The Almost Archer Sisters (18 page)

And in those years I hadn’t traveled the world, hadn’t done anything important or even interesting, but I had given birth to two sons, three years apart. And though there was nothing remotely immaculate about Sam’s conception in the kitchen that day, he was my little savior, my godsend. He gave me purpose, that squalling blob of a boy who latched to my breast with such urgency I thought he’d turn the rest of my body inside out through my nipples.

As for Jake’s conception, I had read how you could time and calibrate sex to make a girl. And I’ll admit I wanted one. I read about vitamins you could take and positions you could initiate. While I was pregnant, the baby rode low on my front, and knowing women would press their palms to my belly at the A&P, swearing that he was a she.
Are you nauseous and moody
, they asked. I was.
So you already have a boy?
I did.
So you’re likely stuffed with double the amount of estrogen
, they said.
A girl
, they said,
such good news
. I blithely installed a pink bed frill around Sam’s old bassinet, because what if they were right?

When Jake was born, I was impressed. To keep that penis of his intact, he’d probably battled off a lot of magic, menace, and wishes in my womb. Later, while diapering him, when he’d cover his exposed penis with both of his hands, using strength that required both of mine to remove them, I got the feeling he knew I had tried to prenatally snatch it from him.

So I came to believe that the life you got, unlike the one you hoped for, could still be a decent consolation prize if you held it aloft like the winner’s trophy. That’s what I did, and had been doing ever since that day Beau and I had sex on Lou’s granite counter. And though it was an exhausting skill, it came easily to me because I had never kept my eye on the bigger prizes to begin with.

F
OR MOST OF
the flight I hadn’t noticed that the seat between me and a chubby bleach-haired woman remained blessedly empty. At first, I thought it was luck that left it vacant before realizing it was supposed to have been Beth’s seat.

“It’s nice to have a little space, isn’t it?” the woman said over the white noise.

“It was supposed to be my sister’s seat,” I yelled over the din, immediately regretting it. Small talk was always a big problem for me. That was Beth’s particular talent, one I’d always left to her when we’d be out and about, meeting strangers.

“Oh, what happened to her?”

“I’m trying to figure that out myself,” I said. I didn’t mean to be mysterious or funny, but I was granted a sudden and captive audience in Lee, from Long Island, who worked as a regional manager for an expensive weight-loss franchise, the same company
that had helped her slim down from about 300 to 160 pounds and counting. She carried a “before” picture around for proof.

“Wow, you’re half a person!” I said, unsure if that was the right thing to say to a formerly obese person who was now just chubby.

Telling strangers terrible things had a way of making them feel less like they happened to me. So in the same way I unburdened myself to the border guard, I regaled this woman with the facts of my life; of Beth and Beau’s crime, leaving out details of the sexual position I had found them in, sprinkling in a bit about our past and Sam’s condition, and that this was the first flight I’d ever taken in my life, not counting the helicopter ride at Bob-Lo Island when I was eight. I didn’t tell her about Marcus, as I didn’t want to relent an ounce of my precious victimhood, the only thing that propelled me onto the plane to begin with. I still needed to feel badly wronged in order to continue on the destructive path I had begun to carve from my gravel driveway to Beth’s marble lobby.

“Jeez, Louise,” she said, with a long whistle. I felt stupid. It occurred to me that she might have been mocking my hickishness with that exclamation. Then to my great relief, she added, “My Perry cheated, like six, seven years ago. With some woman he met in a chat room, or what have you. You know, on the Internet.”

“Did you leave him?”

“For a little while, yeah. I stayed with my brother in Vermont. Maybe a month. But we got on with things. Actually, I think it made the marriage stronger, the threat of not having it, you know?”

“Did he ever cheat again?” I felt such sudden kinship, love even, for this blowsy seatmate of mine. I imagined us having drinks on a beach together, on a girls’ type vacation, something I’d always wanted to do with Beth. Lee and I would tell people how we met, arching our eyebrows at each other. We’d laugh about our wayward husbands, clinking fancy drinks to our uncommon strength and their common weaknesses.

We were banking near Manhattan when the pilot announced that we could see the black gap in the toothy skyline where the World Trade Center used to be.

“I don’t know if he ever cheated again. I like to think not. He ended up dying in that mess down there,” she said, pointing over my shoulder.

“You mean 9/11?” I said.

She nodded.

“I’m so sorry.”

I kept my eyes on the island below, thinking, there I was, an imaginary widow attempting to comfort an authentic one. She was not looking at me at that point, but out and beyond the window, with a steely, almost practiced gaze. She could tell I was staring at her, which suddenly bothered me. It was like she had zipped on a snug suit of stoicism, one which she probably carried around for just such occasions. Still, I tried to fathom her sadness, to see past the strange celebrity that often comes from being party to such public tragedies.

“I can’t believe three years have already passed,” she said, sighing back into her seat. I felt very far away from her. I had no idea what to say, feeling as though my shoddy story of betrayal had been smothered under the ace of spades of her epic tragedy. I wished I could take back my words and the petty way I’d uttered them.

Beth had been in Belle River that September day, which she openly, deeply, selfishly lamented. She was down at Lou’s having a touch-up on her highlights when the first plane hit.

“I should be there,” she whelped into Lou’s TV screen when the second plane made impact. We all scrambled down to the trailer, which had the only satellite dish at that time. “My city! I should be there!” I remember looking at the back of her head and willing its front part to shut the fuck up and be grateful. Despite air-conditioning, it was stifling hot, all of us crowding into Lou’s watching endless CNN. And though I blamed 9/11 for a lot of
rotten global fallout, long lines at the border, war and everything after, it was because of that godawful event that I relented and let Beau hook us up with one of those flat-screen TVs and a satellite dish too.

For the entire time the planes were grounded, Beth alternated between calling everyone she knew and crying in front of the set. Finally, she took a bus back from Detroit. I was worried, but relieved to see her go, sick of Beth’s wrong-minded mourning. Still, having missed her shot at participating in history hadn’t stopped Beth from knitting herself into the periphery of its ugly narrative.

“I had breakfast at Windows on the World not three months ago. That could have been me!”

On the phone to Kate: “Gosh, didn’t we
just
fly into L.A. for that VH1 pitch? That could have been us.”

To Jeb: “Man, my place is just a few blocks from there. What if the terrorists had miscalculated? And they slammed into my building? I mean, if I was there, then that could have been me.”

I tried dismantling her reasoning.

“Beth, please, that would be like me saying if a different selection of Beau’s sperm had hit my eggs, I wouldn’t have had these exact kids.”

“Yeah, but Peach, that
is
true. That
is
exactly what I’m saying.”

Lee offered me her pretzels. “Trying to stay away from carbs. Sorry to be such a downer. The town I’m from lost a lot of people. We don’t have much of a problem talking about it. Just blurting it out like that. I should remember that it shocks people.”

“God. Don’t apologize,” I said, still looking at her profile. I thought of ways her husband might have escaped his fate: he could have been late for the train, or stalled in a lineup at a bridge or a Starbucks. Those were the stories I became fixated on, the people who missed their planes that morning because they got stuck in
traffic, or they were delayed because it was their turn to drop the kids off at day care.

“But at least your marriage was a happy one when he died,” I said, adding lamely, “at least that’s something.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t go that far. The marriage might have been stronger, but that doesn’t mean it was happier.”

I envied her her widowhood. I imagined that that would always overshadow Perry’s ridiculous Internet romance. And Lee would be remembered for being a grand widow rather than a wronged wife. It made me sad that I couldn’t tell Beth about Lee, that I’d met a famous widow, a true American mourner, though I imagined they were a dime a dozen in Manhattan. I wouldn’t have put it past Beth to have made up a trader boyfriend, lost in the rubble, her one last shot at happiness now turned to dust.

Staring at Lee kept my eyes off the window, so the bounce and roll of the plane’s landing took me by surprise. It forced a low laugh out of my diaphragm and a bit of pee escaped.

“Whoa,” I said, “so that’s what that feels like!”

Lee gave me a fleshy hug in Arrivals and told me to keep my chin up and that it shouldn’t take too much work, as I was lucky to have only the one. And then she handed me a card with a 20 percent discount.

“Not saying you need to lose weight. My contacts are on the back in case you get into a jam. I live in Levittown. It’s not far. But my advice, for what it’s worth: don’t do anything hasty, Peachy, okay?”

“Thanks. I’m sorry about your husband,” I said.

“Life’s life,” she said. “Stay in touch.”

We said goodbye, and as she walked away, I thought that there was still time to become a good woman. I could turn things around. I could stay kind through turmoil, like Lee. But after that weekend, I thought, Not now. Passing a bank of phones, I noticed the time. Beth should be with Sam at Dr. Best’s by now. We were
trying to monitor brain activity before, during, and after a seizure in order to perfectly time his surgery. I’d phone Lou later to find out how the appointment went. Meanwhile, fear and homesickness were duking it out in my stomach, my money on the latter. I felt young and dumb, and suddenly I wanted a mother, any mother, to wrap me in a shock blanket and take me home. I searched for the back of Lee’s head. I suddenly wanted her to take me to her place in Levittown for the weekend. I could cry on a lawn chair, and she could bring me crackers and cheese and coffee. But before I gathered the guts to run after her, I banged into Beth’s friend Kate standing in Arrivals and holding high a poster that read
EVERYTHING’S GONNA BE JUST PEACHY
.

“I think that’s me,” I said, pointing to her sign.

“Peachy?”

“I really didn’t expect anyone to meet me at the airport this morning.”

“Sounds like you didn’t expect a lot of things this morning,” Kate said, rolling her eyes.

She already knew about Beau. Typical Beth, corralling friends and coworkers, I thought, while I’m seducing total strangers, one at a time. No wonder Beth always won. She goes for the players and I go for the bystanders.

“God, you look nothing like Beth!” she said, peering up into my face. Kate grabbed my hand with one of hers and pulled me into a brittle hug. Then she reached for my bag. “Not that that’s a bad thing, lord knows Beth could put on a bit of weight.”

She should talk, I thought. Kate had the size and carriage of a tiny, anxious fairy, with scarlet streaks striping her bobbed black hair.

“That did not come out right, Peachy. Sorry. I didn’t mean … listen. Beth asked me to come meet you. She was afraid of you arriving here all alone. I hope that’s okay.”

I nodded.

“I did NOT mean to suggest you were fat. I mean, you’re not
at all
.”

“It’s
okay
. And I didn’t mean for anyone to go to any trouble. I would have been fine on my own. I have Beth’s address and her keys.”

“It’s no trouble. Beth’s paying. Remind me to keep the receipts. I’m at your service all weekend. And you know,” she said, lowering her voice, “I’m really sorry about what Beth did with your husband. I know Beth can be a complete fucking idiot sometimes, but if it matters, she feels like a total ass right now.” Her T-shirt said
ASK ME ABOUT MY HONOR STUDENT
, so I changed the subject and did.

“Oh!” Kate’s face lit up as she turned around to show me the shirt’s epilogue:
THE BASTARD HASN’T CALLED US IN YEARS
. “Thought it up myself. Trying to start up a kind of online business selling them. Beth said she might back it. She thinks we could make a mint.”

We exited the terminal into a balmy wash of air that took me by surprise with its surprising tropicalness. I asked her where she parked her car.

“I’ve been asking myself that for ten years. No, sweetie, we’re cabbing it. Nobody owns a car in New York. Not even Beth.”

I knew that, but these are the things you forget to picture when you’re picturing someone’s life over the phone. You don’t think about how they navigate from place to place, though I used to imagine Beth walking the streets alone, smoke rising out of the grates in the sidewalk, muggers and rapists lining the alleyways, waiting for her. There was always a dreary grey backdrop in my terrible nightmares of what it was like for my sister, alone in the city. I once dreamed she’d been shoved in front of an oncoming subway by a deranged stalker who turned out to be Lucy wearing a hobo outfit. Eventually, I got used to her living here, was less and less afraid for her, because in truth she was a taxi whore, a woman
who lived in a SoHo condo that employed a full-time doorman, who frequented no establishment more than fifteen blocks from her doorstep, who had everything she bought delivered, including ice cream, hairspray, and dry-cleaning.

When Beth first moved to New York, we quickly had to develop a verbal glossary of terms for each other, our lives were becoming that different that quickly. Her new words for me were Ayurveda, Nolita, NPR, Missoni, Auster, E, and edamame. My words for her were episiotomy, CBC, soffit, raglan, Zyban, Enya, Ya-Ya, and Martha. But despite the differences, our conversations had always maintained the casual intimacy of two women in side-by-side change rooms, yelling over a high partition.