Sisterland

by Curtis Sittenfeld

  I saw that she’d separated the bags into shirts, pants, and dresses; I also saw that all the visible clothes were the same brand of organic Swedish cotton. “Is Amelia’s name in them?” I asked. “Or I can just write down what everything is so we remember to—”

  Courtney waved a hand through the air, cutting me off. “It’s all yours to keep. We’re done.”

  “Are you sure?”

  She nodded. “My uterus is closed for business.”

  When Jeremy and I had walked home from the Wheelings’ after shish kebabs and brownies, I’d waited until we were two houses past theirs and said, “I really like them.”

  Jeremy said, “Someone has a friend crush.”

  “On him or her?”

  He laughed. “Either way. They’re an attractive couple.”

  “The whole interracial thing is interesting,” I said. “Don’t you think? I wonder how much they’re aware of it on a daily basis.”

  “If you mean does Hank know he’s black and does Courtney know she’s white, I suspect the answer is yes.”

  “Ha-ha.”

  “I’m sure they get comments from time to time. I mean, we’re not living in Brooklyn. But they’ve been together since college.”

  “Where’d they go?”

  “Harvard.” Jeremy hadn’t said it in a particularly meaningful tone—his best friend from high school had gone to Harvard—but it was a reminder of some of the differences between us. “Hank paints, I think,” Jeremy said. “Has he mentioned that?”

  “A little.” Then I said, “How about this? I promise not to fall in love with Hank if you promise not to fall in love with Courtney.”

  We were one house away from ours, and I was pushing Rosie in the stroller; she had just gotten a second wind and was making high-pitched squeals. Jeremy was walking slightly behind me, and he patted my rear end. He said, “How could I ever fall in love with Courtney when I’m married to this?”

  Chapter 18

  The night of Vi’s prediction, we watched TV until twelve o’clock, at which point the world didn’t end and my sister announced that she was hungry. In the kitchen, she went for the leftover lo mein first, eating it from the carton, still cold. After she’d polished it off, she moved on to the eggplant, which she heated in the microwave. She tilted the plate toward me and said, “You really don’t want any?”

  “I ate dinner about six hours ago.”

  “Exactly.”

  “I’m okay. Oh, what the hell.” I pulled a pint of caramel ice cream from the freezer.

  “Now we’re talking,” Vi said.

  “It’s fine if you want to spend the night,” I said as I scooped ice cream into a mug. “You can sleep upstairs with me.” The invitation wasn’t entirely unselfish—as long as Vi remained in our house, the night was about her. If she left, what would distract me from what I’d done?

  “Driving tonight was weird,” Vi said. “Or weird in how not weird it was. It was like when you want to put someone out of your mind and you’re like, I haven’t thought of the person in two whole days, but right then you are thinking of them. I was driving on Big Bend, thinking, I’m not freaking out! And then I’d wonder, Or am I?” After she’d swallowed a bite of eggplant, she said, “The roads were really empty, though. Some lunatic predicted a huge earthquake, and everyone was staying home.”

  “It’s midnight in St. Louis,” I said. “Everyone is home anyway.”

  She scoffed. “You just think that because you’re always home. Don’t forget it’s a Friday.”

  “Well, it’s great you drove. Whose car did you use?”

  “Patrick’s. Which, to give credit where credit is due, Patrick can be a pain in the ass about his Audi, but he didn’t blink when I asked if I could borrow it.”

  “Do you want any before I put it back in the freezer?” I held up the pint of ice cream, and Vi leaned forward, dipped her index finger in, and licked it.

  “I meant in a mug,” I said.

  She smirked. “You offered.”

  Upstairs, Vi used the bathroom while I checked on the children, and she was already under the covers when I climbed into bed. I turned off the light on my nightstand, and as I did, Vi bolted upright, frantically waving one hand in front of her face. “Oh. My. God. You reek of sex.”

  “What are you talking about?” I tried not to panic; at least in the dark, Vi couldn’t see my face.

  “Are you having an affair? Who’d you have sex with if Jeremy is out of town?”

  Wasn’t the answer to this question obvious? Presumably, a person could not be psychic at all and still get it on the first guess. But I wasn’t admitting to anything; even if I wanted to, and a part of me did, doing so would be a further betrayal of Jeremy. I said, “If you think I smell bad, feel free to sleep on the couch downstairs.”

  “You don’t need to be defensive just because you had sex.” Vi had laid back down, and she pulled up the sheet and bedspread. “I forgot how nasty semen smells. There’s a reason to be a dyke, huh? Remember when you were saying there’s no good reason?”

  “That was never what I said. You have to let that go, Vi.” But she had given me an opportunity to change the subject, and I said, “So how’s Stephanie?”

  “I don’t know. You’d have to ask her.”

  “You’re not an item anymore?”

  “If you really want to know, this South African radio station interviewed me, and when they asked if I was single or married, I said I was in a relationship, and a few minutes later, the interviewer said, ‘So how does your beau feel about this prediction?’ and I said, ‘It’s not a big deal with us.’ Stephanie was listening online, which I had no idea she could even do, and she freaked out that I hadn’t corrected him. And I was like, how was I supposed to know beau can only refer to a dude? I’m not fluent in French.” Vi turned her head toward me in the dark. “Oh, come on. You’re not going to gloat over the irony?”

  “I bet if you apologize to Stephanie, she’ll give you another chance,” I said. “She seemed super into you.”

  “I did apologize.”

  “You said you were sorry?”

  “I said excuse me if I haven’t been out and proud since I was a freshman in college, but not all of us arrived at the lesbian party as early as she did.”

  “That’s not an apology.” Then I said, “Not that this is any of your business, but Jeremy and I had sex before he left town yesterday, and I haven’t had a chance to take a shower. It’s kind of hard with Rosie and Owen.”

  “Wow, two young kids and you guys are still at it like rabbits.”

  Oh, to have been telling the truth! To just be able to undo the act, to rewind the evening.

  “By the way,” Vi said, “I can’t believe you shelled out fifteen grand for Emma Hall. I’d have guessed three thousand, five thousand tops, but fifteen thousand—too bad we can’t all be publicists.”

  “Is she still helping you?” I said. “I assume she arranged the Today interview this morning.”

  “She’s good at what she does, don’t get me wrong. But fifteen thousand is a lot of bones.”

  “Did you end up getting any licensing-fee payments?”

  “Today wanted to show family pictures, and I knew you wouldn’t like it, so I said no. Aren’t you impressed by my integrity?”

  Not that she was wrong—I’d have hated for images of me or our parents to appear on television—but it seemed so frustratingly fitting that my sister alone among insta-celebrities was managing not to make money off her newfound fame.

  “Do you really think I should call Stephanie?” she asked.

  “Yes.” I turned onto my stomach. “Just so you know, Owen will wake up in two hours, and I’ll have to go feed him.”

  “He doesn’t sleep through the night yet?”

  “Vi, if you’re going to start—”

  “Don’t get your panties in a wad. Your disgusting-smelling panties, that is.”

  We both were quiet for a long time, and I felt m
yself falling toward sleep when I heard Vi say, “Now that I was wrong about the earthquake, do I have to move to a different city? Should I change my name?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Or dye my hair?”

  “You don’t need to dye your hair.”

  “I could henna it.” She sounded chipper. “I’ve always wanted to try that. Are you still awake?”

  “Barely.”

  “You could do it, too,” she said. “Henna doesn’t have chemicals like regular hair dye.” I didn’t respond, and she said, “I did know that beau means boyfriend. I pretended like I didn’t, but I did.”

  “Call her tomorrow,” I mumbled.

  And then Vi didn’t say anything more, and I didn’t either, and the silence of the night stretched and stretched until it swallowed us; it pulled us down together, and my sister and I slept, as we had not done for many years, in the same bed.

  I awoke at five-fifty and decided to shower. By the time I was dressed, Owen was stirring, and by the time I’d gotten both children downstairs, I’d received a text from Hank, adding to the two texts and two voice mails from Jeremy I hadn’t responded to the night before, all of them saying variations on the same thing. You ok? Going to bed, connect in A.M. Hank’s text said, C coming home at noon. We should talk.

  Vi slept through the chaos of breakfast, and I left a note for her at the bottom of the stairs: Taking kids for a walk. Help yourself in kitchen.

  When we joined Hank and Amelia in their backyard, Hank was sitting on the step between the deck and the grass, drinking coffee from a stainless-steel thermos, looking tired. As we approached, Amelia called out, “I’m making porridge!”

  I set my hand on Rosie’s shoulder and said, “Want to help Amelia?”

  At breakfast, Rosie had held up a Cheerio and said, “It looks like the baby’s belly button,” and Owen had played peekaboo by setting his palms on his forehead and peering out from under them, as if we couldn’t see him that way. What if Jeremy wanted a divorce and we had to split custody? No, I could never tell him. After breakfast I’d texted, Things fine here. Call u soon.

  The weather was nice again—it was a windy, sunny morning in the high fifties—and the day might, under different circumstances, have seemed like the coda to Vi’s prediction. “So no earthquake,” Hank said.

  “No earthquake,” I repeated.

  “And still no word from Vi?”

  “Actually, she came by last night. She ended up staying over.”

  He raised his eyebrows inquiringly, and while there were several possible questions he might have been asking—you made peace? how’s she doing?—the one I answered was the one I suspected he felt most curious about. I said, “I didn’t tell her anything.”

  Hank was still Hank, though—that was the confusing part. He still looked like the person I’d been friends with these last two years, he wore jeans and a long-sleeved orange T-shirt I recognized, but now I also knew about his gray Calvin Klein briefs, I knew the sigh he made when he came.

  The grass was too wet with dew to set Owen in, and I hadn’t brought a blanket, so I left him in the stroller, wheeling it around so that he’d be facing me when I joined Hank on the deck—when I joined him at a distance of several feet. I had a hunch we wouldn’t be staying long and that Owen would be our excuse, because he’d recently started to get impatient if I left him in the unmoving stroller.

  Hank was quiet for a full minute, and then, his tone lowered so that Amelia and Rosie wouldn’t hear, he said, “I’m assuming you know that I think you’re great. I’d be lying if I claimed I can’t imagine a parallel life of us together. But in this life, it’ll explode in our faces.”

  I wondered if he was waiting for me to persuade him otherwise, though at the same time I felt a little like he was breaking up with me. This idea seemed darkly funny; it seemed funny because I didn’t understand how literal it was.

  “I agree with you,” I said.

  “I hope Courtney and I make it, that this is a rough patch and we come out stronger, or whatever the bullshit is people say about their marriages. But I need to keep trying. And I think you and Jeremy have a good thing going. I don’t want to be involved in fucking it up.”

  This morning, you don’t, I thought, but Hank was no more accountable for what had happened the night before than I was. Though again, I wasn’t sure if he expected me to disagree, to announce that Jeremy and I were secretly miserable.

  Hank continued, “So our options are tell Courtney and Jeremy or don’t tell them. I know which one I vote for, but you and I have to be on the same page. It’s too messy otherwise, if one knows and one doesn’t, or if one tells the other.”

  “I’m guessing you think we shouldn’t tell them.”

  “It might seem like confessing is honorable, but ultimately, who’s the confession for? We unburden ourselves, and they both have to second-guess their whole lives. And I can see Courtney wanting a D-I-V-O-R-C-E. Just being furious at me, and going scorched earth.”

  Would Jeremy leave me if he knew? I wasn’t sure. The biggest reason he wouldn’t, of course, was that he wouldn’t want to live apart, even half the time, from Rosie and Owen; he wouldn’t want them to be children of divorce like he’d been. If our days often felt relentless, how devastating to have them free—to inhabit an uncluttered apartment in which he could spend a Saturday afternoon reading a dense academic journal without interruption, in which he could set a glass of water on a table and not assume it would immediately be knocked over. How could he go back to such order after the shrieking exuberance of Rosie in bright pink pants and a yellow shirt, jumping on the sofa, shouting, “Daddy likes to eat crocodile cheese!” No, I didn’t think Jeremy would initiate a divorce; he was likelier to remain unhappily in the marriage I had poisoned. But again, I wasn’t sure. And was there a way to explain to him, to convince him of, the insignificance of what I’d done—the impulsivity of it—and to thereby earn his absolution? Could I make him understand that having sex with Hank hadn’t been the result of a mutual attraction simmering for years but, rather, a mistake born of loneliness and stupidity?

  “Okay,” I said. Hank looked at me, and because of how we were positioned, he had to hold a hand up to his eyes to block the sun. “Okay, we don’t tell.”

  What would our other selves, our before-last-night selves, have done at this moment? Pinkie-sworn, maybe, or some other joking kind of physical contact. Had an attraction between us been simmering for years? Not really, not exactly. We liked each other, sure, but only because something had happened had the attraction retroactively taken on the air of inevitability. I wanted to ask Hank if he’d ever cheated on Courtney before, but I couldn’t. I could have if he hadn’t cheated with me, but I couldn’t now.

  He said, “Let’s keep the conversation open, in case one of us changes our mind.”

  “I won’t change my mind,” I said. “But okay.”

  When Owen began to fuss, I explained that we ought to get going, that I wanted to check on Vi anyway, and Rosie climbed willingly into the stroller, though we’d barely been there fifteen minutes. As I pushed my children out of the Wheelings’ backyard, I had no idea that I was walking away from the last moments of my friendship with Hank.

  At our house, Vi was frying eggs. “I was thinking about it, and now I get why October sixteenth was looming so large to you,” she said. “I mean, if that day-care place is where Rosie went, then no shit you’d be tuned in. But here’s what I still can’t figure out: Where’s my earthquake? Because I just can’t see Guardian misleading me.”

  “You thought October sixteenth, too,” I said.

  “Well, I trusted you.”

  “Wait, you didn’t think October sixteenth?”

  “I never got a firm date. But two heads are better than one, right? That’s how we figured out Brady Ogden, with teamwork.”

  I was the one—I alone—who had determined that the earthquake would be on October 16? Which meant—well, the implications were al
most too awful to consider. That I, not Vi, had set the hysteria in motion. That I had agitated an entire city because I’d had a sense of something big happening on a certain date, but that, in the ultimate act of narcissism, I had failed to understand that the something big had only to do with me. And the event I’d sensed was not—I wished it had been—the accident at the day care. I said, “But if I said when the earthquake would be, who said where? Did Guardian? Did you? Did you get a vibe about St. Louis, or was it just that Channel 5 newscaster with the huge boobs who assumed it?”

  Vi looked stricken. “You think?”

  I wanted to tell her that she and I should never speak of this again, that we should permanently hide the enormous error we’d made together, but surely such a suggestion would result in Vi leaving my house and calling a press conference. She might call one anyway, to warn the world that her earthquake was still at large.

  On the stove, I could see that the yolks of Vi’s eggs had turned solid and pale, the way she didn’t like them, and I said, “You might want to take those off.”

  And then on Sunday, Jeremy was home; his time away had been both endless and the blink of an eye, excessively eventful but without real meaning.

  I met him at the door—how would I possibly be able to keep my secret from him?—and I said, “They’re both asleep,” and he said, “Awesome. Let’s go upstairs.”

  “Really?” I said.

  “Why not?”

  I had thought he’d be emotional, as when he’d learned of the accident at the day care, but he was cheerful again; I was the emotional one. And indeed, after we’d gone up to our room, after we’d stood on opposite sides of the bed pulling off our clothes (for my part, I was less overwhelmed with desire than desperate to accommodate him), after I was lying on my back and he was on top of me, after we both came within roughly three minutes—after that was when I burst into tears, a profusion of them falling from my eyes, making me shake beneath Jeremy. He kissed where the saltwater ran down my face. He said, “Sweetheart. Oh, Katie. I know.” What had I done, what had I done, what had I done? And still he was kissing me, the kindest man in the world, and still I was crying uncontrollably.