Two Sisters: A Novel (38 page)

T
HE WEEKEND
T
IMES
was heavy, but Muriel felt lighter than the snowflakes that had melted on her cheeks. Her bare hand was warmed by the venti cappuccino she’d bought at Starbucks on Broadway. The detour made her chilly, but as she made her way home, she envisioned the perfection of the rest of her day: exercising up four flights of stairs, kicking off her damp boots, removing her thick socks, and sliding her bare feet into the slippers that waited beside her bed. Perhaps she would preheat them on top of the radiator? In her sweats and T-shirt, as she read every word of the paper, she would sip her coffee and delight in its robust taste. As it got low, maybe she’d augment it with hot chocolate and tiny floating marshmallows that resembled snowballs. Pausing to turn the page she would think about John’s rosy cheeks and Portuguese/Belgian puppies romping in the dog run and popcorn with caramel and pecans.

“Muriel?”

A familiar voice jolted her out of her fantasy. She blinked, unsure if she was really seeing what she thought she saw. Standing in the snowy footprints in front of her building, was Lidia. Her shoulders were pressed together in the cold. She wore army green anklet galoshes over pumps. Her off-white coat was tapered at the waist and she held a leather handbag primly between two hands that were covered in wrist-length sheepskin gloves. Muriel was speechless. Her mother seemed so out of place.

“Is Dad okay?” she stammered.

“He’s fine.” Lidia looked down, as if she knew she deserved that as a first question.

“What are you doing here?”

Head still bowed, Lidia inhaled the reality that question number two was also warranted. “At the moment, I’m shivering,” she said, attempting to sound lighthearted.

Muriel looked at her mother. Of course she had to let her in. Even as she hungered to relive the past ten minutes where she would skip Starbucks altogether and have breakfast at City Diner farther uptown, in the back of the restaurant, away from the front window so no one could see her if they should happen by. Surely her mother would give up waiting after an hour or so of standing in the snow.

“I’ve come to see you,” Lidia said, sounding so vulnerable Muriel’s heart softened. “I knew you wouldn’t receive me if I called first.”

Receive?
Muriel half-expected her to produce a calling card. Resigned, she reached into her jacket pocket for her keys. “Come on up,” she said, unlocking the vestibule door. Lidia followed her daughter inside the building. In silence they marched up the stairs. Four flights, Muriel discovered, was more than enough time to mentally list every way in which her studio apartment wasn’t prepared for a visit from her mother. Her bed was unmade, last night’s black tights were inside out where she’d left them, balled up, in front of the open closet door. Dishes were in the sink, a ring was most certainly around the inside of the tub. That damn oily body wash made a ring each time she used it! The toilet seat top was probably up and her winter clothes were down, having not quite completed the seasonal closet transformation. A Costco-size bag of Chex Mix was pinched shut with a paper clip on the dusty table next to the bed.

Muriel felt the leaden knot of dread forming in her gut until—in a rush of clarity—she realized it was beyond time for her mother to see her in her natural habitat. Messy, fleshy, unfashionable, at times unkempt, and altogether nothing like her. Nothing like Pia, either. No more hiding. No more lies. It was time to come out of her disheveled closet.

“You’ll be warm inside,” she said, unlocking her front door.

“Shall I leave my wet overshoes in the hall?” Lidia asked, breathless from the climb.

“No need.” Muriel turned the knob.

They hadn’t spoken in months. Not since that horrible day in Queens. Even at Pia’s funeral, they barely glanced in each other’s direction. Owen had been as silent as ever. Her father’s nonpresence in her life—perhaps even in his own life—was a fact Muriel had come to accept. She finally understood that Owen knew how to father a
son
. A mirror image. And by the time Muriel came along, the distance between her parents was too vast for any baby to bridge.

“You raised yourself,” Logan had said in Galisteo.

Muriel had agreed. It made her feel awful at first. As lonely as she’d felt growing up. Then a blessed sense of
release
overtook her. If she raised herself, she could continue to do so. No longer was she fated to be her family’s disappointment. Or the Secret Keeper. She could raise herself right out of those roles. She could become anybody she wanted to be.

Lidia pulled her wet gloves off finger by finger. She unstrapped her galoshes and lifted her feet out of them, resting the rubber shoes primly against the back of her daughter’s front door. In Muriel’s tiny kitchen, Lidia set her handbag down on the café chair and unbuttoned her overcoat. “Shall I hang this up in your closet?”

Muriel said, “That depends.”

“On what?”

“How long do you plan to stay?”

Standing erect and facing her mother head-on, Muriel willed her eyes not to blink. Lidia looked startled, then crushed. As Muriel watched, astonished, her mother fumbled around in her purse and pulled out a tissue, pressing it to the corner of each eye. “Of course you hate me,” she said, softly. “Why wouldn’t you?”

“I don’t hate you, Mama. Hate gives you too much power.”

Again, Lidia looked slapped. “How
do
you feel then?”

Tilting her head slightly, Muriel rifled through her emotions for an honest answer. After a lifetime of hiding and lying for others, the truth took a moment to locate. Once she found it, it almost always surprised her. Without the slightest trace of anger she said, “Absolutely
free
.”

With that, Muriel marched over to the window, flung open her curtains, and let the sunlight illuminate every bouncing particle of dust. As she knew it would, the sun had burned away the overcast sky and bore down on the snowy earth, reflecting its bright whiteness. It truly was the most stunning day. Lidia made a space for herself on the love seat at the foot of Muriel’s bed.

Muriel asked, “Tea? Coffee? Hot chocolate?”

“I’m fine. Thank you.”

Sitting cross-legged on her unmade bed, Muriel stilled herself. She quieted the impulse to rush about her apartment apologizing and tidying up. Instead she faced her mother and breathed, startled to notice how much Lidia resembled Pia. Already she had forgotten the intricacies of their faces, the way both women had cheekbones that rose like boulders beneath their eye sockets. Their slender fingers had the same spidery taper and their lips curled up at the edges. Both blond pageboy hairstyles curled under just so. They were pretty. No doubt. Pia would have been an elegant grandmother, just as Lidia was. Looking at her mother made Muriel miss her sister. More accurately, she missed the relationship she would no longer be able to craft. How she wished Pia had lived long enough to see her become herself! They’d had such a great beginning that day on the sunporch. Perhaps they could have continued on that path? Maybe met halfway?

“I’ve been wanting to see you for months.”

Lidia ventured into conversation the way a skinny-dipper approached a misty morning lake. “Gathering my courage, I guess.” Her right hand gripped her left fist. The tissue from her purse looked like a wad of old gum. Muriel stared at her mother, silent.

“I’ve made such a mess of things,” Lidia said. “I don’t deserve it, but I’m here to ask for your forgiveness.”

“Ah.”

Muriel glanced across the room at an old oak rocker she’d recently found on the Riverside Drive access road the night before garbage day. She’d carted it home from the trash pile and given it a sanitizing alcohol bath. She had yet to restore the wood shine with varnish or Pledge, and several loose spindles needed glue. She was hoping to find the perfect seat cushion, too, at the new Home Goods across from the new Whole Foods.

“An apology,” Lidia said softly, “feels woefully inadequate.”

Ungenerously, Muriel noted that Lidia wasn’t teary anymore. She asked, “I’m curious. What, exactly, would you apologize for?”

“Right. Right.” Lidia tucked the used tissue in the pocket of her wool slacks and unfurled her still-beautiful hands, rubbing them together as if it was cold in the warm apartment. “I’ve made so many poor choices. Where to begin?”

Suspecting that Lidia’s worst choice was having her, Muriel braced herself to hear whatever her mother was prepared to reveal. “I was hoping,” Lidia sputtered, “you would allow me to explain.”

“Explain?”

“Not an excuse. An explanation.” When Muriel said nothing, Lidia added curtly, “I am still your mother, whether you like it or not. My history will always be your history. When you have children, they will inherit my past as well as yours.”

It was Sunday. Muriel’s favorite day. She exhaled and thought about the fat
New York Times
sitting on her kitchen counter. All of her favorite sections were there, waiting: real estate, Sunday styles, book review, the magazine with its pristine crossword puzzle. The thought trotted through Muriel’s mind that it was so much harder putting your family behind you when they were right there in front of your face.

“You know I saw Logan and he told me everything, right?” she said.

“Yes, I’ve been made aware.”

“I do have one question, though. Something I didn’t ask him. Well, two questions, actually.”

Lidia placed both hands flat on her lap. “Yes?”

“Did Pia know? About Father Camilo being her dad, I mean.”

Tears sprang to Lidia’s eyes with a suddenness that took Muriel aback. “God, no,” she said. “Never. It wouldn’t have been fair to her. Or your father.”

“Fair? To Dad?”

Quietly, Muriel stood and walked into the bathroom. As Logan had, she returned with a roll of toilet paper and handed it to her mother. Lidia stared at it for a moment, then wrapped a section around her index finger and pressed it under both bottom lids. She used a doubled length to daintily blow her nose.

“I deserved that. I’ve been awful to your father and you. So selfish. I don’t expect you to forgive me right away—maybe never—but I want you to know that I never intentionally meant to hurt anyone. One lie got caught in another, then another. Before I knew it, that’s all I had. Lies. We were all entangled in them.
I
entangled us. I put you in the middle of it. My own daughter. How could I? I’m so sorry, Muriel. I can never forgive myself for my sins. But God has forgiven me. I’m here to ask the same of you.”

For the first time since Lidia arrived, Muriel felt a surge of anger rise in her cheeks. “
God
has forgiven you? How do you know that? Did he send a sign of some sort? A discounted hotel room, perhaps?”

Lidia’s face went cold. “I didn’t raise a cruel girl.”

“No, you didn’t, Mama. You raised a liar, remember?”

The pupils in Lidia’s eyes seemed to engulf the brown of her irises. Muriel felt her heart pound. She wanted no part of her mother’s bullshit God. Her God of convenience. Either the spying “gotcha” God or the kindly old man who would forgive all manner of sin in exchange for an hour on Sunday and a generous donation in the usher’s basket. A God who allowed his children to cherry-pick Bible Scripture to suit their narrow-mindedness. One who would allow His followers to love thy neighbor only if thy neighbor was exactly like them. Who accepted
prayer
instead of kindness. A God who would forgive merely for the asking. Pia’s God who rewarded her allegiance by plucking her off the earth, leaving only sorrow in her wake. One who praised faith over rational thought, who didn’t care if His followers ignored the truth as long as they
believed
. A divine leader who valued dogma over intelligence. A God who let His people be hypocrites. They could kill each other in His name. Over and over and over. Muriel wanted no part of a God who existed purely to forgive humanity’s hatred. A shield for sinners to hide behind.

“Did your God happen to ask how you could let Father Camilo say Pia’s funeral mass?” Muriel asked through clenched teeth. “Was that a holy kindness to Dad? To me?”

Lidia stared at her lap, the toilet tissue a pulpy mass in her hands. “He couldn’t bear to let anyone else do it. He was so devastated when Pia died.”

“So he knew she was his?”

“Of course he knew.” Lidia forced herself to raise her head and look directly into Muriel’s eyes. Taking a deep breath, she composed herself. “Cam and I were together before I met your father.”

Cam?
Is that what she called Father Camilo? Was that his real name? Struggling to remember her Sunday school classes, Muriel tried to recall if priests changed their name when they married God. Or was it only nuns who married God?

“We met after I graduated from college,” Lidia said, her face suddenly weary. “I was living at home in Pawtucket. I’d begun to believe I’d never fall in love. There was no one. And then, there he was.”

Muriel imagined her mother at her age. She’d seen photos of how beautiful she was. How tiny. Had Babcia Jula pressured Lidia to marry the same way Lidia pressured her? Had her mother felt stale at twenty-four?

“Cam was fresh out of seminary in Providence and had been questioning his faith. The church sent him to our parish as a retreat. A quiet place to reflect. I saw him one Sunday morning coming out of the sacristy. He saw me, too. We were both . . . struck. That’s the only way I can describe it. Before that day, I would have told you there was no such thing as love at first sight. At least not lasting love. But I would have been wrong. Love hit us both like a hurricane. There was no controlling it. We tried. We
prayed.
But there was no stopping it. I’ve never been more terrified in my life. So completely out of control.”

Muriel’s buttoned-up mother out of control? She wanted to laugh. Then it abruptly occurred to her that Father Camilo might be the reason Lidia held on so tightly. The one time she let go, all hell did break loose.

“We kept thinking it would blow over. That it was just an affair and Cam would be ordained as planned. But our love only deepened. Then Pia—” Tears dribbled black mascara down her cheeks. She pressed the ball of toilet tissue against her face. Muriel handed her the roll as Lidia said, “This is nothing a daughter should ever have to hear.”