The Never Never Sisters

by L. Alison Heller

  “Or we could drink it.”

  “Drink it?” He mimed surprise. “We’d have to do it quickly, though.”

  “So that there’d be no trace of it when they get back.”

  We pulled open the kitchen drawers in a rush, looking for a corkscrew, but came up empty. “Come on,” I said. “They have this”—I held up what looked to be a rubber diaphragm with perforated holes—“but not anything for wine. I mean, what is this for anyway?”

  Percy regarded it. “Maybe it’s an oven mitt?”

  “An oven mitt?” I pulled out an actual cloth oversized hand with a rooster print. “This is what an oven mitt looks like, Percy.” He held up a corncob holder with a tiny fake ear of corn on it. “And that’s a corncob holder. You, sir, are no help. No help at all.”

  I continued to open and shut drawers. I glanced up, about to make a caustic comment about his lack of assistance, when I saw him sticking the corncob holder into the top of the wine bottle. “It’s all right.” He braced the bottle against his thigh—those jeans again—and after a few twists, his biceps moving under his T-shirt, pulled out the cork. “No apology necessary.”

  We decided against glasses and walked out shoeless to the hammock. The sky was completely dark when we eased into the rope seat, swinging gently, our heads at opposite ends of the hammock.

  “So that was Dave running in the park that day, right?” Percy handed me the bottle, and I took the first swig.

  “Yep.”

  “Is that your thing? Running together?” I handed the bottle back to him.

  “Not at all. I was freaking out, couldn’t you tell?”

  “You have a bit of a poker face.” He swigged from the bottle and then passed it back. “But speaking of Dave, I have some updates on your case.”

  He had figured out, he said, a possible meaning for the notes from Hedda’s office. Stuben was the head of the corporate department—something I should have remembered—and if the random letters were initials, which Percy thought they were, this could be a possible translation:

  June 30, (met with) AP (Annie Poleci) about DT (Dave Turner) and NS? (three possible combinations—Noah Styles/Nathan Shreeky/Nick Sebly) Hour meeting, 3 x. notified corp. dept. (phone), Stuben (phone). Implement handbook policy. I took a sip, holding the wine in my mouth and letting it sit for a while as I listened.

  “Get it?” Percy said. “She’s memorializing a meeting. Someone named Annie Poleci was saying that Dave and this other guy did something, so she took the steps in the handbook and notified his department heads, et cetera.”

  I swallowed. “How do you know Annie Poleci is AP?”

  “Believe it or not, she’s the only person at the firm with those initials. She’s a junior associate in the corporate group, just started last fall.”

  “That’s Dave’s department.”

  “I know. She and I are now Facebook friends. And in the same singles book club.”

  I tilted the wine bottle to my lips for a long swallow and wiped my mouth with the back of my wrist. “That’s a weird coincidence.”

  “Not a coincidence. I friended her as part of this. Everything’s sort of falling into place. The book club meets every two months. You know when the next meeting is?”

  I shook my head. “Two months from now.”

  “Next Monday. Near Washington Square Park.”

  “How—”

  “Once I got the name of the host, it was easy to get her address through the DMV. It never works out this easily, Paige—everything rolling along without need for a plan B.”

  I should’ve asked some questions then, but the wine was starting to blur the edges of our conversation. “Let’s talk about something hammock-y.”

  “What are some hammock-y topics?”

  Percy’s feet were sprawled by my elbows. “Like your crooked toenails.”

  He glanced at them. “What?”

  “You should file them. It’s sandal season.”

  “I don’t wear sandals.”

  “Why do you always wear jeans in summer? Isn’t it too hot?”

  “Um.”

  “How many pairs of jeans do you have?”

  He flared his nostrils. “Three? This is hammock-y conversation? My wardrobe?”

  “Yes.” I passed him the wine and watched him tilt it back. “And another bit of hammock-y conversation. How come you live like a Calvin Klein ad from the nineties?”

  He cough-choked, tipped the bottle back over. “Uh.” He pressed his temple.

  “You have no furniture. Everything’s black and white and downtown and cool. Doesn’t it turn off the ladies?”

  “The ladies, they seem okay with it.”

  “Do you play the field, Percy?”

  “Do I—what—I’m sorry?”

  “That’s a yes.”

  He smiled, shook his head.

  “And you’re like a German design student with no furniture.” He started to laugh, and I laughed too. “Minimalism everywhere except in romantic partners. What’s with the no furniture?”

  “I’m sure I’m supposed to be insulted, but I’m a little too confused.”

  “I just think people who live in a place for four years should have acquired some stuff.”

  “I don’t blame you for my confusion. You’re being very clear, and I’m sure there’s an excellent reason why my lack of furniture is a personal affront. Are you maybe a hoarder?” He placed an index finger on his chin. “Or part of the carpenter’s lobby? Business has been troublingly slow lately?”

  “I just think it’s weird.”

  “Jeez. Hammock-y talk is brutal.”

  “I should use it at work. How funny would that be? If I cut through the bull, just told people what I was thinking.” I used my soothing nonjudgmental therapist voice. “Mr. Jennings, it’s clear to everyone here that the problem with the marriage is that you’re an asshole.” I laughed. “I don’t think I’d have many clients left.”

  “You’d probably wind up with a syndicated radio show.”

  “Maybe. So seriously, though, why have you collected so few grown-up things? Are you, like, twelve?”

  “Yes, Paige. I’m twelve. I’m glad it’s out, actually. It’s less awkward to ask you for a field trip permission slip, which obviously I’ll need.”

  “I knew it.” I swigged. “All the good ones are underage.”

  Percy didn’t respond, and maybe I should have felt more embarrassed, but I was emboldened by the wine and the darkness, which played with Percy’s features so they morphed and faded into an unfamiliar, nighttime version of his face. What didn’t shift with the moment was the sensory data—his warm leg against mine, the sound of the dry tone of his voice, the featherlight touch of his fingers brushing against mine as he reached for the wine.

  “So how old are you?” I said.

  “Thirty-one. To answer your question about why I live like a loser, I guess I have odd hours. I spend a lot of time at the office.”

  “That’s like saying you don’t wash your clothes because you go to church.”

  “I don’t think it is, actually.” Percy reclined his head against the back of the hammock, and his legs pushed a little into mine.

  “No! No sleep!”

  “All right, all right.” He sat back up. “I’m awake, see? Are you keeping me off balance on purpose? Mrs. Paige Turner.” He emphasized the “Mrs.” in a way that sobered me somewhat.

  “I don’t go by that name. That’s Dave’s.” I leaned back and closed my eyes. “Let’s not talk about that whole drama.”

  He pushed me with his foot. “No sleeping.”

  “Okay.” I sat back up.

  “So no hammock-y talk. No talking about that whole drama. What’s left?”

 
“Hmm,” I said. “I’ll tell you something that no one knows, because you opened up to me about your age and your clothes and all.”

  He laughed in a one-syllable punch: “Ha.”

  “I’m reading my mother’s journals.”

  “And no one knows that, including your mother?”

  “It’s awful, right?”

  Percy sprang off the hammock quickly, wine bottle in hand. “Where are you going? Have I ruined the hammock moment?”

  “Not at all.” He walked deliberately toward the tree, heel-toe, heel-toe. “Foot cramp.” Then he sat back down in the middle, arms outstretched on the sides, so our bodies made a T, his body the base and mine the top. “Tell me.”

  I told him—how I’d found the notebooks. How she seemed like a different person in writing and how I felt annoyed and fascinated to learn how much was going on under the surface that she hadn’t shared with me.

  “Yeah,” he said. “But isn’t she entitled to not share that with anyone?”

  I thought for a second. “In theory. But I did so much based on how I thought she felt. That’s why I think it bothers me.”

  “Like what did you do?”

  I shrugged. “We didn’t discuss Sloane—ever—so I trained myself not to think about her. I didn’t let myself because I thought it would be too painful for everyone. Meanwhile, my mom was already tortured by the whole thing, which makes a lot more sense when I think about it. Pass the bottle, please.” He handed me the bottle, and I drank a little more. “Be straight with me, Percy, as I have been with you about your issues.”

  “I’m sorry. How have you been straight with—”

  “The toenails and the—”

  “Oh, right. The whole German design student thing, yes. Okay. I wear jeans because I used to wear shorts in the summer, but a client told me I looked like a British schoolboy.”

  “Really?”

  “Really. She called them short pants, which sort of undermined my professionalism. I seem to be able to get away with jeans. At least I could until now.”

  “No, you do fine by those jeans.” We swung in silence for a bit. “I’m a horrible, disloyal person, right?”

  “I’d say more full of zesty opinions. But, ah, you mean about the journals. There’s something very funny about asking for a blessing from a private investigator. I’m professionally obligated to tell you to go after the knowledge.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “Hell, yeah. Run toward the ignorance rather than run from it. Attack the facts. I think Sloane has this one right—both for the stuff with Dave and your mom’s journals.”

  “You know, what we do is not so different.”

  “Who said it was?”

  “I thought it was. Because we have different endgames.”

  “What’s your endgame?”

  “Resolution and harmony, while yours is confirmation of wrongdoing. But it’s not. We’re really both trying to help people find what’s true.”

  “What’s true,” said Percy.

  “Right,” I said, hoping I wasn’t slurring. “That’s exactly right.”

  “No, I meant what is true? As in—how do you even know what true is? I mean there are facts, and then there’s perception.”

  “Whoa.” His words swam before me, dipped around my brain, wiggled away. “By that logic, you might be totally incorrect about what your father thinks of you.”

  “I’m not, though.”

  “No, you have perception, not truth. You can’t separate how much of his sending you newspaper clippings is disappointment and how much is, say, trying to connect by keeping tabs on your old friends.”

  “Please.”

  “Unless you’ve asked him outright.”

  “I haven’t. And as logical as your point is, I know you’re wrong. There’s a beef.”

  “A beef.”

  “A long line of conflict between my father and my aunt. According to my father, I chose her when I chose being a detective. It wasn’t personal to me, but it was to him. I wasn’t trying to choose her; I was trying to do what he’d always told me to do—make a living doing something interesting. See? There’s a price. There’s always a price to doing something you want to do. Even if you don’t realize it, anytime you go after something you want, you end up at least hurting someone else’s feelings. It’s a given.”

  “What was the beef about?”

  “Don’t know. Don’t want to know.” We swung in the hammock, watching our feet. “So, yes, read the journals. No judgment here. Still, I acknowledge the weirdness of accessing your mother’s innermost thoughts when you were—how old?”

  “Twelve, just like you are now.”

  I had shifted at some point in the conversation, I wasn’t sure when, and we sat next to each other in the middle of the hammock like it was a big giant swing, our feet on the ground, pushing us off, our shoulders almost touching. He pressed his feet to the ground before pushing us off again. “What were you like as a twelve-year-old?”

  “Nerdy and oblivious. What were you like?”

  “Really into baseball. Nerdy and oblivious, huh? Is that what the journals say?”

  “About me?” I considered. “She doesn’t say anything.”

  “Oh. Maybe that’s why you’re annoyed.” His voice shifted, so I turned to the left to look. He’d leaned his head back, his eyes closed.

  “I think it’s better your way, Percy.”

  “Which way?”

  “To know what messed you up, like you and your dad’s disapproval.”

  “Yeah. It’s a real luxury.”

  “It must have been so jarring to me as a kid, how Sloane just disappeared. I don’t remember it that way at all, though. I remember it like a peace.”

  “Maybe it was a bit of a peace.” His voice was sleepy.

  “All my friends have kids. I haven’t wanted them, and not that there’s anything wrong with not wanting kids, but I think my whole personality—my whole life as I know it—has been formed by things I’ve never questioned.”

  “How old are you?”

  “Thirty-two.”

  “You have a bright future ahead of you, Paige. Plenty of time to identify what’s messing you up.”

  “Let’s hope.”

  After a moment of silence, his eyes flew open. “No sleeping, sorry. Forgot the rules.”

  “It’s okay.” His eyes closed again, and I leaned back too and closed mine.

  “That was a cool trick,” I said. “With the corncob holder.”

  “Mmm,” he said, and mumbled something that sounded like I’ve got moves.

  “I’ll go get the rooms ready,” I said. “I should.”

  “Who needs rooms?” he responded. “Give the lovebirds the whole house.”

  “What do you think they’re doing?”

  “Heh, heh, heh,” he said, with more space between each syllable.

  I was drifting off to sleep with predream thoughts, when I heard thunder crack and felt the hammock buckle under me and arms around my shoulders.

  Percy had pushed me over to the side; his face was inches away from mine. “A branch fell.” His eyes were a little wild, and indeed, there was a large jagged tree branch piercing through one of the holes in the hammock, right where we had been sitting.

  It felt inevitable to have no space between us. Little shivers of recognition prickled up from my toes at the atmospheric pull, crackling and alive. It was the moment right before a first kiss, when someone new, a former stranger, turns into someone known. We’d been building to this, probably for weeks, and he must have thought the same, because we both jumped back and stood up.

  “You can have any room you want,” I said. “The blue, the green or even the master,” and then before he coul
d respond, I blindly ran into the house and up to the first room. Only after I’d shut and locked the door did I realize I was in the green one I’d promised to him and my bag was still downstairs. I lay on the bed with all my clothes on, my heart pounding hard enough that I could see my chest jump with every beat.

  I heard the back door close, the clank of the trash lid and then, about ten minutes later, the creaks of the stairs and Percy’s footsteps pause at the top. When he entered the blue room, the walls were thin enough that I heard the groan of his mattress as he reclined on it.

  I pictured him in there, staring up at the ceiling fan just as I was, hands folded across his chest. I imagined, as if in a movie, donning a gauzy white nightgown, knocking on the door softly, turning the knob and slipping inside. But it wasn’t a movie, so I lay there in my shorts and T-shirt and, instead of counting sheep, enumerated the reasons why my temptation had nothing to do with Percy Stahl:

  I was confused. About Dave’s secrets and my family’s secrets.

  I was, to be honest, a little tipsy.

  I was far from home.

  Percy wasn’t the main event; he was a mirage, a classic textbook distraction from the tumult of the summer. I was just grateful that nothing more had happened.

  chapter thirty-six

  NO ONE HAD thought to turn on the air-conditioning, and the green bedroom was hot, stuffy and bright when I woke up on top of the covers, in my clothes. First thing, I called Dave and got his voice mail. “The house is great.” I tried to sound casual. “But it’s weird without you. See you tonight.”

  I opened the door to the hall slowly just in case Percy was lying in wait, curled up on the floor outside my room. He wasn’t. The doors to all the bedrooms were swung open and filled with sunshine, the beds made as if no one had slept there.

  Under the hot spray of the shower, my brain lingered on the glow of that instant immediately after the cracked tree branch. I cooled the spray, dousing the thoughts in ice-cold water until they calcified into guilt. I’d been about to kiss someone not my husband, and now I was replaying it for kicks? I barely recognized myself. I stood under the cold water long after the shampoo was out of my hair and its sharp grapefruit scent was gone.

  Downstairs, the kitchen was neat as a pin. Barefoot, I walked outside, hopping down the warmed stone path until I saw Sloane and Giovanni in the hammock, cuddled up against each other. I turned around to go back in the house just as Giovanni yelled, “Sleeping Beauty!”