Forbidden Sister (6 page)

“I doubt it. Look,” I said, stopping, “I’m depending on you to keep this to yourself. If you don’t, I swear I’ll tell people some of the secret things you told me about yourself and what you do.”

“Of course I won’t talk about it. I promised, didn’t I?”

“Okay,” I said. We reached the corner where we would separate. “You had better study for tomorrow’s test,” I reminded her.

“Ugh. Don’t forget to get permission to come over Friday.”

I nodded and walked away. I didn’t feel at all the way I had expected. Chastity’s excitement and imaginings dominated the entire experience. I had barely looked at Roxy. Chastity saw her up closer than I had, and what’s more, she heard Roxy’s voice, her laughter. Rather than fill me with any excitement and pleasure, the entire event depressed me. I made up my mind to come up with some excuse for why I couldn’t go to her house on Friday.

In the meantime, I thought I might find a way to return to Roxy’s hotel by myself. It might mean more lying, I thought, but I couldn’t help it. Now that I had bitten the apple, I wanted the whole thing. I wanted to know more about her, and even though I wouldn’t admit it, I wanted her to know more about me.

I had been hoping to get home before my father
arrived. Most weekdays, he didn’t get home from work until just before dinner, but today he was already there. I was frightened because his presence was unexpected, and I thought maybe, just maybe, he had thought to have me followed after school or something. Maybe he didn’t believe anything I had said at breakfast. I could barely breathe when he looked at me, but I knew I had better do all I could not to look guilty about anything.

“Why do you look so disturbed?” he asked me immediately, however. Papa was great at reading faces, especially mine.

“I wasted my time studying with them,” I said. “All they wanted to do was gossip. Now I have to work harder tonight for tomorrow.”

Papa’s eyebrows rose, and then he laughed. “She’s a chip off my old block, all right.”

I breathed with relief, but I was still nervous. I hadn’t lied this much to either of my parents until now.

“I’ll just put my things away and come down to help you with dinner, Mama,” I said.

“No need. It’s all done, Emmie. We’ll call you when it’s time to eat.”

I nodded and hurried up to my room. I did try to study, but my mind kept wandering back to Roxy. I had always struggled with memories, trying to conjure up anything that would remind me of her. Because I was so young when she left, it took me a while to understand that she was no longer there. I remembered asking about her, but Papa wouldn’t respond, and Mama always told me to do something
else or pay attention to something else. I vaguely recalled going into her room to look for her. After a while, she seemed to drift out of my young mind like a passing dream.

She was still dreamlike to me, even after seeing her as much as I had today. How could she look so beautiful and vibrant if she were all that Papa said she was? Maybe most of it wasn’t true. Maybe she was just living on her own with her own friends and had a good job. After all, I thought, how would Papa know? He didn’t want to know anything about her.

Or did he?

Was he secretly keeping an eye on her?

What if I went back to the hotel and he was doing what I was doing? What if he were somewhere nearby watching for her and he saw me? He’d be very angry, but he wouldn’t want me to know he was there, too.

He was more cheerful than usual at dinner. His financial moves had gone well for him today at his investment-banking firm, and he was talking again about an early retirement and our moving out of the city.

“We’ll be in lots better shape than my brother. That’s for sure,” he said.

My uncle was almost as unmentionable as Roxy these days. From what I understood, Uncle Orman sided with my grandfather and was highly critical of Papa for not pursuing an Army career as their father and their grandfather and great-grandfather had. Papa could have been a candidate for West Point.

In my father’s family, when you broke a tradition,
it was like breaking an egg. There was no way to put it back together.

I guess I should have expected that Chastity would call me in the evening. Her imagination was taking her in all sorts of directions. First, she saw us as amateur detectives.

“We’ve got to find out more about the escort service. I thought of a way. We need to bring someone else in on this, too.”

“What? Why? Who?”

“A boy. We need a boy’s voice.”

“A boy’s voice? Why?”

“Well, I was thinking, what if we do find out the name of the service and the telephone number? We could get this boy to call and pretend he wants a date with your sister. You told me her French name. If he’s told she’s booked that night, we’ll know, and we can watch to see who picks her up, get the license number or something.”

“Chastity, you’re running away with yourself. We’re not detectives. We couldn’t find out anything if we knew someone’s license number. What’s the point?”

“I think I can. My uncle Tommy is a city policeman, isn’t he?”

She made my heart flutter. “Forget that,” I said. “You’re thinking of things that will make this all worse for me. We don’t tell anyone, especially some boy from our school, about my sister, understand? And if you went to your uncle . . . he might call both our parents. Promise me you won’t even think of such a
thing again,” I demanded. “Promise, or I’ll never do anything with you again.”

“Oh . . .”

I was silent.

“Okay, okay. Don’t bust a blood vessel.” She took a breath and went right on to a new fantasy. “I wonder if there is such a thing for girls our age.”

“What? What thing?”

“An escort service. I don’t mean young girls for older men,” she added quickly. “But how about an escort service for high school boys? We might be able to organize it. I bet we could make a lot of money.”

“That’s even more ridiculous, Chastity.”

“No, it isn’t. There are plenty of boys today who are pretty awkward when it comes to dating and things. They’d love to pay to have everything arranged. And don’t say it’s illegal. If it was illegal, your sister would be in jail, right?”

I suddenly realized I might have created a monster. “I don’t know, Chastity. And don’t ask your father!” I added.

“I won’t, but I think it’s a very exciting idea.”

“You should just study for the test tomorrow, Chastity. You’re getting crazy. Let’s forget about my sister for a while.”

“What do you mean? We’re going back up there, aren’t we? I heard her say she had a full weekend.”

“No,” I said. “I decided it’s not a good idea.”

“What?”

“I want to think more about it first.”

“Well, that’s not fair. You got me into this, and now you just want to stop?”

“We’ll talk about it tomorrow,” I said quickly. “I really want to study.”

“That’s not fair,” she repeated, and hung up.

I was actually shaking.
She’s going to cause some sort of trouble,
I thought.
I have to find a way to keep her satisfied.
Papa was always fond of saying, “Two can keep a secret if one is dead.” Now I was afraid I had trusted someone too much. Chastity and I had been drawn together out of a common need for a best friend. My life was so restricted, so controlled, most of the girls in my class considered me a waste of time. Chastity was usually ignored or forgotten whenever it came to parties or get-togethers. We just seemed to gravitate toward each other.

We both felt safe talking and fantasizing about boys and men we knew we would never really speak to, much less have any sort of intimate relationship with. Romance for us was still something kept at a distance, a dream. Other girls our age whom we knew weren’t much more sophisticated, and most of them were virgins, but for some reason, our virginity had a capital
V
. I could feel it in the way boys and other girls looked at us, especially me.

What would happen if they suddenly found out I had a sister who worked for a high-priced escort service? Would it make me seem odder and forbidden, like someone who could spread a disease, or would it suddenly make me interesting to them? There were a few boys I found attractive and interesting. I wished
one especially, Evan Styles, a sophomore, would give me a second glance, but that had yet to happen.

Evan was one of the more popular boys. His father was a mayoral assistant, an attorney, and he and Evan’s mother were often in New York magazines, photographed at charity events or government events. The question wasn’t whether there were any girls interested in Evan. The question was who wasn’t? Besides being bright and very good-looking, he had a winning personality. I knew our teachers were fond of him.

What would get him to look seriously at me?

I thought about Roxy. She was so well put together—her hair, her makeup, and the way her clothes fit. But it was that air of self-confidence that surprised me the most, the way she walked and held herself. Where did she learn how to do that if she had been thrown out onto the streets? Wouldn’t that make it far more difficult to have any self-confidence?

I looked at myself in the mirror. My hair was neat but dull, I thought. I wore nothing but a little lipstick, and that usually wore off or looked bland. I rarely wore earrings to school, and I was never excited about my clothes. Whenever Mama took me shopping for something new to wear, she always wondered aloud if my father would approve. I might as well be wearing a uniform.
I’m in Papa’s private family army,
I thought.

I need to buy something more attractive to wear. I’ve got to do something else with my hair, and I should wear more makeup to school.

Just a short look at Roxy had stirred all of these thoughts in my mind.

What would happen if I ever did speak to her and spent any time with her?

Maybe I shouldn’t think of the two of us as being like Cain and Abel in the Bible.

Maybe I should think of myself as Eve.

And of Roxy . . . as the snake.

“I need something new to wear to school,” I announced at breakfast the next morning.

“Why? What’s the special occasion?” Papa asked me.

“It’s nothing special. I look so drab and boring.”

“You’re going to school, not a gala ball,” he said.

“Now, Norton, a woman has to feel good about herself to do well in anything. Clothes are more important to us.”

“To you French, you mean,” Papa said, sipping his coffee. “She has nice enough clothes.”

“Nice but not what’s really in fashion,” I ventured.

He put his cup down and began to stir it again, which I knew was an indication that he was wrestling with two contradictory thoughts. While he did, he fixed his gaze on me with those searchlight eyes like some detective looking for a clue. Of course, I wondered the same thing I often did whenever I asked for something. Did Roxy ask for similar things? Did my asking set off new alarm bells in Papa? My heart was starting to thump.

“Fashion? Don’t become one of those clones, dressing like everyone else, thinking like everyone else,” Papa finally said.

“She’s not,” Mama said. “Look at the grades she gets and how well behaved she is. Her teachers have nothing but good things to say about her.” Mama looked at me and smiled. “I know exactly what she’s feeling. She’s a beautiful flower put in a pot and hidden in a closet. You can’t keep her a little girl forever, Norton.”

Papa grunted, which was something he would call a strategic retreat.

“I’ll take you shopping after school today,” Mama promised.

“I don’t want her wearing anything ridiculous,” Papa warned, “like those shirts that leave their middles naked.”

“You know they don’t let the girls look like that in her school, Norton.”

“They’re too lax in her school already. I’ve seen some of the girls there.”

“When?” Mama asked.

“Well, maybe not exactly there, but . . .”

“Norton, could you let this girl breathe,
s’il vous plaît
?”

He glanced at her and then at me.

“You’re the one who told me when we first met that if you hold a bird too tightly, you’ll crush its wings,” Mama added.

Papa stopped stirring his coffee. “Is that what you think happened?” he asked.

I knew exactly what he meant. He was referring to Roxy.

Mama blanched. I immediately regretted asking for anything.

She sucked in her breath and then stiffened. “We’re not going to make this into something more than it is,” she said. “It’s time your daughter had some new things to wear. I might buy myself a new dress, too,” she added. “You go to work, and let us enjoy being women,
n’est-ce pas?
”

Papa stared at her a moment. His eyes softened, and then he nodded. “Okay, okay. You’re right,” he said, holding up his hand.

He looked at me, and for a moment, I thought he wasn’t looking at me with any anger. He was looking at me with fear.

“I won’t get anything that would make you ashamed of me, Papa,” I said.

His eyes brightened, and he smiled. “I know. You’re my
fille parfaite
. Besides, what chance do I have with two French women?”