knew he looked
good in them. Which meant he was an ass.

“And Giovanni is?”

Sloane dropped her cigarette and stomped on it, speaking softer and sounding shyer
than I could ever have thought possible from her. “My fiancé.” I stopped right there
on the sidewalk, incredulous, as Sloane leapt forward and ran smack into the arms
of the guy next to the Adonis, the one at whom I hadn’t even bothered to glance.

They hugged and murmured at each other—probably more about my parents:
Did you survive
?
Yes, I managed even though they hung me by my thumbs
—and I caught Adonis’s eye. He smiled, and I blushed and looked down.

A hand touched my shoulder. It was the fiancé, who had made up the distance between
us, his other hand holding Sloane’s. “Paige?”

Sloane moved closer to him until their whole bodies were entwined. “Giovanni?” I said.
He was not what I’d have dreamed of for a life partner for my sister; instead of a
skanky ratlike creature, Giovanni was like a gangly, friendly version of the little
prince: curly hair, huge Bambi eyes, about half an inch shorter than Sloane and I
were.

“Hi!” he said, and, hand still on my arm, leaned forward to give me a squeeze. “So
great to meet you.”

“You too,” I said, my eyes falling back to the nameless Adonis as if felled by gravity.
He had that same smile on his face. Beautiful but simple, I decided. It was always
the way.

“We brought something,” Giovanni said. He fished into the beige tote bag slung over
his shoulder and brought out a box, a brown ribbon quartering it into four uneven
sections. “For you.”

“Me?” I wondered how he had known that I was going to be appearing at this block at
this time for the presentation when I myself had had no clue. “Thank you.”

“Open it.”

“Yeah, open it,” said Adonis.

“Um. Okay.” I tugged off the ribbon and lifted the box. Four fat truffles sat in paper.
They were beautiful, sure, but as it was a little after eight thirty and already sweltering,
they seemed inappropriate. I could tell Giovanni was about to urge me to taste the
chocolate, so I made some happy exclamation about how I couldn’t wait to have some
after lunch
, and shut the box quickly.

“It’s from her store.” Giovanni removed his hand from around Sloane’s waist, only
to clamp it down on her shoulder. They needed to get a room.

“You have a store?”

She nodded. “I manage it.”