Confessions of the Sullivan Sisters

by Natalie Standiford

  “I love spaghetti and meatballs.” I helped myself to a cracker with goat cheese.

  Clutching a big wooden spoon, Robbie poured some wine into two glasses. He lifted his, clinked it against mine, and said, “Cheers.”

  “Cheers.” I took a sip. For some reason I thought of Communion wine.

  Robbie’s cell phone rang. He frowned at the screen, then took the call, waving the spoon at me. “One second. Doyle? Yeah. Nah, man, I can’t. Not tonight. I’m busy. None of your business. I’m not telling. I won’t say if you’re right or wrong. Think whatever you want, man. Okay. Check me at the theater tomorrow night. Yeah. ‘K-bye.”

  “Doyle,” he said as he pushed buttons on his phone, turning it off.

  “Graduate school stuff?” I asked.

  He laughed. “Yeah, grad school stuff.” He gave the pasta another stir, then poured it into a colander in the sink. “Dinner is almost ready.”

  The funny baby-voice on the iPod was growing on me. “Who is this singing?”

  “Blossom Dearie. She was a cool old lady.” He tossed me a CD with a picture of a blond woman on the front. While I studied it, he made up a plate of spaghetti and meatballs for me. “Would you like salad? I can make a salad.”

  “Do you want a salad?” I asked.

  “I could live without it. But if you want one, I can whip it up easy.”

  I didn’t want salad. I felt like gorging on decadent delicious things and not bothering with fiber and vitamins and health. I wondered what was for dessert.

  “Don’t make a salad,” I said.

  He grinned and offered me a basket of garlic bread. I took a piece. It was warm and slick with butter. We started to eat. We didn’t talk. I didn’t know what to talk about. I looked around the tiny apartment, at the drawings on the wall that were probably done by his friends, the framed poster from Rushmore, and the toy robot on the windowsill.

  “Tell me a story,” I said to Robbie. “Something that happened when you were a little boy.”

  “Hmm. Okay.” He ate some spaghetti and thought of a story. “When I was twelve, my mother finally let me walk to school by myself. It was only three blocks away, but until then she always walked there with me.”

  “What neighborhood did you live in?”

  “Greenwich Village. It is not the least bit dangerous, as New York neighborhoods go. It’s nothing like West Baltimore or even this neighborhood. But when I was little it wasn’t quite as fancy as it is now.”

  He paused to take a sip of bubbly water.

  “So there I am, I’m twelve, I’m walking to school alone for the first time, and this woman runs out of an apartment building, screaming and covered in blood. I can’t understand what she’s saying except for ‘Help me! Help me!’ I froze on the sidewalk. I was completely wigged out.”

  “Did she kill somebody?”

  “I didn’t know. I ran to the newsstand on the corner and told the guy to call the police. A police car arrived and they took the woman inside the building. They told me to go on to school. I couldn’t just stand there so I went to school. I got in trouble for being late, and they called my mother to tell her. She was really mad. My first day walking to school alone and I get there late.”

  “Parents fixate on the least important things! So did you ever find out about the lady?”

  “It was on the news that night. Turns out she was from Indonesia and had been brought here as a domestic slave. They made her work day and night, fed her gruel, and never let her leave the house. She got fed up and tried to kill the couple who were holding her captive with a carving knife. But she only managed to chop off her mistress’s hand.”

  “Ew!” I reflexively grabbed my own hand to make sure it was still there.

  “I know. After that, my mother didn’t let me walk to school alone anymore. I wasn’t allowed to go anywhere alone for another year.”

  “But that’s ridiculous,” I said. “That Indonesian woman was no danger to you.”

  “I tried to tell Mom that, but the screaming and blood freaked her out.”

  “What happened to the slave?”

  “She was sent back to Indonesia and her captors were put in jail.”

  “Wow.”

  “Yeah.”

  “That’s one of those stories that makes you wonder what’s really going on in your neighbors’ houses. Are they secretly hiding domestic slaves in their attics? Do they live in a maze of old newspapers they refuse to throw away? Are they working on an invention that will solve the mysteries of time travel?”

  Robbie laughed. “See that window right there? Fifth floor, third from left?” He pointed to one of the glowing windows across the courtyard. The light was on but the shade was drawn.

  “Yeah?”

  “There’s a girl in there who puts on a gypsy costume and dances around.” He stood up and whirled around the kitchen, waving his arms. “Late at night, every once in a while. She keeps her shades closed except when she’s doing her gypsy dance.”

  “Is she casting a spell?”

  Robbie shrugged. “I don’t know what she’s doing. But she sure seems to want people to see her in that costume.” He reached over to the stove for a pot. “More meatballs?”

  “Just one more, please. They’re delicious.”

  “Thank you.” He spooned more sauce onto my spaghetti. “I also make a great shrimp risotto. Dad’s recipe.” He passed me more garlic bread. “Your turn to tell a story.”

  “Okay.” I decided to tell him a story I’d never told anyone else. “One time Daddy-o decided to take St. John and Sully sailing for the weekend. They were going to sail all around the Chesapeake and fish and sleep on the boat. Jane and Sassy and I protested—it wasn’t fair. We wanted to go. But there wasn’t room for all of us on the boat, and anyway, it was supposed to be a father-son thing. This was before Takey was born.

  “So Ginger said we girls could have our own fun weekend without them, and she took us to New York. We’d get a suite in the Pierre, she said, and go to shows—especially the kind of girly, cheesy musicals Daddy-o won’t go to, like Wicked—and shop and eat out and ride in a carriage through Central Park…the works. Daddy-o and the boys would be jealous.”

  “The Pierre,” Robbie said. “Wow—you’re really rich, aren’t you?”

  “Um—not really…but in a way. It’s a long story.” I felt embarrassed. Don’t hold it against him, Almighty.

  “I’m sorry. It sounds like a fun weekend.”

  “That’s what we thought. We took the train up to New York and checked into the Pierre. We had a beautiful suite overlooking the park and tickets to see Wicked that night. We got dressed up and went to the show and it was great. Afterward we went out for a late supper and Ginger said we could order whatever we wanted, so I ordered lobster. Ginger ordered garlic shrimp. She said she could be as stinky-breathed as she wanted that weekend since Daddy-o wasn’t around. But then she didn’t eat it. She didn’t eat anything.”

  I ate the last bite of my garlic bread.

  “Sassy and Jane and I chattered about the show and how we couldn’t wait to watch The Wizard of Oz again now that we knew the real story behind the Wicked Witch of the West. Everything seemed wonderful. But near the end of dinner I realized that Ginger had been pretty quiet. I glanced at her and caught her staring at the next table with the saddest look on her face.”

  “What was at the next table?”

  “Just some old married couple. I don’t know if something about them made her sad or if she just happened to be staring sadly in their direction. It’s weird for Ginger to look sad like that, though. She’s usually very cool and unflappable.”

  Robbie offered me more garlic bread. “I don’t care if your breath is stinky.”

  “Thanks.” I took some, because he was eating it too, so we’d both be stinky. If it came to that. “We went back to the hotel and went to bed. I got up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom and saw Ginger sitting in the living room, and she was cr
ying.”

  “Oh. Poor Ginger.”

  “You don’t understand—that’s so not like her, at all. I asked her what the matter was, and she said, ‘I’m sorry, honey, but I think we have to go home.’ And I said, ‘Why?’ and she said, ‘I just miss your father too much.’”

  “Wow. That’s kind of romantic.”

  “I didn’t think so. I was ten at the time, and I was pissed that we had to go home before our big weekend was over. But I was scared too, because she was so miserable she looked sick. This weepy, pale person wasn’t the Ginger I knew. She called Daddy-o, and he and the boys came home early too. She ruined everybody’s weekend because she couldn’t stand to spend one night without Daddy-o. I know it doesn’t sound like a big deal but the whole thing shocked me. I realized my parents had never spent a night apart for as long as I could remember. They act all blasé about their marriage but they’re actually completely dependent on each other.”

  “My mother would probably say that wasn’t too healthy.”

  “I’m sure it isn’t. It made me think of my parents in a new way. A new, kind of pathetic way. It was the first time I thought of Ginger as…well, needy.”

  “I think you’re being too hard on her,” Robbie said. “Your parents love each other. That’s good.”

  “I guess. But it’s not one hundred percent good.”

  I took a breath and stared at my plate, which had somehow been cleaned. When did I eat all that spaghetti?

  Then I looked up at Robbie. He was waiting to hear why Ginger and Daddy-o loving each other wasn’t one hundred percent good.

  “Because they love each other more than they love us,” I said.

  “That can’t be true.”

  “Yes it can.” I drank some water. Time to change the subject, quick. “Whew. I just talked your ear off.”

  “That’s okay. I talked yours off first.”

  “Both of our stories happened in New York.”

  “Stuff’s always happening there. You should go back sometime.”

  “I will.”

  We sat in silence for a minute. It was a comfortable silence. I thought about what had just happened. I had blabbed to him a stupid story about my family. I had blabbed without self-consciousness. It was almost like talking to one of my sisters. And he seemed completely into it.

  I looked at his hair, his liquid brown eyes, his smooth skin with its ever-changing happy expressions, his dimpled cherry grin. That’s it, I thought. I’m in love.

  “What’s for dessert?” I said.

  “Norrie, I think I’m in love with you,” he said.

  We stared at each other across the table in a strange, full-bellied, ecstatic moment of communion. Then he stood up, and I stood up, and he reached for me and pulled me to him.

  We kissed until I thought I would lose consciousness. And I did lose consciousness in a way. I didn’t faint or pass out, but my mind drifted away into another world where it sat numb and unthinking, put on mothballs until later, when I would need it.

  I will now draw a curtain across this scene. I think this is about as far as a girl and her grandmother should go when discussing matters of the heart. But there is one little coda I want to add.

  Late in the night I woke to find myself in a loft bed, the ceiling only a few feet above my head. Robbie lay next to me, snoring softly, one arm flopped over my belly.

  I gently moved his arm and slid off the loft bed. The apartment was dark. The candles had burned to stubs, but light came in through the window. I put on Robbie’s T-shirt and sat at the kitchen table and looked out.

  The moon was full and shining in a clear, cold sky, beaming its light into Robbie’s kitchen. Across the courtyard, a checkerboard of windows glowed even though it was two o’clock in the morning. The shade was open in the gypsy girl’s apartment, and I saw her, dressed in a head scarf and shawl and long, bright skirt, whirling and twirling and singing. I looked into the other windows. A stocky young man climbed into a loft bed like Robbie’s, and a gray cat jumped up next to him and rubbed her fur against his cheek. The guy nuzzled her. They rubbed their noses together, then settled down for the night. The gypsy girl whirled and danced. All was well in the hive of students.

  When I got home after breakfast the next morning, the house was quiet. Ginger and Daddy-o and Jane were still sleeping, and Miss Maura was cleaning up the kitchen. I heard TV noises coming from the den, and looked in. Sassy was on the couch watching cartoons with Takey, her arm over his shoulder, his hand on her leg. They didn’t notice me. They were both mesmerized by the show, with that TV zombie look on their faces, unself-conscious, cherry Popsicles melting in their hands. In that pose Sassy looked like a little kid, unaware of the way her left foot bounced off the end of the ottoman or the sticky Popsicle juice dripped down her fingers.

  I felt old suddenly. Or maybe not old, but mature. I felt happy and sad. I touched my face, my bony new cheeks.

  Everything was different now.

  THIRTEEN

  YOU INVITED SASSY, AND ONLY SASSY, FOR TEA THAT WEEK. Ginger, Jane, and I got the message: You were mad at us. I don’t know what Ginger did to upset you, but I figured some of the rumors about me had gotten back to you. As for Jane, her crimes were no mystery: the Sun had just published the story about her blog and all the scandalous family secrets, and then she was suspended from school for blasphemy. She expected trouble—no, she wanted trouble.

  I came home from school and then realized I’d forgotten to get tampons, so I asked Jane if she wanted to drive to Roland Pharmacy with me. She was restless from being stuck at home all day so she said yes. It started raining. We drove to the pharmacy accompanied by the slap of the wipers, the swish of the water under our tires, and the smell of wet wool.

  I pulled up in front of the pharmacy. “Come in or wait in the car?”

  “Wait in the car,” Jane said. “Get me a Mounds bar.”

  I picked up a box of tampons and stopped to scan the magazine rack for a second. I heard a familiar voice say, “I’m picking up a prescription for my mother.” Brooks Overbeck propped his elbows on the pharmacy counter, handing a prescription slip to the pharmacist.

  “It’ll be ready in just a minute, son,” the pharmacist said.

  Brooks turned and leaned against the counter to wait, surveying the after-school activity in the store. His eyes brushed past the middle school girls giggling over greeting cards and a woman studying moisturizers until they reached the magazine rack and caught me staring at him. As he ambled over, I casually held the box of tampons behind my back.

  “Hey, Norrie, what d’ya know?”

  “Hi, Brooks.”

  He pulled a cream-colored envelope from his jacket pocket. “Got this in the mail today. You’ll be getting my official reply in writing, of course, once my mother shows me the proper way to write it, but off the record the answer is ‘Yeah, baby!’”

  “Answer?” I didn’t know what he was talking about. “Answer to what?”

  “You’re a cool one.” He tapped the envelope against his palm. “Always were, weren’t you?”

  “Cool? Me? No, I’m not cool at all.” I shifted the box of tampons to the crook of my arm—let him see them, I didn’t care anymore—and snatched the envelope out of his hand. It was thick, creamy Downs’ stock, addressed to him, and the return address was mine. But the handwriting—thin, scratchy, yet forceful—was unmistakably yours, Almighty.

  “I was hoping you’d ask me,” Brooks said. “I got a few other invitations too, but I was waiting for yours.”

  I opened the card. Mr. and Mrs. Alphonse Sullivan III request the pleasure of your company at the presentation of their daughter, Louisa Norris, at the Bachelors Cotillon, Saturday, December 21…

  This might surprise you, Almighty, but I don’t like it when people take actions in my name without my permission. My first thought was: How dare she?

  My mind raced furiously, but I didn’t know what to say to Brooks. This wasn’t his fault.


  “Overbeck,” the pharmacist called.

  “I’ve got to go,” Brooks said. “I’ll be in touch. Ciao!”

  He returned to the counter for his mother’s medicine. I grabbed a Mounds for Jane and paid the cashier. Then I ran out to the car.

  “Did you see anybody in there?” Jane asked, because we almost always see somebody we know at Roland Pharmacy.

  “Brooks,” I said. “And you’ll never believe what Almighty did.”

  “Oh, I’ll believe it,” Jane said. “There’s nothing you can tell me about Almighty that will surprise me.”

  “You’re lucky, then,” I said. “Because she sure shocked the hell out of me.”

  And it wasn’t going to be the last time, was it?

  “Ginger!” I yelled when I got home. I threw my coat down at the foot of the stairs. Jane gleefully hovered nearby, ready for a dustup. “Ginger!”

  It was strange that she wasn’t in the sunroom with a cup of tea, talking on the phone with one of her friends. I don’t know why I yelled for her. I wanted her to fight for me—for my right to choose my own escorts, to live my own life. But of course Ginger was probably in on the whole thing, wasn’t she?

  At last she appeared at the top of the stairs, looking rattled. She had her glasses on—her big bug-eye glasses—and her hair was half-teased on one side and flat on the other. She was wearing her flowered silk pajamas. Obviously something was wrong.

  “Stop yelling and come upstairs, girls. Something’s happened.”

  Jane and I looked at each other. Jane was anticipating something juicy. Most of her facial expressions contain an element of satanic glee.

  We went into Ginger’s room and found Sassy facedown on the bed, sobbing. Takey patted her clumsily on the head.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “Wallace is dead,” Ginger said.

  “What?” Jane cried.

  Ginger shook her head and sat down next to Sassy, rubbing her back. “Sassy found him. She was leaving Almighty’s and saw Wallace in his car. Dead.”

  “Just sitting there?” I asked.

  “With his eyes open,” Takey reported.