Two Sisters: A Novel (8 page)

“Isn’t the snow lovely?” he said instead, but Madalyn only snorted. He turned on the radio to camouflage the silent drive. At her front door, he leaned over to end their relationship with a proper good-bye peck on the cheek but she slapped him in the face. Slapped him! He couldn’t believe it. Never would he act so rudely.

“I wish you only the best,” he said to her slammed door.

A
gentleman
in all matters, that was Owen Sullivant’s creed. On the way home, he couldn’t stop smiling.

With visions of a new sexually charged life flashing through his head, Owen slept like a puppy that night. He called Lidia the next morning to say, “The warmth of the rising sun reminded me of you.”

“Aw,” she said. “How sweet.”

Owen
felt
sweet and sappy and Gumby limbed. He made his way to work on Monday without a clue as to how he got there. Midday, he found himself lazily twirling in his desk chair. Life had taken such a lovely turn.

“How would you like to join me for dinner at Le Chez?” he asked Lidia over the phone.

“Ooh, that fancy place in Providence?”

“The very one. Shall I pick you up Saturday night?”

“Why don’t I meet you there? I’ll be in town shopping.”

“Splendid.”

Owen never used words like “splendid” but he’d never met a woman like Lidia, either. She was virgin territory in the most delightfully unvirginal way. When she met him at Le Chez on Saturday night, he was careful not to register alarm on his face when she showed up with her friends Irene and Rita. Not even when she suggested they join them for dinner. Perhaps that’s what popular girls did! Dated with an
entourage
. The very word was so cosmopolitan Owen felt a stirring downtown. He didn’t even squawk about paying for all four of them. And that Rita was no stranger to Cabernet.

Later that very evening, when Lidia completely jumped the gun and called Owen her “boyfriend” in front of her friends, he didn’t question her. That would have been humiliating. Certainly he was feeling all fuzzy with love, but they had never formalized definitions. Perhaps definitions were passé? Engineers were notoriously behind on trends.

The following week they chatted several times over the phone. Owen considered growing his hair out and using gel. He called Lidia “Liddy” once in a gush of otherness. Feeling utterly brazen he wore his Members Only jacket to work. Sexually, Owen waited for Lidia to take the lead. It was only proper. He wouldn’t dream of pressuring his new girlfriend to meet him behind Cogswell Tower or anywhere else so he could perform his boyfriendly duties. But Lidia seemed content to conduct their fledgling relationship over the phone. Their sexy picnic lunches appeared to have dropped off Dexter’s Ledge. Ever the optimist, Owen chalked it up to holiday stress. But after Thanksgiving, when Lidia treated him more like a table centerpiece than the strutting Tom Turkey he envisioned himself to be, he wondered if something might be amiss. He was quite certain boyfriends were not frozen out
entirely
.

“Hmmm,” he said to himself. “Hmmm.”

Methodically, Owen dissected each moment of their two erotic encounters to pinpoint where he may have gone astray. True, they were quite, um,
speedy
. And the frosty air did nothing to highlight his manhood. He was eager to display himself indoors, perhaps after the plumping steam of a shower? Surely the woman couldn’t blame him for the vagaries of Mother Nature! Not when he had clearly stated that he lived in his own apartment.

The only possible blunder Owen could think of was a hulking one. His stomach flopped over just thinking of it. Had he misinterpreted Lidia’s whispered declaration of
readiness
? Instead of a sexual green light, was it something else entirely? Perhaps a statement of desperation from an aging woman who’s the last of her friends to marry and have children? Had she been asking for a ring instead of a fling?

Lord have mercy. Owen felt ill. But he said nothing. While a gentleman may
think
these thoughts, he certainly never utters them.

“I need to see you.”

Lidia called Owen at work just as he was neatening his desk for the weekend. Alarmed by her leaden tone, he didn’t dare suggest they meet at the back of Cogswell Tower, not even with a down sleeping bag.

“That would be lovely,” he replied, trying to sound chipper for both of them. “Shall we grab a bite to eat? Bring the entourage!”

“Why don’t I swing by your place?”

Owen exhaled. His shoulders relaxed. The sexy whisper was back in Lidia’s voice. He could hear the twinkle in her eye. Finally, things were looking up. “Give me twenty minutes to change the sheets.”

Lidia laughed and Owen’s heart soared. On the way out of the office, he practically skipped. Conrad shouted, “You turkey leftovers this weekend or the main course, O-Man?”

“Why, I believe I’m dessert!”

Chapter 9

T
HE BUS STOP
across Riverside Drive was empty, but Muriel knew the M5 would arrive soon . . . or in half an hour. You never knew with that line. The posted bus schedule was merely pole decoration. Something to read while you waited. In the early afternoon sunlight, the two sisters were on their way to lunch.

“Pick someplace fabulous,” Pia had said, “and wear your new scarf. And that white shirtdress I bought you for your birthday.”

Hearing the desperation in her own voice, Muriel had replied, “I bought heirloom tomatoes. I’m quite sure I can make something lunchy out of them.”

“Nonsense. I’m taking you out. I insist.”

Fearless teenage boys skidded their clacking skateboards down the stone steps of the monument in Riverside Park. Puggles tugged at their leashes, toddlers skittered after pigeons who walked from side to side in exactly the way they did. On teak benches in the shadow of young elms, Jamaican nannies and their charges met to gossip and dole out gluten-free pretzels. “Joshua, share with Aidan now.” For a brief moment, Muriel understood why people liked the outdoors. Then she felt the weight of her hair on her head and wished she was back in her apartment.

For the second time that day, Muriel’s body had melted into the shape of a wine bottle. A dress had meant shaving her legs. A white dress meant she couldn’t wear her black Spanx. And the scarf, well, that meant she’d feel more choked than she already did.

“Fabulous it is,” she had said, surrendering, knowing exactly where her perfectly perfect sister would want to go.

O
WEN USHERED LIDIA
into his tidy apartment with a sweep of his arm even as he ached to sweep her
into
his arms and ravenously take her on the freshly Hoovered carpet.

“Milady,” he said, opting for a more gallant approach.

Lidia smiled, but it was the type of smile that had more darkness in it than light.

“What’s wrong?” Owen asked.

“I have news,” she said.

Owen swallowed. “News?”

“We should sit.”

Right then and there he knew his life was over. Not in the
dead
sort of way, but in the
never again the same
way. No one delivers good news sitting down. Happy news inspires leaping, hugging, back slapping. All upright activities. Only dire news causes knees to buckle. At that moment Owen wished Lidia would quietly back out of his apartment the way she’d come in. Rewind herself. Really, they didn’t know each other well enough to share life’s disappointments.

They sat.

“Tea?” Owen offered.

“Thank you, no.” Lidia was suddenly as prim as a headmistress.

“All righty then. Your announcement.” Owen held his breath.

As the news washed over him, Owen struggled to maintain his dignity. Though he
had
recently vacuumed, it would have linted his wool slacks to do what he wanted to do: crumple to the carpet in a heap. The worst possible outcome of their brief outdoor encounters had occurred.

“I’m an honorable man,” he said, clearing his throat to camouflage his hyperventilation. “Whatever the cost to take care of this, I’ll pay. Plus a ride, of course. And absolute secrecy.” With his trembling right hand pressed onto his thudding heart he promised, “I will tell no one. I swear.”

“No,” said Lidia.

“No what?”

“No, thank you.”

Owen blinked. When Lidia repeated her refusal to even
consider
termination—announcing she was a devout Catholic—he reminded her that he was Catholic, too. God, he happened to know, was a world-renowned forgiver. His flock was entitled to a “Get out of hell free” card at least once in their lives. It was practically in the Bible.

“No,” she said flatly.

“
No?”

“No.”

Ever the gentleman, Owen didn’t say, “Screw you, then.” That would have been uncouth. Instead, he promised to compile a list of respected adoption agencies. “Imagine the number of suitable families looking for Caucasian children. There must be hundreds. Maybe
thousands
. God will praise your selflessness. Think of the joy you’ll bring to an infertile couple!”

“No,” said Lidia again, this time punctuating it with a petulant stamp of her foot.

Owen gaped at her. What the hell did she want? Good lord, they’d only done it twice. They were practically strangers. Well, not
practically
. They were strangers! He’d wanted to see
Death Wish II
the night they met, for God’s sake. They didn’t even have the same taste in movies.

“You can’t possibly think we should marry?” he asked, his mouth hanging slack.

“I don’t. But God does.”

Owen almost laughed. It was the
eighties.
Had the woman never heard of the sexual revolution? Women’s lib? The pill? Had God never spoken to her about the twentieth century?

Lidia abruptly stood up. She took Owen’s hand and placed it flat on her slightly rounded abdomen. “There’s a human life growing inside of me.”

God forgive him, Owen wanted to jerk his hand away. But Lidia took Owen’s other hand and pressed both of them hard against her body.

“
Our
creation, my darling,” she whispered, bending down so she was right up to his ear. There, she inhaled his earlobe into her mouth and nibbled on it as if it were a tiny cob of corn. Letting her feathery blond hair spill all over his face, she kissed him. First his eyelids, then the tip of his nose, then his bottom lip, then both lips. Her tongue found the roof of his mouth and danced there. Sliding her skirt up over her thighs, she straddled him. With his hands still on her torso, Owen was as tiny limbed as a T. rex. He fell backward on the couch, helpless, moaning as she unzipped his wool slacks. He muttered, “Oh God,” as she somehow maneuvered his manhood through the maze of fabric that separated them. With his girlfriend on top of him, moving in the most exquisite undulating manner, Owen decided it might not be so very terrible to make her his fiancée after all.

Chapter 10

P
APA
C
ZERWINSKI MADE
a call or two. He knew people. His tentacles spread far beyond the tiny state of Rhode Island. There were men he’d grown up with in the old country, other bakery owners on the East Coast, restaurateurs, loans he’d made, favors offered and accepted. He was a man with options. His daughter needn’t be a topic for tut-tutting over afternoon tea and
pączki
. “Such a big baby for a preemie. So soon after the wedding. You’d think a couple who barely knew each other might want to wait one Christmas, at least.”

Above all else, Papa Czerwinski was a businessman. Already he could hear the way his customers would grumble: “The Irishman will be making the babka now? What,
tradition
has become a dirty word?” Best to get the new husband and the large baby with the Celtic last name out of town before the rabble had a chance to be roused. He picked up the phone. He made a call or two. While Pia was still a baby bump, Papa arranged for his new son-in-law to accept a position at an engineering firm in midtown Manhattan.

“Oh! Manhattan is fabulous!” Lidia’s dark eyes were alight. “At last I’ll see the world.” To the baby still in her belly she said, “See how much you’ve given me already?”