The Never Never Sisters (9 page)

“WHEN YOU HAVE
kids, make sure you have a daughter.” My mom always said this at least once during
our shopping trips. “So you can do this.”

“I’ll put my order in with the gods.” It was my standard response. Neither of us ever
mentioned the obvious possibility of that daughter being an estranged junkie, in which
case she’d most likely not be game for grabbing a chicken salad at Barneys every few
weeks. I supposed there was also a fifty-fifty chance of winding up with a daughter
like me, though, someone who lived for the shopping day tradition to an almost pathetic
degree.

Lunch was my favorite part of the routine, even now that my mom insisted on going
to the floors with the expensive designers and buying without regard for price. “Don’t
even bother looking at the tags,” she’d say, waving her hand as I imagined Marie Antoinette
did after her line about letting them eat cake. I loved the meal despite my mom’s
constant dieting, which was always the wacky, demanding, all-in variety, requiring
the deletion of at least one layer of the food pyramid. Earlier she had handed back
her menu with a packet of dried something and the request that the waiter mix it with
rice milk. He had bowed his head deeply and apologized; no rice milk. No almond or
cashew milk either, so the two of them negotiated and settled on soy. When he brought
her brown shake along with my summer salad, she made me swear I wouldn’t tell anyone.
“I’m really not supposed to have soy,” she whispered, as though she were about to
dig into an entire chocolate cake.

I traced a cross above my heart with my index finger, and she winked in response.
We felt off our normal groove; I’d been working to click us into track since we first
met up in the shoe department. They were showing dreary colors for fall—mustard and
purplish gray and brownish green—but we tried them on anyway, slipping cutoff pantyhose
over our toes and pausing in front of low mirrors, exaggerating our attempts to see
the style.

The whole morning I’d been thinking about that raw journal entry, which was, to say
the least, a new perspective on my parents’ we-met-through-work story. I had tried
to process it, rereading it in my mom’s voice. The tone and cadence were familiar,
just not the darkness or the ranting looseness. It was pure, uncalculated: a confession.
“Did you hear from Sloane today?”

My mom dabbed her lip with her napkin in a manner befitting a duchess. “She said she
had plans all day.”

“Oh? When did she say that?”

“I called her this morning to invite her.”

“Really? Shopping is pretty clearly not an area of interest for her.” Yesterday, Sloane
had looked like an eleven-year-old camper—slogan T-shirt, cutoffs, stubbly bruised
legs. Plus, it was
our
thing, my mom’s and mine.

“It’s not really about the shopping.”

As if I didn’t know that. “What’re they doing instead? Seeing those sculptures?”

“They?”

“Her fiancé.”

“Her who?”

“Fiancé. Yep. I met him.” Her face darkened just a touch, as though someone somewhere
had twisted an old-fashioned tint dial on us. “You’re allowed to talk about this stuff,
Mom. You can show surprise that she’s engaged.”

“I’m not surprised. She has a whole life. She’s a grown woman.”

“You’re not hurt that you didn’t know?”

“I thought she seemed really good, didn’t you?”

“Sure.” What I tried to convey with my raised eyebrows was this:
That wasn’t an answer, but if you’re not going to ask, I’m not going to tell
.

“When she was talking about the exhibit yesterday, it made me remember how she’d do
these nature paintings. She did this whole project when she was eight using fruit
slices as stamps. And do you remember the plays?” I shook my head. “To be honest,
they were a little lacking as entertainment: not much plot. Just elaborate dress-up
and long monologues.”

“About what?”

“There was a heavy
Peter Pan
phase. We had a small dog costume, so you were usually Nana the sheepdog.”

“I don’t remember that.”

“You were so young. You’d kind of wander around the stage. She did the whole production,
soup to nuts.” She leaned forward and sipped through her straw. Daintily, but this
was always her Achilles’ heel—it was nearly impossible to channel period fine dining
while using a plastic straw. “She’s a creative soul, your sister.”

“To me, she seemed kind of weird. I mean, I know she’s your prodigal daughter and
all, but . . .” I laughed, and she didn’t join in.

“I’m sure it was hard for her. To be out of touch for so long and then just come back
in. We don’t even know what she’s been through.”

I nodded. “Of course.”

“I know”—our eyes met—“that this is an upset. Be welcoming, though, tomorrow at breakfast?
I think it will go a long way. She really wants to spend time with you.”

“Okay.”

“You’re my good egg, you know?” She cupped my jaw with her hand, and I leaned into
it. “My easy breezy.”

“Mom, remember when you gave me those boxes? When you moved?”

“Sure.”

“How carefully did you pack them?”

“I don’t think I did. I think Betty handled your bedroom and the hall closet, all
that stuff.”

“Yeah, because I went through them yesterday morning when I was clearing out the closets
for the renovation.” I felt clunky, but I was desperate to edge us closer to talking
about what she’d written. “I found my journal from Dr. Pressman.”

My mom sipped again. “He was pretty good, actually. You never knew what to write,
though. You were always asking me.”

“Well, apparently you didn’t give me a good answer. I skimmed through, and if you
didn’t know what they were for, you’d think the big issue in my life was whether or
not I’d get a part in
A Chorus Line
.”

“I don’t remember that.” She frowned. “I don’t remember you trying out for
A Chorus Line
in sixth grade. Isn’t there a lot of talk about tits and ass in that?”

“We sang it as ‘pride and class.’”

“I guess that works.”

“Ridiculously. Pressman had you guys do it too, right?”

She arched one eyebrow. “Do you really believe that Dad wrote letters to himself in
a journal? It was all I could do to make him go to the sessions.”

“But you wrote them?”

She shook her head.
I don’t remember
. I could tell from the shift in her eye that we were about to loop the conversational
cul-de-sac.

“Did you write about your father?”

She looked down and stirred her shake with the straw. “Probably.”

“What was his name?”

“Paige?” She let go of the straw and put her hand over mine. “We don’t need to keep
his memory alive.”

“Do you know where they are?”

“Know where what are?”

“The journals.”

“No.” She said this with finality—her mouth shutting as soon as it possibly could
in a way that settled it for me: if I wanted to learn more about the lost years, I
was on my own.

“I don’t really remember anything from that year,” I said.

“Good. It’s better that way.”

“I don’t remember Sloane much at all. What was she like as a kid, aside from those
bursts of creativity?”

My mother sighed. “Serious. Focused.”

“Give me more examples.”

“Listen, the best thing we can all do is get to know her again. It’s a blessing, Paige,
to not remember the bad. I wish I didn’t.”

“That dark, huh?”

She was silent.

“Why?”

She didn’t say anything, just pretended to admire the yellow bag of the woman at an
adjacent table. “Do you like that one, the maize?” She pointed her head toward the
table.

It was the same ugly color we’d seen in the shoes, and I frowned in its direction
and shook my head.

The front door slammed behind me, and as I put down the shopping bags in the hall,
Dave emerged from his office. “I just had a great talk with Herb. I feel good.” He
indicated the shopping bags. “Whoa. You did some damage.”

“It’s for you, actually. For back-to-work when it happens.” He bent down and peered
in the bags, holding the sides apart with his fingertips. “All shirts and ties.”

He slipped his hand inside the neck of his shirt and mimed a beating heart—
thump, thump
. “No one’s sweeter than you.”

“So, what’s the latest?”

“Herb told me they’re not concerned anymore. It’s almost over.”

“That’s great.” The phone rang and I ran to check the caller ID. “It’s Lucy. Did he
say anything else?”

“No. Go ahead—take it.”

“Do you mind? We’ve been playing phone tag.”

“It’s fine. I’ll finish up my stuff.” He went back to his office, leaving the bags
in the hall, and I picked up the phone.

“Hi, Lucy.”

“So, when are you coming out?” she said.

“Ha-ha.”

“You sound so far away,” she said. “Oh wait—I have to give Antonio directions. Sorry,
I’ll call right back.”

“Who’s Antonio?” In that moment before she hung up, I heard a splash and a peel of
laughter, and I pictured her outside by her parents’ pool. I could be there now, sunbathing
on one of the landscaped rocks, its warmth soaking through my towel, my toes dipped
into the water. I’d visited her there every summer since college until this one.

When the phone rang again, I raced to pick it up. “Who on earth is Antonio?”

Silence.

“Luce?”

Pause. “Is this Paige?”

“Yes.”

“Hi, it’s Brian Lochlyn. From Dave’s office. We met at that dinner last year? The
one honoring female corporate lawyers?”

“Oh yes. Brian.” What I mostly remembered was that more than half of the speakers
had been men, but I could conjure a vague recollection of a pale associate at our
table with a bright green bow tie, talking earnestly about the firm’s “mommy tracking”
options. “Sorry. I was expecting another call.”

“From Luce,” he said helpfully. “I gathered. Am I tying up the phone?”

“Not at all. How are you? Happy belated Fourth of July.” I walked the phone down the
hallway to Dave’s office door.

“To you too, you too. Is Dave there? I just missed his call, but his message said
he was at home.”

“He is. I’ll get him.”

“So, how’s he doing? Is he hanging in there?”

“Yeah, he is. He seems to be working very hard, getting a lot done.”

“And you? Are you holding up?” Brian, I could tell—by the paste of empathy squirted
on top of his words like a line of mustard on a hot dog—had probably been one of those
student-counselor types in college.

“I’m fine.”
Why wouldn’t
I
be fine, Brian?

“The allegations are crazy. It’s just a matter of clearing them up. Sitting tight
until then.” Brian was undeterred by my silence. “Everyone who knows Dave knows he’d
never do anything like that.”

“Do anything like what?”

Brian paused, then gulped audibly. “Like, just, I mean, anything to get suspended.
He’s so ethical! I mean—”

I heard the creak of Dave’s office door swinging open and muted the phone. “It’s Brian
Lochlyn,” I said. He reached for the phone, and I held it just out of reach. “You
guys close?”

“Not especially.”

“So why’s he calling?” He reached again for the phone, and I clutched it to my chest
and stepped back.

“What are you doing, Paige?” He moved toward me. I again moved just out of reach,
and then he raked his fingers through his hair and frowned to show his frustration.
“He’s my liaison. I’m supposed to run things through him during the suspension, you
know, when I have to keep a low profile, and if you don’t give me the phone, I swear
I’m going to flip. There’s a deadline, and I know you’re just trying to be funny,
but, Paige, this is not the time—”

I held up the phone and he snatched it out of my hand, shutting the door behind him.
I sat there, on the floor in front of his door, trying to listen to his conversation,
but all I could hear was the low rumbling of his voice, measured and professional.

THE CONVERSATION AT
our second family breakfast was gunning and stalling like a driver learning stick
shift. “So,” Sloane said, breaking an especially awkward pause, “how was shopping?”

“We wish you’d come with us.” My mom gave me a pointed look.

I chimed in. “Next time. For sure.” I supposed it was strange—my mom and I hanging
out together yesterday while Sloane had been only blocks away.

Sloane stood up abruptly. “I’ve got to smoke.”

We all stared for a minute, unprepared for such urgency, especially surrounding a
habit that had been shunned at all Reinhardt events since Great Uncle Richie’s death
from lung cancer fifteen years ago. Had I made a similar announcement, my mom would
have brained me, but she just smiled apologetically and asked, as though it were a
huge imposition, “Do you mind doing it on the patio?” Sloane shrugged and slid open
the door, and my mom spun toward me. “Go keep her company.”

“Aren’t you worried that I’ll breathe in her secondhand smoke?”

“Just stay, you know, to her side.”

“Okay,” I said, incredulous. “Here goes your little sacrificial lamb.”

Their patio—one thousand feet of outdoor space—was large for New York standards, and
it took me a while to spot Sloane, sitting in the shade with her legs tucked under
her, using a crumpled tissue as an ashtray.

I walked slowly to her bench. “Is it okay if I sit here?”

“Of course,” she said. “Wait. You want the shade?”

“Thanks.”

“I know it’s insane to add more heat to this situation. But, you know . . . addictions.
So”—she inhaled and exhaled, shooting the smoke out of the side of her mouth away
from me—“when do I get to meet Dave?”

“I don’t know. My mom—I mean, Mom—thought it might be nice to just have us four at
first. Is that why you’re not including Giovanni in any of this?”

“Um, no. I didn’t want to expose him.”

“We wouldn’t hurt him, you know.”

Sloane yawned and ran one hand through her hair by way of response. “So where is your
husband now?”

“Working.”

“What’s he like? Tell me everything.” Her words were flat as dehydrated fruit, all
the juice sucked out.

I was trying not to think about Dave, because doing so launched a jittery little twinge
right in my gut. Last night, I’d waited outside his office. When he hung up with Brian,
I’d knocked on his door and blurted out what Brian had told me—“those crazy allegations.”
“What did that mean?” I’d asked.

“I have no idea,” Dave had said.

I had persisted, and Dave kept repeating that he had no godly clue. Who knew why Brian
Lochlyn did any of the strange things he did? Brian was not someone to take seriously.
Didn’t I remember that awful dinner we went to a couple years ago—the one honoring
attorneys of color? We had that important black judge at our table, and everyone was
so busy sucking up to him, except for good ol’ Brian, who just wouldn’t shut up about
his thoughts on affirmative action. It sounded vaguely familiar, jibing enough with
the memory of the women’s dinner to lead me to conclude that Brian was the firm’s
most socially awkward associate, if not the world’s. Still, even if I could accept
that Brian had misunderstood those crazy allegations, I didn’t like how the facts
were emerging piecemeal, as if Dave were showing me an impressionist painting dot
by single dot. I should have understood the big picture by now—seen how the random
dabs of color were actually water lilies.

On the other hand, I was grateful for Dave’s steady reemergence. That night in bed,
his hands reached out, pulling gently at my pajama bottoms before snapping, a little
urgently, where the waistband met my skin. I’d turned toward him, trying not to act
as grateful as I felt. It was the first time we’d been together since the suspension,
and I’d hoped sex would cement our connection, or at least make things feel normal.

Back to that other hand, though, it hadn’t.

I turned my head away from the smoke. “It’s boring.”

“Boring?” Sloane cupped the edges of a crumpled tissue and tapped some ash into it.
“Harsh.”

“Wrong word. It’s just hard to describe the person you know better than anyone. I
can’t sum him up with pithiness.”

“How long have you been married?”

“Two years.”

“And what’s he do?”

“He’s a lawyer.”

“Like Dad.”

“He’s so not like Dad.” I stared her down. “In a thousand different ways he’s not
like Dad.”

“What does that mean?”

I couldn’t help but smile. “For one, he emotes.”

She laughed. “I see. How else?”

I nibbled at the rough edge of a fingernail. Dave was the original man with a plan.
Of course we’ll be together,
he’d said, both explicitly and through his actions when we started dating. Why bother
with games or courtship? I’d been wary, wondering to Lucy if he was as deluded as
the naked emperor who’d believed he was clothed in gorgeous thread. He wasn’t. He
was just mature.

I kept quiet. Never in my life—not even before that year—had Sloane ever shown this
much interest in me.

“You always were kind of shy, huh?” I bit off the edge of the nail. I was not particularly
shy. It was just that her questions felt like fingertips drumming on a bruise. “You
look different, though. You’re all, like—polished.”

“Um, thanks.”

“It was a compliment. I mean, it probably came out wrong, but it’s good on you.”

“Thanks.”

She breathed out smoke again, nostrils flared, and but for the slightest bit of concern
in her eye, she looked just like a dragon.

After breakfast, as I walked to work, Brian’s phrase repeated in my mind in a deranged
parrot’s voice:
Crazy allegations
, squawk,
those
crazy allegations
, squawk! I tried to ignore it as it hummed during my single session of the day (the
Hoestlers) and again when it popped up as I fine-tuned the bookcase organizing. I
tried to beat it out of my head as I ran the park loop after work, but I couldn’t.

Determined, I knocked on Dave’s door as soon as I got home. He raised his head and
asked, eyes imploring, “Do you know how hard it is to do a closing from outside of
the office?”

“I don’t.”

“It’s like trying to juggle while handcuffed. Like trying to peel a grapefruit with
your freaking toes.”

So I let Dave work, reassuring myself that I would find a better time to talk to him
soon, and drowned out the chanting—
crazy allegations
—by blaring a reality show about therapists and their screwed-up personal lives. Halfway
through it, I drifted off to sleep.

Scott Jacoby alternated between jumping up and sitting down in my office, making quite
a scene. “She got suspended.” He leapt to his feet. “Suspended! For insider trading!”

Helene had also gotten suspended? She sat on the couch next to Scott, her feet resting
rather calmly on the carpet. My eyes were too heavy to drag up to her face. How could
I help the Jacobys if I couldn’t make eye contact? Should I address the woman’s feet?

I recognized her flats, tasteful black napa leather with a peep toe large enough to
showcase her two biggest toes, which were painted with a very familiar glossy oxblood
polish. My eyes yanked up, and my mother smiled at me, somewhat pityingly. Where was
Helene? “Where’s Helene?” I said.

“Don’t worry about it, hon,” my mom said.

“Sham
Wow
!” Scott jumped higher. “Sham
Wow
! Sham
Wow
! Sham
Wow
!” He screamed it louder and louder until his voice swallowed up the room.

My eyes sprang open.
“ShamWow is for the house, the boat, the car, the wet sweater, the dog. No
other
towel’s gonna do that. See what I mean? All I can say is
ShamWow
!”
The TV flashed light across the dark room: infomercial hour or, as the clock read,
two thirty in the morning.

My throat was parched, and my heart pounded in that way it does in the aftermath of
vivid dreams. Dave wasn’t in our bedroom, so I got out and walked to his office, opening
the door without knocking. His back was to me, his leg jiggling up and down as he
focused on the screen, editing a document.

“Are you suspended for insider trading?”

“What?” He looked amused as he turned around to peer at me.

“Have you done anything illegal?”

“No.”

“You swear?”

He glanced back at the computer screen for a second, then at me. “No.”

“You don’t swear?”

“I meant no, I have not done anything illegal. What is this?”

“The Brian thing is bugging me.”

He sighed.
I explained the Brian thing
.

“I don’t think you’ve ever fully told me what happened.”

“Probably not. I don’t really know what happened, Paige.”

I’d been leaning against the door, but I stepped into the room then. “Just tell me
about that morning. Walk me through it.” He turned back toward his computer screen
as if he were watching a star-crossed lover board a departing train:
There’s a place for us . . . somewhere a place for us
. “I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important.”

He got up from the chair and stretched back his arms. “Okay.”