The Spinster Sisters (11 page)

“Hey. Fuck you. I was just trying to spare you some of the ugliness so you could enjoy the holidays in the flush of your new engagement. So sorry if I didn’t want you to have to face the shitty side of this without a plan in place. I wanted to be able to say, ‘Here is what is going on, and here is how we are going to protect you and the business,’ so you didn’t have to worry!”

“You can’t protect me from my own business.”

“Trust me, I’ll never try again. You can have it.” I go over to my desk and grab the rest of the files of letters and drop them in her lap. “You send the answers to all these people, then. You talk to Kim about how to fix it. You stay up wondering if the entire business is about to go under, with all the people who work with us at risk. You talk to the fucking security company about how to keep us all safe. I’m fucking done. I’m tired of being the fucking FEMA director of our lives.”

“Fine.” Jill stands up.

“Fine?”

She nods. “Fine. This is my mess, you seem to think. My fault. My problem. I’ll take care of it.”

“Fine.”

We look at each other.

“It doesn’t matter if your intentions were good, Jodi. You had no right.”

“Whatever.”

“Let’s just get through tomorrow and try to have a happy day. We can talk about this on Friday when we’ve cooled off.”

“Yeah, okay.” I’m suddenly crushingly exhausted.

“I’ll see you in the morning.” Jill turns, carrying her armload of poison, and leaves.

I’m too shocked to even cry, at once furious at her for being so angry at my well-intentioned efforts and even more furious with myself for not just keeping my mouth shut.

I head to the kitchen to clean up and then go to check e-mail before bed. There is a message in the website in-box from C. Duncan. I open it.

 
This makes me a little bit fuzzy. In a good way. In a way that momentarily makes me forget the recent unpleasantness. I hit Reply.

 
It appears that this year, whatever shit may be hitting the fan, I may actually have one extra thing to be thankful for.

 
“Please pass the mashed potatoes,” I say softly, stuffed to the gills but desperate for one more creamy mouthful of comfort.

Jill picks them up and hands them over without a word.

“Another triumph, Shirley,” Aunt Ruth says, patting her mouth with a napkin. “The turkey was perfect.”

“Thanks, Ruthie. It’s all in the brining.” Shirley is beaming, having truly pulled off an extraordinary meal. “See, the thing is, there’s all this flavor in the brine outside the bird and no room inside the bird. So you have to let the bird sort of stew in its own juices overnight to get it to give up some room, so that the flavor can work its way inside.”

“Interesting.” Ruth takes a sip of wine. “So what you are saying is that in order for the bird to be the best it can be, it has to let some outside influences help.”

Sweet Calvin and Hobbes, they’re baiting us! “Oh goodness gracious, the two of you are ridiculous,” I say.

“And very, very unsubtle,” Jill says.

“Well, what do you expect?” Ruth asks. “All that stomping and muffled yelling and slamming of doors and huffing up and down staircases. We’re old; we’re not deaf or stupid. And the two of you have been polite-ing each other near to death since eight this morning.”

“We’re having some issues related to work, that’s all; we didn’t want to make a big deal of it,” I say.

“We just want to have a nice Thanksgiving,” Jill says, not looking at me.

“The two of you are full of hooey,” Shirley says.

“Oh, hellfire, Shirley, they’re full of shit,” Ruth snaps. “How can we have a nice day when clearly the two of you didn’t work through this last night, and now, having slept little, I’m sure, you’re working so hard not to say anything that it’s making you unbearable company!”

“Maybe we should just . . .” Hunter tries to speak.

“Please,” Jill whispers. And she does it in a tone that tells me that he knows everything, and might not have been totally on her side in the matter. Interesting.

“Don’t shush the poor boy; he’s getting the brunt of it!” Shirley pipes in. “Hunter, darling, would you join Ruth and me for sherry in the parlor while the girls clean up?” She rises, Hunter automatically getting up and offering her his arm.

“Don’t forget to soak the roasting pan,” Ruth says, and follows her sister and almost-nephew from the dining room.

I look at Jill. She looks at the table and sighs. “We’d better start.”

I fork in one more mouthful of potatoes and get up to begin clearing the mess. One wouldn’t think five adults could create such an enormous amount of dirty dishes, but there is at least an hour of work ahead of us.

I begin putting leftovers in containers and plastic bags, while Jill starts scraping and stacking plates and dumping silverware into a large bowl. The only noise is the tinkle and clink of china and crystal and a low rumble of talking from the other room. I can’t fucking stand it. I won’t be the first one to say something here; she’s the one who blew up at me instead of acting like a rational person and talking it over.

“Stop thinking so damn loud; this is not all me,” Jill says quietly.

“I’m sorry, were you addressing me or those Brussels sprouts?”

“I can hear your determination not to be the first one to talk from a mile away, Jodi. You’re pretty predictable.” She runs water into the sink and splooshes a bunch of dishwashing liquid over it.

I stick the last of the food in the fridge and open the dishwasher and start loading the silverware. “You know we don’t sleep on an argument, and you were the one who bailed last night. I tried to talk to you about this, and you shut me down and yelled at me.”

Jill starts rinsing dishes and adding them to the dishwasher. “You stepped way over a line, and I didn’t feel like we were going to come to a resolution last night. I was too angry. I’m still angry.”

“I appreciate that, and I’m sorry you’re angry, but all I was doing was . . .”

“Keeping me out of the loop,” Jill spits out.

“Protecting you!” Why can’t she see that?

“I said it before: You cannot protect me from my own business. These aren’t schoolyard bullies calling me Bill because of a bad haircut!”

I did have to beat up a couple of kids once upon a time when what was supposed to be a Dorothy Hamill ended up more of a Donny Osmond.

“I know. This is worse. This could cause us to lose everything.”

“We can’t lose everything—we haven’t done anything wrong! I’m not doing anything wrong! And what I’m doing has not one fucking thing to do with our business!”

I slam the last fork into the basket. “You have got to be kidding me! You saw the mail, you read the e-mails, how can you think things are separate? It’s all there in black and white. People who trusted us feel betrayed. Who are the Spinster Sisters if you aren’t a spinster anymore? And who are we if we aren’t the Spinster Sisters?” Hot tears begin to fall down my cheeks.

Jill puts down the plate she is holding, dries her hands on a towel, and comes over to me. She opens her arms and we hug tightly. “We are Jodi and Jill, and we will always be sisters and best friends and partners, always. It doesn’t matter if I get married or you do, or if the business folds or changes into something else. We are always us; nothing can change that.”

I hiccup. “I didn’t mean to belittle you or be overbearing.”

“I didn’t mean to accuse you of ill intentions.”

“I’m really happy you’re getting married.”

“I promise it won’t change me or us.”

We look at each other and smile.

I tweak her nose. “I love you, Moose Face.”

She pinches my cheek. “I love you, too, Butthead.”

“Let’s get them the hell in here to help dry the damn glasses.”

“Indeed.”

Jill goes to let Hunter and the aunts know that the storm has passed and that it is safe to come into the kitchen, and I turn to the sink. I hope she is right. I really need her to be right on this one.

Honesty isn’t really always the best policy. Whenever you choose to share something potentially hurtful with a friend or lover, you should stop to think about why you are sharing it. Yes, it can be important to talk about issues that are negatively impinging on a relationship. If someone is doing something that hurts your feelings, it is essential to confront them about that. However, some things truly are better left unsaid. If you are jealous of your friend’s new job, that isn’t about her; it is about you, and telling her will only make her feel self-conscious about talking to you. If the problem rests with you, keep it to yourself, work through your own issues, and try to look at why you are feeling the way you are feeling. I would bet that you are really dissatisfied with your own work situation, and if that is the case, be happy for your friend, and get off your tush and try to do something to alter your own career path.

 
 
 
“This is Jodi Spingold,” I say into the large microphone in front of me.

“And this is Jill Spingold,” she says into her mike.

“And you’re having
Lunch with the Spinster Sisters
,” I continue. “Today’s topic is compromise. How to do it, when to do it, why to do it—”

“And when to avoid it!” Jill jumps in.

“We’ll be taking your calls in just a minute or two, so get your questions ready and set your speed dial to 1-800-S-P-I-N-S-T-R, that’s 1-800-774-6787. But I want to start with getting some sort of handle on what we mean when we say compromise. Jill, what do you think of when you think of the word
compromise
?”

Jill winks at me. We don’t overtly script the show, since we really want it to be spontaneous, but we do go over some scenarios and talk through our ideas. We don’t, unlike some radio pairs, try to either always be in agreement or always be at odds. We let our opinions stay organic, letting the chips fall where they may.

“Well, I sort of get two different images in my head when I hear
compromise
,” Jill begins. “I mean, the first is sort of the classic, right? Two people who want things that are at odds, coming to an agreement somewhere in the middle. I want Italian for dinner and I want to see the new French movie. He wants Greek for dinner and to see the new action adventure. So we either do a ‘You pick the dinner, I pick the movie’ thing, or we agree on the French restaurant and the comedy.”

I laugh, since last night she and I fought over whether to go to Santorini or Sentimana for dinner, and ended up at Bistro Zinc.

“So, it’s either everyone gets part of their way, so that the benefit is split, or you move to a whole different area that you can find some agreement on,” I prompt her.

“Exactly.”

“But then, what is the other image you get? You said you got two.”

“I think, for many women, compromise means giving up something to keep the peace. That it isn’t about giving up part of something or changing tracks entirely, but rather about letting something go because they don’t believe that they are valued enough to even get a part of what they want or deserve.”

“I think we’re going to need a less academic description here, sis; you just sort of lost me.” Which she didn’t, but part of the job is to play the part of the listener, anticipating what they are thinking and would ask if they were in the room.

“Well, I think what I mean is this. Let’s say we’re looking at that dinner discussion again. She wants Italian. He wants Greek. So in order to not have to have a big discussion, she’ll say fine, and they’ll have Greek instead of coming to a genuine compromise. Women sometimes see giving in as compromise. As if their wants or desires have less value. And what can happen is that we tell ourselves it isn’t a big deal, right? It’s just a meal. But those little deals add up, and before we know it there is a major communication breakdown. And it doesn’t matter if the situation is professional or personal, romantic or platonic. It can set up an unhealthy pattern of not allowing yourself to get what you want and need.”

“I sort of see what you’re getting at. I mean, often it seems easier to just acquiesce. Like, when I was married, and I didn’t really want to get a second cat, but the minute it started to become a real discussion, and I knew we’d end up in a fight, and I also knew that having the second cat wasn’t really going to have any overt negative impact on my life, I just let my husband get the second cat so that we didn’t have to argue about it.”