by Unknown
It had been a pleasant enough evening so far. Everyone seemed to be very careful to keep inside their own lines. Raine talked about her life in San Francisco, and Norah pretended to be interested. A photo essay featuring your sex organs? she’d asked in her emotionless, professorial voice. How second-wave feminist of you. Norah then listed her academic achievements, while Raine acted riveted. The figure of Prometheus in British literature during the Industrial Revolution? she’d echoed. Bet that’s a full class. If I had pointed out how alike they were in this, right down to their matching fake smiles, they would never have believed me. But I saw how obvious it was they were sisters. The same, despite their differences.
Lucas, Matt, and Phil, devoid of the usual safe male topics as none of them were particular sports fans, had managed to bridge the gap by having Phil discuss the physics of animated television shows, since both Lucas and Matt spent a lot of time watching the Cartoon Network.
I tried to ignore how unsettling I found it that Lucas and Matt had anything at all in common, even TV habits.
Eliot, bored hours before, ran around in circles on the back lawn with his favorite toy airplane.
“This is going better than I expected,” I murmured to Mom as I helped her clear plates to make way for dessert.
“Only if you squint your eyes and don’t really pay attention,” she retorted, but she was smiling. She headed back inside through the screen door.
Phil excused himself to go discuss aviation with his son, and I sat back down next to Lucas. Matt looked at me, then turned away. I pretended I didn’t mind, and smiled at Lucas instead. He smiled back, but it made me uneasy.
Or maybe I was just psychic, because Norah sighed then, loud in the darkening evening.
“Oh, come on,” she said impatiently.
“What?” Raine was laughing. She noticed she had all of our attention, and raised one bare shoulder. Her eyes twinkled at me. “I was just telling Norah that I thought it would make Dad happy to see us all in one place.”
So much for our better than expected evening, I thought philosophically. I wondered why, exactly, Raine had to go there. On her first night back. Was it because she couldn’t abide the dishonesty of small talk, as I’d heard her declare once? Or was it more along the lines of what Verena had claimed—that she was her own version of a control freak, and pushing Norah’s buttons was her method of getting her way?
“If Dad was so interested in seeing all his little girls together,” Norah said quietly, deliberately, as Raine must have known she would, “then maybe he might have stuck around to meet Courtney. Maybe he wouldn’t have taken off for Hollywood.”
“Nothing changes,” Raine said then, leaning back in her chair as if she were relaxed. Though I could see she was nothing near relaxed. She cocked her head slightly to the side. “Dad was an artist, Norah.”
She said the word as if it explained everything. As if, having said it, there was no need for explanations.
Norah turned to look at Raine. I thought she looked almost kind, which, of course, was terrifying.
“He was the father of two, with another one on the way,” she replied evenly. “Whatever else he might have been, that should have been his first priority.”
Raine shook her head. “You just can’t understand what it’s like to be an artist,” she said. Almost as if that fact made her sad.
Norah actually smiled. Not nicely.
“And you can?” she asked. She let out a sharp little breath, through her nose, that was almost a laugh. “I’m sorry, did I miss something? I thought you were a waitress.”
I felt myself tense at that. I also felt Matt turn and fix that cold stare on me, no doubt blaming me for this, the way he always had. Great.
“She works in a bar, Norah,” I said hurriedly. “I told you that.”
“My mistake,” Norah said acidly. “Not a waitress, then. A bartender.” Her tone made it clear how little she thought of that distinction.
Next to me, Lucas was looking back and forth between my sisters like they were playing a particularly fascinating game of tennis.
“That’s right,” Raine said. “Disparage me all you want. It doesn’t change the fact that you’re the only one in this family without a single artistic impulse.” She blinked at Norah. “That must be terrible for you. It explains why you feel you have to be so controlling of the rest of us.”
“Okay, guys,” I threw in, trying to stop them. But the light of battle was in Norah’s eyes, and she wasn’t about to back down.
“Is that what you call it?” she asked Raine. She made little quote marks with her fingers. “‘Artistic impulse’?” She pursed her lips. “Exactly what is so artistic about ruining your sister’s wedding and then skulking away in the dead of night?”
“Hey,” Matt said. Everyone looked at him then. Perhaps we were sharing the same flashbacks of the times he’d been even more involved in all the Cassel family fights. I had a particularly vivid recollection of him hauling Raine into the air by her waist, to keep her from diving across the kitchen table at Norah’s neck. He and Raine had been about fifteen. “I don’t think we need to get into this tonight.”
“Of course you don’t think so,” Norah said icily. “But no one asked you, did they?”
“Very nice.” Raine shook her head. “This is how you treat a guest?”
“Matt Cheney is no guest,” Norah said with a snort. “At this point he’s like a cousin. The kind who shows up for dinner and never leaves.”
“This is all getting very intense,” Lucas broke in at this point, while the other three all but snarled at one another. He sent his wide grin around the group like a beacon, inviting them to return it. “And I don’t know anyone well enough to enjoy the personal insults.”
That made Matt smile—albeit reluctantly. Norah and Raine eyed each other with wariness.
“This started because we were talking about Dad, and all of us being here,” I said, quickly jumping into the sudden quiet. “And I do think it’s great that we’re all here, no matter what. I’m really happy that Lucas and my engagement party can bring us back together.”
“I know it’s not popular,” Raine said, unwilling to let it go, “but I believe our father loved us very much. Even you, Norah.” I felt an uncharacteristic twinge of annoyance.
Norah looked down for a moment. I thought she might let it go, but then I saw the light in her eyes when she lifted her head.
No such luck.
“Phil loves me, and he loves Eliot,” Norah replied tartly. “Do you know how I know he does? Because he’s here. He lives in the same house, having the same life. If he up and moved to the opposite coast, I might have to rethink.”
“Why must you make every situation so tense?” Raine asked her, sounding exasperated. “Why can’t we have one nice family dinner?”
“We’ve had a whole lot of nice family dinners,” Norah said. Her eyebrows arched upward. “While you were gone.”
Mom chose that moment to reappear at the back door, bearing cake. Not any single, solitary cake. In deference to our wildly divergent tastes, she’d created her old standby: three small, separate cakes on one platter. Chocolate with raspberry filling for Norah. Red velvet cake with cream cheese frosting for Raine. And the lightest, most delicious angel food cake for me. Cassel Cake, we’d always called it, because it was ours and the best part was, this way no one had to share.
“All my girls together,” Mom said as she came and set the platter down on the picnic table. If she noticed the strained silence, she gave no sign. “Here’s to a wonderful summer.”
The next morning, I woke up on a mission.
My sisters wanted to sit and soak in their lifetime of antagonism. I wanted everyone to get along. Therefore, I was the one who had to do something about it. Forcing them to interact wasn’t going to work, clearly. I had no choice but to appeal to their better natures.
I got to Norah’s house a little before ten and settled myself on the steps. It was har
d to get up so early, and all I’d done was rattle around my apartment. I wasn’t sure how parents did it, day after day. Or, for that matter, business-people who had to be places by nine in the morning. I wasn’t sure how Norah combined the parent part of herself with the professor. I was having a hard enough time just thinking the word wife.
All around me, the summer morning sang as it kicked into gear. Birds chirped above me in the old trees, and the air smelled like grass and flowers. It was already hot, and I was glad I’d worn the shorts I’d made by cutting up the jeans I’d loved at the conservatory, even if my legs were pale enough to blind unsuspecting pedestrians. I had fortification in the form of a huge café mocha from Starbucks, which comprised three of my favorite foods in one beverage: caffeine, sugar, and sweet, delicious chocolate.
The longer I sat still, the warmer it got. I wished I’d worn my flip-flops, because I was convinced I could feel my toes sweat in my favorite pair of off-white, low Chuck Taylors. I rummaged around in my ratty purse until I found a hair elastic, and bundled my hair up on the top of my head. Not necessarily the most attractive hairstyle, but my neck felt cooler immediately.
As I nursed my mocha, I stared at the spot down on the sidewalk below, where Lucas had proposed. I smiled a little bit, remembering the look on his face and the way I’d knelt down, too, letting the chill and wet seep into my jeans. I couldn’t believe that had been six months ago now. I played with my ring, turning it over and over with my thumb. I was used to it now, though I still caught myself staring at it from time to time, caught anew by how pretty it was. I hadn’t truly appreciated the genius of Lucas’s choice of proposal spot until now, however. Every time I came to Norah’s house—particularly on unpleasant missions like this one—I would remember one of the best moments of my life. He was crafty, that Lucas.
“Aunt Courtney!” Eliot cried in delight, spying me from down the block. Though what he actually said sounded more like Corny. He let go of Norah’s hand and lurched toward me in that half-drunk baby walk of his. I jumped up to meet his headlong dash.
“How’s my favorite nephew?” I asked, swooping him into my arms in a big hug. I pressed kisses into his soft, sticky cheeks, until he squealed with delight and I felt that much more connected to life—and Norah—because I loved him so much.
My sister said nothing, though her eyebrows practically reached over her head and touched her bun. I knew she could tell I wasn’t there by chance. She wasn’t stupid: she knew I had an agenda.
Part of me felt guilty for using my nephew against her, but it was only a small part. I held the door for her and her stroller. I helped her feed Eliot lunch, and did the dishes when she took him upstairs and put him down for his nap. I knew she responded well to acts of service, and I wasn’t above using whatever tools I could.
When she came back down and stood in the doorway, I was wiping my hands dry on one of the matching towels that hung in a perfect line on her oven door. I struggled to fold it back into its place, and failed, leaving it unsightly and out of order.
“To what do I owe this honor?” she asked, sounding almost amused.
“I want to talk about Raine,” I said, because why not launch right into it? “I feel like I should tell you some things.”
“What could you possibly tell me about Lorraine that I don’t already know?” Norah asked, moving past me into the kitchen and refolding the towel with two quick jerks.
“She’s not here for fun,” I told her. “She wanted to come back to deal with everything that happened. She told me she wants to confront her demons.”
“And she brought that Matt Cheney with her,” Norah said after a moment, watching me closely. “That’s a thoughtful engagement present for you. What I’m not grasping is why he’s staying in your childhood bedroom. I thought he had family here.”
I hadn’t known until that moment where, exactly, in my mother’s house Matt was staying, and imagining him ensconced in my pretty blue room with its flowery bedspread made me feel . . . strange. Maybe because I had spent so much time and energy imagining him there. I swallowed.
“He lived with his grandfather way back when,” I said, clicking into informational mode for Norah, who had never seemed to care in her entire previous life about Matt Cheney’s living arrangements. “But apparently he moved to Florida a few years ago. Matt’s grandfather, I mean. Anyway, they weren’t close.”
Norah studied my face, looking for something. I quelled the urge to fidget. I told myself I felt calm and serene, and tried to exude it.
“Why are you making that face?” Norah asked.
I stopped exuding.
“I’m not making any face,” I said. “I just wanted to tell you. So you could see where she was coming from, and maybe reach out. I mean, we’re all sisters, right?”
“It’s really nice of you to think of me,” Norah said, her tone somewhere between sarcastic and irritated.
“Don’t be like this. It doesn’t have to be this huge, terrible thing. We should all try to—” I broke off, not sure what I was trying to say.
“Get along?” Norah finished for me. She cocked her head to one side. “What a great idea. Too bad Raine and I have never gotten along. But I’m sure we’ll just set that aside now because you’ve decided it’s time.”
“Well, why not?” I asked.
“Grow up, Courtney,” Norah said, but it came out like a sigh. “I’m not going to tiptoe around Raine because she’s finally decided to come home. It’s not my fault she put off facing the music for years.”
“I’m serious.” I warmed to the topic. “Why can’t we all decide that it’s time to get over the past? If we wanted to, we could draw a line and decide to be done with it.”
“Yes, but there’s a crucial distinction,” Norah said, and now she sounded tired. “Raine is angry because she decided to be when she was about ten, and because she wants to have issues. She thinks it makes her more interesting. I, on the other hand, am angry because she singlehandedly ruined my wedding. Can you see the difference between the two?”
“I understand the difference, Norah, I really do.”
“Good, because I’m beginning to think I’m going insane here,” she said. “That, or everyone else is in an alternate dimension wherein Raine and my behavior is considered to be the same.”
“But you can decide to stop being angry about that.” I was pleading with her. “You can decide to let bygones be bygones.”
“And once again, Raine gets a free pass,” Norah said in a low voice. “Once again, Raine’s actions have no consequences.” She shrugged unhappily. “That’s not how I live my life.”
“I don’t think it has to be about how you live your life,” I ventured. “It could be about choosing to overlook some stuff—no one’s saying it isn’t valid stuff—for the sake of the greater good. This is the only family we have.”
For a long moment, we looked at each other.
“I don’t accept that the family you’re dealt is the one you have to put up with,” Norah said after a while. Her chin rose a little. “And I don’t accept that I should ever have to deal with Raine, who, by the way, has yet to apologize.”
“Come on, Norah . . . ”
“And the worst part is,” she continued, her chin high, “you don’t even realize that she’s going to do to you what she does to everyone, do you? Didn’t you hear what she said to me at Mom’s? She’ll judge you, and your life, and everything you hold dear. Then she’ll ruin something, just because she can.”
“I believe that we can just . . . be sisters,” I said. “I believe that we can do it, if we want to.”
Norah looked at me for a while, and the anger left her face. She shook her head once, as if something had changed and I made her sad.
It was worse, somehow, than her anger.
“Maybe this isn’t really about how I live my life,” she said with a note of finality in her voice. “Maybe it’s about how you live yours.”
Chapter Seventeen
It was one thing to stand on a hill in San Francisco and wonder how my life might have been different if I’d chosen a different path. It was one thing to play what if games in my head and pin them all onto a sunswept city with mythical hills and trolley cars. I could understand the urge to be different. It was in my genes, it seemed, from my father to Raine. I had felt the same urge at the top of Twin Peaks.
But here in Philadelphia, things were different. Because this was my real life. This was where I’d made my choices, and this was where I lived them.
Norah had hit a nerve, and I suspected she knew it: I was afraid that Raine and Matt would pity me when they saw the way I lived.
I was afraid they would be right.
After all, I’d been terrified in San Francisco that Raine already pitied my life, thought it small, from thousands of miles away. I was even more terrified now that she could see it for herself.
I looked around, making a list and checking it twice, so I could get to each item before Raine did. I decided to try hating all of it, in preparation. It was like a rehearsal.
I hated my apartment. It had a terrible layout, with the bedrooms one on top of the other and tiny to boot. It was cramped and small, and the only nice thing about it was the bay window in the living room, which hardly made up for the puny kitchen and drafty corners.
I hated our cats, who I had to physically disengage from the clothes I hung in my closet—all now sporting claw marks—because they thought it was fun to climb up anything that hung. And while on the topic, I found emptying the litter box disgusting in the extreme, and why did they think it was so much fun to scatter the litter all across the bathroom floor? It was a good thing we never really had guests.
I hated grubby, muggy Philadelphia. It was the City of Brotherly Love, but not, in the Cassel family, sisterly affection of any kind. Instead of glorious bay views we had the Delaware River on one side of Center City and the Schuykill on the other. Hardly the same thing. No Twin Peaks—the highest point in Philadelphia was Chestnut Hill.