Sisterland (6 page)

“Lukovich said this semester, and I might as well go sooner rather than later and avoid getting stuck in a snowstorm.” George Lukovich, head of Cornell’s Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, had been Jeremy’s adviser, and he and his wife had attended our wedding.

I added the pepper to the pan of onions, along with broccoli Jeremy had already chopped, then wiped my hands on a paper towel. “You couldn’t do it in the spring? Or at least wait until November?”

“You don’t mean because of Vi’s prediction, do you?”

“She did say the earthquake would be soon.”

We looked at each other, and neither of us spoke. Then Jeremy said, “You remember that my AEPS conference is in October, right?”

It wasn’t just that I hadn’t remembered that the conference was in October; after five years of being married to Jeremy, I still couldn’t even remember what AEPS stood for. “When is it again?” I asked.

Jeremy walked to the calendar on the wall and lifted the month of September; in the grid for October, he had indeed made note of his conference. I squinted to see that it was in Denver and would run from Thursday, October 15, to Sunday, October 18.

“And you’re presenting?” I said.

“On Sunday morning, when everyone is hungover, probably to a crowd in the single digits.”

“So it’s a really worthwhile use of your time, and I’m sure it’ll be a piece of cake to take care of Owen and Rosie by myself. It’s a win-win.”

“Sweetheart …” Jeremy paused, and I could tell that he was proceeding carefully. “The fact that Vi predicted another earthquake—it
could
happen. Of course it could. And I could be run over in the Schnucks parking lot this weekend.”

“That’s reassuring. Thanks.”

“Or I could buy a lottery ticket and win a million dollars. But we have to live our lives with the information available to us. We can’t make decisions based on remote possibilities.”

“What makes you so sure Vi’s prediction
is
remote?” I said. “She isn’t usually wrong.”

Jeremy swallowed, and I knew he was trying to seem respectful, not sarcastic, as he said, “Is it her spirit guide who told her there’d be an earthquake?”

“I didn’t get into that with her, but I assume so.”

“And you believe her? You believe that this ghost or whatever told Vi about an upcoming geological event, and therefore it’s true?”

To be asked to defend a situation that I more than anyone wished weren’t part of my life—it felt not quite fair. Furthermore, in acting as if Vi’s psychicness was unconnected to me, weren’t we failing to acknowledge certain facts? I said, “So you feel like you can completely dismiss her premonition?”

Jeremy was still standing by the calendar and I was at the stove and because he was short for a man, just two inches taller than I was, and I had on clogs, we were the same height as we faced each other. While the silence between us grew, I had the troubling thought that maybe I’d married him
because he didn’t entirely believe in something about myself that I hated; that maybe he’d married me because he wasn’t worried about, wasn’t deterred by, what he didn’t entirely believe in; and that both of us had mistaken our marriage for consensus. But compatibility and agreement, it struck me suddenly, were not the same.

I said, “I’m not claiming that she’s definitely right. But if the weatherman says there’ll be rain, why not take an umbrella? And if he’s wrong, better safe than sorry.”

“But what’s the umbrella in this scenario? Saying no to Cornell? Canceling my plans for AEPS?” Jeremy was still calm, as if the idea that we were having a disagreement hadn’t occurred to him.

“What if you go to the conference but postpone Cornell?” I forced a smile. “And then neither of us gets our way and we can both feel resentful.”

He smiled, too. “Has anyone ever told you that you’re a world-class negotiator?”

“Lukovich isn’t trying to recruit you, is he?” I said. It was well-established between us that I didn’t want to leave St. Louis as long as my father was alive.

“They do have a job opening this year, but Lukovich knows where we stand on moving. This would just be a colloquium, not a job talk.”

“Will they pay you?”

“Let me put it this way: Yes, but it probably won’t be enough to cover a trip to Target.”

After a minute, I said, “If Vi’s right, then I guess her prediction’s not embarrassing, but I’d rather be embarrassed and safe.”

“I know you would,” Jeremy said.

As we were
cleaning up after dinner, there was a knock on the back door—this wasn’t the one we, or anyone else, usually used—and when I looked over, Courtney Wheeling was making a blowfish face against the windowpane. I opened the door, and she said, “I saw the light on back here. Late-night dining, huh?”

“Come on in,” I said, though I wasn’t entirely sure why she was at our house. We hung out with the Wheelings all the time, but we generally called or texted each other first. In spite of the fact that Courtney was wearing shorts, running shoes, a T-shirt, and an unzipped hooded sweatshirt, the force of her personality—her intelligence and confidence and will—emanated from her. Although Courtney was pretty, her prettiness was never the main thing I noticed about her. Her hair was blond, like mine, but very short—she’d once told me she got it cut every three weeks—and even in her haircut her confidence was obvious; the same was true of her glasses, which had aggressively nerdy thick black frames. I liked Courtney, and I was impressed by her, but I didn’t always find myself able to relax in her presence.

“I’m sure you’re feeling weird about the Channel 5 thing today, but you shouldn’t,” she said. “That’s what I came over to say. It’s not your fault if you have a wackadoodle sister.”

Was I supposed to thank her? I glanced at Jeremy, who was wringing out the sponge, and his expression was impassive. I said, “What a weird coincidence, huh?”

“That poor newscaster wouldn’t know seismic energy if it bit her in the ass,” Courtney said. “Which tends to be the norm with the media. Did Jeremy tell you he got invited to give a talk at Cornell?”

“I did indeed,” Jeremy said.

Courtney took a seat at our kitchen table. “Cool, right?” she said to me. Then, to Jeremy: “Did you read Leland’s email yet?”

“I skimmed it,” Jeremy said. We made eye contact, and he said, “Nothing interesting. Department politics.”

“So Amelia is agitating to eat meat,” Courtney said. “Which I knew would happen eventually, but I didn’t think it’d be this soon.” Both Courtney and Hank were vegetarians.

“I was wondering about that,” I said. “At the park today, she was pretending to cook ham.”

Courtney wrinkled her nose. “Gross.” As if I were a pig farmer, she added, “No offense.”

“None taken,” I said.

She said, “There’s just something extra-revolting about ham. It’s so fleshy. But we’ve always said if Amelia wanted to try meat, we’d let her, so I’m thinking we should all go out for dinner and you carnivores can show her how it’s done.”

Jeremy looked amused. “I’m guessing if she’s got molars, she’s good to go.”

“Okay, then you can provide moral support to her parents.”

“You mean molar support?” Jeremy said, and Courtney and I rolled our eyes at each other.

Courtney said, “Kate, did you hear that Justin Timberlake and Rihanna are hooking up?”

“I saw that online, but I’m not sure I believe it.”

“I want it to be true. They’d make beautiful babies.” Early in our friendship, I had wondered if I should feel patronized by Courtney’s tendency to bring up celebrity gossip with me, but I had soon realized that her interest in the topic was unabashedly sincere; in fact, her knowledge far eclipsed mine, though I still wasn’t sure when she had time to study up. Courtney stood then. “I’m thinking Saturday for meat night. You guys free then?”

Jeremy and I looked at each other, and I said, “I’m pretty sure.”

“You can tell Hank tomorrow,” Courtney said to me. “And we’re cool on the whole TV news showdown? No hard feelings?” When I nodded, she said, “Tell your sister nice prayer flags.”

When Courtney had left, I let a minute pass, which probably was long enough for her to be halfway home, before saying, “I kind of feel like she was trying to trick me into being on her side.”

Jeremy shook his head. “Courtney’s just being Courtney.”

We both were quiet, and I said, “I can understand her being bummed out about Amelia wanting to try meat.”

“Why? Meat’s delicious.” Jeremy was grinning.

“But doesn’t it make it seem like all our children are growing up so quickly?”

“Am I allowed to remind you of that when Owen wakes up at two in the morning?” Then he said, “What if you go do your thing in the living room and I bring out some ice cream for us? Will that make you feel better?”

What Jeremy meant by doing my thing was that every night after the children were asleep, I took a few minutes to set the diaper bag by the front door, checking that inside it were not only diapers and extra clothes but my wallet with my health insurance card; I also charged my cellphone in the closest outlet.

“I’m leaning toward a chocolate-pistachio blend tonight,” Jeremy said, and I thought, as I did at least once a day, how lucky I was that he was my husband; it hadn’t been a foregone conclusion that I’d marry someone kind, because I hadn’t understood how much it mattered.

I said, “You really think I’m a person of simple wants, don’t you?”

Jeremy grinned again. “Isn’t that why you settled for me?”

In April 1989, the spring Vi and I were in eighth
grade, I got invited to a slumber party at Marisa Mazarelli’s house and Vi didn’t. While I wish I could say that I considered declining out of sisterly loyalty, the truth is that when Marisa called our house, I raced to ask my mother, and when she granted permission, I accepted with an excitement that I tried to conceal more from Marisa than from Vi. I was surprised and flattered to have made it onto Marisa’s guest list—Marisa of the long, dark, curly hair, Marisa of the large, newly constructed house with a hot tub, Marisa of the scary power over most of the girls at Nipher Middle School. Marisa was the daughter of the owner of an eponymous pizza chain in eastern Missouri and western Illinois. She had started wearing lip gloss in fifth grade. And at a dance the previous fall, she had, during the last song of the night—Poison’s “Every Rose Has Its Thorn”—brazenly made out on the dance floor with a boy named Chip Simmons. I’d already heard about the Mazarellis’ hot tub, even though I’d never been to Marisa’s house, and when she told me over the phone to bring a bathing suit to the party, I felt the thrill of confirmation.

It wasn’t until a few hours after Marisa’s call, when Vi and I were getting ready for bed, that the first wave of uneasiness struck me. We had just emerged from the bathroom and were headed toward the bedroom we shared. (The third bedroom in our house was kept as a guest room, its double bed pristinely covered by a white spread with cream-colored satin borders, unslept in and unsullied by actual guests from one year to the next.) Our room, which was usually a mess, had a sign on the door that Vi
had posted when we were in fourth grade and neither of us had taken down since:

“I could ask Marisa to invite you, too,” I said.

“I saw her cheating on the math quiz yesterday,” Vi said. “She was copying off Dave Stutz, and he didn’t even know it.”

I said nothing, and Vi added, “Marisa is a rich bitch.”

Coming on top of the cheating comment, this was too much. “It’s not my fault if you’re jealous,” I said.

If asked during
elementary and middle school, I would never have claimed that Vi was my best friend. I might not even have said I liked her that much. For one thing, I was unsentimental as a child, and for another, I had no frame of comparison. Did I like living in Missouri? Did I enjoy having ears?

In any twenty-four-hour period, it would not have been uncommon for us to be apart only during a few classes at school. Otherwise, we were almost always in the same room, side by side on chairs in the school cafeteria or at our kitchen table, watching television in the living room with our heads on the cushion we’d moved from the couch to the floor, taking turns hanging upside down from the mulberry tree in our yard, the backs of our knees hooked on the lowest branch and our shirts flying over our faces. We participated in no organized sports or other extracurricular activities—our mother’s general suspicion of the world extended to doubts about the value, financial or otherwise, of music or dance lessons—and we were often unsupervised.

We made up many of the games we played. One that irritated our mother involved, in its entirety, lying with our heads on opposite arms of the living room couch, the soles of our feet meeting up in the middle, and
pumping our legs back and forth as if riding a bicycle while singing, over and over and over, “There’s a place in France / Where the naked ladies dance / And the men don’t care / ’Cause they wear their underwear.”

Around fifth grade, Vi and I invented Commercial, which we played only outdoors, in the backyard, and which entailed assigning each other imaginary products that we then pretended to advertise; for the most part, these products were related to sex or farting. (Vi once made me come up with a commercial for what she called a vagina wig, and it was one of the great shocks of my life, years later, to learn in a college history course of the existence of merkins; I almost stood up in the middle of the professor’s lecture and walked out to call my sister.) Vi and I also played Person, which was the name we gave to a game much like Twenty Questions, except without the questions: One of us would think of either a celebrity or someone we knew—our music teacher, Mrs. Kebach, for instance—and the other of us would get three guesses to figure out who it was, though we usually got it on the first or second try. Our mother disliked this game even more than she disliked our singing, “There’s a place in France.” The first time she ever heard us playing, when Vi and I were in the backseat while she drove us home from the dentist’s office, she turned around and said, “Stop it! Stop it right now! That’s a bad game!” We still did play, but not in front of her.