The Pretty One: A Novel About Sisters

by Lucinda Rosenfeld

  “No one has ever said we look alike before,” she told Mike. “It’s probably just that we were talking about her.”

  “Maybe,” he said.

  “Anyway, I can finish up here.”

  “You sure?”

  “Positive.”

  Relief flooded Olympia’s chest at the sight of her brother-in-law lumbering away.

  But there was no escaping him after the kids were all finally asleep. Since Bob was in the guest room, Olympia’s bed for the night was the living room sofa. Which was also the TV couch. Then again, it was Mike’s house. He plunked himself down in a club chair across from her and cracked open a beer. She was watching 2001: A Space Odyssey. “You gotta love the nineteen-sixties idea of advanced computer technology,” Mike offered at the spectacle of Hal the talking computer telling one of the astronauts that the spaceship was about to malfunction. “Hal,” he went on. “How come no one uses that name anymore? Hal Sims. Not bad. Right?”

  “You thinking of having a fourth?” Olympia joked.

  “Not likely to happen at present, since my wife doesn’t appear to live here anymore.”

  “I’m sure she’ll be back,” said Olympia, who wasn’t sure of anything.

  Mike took a sip of his beer and sighed a world-weary “Who knows.”

  “Speaking of walking out,” Olympia told him. “I basically quit my job this afternoon after I talked to you. Like, I’m not sure it’s going to be waiting for me on Monday.” She had to tell someone.

  “No shit.”

  “Yes shit.”

  Mike folded down his lips. “Wow. Well, welcome to the unemployed people club. It’s not that bad once you get used to it.”

  “I guess,” said Olympia, unconvinced.

  “Hey.” He paused, took another sip of his beer. “I appreciate you coming out here.”

  “Of course.”

  “It’s nice having you here.”

  Olympia couldn’t, in good faith, tell Mike that it was nice being there, so she said nothing.

  A few minutes before eleven, he wandered off with a “ ’Night.”

  “Sleep well,” she told him. She watched a few more minutes of the movie. Then she flicked off the power button, curled up under her blanket, and attempted to shut out the world and all its myriad confusions, if only for the night.

  It couldn’t have been much more than six a.m. when Olympia woke. The kids weren’t even up yet. Her back ached. Yet there was something strangely calming, even copacetic, about lying there staring at the ceiling beams. The silence was as heavy as the velvet drapes in the dining room. The morning light was just beginning to filter through the bay window that looked out into the backyard. It was early spring, and crocuses and daffodil buds were poking through the thaw. Olympia thought back to her earliest love affairs. All of them had started in late March or early April. It made her think that human beings were eighty-five percent biologically programmed and, to that extent, completely predictable. As for the remaining fifteen percent, there was no saying where it would lead.

  Or where it had led her sister Perri. The Rocky Mountains? Rio de Janeiro? A thought struck Olympia: Was it possible that she really didn’t know the first thing about her older sister? What if the roles we assumed in our families had little to nothing to do with the people we actually became in the outside world? A mutual acquaintance in New York had once described Perri as “such a sweetheart,” and the description had shocked Olympia. Was that how her older sister came across in public? And was Perri’s critical streak reserved only for her younger sisters and husband? And had it really been so intolerable here in Larchmont? Olympia wondered as she gazed around her at the creamy walls, plush carpets, iron chandelier, leather upholstery, and solid wood furnishings. Olympia had yet to graduate from the Ikea stage of home furnishing, the particleboard and MDF interspersed with the occasional flea-market find.

  Bob was up next. Olympia saw him before he saw her. He was dressed in his flannel bathrobe, and his upper body was bent at a seventy-degree angle. Scurrying down the hall, his eyes darting this way and that, he reminded her of a frightened bandit. Clearly he couldn’t wait to go home, Olympia thought with a heavy heart. And why did it so upset her to see her parents looking needy or vulnerable in any way? Growing up, she’d hear the two of them talking in the kitchen in low voices about how her father had been passed over for yet another plum assignment. Carol would express outrage at the head of the lab. Quietly defensive, Bob would try to justify the decision to make Kit Furlong or Dan Lieblich, rather than himself, the team leader of the Booster Neutrino Oscillation Experiment, or some other initiative. As Olympia understood it, her father, while a young atomic scientist at Los Alamos National Lab in New Mexico, had once been deemed a rising star in his field. There had even been talk of a future Nobel. What had happened since then (to change his fortunes) was unclear. Bob never talked about that period of his life. And Olympia didn’t have the nerve to ask, not wanting to be nosey or to upset him.

  In truth, it was strange to think of her father having ever had a life outside his wife and three daughters and in a place other than Hastings. Still, Olympia always longed to know more about the man he once was. And had he been a virgin when he’d married Carol? It seemed unlikely, but who knew. Clearly, he’d been a serious nerd. “Hi, Dad,” she called to him.

  Apparently startled, he froze in place before his head swiveled to face her. “Perr-Gus-I-mean-Pia—what in the world are you doing here?!” he asked, his eyebrows up near his hairline.

  “I came out last night,” she said. “Lola’s up in Sadie’s room.”

  “And where’s Perri? She’s usually the first up.”

  “She went on a last-minute business trip,” Olympia said, improvising. “Some kind of closet organization conference in San Diego, I think. She would have said good-bye, but she didn’t want to wake you.”

  “I see.” Bob furrowed his brow. “Well, it’s nice to see you! Maybe you’ll come to the hospital with me today to see Mom.”

  “Of course.”

  “Though I don’t know how we’ll get there. Perhaps someone can drive us.”

  “We’ll figure it out,” said Olympia, conjecturing that Perri and her Lexus were the glue that kept the Hellinger family from splintering into four disparate units.

  Noah and Mike appeared soon after that, Noah in the same Yankees jersey and jeans from the previous night and Mike in the same T-shirt—and now sweats. As the latter lumbered down the stairs, his son hanging off his neck, Olympia could just discern the outline of his penis swinging to and fro. “Morning,” he mumbled.

  “Hey,” she said, suddenly as embarrassed by her own semidressed state as she was by his—and glad now that her father was nearby. “Hey, Pops,” she said, turning to him. “Do you want me to go get the newspaper for you?” Perri still got home delivery of the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, though it was unclear if anyone read them.

  “Please,” replied Bob.

  Olympia took her time walking to the front door, then walking back, so as to avoid sharing counter space with Mike. Indeed, by the time she made it to the kitchen, he was already on his way back upstairs, both bottle and baby in tow.

  Sadie appeared shortly after that, followed by Lola.

  “Good morning, you two!” said Olympia.

  “I want pancakes,” said Sadie.

  “Me, too,” said Lola.

  “You’re just saying that because Sadie wants them,” said Olympia, then realized she was being unnecessarily critical of a not-quite-four-year-old.

  “No, I’m not!” cried Lola, sounding hurt.

  Olympia couldn’t blame her. “You’re right. That was bitchy. Sorry,” she said.

  “What’s bitchy?” asked Lola.

  “Mean,” said Olympia.

  “Supermean,” said Sadie. “I love being supermean!”

  “Why?” asked Lola.

  “I don’t know,” said Sadie, shrugging.

  At least she w
as honest, Olympia thought. “Well, if Sadie shows me where the ingredients are, I’m happy to give the pancakes a go,” she said.

  “Mom keeps the organic buckwheat mix over here,” she said, leading her aunt to a pullout pantry that made the linen closet look haphazard. The twist ties that accompanied already-opened products such as rice and pasta appeared to have been color-coordinated to their packaging. What’s more, all the cereal boxes were lined up so that no box stuck out farther than any other. Olympia felt as if she needed a double dose of her anxiety medication. It wasn’t just the perfection of Perri’s pantry that unnerved her. The very idea of cooking filled Olympia with dread and self-doubt. She never understood how other women she knew all seemed to know how to make braised lamb shanks and turnip puree. When had they learned? And who had taught them? Carol, a would-be women’s libber in her day, had seen cooking as a form of servitude and had done as little of it as possible while her daughters were growing up. The Hellinger sisters had therefore subsisted on TV dinners, pizza, raw carrots, and macaroni and cheese.

  But Olympia’s own generation had turned the business of producing edible calories into a higher calling. Not infrequently, Olympia would find herself at dinner parties in Brooklyn where everyone would be sitting around talking about naturally evaporated sea salt or herb-infused olive oil, and she’d feel as if she were visiting from Mars. Neighbors of hers had built a cheese cave in their backyard; another guy she knew in the neighborhood had a giant beehive from which he extracted honey while wearing a black bag over his head that looked eerily like the ones used to humiliate prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison during the War in Iraq. “Wow, your mom is really organized,” Olympia murmured to her niece.

  “Yeah, she’s kind of a control freak,” said Sadie.

  “What’s a control freak?” asked Lola.

  “Someone who likes to be really neat,” said Olympia.

  “And who freaks out if it’s not neat and has to take her medication,” added Sadie—to Olympia’s shock and fascination. Was her sister on Zoloft too? And, if so, why hadn’t she ever told Olympia? Then again, why had Olympia never told Perri about her own prescription? What if the two sisters had more in common than either would ever be willing to admit?

  Eggs, milk, and oil all found their way onto the countertop. “Are you girls going to help me?” asked Olympia. “Because, truth be told, Old Auntie Pia isn’t much of a chef.”

  “Can I break the eggs?” Sadie said excitedly.

  “Can I mix?” said Lola.

  The project was a roaring success. Olympia managed to flip at just the right moment and without excessive splattering. For once, Sadie was being almost sweet. And Lola seemed ecstatically happy to have a “big sister” for the day—so much so that, for a brief moment in time, Olympia allowed herself to imagine they were all one big happy family and that this was her four-bedroom Tudor; her toile-upholstered kitchen nook; even her (god forbid) husband sitting in it, flipping through the Weekend Journal, Noah on the floor next to him zoom-zooming a toy digger around a pretend building site. Her brother-in-law was no one’s idea of tall, dark, and handsome, Olympia thought. But he was all man. His hands in particular had a certain meaty appeal. His wedding ring and neatly clipped nails aside, she could almost imagine Mike as a caveman in prehistoric France, pulling apart an animal carcass.

  In the afternoon, they all went to the hospital to visit Carol. At the sight of her broken leg still suspended in traction, guilt consumed Olympia. She suddenly grasped the discomfort that her mother must have been in all that month, as well as her own failure to have made that month any more bearable for her. Olympia couldn’t precisely say what had kept her away from Yonkers other than sheer lassitude. If Carol was miffed at her, however, she didn’t let on. “It’s lovely to see you, Pia,” she said, to Olympia’s surprise and relief.

  Then she relayed the joyous news that, if all went as planned, her doctors were promising to release her on Sunday or Monday.

  “Well, isn’t that something,” said Bob, looking so happy that Olympia thought he might burst.

  It didn’t seem like a good time to tell Carol (or Bob) what was going on in Perri’s marriage, or at Olympia’s job. So Olympia repeated her previous lie about how her older sister had left at dawn for a closet conference in San Diego.

  “How strange. She didn’t mention it when I saw her,” said Carol. “But you girls are so in demand! I don’t even try to keep up anymore.”

  Saturday evening, Gus and Jeff came over for pizza. Just as Perri had feared and suspected, the two were now a couple. The thought crossed Olympia’s mind that Perri’s motives for leaving town included some deep-seated dread of seeing her sister and her brother-in-law romantically entwined. Since Jeff was sitting across from her, Olympia had plenty of opportunity to study his face. Stunningly handsome was the verdict, she decided, if in a highly studied way. Clearly, he’d put a lot of thought into making his hair appear as if he’d just climbed out of bed. Or maybe he really had just climbed out of bed—with Gus. Or had they not slept together yet? Olympia couldn’t tell. Either way, Olympia was surprised to find herself feeling resentful, as well: Why should she have to deal with Perri’s mess while Gus spent the weekend gallivanting with Perri’s husband’s handsome brother? Wasn’t Olympia supposed to be the Pretty One in the family? Didn’t that count for anything anymore?

  Or had the tiara been passed down? Olympia had to concede that, if anyone was looking stunning that evening, it was her younger sister, Gus, who had pulled her hair back in a tiny ponytail and was wearing—was it possible?—eyeliner and lip gloss. Until just then, Olympia had never noticed how fine her sister’s features were. The loss of her nose ring definitely enhanced the picture, as well. And why was she smiling like that and giggling at everything Jeff said? Olympia liked to think of herself as someone who didn’t begrudge others their happiness and especially not her sisters—so long as they didn’t gloat. But with each passing minute, she found the sight of Gus and Jeff more and more unbearable.

  On account of (a) Perri’s glaring absence and (b) the need to keep the truth about that absence from Bob, the conversation at the dinner table that evening was as desultory as it was stilted. Bob remarked on how tasty the crust was before asking if the rest of them were aware that pizza dough operated on similar principles as standing-wave ultrasound, providing insight into the motors used in micro-actuator technology? No one was aware. At another lull, Olympia asked Aiden, “So, what’s your favorite movie these days?” (Having already eaten dinner, the younger kids were in the adjoining den, watching Mary Poppins.)

  “Transformers,” he said, without skipping a beat.

  “An excellent film,” said Jeff. “I thought Megan Fox really brought depth to the character of Mikaela Banes, the all-knowing auto mechanic.”

  “I guess,” said Aiden, who still didn’t like girls.

  “What about you, Dad?” asked Olympia.

  “Let’s see. I enjoyed What’s Up, Doc? with Barbra Streisand. I suppose it was many years ago now. But Carol and I have never laughed so hard in a movie theater. I also enjoyed Woody Allen’s Sleeper. A very amusing film.”

  “Interesting choices from yesteryear,” said Olympia. “Jeff?”

  “Let’s see. I remember digging The Shawshank Redemption when I saw it. On a lighter note, I definitely enjoyed Wedding Crashers.”

  “That was a seriously funny movie,” offered Mike, chuckling for the first time all weekend. “That scene when the weird gay brother climbs into Vince Vaughn’s bed and tries to seduce him—hilarious.”

  Gus took the opportunity to shoot her brother-in-law an angry look and mutter “Homophobe” while an apparently newly sensitized Jeff added, “Easy there, bro.”

  Meanwhile, Olympia’s mind traveled at the speed of a flying pizza back to Brooklyn and her black file cabinet, whose bottom drawer she mentally pulled open to reveal the donor profile of #6103. They were his favorite movies, too. A coincidence, she hoped. Only, what d
id that coincidence say about Lola’s father? To the best of her abilities, Olympia had blocked out Dawn Cronin’s New Year’s missive, refusing to believe that her daughter’s father could possibly be a second-tier underwear model named Randy from Las Vegas.

  Or what if, by some freak chance, it wasn’t a coincidence at all? What if Jefferson Sims, in need of cash for a new pair of Rossignols or the like, had paid a few visits to the Cryobank of Park Avenue five or six years ago, en route to Stowe? Olympia suddenly recalled Perri’s saying that he’d spent one semester at medical school in the Caribbean before quitting to start a T-shirt and Boogie Board business on Venice Beach. Plus, he was over six feet tall with blue eyes and brown hair. Moreover, #6103 had listed skiing as one of his favorite sports, albeit the cross-country variety.

  Olympia thought she was going to be sick. She put down her fork and reached for her wine. “Jeff,” she said, swallowing. “I have a strange question. By any chance do you like the Boston Red Sox?”

  “The Red Sox?” he asked, squinting.

  “Yeah.”

  He shrugged. “I’m not really a team sports kind of guy. But the Sox are pretty awesome if you like baseball. They’ve got Big Papi—”