The Sisters Club

by Lauren Baratz-Logsted

  “I’m not concerned about your social lives,” I said with no mercy. “You want to be published writers, right?”

  Twenty heads nodded.

  “Well, if you are ever lucky enough to land a publishing contract—we won’t even talk about talent—you’ll be expected to meet deadlines. So you can consider this your first deadline. Now, shoo, get out there and write.”

  • • •

  I hurried from the classroom to my office, hurrying not because I wanted to get there quickly but because I just wanted to get out of the damn cold. The campus would be pretty enough in a few months, when the flowers sprang up around the lake and it was finally warm enough again to sit on the benches and feed the ducks, but for now I was sick of winter.

  The plaque outside my office door read “PROFESSOR LISE BARRETT, MFA.” I never looked at it without a feeling of pride: pride at what I did for a living, followed hard by a feeling of imposture.

  Fifteen years ago, I’d been a student at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where I’d received my MFA with much fanfare. I was supposed to be the Next Great Thing. In truth, I was much as John was now: all sound and a lot of fury, signifying not much. Oh, sure, I’d placed the odd story in increasingly less prominent publications, starting out with the Paris Review and Esquire before the precipitous fall that had landed my last story in some last-chance publication named the Last Chance Review. Seriously. I think maybe they paid me two dollars and a contributor’s copy. And I may be being optimistic about those two dollars.

  At least the MFA at Iowa earned me the right to teach writing at the university level. And when I’d started here right after receiving that MFA, I’d been greeted with open arms. The dean was sure I’d earn prodigious renown, earning some for the university as well. But if the name of the game was publish or perish, then I was perishing here. I’d never set out to write short stories—I was a novelist at heart—but between teaching classes and tutoring others on how to write, somehow there never seemed time to write anything in my beloved long form.

  Before you know it, a decade and a half have slipped by, and you’ve got nothing to show for it but a dollar from the Last Chance Review and a handful of students who will probably succeed where you failed.

  I draped my winter coat over the back of my chair, rubbed my hands together in the north-facing tiny office that was never warm enough, even in spring, and turned on my computer.

  Funny, but when I first started out teaching, office hours, which I was supposedly there for right now, were always filled with students stopping by. We’d get into debates about what was going on in the classroom or about what Art with a capital A should/shouldn’t be. We’d talk about life. But now everyone relied so heavily on computers as a form of communication, nearly no one ever stopped by. They just e-mailed. My colleagues complained relentlessly about this. They said students were always making the most outrageous, not to mention stupid, requests through e-mail: “Will you read my essay now and tell me what you think before it’s due on Friday so I can perfect it before the due date?” “What notebook should I buy for your class?” “I’m not going to be in class on Friday—big kegger the night before—so do you think you could loan me your notes?” Me, I couldn’t see what they were complaining about; answering e-mails, even a whole slew of them, took less time than talking face-to-face with students for ninety minutes two days a week. Me, I had a whole file of stock answers to plug in because students did predictably ask the same questions over and over again. Me, I missed the contact of talking to other human beings, even much younger ones looking for a good grade, face-to-face.

  The computer was warmed up; my e-mail was on.

  There were several e-mails involving departmental bullshit plus the usual assortment of spam the university’s supposedly strong spam-filter never quite managed to keep out. There were also three other e-mails: one from student John, one from my sister, and one from Tony. I opened John’s first.

  From: JohnQuayle@yahoo.com

  To: Lise.Barrett@ctubiversity.edu

  I’m attaching my chapter for your early review. Since you did say even I wasn’t exempt from revisions, perhaps you could read it now and tell me what you think I ought to change.

  I pulled out one of my stock replies from the folder I’d created just for such purposes.

  From: Lise.Barrett@ctuniversity.edu

  To: JohnQuayle@yahoo.com

  ’Fraid not. If I read your chapter today, it would give you an unfair advantage over the others. The only way to make it fair would be if we declared your due date to be today instead of next week and graded you accordingly. Are you sure that’s what you want?

  I was sure it wasn’t. With John out of the way, I could concentrate on Sara.

  From: sarabarrett@peacers.net

  To: Lise.Barrett@ctuniversity.edu

  Sis-tuh!

  You would not believe how amazing it is here! We’ve moved east and it’s much better than the last village we were in. Of course, I got diarrhea right off the bat, but I recovered nicely and am still just loving everything about Africa. The people! The animals!

  How is the novel going?

  Love

  Several months ago, Sara had thrown over a safe and respectable job at a relocation agency, plus the full benefits and retirement plan that came with it, to follow her dream of working in a Peace Corps type of organization. It was a move that our parents, security-oriented workers right down to their own 401Ks, were appalled at. As far as I was concerned, in their eyes, they were glad I’d seemingly given up my dream of writing novels and were even more so now that Sara had done a bunker on them. On some level it was galling to think my younger sister was braver than I. But it was tough to resent Sara. In sympathy and solidarity, then, and in part not wanting to be out-adventured by my younger sister, I’d recently told Sara I’d started working, finally, on a novel, in earnest and in secret. Our secret. Of course, I hadn’t done anything of the kind.

  I wrote back, telling her what I thought she wanted to hear—that the secret novel was going well—and imploring her to keep on top of her malaria pills. Then I opened the last e-mail.

  From: Antony.DiCaprio@ctuniversity.edu

  To: Lise.Barrett@ctuniversity.edu

  Do you have any idea how good you look in those jeans? And how much I’d like to see you out of them? But, alas and alack, I promised Dean Jones I’d pop by for some of his wretched sherry this evening. Rain check on those jeans?

  Tony was in the same department as I am, but he taught only dead authors, while I’d committed myself to live ones. Hey, at least we both loved to read. Tony was also the kind of rangy, long-limbed, blond-and-blue-eyed man who could make tweed look trendy, and he was my other big secret. Not that we’d get fired if people learned of our on-again, off-again affair—I mean, it wasn’t like he was a student, after all—but it would be frowned upon, particularly when each of us came up for peer review.

  We’d been together for three years. At the end of the first year, he’d asked me to marry him. Not realizing how serious he was, I’d all but laughed in his face.

  “Who gets married these days after just one year together?” I’d said. “And why? I’m not even ready to have kids yet.”

  A year later, following a pregnancy scare of Sara’s, I thought I had the childbearing itch and asked him to marry me. It was his turn to laugh.

  “You’re still not ready to have kids. You’re not ready to be married,” he’d said. “Don’t be ridiculous. Ask me again someday when you understand what it is you’re saying.”

  I had a hunch that his “no” was a defensive reaction to my earlier “no,” but even I could see he was right: I wasn’t ready, neither for marriage nor kids.

  Since then, we’d just continued on in our off-again, on-again way, neither of us ready for anything more, both content to remain what we were—at least for the time being—a man and a woman who enjoyed each other’s company more than we did anyone else’s. Oh, and the sex was still good
.

  I wrote him back that he could have as many rain checks as he needed, provided he had some power over the universe and could make it warm enough to turn the oddly persistent snow into rain.

  Then I shut down the computer and declared office hours over early for once. No one was going to show, and if John Quayle wrote back again, well, I could always deal with him tomorrow.

  Diana

  The early-morning sun streaming through the mini blinds cast zebra-striped, tan shadows diagonally across my naked body. Too bad the body thus illuminated wasn’t a better one. Put it this way: Rubens would have placed me on a diet.

  “Come on, Diana,” Dan said, his voice husky, “roll on top. Please. You know you come better that way.”

  It was true, of course. But I always hesitated, fearful I would crush my husband of one month. Not that I weighed that much more than Dan. Not that much. The high-tech scale in our enormous bathroom put his weight at two hundred pounds—he was very tall, so he could carry it easily—while it put my own at two seventy-five. It had taken me a while to get used to the American system of weights and measures, but really, whatever language you were putting the numbers up in, it was a lot.

  As gingerly as I could, feeling something like an elephant in a rose garden, I did as Dan asked. I spread my thighs around him and he entered me, his hands on my buttocks pulling me closer to him. It felt so good.

  I could never look down at my husband from this position without marveling at my incredible good fortune. He was so beautiful with that jet-black hair, startling blue eyes, straight nose, determined jaw, and those perfect lips that never minded taking the dive down between my legs.

  I’d met Dan early the previous year. My girlfriends from work had insisted I accompany them to a private club to celebrate one of their birthdays. I didn’t normally like to go to places like that, because there was too much risk of someone saying something hurtful, but it seemed churlish to opt out of someone else’s birthday celebration. Not in the door a half hour, Dan made his move on me. At first, I thought it was some kind of put-up job. Surely, it was a joke, this American man in London on business taking an interest in pathetic me. But Dan was so determined to talk to me, dance with me, get to know me better—he said I was charming, funny, and beautiful—and I started to believe maybe fairy tales really do come true.

  We’d been standing at the bar, winded from dancing three dances in a row, waiting for our drinks. Dan had his arm possessively around my shoulders when some sot sat down on a stool next to him and, leaning in with bleary eyes, tapped Dan on the arm.

  “What’s this?” said the sot. “Fancy a bit o’ the lard, do you?”

  And then Dan did something disgusting; a truly and wonderfully disgusting thing I’d never seen him do before or since. He put his finger up his nose, took out a snot, and examined it as though puzzled.

  “What’s this?” he said, echoing the sot’s own words. Then, as though discovering the answer to the sphinx, knowledge dawned on his face and he looked at the sot with a cold gleam in his eyes. “Oh, that’s right. It’s your brain.” Then he wiped it on the sot’s sleeve. “Now fuck off.”

  It was a vulgar thing to do, of course, but Dan was so refined in every other way, it made it OK. Plus, he’d done it in defense of me. No one had ever done such a thing on my behalf before.

  I suppose if Dan hadn’t been so much stronger looking than the sot, the sot might have fought him, but instead he slinked off, ashamed.

  But I no longer cared. There was no one else in the club any longer as far as I was concerned. Because if it hadn’t been love at first sight earlier, it certainly was then.

  We were married on New Year’s Eve.

  And now I was back in the present, and Dan was squeezing his hand between our jointure, as he liked to do, placing two fingers on my clit and rubbing until he was sure we’d come at the same time.

  “I love you,” he said afterward, a bead of sweat above his gorgeous brow as he strained upward to kiss me on the lips, “so very much.”

  Dan rolled me off of him and slapped me on the thigh. “I wish I could stay here like this with you all day,” he said with an easy smile, “but someone has to work around here.” The words might sound it, but there was no criticism in his voice. Then he rose from the bed, looking like a Greek god, and headed off to the bathroom. A moment later, I heard the shower. Already, I knew his habits. The shower would take no more than five minutes, another five to do whatever it is men do in the bathroom, then he’d be into his expensive dark-gray suit like a light, and, briefcase in hand, he’d head downstairs for a quick exit. I’d offer to make him breakfast, but he’d insist I wasn’t to move one beautiful limb, that he’d have the limo driver stop on the way into the city.

  And then he was gone. Dan Taylor, CEO.

  Alone, I did what I did most days since Dan had moved me there: lived the life of a lady of leisure, tidying up a bit before the cleaning lady came. Mostly, I thought about my life.

  A long time ago I had taken the words of the Duchess of Windsor to heart. I’d wanted nothing more than to be rich and thin. And loved, of course, but that had always seemed like an impossible dream until Dan came along. Now, thanks to Dan, I had that as well as the first item in the duchess’s dictum. I lived in a house that could only be termed a modern mansion, made of red brick with white trim and black shutters framing the long windows, not far from one of the best golf courses in the country. Dan always said that, come the warm weather, he’d teach me how to play. I thought it was great that he’d want me there, part of his own private oasis of sanity; but even though I smiled whenever he suggested it, I knew I’d never say yes. The idea was sheer madness; there were too many possible sand traps of embarrassment there. For whatever else I was, whatever Dan had enabled me to become—a rich woman who was loved—I’d never have the other half of the duchess’s equation: I would never be too thin.

  Of all the men I’d been with in my forty-two years, and I had been with several, Dan was the only one who never asked me to lose weight for him.

  “You have such a pretty face.” I’d heard those words all my life. And it was true. I also had thick blond hair I usually wore up in a French braid, soft brown eyes, naturally clear skin that any spotty actress would envy, a cupid mouth revealing even white teeth. I did have a pretty face. And yet even Fat Frank, who would have outweighed me on that bathroom scale by at least a hundred American pounds, had always said, “If only you’d lose a bit of that weight, Di, you’d be such a looker.”

  As if he was one to talk.

  But Dan never said that. Oh, he did tell me I had a pretty face, often. But he also told me the rest of me was pretty too.

  The phone rang and when I looked at caller ID, I saw it was London calling. It was my sister, Artemis. Well, it was already afternoon there.

  I let it ring for a few times, debating whether or not to pick up. Even reviewing the hurtful things men had said to me in the past was sometimes preferable to talking to Artemis; if I were a bunny rabbit, I often thought, Artemis would be both my carrot and my stick. But I knew if I didn’t pick up, she’d only keep calling. Artemis knew I rarely left the house.

  “How’s Connecticut treating you?” she said in plummy tones as soon as I answered. “Are you ready to pack it in and come home yet?”

  “No,” I said, not for the first time. “I like it here. Dan’s here.” Well, the second part was true, at any rate.

  “Just give it a little time,” she said. “Before you know it, Dan’s being there won’t feel like enough.”

  She was always such a ray of sunshine, my sister, Artemis.

  Four years my junior, Artemis had received every good thing and gene the Richards family had to offer, plus she got all the love; I just got the food. Whenever I was sad about something, or angry or hurt or even happy, my mother would just give me another piece of cake. Before I knew it, my body was something like cake.

  “How is that possible?” Artemis said, after I
’d assured her Dan was enough. “You don’t go out anywhere. You don’t see anybody. You haven’t made any new friends there yet, have you?”

  All of this was true.

  I tried to tell myself that her words only sounded bitchy, that in reality she was merely worried I’d wind up hurt. Still, those words of hers did rankle.

  “It’s only been a month,” I pointed out. “Technically, I’m still on my honeymoon.” I was starting to feel angry. “You give it time.”

  “Now, now,” she laughed. “There’s no need to get shirty.”

  “I’ve got to go,” I said.

  “Brunch date?” she said sharply, suspiciously.

  “Yes,” I said firmly, thinking of the cleaning lady, Consuela, due soon to arrive. Well, it did qualify as a date. Sort of.

  “Is it with a man?” she said. “Does Dan know?”

  “No,” I said. “It’s with a Brazilian…dignitary.”

  “Oh. Well. La-di-da. Be sure to shoot me out an e-mail later and tell me how brunch went with your dignitary.”

  “Give Mum my love,” I said.

  “Will do. But perhaps you might call her sometime yourself?”

  Here’s the thing about Artemis: she could be a bitch to the hilt, but sometimes she had a valid point.

  She rang off.

  Things hadn’t always been quite this way between Artemis and me—her being unpleasant, me parrying the unpleasantness. When we were very young, we even shared a pair of friends, Sally and Samantha, who were themselves sisters, same ages as we were. I always envied the way Samantha stood up for Sally when the boys at school picked on her for being too puny to be any good at sports, and I envied the way they liked to wear the same clothes, despite the difference in their ages; it was as though they admired each other so much, they liked looking the same. I longed to have what they had—sisters, loving and supporting one another—and was grateful for their friendship. I was grateful that our friendship with them brought Artemis and me just a little closer together. But then they moved away and Artemis and I drifted apart.