by Mary Hogan
“Hand it over,” Muriel said, rushing her sister.
Pia laughed out loud. “Why should I?” Easily, she held the journal high enough over her head to be well beyond Muriel’s reach. The sparkly dress suddenly felt unbearably heavy. Muriel wanted to surrender to its weight and crumple to the ground in a billow of shiny fabric. She wanted to hide beneath it and sleep with the bats in her own secret cave, nestled safely in their shared darkness.
“There are some things you need to know and some things you don’t,” she said to her sister.
Scoffing, Pia replied, “Muriel, you are as odd as odd can be.”
Surprising herself, Muriel coughed up a laugh. Suddenly, she saw the pointlessness of it all. There she was, standing in her mother’s dress, in her mother’s closet, protecting her mother from the sin she’d committed. What did she care if Lidia’s secrets took flight? She didn’t let them loose!
“Go ahead and read Mama’s diary. See if I give a whoop.”
Muriel jutted her chin forward. She turned and walked to the back of Lidia’s closet to return the heavy dress to its plastic shroud. Honestly, if Pia knew the truth, it would be a relief. She wouldn’t feel so alone. A shared secret was a bond instead of a burden. A connection with her sister. Pia would sneak into her room after dinner, shut the door without a sound, flop down on her bed, and whisper, “I still can’t believe it. A priest? Can you believe it?”
“I know!” Muriel would say, and Pia would press her index finger up to her sister’s lips. “Keep your voice down. Mama can’t know that we both know.” Bellies down, knees bent, feet crisscrossing in midair, Muriel would bump shoulders with Pia. Even though she didn’t fully understand what she’d seen that day, she would pretend that she did. She’d sidle up to her older sister and whisper the one question she’d been dying to ask someone since that late afternoon on Broadway: when Mama kissed Father Camilo like that, did it mean they were both going to hell?
“I can keep a secret, you know,” Muriel proudly called out from the depths of the closet. “Remember the day you buried me at the beach?”
Pia ignored her and opened their mother’s journal. Muriel hung up the black beaded dress. “Besides,” she said, “I already know what’s in Mama’s diary and I’ve never told a single solitary soul.”
Pia read: “ ‘My darling first daughter is as perfect a child as a mother could want.’ ”
“That’s not what it says.”
“ ‘From the moment I saw her face, I knew God gave me a miracle.’ ” Holding up the diary, she showed her sister the very paragraph.
“That’s what it says?” Muriel rolled her eyes. In a bossy tone, Pia continued, “ ‘As a young woman, my Pia is smart, beautiful, slender, athletic, and independent. In life, she will achieve anything she wants.’ ”
Groaning, Muriel flipped through Lidia’s other gowns to choose her next selection. Pia droned on, but Muriel ignored her. What a stupid thing to write! How utterly perfect Pia was? Like anyone needed to document that. Like the whole world didn’t witness it every day of their lives. Muriel rifled through the rack to find another shimmering dress to try on. Maybe something silver?
“ ‘Logan has the temperament of an artist. Years ago, I ceased trying to understand him.’ ”
“Blah, blah, blah,” said Muriel.
“Then I guess you’re not interested in this long paragraph about you.”
Muriel’s eyebrows shot up. In her shorts and tank top, she trotted to the Pia end of their mother’s closet. “She wrote about me?”
“ ‘Muriel,’ ” Pia began primly, as if reading the heading in an encyclopedia. “ ‘My second daughter is a huge disappointment.’ ”
“It doesn’t say that.”
Pia held up her mother’s journal. Her finger tapped the first sentence four times. “Dis-ap-point-ment.”
Standing motionless, Muriel felt the soft carpet beneath her bare feet. She commanded her face to look blank as Pia continued reading. “ ‘Muriel is everything Pia is not. Clumsy, chubby, loud. Her teeth will need braces.’ ”
Muriel closed her mouth.
“ ‘Often I wonder how she could be a part of me.’ ”
The sting of tears hurt Muriel’s whole face. In an effort to keep them from escaping, she clamped down her crooked teeth. “I don’t want to hear any more.”
“Too chicken? Bak, bak, bak.”
“Too mature. Unlike you, who still lives at home.” Muriel spun around and marched back into the depths of Lidia’s closet, running her tongue along her gums to keep the tears at bay.
“ ‘My biggest concern,’ ” read Pia loudly, “ ‘is Muriel’s habit of lying. It’s sad to say a child can’t be trusted, but Muriel cannot. I suspect something serious. Pathological? Will have her tested before high school.’ ”
Muriel’s mouth fell open. “No way does it say that.”
Pia brandished the diary entry. “Right here in black and white.”
Though Pia kept reading, Muriel only heard snippets. A strange buzzing sound filled her ears.
“ ‘ . . . disturbing fantasy life . . . antisocial . . .’ ”
Pia stood between her and the narrow closet exit. Muriel’s chest burned, as if the oxygen inside that closet had turned to carbon monoxide. Could clothes soak up air itself? Was she now breathing in her own exhalations? Muriel made a move for the door, but Pia stepped forward to block her. “ ‘I have caught Muriel lying so often I must concede that she is unable to tell the truth.’ ” Pia looked up. ‘Concede’ means it’s true whether you like it or not.”
“I know what ‘concede’ means,” Muriel lied, sniffing back tears. Whether she liked it or not, tears ran down her cheeks in two thick lines. She quickly wiped them away with the edge of her tank top.
“Why are you so mean?” she asked, her chin quivering.
“It’s not mean if it’s the truth,” Pia replied with the haughtiness of a girl who had always gotten what she wanted. One whose place in the world was as solid as a slurry wall. Muriel shoved past her. Pia spun around and followed her out of the closet. “You don’t have to cry about it, baby Muriel.” Snapping the diary shut, she announced, “Dress up is over. I have to study.”
“Fine,” said Muriel, glaring. Then Pia returned Lidia’s diary to exactly where she’d found it: sandwiched neatly between the remote control and the new DVD cover of Legally Blonde. Directly in front of the television set. Where Pia couldn’t help but find it, open it, and read it.
Pia, being Pia, would have been unable to keep it to herself.
“Do this for me,” Lidia had said.
Muriel’s mouth fell open. Pia said, “You tell, you die,” before striding out like a supermodel, leaving Muriel alone in her mother’s room.
Never had young Muriel felt so awfully, horribly, terribly grown up. As if she’d been both stretched to her limit and weighted down at the same time. She stepped toward Lidia’s diary slowly. Before lifting the remote control off the top of it, she memorized its position. She left nothing to chance. Ever so gently she set the remote aside. She reached for the journal, though, of course, she knew exactly what she was about to see inside it. Opening its stiff, new binding, she inhaled the doughy scent of fresh paper. Inside, she saw the writing just as her sister had read it.
. . . Pia is smart, beautiful, slender . . .
Logan has the temperament of an artist . . .
. . . Muriel . . . unable to tell the truth . . .
Then she turned the page to confirm what she suspected. Lidia had made one entry at the beginning of the book. Period. One entry that marked her three children for life: Pia was perfect in every way, Logan was a troubled artist, and Muriel was a liar. There, in black ink on white paper, was precisely what Lidia wanted her—and Pia—to see. Lidia’s insurance policy.
It’s sad to say a child cannot be trusted, but Muriel cannot.
Her mother had set the whole thing up. Now, it wouldn’t matter what Muriel said. If she ever told anyone abo
ut that day beneath the awning when Father Camilo bent Lidia’s head back in a Broadway kiss—baring the very artery of her life—no one would believe her anyway. Lidia had documented Muriel’s fantasy life. Her inability to tell the truth. Pia, her responsible eldest daughter, would now back her up. She was safe. Who would believe the word of a prepubescent child?
At that exact moment, Muriel felt the very last bits of her childhood slither away. She didn’t try to stop them, corral them somehow. It would have been useless. How could she remain a child when she knew so many ugly truths about adults? About her own mother? Lidia would lie to keep her child from telling the truth. Instead of shielding her daughter, she protected herself. Never had Muriel felt so very alone in her very own family.
You tell, you die.
Didn’t Pia know by now what Lidia should have known as well? Muriel would never ever tell. Keeping secrets was her specialty!
Muriel returned Lidia’s diary to its original position on top of the DVD, as if it had never been read at all. She put the remote back, too, and made sure her mother’s bedspread was perfectly smooth before she left the room. Down the hall, she heard music blaring from behind Pia’s closed bedroom door. She heard her sister singing. Still barefoot, she tiptoed to her own room where she shut the door behind her and dragged her desk chair over to the open closet. There she climbed up to reach the top shelf where her Playbill collection was stored in its special notebook. The notebook was heavy, each pristine Playbill protected in its own plasticine cover—like Lidia’s fancy dresses. Hugging the notebook to her chest, Muriel climbed off the desk chair and sat on her bed. Page by page she slowly looked through her treasures. Merely gazing at the covers made her remember how happy she’d once been. On matinee Saturdays. Before everything went awry.
Chapter 25
HAD THERE BEEN a window in that tiny office restroom Muriel might have attempted to squeeze through it. Outside she would have sidled along the sills, tuning out the city traffic below, calming the thudding of her heart, until she reached the corner where she’d shimmy to the ground like a monkey. For one more day, she would have forgotten.
Instead, she dried her face and hands and returned to the inner office where Joanie sat smoking a fresh cigarette.
“It’s my sister,” she blurted out.
“What about Barbie?”
Without warning, Muriel opened her mouth and let loose an ungodly noise that shocked both of them. Her shoulders curled forward and her arms dangled like wet towels on a bathroom hook. Water spilled over her bottom eyelids like from a forgotten bathtub.
“Good Christ,” Joanie said. Grunting in her fussy way, she stood and smashed her cigarette into the overflowing ashtray with a screwdriverish twist. She made her way to Muriel and enveloped her in folds of fabric. “No good can come from holding that shit inside,” she said quietly into the top of Muriel’s head.
After a few moments of silence, she added, “Let it all go, baby girl. I’m here to catch it.”
Not at all meaning to, that’s exactly what Muriel did. She released the energy it took to keep her head up and let her forehead burrow into Joanie’s cushioned shoulder. She made no effort to stop the waterlogged story from sluicing forth in a flood of words and weeping. The warmth of Joanie’s round body was as comforting as a chenille robe. Her smoky smell, along with a powdery sweetness, stirred something deep within her friend. The gentle pat of Joanie’s fleshy hand on her back made Muriel miss the mother she’d never had. A mother who would light up when she walked into a room, feel an ache when she left. One who would sneak up behind her as she stood at the mirror, hug her with her whole body, then nestle her chin into the divot of her collarbone, press her face against her cheek and say, “My nose is wider than yours. Your jawline is more defined.” She would compare features, freckle by freckle, searching for her contribution, delighting each time she found a genetic link. “I gave you that cleft in your chin.” A mother who would use the tight space between them to recall how they were once one person. “Feel my heart beating? That used to be your heart, too, moje kochanie.”
A mother like Pia had.
In gulps of air Muriel opened the spillway and let the secrets surge. Some of them, anyway. About Pia’s illness. The gray satin dress. The way she found out how her mother really felt about her. The crushing hurt of it all.
It’s not your fault. Siblings are mean.
“Jesus Christ,” Joanie said, embracing her more tightly.
“I feel so helpless about my sister. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. What do I do?”
Without hesitation, Joanie stepped back and wiped the wetness off her friend’s damp cheeks. First one, then the other as the air conditioner blew back the curls in her wild hair.
“You go back into that bathroom and splash more water on your face. Swish around a little mouthwash while you’re at it . . . just saying. Then you grab your purse, wait for the elevator, and take a cab to Grand Central. Get the hell out of here, Muriel, and catch the next train to Connecticut.”
THE VERY NAME of the state made Muriel feel inadequate. Connecticut’s summers didn’t feel as miserable as the sweaty mangle of humanity in Manhattan did; its winters inspired poetry. Somehow, the state seemed immune to mess and crankiness. At least the parts of it Muriel had seen, which were the sections of Connecticut that housed Pia and her family. To Muriel, the nutmeg state felt like a Broadway set. Vignettes of white-steepled churches; lime green trees; stone retaining walls stacked like craggy puzzles; mansions set back from the street atop manicured knolls; children in Converse sneakers riding bicycles along quiet country roads, their reflective helmets strapped tightly beneath their chins. Even the lone time she’d taken the east side bus with Joanie to the Connecticut casinos, it felt as if they were on the yellow brick road from The Wiz the moment they left the interstate.
On the train north, Muriel came close to throwing up. She’d never had motion sickness before, but that morning her glands flooded with saliva, her stomach felt roped into a knot. Using a sanitizing wipe to open the latch to the lavatory, she stood over the stainless steel toilet bowl with the chugging train jostling her violently from side to side. Vainly, she tried not to inhale the stale urine smell. Did male commuters even try to hit the bowl? Bracing her legs in a wide stance so as not to touch the wall or sink or, God forbid, the toilet itself, she hung her head and spit into the bowl. How had she let Joanie talk her into this? Pia had made it clear she didn’t want to see her. She’d left explicit instructions. Natural polish and lips. Don’t let them restyle my wig.
Barging in unannounced and uninvited, well, it wasn’t something a Sullivant would ever do. Not a Muriel Sullivant, anyway. Pia’s housekeeper, Blanca, would probably turn her away at the door. “Miss Pia is out,” she’d say in a practiced way that left no room for discussion. Only Muriel would know why the car was in the driveway. She’d look up to see the sheer curtain fall closed on Pia’s bedroom window.
“Family doesn’t need an invitation,” Joanie had said to her before she left New York. “Not at times like this. Now go.”
In her vulnerable state, with her puffy red eyes and mottled neck, she’d believed her. “What do I say when I get there?” Muriel had asked, sniffing. “What do I do?”
Joanie was clear. “Empty the dishwasher if it’s full, scrub the toilets if they’re dirty, pick Emma up at school, buy groceries if the fridge is empty, recycle junk mail piled on the kitchen counter, make tea, flip through People magazine with Pia, hold her hand. Be her sister.”
Muriel burped up a laugh.
“If she wants to be left alone,” Joanie added, softly, “leave her alone. But don’t let your sister pass without her knowing you were there. That you cared enough to show up. Even if it means squeezing her hand and saying nothing. If you don’t, you’ll never forgive yourself.”
Of course she was right. Of course.
While Muriel struggled to maintain her balance over the train’s toilet bowl, she shook h
er head at the very notion that she would need instructions on how to care. Wasn’t that something families learned naturally?
Not her family. Not from the very beginning.
“You should spend Christmas with your family,” Babcia Jula had said to her only daughter, Lidia, the first holiday after Pia was born. They had already moved to Queens. Lidia hadn’t bothered to buy a Christmas tree.
“We are, Mama. We’re coming home the Saturday before.”
“Your new family.”
Lidia was taken aback. “What are you saying?”
“Nic, nic. I’m just saying.”
“You don’t want to see your granddaughter?”
“Of course I want to see your little niemowlę. It’s not me. You know how open minded I am.”
“Papa?”
“That man is as stubborn as a hedgehog.”
Lidia felt a flush rise in her cheeks. “He’s going to have to accept my husband sometime.”
“Hedgehogs don’t always agree.”
“So I can never come home? Is that what you want?”
“Not what I want, kochanie, but the way it is. You made your bed with an Irishman, now you must sleep in it. I only tell the truth because I care.”
“Care? How can you say you care when you refuse to see your only grandchild?”
“Don’t be dramatic, Lidia. I’ll see little Pia one day in New York.”
“One day? It’s her first Christmas!”
“You’ll understand when your baby grows up. Your father cares so much about you he can’t bear to see a Sullivant in your arms. And me, I care too much about you and little Pia to allow such an upset on Christ’s birthday. If we didn’t care, you could bring anyone home. Have a premature child with any man. But we care too much to witness the ruin of your life.”
Care. In her family it had always been a four-letter word.
Over the loudspeaker the conductor announced, “Westport. Next stop. Westport.” Muriel spit into the bowl once more, then used a fresh Sani-Cloth to unlock the lavatory door and let herself out moments before the train lurched to a stop at the platform. Once outside, the fresh air made her feel slightly better. At least her stomach stopped its cartwheels.