A Simple Favor

by Darcey Bell

  And now it wasn’t going to happen.

  I should never have told her about the insurance scheme. We were sisters, after all. She could be doing this just to mess with me, because she could. She knew how. She was my sister.

  “I’ve got a suggestion,” I said.

  “You always do,” she said.

  It was as if I heard someone else talking. Someone who wanted what I wanted but wasn’t afraid to say it. That person said, “Let’s have one last total blowout before we get clean forever. You and me. Sisters. Like the old days.”

  Evelyn gave me a quizzical smile. I still loved her, but the missing tooth was a bad look, and if she lived, I was going to have to fix that too.

  “One last time,” I said. “Let’s get totally blasted. Let’s get that demon out of our systems forever.”

  “Now that’s a suggestion,” my sister said.

  When I thought that my sister was calling on me for comfort in her last hours instead of discovering (partly thanks to me) a reason to live, I’d brought along three bottles of designer mezcal.

  I found two shot glasses, lacy with white cobwebs and speckled with mouse shit. I hadn’t thought about it last night, but I was struck—as I had been last summer when I came here with Sean—by the fact that the water was running and the electricity on. Did Mother—that is, Bernice—pay the bills and hire someone to keep the pipes from freezing? I washed out the glasses.

  I said, “Let’s sit at the kitchen table.”

  The kitchen was full of ghosts. I was right about the cabin being haunted. Grandma and Grandpa, Dad and Mother were all there in the kitchen, watching Evelyn and me pour shots and drink at eight o’clock in the morning. If this wasn’t bad behavior, what was? Evelyn was so happy to get her hands on a glass of something—anything—that she hardly noticed I was pouring only a fraction of that amount for myself. Or maybe she was thinking like a twin: less for her, more for me!

  After four, maybe five shots, Evelyn said, “Do you have any memories from before we were born?”

  That was how I knew that she was on her way to being drunk. She often asked me that when she drank. She would forget she’d asked before.

  I said I didn’t. She said she remembered being kicked.

  “Oops.” She made a screeching-tires sound. “Let’s talk about something more friendly.”

  I said, “What kind of pills have you got?”

  She said, “Yellow and orange and white ones.”

  “Let’s do one,” I said. “One apiece. That’s all. No more.”

  “You’re twisting my arm,” she said. “Doctor, it’s not my fault! My twin sister is an enabler.”

  I followed her into the bedroom. There was already a slight pitch and stutter to her walk. She dithered over the pill bottles on the dresser like a pharmacist, or like a bartender with mixological ambitions. At last she decided and dispensed two pale yellow pills, one of which she gave me and one of which she kept.

  “I’m saving mine for a minute,” I said.

  “I’m taking mine now,” she said. “If you don’t mind.”

  “Go for it,” I said.

  “Actually, I think I’ll bring Mother’s Little Helper into the kitchen. Less trekking back and forth. Save on the wear and tear.”

  Evelyn took the pill bottles. I could have stopped her, but I didn’t. And finally that’s all that matters: I didn’t kill her, but I didn’t stop her.

  She lined the bottles up on the kitchen table. She said, “I really shouldn’t,” and then was silent for a while, as if to give that thought time to wash over her and leave. “My medication regimen.” She opened the first bottle and took a candy-blue pill shaped like a tiny heart.

  My sister grew more mellow, even sentimental. After a while I had the sense that she wasn’t really talking to me. She was passing the time, waiting. She was already on her way.

  “First memory?” I said.

  “A pillowcase with horses,” she said.

  “Wallpaper,” I said. “Pineapples on the wallpaper by our playpen.”

  “What about me?” my sister said. “Do you remember me?”

  “I remember that my name was your first word.”

  “Typical,” she said. She refilled her glass and took another pill.

  She said, “I have a pretty high tolerance.”

  I said, “I used to. As you know.”

  “Good for you,” my sister said, with a little toasting gesture and the angry head twitch she got from Mother. “Here’s to my sister, the cheap date.”

  “I love you,” I said. I needed to get that information across to her, the sooner the better.

  She didn’t say she loved me. She shut her eyes. She sat there at the kitchen table with her eyes shut for a very long time.

  Then she said, “Can I change my mind again? I actually do want to die.”

  I could have said, “It’s the alcohol and the pills talking. Wait until you come down.” Would my sister have believed me?

  But what I said was “Sometimes you have to follow your heart. You know what’s best for you. Do what you need to. Don’t worry about me. I’ll miss you, but I’ll survive.”

  My sister’s pale little face blanched with shock. She stared at me. Was I giving her permission? Did I want her to die? I wasn’t telling her to live. I wasn’t offering to protect her.

  She buried her face in her hands. Then she turned away from me and looked toward the porch and said, “You know what? I think I’ll go for a little swim . . . The cold water will wake me up . . . I’ll be back in five minutes.”

  “Don’t go,” I said.

  “Don’t worry,” my sister said.

  Was I supposed to tackle her and keep her in the room?

  I wanted to believe that the shock of the water would sober her up and make her realize she didn’t want to die. She’d come back inside and ask me for help. I’d wrap her in towels and hug her and we’d start over. There was time to get her somewhere where they would pump her stomach. All I had to do was get her in dry clothes and into the car.

  Forget the insurance money. I’d live a better life. I’d make my sister live with us. She and Nicky would love each other. Sean would get used to it. I’d get her a job at Dennis Nylon. We’d commute to work. Dennis could be her sponsor. He would love how crazy that was.

  Evelyn took another pill and drained another shot.

  She stood and stumbled once before she reached the door.

  “Wait,” I said. “There’s something I want you to have.”

  I took off Sean’s mother’s diamond and sapphire ring and put it on her finger. Her hand was swollen from drink, so it took some doing.

  “Ouch,” she said. “What’s this?”

  “I want you to have it.”

  What I really meant was that I wanted someone to find it. Later. Evelyn knew it too. Mind reading up until the end. The very end.

  “Brilliant,” she said. “Thank you.”

  “Take care,” I said, as my sister went out to die, and I didn’t stop her.

  I really believed she’d come back. Or maybe I half believed it. Or wanted to believe it. Meanwhile I was sleepy. I’d drunk more than I realized, keeping up. I’d hardly slept. I hadn’t eaten. I’d gotten out of practice. I’d forgotten how to maintain my old bad habits.

  I lay down on the couch and passed out for half an hour.

  When I awoke, I went outside and looked for Evelyn. I ran along the edge of the water. I shouted her name. There was no one around. There was nothing I could do.

  I went back into the cabin. I took two of my sister’s pills and washed them down with mezcal and slept for thirty-six hours.

  I woke up sober, knowing that I had killed my sister, still trying to convince myself that I hadn’t. She wanted to die. To force her to live would have been selfish. Maybe for the first time, I had helped her—really helped her—get what she wanted.

  I’d lost all my fear of being alone in the cabin—maybe because the worst had happene
d. I was glad to have time alone there, time to get used to Evelyn’s death. Time to remember our lives. Time to think about who I was and who she’d been and who I was without her. I should have called the police right away, but I told myself that my sister wouldn’t have wanted that. She would have wanted me to stay at the cabin and clear my head and let some time pass.

  I lived on bologna sandwiches on white bread with mayonnaise. The diet of a ten-year-old. I wouldn’t let Nicky live that way, but it was what I wanted. I wanted to pretend, while I was eating, that Evelyn and I were ten and spending the summer at the lake house.

  I paced the cabin. I was afraid to go out to the lake, afraid of what I might see. Early in the evenings I fell exhausted onto the bed and slept until morning. I’d been something of an insomniac when I lived with Sean and took care of Nicky and worked for Dennis, but now I fell asleep at once.

  A week passed, then another. I lost track of time.

  I straightened up the cabin, cleaned up Evelyn’s mess one last time. Or some of it. I left the pill and alcohol bottles. I left the rental car in the woods, hiked back to the cabin, and drove off in Mother’s car.

  I drove to the Adirondacks and stayed there awhile.

  Maybe that wasn’t the best place for me to be. I didn’t have enough to do. I wanted to sleep in my own bed. I couldn’t stop thinking about Nicky. I longed to hear his voice, his beautiful silly conversation. I wanted to smell the milky smell of his hair. I wanted to walk down the street holding his hand. I wanted to see his face when he spotted me waiting for him after school. Soon I was missing him so much that I felt frantic. And grief stricken, as if it were Nicky and not my sister who was dead.

  I left the mountains and went to Danbury, which seemed safe, like a city where no one knew anyone else. I checked into a motel. That’s when I plugged back in, reconnected. That’s when I went on the internet and found out that Stephanie had helped herself to my husband.

  I’d honored my sister’s wish to die. But now I wondered if I would have fought harder to keep her if I’d known that Sean was a weakling and a traitor and that our plan was a joke. He was living with Stephanie. And I was alone.

  Now Stephanie was harassing my mother, involving everyone I knew in her sick plan to become me. What Stephanie edited out of her blog is what she saw when she sat on that pink-and-white-striped couch and looked at Mother’s pictures of me as a child.

  At two of me. At Emily times two.

  Big surprise: I was a twin!

  I can imagine her dismay at this heinous violation of her best-girlfriend faith that we told each other everything. How could I forget to mention that detail about myself?

  Sean believed I was dead. But that only meant he hadn’t believed me when I said goodbye at the airport. I needed to talk to Sean, to see him, to find out what was in his mind. As if his mind was the part of him that had decided to sleep with Stephanie.

  I called Stephanie one more time. As usual, I waited till she was alone.

  I said, “If you tell Sean what you found out from my mother, I will kill you. I’ll kill you and Miles both. Or maybe I’ll kill Miles and let you live.”

  “I swear I won’t.” She sounded terrified. “I swear it.”

  That’s how stupid Stephanie was. Even knowing how often I’d lied to her, she believed me.

  Sean and I had agreed on code words we’d use in an emergency, and I texted them to him, and he texted me back.

  The code words were “Peeping Tom.”

  I told him to meet me for dinner at a restaurant where we used to go when we first got together, an Italian restaurant in Greenwich Village where you paid to have space between you and the next table. You didn’t go for the food but for the quiet. People went there to make business deals, to get engaged—and to break up.

  Sean was there when I arrived. I wasn’t sure how I’d feel when I saw him again. Now I knew. He had an open, stupid face. I felt annoyance, then rage. Whatever love I’d had for him was dead—colder than my sister.

  When Sean saw me walk into the restaurant, you’d think he was seeing a dead woman walking. Who did he think had texted him? My ghost?

  He rose, as if to embrace me.

  “Don’t get up,” I said.

  I sat down. I was glad that the volcanic flower arrangement half hid my view of my husband. I couldn’t look at him. I wanted to stab him with a steak knife. I had killed the wrong person. I told myself: Be patient. Hear him out. You don’t know what he’s thinking.

  “I thought you were dead,” he said. “I really thought you were dead.”

  “Apparently, you were wrong,” I said coldly. “What part of my telling you not to believe that I was dead did you not understand?”

  “But the body,” Sean said. “The ring.”

  “You don’t need to know the details,” I said. “You’re better off not knowing. You’d probably just tell Stephanie.”

  I heard the fury in my voice. That was a mistake. I needed to stay calm—seem calm.

  “I’ve been reading her blog,” I said. “She’s been blogging about your happy home. You idiot.”

  “Stephanie means nothing to me.” Did he hear himself? Did he know that sounded like a line in the cheesiest afternoon soap?

  “Prove it,” I said.

  “How?” he said, looking even more alarmed than he had when he first saw me.

  “Break her heart. Torture her. Kill her.” I wasn’t suggesting that he kill Stephanie. I hated her, but murdering her wouldn’t help. I just wanted to see how he reacted.

  He said, “Come on, Emily. Be sensible. She’s been good to Nicky. She’s been helpful. Nicky likes having her around the house. And you were right. She’s the perfect nanny. We’ll dump her as soon as the money comes through.”

  He was telling me to be sensible?

  Wanting to see him had been a huge mistake. I needed to leave, and yet I said, “We should eat.” I was hungry. After this, I had to drive back to Danbury.

  Sean ordered a veal chop, well done. I couldn’t help giving his charred crematorium-smelling chop a dirty look. Stephanie cooked his food the way he liked it. I felt sick with rage and disgust.

  I ordered pasta, something soft. I couldn’t trust myself with a knife.

  “Come on, Em,” said Sean. He never called me Em. I’d told him never to call me that. It was Evelyn’s name for me. And now my sister was dead. And this idiot—my husband—didn’t even know that I’d had a sister. Stephanie knew, but I was pretty sure I’d scared her into keeping Evelyn a secret.

  He said, “Our plan is working . . . it could still work . . . we’ll get the money before too long.” Even as he said it, I knew I didn’t want the money if it meant spending the rest of my life with Sean. It wasn’t worth it.

  I said, “Your fucking Stephanie was never part of our plan.”

  “I’ll tell her to leave. I’ll tell her it’s not working. You and I will get back together, and it’ll be like it was, you and me and Nicky—”

  “It can never be like it was,” I said. “You made sure of that.”

  “But we were so happy,” Sean said.

  “Were we?” My sister was dead. And though I knew, logically, that Evelyn’s death wasn’t Sean’s fault, I couldn’t stop feeling that Sean was to blame.

  I said, “I’ll never forgive you for this. You’ll be very sorry.”

  “Is that a threat?” Sean said.

  “Possibly,” I said. “Speaking of which, don’t you dare tell Stephanie that I am alive, that you saw me. The last thing I want is the two of you talking about me and trying to second-guess my intentions. You and Stephanie put together aren’t smart enough.”

  I got up and walked out.

  I hated him more than I hated Stephanie. Despite all the pride she took in her dark secrets, and in her stupid blog, Stephanie was such a simple creature that I couldn’t blame her for what happened. She reminded me of a spaniel swimming against the current. Or a not very bright child just wanting to make friends
and have people like her.

  Sean was different. He was the only person except my twin I’d ever let get even slightly close to me. The only person I’d trusted. Except Nicky.

  Sean had betrayed me. I meant it when I said that he would be sorry.

  Part Three

  34

  Sean

  I was afraid of my wife. It wasn’t something that a man in my business, a guy in any business—or any man—should admit. I knew that Emily was trouble. It was part of her appeal. What do you do when on the third date a woman invites you to watch Peeping Tom? What are you to think when after five years of marriage she has never once let you meet her mother? When you’ve never seen one picture of her when she was little, when she refuses to tell you one thing about her childhood except that her mother drank and used to say she was stupid?

  You give in; you give up. You surrender something. You lose your power, and you don’t get it back. Samson and Delilah, David and Bathsheba. The Bible is full of such stories. What they don’t say in the Bible is that the sex was great.

  I fell in love with Emily and married her without knowing much about her. I had my illusions about who she was. She’d cried in front of the crowd at the Dennis Nylon benefit. It was hard to believe that the person who wept at the thought of women without clean water was the same person who stole my mother’s ring. Much later, Emily confessed that she hadn’t been crying for the poor women but because she’d had to deal with so many disasters at the charity gala and was facing another of Dennis’s inevitable shit fits. The beautiful woman who’d wept out of sympathy and compassion—that woman never existed.

  I should have left her as soon as the plane from the UK landed. It was so early in the marriage; we were returning from our honeymoon. We could have had the marriage annulled. I should have acted on what I saw when I told her we’d have to give the ring back to Mum and Emily threatened to ruin my life. I should have told her I’d made a mistake. Instead we had sex in the airplane bathroom—and that sealed the deal. I was hers. I loved her. I loved her wildness, her determination, her rebellious streak. It was part of what fascinated me, what I didn’t want to lose.