Two Sisters: A Novel (5 page)

A H
ALLOWEEN PARTY
in Pawtucket? At the home of a woman he’d met in a movie line? Owen Sullivant had every intention of tossing the invitation in the trash. It was absurd. He didn’t even know the woman. How had she found him anyway? They’d never spoken again that night, though they had exchanged weighted glances in the murky light of the movie theater and again in the lobby on the way out. While Madalyn prattled on about Warren Beatty (“Does the man even
own
a comb?”), Owen felt heat radiate across the side of his face. Turning, he saw Lidia by the drinking fountain. Her dark eyes were bark beetles boring into his skull. Their intensity startled him. Excited him, too, frankly. He felt a stirring that had long been iced. Her waist was so tiny he could probably wrap both hands around it. Easily, he could lift her on top of him, feel her blond hair spill onto his face. It probably smelled like raspberries or vanilla or one of those expensive shampoos he saw at the drugstore next to the tar-infused one he bought for his dandruff.

That night on Madalyn’s pull-out sofa, Owen made love so energetically Madalyn remarked, “Goodness! I should have worn this perfume
last
Saturday night.” God forgave him for sex before marriage, Owen had long ago decided. Surely He could absolve him of having sex with one woman while imagining another? And for the little white lie he told Madalyn about fumigating his apartment for ants. How could he conjure up Lidia’s fruity shampoo with Madalyn’s hair spray smell all over his pillow?

The day the Halloween party invitation arrived in the office mail, Owen nearly tossed it right away. A fleeting fantasy was one thing, reality was quite another, replete as it was with effort and misunderstanding. Best to leave it be. It was the prudent choice. Surprised he was, then, to find himself tucking Lidia’s invitation in his shirt pocket, pulling it out several times a day to read it from beginning to end. Once he even held the card up to his nose and inhaled, as if he might smell the scent of her fingerprints.

Never, not once, did he intend to go to the party. The very idea was ludicrous. On Halloween night, in fact, having told Madalyn he was visiting his parents, Owen planned a quiet evening alone in his apartment. He’d even bought a bag of mini Snickers on the off chance that neighborhood kids holding open pillowcases might ring his bell. There he sat on his couch, listlessly thumbing through
TV Guide
, perfectly satisfied with his decision to stay home. He mulled over supper choices: Pan-frying the strip steak he had in the fridge? A giant bowl of popcorn with parmesan cheese? Suddenly feeling a tad frowzy, he shelved the dinner decision until after he showered and shaved for the second time that day. Briefly, he considered putting his work clothes back on, but there was a freshly laundered shirt in his closet—still draped in plastic—next to tan slacks he’d bought the week before at Sears. The thought of trousers that had never been worn by anyone else pleased him. There was nothing like a factory press. The way the reverse pleats lay so flat against the pockets. Almost robotically, he donned clean underwear and socks and stepped into his new slacks. The zipper tugged slightly, but it would loosen with use. And when he tore open the plastic covering encasing his ironed white shirt, the steamy smell of the Chinese laundry made him feel faintly superior.

“There,” he said, combed and dressed. As if his tidy appearance was a job well done. Even his toes felt satisfied nestled into their Sunday socks.

Owen padded over to the front window of his second-story apartment. He looked right and left as far as he could without opening the window to the October chill. Not a soul was on the street. No youngster in a skeleton suit or teen with a fake ax protruding from his skull. As with previous years, the neighborhood kids knew they could score more candy on another street, one with fewer darkened apartment windows.
Oh well
, Owen told himself, no one could accuse him of not being prepared.

Turning away from the window, Owen walked to the far end of his apartment, next to the still-steamy bathroom, and opened his linen cupboard. Ferreting through a stack of clean sheets, he pulled out a white pillowcase and carried it to the kitchen table. There, he smoothed it flat and used the desk scissors to cut a long arch into one side. He then positioned the cut pillowcase on his head in a flaccid attempt to approximate Lawrence of Arabia. Careful he was to depress the top and secure the forehead with an old tie so as not to resemble a Klan member in any way.

Still content with his decision to stay home, Owen left his apartment and got into his car and drove the mile and a half into Pawtucket, just to see. A nice bottle of red wine rolled back and forth on the passenger seat. It was easy to spot the Czerwinski home. Their front maple trees were draped in cottony fake cobwebs.
They’ll regret that tomorrow morning,
Owen thought. Lit carved pumpkins with maniacal expressions lined the brick walkway leading to the front door. He found himself impressed with the knife work. Did an artist live on the premises? A butcher, perhaps? At the door, Owen tapped his middle knuckle against the shiny black wood. Then he shook his pillowcase-covered head and scoffed. The music inside was so loud, no one would ever hear him.

“Hello?” Wine bottle in hand, he stepped into the foyer and stated, “I have an invitation.”

Nobody paid the slightest attention. The dimly lit living room off to the right was a pulsating mass of flesh and flashy costumes—more than one Boy George, he noted, and several Madonnas. The even darker dining room to the left seemed full of legs and laps. At the exact moment Owen muttered under his breath, “What the hell am I doing here?” Lidia appeared from out of nowhere, pink cheeked and grinning.

“Evan!”

“It’s Owen,” he said, surprised by how happy he was to see her. Had she had such deep dimples at the movie theater?

“Forgive me, Owen,” she said, not the slightest bit repentant, “I’ve had a beer or three.” Lidia snatched the wine bottle from beneath Owen’s arm, set it on a table, and dragged him into the shadowy living room where an old disco number was reverberating off the walls. In a throaty voice, Donna Summer sang “I Feel Love” over and over and over. Owen blushed.

“I’ve been waiting for you all night,” Lidia boozily whispered into the pillowcase over Owen’s ear.

“What?” he said. But she didn’t repeat it. Languidly she draped both wrists around his neck and swayed her hips back and forth, letting her eyelids meander shut. Owen nervously glanced around the room, but everyone else had their eyes closed, too. Figuring
Why not?
he tested his fantasy and encircled Lidia’s tiny waist to see if his fingertips touched. They didn’t, of course, but he nonetheless convinced himself he could lift her with barely a flex. The mere thought of it quickened his breath.

Never an accomplished dancer, Owen shifted from foot to foot like the Tin Man creaking down the yellow brick road. Not that Lidia noticed. She seemed to be dancing by herself, lost in a techno beat Owen couldn’t quite locate.

I feel love, I feel love, I feel love, I feel love, I feeeeeeel love.

Lidia’s closed eyes gave Owen an opportunity to study her face. The nose was a bit meaty at the tip and her cheeks were full for someone so petite. Still, even in the silly orange wig she wore, she looked unbelievably sexy. Not beautiful, but nowhere near ugly. The purple satin of her Jane Jetson costume suited her. He appreciated her whimsical guise, as he hoped she appreciated his. Anybody could dress like
Boy George
. And the juxtaposition of the dainty silver cross that nestled in the hollow of her neck with those thigh-high fake boots, well, Owen felt another flutter.

“Want a tour?” Lidia asked when the song faded to a close and her eyes shot open.

“Tour?” What the hell did that mean? Not that it mattered. Lidia hadn’t waited for an answer. Taking Owen’s hand, she bumped him into her friends as she led him through her childhood home. “Kitchen, powder room, guest bedroom.” Upstairs, her index finger pointed: “Bedroom, bedroom, bathroom, bedroom.”

“You still live with your parents?” he asked, stating the obvious.

“Not for long.” Lowering her voice she added, “You know how it is. Irene and Rita will be
buried
on this block. Not me.”

They passed a couple dressed like John and Yoko leaning against the hallway wall. Owen adjusted the tie across his forehead and wished he’d chosen a less flimsy pillowcase. John and Yoko both rolled their eyes at him behind their dark round glasses. At least he thought they did; it was impossible to tell for sure. Utterly unaware of anyone else, Lidia chattered on as if she’d known Owen all her life. “
Anchorage
is bigger than our entire state, for God’s sake. Can you imagine never seeing Alaska or California or New York City?”

Owen thought for a moment.
Who were Irene and Rita? The other girls in the movie line?

“I may even move to Texas,” Lidia stated, petting her flared satin collar. “From smallest to biggest. Why not?”

“Alaska,” Owen said.

“Or Alaska. Why not?”

He’d meant to correct her. In land size, Alaska was the largest state. Texas wasn’t even the most populous. New York had that distinction. But Lidia had already dragged him back downstairs into the living room where a song called “Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic” seemed to be playing his thoughts. When she danced around him, the hem of her minidress rose higher than he thought appropriate. He tried not to look, but how could he not? He’d never met anyone like Lidia before. When he was with her, he, too, felt like someone he barely knew.

Chapter 5

F
OR THE THIRD
time that morning, Muriel’s phone rang. She felt her cell vibrate in the front pocket of her jeans as she waited for traffic to clear at the corner of West End Avenue, her elbows throbbing from the weight of her groceries.
Buzzt. Buzzt
. She lowered her bags to the sidewalk, and they settled into pools of plastic. This time she looked at the caller ID.

“Pia is visiting,” she said into the phone.

“Good God.”

Muriel laughed as Joanie asked, “What, you wearing the wrong shoes for the Rapture?” Eccentric, atheist, foul mouthed, and a chain-smoking casting director who self-medicated stress with Hershey’s Kisses, Joanie Frankel had no filter between thought and word. She was unapologetically herself at all times, caring not one whit what anyone else thought of her. Her bedspring hair was prematurely gray and the shape of her XL body was indistinguishable beneath layers of gauzy fabric. Joanie believed the world was big enough for everyone. “Don’t like me? Move over.”

Of course Muriel adored her. (Even as Joanie’s nicotine-laced exhalations made their office smell like a bowling alley bar and did God knows
what
to her lungs.) In the two years she’d been Joanie’s casting assistant, they’d been best friends for a year and a half. A fact that concerned Lidia deeply.

“She seems so lesbianish,” Lidia had said, pinch faced, after meeting Joanie the first time.

“I suppose that’s because she’s gay,” Muriel had replied.

Lidia gasped. “Dear Lord. You two alone in that tiny office all day?”

“Homosexuality isn’t contagious, Mother.”

“Isn’t it?”

Though Lidia labeled herself open minded, she proudly snapped it shut on the subject of sexuality between sexes of the same sex. “If God wanted men to be with men and women to be with women, He never would have created a sperm and an egg.”

“Is that why there are fifteen hundred species of animals who exhibit homosexual behavior?” Muriel asked, wide eyed.

“That absurd statistic came from your lesbian boss, I’m sure.”

On that pre-spring morning in New York City, Joanie asked Muriel, “What brings Miss Priss to Gomorrah?”

“No idea.”

“Need a wingman?”

“Wing woman?”

“Potato po
tah
to.”

Pressing her phone to her ear with her shoulder, Muriel squatted down to gather her shopping bags and scuttle across the street before the light turned red again. “I should be able to handle one lunch with my sister, right? What’s the matter with me?”

“Jesus, she wants
lunch
?”

For the second time in as many minutes, Muriel released a laugh. Joanie was familiar with the Sullivant family history. Most of it, anyway. She knew how Muriel’s perfect sister made her feel like a Yeti. She knew how Lidia had lost her breath the first time Pia opened her eyes.

“Those eyelashes! Lips like a rosebud! How could fingernails be so tiny and pink? God bless you for my miracle!” For hours Lidia gazed at her firstborn. The spit bubbles baby Pia made with the tip of her magenta-colored tongue were works of art. The way her toes fanned out like the hood on a frill-necked lizard, couldn’t you just die? Pia’s creamy white skin was satin soft. Lidia couldn’t stop caressing her. She felt a physical ache when they were separated during nap time; she wished Owen would vacate their marital bed so Pia could sleep beside her, cushioned in pillows, their heartbeats in sync. Instantly and permanently, Lidia Sullivant had fallen in love with the gift God had given her. She had a daughter and a legitimate Catholic husband. What more could a woman want?