The Pretty One: A Novel About Sisters

by Lucinda Rosenfeld

  Perri also suspected that her parents, who had never really disciplined any of them, preferring to look the other way when faced with their antisocial behavior, were responsible both for Gus’s emotional instability and for Olympia’s inability to sustain a romantic relationship. Bob and Carol had never set limits. So her sisters had never learned that they couldn’t do exactly what they pleased at the moment that it pleased them. That Perri hadn’t fallen prey to the same impulses was, to her mind, the result of a strong personality that, even as a child, had allowed her to monitor and even police her own behavior. She also firmly believed that she’d grown up amid a disgraceful level of dirt and sloth, her parents having placed history and science before personal hygiene or clean bathrooms in the hierarchy of importance.

  In any case, it was time to go. “Okay, that’s it. Everyone in the car,” she declared. “Right now. It’s already seven forty. Aiden, did you remember your cleats?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “Aiden, I’m talking to you!” Sometimes, Perri felt as if she were talking to the wall.

  “What?” he said.

  “We need to go.”

  “I’m not finished with breakfast.” His mouth still full, Aiden dug his fork back into Lake Syrup.

  “Take a last bite and come on!” The child loved to eat in ways that made Perri nervous.

  “And, Sadie, you, too. Get your coat on right now.”

  “Aiden’s got syrup on his chin.”

  “Do not.”

  “Do so.”

  “You two, enough!!” As Perri literally shoved her children out the door, she wondered when she’d turned into a shrieking battle-ax. That had never been the plan.

  Even on her “city days,” and even with Mike at home, Perri made a point of dropping her two older kids at school before she left for work. She enjoyed seeing them run up the steps and disappear through the double doors. Occupied for the next six and a half hours, at least. This was the primary thought that went through her head. Had an earlier generation of parents spent so much time worrying that their children would be bored? Perri had no idea if either Sadie or Aiden actually liked school. As many children did, they typically answered “Fine” to the question “How was school?” and “Nothing” to the question “What did you do today?” But neither seemed reluctant to get out of the car, at least. And on occasion, one would excitedly attest to some possibly fantastical development such as “Guess what? Our gym teacher has bird flu!” (Sadie) or “Porter Smith’s dad got arrested for tax elation” (Aiden).

  That morning, after school drop-off, Perri returned to the house to collect her briefcase. She found Noah standing two feet from the TV, his eyes enormous. Mike was sprawled on the sofa behind him, singing along to the opening credits in a rich baritone: “Yoouuurrr backyard friends, the backyaaaardigaaaannnnns. In the place where we belong, where we’ll probably sing a song…” It was cute, sort of. Except not quite. A familiar rush of irritation and impatience replaced Perri’s earlier happiness over the music class news. For the eight hours a week that Mike performed childcare, why couldn’t he sit on the floor and play with blocks, or show Noah a map of the world, or even bounce a ball his way? It was a competitive world. Chinese kids Noah’s age were probably already adding fractions! Perri experienced a familiar rush of fear as well—that her family was falling hopelessly behind in the race to the top.

  It was more than that, too.

  When Perri was young, the Hellinger family hadn’t even owned a TV set. Carol, who considered television to be a scourge on humanity, hadn’t purchased one until the mid-90s after her three daughters had left for college and ostensibly only to watch Great Performances on PBS, whereupon Bob had gotten hooked on the vintage police drama, Hawaii Five-O. And yet, Perri didn’t remember feeling deprived—maybe because she and her sisters had been too busy building dollhouse furniture out of matchsticks (Perri), conducting “science experiments” with baking soda and toothpaste (Gus), and painting scenery for Greek tragedies (Pia), which the three of them would then perform in togas made of their own twin sheets fastened over the shoulder with safety pins.

  It wasn’t until sixth grade that Perri had realized what she’d been missing—and how unusual her upbringing was. After she confused the animated TV show and its eponymous dog, Scooby-Doo, for a candy bar, her classmates had laughed—and Perri had experienced deep feelings of shame and alienation. When she became a mother herself, she’d been determined that her own kids should avoid a similar fate. But at the same time, she’d secretly suspected that Carol was right and that creativity blossomed in inverse proportion to the amount of screen time allowed. In what was Perri’s greatest and (arguably) only rebellion against the Hellinger family, aggressive normalcy had ultimately won out. She’d relented on morning cartoons, and then relented on video games. And yet…

  Perri lifted the remote off the coffee table and hit the power button. The screen fluttered into darkness.

  “Ttttttttt Vvvvvvvvvv!” wailed Noah.

  “Sweetie poo,” said Perri, lifting him into her arms. “Mommy doesn’t want your brain turning to mush.”

  But the child kept wailing. That was when she noticed the cereal bar—suddenly smeared across the collar of her freshly dry-cleaned silk blouse, mashed strawberries and all. “God damn it!” she cried as she turned back to Mike. “How many times have I asked you not to let the kids eat in the living room!” At the ferocity of her upbraiding, Noah cried even harder. Upset to see him upset, Perri felt even more inflamed at her husband. “See what you’ve done now!”

  “See what I’ve done?” He laughed. “I’m not the one who turned off his favorite show, then yelled at him for eating breakfast.”

  In an attempt to control her rage, Perri breathed in and out, both to a count of three. “I’m late—and I have to go change now,” she said finally. She deposited the child on his father’s stomach and walked out.

  “Are you trying to make this house an incredibly unpleasant place to live in? Or only a slightly unpleasant place?” Mike called after her.

  The comment stung, and Perri stopped short. Catching her reflection in the mirror over the console table, she was aghast to discover how puffy and ill-defined her face had become with age. She was beginning to resemble a Yorkshire pudding. And what if Mike was right? What if she’d become unbearable to be around? And if she had become unbearable, was it mostly because he’d stopped having sex with her? Or had he stopped having sex with her because she was so unbearable? And had she not had perfectly valid grounds for complaining just now, or was she being too much of a stickler? Should she have cut Mike some slack and let the TV stay on?

  Perri changed into a short-sleeve sweater. Then she went back downstairs. She hated leaving for work right after she and Mike had had a fight. But she also knew that she’d have to be the one to apologize. Somehow, despite her doubts and melancholy, she couldn’t bring herself to do so. She had too much pride. And yet, how badly she wished her husband would come to her just then, put his arms around her waist and tell her how lucky he was to have a wife like her. Stalling, she went to collect the mail. She found the usual bills and catalogues waiting in the basket. She must have gotten six catalogues a day. Sometimes Perri felt as if Pottery Barn and J. Crew were personally stalking her. In the Closet sent out only two catalogues per year. Perri felt it made the experience of receiving one special.

  She also found a credit card offer addressed to one Ginny Budelaire. Perri recognized the name as that of the previous owner of the house. At the time of the sale, Ginny Budelaire, then in her eighties, had been afflicted with Alzheimer’s disease. So her grown children had sold the place on her behalf. According to their real estate agent, Ginny had been a chorus girl at Radio City Music Hall back in the 1940s. Later, she’d married an Amtrak executive who’d seen her onstage. It had been hard to connect the story with the figure who Perri had caught a glimpse of during her final walk-through with Mike. To Perri’s recollection, Ginny Budelaire had
been a tiny slumped woman with parchment skin, vacant eyes, and a wisp of orange hair. Perri also recalled the rush of joy and pride she’d experienced that afternoon as she and Mike—grown-ups at last!—had made their way through the house, Mike squeezing her hand and Perri squeezing back. As if coconspirators in a secret pact that was finally coming to fruition. How long ago that all seemed now…

  It was getting late. Perri had a nine thirty meeting with an investor. She took the envelope into the kitchen with her and, feeling that it was somehow sacrilegious to toss it in the trash, stuck it in her handbag instead. Then she walked back into the living room and gave Noah a kiss good-bye. He’d stopped crying for the moment, if only because the TV was back on. He was also sitting in Mike’s lap. “I’ll be home by six thirty, seven. Thank you for taking my father to the hospital,” she told her husband in a flat and inanimate voice and without making eye contact.

  “Sure thing,” he replied faux breezily.

  A blur of ranch houses and warehouses, anemic-looking poplars and junked car part lots, greeted Perri’s eyes through the window of her Metro-North car. Finally, the train slowed into Grand Central. Perri slung the strap of her briefcase over her shoulder and stepped out.

  Her office in the city was on the thirteenth floor of a generic glass high-rise on Fifth Avenue in the 30s. Her business partner was a woman named LuAnn, who was older and had once worked as an interior decorator. The two shared adjacent offices. They also employed twenty-three people, more than half of them under thirty. One of them was a graphic designer with a handlebar mustache, an extensive collection of skintight jeans and oversized plaid shirts that he wore buttoned to the neck, and a tattoo of a pizza on his left hand. His name was Troy, and he functioned as Perri’s connection to the “next generation.” In the Closet’s chief demographic was thirty-five- to forty-two-year-olds, but Perri and LuAnn were hoping to expand into the collegiate and postcollegiate market with a lower-priced line called ITC.

  At eleven, Perri walked her “nine thirty” to the elevator. At twelve thirty, she did the same with her “eleven thirty.” At twelve forty-five, she shut the door, glanced at a framed desk photo of Noah, pushed away a horrific image of him being crushed by an oncoming train (why did her brain taunt her like that?), scanned a sushi menu on the Internet, placed an order, and readjusted her buttocks in her desk chair. But she couldn’t get comfortable. Her bones felt creaky, her skin itchy. There was a licorice taste in the back of her throat. Maybe she and Mike needed a vacation, she thought. Just the two of them. Somewhere far away with palm trees and white sand. The only problem was that Perri secretly hated vacations. She felt as if she weren’t accomplishing anything. Which, of course, was the whole point—just not to Perri.

  Over a yellowtail scallion roll and seaweed salad, she reviewed the previous quarter’s sales figures. They were disappointing. However, considering the wider economic situation in the country, they were not as disappointing as they might have been. Also, the pastel wicker keepsake boxes were selling like hotcakes. Maybe recessions brought out consumers’ nostalgic streaks?

  At two, she met with LuAnn and Troy in the conference room to discuss the upcoming catalogue. (Proposed cover line: Spring = Spring Cleaning.) Troy felt it sounded too 1950s—no one cleaned exclusively in the spring anymore, he argued—but LuAnn felt that the phrase had retro appeal. And Perri agreed, clearly irritating Troy, who stomped out with a pissy “Who cares what I think—I’m just a pretentious white guy with facial hair who dresses like a perverted lumberjack and lives in Williamsburg. Right?”

  Rather than agree, Perri said nothing.

  Returning to her office at two forty-five, she dug her hand into her bag in search of her BlackBerry. She was feeling guilty about her freak-out over The Backyardigans and thought she’d send a conciliatory text to Mike, something like “Hope you and N had a good Wheels on the Bus. Sorry I was a big crank this morning.” But was she actually sorry? All she knew was that she hated the idea of him sitting there thinking he’d married a shrew. Along with her BlackBerry, her hand emerged with the credit card solicitation addressed to Ginny Budelaire.

  Without thinking, Perri ripped open the envelope, grabbed a pen off her desktop, and began to fill out the application form. She wrote in a fictional date of birth that established her as ten years younger than she actually was. She listed her marital status as “single.” She picked nine random digits as her Social Security number and copied them out. She checked off the box indicating that her annual family income was between $50,000 and $75,000. Finally, with a loopy theatrical hand and with both the capital G and the capital B dwarfing the back-slanted letters that followed, she signed the form “Ginny Budelaire.” Then she stuffed the form into its accompanying envelope, licked it closed, tucked it back in her purse—and dared herself to drop it in the mailbox in front of the Lexington Avenue post office on her way back to Grand Central later that day.

  7

  TAKING PITY ON HER MOTHER—and with nothing else to do after work now that Debbie had moved out—Gus had been going out to Yonkers to visit Carol every evening or two.

  “Let me know if you want me to bring anything else to the hospital,” she offered one still-wintry mid-March eve. “Crossword puzzles. Socks. Fresh fruit. My diary for you to read.” In high school, Gus had caught Carol doing exactly that, which wouldn’t have been a big deal if Gus hadn’t used the pages to confess to an undying crush on the captain of the girls’ basketball team. Whether her mother realized that P.S. was Penny Showalter was unclear. In any case, she’d never forgiven Carol, who’d never apologized, on the grounds that Gus had left the thing sitting out in clear view.

  But for once, Carol let the reference fly right by her. “I’d love some green grapes, actually,” she said.

  “Easily accomplished,” said Gus.

  “You’re too kind.”

  “Really, it’s no problem.”

  “I suppose it would be nice to have a few books, as well,” Carol went on. “Whatever you find on my bedside table is fine, if you don’t mind schlepping back to the house again. I know you’re busy—”

  “Not too busy to secure you a fictional autobiography of a Roman emperor,” said Gus.

  “Thank you, my dear. Actually, I wouldn’t mind rereading I, Claudius.”

  “Sure thing.”

  “Auggie.” Carol pursed her lips, her eyes crinkly beneath her mummy-like head bandage.

  “Yes, Mom?”

  “It’s meant a lot to me that you’ve been here so much, keeping your feeble old mother company.”

  “It’s nothing,” said Gus, unnerved though not displeased by the apparent change in Carol’s personality. Indeed, as she emerged from the fog of painkillers, she struck Gus as being newly deferential, even polite, where she’d once been rude and overbearing. As a result, Gus and her mother were getting along far better than usual. It was also clear to Gus that she was attached to the woman in some possibly unhealthy way. But she didn’t necessarily want to be reminded of that.

  At the same time, having been awarded Favored Daughter status, if only for the moment, Gus wasn’t about to pass up the opportunity to denigrate her Less Worthy Sisters. “On that note,” she began again. “I can’t believe how little Pia has been out here to see you. I think Dad’s really offended.” In fact, Bob had never mentioned Olympia’s name to Gus. Not that he necessarily remembered Olympia’s name.

  “Well, he shouldn’t be,” said Carol.

  “Why not?” said Gus, disappointed.

  “Pia has a lot on her plate, between her museum job and raising Lola on her own.”

  “And I don’t?”

  “I know you do, too.”

  “Well, Lola is in daycare, like, seventeen hours a day.” Gus felt guilty ranking on her sister behind her back—but maybe not that guilty.

  “Well, it’s not easy for her to get out here,” said Carol, “especially without a car like you have. It’s a good hour-and-a-half commute by public transit, and s
he doesn’t get out of work until six something.”

  “What about weekends? What’s her excuse then?”

  “I don’t know about weekends,” Carol conceded.

  “Well, my reading is that she can’t deal with people when they’re in need because she’s an incredibly selfish human being.” No sooner had Gus relieved herself of the long-held conviction that her middle sister didn’t pull her fair weight in the family, however, than she found herself doubting her righteousness. After all, it was Gus who had helped herself—twice now—to the petty cash jar in her parents’ kitchen while picking up extra clothes for Carol. It wasn’t as if she needed the money. Between Legal Aid and Fordham, she made a decent living, even if a full fifty percent of it was stripped away by the government. (Despite being a committed lefty, Gus secretly hated paying taxes and occasionally claimed questionable write-offs on her annual returns, such as dry cleaning for “public appearances.” Which, in her case, meant appearing in family court in the Bronx.) But there was a way in which she believed herself to be deserving of those extra five- and ten-dollar bills.

  Gus often thought of a story told by her grandmother, Gertrude, who had been a small child during the Depression, as well as the youngest of six. When Trudy’s mother, Alberta, had roasted a chicken, the pick of parts would begin with her oldest brother and continue down. Poor Trudy would always be left with the near-meatless back or thigh. (Gus could relate.) Not that in the eighteen years she lived on Edmarth Place Carol had ever served them a freshly roasted anything. Ready-made astronaut chicken was another story. Gus had nevertheless felt that her older sisters had consumed the majority of their parents’ riches, such as they were. To Gus’s mind, Olympia had been so beautiful and ethereal that everyone had had to tiptoe around her for fear of her breaking in two. And Perri had been so bossy and histrionic that no one had any choice but to do as she said. No wonder that, growing up, Gus had felt as if she’d had to shout to be heard, even over Olympia’s silences, which in their own way could be deafening. “Everyone’s doing the best they can” was the New Carol’s magnanimous reading of the situation.