Two Sisters: A Novel (22 page)

At her most defenseless, when Pia lay coiled on the bathroom rug, hollowed out from the constant retching, when the angry red radiation burn on her chest tugged at the scarred skin from her armpit to her sternum, when the swelling in her arm from the poisoned lymph nodes and the purple-black bruises where her plump veins were before they collapsed made her wince with every movement, when the central line in her chest infected her blood and all she wanted to do was lie down and give up, Pia needed someone to help her sit upright, fling open the bathroom window and knock out the screen so she could lift her chin to the sky and shout, “Fuck you, God, you prick. You goddamned fucking motherfucker.”

Had a therapist genuinely wanted to help her, she would have told her that death blackens your soul. It makes you hate everything, even God. She would have stopped petting her fucking hand and yelled at God with her.

That’s
how she was feeling.
That’s
what she needed. Not that she could tell Will or anyone else. Who wanted to hear it?

“I don’t need a thing, sweetheart,” she said each morning as her husband propped himself up on his elbow and stared down at her with his shadowed eyes, as her queasy stomach announced itself and the day already felt like a sandbag on her chest. “I’m fine. How are you?”

Chapter 23

T
HAT DAY AT
Columbus Circle, Muriel had watched her sister depart in a cab the way it would be filmed in a movie or staged on Broadway. The forlorn wave in the rear window, her lingering look of good-bye. On-screen there would be misty rain, a hosed-down street to make the asphalt reflective; onstage a yellow spill from an old lamppost would encircle the actress in a lonely spot. The scene would be underscored with chords from a single violin.

Long after Pia’s cab merged into the belching miasma of midtown traffic, Muriel stood on the sidewalk staring at the site where Pia had been, sensing the imprint of her kiss on her check. Smelling her clean scent. Feeling the corded handle of the dress bag resting in the nest of her curled fingers. She left Columbus Circle in a daze, crossing diagonally against all lights, wondering why drivers kept honking at her. At the bus stop, she had intended to wait for the M5, but climbed aboard the M104 instead, not even aware of it until the bus continued straight at Seventy-second Street instead of turning left. “Hey,” she shouted. “He missed the turn.”

As if speaking to a mental patient off her meds, an elderly passenger asked, “Where are you trying to go, dear?”

For days afterward, Muriel felt befuddled. Twice, at the Vaclav casting session, Joanie had to prod her.

“Miss Sullivant? Care to join us?”

With her script hanging limply in her hands, Muriel would jerk her head up and blush. The actor standing on his mark across from her would look all put out.

The strangest sensation settled into either side of her forehead. Static, almost, as if her brain was between channels. By the end of the week, however, she felt tuned in. Muriel became convinced that she’d
misheard
what Pia had told her. It wouldn’t be the first time her nerves interfered with her hearing. On her first date with Kent Bond, she thought he said, “I went to Northwestern,” but he was really talking about his desire to visit Seattle.

In the hundreds of times Muriel had rerun the scene in the dressing room she was certain that “cancer” was never uttered. When you have cancer doesn’t the actual
word
come up? It’s not like there were synonyms for it. (Organistic erosion? Cellular chaos?) Besides, who died of breast cancer anymore? Why, the science section of the
Times
recently labeled it a “chronic disease”! Soon those pink-ribbon walks would fade in the same silent manner as the rainbow-hued AIDS walks had. On to the next trendy disease. Asperger’s, perhaps? What color would its ribbon be?

Yes, that whole messy business with Pia was a huge misunderstanding. Perhaps Pia had really been confessing her plan to get
implants
. Maybe Will had said something hurtful to her regarding her boyish frame. Which wouldn’t surprise Muriel in the least. On the class ladder, Will had always been a rung below his wife.

On her lunch break, in the dappled sunlight beneath a Siberian elm in Union Square Park, Muriel sat on a bench and called her sister. Together, they could laugh about how silly and self-absorbed she’d been. “Now that I can see beyond my own belly button,” she’d say, “tell me again why you want me to hang on to that gray dress?”

Pia’s cell went straight to voice mail so Muriel hung up without leaving a message and called the Connecticut house. The phone rang three times before Will picked up.

“Muriel.”

His voice was black. He said nothing for a long moment. Then he inhaled a breath that seemed to swirl up from his toes, gather in his throat, and tumble out past his teeth. In that audible breath, Muriel, too, lost her air. Her body sank onto the bench like a sack of rice. All of a sudden, she felt so tired she imagined sitting there, immobilized, as the sun darkened to orange and the park lights flickered on. Pigeons would land on her shoulders and shit down her back. In Will’s exhalation, Muriel’s denial dissolved like castor sugar in boiling tea.

“Is Pia, um, home?” she asked, stupidly, sounding like a teenage girl.

Really, Muriel wanted to hang up. Her impulse was to pop the smart card out of her cell and fling it down the nearest storm drain. She wanted to clamp her hands over her ears like a child and pretend she’d never heard Will say her name. In her mind she would continue to picture him at work, surrounded by computer screens. Pia would be at the spa in the village, the latest exfoliating concoction bubbling on her skin. Emma—lovely Emma—would be consumed by the boy who stared at her in ecology class. Should she stare back? Ignore him?

“Aunt Muriel, why are boys so weird?”

Had Muriel not heard the moan at the end of Will’s breath, she could still entertain the fantasy that Pia had gone Hollywood with a boob job. She could plot a way to leak it to Lidia in a petty manner that would make her sister look shallow.

“I never thought she was the type to alter what God gave her,” she would say, tossing her hair. “Funny, she’s always seemed so confident.”

Had Will not exhaled the truth, Muriel could look the other way.

“She’s asleep,” he said, sighing once more.

“Oh.” Muriel felt the weight of the phone in her hand.

“It’s fairly bleak around here, I’m afraid.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“We all are. What can you do?”

“Is Emma okay?”

“What do you think?”

“I didn’t mean . . . I mean—”

“Forgive me. This whole situation is fucked.”

A bloated silence expanded between them like pizza dough. Muriel’s brain went blank. She tried to recall what Marvin sang to Whizzer in the soundtrack from
Falsettos
but all she could remember was Whizzer’s song “You Gotta Die Sometime.”

“If you need anything . . .” Muriel’s voice trailed off.

“I do. Keep Lidia occupied. She’s been sniffing around and Pia refuses to see her. I can’t keep her away forever.”

Ah, yes. Muriel swallowed. She pressed her eyes closed. “Of course,” she said, wishing, of course, he’d asked for anything else. Let Emma move in. Spend weekends running errands around Connecticut. Donate half of her liver. “I’m on it, Will. You can count on me.”

The moment she hung up, Muriel called her mother.

“Why?”

That’s what Lidia said when Muriel suggested they meet in the city for lunch.

“It’ll be fun, Mama. Just us girls.” She winced. Even when Muriel was a girl she’d never been one of the girls.

“What’s going on with your sister? She won’t see me.”

“Nothing,” Muriel said quickly, overopening her eyes while she talked on her cell, hoping that an expression of innocence might lighten her voice. “Why do you ask?”

“Aren’t you listening? I said she won’t see me.”

“There’s a fabulous food court at the Plaza.” Again, she winced. Words like “fabulous” sounded absurd in her mouth, as if her tongue was playing dress-up.

“Is she okay?”

“Who?”

“You know very well who!”

“Why do you ask?”

“Aren’t you
listening
, Muriel?”

The difference between lying for someone and lying
to
them was vast, Muriel suddenly noticed. Lidia Sullivant was as easily redirected as a hurricane headed for a trailer park. There was no nudging her off course. In desperation, Muriel heard herself promising to invite Pia to join them. “It’ll be fun! Just us girls!”

The following week, when Lidia came bustling through the door of the downtown sushi restaurant Muriel had picked (based on a
Times
rave review), her first question was, “Where’s your sister?”

“Sake?”

“I called her this morning and Will said she was asleep.”

“It’s made with highly polished rice.”

“She’s not ill, is she?”

“Waiter!”

Muriel’s eyebrows felt sweaty. After her mother sat down and eyed her sharply, her mouth fell open and she began to blather. “Funny story, Mama. Pia was, um, riding Emma’s bike. You know, the new one they got her for Christmas? The one with all those, um, gears? And, well, she’d accidentally taken NyQuil during the day, the
green
liquidy one that zonks you out . . .”

Breaking the first rule of successful lying, Muriel overexplained Pia’s absence. She knew better. Endless hours of crime stories on TV had taught her that the best liars stuck as closely to the truth as possible.
Yes, I’ve been in that house.
I was invited in for a glass of water. Naturally I might have touched all
sorts
of things.
Still, she couldn’t help herself.

“You know how steep their driveway is. Wasn’t it recently regraveled?”

Groaning impatiently, Lidia reached into her purse for her cell. Before Muriel could stop her, she called Pia on speed dial. Muriel noticed that her sister was number
one
. Was she even on her mother’s contacts list?

“Darling!”

Astoundingly, Pia picked up. Muriel’s heart fell into her stomach. Where the hell was that waiter?

“I’m here with your sister,” Lidia said. “Are you okay,
kochanie
?”

“The bike didn’t crash, per se,” Muriel said loudly, leaning across the table. “It sort of
skidded
. You know, that thing that happens with a motorcycle on a sharp curve? Only not that bad, of course.”

Covering the mouthpiece on her cell, Lidia said, “Shhh.”

Mercifully, the waiter arrived.

“Two sakes, please. Large.”

Lidia listened and nodded as Pia said something or other. In a motherly way, she cooed sympathetically and muttered, “Aw.” With pursed lips, she shook her head.
Tut, tut
. When the waiter returned with a ceramic flask of steaming sake and poured two cups, Muriel singed her throat by downing hers like a vodka shot.

“Heavens, Muriel,” Lidia said after she hung up. “You’re so dramatic.”

“Dramatic?” she croaked, pouring herself another cupful.

“Pia is
fine
. She didn’t say a word about any cycling accident. Will needed her at the last minute, is all. You know how demanding he can be.”

It had never even occurred to Muriel to blame it on the man.

“The eel roll is supposed to be fabulous, Mama. Shall we order two?”

T
HE WEEK AFTER
, Muriel met her mother at an Italian restaurant in Queens.

“I read that the calamari here is to die for,” she said, smoothing the napkin flat on her lap.

Lidia replied, “Black isn’t as slimming as everyone says it is.” Then she added, “That white napkin will leave lint all over your pants.”

“Yes. Well. Hmmm.” Muriel scanned the menu from top to bottom. “I think I’ll have a salad.”

“Caesar salad is as fattening as a Big Mac.”

“Okay, then, uh, the Italian Cobb looks fab.”

Lidia groaned, “Did you not see
salami
as one of the ingredients? Not to mention Parmesan cheese.”

By dessert—which she didn’t dare order—Muriel decided it was best to avoid edibles with her mother. They were in New York! There were plenty of other things to do.

“Hey! The Barney’s warehouse sale starts Monday, Mama. Want to meet me after work? The deals are delish!”

Really, she
had
to stop talking like a Real Housewife.

For her sister, Muriel plodded along with her mother to Barney’s (“Emma would look darling in this!”), the Museum of Modern Art (“De Kooning’s brushstrokes feel so, I don’t know,
violent
.”), Lidia’s nail salon in Queens (“Perhaps a natural shade to elongate my fingers?”). Each time Muriel saw Lidia, she was subjected to a full-body scan.

“Coupon?”

“
Coupon?”

“For that drugstore hair color?”

“Why yes, actually. Buy one, get one half off.”

“Foundation, too?”

“No, that was full price.”

“Same drugstore, though, I’m guessing. Thank goodness they don’t sell clothes. Or do they? I must say, Muriel, your T-shirts look very mass market.”