Tiffany jumps off and rushes toward the shoe department. “Why are you two shopping at this hour?”
“I might ask you the same,” I say as we air-kiss. Her face is puffy; she looks heavier than when I last saw her, at her wedding.
“I’m buying Aubrey a present.” Sweet, Elodie does sweet. Probably because Tiffany’s family, including her grandparents, are patrons at the Literary Society.
Tiffany grabs the sample Burberry sneaker. “I’m avoiding brunch at Longreens or the Harbor Club and shopping instead. Do you like the leather with the plaid bit in the middle?”
“Nice,” I say.
Tiffany moves on to the white Veronica Beard sneaker.
“I don’t think I’ve seen you since right after my honeymoon. I thought I texted some pictures. Thailand was incredible. We booked a boat to the tropical islands from Phuket; we did the Krabi jungle tour.…”
Scrolling through her iPhone, Tiffany offers pictures of her with Ethan at every junket. Both of them are in straw hats and carrying backpacks.
“Look at the color of the water. Aqua!” Tiffany says.
“You know, we have some terrific books in the travel section of the Society on trips to—”
“Elodie, Tiffany has just returned from Thailand,” I say.
“No, that’s fine,” Tiffany says. “Ethan and I want to do another adventure soon. We will come in and look around the travel stacks. Sometimes it’s better with a real book.”
I feel like Tiffany is watching how I move. I hold my sweatshirt to my middle, loosely.
“Hey, how is your guy, Aubrey, the cute one with the twang?”
“Tyler,” Elodie says.
“Wasn’t he booking bands?” Tiffany asks.
“He’s good. He’s still doing it,” I say. A fair question, because in sixth grade Tiffany and I shared plans for our futures, a canvas of life as it should be. I resist the urge to ask her if the second husband is the charm.
“Aubrey?” My sister holds up a Tretorn espadrille. “These are no big deal, very cute, useful.”
“I’m fine, I can wear my Nike Airs, my Lululemon tie sneakers.”
“For what? What are they for?” Tiffany asks. “Are you and that cute guy Tyler traveling somewhere?”
“Not really, not much past South Beach,” I say.
“We’re improving Aubrey’s collection,” Elodie says. “Sneakers are a rage.”
Already Tiffany is preoccupied with the array of sneakers, stilettos, platforms, turning over a few to check the price. She is a far cry from the night of her wedding; her ponytail is straggly and she has dark roots. She holds up a Gianvito Rossi ankle-strap pump and a Balenciaga color-block sneaker.
“Life is changing—I’ll do low heels, but I can’t resist the high ones.” Tiffany starts taking pictures of the sneaker selection. “Jessica’s meeting me—Sunday was the only day she could manage. Her work, her schedule—I’m more flexible. Anyway, she’ll steer me clear of any shoe that isn’t sturdy.”
Sturdy. Elodie and I know before we are told; of course we know. Elodie nods, while I watch Jessica come off the escalator, beneath the butterflies. Tiffany starts beckoning her.
“Jessica! There you are!”
Jessica is waving her hand with her solitaire as if we are still greeting one another at Tiffany’s wedding. She does an air-kiss, my left cheek first, then my right. Next she does the same for Tiffany, then Elodie, whom she hardly knows. The overhead lights are too much. I need water. Ice-cold, refreshing filtered water.
“Aubrey with her big sister!”
“To shop—we’re on a spree.” Elodie saves the day. “But we’ve got to move on, head down the Avenue.”
“Jessica, tell them you’re going to steer me clear of shoes and clothes that won’t work while I’m pregnant!” Tiffany horse-whispers across the shoe department.
Her voice practically crashes into the wall on the other side of the building and bounces back to us. I look away from my sister. How many times has she had to hear this from a friend over the past years?
“What news!” I do as I’ve been taught: I’m brief, polite enough, excited enough.
“Yup, impregnated on the riverboat,” Jessica knows.
“A happy accident. We wanted to have some fun alone together first. Not that I care. I mean, being a newlywed, it’s not that great,” Tiffany says.
“On to what’s next on the marriage checklist,” Jessica insists.
They’ve had the conversation before.
“Congratulations,” Elodie says with that edge that means we are exiting. To be authentic, she pulls out her iPhone. “The time, it’s slipping away. Do we want to look at dresses—decide on sneakers later?”
“That’s best,” I say. Holding my sweatshirt close to me, I shrug. Meaning I must follow Elodie. I always have.
* * *
Elodie and I don’t speak until we cross the Avenue and are in a large dressing room at Saks. In the double mirrors, we are counterparts. I sit on the chair facing her. We fit as if we are a Chinese box or a puzzle, echoing each other’s shapes. Except that already my body is unlike me, as if a stranger has invaded the space and is churning up to take charge. Although I dread it, I also am inexplicably placid, marveling at the baby inside.
I kick the tired-looking pumps on the ground to the side, the pair provided by the store that everyone wears when they try on dresses.
“Not sure anything in this pile will work,” Elodie says. Obviously she’s a quasi-pro. “I grabbed a few things.”
“They might be too tight. You see how I’m getting. Worse, how some days feel.”
“I know this isn’t logical, but I feel how you feel. Like I’m a sympathetic weight gainer. I’m exhausted, too—the baby is always there,” Elodie says.
My sister linked with me—as best she can be.
“Oh, that’s so supportive. Don’t worry, it’s a pipe-dream pregnancy,” I say.
Elodie smiles. “Try these, what I brought. Nanette Lepore, Marni, a Milly dress.”
I pick up the first boxy top that she’s collected. “Can you believe that Tiffany is having a baby, too? Maybe she and I can go to natural-childbirth classes together.”
My sister recoils. “Maybe not such a great idea.”
“I mean after the news is out,” I say. “She is my friend.”
“That’s the sticky part. I mean, why rub in how your pregnancy is unconventional. By any standard, that’s the case. In a town with your childhood friend, who is pregnant naturally, it feels odd. Too odd.”
How uneasy Elodie is. I resist telling her we need to be overt, sanguine, our usual selves.
“You could come, be with me for whatever is ahead. And you’ll be at the delivery.”
“We’ll figure it out. Dr. Noel can recommend some childbirth classes in South Beach, too.” Elodie is more composed now. She starts handing over flower-print dresses and tops. “Want to start trying these on?”
In a millisecond, I pull on a navy romper and admire how it looks. I’m sleek except for where my abdomen is already stretched. I’m supposed to say womb, think womb. I can’t do that, not today. My sister watches, eyeing my smooth “bump.”
“I’m glad we’re alone, the two of us,” I say.
Both our iPhones ding. In the reflection, I laugh. “Not that alone; Mom is obviously looking for us.”
A second ding. “Let see what she wants, because I’ll either go straight to South Beach and Tyler can swing around to pick me up or I’ll go later in an Uber.” I kneel down and take my phone out of my bag. Elodie is already reading hers. “Is it from Mom?”
“She said to read her email. She’s sending it now. With a list of maternity shops in West Palm.”
“Why? We’re not doing that, are we?” I say. “I’m starving. Let’s go to Ta-boo and get lunch.”
“Yes! You must eat. Chicken Milenese, key lime pie,” Elodie says. “Let’s decide if Veronica has any ideas worth…”
I scroll th
rough my emails. “Nothing yet from Mom.”
My sister is reading. “Wait, one came in for both of us, this second. I’m reading it. Skip Mom’s list, you’ll do better right where we are.”
I read my screen. “Did you also get an email from 23andMe?”
Elodie does that brainy, nerdy scowl. “Yes, I have one, too. The results from the DNA testing, they’re in.”
“I’m really hungry.” I put the iPhone down. I take a small can of Pringles potato chips out of my bag, eat a few, handing a few to Elodie.
Elodie ignores me. “Maybe you should check yours.”
I open my water bottle, drink in gulps.
“Aubrey, please read it.” Elodie’s mouth is thin, like our mother’s mouth gets when someone is in grave danger or has died. When she cannot deliver the “headline.”
“Okay.”
The fabric on the beige love seat scratches my thighs. Elodie is on the chair across, fixated on her screen. I’m feeling queasy, almost in an air sickness mode. More that I’m in dread of what she’ll find.
“Elodie, if it’s a surprise, I don’t want to look.”
“The DNA, the report,” Elodie says.
“So do we carry a bad gene? What is it?”
I suck in what air is around us. She’s holding her phone like a weapon she can’t put down.
“That isn’t it. Not from my test,” she says.
“What do you mean, your test? Wouldn’t our tests be similar for being carriers?” I ask. My sister isn’t looking at me. She’s hunched over, reading or rereading her screen.
“Elodie?”
“The report is that we aren’t full sisters. We’re only half sisters.”
I do a fake Palm Beach laugh, like the women in Elodie’s library circle do when they don’t agree on the writer’s tone or style.
“Stop,” I say. “Stop.”
“Here, give me your iPhone. Go into your emails first, then log in to your 23andMe account.”
The fluorescent lights are too bright. I hold my phone closer to my face, tap the screen, then pass it to her.
She starts reading my results. “Yes. Exactly. Half sibs, half sisters. Mom is our mother, but Dad, he’s…” Elodie is crying. No gulps or heaves, quiet crying.
My sister, who hardly ever emotes, who has always warned me not to get upset too quickly or cry out loud. When I was in tenth grade and weeping over J. P. Ellias, who liked Beezy Blanchard better than he liked me, Elodie practically shook my shoulders. She said to me, “Here’s the key. Don’t let anyone see how you really feel, don’t let anyone know what bothers you.”
Elodie keeps at it; now she is heaving, too. “Aubrey, he’s your father or my father.”
“You’re scaring me. He’s our father. The tests, they make mistakes; maybe they get ruined when the kits are shipped or past an expiration date.” I am crying, too. “You are so smart, like Dad is.”
I have this dread and fear, a sickly sense I won’t survive. This must be what it is like when someone falls down the elevator shaft of an eighty-story building. Plummeting, spiraling downward, the shock of it. The same kind of shock I had when I was biking with Elodie two years ago. We stopped short on the Lake Trail and I flew over the handlebars. Tossed through space, I realized how everything veers, how the life you know is about to be snapped up, snatched away. Then I landed and had a broken wrist and had to have stitches on one knee and one elbow. “Lucky you,” Mom said while she sat in the ER at South Palm Hospital with me. “You are very fortunate.”
“We know she’s our mother,” I say.
Dad has to be our dad, I tell myself. It becomes a mantra, thumping around my skull. I need a wand to wave, some method to stop what’s ahead. I stretch my arms over my head for a second, as if I can vanquish this crazy shit.
“Aubrey, listen.”
Elodie has stopped crying. She comes to where I’m sitting, her legs against mine—we are that near. “I’m trying to sort it out. What I’m wondering is if you and I could both have fathers who aren’t Dad.”
Dad belongs to us and we belong to Dad, I want to yell. But this investigation is moving at record speed; I can’t be tearing up. My sister isn’t going to fuel my wishful thinking; my hope versus what she needs to learn has to clarify. She pats my thigh while scrolling through her iPhone. I cannot stand how businesslike she is.
“Before we were born, then when we were little, Mom was so pretty, so stunning. She had an affair, I bet,” I say.
I imagine our mother floating around her own life, sorry for something, pining for more. Hasn’t it always been a little like that? Yet it isn’t partially amusing or slightly curious anymore, not after today. No longer is it about Mom’s style. The questions now are: What has she done? What does she know?
“We have to find out what happened,” Elodie says, making her a mind reader.
“I know. I was just thinking that.”
More dread and fear circle around me. I can’t judge if the windowless dressing room with its lack of daylight is too much for me or if they’ve temporarily stopped circulating the air. I inhale more deeply, try those breathing exercises everyone raves about. I try to envision myself in a safe place. I hold on to the corner of my sister’s skirt. The room hurls, turns gray. I might faint.
I put my head in her lap and she pats my head. Outside the dressing room, there are voices; more women are coming into the area. Yet we can’t leave. Where would we go?
The salesperson named Deedee knocks at our door.
“Excuse me, how are you girls doing in there? Is there anything you need?” Her voice is singsong, from another galaxy.
“We’ll be out soon,” I say.
“Of course,” Deedee says. “Let me know what you’ve chosen and I’d be happy to assist you.”
Her footsteps back off.
“If Mom had an affair and got pregnant, was it with me or with you?” I whisper.
Elodie shrugs. “Maybe we’re both because of an affair.”
“Two affairs? That’s madness. Who is our mother? With Dad nowhere in this?” I say.
“I don’t know. I don’t know.…” Elodie puts her right hand to her right eye and tugs on her eyelashes.
I touch her elbow. “Don’t do that.”
“Where is Mom? We should go to her wherever she is,” Elodie says.
“She’s in a card game at Mar-a-Lago.”
“Let’s try Dad,” Elodie says.
“Dad? I’m not so sure; besides, he’s at tennis or golf.” I stare at the screen of my iPhone, at the 23andMe site.
“Let’s go find him,” Elodie says.
“No, not Dad. Mom first,” I say. “Before anyone else.”
“Why do you want to protect Dad? Why spare him?” Elodie says.
“Because we have to go to Mom first. It seems a better way to find out,” I say.
So unlike my sister—how her eyes are darting about. Like a damaged sparrow’s. I hold her against me.
“Who cares who our DNA father is? These are our parents. Dad is our dad, Elodie,” I say.
“I care,” Elodie says. “I have to know.”
Deedee knocks on the door again. “Excuse me.”
“Out in a sec,” I say. There’s sand in my mouth, dry sand; my stomach hurts.
Elodie straightens up. “Okay, so, maybe we shouldn’t do anything until we look around their house, search for papers. There have to be documents in Dad’s safe.”
“Yeah, I agree,” I say. “Can’t we ask Mom, though?”
“No, Aubrey,” Elodie says. “I doubt that. Look at the conspiracy. Look at how we were never told anything. That means no talking to James or Tyler. Or anyone else.”
We stand up and face ourselves; all that is the same isn’t quite the same. Only half the same. My sister and I have been halved.
“How do we know that 23andMe is right? That it’s not their mistake? We might call them up,” I suggest.
“Yes, we could try that,” Elodie says. “For me
, I’m certain, absolutely certain that what we learned is correct.”
How can she be positive? My iPhone bings. Tyler is texting. You joining me?
“Tyler is waiting at Mom and Dad’s for me to head back to South Beach. We’ll go through our work schedule in the car,” I say. “This whole week is busy with bands, some new singers.”
The idea of Tyler in my childhood bedroom or my parents’ den, their kitchen, their house is like being on a film set; nothing is authentic. Whoever it was who ran my hands over his chest this morning and kissed him seems to be missing, maybe gone.
“Let’s leave.” Elodie is not herself. She is practically sobbing, dissolving.
Hey, Tyler texts.
I stand up taller, text back. Yes. All right if I stay longer with Elodie?
The little bubbles show before his text comes in: Ok. Sure.
He’s such a good sport that I decide to deliver the news in small pieces. In an hour, I’ll text that I’m tired and I’ll be staying with my parents or my sister. Trading in a night at the clubs for the quiet of Palm Beach, of family. Family.
Elodie and I walk to her car. The air is infected with deceit.
CHAPTER 19
AUBREY
“Elodie, Aubrey?” Mom’s voice does that trill. “What are you doing?”
“Mom, we texted,” Elodie says. Both of us stand outside our mother’s dressing room.
“Ah yes, texted.” Mom opens the door and her closet is a crazy salad, meaning she is late. She does that bird peck with her head, since she can’t kiss or be kissed—it would affect her cinnamon-colored lipstick, or an earring might be knocked off a lobe. Our mother is easiest on the Lake Trail before seven A.M.
Mom steps out. We stand in the wide hallway at the top of the stairs. “Dad and I are off to cocktails at the Norrics’, then the Bergs’ for a dinner party.”
“We know,” Elodie says. “You told us.”
“Plus, we have an app with your calendar,” I say.
“Girls, is everything all right?”
I squeeze Elodie’s hand and she squeezes back. In a flitting second, we see how the Palm Beach machine at its finest affects her.
A Palm Beach Scandal--A Novel Page 14