The Pretty One: A Novel About Sisters Page 8

  It had also been Perri who had comforted Olympia after the whole Mr. Grunholz mess, albeit in Perri’s characteristically abrasive and peremptory way. “I’m sorry,” she’d told Olympia. “But the man smells like liverwurst. Also, he has a weird-shaped head. I don’t know how you could have gotten naked with him. Anyway, if I were you, I’d take a long shower and pretend it never happened.” To Perri’s credit, however, that was also the last time she ever mentioned the man, or the incident. Even Mr. Grunholz’s eventual firing went uncommented upon by her older sister.

  Meanwhile, Olympia had felt guilty and ashamed. Statutory rape laws aside, the blow job she’d given her thirty-eight-year-old English teacher at the age of seventeen in the back of his Pontiac Sunbird in the parking lot behind Temple Beth Shalom had been strictly voluntary. What’s more, she’d enjoyed it—if not the actual deed, then the sensation of limitless power it conferred. She’d also enjoyed the sound of Mr. Grunholz’s low groans and the sight of his eyeballs rolling back in his head—until she’d made the mistake of telling a friend, who’d told another friend. Eventually, the story had gotten back to her mother, who’d chosen to interpret the situation as one in which a predator had preyed on her beautiful, unsuspecting young daughter. Olympia had done nothing to dispel the notion. Little wonder that Mr. Grunholz had been so furious at her. She still remembered passing him in the hall while the case had been pending before the school board. He’d said nothing, but the look on his face had been of someone who’d been betrayed. Even two decades later, the thought of that unforgiving face still made Olympia shudder.

  Gus’s casual invocation of the man’s name had been cruel and uncalled for, Olympia thought as Perri pulled out of the driveway. Wasn’t there a tacit agreement between sisters that certain traumatic events of the past were never to be alluded to again? Olympia had never dared mention Perri’s outpatient treatment for OCD and bulimia while she was in college—or Gus’s dalliance with self-cutting and speed during late high school.

  Perri turned onto Maple Avenue. As she did so, Olympia stole a glance at her older sister’s face, at her clenched yet ever so slightly loosening jaw, a double chin that hadn’t quite arrived. The sight both fascinated and frightened her. Middle age was sneaking up on them unawares, it seemed. Olympia recalled a black-and-white photograph from the 1940s of her grandmother and great-aunt, both of them with dark painted lips and short stiff hair peeking out of bizarre hats that resembled airplane neck rests. Not too many years from now, Olympia thought, she and Perri would likely become those unstylish, pity-inducing “ancestors” in the eyes of their own children, and then grandchildren. Maybe they already were? “Where should we go first?” asked Olympia.

  “To the pharmacy, obviously,” said Perri.

  Olympia didn’t answer. Obviously nothing, she thought irritably. Perri was structurally incapable of conceding that she was as clueless as the rest of them about what they were all doing here on earth. And at the same time, it came as a relief just then to be with someone who was willing to keep up the fiction of certainty. “Sounds like a plan,” Olympia murmured impassively.

  Perri made a left onto Spring Street, then a right onto Warburton. She got only so far. There was a police car parked diagonally in front of Hastings Prime Meats, its flashers on. The pharmacy was directly across the street. One cop stood to the left of the car directing southbound traffic around the north side of the street. Another stood near a flashlight beam, writing in a notebook, his stance wide. Yellow tape encircled a wide swath of the adjacent sidewalk. “What the hell is this?” said Olympia.

  Without answering, Perri jerked the car over into an empty space in front of a hydrant and got out. Olympia followed, her cheeks lowered against the wind.

  Upon closer inspection, there were jagged white objects scattered across the sidewalk behind the tape.

  Perri approached the scribbling cop. “Excuse me, Officer,” she said. “May I ask what happened here?”

  The man took his time looking up from his notepad. Finally, he answered, “A streetlamp bulb struck a pedestrian.”

  Olympia looked up. Sure enough, one of the old-fashioned wrought-iron streetlamps that lined Warburton was missing its opaque white orb. The lamp itself was also leaning at a precarious angle over the sidewalk. “Well, we’re looking for our mother, Carol Hellinger,” Perri went on. “She was on her way to the pharmacy about an hour and a half ago on foot. She’s five foot one with medium-length silver hair. And she was wearing a bright purple winter coat and matching purple beanie—”

  “It’s more like a beret,” interjected Olympia.

  “Beret-beanie-whatever,” barked Perri, clearly irritated at having been corrected.

  The police officer seemed reluctant to divulge any more information. He scribbled some more in his notebook. Then he said, “The victim hasn’t been identified yet. She was taken to the ER at St. John’s Riverside, fifteen minutes ago. If your mother is missing, I suggest you go to the station and file a missing persons report.”

  So it was a she, Olympia thought, her stomach tightening around her belt.

  “Thank you for the advice,” snapped Perri.

  “You can’t park there,” said the policeman, motioning at Perri’s car with his lantern jaw.

  “We’ll be leaving in five minutes after we search the pharmacy for our missing elderly mother!” declared Perri, officious even in a crisis.

  Olympia found the description unfair: Carol was only sixty-five. But this time, she didn’t dare object.

  It seemed that Olympia wasn’t the only one feeling cowed by Perri. “You need to move the car in five minutes,” the cop mumbled back at her.

  “Of course,” said Perri, starting across the street.

  Again, Olympia followed. The creeping headlights made her feel blind.

  The local pharmacy was another of Hastings’s f-you’s to chain stores, none of which were allowed in the downtown. The first thing you saw when you walked in was an old-fashioned soda fountain complete with chrome stools with vinyl seats. Behind the fountain were the actual health and beauty products, all of them laid out on wooden shelves so pleasing to the eye that even the maxi-pads looked quaint. At the back of the store, next to the drop-off window, was a fish tank featuring Frisbee-sized anemones that, depending on your perspective, looked like cute monster puppets on Sesame Street or like extras in an aliens movie. The pharmacists dispensed their magic from behind a loftlike wooden enclosure. Gus must have been right about the Xanax prescriptions, Olympia thought. There were at least ten people milling beneath the loft, all of them looking restless and, well, anxiety-ridden. Or was Olympia projecting her own mental state? It took five minutes to speak to a human being. Finally, Perri got her chance. “Excuse me,” she said to the white-coated man behind the counter. “I’m the daughter of one of your customers, Carol Hellinger—”

  “Carol Hellinger! Of course.” He laughed. “We all get a kick out of Carol when she comes in. She mocks us to our faces. It’s really very amusing. Snake oil salesman. That’s her preferred term of abuse.” He laughed again.

  “Funny,” said Perri. As if it weren’t. “Anyway, we’re wondering if she came in here an hour ago to fill a prescription for our father.”

  “Haven’t seen her in months,” came the response. “But please send her my regards.”

  “I will,” said Perri.

  “Let’s go,” said Olympia, tugging on her sister’s sleeve.

  Perri took the opportunity to shoot her sister another censorious look. Then she turned back to the pharmacist, and said, “Thank you for your time.”

  Closing the door to the pharmacy behind them, Olympia was reminded of why she secretly preferred chain stores and the anonymity they promised, especially when filling her own monthly prescription for Zoloft.

  They got back in the car. This time, Olympia didn’t bother asking her sister where they were going. Perri drove the rest of the way without speaking, or mostly without speaking. At one point, sh
e mumbled, “Could this frigging light take any frigging longer?”

  The emergency room was strangely empty but for a few relatives of the injured mulling about with coffees, looking bored or maybe stunned. “We’re wondering if a Carol Hellinger was brought in here tonight,” Perri asked the receptionist, a large woman with exquisite purple nails.

  The receptionist scanned her notes. Then she said, “Hold on, please.” With considerable effort, she lifted her body into a standing position. Then she disappeared into a back office. Five minutes later, a “Dr. Grodberg” emerged. He was wearing a bow tie and horn-rim glasses like some parody of a boarding school teacher circa 1950. Except it was 2010, and there was no way he was older than thirty. “Are you the family of Carol Hellinger?” he asked, mispronouncing her last name. As if the final syllable began with a hard g.

  Olympia felt as if a lozenge had gotten lodged in her throat. Even so, she couldn’t stand to let the error slide. “It’s Hellinger,” she said, with great emphasis on the soft g.

  “Can you let the man talk?!” said Perri.

  Olympia grimaced but said nothing.

  “We’re her daughters,” Perri went on.

  Dr. Grodberg cleared his throat and began to explain.

  It turned out that the driver of a Coca-Cola truck had been rushing to make a late-day delivery in order to get home in time to celebrate his twentieth wedding anniversary with his wife. While attempting to park, he’d accidentally backed into one of the streetlamps. The impact had bent the pole and caused such a disturbance that the glass orb had slid off its base and fallen. At that same moment, Carol had been preparing to cross the street to the pharmacy. The orb had hit her smack in the forehead, causing her to lose her balance, careen onto the sidewalk, and briefly become unconscious. She had a concussion, a fractured hip (she’d fallen on her side), multiple lacerations on her face, and a badly broken leg. (Her calf had twisted behind her as she fell.) There had also been some internal bleeding, which had been stanched. The situation was not life-threatening, but it required monitoring. Further surgery might be necessary. She’d be in the hospital for several weeks at least, if not a month or two.

  Olympia’s first reactions were horror and distress at the thought of her mother’s pain, followed by relief that she wasn’t about to die—not right now, at least. Those emotions, in turn, were followed by a more selfish thought: her father was going to have to move in with one of his daughters. Or one of his daughters was going to have to move back to Hastings to live with him. Despite his groundbreaking work on the origin of quark and lepton flavors, Bob Hellinger didn’t know how to boil an egg. Olympia knew instantly that she didn’t want the responsibility to fall to her. As unconditionally as she’d always loved her father, his warmth and wackiness as much as his utter obliviousness to the details of daily life, her self-protective streak was stronger.

  Even as a small child, Olympia had sought out her own space and walls, establishing a secret hideaway in a tree behind the garage. It was no coincidence that she’d spent most of her twenties traveling the world, beginning with a junior year abroad in Florence. Later, there had been a waitress gig at an expat hangout in Prague, followed by the obligatory treks through Thailand and India, a photo editor stint for a Time Out start-up in Ho Chi Minh City, and a bum-around period in Baja California—anything not to be stuck at home. Yet the claustrophobia of high school in particular had never entirely lifted. Not only had Perri been just a grade ahead of her in school and Gus just a couple below, but her mother had always seemingly been right down the hall, her reading glasses attached to a red string and banging against her bosom as she walked. In self-defense, Olympia had learned a way of being—but not really being—there.

  Maybe that was why, ten minutes later, standing next to her prostrate, incapacitated, and tubed-up mother, Olympia felt as if it were all happening to someone else’s family. She stood motionless, her eyes dry, her mind numb.

  Perri apparently had no such inhibitions. She was sobbing loudly. “I never should have asked Mom to pick up Dad’s prescription,” she said. “I should have just gone out and done it myself. It’s all my fault!”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. It’s no one’s fault,” said Olympia, draping her arm around her older sister’s bouncing back. They stood like that for a few seconds, Olympia feeling awkward. Unlike Olympia and Gus, Olympia and Perri had never had a physical relationship, not even as little girls—maybe because Perri had always preferred to imagine herself as the third adult in the house. Olympia couldn’t ever remember seeing her cry.

  Finally, Olympia felt that enough time had passed that she could remove her arm without calling attention to its absence.

  Perri sniffled a few more times. Then she said, “I need to call Mike and tell him to get the guest room ready.”

  Olympia read into the announcement that Bob would be moving to Larchmont with Perri—and breathed a sigh of guilty relief. “I should call home, too,” she said, pulling out her own phone. “If you think someone should stay at the hospital overnight, I could ask my sitter to spend the night. She’s never done it before but…” She glanced tentatively at Perri.

  “It’s okay. Lola needs you,” said Perri, just as Olympia had hoped and thought she might say.

  Ten minutes later, Olympia planted a quick kiss on Carol’s forehead and scurried out of the hospital and into a waiting taxi.

  6

  MOM, WE’RE OUT OF SYRUP,” said Aiden, drizzling the dregs of the jug onto his plate.

  “Aiden, that’s disgusting,” said Perri, glancing over from where she stood at the counter, slicing open a grapefruit. “Pancakes are not supposed to be floating in syrup.” Today was the first day of Perri’s new diet, and she was feeling predictably righteous—even as a part of her knew she’d give up this one, just as she gave up all of them, and regain whatever weight she’d lost.

  “It looks like diarrhea pancakes!” cried Sadie.

  “Sadie, you don’t have permission to be disgusting, either,” snapped Perri. “And what is that thing in your hair?”

  “A Mad-Eye Moody eye patch. Want to see?” Sadie secured the band around her forehead so it covered one eye.

  “Very amusing, but you know you’re not allowed to wear costumes to school,” said Perri.

  “I want pancake,” said Noah, attempting to climb out of his high chair, his arms flailing.

  “Noah, sit down!”

  “Hey, Mommy, is there any butter?” asked Mike, the Sports section open on his iPad.

  “I don’t know. Have you looked in the fridge?” Perri shot back.

  Mike gave her a wary look and grimaced. “Someone woke up on the wrong side of her chaise longue this morning,” he said.

  “Excuse me?” said Perri, wondering when she’d started to actively dislike her husband, as opposed to merely tolerate him.

  Mike sighed, stood up, and, with what appeared to be Sisyphus-like effort, ambled over to the fridge.

  “Lovely pancakes, Perri,” Bob said. “Thank you.”

  “My pleasure,” said Perri, who also couldn’t help but notice, and lament, the morsel of pancake stuck to her father’s beard. It would probably be there for days, she thought despairingly. To Perri’s knowledge, Bob hadn’t taken a single bath since he’d moved in two weeks ago. The towel she’d put out for him was still folded in a perfect square on the dresser. “Meanwhile, have you taken your pills yet?” she asked him.

  Bob waggled his head and sighed. “If it hadn’t been for those godforsaken pills, Carol would be on her way to school right now.” Perri couldn’t begin to fathom what made her parents’ marriage tick—and keep ticking. But they were clearly still in love, almost nauseatingly so. “I blame myself entirely,” he went on.

  “Stop, Dad,” said Perri. “It wasn’t anyone’s fault—except maybe for that moron driver. Here’s a glass of water.” She walked over to the table and set a glass down next to his plate. “Take your pills.”

  “Thank you, sweetheart,
” said Bob. Then he turned to Mike, and said, “Is there any way I could hitch a ride with you to the hospital today?” It was Mike’s “big day” to babysit.

  “It’s a little tricky because I got the Noah-Man all day,” he answered. “But let me see. He’s got his Music for Aardvarks class down on Larchmont Avenue at eleven. I guess we could detour to Yonkers on the way over, say around ten thirty?”

  “Since when is Noah doing a music class?” asked Perri, pleasantly surprised.

  Mike flexed his pectorals and arched his back, a self-contented smile to match. “Since Superdad here signed him up for one.”

  “I see,” said Perri, noting that Mike had been making a little more effort lately with the kids—and that she should probably give him credit for it. (Why did she have such trouble praising the things he did right?!)

  “Well, it sounds like an excellent plan,” declared Bob. “Says an appreciative father-in-law.”

  In his own way, Bob was trying to be a model father too, Perri thought. A model houseguest, as well. And he was. He always thanked her for meals. He spent most of the day in the den, reading physics journals. He even played the occasional chess game with Aiden. But he rarely took off his old vinyl bedroom slippers. And he seemed incapable of making a sandwich himself, or washing the sink after he brushed his teeth. That wasn’t really the issue, of course: Perri’s resentment went far deeper. Rationally, she knew that, in raising her and her sisters, her parents had gotten the big things right: they’d been both doting on a personal level and encouraging of education and achievement—Carol perhaps to a fault.

  Perri’s lingering anger was based on her memory of her parents having been so relaxed about the small stuff—about curfews and clean hands, smoking and sunscreen. In their laxness on these and other counts, they’d been highly negligent, Perri thought. How could Bob in particular, a scientist who studied radiation, not have devoted more of his energies to protecting his children from UVA (and B) rays?! Every morning, Perri looked at the indelible sun spots on her cheeks and forehead—she refused to call them “freckles,” a misleading euphemism if there ever was one—and felt simmering rage at him and Carol for having failed to preserve what little beauty she could claim. Never mind the melanoma risk.