The Almost Archer Sisters

by Lisa Gabriele

  “It’s okay. And I didn’t mean for anyone to go to any trouble. I would have been fine on my own. I have Beth’s address and her keys.”

  “It’s no trouble. Beth’s paying. Remind me to keep the receipts. I’m at your service all weekend. And you know,” she said, lowering her voice, “I’m really sorry about what Beth did with your husband. I know Beth can be a complete fucking idiot sometimes, but if it matters, she feels like a total ass right now.” Her T-shirt said ASK ME ABOUT MY HONOR STUDENT, so I changed the subject and did.

  “Oh!” Kate’s face lit up as she turned around to show me the shirt’s epilogue: THE BASTARD HASN’T CALLED US IN YEARS. “Thought it up myself. Trying to start up a kind of online business selling them. Beth said she might back it. She thinks we could make a mint.”

  We exited the terminal into a balmy wash of air that took me by surprise with its surprising tropicalness. I asked her where she parked her car.

  “I’ve been asking myself that for ten years. No, sweetie, we’re cabbing it. Nobody owns a car in New York. Not even Beth.”

  I knew that, but these are the things you forget to picture when you’re picturing someone’s life over the phone. You don’t think about how they navigate from place to place, though I used to imagine Beth walking the streets alone, smoke rising out of the grates in the sidewalk, muggers and rapists lining the alleyways, waiting for her. There was always a dreary grey backdrop in my terrible nightmares of what it was like for my sister, alone in the city. I once dreamed she’d been shoved in front of an oncoming subway by a deranged stalker who turned out to be Lucy wearing a hobo outfit. Eventually, I got used to her living here, was less and less afraid for her, because in truth she was a taxi whore, a woman who lived in a SoHo condo that employed a full-time doorman, who frequented no establishment more than fifteen blocks from her doorstep, who had everything she bought delivered, including ice cream, hairspray, and dry-cleaning.

  When Beth first moved to New York, we quickly had to develop a verbal glossary of terms for each other, our lives were becoming that different that quickly. Her new words for me were Ayurveda, Nolita, NPR, Missoni, Auster, E, and edamame. My words for her were episiotomy, CBC, soffit, raglan, Zyban, Enya, Ya-Ya, and Martha. But despite the differences, our conversations had always maintained the casual intimacy of two women in side-by-side change rooms, yelling over a high partition.

  The ride into the city was languorous, except for Kate’s constant narrative.

  “… one of the safest big cities on the planet. I swear in the like decade I’ve lived here, I’ve never been mugged, raped, shot, nothing—did Beth tell you I went to NYU, not Parsons? Beth is such a fuck-up. But we’ll talk about that. I studied film. Not that I wanted to make films. That’s the Chrysler Building. See the top? I never did really see myself as a director. Always liked the industry side. I’m interested in the producing. The financing side. I’m interested in the notion of the perfect pitch …”

  The driver let me crank open a window to smoke, his Middle Eastern music adding a tinny soundtrack to our bumpy trip to Manhattan. I always knew I was in the States by the state of its roads. When Beau used to drive us to pick up Beth at the airport, I could close my eyes and feel us transition from Canadian-smooth streets, the cracks practically grouted with ground-up tax money, to the bombed-out downtown Detroit roads, its buckled concrete and neglected potholes rattling my teeth and bones.

  “… so I said, ‘Beth, that’s pretty unforgivable. No, completely unforgivable. But we’ll talk about that.’ I used to live over there. I mean, I know she’s made mistakes in the past—beating up a bouncer comes to mind—ha-ha-ha—you know we always tease Beth that she’s burned so many bridges in New York she should have a ferry named after her—that’s the Lower East Side. Marcus lives here. He was a really nice guy. ‘Beth,’ I said, ‘your sister’s husband? I mean, that’s just fucking mean. But we’ll talk about that …’”

  It was shortly after the abortion when Beth got the idea to move to New York. She went through a phase of watching Bill Kennedy at the Movies with Lou. Beth loved Myrna Loy, but her favorite actress was Jennifer Jones, especially in The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit. After a sorry revelation about her husband’s bastard son, Jennifer Jones frantically runs into their Connecticut yard. Gregory Peck wrestles her writhing body to the ground like an apologetic monster. Jennifer pretends to calm down, then she suddenly drives off in the family sedan, shooting down the gravel road, laying tracks like one long exclamation point.

  To no one in particular, Beth announced, “I can’t wait to live in New York, where I don’t have to drive every time I want to leave.”

  “… You will LOVE, love, love, the shopping on the Lower East Side, Peachy. I am getting that fucking kimono. Hope you have space in your bag for some new purses. They’re knockoffs. It’s all grey-market. No worries. But I have mentioned to Beth about her drinking. We all have. Marcus said the bouncer should have been a wake-up call. How cool would a kimono be? Saw it off a little? At the thigh maybe? With jeans? Yessss …”

  Of course Beth lived here, I thought, scanning the skyline, almost dental in its craggy symmetry. I had memorized Beth’s address from all the Christmas and birthday cards I’d sent, sometimes stuffed with a five or a ten, Canadian, just to bug her. And Easter cards, and Halloween cards, and Thanksgiving (Canadian too) cards, and all the in-between cards filled with news of the boys, or just corny cards I’d send to woo her with their corniness.

  When we crossed the bridge, I felt the vertigo of the city suddenly tipping forward, and I couldn’t take everything in with just two eyes. I saw stores I’d never heard of and some I had; bloated Gaps next to tiny cafés, elderly brick houses slumped next to a stiff concrete slab, with a slash of a window cut in the center. Was it a salon? A museum? There’d be a tree, then many, then none for an entire block; dark, light, dark, light, the shadows carrying specific weight, the sun some real heat. We drove slowly, then quickly, the cab moving in nauseating fits and starts. The hordes of pedestrians, like cattle, seemed to have no interest in the yellow and red lights, or fear of the cars barely honoring them. Our driver parted people, Red Sea–like, around the hood of our nudging cab. Some buildings looked like they could be large homes or small colleges. It was like watching a noisy musical playing inches from my face. We barreled down canyon after canyon, some streets narrow and some harrowingly wide. My neck hurt from gawking and craning, up then down; it was Detroit times a thousand; Belle River, a thousand million. It wasn’t a bad feeling, just overwhelming, the same feeling I’d get as an eight-year-old with five dollars in my pocket pulling up to the Starlite. I wanted to feel flush with choices and happy to make them. But instead I’d worry about buying the wrong thing, something I didn’t want or wouldn’t like, and a bit of that fear followed me to New York.

  “Here we are,” Kate said, clambering out of the cab.

  Beth’s condo was in an old building made newer by bright green awning, smoked windows, and two huge granite vases framing the doorway.

  Kate pulled out an envelope of money and counted out the fare, handing me the rest.

  “Beth wants me to give this to you. She was going to pay for the whole weekend anyway, so no arguments, okay?”

  “But I have money. I just have to hit a bank—”

  “We’ve seen your people’s money. It’s very pretty, but very useless here,” she said. “Now, I’ll call you later, okay? I have a million things to do, but I’m taking you to a dinner party tonight and tomorrow night I was thinking we could—”

  “No! No. I mean, I’ll be fine, Kate. You don’t have to babysit me.”

  I wasn’t sure how much she knew of my participation in their Marcus fraud, or of my threat to meet the hapless man tomorrow night, instead of standing him up as Beth had planned for “Georgia” to do. But I didn’t want her to muck that up. Plus, the thought of spending another living minute with Kate made even my hair hurt.

  “Well. Okay,” she said, f
iddling with the bottom of her shirt and glancing around. “But I have explicit instructions not to—”

  “Look. I am sorry, but I’m here on a break. I have a lot to figure out and I didn’t plan on having an escort. It was very generous of you to meet me at the airport. Very. But I am fine from here on, okay?”

  Beth didn’t have friends, she had minions, pets, errand runners, I thought, as Kate handed my bag to a man who looked like he belonged to a South American army.

  “I can take my own bag,” I said, snatching it from his hands.

  “Okay then,” the man said, surrendering his hands to the sky.

  “It’s Jonathan, Peachy,” Kate said, yanking my bag out of my hand. “Jonathan works here. He’s Beth’s doorman.”

  “I’m Beth’s doorman?”

  Jonathan took a step back and scratched his chin. “Really? Now, I was always under the impression that I also worked for some of the other nice people who live here, too. But perhaps I’ve been wrong all this time. And where is Miss Archer, may I ask?”

  “She got delayed,” Kate said, looking at me. “This is her sister, Peachy. She’ll be staying here for the weekend. So you be good to her, okay, Jonathan? It’s her first time in New York.”

  We were practically yelling at each other over the traffic sounds.

  “Of course,” he said, raising his hand. For a second I thought he was going to slap Kate across the face. Then a cab screeched to a halt in front of the building.

  “Thanks, doll,” Kate said in his general direction. She folded herself inside the cab. “It’s going to be a great dinner party tonight. It’s in your honor.”

  I silently followed Jonathan and my bag into the lobby, which was flooded with the sound of a loud golf game echoing out from behind the marble kiosk. Jonathan dropped my bag and dove over the counter.

  “Let me turn that down. That’s not your sister’s favorite sound.”

  “That’s funny,” I said, looking around, “Beth loves TV. She makes TV.”

  I couldn’t imagine entering this lobby after a long, stressful day and uttering “Home at last.” It had all the charm and warmth of an empty underground pool.

  “Well, your sister was one of the few ‘no’ votes on me getting the thing. I try to keep it low. I can’t see the resemblance,” he said, turning back around to look at me. “Between you and Beth.”

  “We’re only half-sisters,” I said, thinking he could probably tell which half’s mine.

  “You got a key and all that then?”

  “Yes, thanks. I do. I’ll take that.”

  He picked up my bag off the floor and handed it to me as though it was carved out of expensive leather and not formed of blue vinyl and covered in the boys’ Pokemon stickers.

  “Let me know if you need anything. Peachy. Is that from the South or something?”

  “Kind of. No. It’s Georgia. Peachy’s just a nickname.”

  The elevator was taking a long time, and I seemed to need to flood the lobby with my words while I waited.

  “Well, it’s my middle name,” I said. “But I was, you know, conceived in Georgia. Born in Canada. Where we lived, Beth and me. But I live in Canada, Beth doesn’t live there anymore. She lives here. As you know.”

  “Oh. I thought Beth was from California. I know she has a weekend house near Grosse Pointe. But I thought—” He suddenly stopped himself as though remembering that he had to do something urgent behind the kiosk.

  “A weekend house? Huh. In Grosse Pointe, Michigan. Yes. Well, Beth was born in California. But she lived most of her life on our farm. Since she was two. In Canada, in Belle River, which is across the lake from Grosse Pointe, Michigan. I guess that might be where her weekend house is located. But I’ve never been there myself.”

  I put my bag down, took a step toward him, and crossed my arms. An elevator came and went while I continued.

  “No, see, Beth’s at the farm where she was raised, and where I live, weekends and weekdays. With my sons and my husband and my dad. She’s never mentioned that?”

  “Nope,” he said, shaking his head, still pretending to look for something. “So Beth’s Canadian?”

  “Not anymore. But she was. Yeah.”

  “Huh.”

  It was like we were both blindfolded and describing the same animal to each other.

  “So this weekend house,” he said. “Big stone place? Few hundred acres? You live there too, with your family?”

  “Yes. We all live there. Only it’s thirty acres now. The land got chopped up to pay for Beth’s college. And we’re likely going to chop it up some more. And the only thing stoned about the place is my husband, sometimes. Beth visits us every other month or so, and my dad does her hair for free. He’s a hairdresser. She’s never mentioned that?”

  “No. She once mentioned something about him being a fighter pilot in Vietnam.”

  It wasn’t until after I replied, “No, he’s about as opposite to a fighter pilot that you can get,” that it occurred to me Beth might have been talking about Tooey, her real father, who now sported phony pilot credentials.

  “So Beth’s delayed on the farm you live on with your family. Getting her hair done by her dad the hairdresser.”

  “That’s right. She’s also taking my son to his doctor’s appointment, and after that she’s supposed to drag four loads of my laundry into town because our washer is busted.”

  That image, of Beth doing laundry, seemed to amuse Jonathan. But after a brief silence our words, which had begun to bounce around the marble cavern, started banging violently into each other.

  “I’m sorry. You know it’s none of my business—” he said.

  “That’s okay. This is all—”

  “It was unprofessional of me to—”

  “No, no, no, it’s okay—”

  “Please don’t mention to Beth that I—”

  “Of course not—”

  “I mean really, it’s—”

  “I won’t—”

  “I need this job,” he said, pressing his finger lightly on the kiosk and stopping the conversation on that point.

  There was restless history between them, that much was obvious. And though he was not bad-looking, I think even Beth would draw the line at her elderly black doorman.

  “Do you live here?” I asked.

  “Yes, I do.”

  “What floor?”

  “I don’t live here here,” he laughed. “No, I live in Yonkers. My wife and I. Our son’s in college. Syracuse.”

  By then his face had melted into complete bemusement, eyebrows fully relaxed alongside his eyes.

  “You should know that Beth and I aren’t much for conversation these days, I’m sure she’s mentioned that.”

  “No, she hasn’t,” I said. “But then again, we’re not much for conversation these days either.”

  I re-pressed the elevator button, feeling suddenly exhausted by Beth even though she was hundreds of miles away. It occurred to me that this man saw Beth morning, noon, and night. And before she dumped her dramas on me over the phone, she likely lugged them past this man who likely made minimum wage and maybe Christmas tips, and still was able to put a kid through college, a man who probably commuted from wherever Yonkers was, probably at least an hour away, every day, to and from SoHo, so he could stand guard for people like Beth, a woman who never, ever dropped her guard for anyone, except for maybe me.

  “Okay then, I’m going up now,” I said as the next car arrived.

  “You do that, Peachy.”

  I held the door open for a second.

  “You do realize, Jonathan, that my sister is completely and utterly full of shit.”

  “I have had my suspicions, Peachy,” he said, spreading a sympathetic smile across his face.

  I pressed the CLOSE button. “Twelfth floor, right?”

  “That is right. Now you let me know if you need anything.”

  “Oh, I will.”

  chapter eleven

  BY OUR FARMHO
USE standards, the apartment was surprisingly small, but by Manhattan standards I knew Beth had scored with this place. It was nicely proportioned, boxy and clean. In the living room, which was a step down from the narrow hallway entrance, there were two intentionally mismatched dark wood end tables bracketing a white couch that I could only call obese. It seemed a piece of furniture so alien in color and texture to me that when I sat on it I had the nervous-visiting-mother-of-brats kind of dread, as though my kids could dirty up this kind of couch telepathically, through my own proxy fingers.

  Funny how I’d gotten so used to the primary colors of the boys’ sticky toys studding every living space in our house that their absence in Beth’s seemed like a strange trick to my eye. I expected a red Tonka truck to careen out from under the couch if I nudged under the slipcover with a toe a little, or to hear the squeak of Scoots’s gummy yellow chicken toy if I sat atop the pile of Beth’s carefully placed pillows. The lack of dog and boys was instantly odd. Her place could never include them. What would they do in a place like this except sit still a lot, hands folded in their laps, fear on their faces? The white leather armchair was less a chair than a flabby letter L, its top and bottom strung between two gleaming metal poles. A pale green shawl had been thrown over it for effect; I could picture Beth set-designing the place, preparing it for our imminent arrival. Little Chinese boxes and souvenir masks from all her travels littered the shelves and dotted the walls. The low-slung, kidney-shaped, glass-topped coffee table was appropriately “Beth,” very arty and very useless; no place to store magazines, no coasters, nothing on it, not even the remote or a vase of flowers. Her suspended wine rack reminded me of a full holster of bullets hanging sideways from the ceiling. She had the flat-screen TV I had wanted, half the size of our space portal, through which I’d joked we could all step through standing.

  The two living room windows boasted a decent view of the Hudson River several blocks away, but sunlight didn’t flood the place as you’d expect this high up because it had to negotiate around several similar buildings nearby. Her white laptop lay closed on a brushed metal desk. The parquet felt cool and clean under my bare feet. (I had removed my dirty sandals, of course.) The window in the kitchen, between the steel stove and steel fridge, looked onto a cluster of plants suffocating the fire escape. I opened the door and peeked below to a courtyard of brush-cut grass. I slid a finger in the pots hanging over the grating. All freshly watered. Perhaps that was one of Jonathan’s jobs, though he had left me with the impression he’d just as soon pee on her plants as feed them.