The Pretty One: A Novel About Sisters Read online

  “What in Jesus’s name are you talking about?!”

  “Just that he and Pia were in there together for, like, a half an hour. And I kind of doubt they were comparing plucking techniques. Though you never know.”

  “Interesting,” said Jeff.

  “Ohmygod, what have I done?!” gasped Gus, suddenly cognizant that she’d now sold out pretty much the entire family. “Next thing you know, I’m going to tell you about Perri’s fake credit card.”

  “You just did.”

  This time, when Gus gasped, no sound came out. How had she become such an incorrigible loose lips? In her professional life, she was a model of discretion. In fact, she made a point of protecting the privacy of her sources. But in her personal life, it was as if she were still a teenager, trying to get her sisters’ attention at the breakfast table in Hastings with scandalous tidbits about their classmates.

  “Listen, babe,” Jeff said. “I should go. Private lesson waiting. But that was superfun last night.”

  “I had fun too,” said Gus. “But, Jeff?”

  “Yes, milady?”

  “I was serious about not telling Mike everything I just told you. I’m actually begging you.”

  “I like a woman who begs for it.”

  “Jeff, I’m serious!”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  Was it any wonder that Gus descended the steps to the subway feeling as if Hades awaited her?

  14

  AS MANY TIMES AS Olympia returned to her childhood home, she never grew acclimated to the sight of it. It seemed somehow impossible that it should still exist with the same people in it, the same furniture she remembered too. Most of her friends’ suburban parents had downsized to condos after their nests had emptied—not the Hellingers. It was midday. Lola was asleep upstairs. Olympia wandered into the kitchen. She found her mother peering into the cupboards.

  “Is there any coffee?” Olympia asked her.

  “Should be, but I’m actually looking for the Ovaltine,” said Carol. “Oh, here it is!”

  “What is it with you and Dad and the Ovaltine?” Olympia muttered as she lifted the kettle off the stove.

  After the water boiled, and Olympia poured out two hot beverages, she and Carol sat down at the kitchen table. “So, what have I missed?” Carol asked with a breezy sigh.

  For the first time in ages, Olympia saw an actual person sitting across from her, as opposed to her Annoying Mother—a person who wanted to believe her life mattered and that she was indispensable to those around her. It seemed suddenly ludicrous that everyone should be lying to her. Olympia took a deep breath and announced that Gus had fallen for Mike’s brother, Jeff, while Perri, far from being at a closet conference, had walked out on Mike on her fortieth birthday and was currently in an undisclosed location.

  Carol sat listening with popping eyes, her cup suspended in midair. When Olympia had finished speaking, she took a sip of her Ovaltine, and declared, “My goodness—well, I don’t know what to say. Between you and me, I never thought Mike was worthy of Perri. He’s a Republican, you know.”

  “I know.”

  “But they have three kids.”

  “The split might not be permanent.”

  “And I bet that brother of his is a Republican, too. It tends to run in families.”

  “As far as I can tell, all the guy cares about is skiing. And now, I guess, Gus.”

  “And is Gus in… love with him?”

  “I’m not sure she’s ‘in love,’ but she clearly likes him.”

  “The heart is a mysterious thing,” Carol said, sighing again, as she gazed out the window. “And here I’d finally come to accept that I was the mother of a gay person!” She turned back to Olympia. “And what about you? Who does your heart belong to these days, other than to Lola?”

  The question startled Olympia in its very directness. Meeting her mother’s gaze head on, she thought of how infrequently the two of them spoke about anything meaningful—it was all quips and barbs—and how little time they’d spent together in recent years apart from Perri or Gus. Who knew when the next time would be? And who knew how many years her mother and father actually had left? Ten? Twenty? Twenty-five at the absolute most? In that moment, Olympia resolved to come clean about her own life, too. “If you want to know the truth,” she said with a trembling heart, “I’ve been in love with the same man for five, maybe even six years. We broke up before Lola was born. He runs a community center for disadvantaged kids. The problem is… he’s married and his wife is”—Olympia swallowed hard—“a paraplegic. So he can’t leave her.” She held her breath while waiting for the onslaught of disapproval that she’d always assumed her faithfully married mother would direct at her.

  But to Olympia’s surprise, all Carol said was “That does sound complicated. I’m sorry.”

  Carol’s reticence, in turn, spurred Olympia onward. “Complicated is one way of putting it,” she said, somehow knowing she’d live to regret what she was about to say, yet unable to stop herself. “So complicated,” she went on, “that when I wanted to have a baby four-plus years ago, and he was the only guy in my life, I decided to use”—Olympia paused—“a sperm bank instead.”

  “A SPERM BANK?!” Carol cried.

  Olympia was already regretting her confession. “I thought it would be less complicated,” she said. “I was wrong about that, of course. But at the time…”

  Carol’s contorted face suggested horror, bewilderment, and disappointment all in one. It was the same expression she’d had when Gus had “come out” nearly twenty years ago—only a more extreme version of such. It was one thing, apparently, for a gay person to admit that she couldn’t help being gay, quite another for a heterosexual person to admit to willfully subverting reproductive norms. “But couldn’t you have waited to see if you met someone else?” she stammered.

  “I was turning thirty-five. How long was I supposed to wait?” asked Olympia, her lower lip now quivering.

  Carol didn’t answer.

  15

  PERRI HAD ALWAYS LOVED BREAKFAST. It was her favorite meal of the day. When Mike traveled for business, she’d treat herself by eating cereal for dinner after the kids went to sleep. Now she lay sprawled on her hotel bed, feasting on room-service waffles (at four o’clock in the afternoon, no less) and trying not to fret about the fact that Gus had discouraged her from returning home. What accounted for Gus’s negativity? Seeking distraction from her worries, Perri flipped on the TV. The Real Housewives of New Jersey were having some kind of altercation. As Teresa overturned a table onto Danielle, Perri felt a momentary jolt of smugness in the knowledge that the lives of reality TV stars were infinitely tackier and more dysfunctional than hers would ever be.

  However, the sound of her ringing phone—and the sight of the name “Sims, Michael” flashing across its screen—undermined that certitude, reminding Perri that she’d dumped her husband and kids so she could have sex with a vascular surgeon in South Beach. She dreaded the thought of the conversation to come. But if there was any hope of repairing the damage, it needed to be had. It was why she’d left Mike a teary message, twenty minutes earlier, apologizing in a general way and asking that he call her. “Hello?” she said in a mealy voice.

  “You went down to Florida to have an affair. Is that it?” he barked.

  “WHAT?! Who said that?”

  “I have my sources.”

  Perri was aghast and inflamed. So it had taken Gus not even five minutes to betray her? There was no other explanation. She wanted to break one of Gus’s legs. “Well, your sources are wrong,” she told him.

  “Yeah, right,” said Mike.

  A sob climbed the length of Perri’s throat, and she felt powerless to keep it inside. “It’s already over,” she said. “And nothing even happened. But I’m sorry anyway. I’ll be sorry for the rest of my life.”

  “So, who was it?” asked Mike, seemingly unswayed by his wife’s display of abjection. “Some pool boy you met down there? T
he sixteen-year-old with the handlebar mustache from the office?”

  Remorse mingled with rage. “What do you care?” cried Perri. “It’s not like you want me anymore!”

  “Is that what you think?”

  “Yes.” He hadn’t denied it, had he?

  “So you had to go fuck someone else?”

  Perri felt as if she’d been punched in the stomach. “I didn’t f-word anyone.” It pained her in particular to have to use the word as a verb, even in an abbreviated form, but she saw no other way to counteract the charge. “And for the record, I’m lying in bed alone right now eating waffles. Okay?”

  “Well, good for you. I hope you have a lovely and romantic getaway. And at the end of it, do everyone a favor and don’t come back.”

  Was he serious? “Mike! PLEASE!” Perri was crying so hard now that she felt as if she couldn’t breathe. What had she done? And how had they arrived at this point? Hadn’t they loved each other only a short time ago? She could no longer even remember what she was doing in Florida.

  “Please, what?” he said.

  “Forgive me!”

  “I can’t. I’m sorry.”

  “Mike, we’ve been married for—” she began. But the line had already gone dead.

  As the tears rolled down her cheeks, Perri redialed her home number. She stopped after the fourth digit, realizing there was no point. Mike wouldn’t pick up. Besides, there was an even more urgent call she needed to make just then—to her youngest sister, Gus, to tell her that she was never speaking to her again for as long as she lived.

  Gus and Perri had never really had a big blowout before. True, Perri had been less than amused when her sister had shown up for her wedding twelve years earlier wearing a light blue men’s tuxedo. Perri had begged Gus to wear a dress, even offering to buy her one of her choice at Nordstrom’s, no expense barred—to no avail. But the whole incident had been more of an eye roller than anything else. This time was different.

  “What’s up?” asked Gus.

  “This is Perri,” she began in a shaky voice, “and I just want you to know that I’m never speaking to you again.”

  “What?!” said Gus.

  “I spoke to you in confidence this morning, and you betrayed me. You told Mike every single thing I told you. You told him I had an affair, too. Which, by the way, is patently false. But what do you care about the truth?”

  “Oh, Jesus,” she said.

  “That’s the best you can do?” said Perri. “Invoke the name of a God you don’t believe in?”

  Gus sighed heavily. “Perri, I swear—I didn’t mean to say anything. Jeff dragged the whole thing out of me, and then he swore he wouldn’t tell Mike. I’m seriously going to kill him.”

  “Do what you like!” Perri shot back. “It won’t make a difference to me, since our relationship is OVER, a relationship that, by the way, I once considered among the most treasured entities in my life.”

  “Perri—PLEASE!” Gus let out a gasping little yowl.

  Perri’s first instinct was to comfort her sister, just as she’d done so many times before. In order not to do so, she had to remind herself that she was the victim, not the other way around. Perri wasn’t going to let Gus off the hook without further berating, either. “When I think of all the times I was there to hold your hand,” she went on, “like when you thought you needed a sex change, freshman year of college.” Perri paused to catch her breath and wipe the spittle that had found its way onto her chin.

  “You’ve been a great sister,” moaned Gus. “I didn’t mean to upset you. Please don’t cut me off.”

  “Why shouldn’t I?” cried Perri. “You sold me out. I turned to you in a vulnerable moment, mistakenly believing you’d have more compassion than Pia would. It turns out I was wrong.”

  “You weren’t wrong.”

  “Really?”

  There was a pause. Then, in a newly defiant voice, Gus announced, “I’m not the sister who’s getting cozy with your husband the second you leave.”

  “Ex-cuse me?!” cried Perri.

  “Let’s just say that a certain two people spent a lot of time in the bathroom together with the door closed the night after you left.”

  Perri was momentarily speechless. What in the world was Gus trying to imply? Had her husband been unfaithful, too?! “And which two people would that be?” she asked.

  “You figure it out. One of their names starts with O—and the other with M.”

  For a full minute, Perri was speechless. Was Gus serious? It sounded implausible. But what if it wasn’t? What if her husband had spent the previous twelve years believing he’d married the wrong sister? And what if Olympia, consummate flirt and known saboteur of others’ marriages, had tried to sabotage Perri’s marriage too? Perri’s thoughts turned to the entirely inappropriate outfit that Olympia had worn to her wedding, which had basically consisted of two pasties attached to a loincloth. “Good-bye, Augusta,” Perri said finally. “I hope you have a nice life. You won’t be hearing from me again.”

  “Perri—WAIT!” cried Gus.

  But Perri had already hung up, just as her husband had hung up on her, ten minutes before. As far as she was concerned, both sisters were now lost to her. She picked the phone back up and dialed Olympia’s number to inform her that she, too, had become a nonperson.

  16

  JUST AS OLYMPIA WAS EXITING THE KITCHEN, following her unpleasant confession to Carol, Perri’s name flashed across the screen of her phone. Happy for the distraction from her own problems, Olympia took the phone into the living room with her, and said, “Hello?”

  What she wasn’t expecting was the fusillade of vitriol that greeted her left ear. “For nearly forty years, I’ve stood by you!” said the furious person who was apparently Perri on the other end of the line.

  “Perri?” said Olympia.

  “In high school, when everyone was calling you a slut, I told them to go jump in a lake!”

  “Jump in a lake? I don’t think anyone’s used that expression since the nineteen-fifties,” said Olympia, her casual banter belying her now pounding heart. Had Mike told Perri about their sort-of kiss?

  “And when you were struggling in your twenties,” Perri went on, “I sent you that check for five hundred dollars—which, for the record, you never paid back. But that’s beside the point.”

  “Well, then, what is your point?” asked Olympia, now fearing the worst, even as she felt enraged. Perri had some nerve in raising the issue of Olympia’s ancient, unpaid debts! Besides, what was five hundred dollars to a rich person?

  “My point is that whatever secret hostilities you’ve been harboring toward me for the last thirty-eight years, this is one shitty way of expressing them! Though on that note, if you really want my idiot husband, you can have him.” She let out a high-pitched laugh. “Really, he’s yours!”

  Olympia’s heart rate had gone berserk. So Mike had told her, she thought—the bastard! Clearly, he’d just been using her to get back at Perri, Olympia decided. He’d caught Olympia at a vulnerable moment and turned that vulnerability into a cudgel to use against his jealous wife. What a fool Olympia had been to fall for it! Even so, she wasn’t ready to hand him (or Perri) the victory just yet. “So, now I’m taking the hit for the fact that I had to haul my ass all the way to Larchmont after work on Friday because you decided to split on your family and on Dad?” she said. “Only to have your husband come onto me in the bathroom out of nowhere and, to be honest, to my complete and utter horror. I wasn’t going to tell you, because I didn’t want to embarrass you.” Olympia realized that she wasn’t being entirely honest. But maybe her version wasn’t that far from the truth?

  “That’s not what I heard happened,” said Perri in a more subdued voice.

  “Well, what did you hear happened?” asked Olympia.

  “Gus told me that—”

  “Gus?!” Olympia felt heat on her face. So it had been her younger sister, not Mike, who had betrayed her. Olympia couldn’t b
elieve it. Or maybe she could. Growing up, Gus had been her most loyal and consistent playmate. The two of them had even had their own secret society—the Kangaroo Club (headquarters: Bob’s shoe closet). But now Olympia wondered if she and her younger sister had ever been as close as she’d thought. She’d never forgotten that Gus had “come out” as a lesbian to Perri rather than to her. Clearly, Gus had been Perri’s Chief Confidante (and Snoop) all along.

  “Well, she saw everything,” Olympia heard Perri saying.

  “Well, if you want to know what actually happened, why don’t you ask your estranged husband,” said Olympia, her anger welling up.

  “How dare you presume to know my marital situation!” declared Perri.

  “Well, how dare you presume to know what happened when you weren’t there!”

  “I don’t want to have this conversation anymore.”

  “Me, neither.”

  “Then let’s hang up.”

  “Fine with me. Happy fucking birthday.”

  “Thanks—and f-f-fuck you!”

  Olympia hung up the phone stunned not only by her sister’s fury, but by her use of the f-word, itself a rarity if not a first. Turning to leave the room, she found Carol standing there next to the hunk of gnarled wood that passed for a coffee table. Tears shimmied in her eyes like water sloshing around the bottom of a rowboat. At the sight of them, Olympia felt even more wretched. The only thing more awful than having a screaming fight with one’s sister was feeling as if one had simultaneously ruined the life of one’s parent. “What?” said Olympia. “Why are you staring at me like that?”

  “Be angry at me all you want,” Carol answered in a shaky voice. “But please don’t fight with your sisters. You’ll need them someday—after Dad and I are gone.”

  It was too heavy a concept to entertain in daylight (and without alcohol). So Olympia turned the conversation back to her mother. “Well, why do you think we fight?”