Two Sisters: A Novel (12 page)

They hit traffic near Columbus Circle, but the driver skillfully knit through crisscrossing cabs to pass the vertical mall and loop around the elliptical plaza. Fountains were spurting skinny arcs of water; purple spires of
Liriope
and persimmon-colored buds of
Cotoneaster
decorated the bases of honey locust trees. After they turned right on Central Park South, Muriel both saw and smelled the line of hansom cabs waiting for tourists, their hairy-footed horses scraping the asphalt with crusty yellowed hooves.

“So, what brings you to our fair land?” she blurted out, instantly biting the inner flesh of her lip and cursing her idiocy. “I mean, to what do I owe the honor?” Turning her head away, Muriel wanted to leap out the window and throw herself under the bus tire. Why all semblance of human personality deserted her around her older sister she hadn’t a clue. In the same way she could never comprehend why she gobbled up free samples of mini bagel bites at Costco even though gluten immediately gave her a stomachache. Some things were just mysteries of life.

Subtly sliding her hand out from beneath Pia’s, she released a nervous spew of conversational buckshot. “Of course it’s always great to see you. Especially on such a beautiful day. It really is so very lovely outside, don’t you thi—?”

Pia reached up and stroked Muriel’s cheek with the backs of her first two fingers. It shut her up instantly. Not sure what else to do, Muriel let her face hang there like a bolt of sateen.
Was Pia checking for exfoliation?
Good God, would the nightmarish day never end? Smiling softly again, Pia covered her mouth and coughed, resettling her hand in her lap. Then she returned her million-mile gaze through the bus window. After a lifetime of memorizing her sister, Muriel knew it was useless pushing Pia to talk before she was ready. It was the frustrating trait of a person who’d never known the loneliness of not being listened to.

“I can’t wait to see the grand spot you’ve chosen for lunch,” Pia said, at last. By then, the bus was almost at Fifth Avenue. Lurching into traffic, they turned the corner and stopped across the street from FAO Schwartz. Muriel stood up. “This is us.”

Pia looked out the window. “Bergdorf’s?”

“Follow me.”

Tugging the white shirtdress over her hips and adjusting the suffocating scarf, Muriel led her sister down the bus steps and back up Fifth Avenue a few yards before turning to walk across a cobblestone square past the Pulitzer Fountain of the naked goddess Pomona.

“Ah, Muriel,” Pia said, stopping. “It’s perfect.”

Muriel beamed. It felt good to please someone who was so hard to please. Thank God she’d read the
New York Times
review.

“You can’t smell the horses inside.”

Together the two sisters walked toward the regal red carpet leading to the fabulous entrance of the Plaza Hotel.

I
T WAS IMPOSSIBLE
not to feel grand or magnificent or glorious or splendid at the pitch-perfect blending of old and new known to all New Yorkers as “The Plaza.” The front steps are so alluring they practically suck you through the shiny brass revolving door. Overhead, a black lacquered molding is filigreed in gold. It probably isn’t real gold, but it might as well be.

“Ladies.” As if welcoming Cinderella to the ball, a gloved doorman bowed his head slightly when Pia flitted up the red-carpeted stairs. Not far behind, Muriel attempted her own light-footed flit. In his top hat with its gold-braided trim, the doorman looked like an actor onstage. The “Be My Guest” scene in
Beauty and the Beast
, or, more accurately,
Grand Hotel
. Muriel felt the same fluttery anticipation she felt right before the curtain rose on Broadway. For a moment she forgot about the tugging buttons of her dress.

“Glorious day,” she said to the doorman, sounding not one bit ridiculous. Gallantly, he swept his arm across his chest and replied, “Indeed.”

The Sullivant sisters leaned into the heavy rotating door and pushed themselves through time. In the central lobby, Pia stopped cold and gasped. Muriel nearly toppled into her.

“Oh, my,” Pia said. “I haven’t been here in ages.”

Overhead, a crystal chandelier as large and shiny as a new car sent snowflakes of pearly light dancing about the square lobby. Milky bellflowers in a huge center vase infused the air with the aroma of harvested hay. Their soft petals were an explosion of violet. Pia’s heels sank into the thick floral rug. Tourists and guests entered through the revolving door and sidestepped her. The rubber strip along the edge of the circulating entrance
flap, flapped
with each revolution.

“It’s this way,” Muriel said, but her sister didn’t budge. As if standing alone, Pia dropped her shoulders and tilted her head back to see the ornate white ceiling. Her handbag dropped down to her fingertips; her lips went slack. The dappled light powdered the length of her satiny neck. She let her eyelids fall shut as if imagining a
Downton Abbey
sort of world where women wore silk shoes and teardrop earrings and diamond-studded hair clips to dinner. Their men retired to the study after dining to smoke cigars and sip cognacs and furrow their foreheads over the sorry state of England.

Next to her sister, Muriel studied the mosaic tiles along the edge of the lobby’s red floral rug. “I never did stay here,” Pia finally said in a whisper.

“You still can. Only part of it was made into condos.”

“Yes. Well.” Pia opened her eyes.

Together, the sisters made their way to the rear of the hotel, past a jaw-dropping side lobby, its marble floor so polished you could apply lipstick in its reflection. They circled around the famous Palm Court with its sky-high stained-glass ceiling curved upward like a colossal bejeweled brooch. It cast an ethereal yellow light onto the white-linened tables. Pia ran her fingers along the carbonite stone wall in the long hallway and said, “Isn’t God amazing? Creating man with the ability to imagine this?”

“Conrad Hilton, one of the owners years ago, destroyed the original stained-glass ceiling to install air-conditioning. God created him, too.”

Pia didn’t respond.

A brass-edged escalator carried the sisters down to the basement level, where they were going to have lunch. Like a secret city, it was a Gatsbyesque expanse of shops and gourmet food, an unearthed treasure of chocolate, pizza, elaborate millinery, custom perfumes, sushi, charcuterie, oysters, artisanal cheese, coffee, and cupcakes. Anything anyone with style could ever want to eat or buy.

“Two for lunch?”

A hostess greeted them at the Food Hall—a huge open room dotted with high communal tables and curving Carerra marble counters. Each counter faced a food station, though as the hostess explained, “You can order anything you want at any station.”

Before Muriel could request a quiet corner away from the noise, Pia said, “Seat us in the middle of the action.” Shrugging, Muriel followed the hostess to two bar chairs in front of a large sizzling grill. One of the grill chefs clacked his tongs in greeting. Two older men in suits that cost more than Muriel’s monthly rent looked up when the sisters sat down.

“Ladies,” they said in unison.

“Gentlemen,” Pia replied in a Marilyn Monroe sort of way. Muriel blushed even as the men ignored her. Many times she’d witnessed the way a man’s gaze lingered on her sister. At thirty-one—precariously close to New York’s expiration date—Pia was still asked for her phone number. Muriel, eight years younger, was asked for directions. Never had Pia been a woman unseen. Men wanted her in their limo, on their arm, in their bed.

“Any chance we can buy you ladies lunch?”

Muriel quietly fluffed her scarf, allowing her sister to let the men down easy. The man nearest Pia—with his tan hands and spangly watch—looked at Pia alone. While attractive
enough
, Muriel was the sort of woman men looked
through
. They saw their iPhone messages clearly, or the swivel of young hips in tight pencil skirts, but men rarely noticed Muriel unless they were standing opposite her in Joanie’s office trying to land a part. Even then Muriel was convinced most male actors gazed deeply into her eyes merely in the hope of spotting their own tiny reflections.

“Why not?” Pia said, causing Muriel’s mouth to fall open like an unlatched basement window. “Unless you’re Hindu,” she added gaily, “you only live once.”

Both men erupted in laughter and the tanned one flagged down the waiter. “I’m Richard, and this is my business partner, Edward,” he said, reaching out to shake Pia’s hand.

“I’m Sonny, and this is my sister, Cher.”

They laughed again. Muriel laughed, too. How could you not? When she wanted to, Pia could wring charm out of the air itself. As could their mother. When she wanted to.

Chapter 14

“C’
MON, SLOWPOKE!
”

Pulling her mother’s arm behind her, Muriel expertly weaved through the weekend crowds in Times Square.

“I’m on your tail, cowgirl!”

Saturday matinees had become a tradition. A
tradition
. Muriel was beside herself with joy. They caught the L train into the city, interlocking fingers on the subway. Together, Lidia and her younger daughter dashed up Broadway through the winter’s cutting air, the breezy warmth of spring, the perfect limbo of fall. On those Saturdays Muriel felt positively carbonated, as if she’d once been an orphan and was now an only child.

“Giddy up, Mama. We don’t want to miss curtain.”

“Yeehaw!” On rare occasions, Lidia even
skipped.

With her chin lifted, Muriel felt superior to the unfortunate people without loving mothers like hers. She felt sorry for her siblings, too. Their mother had chosen
her
—not her tongue-clucking sister, not her brother Logan who rammed headlong into people on the sidewalk because he never looked up from his feet. Not even Owen, who never kissed her mother on the lips. Clearly, he didn’t cherish his wife the way a husband ought to. The way it was onstage. Lidia wanted Muriel—and only Muriel—to escort her into the city on their special Saturdays.

Instantly Muriel forgave her mother for treating her so offhandedly all her life. They dressed in fancy outfits. Lidia, elegant in her double-strand pearl choker; Muriel, all grown up in a pashmina shawl. They were two girlfriends on the town, together at last. It didn’t matter that Lidia had once blatantly preferred Pia. Those days were over. It was now Muriel’s turn. Her sense of living on the outskirts of her family was gone for good. At last,
she
was the special one.

“I love you, Mama.”

“You, too,
moje kochanie
.”

Muriel knew well what love looked like; she’d seen it from the orchestra section—the way the Phantom gazed at Christine through his mask while she sang in her soft pink spotlight, how Curly and Laurey followed their hearts despite the turmoil in the entire state of Oklahoma! That was
love
. Even con man Harold Hill changed his whole life for Marian the librarian in
The Music Man
. They didn’t know what love
was
till there was them.

True love was selfless and forever, lit with cool blue gels and accompanied by violins and sometimes cellos. Love was passionate and heartfelt and sung full out up to your lover’s face, touching noses almost. Genuine love was harmony. No fear of a cracking voice or hitting the wrong note. No self-consciousness. And as the music swelled, love was expressed in an urgent kiss that melded two faces, lips pressed on lips, transcending all conflict. Nothing like the listless pecks her father deposited on her mother’s cheek before he left for work. The same type of kiss with which Muriel grazed Babcia Jula’s papery skin, her nose wrinkled and her lips pinched because she hated the smell of mothballs and lilac perfume. Real love was nowhere near anything she’d witnessed or experienced at home.

Even as a girl, Muriel saw that her parents’ marriage was a lie from its first two words: “I do.” Neither willingly did anything the other wanted to do. Lidia wanted to move into the city or back to Rhode Island, Owen dreamed of living on an isolated ranch in Montana. Lidia loved shopping, Owen loved playing chess. Lidia wouldn’t even consider buying her husband’s slacks at Sears.

“What’s
wrong
with wearing silk?” she once asked Owen, who simply stared at her in disbelief.

“Do you actually think I’m the silk-wearing sort?”

From the start, the Sullivant marriage was a series of silent fulminations. Basement doors were slammed, cold dinners were dumped in the trash, hardwood stairs were pounded upon, grudges were locked in eyebrows. Owen Sullivant had been flailing from year one. Fatherhood struck him so abruptly he felt the pull of his previous life the way an amputee feels an itch on a phantom limb. One day a petite blonde is on top of you—on top!—the next day you cease to exist.

“Hand me that diaper, will you?”

“The one with the bear on it?”

“Ach. I’ll get it myself.”

Always able to fix what was broken, Owen was completely at sea.

“A man needs a son,” said Father Camilo, the Pawtucket parish priest to whom Lidia confessed, “My husband is distant and silent.”