The Never Never Sisters

by L. Alison Heller

  I spent about ten minutes in the bathroom trying to calm down before bracing myself to go back upstairs. I didn’t feel normal when I reached the deck, though. I shook with that impulse I trained my clients to fight against—the itch to be heard and speak my mind. To wound because I was hurting.

  I wasn’t even sure who was my prime target—although it seemed in that instant like it had all started with Sloane. It almost didn’t matter. I hated the world.

  But the lunch table was empty, and the little groups had dispersed into protective little huddles. My mom and Cherie were on the other side of the boat, and I couldn’t even see where Sloane and Giovanni were hiding. I felt it drain, the anger that had been boiling one second earlier, that had seemed uncontainable. Where, I wondered, does all that anger go?

  “Are you okay?” Dave was in my recliner lounge, going over a document with a red pen. He glanced up and exaggerated his voice. “What was that?”

  “I’m fine.” I felt a rote muscle memory as I said it. “I’m fine. I’m fine. How many times this summer have you heard me say I’m fine?”

  “Not that many.”

  “So then this is it?” I gestured around the top deck. “We all pretend that never happened and go back to avoiding one another?”

  “I had a little talk with Giovanni while you were downstairs. He and Sloane are going to hang back for a bit after we dock. They’ll come fetch their things while we’re at dinner.”

  “Thank you for that. So Sloane will be at our apartment unsupervised?”

  “Yeah. I mean they have to get their stuff.”

  “Lock up the silver.” It hadn’t been fair to say, nor had I meant it, but it was what emerged.

  “Really? I don’t think they’d steal at this point.” But he looked worried. “You think we need to monitor them?”

  “No.”

  “This is just eerie. Family boat day, silent picture version.” He ruffled my hair. “You’re not done, huh? You want to go a few more rounds?”

  “That’s not it; it’s just . . .”

  He cocked his head. What?

  My mother—what was that? All huddled up with Cherie, not even coming over, barely meeting my eye. Was that shame? Did she know I was onto her—the secrets and the mysteries and the unknowns that I couldn’t be privy to but that affected me all the same?

  I could start with her, march over there and insist that we continue the conversation, but there was a great allure to staying put, sitting quietly with Dave, feeling the sun on my face, slipping my own earbuds in and pretending to read my book. I wanted to forget about all the questions. I wanted my regular life to resume.

  “It’s just eerie.” I kept looking at Dave. Was it evident to him how unsettled I felt? Did he suspect, as I did, that just over our shoulders was a long train of all the unfinished conversations from this summer? That we were starting to drag them around like chains?

  If so, he didn’t press me on it. He returned to his papers, raising his uncapped red pen over them like a dart, and I settled back down in my chair, earbuds in, book open, until we docked.

  Dave and I were the first off the boat—an easy win because everyone else was moving like molasses to avoid us. Still, we sprinted to a cab as though someone were chasing us.

  At home, I threw on white pants and a passably clean top under which I stabbed some deodorant. “Okay,” I shouted to wherever Dave was, “let’s go. Let’s get out of here!”

  He was still in his boat clothes, typing on his work phone. “Can I shower? I was sweating in the sun all day.”

  “Hurry!”

  I sat on the couch, tapping my foot for a while, and then wandered into the bathroom. “Do you think I was unfair?”

  Dave, lathered with soap, opened the glass shower door a crack. “What?”

  “Today? To my mom and Sloane.”

  “Oh.” He shut the door and stepped back into the shower. “Jesus.”

  “What?” I perched on the toilet lid across from him. He shut off the spray and stepped out of the shower, pressing his towel into his face before tying it around his waist and combing his hair while looking in the mirror. He left the bathroom, and I heard him pulling and closing his dresser drawers.

  “Okay.” He appeared in the doorway, smoothing out a crease in his shirt. “I’m ready.”

  I decided to ignore the “Jesus,” which for all I knew had been in response to a shaving nick. “Where are you taking me?”

  “It’s a surprise,” he said. “You won’t be disappointed.”

  “Not as long as they have wine.”

  “They do.”

  “Let’s get a whole bottle and talk about anything else other than this day.”

  “That’s the goal,” he said.

  Dave had ordered a car, and as we eased into the backseat, his work phone rang.

  “Take it,” I said.

  “Okay, but only to tell them I can’t talk tonight.”

  “It’s fine.” We’d caught the stretch of perfectly timed green lights down Fifth Avenue, and I looked out the window as I listened to Dave’s conversation. It felt so normal—no whispering, no straining to hear, just a slightly impatient voice. He said nothing about financial tips or shady insider advice. There was no whispered Talk to me before you buy.

  “Sorry,” he said when he hung up. “New associate on the team. He doesn’t really have a handle.”

  “Oh.” I grabbed Dave’s hand as our car pulled in front of the Yarn. “Here?”

  He smiled.

  “So romantic. How’d you do it so last minute?”

  He raised one eyebrow. “Secret sources.”

  Dave and I hadn’t been to the Yarn since getting engaged. Securing a table required waking up at five in the morning exactly one hundred twenty days before your desired dining date and pressing REDIAL until you developed carpal tunnel. It wasn’t just the food; it was the service, as though each couple were royalty. Last time, I—and every other female diner—left with a box of homemade bonbons, a bouquet and an ivy wreath. An ivy wreath! As if we were all mini twenty-first-century Caesars.

  Thousands of New Yorkers had knelt on those wooden floors, shakily holding out oversized rock-candy rings to their shiny-haired beloveds. The first time we were there, I’d drunkenly asked the waiter what was up with the name, whether it was supposed to make us all want to sit by the fire and knit sweaters and tell stories.

  He had leaned forward with the manner of someone sharing an oral tradition round a campsite. The owners had named it, he said, after the expression that getting married was like throwing a ball of yarn into the woods and following it past the stumps and brambles to its conclusion: a commitment to stay true to the path regardless of where it leads. I’d leaned forward, the new diamond heavy and glinting as my left hand flourished my champagne flute, my legs snaked around Dave’s. It was so very romantic, that thought of the two of us, following the yarn, braving together whatever life might bring us.

  “Good?” Dave smiled at me as we waited for the maître d’ to place us.

  “It’s perfect.” And really, it should have been.

  chapter thirty-nine

  WE WERE SITTING almost where we had sat three years before, at the end of a row of five tables in front of the fireplace. The time before, we’d been at the middle table, a spot occupied now by a couple whom I immediately labeled the young Turks for the way they were holding each other’s hands across the table while leaning into each other with complete focus. I could’ve dashed, naked and madly, back and forth through the dining room, screaming about fish crackers, and neither would have looked up.

  Dave flipped through the oversized blue leather menu. “You want to do the tasting menu?”

  “How many courses?”

  “We could do three, five or eight. I
’m up for anything.”

  “Three.”

  “Really?”

  “I’m a little beat.”

  “Whatever you want.”

  As he ordered, the young Turks were ignoring the plates in front of them, still not talking, just staring into each other’s eyes, entranced. After the waiter left, I poked a finger in their direction. “Check out the frozen people.”

  Dave watched them for a second. “They look stoned.”

  “Maybe they’re on ecstasy.”

  “Maybe they speak different languages and can’t understand each other, and finally they just gave up.”

  “Maybe someone superglued their hands together, and because they speak different languages, they can’t figure out how to get unstuck.”

  We laughed even though it didn’t really make sense.

  The waiter brought over the amuse-bouche—a tiny little puff of foam in a votive-sized glass that was explained as cauliflower carpaccio with a cappuccino reduction.

  “Thank god,” I said, downing it like a twenty-one-year-old with her first legal shot of tequila. “Not much of a lunch from the sultan’s crew.”

  He swallowed the cauliflower. “Surprisingly good. I was nervous about the cappuccino part.”

  The waiter brought our wine and after a rather long-winded congratulatory explanation about something we’d ordered or should order—I wasn’t paying attention—I downed my glass. “Fruity.” In a flash, another tuxedoed gentleman refilled my glass.

  “You think?” Dave cocked his head. “I taste oak.”

  “I was kind of joking.” I drank half of my second glass; two big gulps.

  Dave looked surprised. “You came to play.”

  “I did.” By the time the cauliflower cappuccinos were cleared, I felt the looseness of my tongue like a release. “Were you surprised by me? Today?”

  “Jesus.”

  “Don’t Jesus me again.”

  “I don’t know what that means.”

  “You did it in the shower when I asked you about today. You said, ‘Jesus.’ And then didn’t answer.”

  “I thought we weren’t going to talk about it.”

  “Maybe I want to.”

  “I just don’t want to bicker.”

  “Then answer and we won’t.”

  He looked at me head-on. “I guess so. I’ve never heard you talk like that to your mother. But maybe it was good.”

  “You think?”

  “Yeah. Maybe a little independence for you is necessary.” He rested his shoulders flat against his chair back as if bracing for my reaction, but I wasn’t mad.

  “Have you thought that always?”

  “She’s always been so front and center in your life.”

  “I know.” I leaned toward him. “I feel like . . . I feel like I’m the one who didn’t disappoint her, I’m the one who does whatever she wants and I’m still sloppy seconds.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “Prove it.” I finished my second glass, and the tuxedo guy poured a third.

  He shrugged. “Your mom really loves you. You know that.” I did. “Did you ever find out what the deal is with her and Sloane?”

  “No, but I’m learning. I’m reading her journals from twenty years ago.”

  “She gave them to you?”

  “Not on purpose. She doesn’t know.”

  “That’s . . . disrespectful, I guess.”

  “Yes, but informative. They’re from the year Sloane left.” I finished the third glass, and the guy refilled it.

  “Wow. Well.” He shrugged and moved back in his chair to cross one leg over the other. “I mean what could be in there that’s really incriminating, right?”

  “Dave!” I waved my glass at him, and the liquid sloshed up to the rim. “It’s someone’s innermost thoughts. It’s not okay to read someone else’s journal.”

  “Yeah, but it’s like all about your family and her feelings, right? It’s not like there were state secrets in there.”

  “You think it’s okay?”

  He uncrossed his leg and stared to the left for a second. “I’m trying not to bicker with you, so even though this is the last thing I want to talk about, I am.”

  “What do you want to talk about, Dave? Interest rates?”

  “How about our next vacation? Finally making it out to Quogue? How about anything that’s not what we’ve done all summer, which is devolve into fighting.”

  He was right. “Mother of Mercy,” I said, and something about the way I said it made him flush and point to the wine.

  “Slow it down, babe.” He patted the middle of the table, right next to the lit candle.

  “Why?”

  “You’re acting off.”

  To our right, we heard the squeak of a chair pushing out, and the man of the intertwined couple—the international ones high on ecstasy but no longer superglued together—was kneeling on the floor, blue velvet box in front of him. We stopped and watched as his fiancée, hands pressed to her cheeks, mouth in a perfect bud, delicately extended her hand for the ring. Eyes glistening, she nodded quickly. “Yes!”

  “Guess they understand each other after all,” I said.

  “I’m not perfect,” he said. “I don’t always do the right thing. And you’re right. It was shitty to read the journals.”

  “Okay.”

  “I don’t like seeing you like this—all twisted up because of some ridiculous family drama. You want to know what I think about the little scene today?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’ll apologize to Binnie—”

  “I’m not going to apologize to her—”

  “Just my opinion on what you should do tomorrow morning. Apologize to your mother too, and they’ll both forgive you; Sloane will clear out of our apartment and our lives, and we’ll take August and go out to the Quogue house and then we can get back to normal. This summer has been a disaster, but we can still fix it, okay?”

  “Sloane’s not a druggie loser,” I said.

  He sighed, as though saying, That’s what you got from what I said?

  “Ugh.” I pressed my palm heels into my temples. He was right. Just tell him. “Dave?”

  “What?”

  “I’ve been worried you got suspended for insider trading.”

  “Yes,” he said drily. “I believe you’ve mentioned that.”

  “The big investigation that’s been in the news, specifically.” I saw, I was sure, a jolt of connection in his eyes. “With Mission Bank. So this whole time, I’ve been trying to learn about it.”

  “How?” His voice sounded a little strangled, and when I didn’t answer quickly, he said again, louder and clearer, “How?”

  “Nothing drastic. Just by reading the papers, talking to someone.”

  “Someone?”

  “An investigator.” I swallowed.

  “You had me followed?”

  “No, no. Nothing like that. I’ve just asked him to help me find out more about it.”

  “Has he?” He lifted his hand and motioned for the check, causing a flurry of concern from the waitstaff.

  “He’s found squat. Zilch. I know you’re probably mad, but the reason I’m telling you is not only to clear the air. It’s also because I realized that if you did something like that? If you ever did, I could understand why you did it. I would hate it more if you lied to me than if you did it and told me. You understand?”

  “I understand the content of what you’re saying, yes.”

  “And I don’t want to lie to you anymore. It’s getting in the way of everything.”

  “Whoa.” He held up his hands. “Whoa.” The waiter appeared, swooshing down the quilted envelope, and Dave scribbled with the
pen and got up to go. He didn’t speak to me on the way out of the restaurant. He didn’t say anything at all, and if I hadn’t jumped—fast—into the cab that he hailed, he most definitely would have left without me.

  “I’m sorry,” I said in the backseat, a couple of blocks from home, but Dave didn’t respond. We stood silently in the empty elevator, walked single file down the hall. As soon as he unlocked the door to our apartment, he went into the linen closet, getting extra sheets to put on the bed that Sloane and Giovanni had carefully folded up.

  I sat on our bed, too confused to do anything else. What if I’d been the one to get suspended without knowing why? What if I’d come home to tell him and, instead of offering blanket support, Dave had turned on me, picking fights and hiring a private investigator and then announcing his mistrust at a romantic dinner I’d planned?

  At this point, I was the only obstacle to going back to normal. And what did I want, if not for things to go back to normal? The normal had been lovely. My lovely, lovely life.

  But even more than I wanted normalcy, I wanted to know the truth. Not just about Dave, but the rest of it: the thirty-two years’ worth of secret facts that I’d been trapped up against without knowing it.

  I went into the closet and found my pink notebook.

  Dear Me,

  Hi, Rock Star! How was school today? What? It was fine. Yeah, I know that because I was there too. Did you see me? Following you around all day? You know what? It wasn’t that great—you had apple skin in your teeth and it probably got in there during lunch, but you didn’t notice until after you got home, but better luck next time.

  Love, hugs and kisses,

  Paige

  All the entries were like that.

  Reading them felt like watching the early scenes of one of Dave’s horror movies, when you know before the doomed character does that her murderer is right there inside the house. Your instinct is to scream out to stop her from going into that room. Or shake her—how is she missing the obvious? It’s dark; there’s creepy music; everyone else has left.

  Until you realize the character’s stupidity is the whole point of her existence—she wouldn’t be in the movie otherwise. You resign yourself to her demise and wonder how she’s lasted so long, given her industrial-strength sense of denial.