by Mary Hogan
Westport, Connecticut, seemed to be zoned for escalating elegance. In the two-mile stretch from the station to Pia’s home, the houses closest to the petite station were humble and overgrown with untended shrubbery. Up a hill, the brown facades lightened to pale yellow. The hedges were flattened into a military crew cut. Around a bend, the houses became homes; farther up, the homes became mansions. By the time she entered her sister’s neighborhood, the estates were erected in stone, their shutters painted French blue or white linen. Balletic weeping willows stretched over the wide avenues in drippy arches. Save for the loud buzz of leaf blowers, the streets were silent. At this hour of the morning in this part of Connecticut, it seemed the only living souls were gardeners.
“It’s going to be okay,” Muriel whispered to herself in the backseat of a cab so clean she didn’t even use the bottom of her shirt to open the door. Still, she fretted over what she might see. Would Pia be bald? Skeletal? Would the veins in her beautiful hands rise up like green tributaries? Would she be too weak to lift her head off the pillow?
At the foot of her sister’s circular driveway, Muriel’s hands shook slightly as she paid the fare. Her stomach made its presence known again. She pulled herself up and stood there, rubbing her hand gently across her belly. “Deep breaths. One in, one out.”
“The right address?” asked the cabdriver, staring at her. Only then did she notice she’d neglected to shut the back door.
“Oh, yes. Sorry.” Muriel quickly closed the door and watched the driver accelerate, his tailpipe belching a puff of white smoke.
Be a sister, she told herself. This is what sisters do.
The Winston estate was a regal stone goddess with white shutters and tiny dormer windows inserted into the gray-shingled roof. In the clear Connecticut sunlight it glowed like a retouched photo. Pristine. Manicured. Flawless. Like Pia herself. (Was she still?) Feeling hopelessly mass market, Muriel climbed the steep driveway. The rough pavers felt warm beneath her feet. Her heart pounded against her sternum. By the time she reached the shiny red front door, she was chuffing for air. For a moment she stilled herself. It’s called composure, Muriel. Look it up. Live it.
Before she had a chance to tap, tap and turn the knob, she heard Root Beer barking and footsteps on the interior marble. The heavy wooden door swung open and the Winstons’ housekeeper, Blanca, stood there, drying her hands on a dish towel. Muriel opened her mouth to speak, but it took a moment for her lips to wrap around the right words. In the interim, Blanca stunned her by throwing both arms around her.
“Miss Muriel! You’ve come on the perfect day.”
THAT VERY MORNING, with the early sun still lemony, Pia awoke confused. Am I in heaven? she wondered. Her bones didn’t scream at her, her lungs didn’t clutch with each breath. When she turned her head to see God, she saw her husband, Will, asleep. His familiar breathing sounds—soft in, hard out—filled the air. His muddy smell clung to the sheets. For the first time in months, she inhaled him without choking. Slowly, Pia sat up in bed and stretched her arms overhead, gingerly at first, waiting for the stab of pain to curl her in on herself. Instead, she felt the elastic comfort of elongated muscle. Her neck, though stiff, didn’t sound like crushed tortilla chips when she swiveled it back and forth. When she lifted her rib cage, the bones felt supported by cartilage for the first time in months. The shooting pain was gone. The queasiness was replaced by hunger. It felt as if a high school buddy had suddenly appeared in her bedroom. They hadn’t spoken in years, but the moment they saw each other, their running conversation resumed. Fresh and limber, they fretted over inconvenient pimples and oafish boys and the unfairness of having to try out for cheerleading squad in a premenstrual bloat. Like it would kill them to wait five days? Magically, Pia felt herself return.
I thank my God through Jesus Christ, Pia silently prayed. “Will?” she whispered.
“What’s wrong?” He awoke instantly.
As she had so many times before she became ill, Pia slid into the warmth on Will’s side of the bed and kissed his furry chest. She pressed her bone-thin body flat against his.
“God answered our prayers, my love. I’m back. It’s me.”
Chapter 26
EVERYTHING IN PIA’S home was shiny. The milk-white marble floor in the entryway was buffed to a glassy finish, the chandelier overhead sparkled like a Tiffany display case. Floor-to-ceiling windows reflected a bluish shimmer. It resembled a model home. Or, Muriel realized for the first time, the lobby of the Plaza Hotel. Too elegant to live in. Unless you were Pia Winston.
“The Lord has given us a miracle,” Blanca said. “Come, come.”
“What’s happened?”
Blanca made the sign of the cross over her chest and hurried into the kitchen where a teakettle was whistling. Muriel scuttled behind. In Pia’s airplane hangar of a kitchen, a giant island sat in the center like a square spaceship. Its black granite top mirrored the huge silver fruit bowl that sat upon it; creamy white cabinetry and stainless-steel appliances around the perimeter of the space didn’t have a single smudge. Muriel had to laugh at Joanie’s advice. The mere thought of cleaning a dirty toilet was unthinkable. Her sister never had to ready her home for guests. The limes in the countertop bowl were always plump and juicy. She had a machine that made club soda on the spot. A dirty dish in the sink? Yeah, right.
“The worst is over,” Blanca said, lifting the steaming kettle off the stove. She poured boiling water over several tea bags in a thick glass pitcher. “Our Pia is better today.”
“Better?”
“She’s back from the very edge.”
Every vein, artery, and capillary in Muriel’s body seemed to widen its borders. She felt a physical surge of relief. Her skin pinked; her eyes drew water. Until that very moment she hadn’t understood how scared she really was or how shallowly she’d been breathing for weeks. After a lifetime of yearning to be like her sister, how could she navigate life without her? However could she possibly know whom she was supposed to become without Pia’s example in the world?
Muriel exhaled a moan of deliverance. She’d always assumed there would be time to fix what was broken between them. Now there was. Her eyelids briefly fell shut. Thank you, God, she silently prayed. Was this one of His mysterious ways? Never would she have comprehended the urgency without this close call. Again, she blew a deep breath out. From now on, she would stop being such a baby and be a sister. Whatever that meant, she would figure it out.
Blanca flicked her black hair toward the back of the house. “Miss Pia is on the sunporch. You know the way? I’m making iced tea.”
Feeling effervescent, Muriel left her purse on the island chair and set out for the far side of the gangling house. She passed a powder room tiled in clear mosaics and a guest room with a moss-colored gingham paint treatment. Root Beer scampered ahead to settle on his microfiber bed in the media room, circling around and around it until he sensed the ideal moment to plop down. Wide footed in her black loafers, Muriel felt light. Brick by brick, the burden of keeping her sister’s secret from their mother was knocked off her shoulders. She skipped down a long hall adorned with photographs of the picturesque Winston clan. There was Emma, tanned and chopstick legged, romping through waves; Will in a sports car with the top down, his hair as thick as mink. Stunning Pia peered at the camera from beneath the rim of a beach hat. In a totem-pole pose, all three Winstons grinned with their ample lips and straight teeth. The last time she’d seen those photos she’d scoffed. How clichéd, she’d thought. As if they were the photogenic people you’d find in a store-bought frame before you inserted yourself.
“Petty,” Muriel muttered, ashamed that she’d ever been so judgmental.
Continuing down the hall, she walked by Will’s leathered man cave and Emma’s ballet pink bedroom suite that was larger than her whole apartment. It was messy in a rich girl’s way—carelessly strewn with shoes and electronics and designer bedding.
At that moment, an odd sensation descended upon
Muriel. It felt as though she had imagined Pia’s illness entirely. Never had it been real. Instead, it was the product of a night sweat and the fitful dreaming that followed a winter’s awakening in an old brownstone with an unpredictable boiler. Without warning it turned on late at night and blasted steam into the radiators. Sleepers awoke in the headachy discomfort of a steam room and fell back into a restless hothouse sleep, cooled only by frosted air swirling in from a window they rose to crack open. Come morning, the temperature had righted itself but the sleep cycle was nonetheless askew.
Women like Pia didn’t die and leave women like her behind. Muriel was now quite sure of it. The universe wouldn’t allow such folly. It would rebalance before things spun too dangerously out of control. With each footfall deeper into her sister’s home, she felt the planets realign, once again orbiting the sun in an orderly fashion.
At the farthest end of the house—their “West Wing” as Will called it—Muriel turned toward the backyard and saw two white-paned French doors. They were both open wide. Above them were the accordion pleats of custom silk Roman shades.
“Pia?”
More of a question than a greeting, Muriel thought it unlikely that the child-size head cresting the back of a slatted wood chaise belonged to her larger-than-life sister. Stiffly, a neck swiveled. A silk scarf, white with a gold-chain pattern, was tied in a knot at the nape of the neck. Two skinny legs clad in black pencil jeans swung onto the floor. Hunched shoulders draped in a cashmere shawl faced her and Muriel saw her sister for the first time since their shopping trip at the vertical mall.
“Muriel!” Pia’s hollow eyes opened wide. “What a delightful surprise!”
Speechless, Muriel quickly swallowed her shock. She had never seen skin so ashen, eyes so deeply sunk into a person’s head. Pia’s lips were two strips of flesh the color of old panty hose, the hollows in her cheeks could house a stack of tea bags. When her sister reached her hands out, Muriel saw every vein, every tendon, every striated ligament.
“You look beautiful,” she lied.
“This scarf makes me look like a cancer patient, I know. If I’d known you were coming, I would have worn my wig.”
“No, you look great. Really. The scarf looks great. Really.” Muriel exhaled a nervous laugh. Her sister was a skeleton. A world of lonely peered out from her eyes. Muriel could barely look at her without bursting into tears. “I meant to bring cake,” she said lamely, having briefly considered swinging by the village bakery so as not to arrive empty-handed.
Pia laughed gaily. “Cake? We should have champagne. You’ve come on the best day of my life. My cancer is gone. What shall I return to the Lord for all His goodness to me? Those horrid treatments finally worked.”
Letting the shawl slide off her shoulders, Pia raised both ropey arms over her head and said, “Ah, Muriel. I’m back.”
Muriel wanted to ask, “You mean you’ve been worse than this?”
“Jesus spared me,” said Pia, beaming and looking heavenward. “ ‘He that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live.’ ”
Awkwardly shifting her balance from her right foot to her left, Muriel lost the ability to control her tears. In heavy droplets they fell to her cheeks. “I’ve wanted to call you. I . . . I didn’t know what to say.”
“Shhh, shhh. It’s okay now.”
“I never said a word to Mama. I swear. I kept your secret.”
Rising with difficulty, Pia retrieved a clean tissue from her jeans’ pocket and handed it to Muriel, who pressed it to her eyes.
“I’ve been such a jerk. So selfish.”
Pia cooed, “It’s okay. Truly.”
As Joanie had done, as a loving mother would do, Pia wrapped her spindly arms around her sister and held her close. Muriel shut her eyes and let her soft body melt into her sister’s frail frame. For the first time, she let the baggage go. In Pia’s embrace, she released the tension she’d always felt around her. Was her hair combed? Her breath sweet? Her muffin top contained? Her thighs smooth beneath their Spanx? Was she good enough? In the warmth of Pia’s arms Muriel let the remaining words go unsaid, confessions unconfessed. To say anything else would ruin it. Pia was going to be okay. That was all that mattered.
Pia pulled back first. She smiled as she ran her hands down Muriel’s unruly mane. “Soon,” she said, “my hair will be as thick as yours.”
THEY SAT ON the sunporch all afternoon in the cool current of the overhead fan. Emma was at ballet day camp, Will was at work. Blanca carried in a pitcher of iced tea, two glasses, mini red velvet cupcakes, and a big bowl of blueberries.
“I eat them like popcorn,” said Pia. “Nature’s cancer killer.”
Muriel couldn’t even imagine eating blueberries as if they were popcorn. Yet nestled into the chaise next to Pia, overlooking the spectacular expanse of their professionally mowed New England backyard, tossing blueberries into her mouth, sipping iced green tea, and chatting as if they were bona fide friends—real sisters—never had she felt so very nearly normal.
“Will’s firm is hosting a black-tie New Year’s Eve cruise on the Hudson,” Pia said.
“Ooh.”
“Midnight. Right past the Statue of Liberty.”
“Ah.”
“He was all nervous telling me because, you know, he has to go and schmooze with his clients.”
Imitating Lidia’s voice, Muriel said, “Stop talking Jewish, you’re a Catholic, for God’s sake!” Pia laughed out loud and ate a mini cupcake in two bites. With her mouth full, she continued, “This morning I said to him, ‘Honey, I need something from you.’ His eyes got all serious.”
“Aw.”
“He says, ‘You don’t have to go. I understand.’ So I say, ‘No, you don’t understand,’ and he goes all hangdog. Like I’m going to tell him how hellish chemo is, like he doesn’t already know. That’s when I move in for the kill.”
Giggling in a girlish way Muriel had never seen before, Pia leaned close to her and said in a low voice, “I put my lips right up to his ear and whispered, ‘I’ll need your credit card. Mine doesn’t have enough limit to buy the sexy dress I’m going to wear for you.’ ”
Feeling free and funny, Muriel tilted her head back and sang from the Broadway show, “ ‘We’re your Dreamgirls, Dreamgirls will never leave you.’ ”
Grinning, Pia said, “Will lifted me off the ground and practically broke every bone in my body.”
Muriel beamed.
“Aside from Emma’s birth, it was the happiest moment of our lives. Thanks be to God who giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.”
Muriel took a sip of iced tea.
Truth be told, Pia’s recent evangelical leanings had unnerved Muriel. Burrowing so deeply into the Bible seemed inconsistent with a woman who bought new Louboutins each season at the flagship store. And Pia had never taken religion too seriously in the first place. One Easter, years ago, when the entire family watched The Greatest Story Ever Told on TV, Pia fliply said, “John the Baptist would have had way more converts if he’d added shampoo.”
After a breath’s silence, the family erupted in laughter.
Owen (Owen!) quipped, “But then he would be known as John the Bathist.” Lidia roared.
Even silent Logan had a contribution: “The Jordan River Spa?”
Muriel never forgot that night, the way they were like a real family. Sitting in one room together, undivided by twos, laughing, united, normal. The utter simplicity of it! Too soon, however, that feeling was drowned out by others in which so much was left unsaid.
But now she understood. Seeing how close Pia had come to the end of her life, it made sense that she would wrap herself in Scripture. Leach strength from the teachings of those who had been through so much pain. If the word of God couldn’t soothe you when your earthly body was breaking down and heaven’s light was in sight, what was it all for?
On that porch in Connecticut, as the sunlight darkened into late afternoon, Muriel kicked off her loafer
s and tucked her feet beneath her. She felt the fan’s breeze on her face and silently thanked whomever was out there for this second chance with her sister. No longer could she see Pia’s shocking appearance. It blended into the image she had in her heart. As ever, she was her perfect sibling, the one who romped on beaches and slow-danced with boys on stair landings and successfully wore white and looped scarves around her neck with French flair. She was Pia, the “it” girl, teen, woman, person Muriel had longed to be all her life.
“I never meant to hurt you,” Pia suddenly said, out of the blue.
Taken aback, Muriel didn’t respond.
“Well, I suppose I did back then,” Pia said. “God forgive me. But honestly, Muriel, I can’t believe I was so vicious.”
“You were only the messenger.”
“Still.”
The waning sun turned the backyard grass the color of spinach. Pia poured both of them a refill of the iced tea Blanca had made. Her hand wobbled with the weight of the pitcher. In a clacking rush, ice cubes tumbled into the glasses. “Emma will be home soon.”
“Oh! Do you need me to pick her up? I’d be happy to—”
“Blanca gets her. It’s not far. Wait till you see her, Muriel. She’s—” Pia put the pitcher down. Her head rested against the wooden chaise. “Well, she’s everything, that’s all. She’s my heart. The absolute best thing I ever did, ever could do. One day, when you’re a mother yourself, you’ll know.”
“If I ever become a mother.”
“Oh, Muriel.” Pia leaned forward and took her sister’s hand, squeezing it hard. “Of course you will. You must. Having a child is the closest you’ll come to seeing God on earth. It’s the truest love imaginable because it literally grows within you. From the moment you feel the flutter of that tiny heart, or a foot poking you from the inside—can you imagine it? A live foot the size of a peanut kicking inside you! It’s unlike any feeling in the world. You can’t help but marvel at the miracle of it. The process of falling in love begins at that moment. There is nothing you wouldn’t do for that child. And by the time your baby is born, oh my lord, those tiny fingers around your finger will flood you with such intense love you’ll drown in it. Blissfully! You won’t know how you ever took a single breath without it.”