The Pretty One: A Novel About Sisters Page 7

  Olympia burst into bosom-vibrating guffaws, gratifying Gus, who remembered that her middle sister had always had a wonderful laugh, deep, hiccupy, and, well, warm. Maybe she was still human after all, Gus thought. Keen to leave their conversation at a high point, she reached for the remote and proceeded to flick through a dozen channels. “So, what do you say?” she said. “Animal Cops: Houston, local news, or a mysteriously Tivo’d The Bachelor?”

  “Whatever you want,” said Olympia, who wasn’t a big fan of television.

  “Well, I vote for The Bachelor.”

  “Fine with me.”

  “What? You don’t think homosexuals are allowed to watch heterosexual shows?”

  “I didn’t say anything!” cried Olympia.

  “But I could tell you were thinking that,” said Gus, aware that she sounded vaguely pathetic. These days, something about Olympia’s very presence made Gus defensive. Maybe it was the fact that, even when her sister was physically there, she gave off the impression that her mind was somewhere else, somewhere she’d rather be. “Actually, I can’t tell anything about you,” Gus went on.

  “What?” said Olympia, squinching up her face.

  “Never mind,” said Gus, embarrassed.

  The sisters watched in silence as a young woman with a blond ponytail dabbed at her mascara-caked eyes and declared, “I would have bet my life savings I was getting a rose.” Then the camera cut to the bachelor himself, a smug-looking guy in a polo shirt with swooshy side-parted hair. “That last rose ceremony was seriously one of the hardest decisions I’ve ever made,” he said with a weary laugh. “I mean, Kristy is a great girl—fun, warm, superhot. I guess I just didn’t feel the connection.” After that segment ended, another contestant came on the screen—a horsey brunette with visible gums. The TV identified her as “Debbie from Delray Beach, FL.” “Speaking of Debbies,” said Olympia. “Heard anything from yours lately?”

  “We’ve texted a few times,” said Gus, somehow surprised that her sister even remembered Debbie’s name.

  “Any chance of getting back together?”

  “Zero.”

  “Sorry to hear it.”

  “She and the new lady love are adopting a baby from North Korea, or something.”

  Olympia squinted at her. “Are you serious about North Korea?”

  “It might be Myanmar or Thailand. I can’t remember. Anyway, I’m over it.” And it was true, or mostly true. Gus’s ego was still wounded. But reflecting on the relationship, she’d come to the conclusion that all she and Debbie did was bicker, with Debbie accusing Gus of being needy and demanding, and criticizing everything she did; and with Gus accusing Debbie of not being supportive, not taking Gus’s work as seriously as she took her own, and caring only about herself. What’s more, Debbie rarely told Gus she loved her. Plus, Gus was always worrying about Debbie getting killed on her Harley-Davidson. And she’d only ever read the introduction to the book that Gus had spent five years slaving over, On Dykes and Documents: Towards a Lesbian Legal Practice (Routledge, 2009). Which is maybe why Gus’s hurt over the split was conflated with relief. At least, that was what she told herself. A part of Gus felt as if she’d been made to sit through some shrieky, seven-hour-long German opera. And the curtain was finally, thankfully coming down—even as another part of her physically ached at the thought of Debbie’s muscular arms wrapped around somebody else’s midriff…

  “Well, that’s good,” said Olympia.

  “I guess,” said Gus, gaining nerve. She glanced quickly at her sister. “What about you? Any handsome young Captain von Trapps on the scene?”

  Olympia seemed startled by the question. “Me?” she said.

  It was one of Gus’s pet peeves—how no one in the family ever dared ask Olympia anything about her personal life. As if it were that much more important than everyone else’s. At least, that was the way Olympia acted—as if she were sleeping with the president. “Who do you think I’m talking to?” she said. “The wall?!”

  “Oh, sorry,” said Olympia. “Well, in answer to your question—not really.” She paused, looked away. “Though I got an email last week from my ex. Which was kind of strange since things between us didn’t exactly end on a good note.”

  “Which ex?” asked Gus, amazed by the rare admission.

  Olympia visibly swallowed before she replied, “Patrick. I don’t think I ever told you about him.”

  “I met him at your housewarming party, like, ten millennia ago,” said Gus, who still recalled that Olympia had introduced him as her “good friend” and that he’d been wearing a wedding ring. (Did she think Gus was that stupid?) Why did Olympia not seem to realize that sisters could tell almost everything about each other’s feelings simply by observing the tilt of each other’s heads, the set of each other’s mouths?

  “Oh, right,” said Olympia, looking confused.

  “So why didn’t it end on a good note?” said Gus, longing to hear the truth from Olympia’s own lips.

  Olympia appeared to hold her breath—before she announced, “Because he was married to someone else.” She looked into her lap. “A paraplegic.”

  The honesty of her sister’s answer shocked Gus. “Was married and still is?” she asked.

  “I assume so.”

  “Huh—that sounds complicated,” Gus said with a nod. As if learning this information, too, for the first time. In fact, in the years since Lola’s birth, she’d formulated the working hypothesis, shared with friends and family alike, that No Saint Patrick (as Gus liked to call him behind closed doors) was Lola’s “mystery father.” There was no other good explanation for Olympia’s secrecy and defensiveness on the subject. “So, what did the email say?” Gus pressed on.

  “That he wanted to talk to me.”

  “About what?”

  “Unclear.”

  “And what did you say?”

  “I didn’t answer.” Olympia shrugged quickly. “There’s nothing left to say. It ended years ago.”

  “Right.”

  Olympia cleared her throat imperiously. “I’d appreciate it if you kept this all to yourself.”

  “You barely told me anything! Also, who am I going to talk to?” said Gus, bristling at having been accused of being a gossip before she’d even gossiped.

  “Perri,” said Olympia.

  “I’m sure she already knows,” said Gus, squirming. In fact, it was she who had told their older sister about Olympia’s illicit affair. “Perri makes it her business to know everything about everyone. Also, if you haven’t seen the guy in five years, or whatever, it’s not exactly news.”

  “Well, I’m pretty sure she doesn’t know about my relationship with… Patrick.”

  “Whatever you say,” said Gus.

  The show cut to a commercial, and the two fell silent. As a Gillette razor traced a slow smooth path down a disembodied jaw, Gus felt newly riled by Olympia’s obsession with privacy. It struck her as not just ridiculous but presumptuous, even self-aggrandizing. “You were always into married guys,” she blurted out. It was unkind, maybe. But wasn’t it true?

  “Excuse me?!” said Olympia, clearly offended.

  “Remember Mr. Grunholz, the English teacher dude in high school with the leather jackets? Weren’t you in love with him, or something?” Gus could no longer remember the specifics, but she knew that something embarrassing had happened between him and Olympia that had led their mother to intervene and the man to be let go.

  “In love with him?!” scoffed Olympia. “Hardly. He was a total lech who was always hitting on all his students!” Olympia, who rarely appeared to be rattled, seemed suddenly undone, her mouth slack, her eyes wild. “I had nothing to do with him.”

  Gus immediately regretted the gambit. As much as she longed to strip the layers (and ego) from her sister, there was something strangely upsetting about seeing Olympia look so vulnerable. “Oh, maybe that was it,” Gus said, even as she strongly doubted the veracity of Olympia’s version of events. Per Gus’s
recollections, at the very least there had been heavy petting against or inside Mr. Grunholz’s car.

  More to the point, Gus couldn’t understand why Olympia wasn’t proud to have been a teenage slut. By all accounts, Olympia had lost her virginity at sixteen to a nineteen-year-old lifeguard at the local pool. Gus’s teenage love life, on the other hand, had mainly consisted of nursing impossible crushes on straight girls while listening to K. D. Lang’s “Constant Craving.”

  The commercial break was over. The Bachelor and his five remaining girlfriends were boarding a yacht. “Oh, come on,” said Gus, now keen to make amends. “That woman is not wearing a bathing suit. That’s like a clothesline with doilies.”

  “I’ve always hated that word—doily,” said Olympia.

  Gus could tell her sister was relieved to find the conversation turning to people they didn’t know. (Gus was relieved, too.) “Still not as bad as ointment,” she offered.

  “Goiter is up there, too.”

  “And tushy. God, I hate that word so much.”

  “It’s still not as bad as heiny,” said Olympia.

  Somehow, they made it through the hour.

  5

  AT THE SOUND OF Perri’s Lexus grinding up the gravel in the driveway, Olympia went outside to help escort their father from the car. Emerging from the backseat, Bob seemed as wobbly as a three-legged chair. But Perri reported that the surgery had gone well. He was also cogent enough to be mumbling, “The pleasures of oxycodone—not to be discounted!” Even so, Olympia found it jarring to see her dad looking so helpless and frail. The two of them rarely exchanged more than two sentences in a row. Moreover, in the twenty years since she’d left home, Olympia had no memory of Bob ever calling her. (Though on occasion he’d answer the phone when she called Hastings, and say, “Hello, sweetheart. I’ll pass the phone to Mom.”) And yet, she somehow loved him more than she’d ever loved another man. These were her thoughts as she helped transport him into the house, then up the stairs, where he collapsed onto his bed and dozed off with a light snore.

  The four Hellinger women gathered in the kitchen, where Carol shook her head and declared, “A genius the man may be. But he’s a terrible patient! All he did was complain. You’d think it was something actually serious.”

  “I didn’t hear him complain once,” said Perri.

  “He did have to get surgery,” said Olympia.

  “Fine. Gang up on me, all of you,” snapped Carol, her lower lip suddenly quivery.

  “No one’s ganging up on you, Mom,” said Olympia, sighing. On top of being sharp-tongued, her mother was incredibly sensitive.

  “Whatever you say,” said Carol. Lips now puckered, she hooked her “pocketbook” over her shoulder. “Now if you all will excuse me, I’m going out for some fresh air. I’ve been cooped up in that awful hospital all day.”

  “You’re going out for a walk now?” asked Olympia. “It’s already getting dark.”

  “I’m not going to turn into a vampire!” She harrumphed. “This is a new one—having to get permission from my daughters to take a walk.”

  Olympia rolled her eyes but said nothing more. Had her mother been this petulant while they were growing up? It was hard to remember.

  “If you’re going out anyway, maybe you can save me a trip and drop Dad’s prescription off at the pharmacy,” said Perri.

  “If I still have it, I’ll be happy to drop it off.” Carol dug her hand into her bag and pulled out her reading glasses, followed by a crumpled slip of paper, which she proceeded to uncrumple, then squint at, before announcing, “No doubt for some kind of sugar pills. But as you wish.” She deposited the slip back into her bag. Then she turned to her eldest daughter, and said, “Why don’t you go home, Perri. You’ve done enough already.”

  “It’s fine. I’ll wait with Dad until you come back,” she said.

  “Gus and I can handle it,” said Olympia.

  “It’s fine!” Perri declared a little more aggressively this time. Apparently, the Queen of all Dutiful Daughters wasn’t ready to abdicate her title just yet, Olympia thought. Perri glanced at her watch. “I’m going to miss Parent-Teacher Conference Night, anyway. Mike will have to report back.”

  “I didn’t know he got home that early from work,” said Olympia.

  “He was laid off a few weeks ago,” Perri replied matter-of-factly.

  “What?!” said Olympia, shocked and also a little bit hurt. She may have hated sharing facts about her own life—having them shared, too—but she still expected to be first in the loop when it came to major events in the lives of her sisters. “Why didn’t you tell me earlier?” she asked.

  “I guess I forgot,” said Perri, shrugging.

  “So I’m the last person to know?” Olympia turned from Gus to Carol, neither of whom reacted, suggesting to Olympia that the answer was “yes.”

  “Well, I’m really sorry for Mike—and for you, too,” said Olympia, wondering if oversight was to blame. Or was it possible that Perri was somehow embarrassed to tell Olympia? And, if so, why? It wasn’t as if Olympia had never been fired from a job—far from it. Or maybe that was the point: Perri didn’t want Olympia to think that she and Mike had anything even remotely in common.

  “He was looking to change jobs, anyway,” Perri said quickly. “And he got seven months of severance. Anyway!” She turned her back, apparently done with the topic. “I’m going to check on Dad.”

  “And I’m going to check that the sky still exists,” said Carol, lowering her beret over her ears.

  “See you soon,” said Olympia.

  The back door went thwwack as Carol closed it behind her.

  Olympia and her sisters sat at the kitchen table, snacking on stale Ritz crackers they’d found in the cupboard and talking about health-care reform (Perri had mixed feelings about the “public option”); whether Lady Gaga was derivative of Madonna (Olympia thought yes; Gus thought they were both “plastic poseurs,” although she appreciated Gaga’s gay-friendly message; Perri wasn’t entirely sure who Lady Gaga was); and old classmates whose lives had taken tragic turns. “Remember that kid, Jimmy Trevor?” said Gus, reaching for the nut cracker. She splintered a walnut. Carol still bought them with the shell on. Pieces flew by Perri’s face and into the sink.

  “Jesus! Watch it!” said Perri, palm raised in self-protection. “That almost hit me in the eye!”

  “Oh, sorry,” said Gus.

  “Who’s Jimmy Trevor?” asked Olympia, even though she sort of knew.

  “Oh, come on!” cried Gus. “You went to junior prom with his brother, David. Jimmy was two years behind him. Hello?”

  “Maybe I remember him.”

  “Why do you always pretend not to know people from your past?”

  Olympia wasn’t sure herself. “I don’t,” she said, attempting to match Perri’s superior tone with a disaffected one of her own. “It’s just—do we always have to talk about high school?”

  “No, we don’t always have to talk about high school,” said Gus, clearly miffed. “I just thought you’d want to know that Jimmy Trevor enlisted in the fucking Marine Corps a few years ago and got sent to Iraq, where he recently lost both of his legs!”

  “Ohmygod, that’s horrible,” said Olympia, feeling guilty. “Poor guy.”

  Twenty minutes went by. Then a half hour. Then an hour. Then an hour and twenty minutes. They’d covered nearly everyone in their high school and extended family, along with all the major stories in the current news cycle. Still, there was no sign of Carol. Miss Clavel turned on the light and said, “Something is not right!”… Miss Clavel ran fast and faster. The words from Lola’s favorite picture book flitted through Olympia’s head. “What the heck happened to Mom?” she said.

  “I’m sure she’ll be back in a few minutes,” said Gus.

  “I’m going out to look for her,” said Perri, rising from her chair.

  “I’m coming with you,” said Olympia, standing too.

  “You guys need to chill out
,” said Gus. “She’s probably looking at the sunset or something.”

  “The sun went in more than an hour ago,” snapped Perri, grabbing her keys off the countertop.

  “Then there’s a long line at the pharmacy, or something. Friday-night Xanax prescription refills. Everyone’s stocking up for the weekend.”

  “You really think Mom would spend an hour waiting in line at the pharmacy?” said Olympia, chin lowered and one eyebrow raised as she fitted her arms through the sleeves of her coat. “She already told us she thought the prescription was for sugar pills.”

  “Well, I think you guys are making too big a deal out of it,” Gus called after them.

  By then, Olympia and Perri were already out the door, Olympia without her coat.

  As Olympia waited for Perri to unlock the doors to the Lexus, her shoulders shimmied involuntarily in the cold. It had been awhile since she and Perri had gone anywhere together. The SUV was enormous. Sitting up high in the passenger seat next to her big sister, Olympia recalled distant memories of cruising through the neighborhood with Perri in Carol’s then ten-year-old Toyota Corolla, hoping to catch sight of someone’s crush playing basketball in his driveway. Even when the crush had been Perri’s—which is to say, even when Perri and her on-again, off-again boyfriend-for-all-four-years-of-high-school, Andy Lyons, were off again—her sister had acted as if she were doing Olympia a favor, chauffeuring her around town. (Nineteen months older than Olympia, Perri had gotten her driver’s license first.)

  Yet Olympia had always suspected that her yearbook-editing, flute-playing, field hockey stick–wielding, student-government president sister had enjoyed their pointless, directionless, résumé-building-less jaunts more than she’d let on—jaunts that frequently concluded with Diet Coke and large fries orders at the McDonald’s take-out window on Central Ave. and Perri’s beloved George Michael on the tape deck, singing, You gotta have faith, faith, faith. Olympia had enjoyed their outings, too. In her official version of her childhood, her older sister had been bossy, patronizing, and hopelessly uncool. In the possibly realer version, Olympia had missed Perri more than she’d ever thought she would after Perri left for Penn. She could still picture her in her “first day of college” outfit—pressed Levi’s with carefully torn knees, a white polo shirt with the collar up, and a navy blue blazer with gold nautical buttons draped over one arm. Olympia never understood how her sister kept her rope bracelet so clean.