The List

by Karin Tanabe

  “I wasn’t quite done talking to you yet,” she said with a smile before I could get a word out. Is that what she did when she wasn’t through talking? She threw pickled bar snacks at people’s heads? She would make a great addition to the United Nations. Maybe she could throw a cocktail onion at Ban Ki-moon.

  “Don’t you want to hear about my day?” said Payton, putting her feet on the coffee table. I looked at her tan legs, longer and thinner than mine, and decided I didn’t actually want to hear how her day was. I had a brief lapse of judgment in New York a few years back and went out on three dates with a plastic surgeon named Stuart from Franklin Lakes, New Jersey. He told me that while my legs were long and dancerly, it would help if I had lipo on my knees to have my kneezles removed. Kneezles, as in the tiny bit of fat that just hangs around on your kneecap. The relationship didn’t last.

  “I had a fascinating day,” said Payton, stretching one of her legs into the air and then thumping it back onto the table.

  “Wad’ya do?” I asked, shoving three olives in my mouth. I chewed them fast and placed the pits delicately into Payton’s lap.

  “Well I’m not going to tell you if you regurgitate food,” she said with a yawn. “Don’t be such a child. You’re actually very old.”

  “Fine.” I put my head in her lap and smiled as big as I could to display my pink gums.

  “I went to the Goodstone Inn,” said Payton.

  “To the what!” I lifted my head and stared at my sister like she had just said she’d been to Planet Zorbitron. “Why did you go there? What did you do? Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Well, I thought about telling you,” said Payton, picking up a magazine from the coffee table and flicking to the table of contents. “But then I figured, why bother, and I just headed over.”

  She started reading an article about the blood type diet and was probably on the second paragraph by the time I ripped the thing out of her hands and demanded some information.

  “Payton! Stop being such a heartless cow! Speak! Why were you at the Goodstone?” I asked turning red.

  “You’re awfully emotional for a WASP,” she said, then picked the magazine up off the floor.

  Would I really go to prison if I strangled her? Couldn’t I just show the police officer the picture from 1987 when she put me in a laundry bag and left me out by the trash? He would let me off then. “Abuse,” he would say. “You’re off the hook.” And he would go off on his merry way to find real criminals.

  “Payton! Tell me why you went! What did you do? Did you tell them I stayed there to stalk a United States senator? Talk!” I screamed, my candle burning at both ends and in the middle.

  “Well,” she said, calmly continuing. “It really is very picturesque, a little provincial, but quaint. I see the appeal. Now if I was going to have an affair—and I’m not saying I am—but if I did, it would have to be in Paris. I just don’t think my clothes could come off with another man unless we were in Paris. At the George V. In spring . . . or maybe early fall . . . ”

  This was the person I had chosen to confide in. This photogenic, horsewoman lunatic. Next time I was just going to call Upton, pass him my notes, and keep writing about Hillary Clinton’s hair.

  “I went to the Goodstone because I wanted to see the place, for starters.” Payton finally put down the magazine and turned toward me. “And then, I figured that while I was there I might as well ask some questions.”

  She did, did she. Sherlock Holmes in a pair of linen pants. I was ready to scream. I was pretty sure that fire was going to come from my mouth and all of Payton’s pretty hair would be singed off, but my father chose that exact moment to walk into the living room and sit down on the other side of the couch. “My lovely daughters,” he said, smiling and patting Payton’s hand. She smiled at him like a girl who knows she’s everyone’s favorite. “Are you two tired? How about a game of Trivial Pursuit? Think you can beat Payton now that you have that big-time job, Addy?” he asked, eyeing an antique chest where we kept boring things like board games and photo albums.

  “We can’t,” answered Payton, taking her feet off the coffee table and standing up. “Adrienne has chlamydia. I’m helping her resolve the problem.” She took my hand and led me out the door toward the barn.

  “Chlamydia! Seriously? That’s the first excuse that came into your warped mind?” I yelled as I marched behind her toward the barn. “ ‘Hi, Dad, Adrienne has the clap! Sorry we can’t partake in family board game night!’ ”

  “Calm down,” said Payton as we headed up the stairs. “He knows I’m kidding. Not all of us are as literal as you.” She opened the door to my apartment, which, like my car, was never locked, and made herself comfortable on my bed.

  “So as I was saying before you interrupted me with your crazy temper tantrum, I happened to stop by Goodstone. And while I was there, I chatted with a few people.”

  “A few people . . . ” I was standing at the foot of my bed, watching her recline like a monarch waiting for me to fan her with an ostrich feather.

  “Okay, I talked to a few members of the cleaning staff.”

  I had visions of Payton sitting down with thirty people in a boardroom and handing them all crisp hundred-dollar bills for inside information. I was going to cry. There went all ethics, all journalistic standards.

  “I can see that tiny little brain of yours working itself up into a frenzy,” said Payton, rolling over onto her side. “It’s not like you went there and questioned the staff. I did. I’m just your source. I happen to be your sister, but that’s never really been proven, so just consider me a source. A really good one, actually. Maybe I should call Wendi Murdoch next.”

  I flopped down next to Payton and looked at the ceiling. “Fine, source. Then be a source and tell me what you found out.”

  “They’re still there,” said Payton, smiling. “Every weekend. They still go there, right to the Bull Barn.”

  Maybe she wasn’t that bad after all. What was a little bribery here and there?

  I rolled over to face her. “Seriously? Are you sure?” I asked, forgetting my anger. “I assumed they would have stopped going there by now. I’ve been too freaked out to go back, now that the staff has seen my face. They can’t be stupid enough to keep coming back, right?”

  “They are indeed stupid enough,” said Payton. “I walked to the horse stable, which is just down the hill from the Bull Barn, and started talking to the two guys mucking the stalls. They were pretty cute, from Winchester they said. And they were very happy to chat with me.”

  “Did you bribe them?” I asked cautiously. “Or do anything else?”

  “Like what, Addy?” Payton rolled her eyes. “You’re far too paranoid. All I did was ask a few questions. I was just doing your job. One of them told me that he cleans the Bull Barn, too, and that he knocked on the door last weekend to clean it and Stanton and Olivia hadn’t checked out yet. He said that an older man and his daughter—with red hair? I offered, and he confirmed—were still there. The same ones that he’s seen every week.”

  “He said daughter?” I asked, concerned that Stanton might actually have a red-haired daughter.

  “He was just trying to be proper,” said Payton. “He knows they’re banging. He also said Stanton had the barn rented out indefinitely. He was told to always have these birch wood logs in the Bull Barn on Fridays, to keep doing it until he was told otherwise. And he hasn’t been told otherwise. So, I got all that out of him and then I gave him a hundred bucks.”

  I knew it. I knew she had bribed him. I was screwed. Or was I screwed? I hadn’t bribed him. My unscrupulous sister had. And I couldn’t do anything about it now except take the very helpful information and run with it.

  CHAPTER 17

  Despite Payton’s completely unethical behavior, I allowed her to book us a trip to Arizona. Alison, who had Saturday duty, agreed to take my Sunday if I covered both days the following weekend. Hardy moaned and groaned and said he was signing me up to work on L
abor Day, but he bought my sister-is-sick lie and approved my time off. I hadn’t taken a minute off since I started. My sister, I explained to all the Style girls, was visiting from Argentina and had fallen off a horse and needed some minor surgery on her hip.

  “Christopher Reeve fell off his horse in Virginia,” said Isabelle. “Did your sister fall at the same place? Maybe it’s cursed.”

  “She didn’t,” I assured Isabelle. “She fell at home.”

  “I thought you didn’t like your sister,” said Libby with suspicion creeping into her voice.

  “Well, she’s kind of snooty, but she is family,” I replied. I sounded like I was lying, I knew I did.

  “Horses are demons,” said Julia. “You’re lucky your sister is alive.”

  Our parents were under the impression that Payton was treating me to a weekend at the St. Regis in Mexico City. Considering that just last Christmas Payton was still devoting a lot of time and energy to emotional abuse, they were elated by her change of attitude and our sisterly bonding.

  “First Payton comes here, all the way here, just to see you. And us, I guess. And now she’s taking you on a weekend vacation! What a sister you have, Addy,” said my dad on the morning we were set to fly out. “You two are getting so close. I could tell last night.”

  “Screw last night. Don’t forget the time she made me eat garbage. I sure haven’t. Never will.” I grabbed a bagel and started scooping out the insides with a serrated spoon.

  “Again?” said my dad. “More garbage? Should I get the ipecac?”

  “No, Dad, not again. She just made me eat trash once. Which I think is one too many times, don’t you? And if you really still have ipecac, please throw it away. It’s probably fifteen years old.”

  My dad laughed and poured me a venti coffee in a ceramic Starbucks cup.

  “As is that memory of yours,” he said. “Payton was a lively kid; you should cut her a break. And she’s taking you to the St. Regis. You love the St. Regis. You can have dinner on the roof there, you know. On the helicopter landing pad. Your mother and I did it last year. How about that? Order the tequila-marinated chicken with mole; it’s delicious.”

  Yes, that all sounded absolutely lovely. Too bad we were actually flying to Arizona to go chase meat-processing-plant workers.

  “Oh, Mexico, it sounds so simple I just got to go!” My mother came down the stairs singing James Taylor and waving her hands in the air. “I love having you girls together under this roof again. It’s like Christmas every day,” she said, kissing me on the cheek.

  “Except I don’t live under this roof,” I said. “I live under a roof designed to keep animals warm.”

  “That’s because you’re the family’s wild animal!” she said, moving her feet like a bull ready to stampede. “And plus, that way you get privacy. You must be saving millions living here with us rather than in Georgetown, so quit your yapping.”

  Millions? I didn’t even make millions of pennies. The only millions I was going to have were millions of hernias. Millions of mental problems.

  “The girls are off to Mexico-co-co-co,” sang my mother. I reminded myself to check the linen closet for booze when I got home.

  My dad dropped Payton and me off at the airport at 5:30 A.M. This was plenty late for me, but Payton looked like she had been yanked out of bed and forced to do strenuous field labor. She was wearing huge Chanel sunglasses, holding two cups of coffee, carrying a cashmere travel throw, and cursing softly in Spanish.

  We shooed our father away before he could catch on that we were checking into the Phoenix flight. Thirty minutes later, we were sitting on the plane.

  Safely in the sky and munching on pretzels, I realized that this was the very first time I had ignored my BlackBerry on a workday since I started at the List. It was petrifying, yet so liberating. I didn’t have to put conversations on hold to check it at five-minute intervals. I didn’t have to tell a friend to hold her tears because I had to rewrite an article as fast as I could. All I had to do was breathe.

  “Planes are amazing,” I said to Payton, who had leaned her head against the wall to try to sleep. She had bought us first-class tickets, even though the haul wasn’t very long, which was rather nice. If I had had to pay for the trip, we would be on Greyhound. She didn’t respond. For the second time in a week I watched her sleep, feeling closer to her than I had in years. Payton had gotten her way since the forceps gripped her skull. But I had to admit that on this visit, even though she still acted like Mussolini in a Gucci minidress, she had softened. She hadn’t poisoned me, or suggested I try base-jumping off our roof. And she had helped me considerably with her willingness to push me down avenues I was so hesitant to pursue.

  “Payton,” I whispered. She didn’t budge. I lifted her sunglasses off her face, and she stared at me like she was about to spit in my face.

  “Thank you for coming with me,” I said. “For coming home and doing all this with me. I don’t know where I would be on this story without you. I definitely wouldn’t be on a plane headed to Arizona.”

  Payton rolled her eyes so far that I could only see the whites, which started shaking from the strain. “Shut up,” she said, putting her glasses back on. “I’m not doing this for you,” she said groggily. “I’m doing this for me. I can’t spend all my time with Buck and horses and our overly attentive staff. Buck has some terrible habits. Like shooting everything in sight or eating twelve eggs at one time. Isn’t that disgusting? Twelve eggs, yolks and everything.” I looked at her, too accustomed to her attitude to really be upset by her reaction. “I’m not doing you any favors. Coddling you has never been an interest of mine. But meddling in the affairs of others always has been.” And those were the last words she spoke on the plane.

  When we landed in Phoenix, the air was thick with nervous energy. My nervous energy.

  “I shouldn’t have had that coffee on the plane,” I said to Payton.

  She looked me up and down like a man selecting a stripper. “I don’t think the caffeine is your problem. Es la culpabilidad.”

  “Guilt. Yes, that might be it,” I said.

  “You’re not doing anything wrong,” said Payton, studying my anxious face. “You haven’t done anything but kiss Sandro, which was stupid, but not as bad as sleeping with Senator Stanton.”

  Right. That was one way to look at it. I hadn’t broken too many moral codes. But I still felt like the hangman.

  “This is what you do, isn’t it? You’re a reporter. It says so on that horrible ID you have to wear around your neck.”

  “But I’m a features writer. I work in Style. I write articles that make people happy, not articles that destroy careers. I don’t know what I’m doing here.”

  “Says who?” replied Payton angrily. “Don’t let those old men dictate what you can and can’t do. Otherwise, you’ll be sitting in the back and people will happily call you mediocre for the rest of your life. You’ve been letting me do it since birth, and it’s pathetic.”

  “Mediocre” was an upgrade from what she usually called me, which was “unfit to breathe.”

  “And finally, you make this big move to the Capitolist, and now you’re going to let those egomaniacal bosses decide what you’re capable of accomplishing. Why don’t you decide?”

  I pointed to a dark green Jeep Patriot in the rental lot, clicked the car open, grabbed my sister, and hugged her until I actually thought she was going to throw up on my shoulder.

  “You’re right, Payton. I appreciate the pep talk. I really do. I haven’t felt this empowered since I beat Jessica Van Mark in junior hunters and jumpers in Culpepper fifteen years ago.”

  “You really should be such a better rider than you are,” said Payton, reminding me that hugging her until her insides hurt was not going to change thirty years of unpleasant behavior. “And now that you love me so much,” she said, “can we get a more upscale car?”

  “No,” I said. “We’re trying to blend in. We can’t exactly cruise around in a D
eLorean.”

  When we got onto the long stretch of Highway 85, we fell silent. I realized that in the last two weeks, Payton and I had spoken to each other more than we had in the last two years. My father had told me all through my childhood that Payton was my only sister so I better learn to like her. It took a few decades, but I was starting to understand his point.

  “So whoever this Drew Reader was, he died in a meatpacking plant owned by the Stanton family,” said Payton, taking notes in a small book. I looked over at the cover. It was definitely made of an exotic animal skin. Probably something illegal. Probably white rhino. “And he had a little girl named Olivia and a wife who was left almost penniless. The wife offs herself a few years later, and the girl has no parents left. Probably has to be raised by grandparents or a smelly aunt or something.”

  “Well, I’m not sure on the offs-herself part. Let’s not jump the gun and just say she died.”

  “Okay, fine,” said Payton. “Either way, if that Olivia is the Olivia, that’s a lot to have happen to you at a young age. You can see why she would be a little intense.”

  “Sure,” I said. “Maybe not quite as intense as Olivia Campo is, but yes, the death of both your parents is a lot to handle. But Olivia isn’t such a strange name. It’s not Emily or Sarah, but still. It could be nothing but a coincidence. It probably is.”

  “The phone call in Middleburg wasn’t a coincidence,” said Payton, still scribbling notes. “It probably seemed a little crazy then, but look how right you were.”

  We drove past a police car and a yellow road sign that read “high intensity enforcement area” and both looked at each other nervously.

  “It’s definitely possible,” I said. “Okay, even if she is the same person, how does it fit into the immigration scenario? I mean, look at where we are. She’s from a border area, too. She and Sandro were devoted to the cause of immigration reform for years, and Sandro is certainly still involved. So maybe she decided to take it to the next level, without telling Sandro she was going to extremes, and she got close to the man pulling the strings on border control legislation.”