The Favorite Sister

by Jessica Knoll

  “Because I don’t want anything that makes us look inexperienced in the press,” she said, flicking open a yoga mat. “I’m worried how it looks to our investors, like we’re little girls playing with Monopoly money.”

  Well, I thought but didn’t have the energy to say, they aren’t our investors. They’re my investors. So don’t lose any sleep over it. But I let it slide. I have enough headaches in my life right now. No need to get hung up on the delusional statements of a stay-at-home mom who still hasn’t accepted the fact that her tubby little sister is the overachiever now.

  And overachiever I am. Since filming wrapped last season, I’ve raised $23.4 million to expand the location of my spin studio, WeSPOKE. Coming fall 2017, SPOKE will open on the Upper West Side and Soho, and, if this yoga thing does well for us, we have our eye on a space just down the block from our original SPOKE location in the Flatiron, the premier zip code for boutique studio fitness in Manhattan. Not bad for a twenty-seven-year-old community-college dropout who, up until three years ago, was living in her sister’s basement in New Jersey.

  I should be proud, and I am, but . . . I don’t know. I can’t help but feel conflicted about the expansion. I loved our scrappy little studio when it was a self-governing affair: There was no board to answer to, no human resources department, no numbingly dull talk of the market. Our seed capital came from an entrepreneurial contest I won when I was twenty-three. I never needed angel investors or bootstrappers, I never had to answer to anyone but myself. The grant money gave me the freedom to focus on the mission of SPOKE, which is and always will be to protect and educate the female Imazighen population of Morocco’s High Atlas Mountains.

  Imazighen women and girls—some as young as eight—walk, on average, four miles a day under a gruesome 14 UV Index sun just to bring home a single jerrican of water. It’s a woman’s duty to provide clean water for her family, and the task often prevents them from attending school and entering the workforce later in life. Then there is the issue of their safety. One in five Imazighen women have been sexually assaulted on their way to the well, sometimes by groups of men who hide in the bushes and wait for the youngest walkers. When I heard this, I had to act, and I knew other women would be compelled to as well if I made it easy for them. For every fifth ride at SPOKE, we provide a bike to an Imazighen family in need. The bikes reduce the time of the water-gathering task (from hours to minutes) so that young girls are home in time for school and their moms can go to work. The bikes mobilize girls who haven’t even gotten their periods yet to outpace a gang of rapists.

  That was my pitch, and not a single investor bought it. They were all men, and they all thought New York City women were too self-absorbed to care. But these days, it’s cool to care. It’s mandatory to support the sisterhood. Women are spokes in the same wheel, trying their best to move each other forward. That’s SPOKE’s mission statement. Kelly came up with it. Beautiful, huh? Myself, I preferred Get off your privileged ass and think of someone else for a change, but Kelly made the point that we’d probably catch more flies with honey.

  Of course, when we didn’t, Kelly lost interest. She laughed at me when I showed her the article I’d clipped from the Out magazine I found in the doctor’s waiting room, detailing the entrepreneurial contest for budding LGBTQ business owners. That’s a long shot, she said, but I’ve always had a strong arm.

  I’d peeled apart a folding chair and said, “The Hamptons are absolutely lovely and they should stay that way, but they won’t, not with pop-up yoga studios opening where the hardware store is supposed to be.”

  Kelly had sighed. “There’s a client base out here, though.”

  I’d set the box of Grindstone doughnuts on the seat of the chair. I’d already eaten two—classic Boston crème and blueberry basil with lemon ricotta frosting. The sugar remained a burning ring in my throat, demanding more. Better than an orgasm, people say about good food, but that isn’t quite right. Food is what happens before the orgasm, the building of something great, the wonderfully excruciating plea to keep going, keep going. Too many women deny themselves this pleasure, and I decided long ago I would not be one of them. Almost one third of young women would trade a year of their lives to have the perfect body. This is not because women are shallow, or because they have their priorities out of whack. It is because society makes life miserable for women who are not thin. I am part of a small but growing minority determined to change that. SPOKE is the first exercise studio that mentions nothing about transforming your body, because study after study proves that your physical body has so little to do with health. Healthy people are people who feel connected to their communities, who are loved and supported by those around them, and who have a sense of purpose in their lives. Healthy women do not waste their precious energy separating egg whites from egg yolks.

  “How about this,” I said to Kelly. “I won’t mention anything about this being your first time in Montauk if you consider the free memberships for the locals.”

  “No, Brett,” Kelly said, her favorite refrain. “Someone in this family needs to graduate from college.”

  “Half a degree from Dartmouth is like a full degree from CUNY,” I pointed out.

  “I’ll get a scholarship,” Layla had said, dutifully. Little perfect angel that she is, she had found a broom and was sweeping the area around the yoga mat, because it was dirty and the instructors were going to be auditioning barefooted. When Layla was born, the doctor told me she had 25 percent of my genes, but I think those cells have copied and split a few times since then. It was Layla’s idea to curate an Instagram account and online shop that hawks the wares of Imazighen women. The feed is filled with gorgeous rag rugs, pottery, and cold-pressed olive oil, and 100 percent of the proceeds go back to the women of the High Atlas Mountains. Just like her auntie, Layla thinks with her heart, not her wallet. We have Kelly for that.

  “It’s not that easy to get a scholarship, Layla,” Kelly said. “Especially to a top school.”

  “Uhhhhh,” I said, making prolonged eye contact with Layla, whose smile was a dare: Say it. “I think she’ll be fine.”

  “Don’t do that, Brett,” Kelly muttered, plopping into a chair while her daughter continued to sweep the floors.

  I walked over to her and rested my hands on the back of her chair, bringing my face close enough for her to smell the lavender rose poppy seed we could have just gone to Dunkin’ doughnut on my breath. “Pretending to be colorblind is just as offensive as the n-word, you know.”

  Kelly covered my whole face with her palm and shoved me away. “Stop.” It came out an exhausted plea. Kelly is a mother, and heretofore exhausted in a way that I as a child-free individual running a multimillion-dollar corporation cannot begin to even contemplate.

  Kelly had Layla when she was nineteen years old, in a confounding act of defiance against our recently deceased mother. Growing up, my mother’s shadow darted after Kelly as she moved between AP classes, piano lessons, Habitat for Humanity, SAT tutors, college essay editors, college interview coaches, Dartmouth, premed summer sessions, and finally, a fellowship with the International School of Global Health in North Africa that Kelly returned from motherless, pregnant, and more chill than I’d ever seen her. Our mom was far from the traditional definition of a tiger mom. Her fixed state was mopey, immobilized, one stain on her blouse away from crying. Kelly was the court jester, but instead of juggling and telling jokes, she got straight As and played Bach with soft fingers. When our mother died (took three strokes), Kelly was released from duty. Why she decided to celebrate her freedom by holding out her wrists for another set of handcuffs still escapes me, but then we wouldn’t have Layla, who, listen, I know on a subliminal level has to love my sister more than she loves me. But it doesn’t feel that way. Not to me and not to Kelly either. And it’s a reversal of fortunes for both of us.

  Because when I was in high school, I was the least loved. I was smoking pot when I should have been in Spanish class, piercing my nose instead
of my ear cartilage, eating white cheddar Cheez-Its for breakfast, and looking more and more like my mother every day, an egregious crime, in her eyes. I never understood it. Kelly may have gotten the thin genes but my mother and I got face. A boy in high school once said that if you put my head on Kelly’s body we could be a supermodel. And this is the problem with the way girls are raised, because both of us were flattered. One of us even gave him a blow job.

  Erin returns from the bathroom, shaking her wet hands. “No paper towels in there,” she says. I stick my hands in my sweatshirt and reach out to dry hers. For a moment, our fingers intertwine through the terry cloth material, and we feel that our hands are the same size. I love introducing other women to the eroticism of equality.

  “Thanks.” Erin is flushed. She takes a seat next to me, pressing play on her recorder with a cutely scolding glance in my direction. I lift a hand with a shrug—No idea how that happened—and a prism of light distracts her.

  “Ah,” she says. “There’s the famous ring.”

  I hold out my hand so we can both admire the gold signet I wear on my pinkie. “It’s a little cocktail-hour-at-the-club for me,” I say, “but I got absolutely no say in the design.”

  When the show was renewed for the third season, Jen, Steph, and I realized we were the only original cast members still standing, and Steph proposed having rings made to commemorate this momentous achievement. She sent me a link to the website of a designer Gwyneth Paltrow featured on Goop, $108 for an inch of plated gold, plus the cost to have them engraved SS, for Standing Sisters. This was before the $23.4 million, the book deal, and the speaking fees that still haven’t made me rich, because it is very hard to be rich in New York City. Does Claire’s still exist? I texted back. On me, was Steph’s response. A lot of things were on Steph, and despite what she tells you, she likes it that way. Sometimes, I catch Kelly staring at the ring. She’ll look away when she realizes she’s been seen, sheepish, like a guy busted staring at your tits when you bend over to pick up something that’s fallen on the ground.

  Erin’s attention travels up my bare arm. “Is that new?”

  I flex my bicep for her. I am not the type of woman who gets a tattoo on the nape of her neck or the underside of her wrist. “A woman needs a man—”

  “Like a fish needs a bicycle,” Erin finishes. Another Straight Girl Flirts with Me (And I Love It) should be the name of my fucking memoir.

  “That’s so clever,” Erin gushes. “Especially with the reference to the bicycle.”

  “Oh, Brett is extremely clever.” Kelly gets me in a headlock and gives me a noogie, her preferred method of attack whenever she feels like anyone is stroking my ego too hard. She likes to try to break off my Cher hair at the root. I sink my teeth into her arm hard enough to taste her Bliss body lotion, the only body lotion Kelly can afford at Bluemercury, and she releases me with a sharp cry.

  Erin reaches out and irons my hair back into place.

  “Can you please tell everyone it’s real?” I ask her.

  “Hair is real.” Erin pretends to jot it down in a pretend notebook. “It’s interesting,” she says, “but I’m noticing a pattern here that the show parallels. You as the little sister to the group.”

  “Mmmm,” I say, unconvinced. “I think Jen Greenberg would rather hump a hot dog than share a bloodline with me.”

  Erin controls her laugh, but her eyes are twinkling with shared detestation for Jen. “I’m sure that’s not true.”

  There is no love lost between Jen Greenberg and me. We were acquainted through the wellness industry years ago, something approaching friends that first season. Viewers watched as I grew close to her famous humanist mother, Yvette, who loves Jen because she has to and me because she does, and everyone thinks this is why we can’t speak the other’s name without a lip curl of contempt. The reality is that there is a gap between Jen’s onscreen persona (Vegan. Groovy.) and real-life one (Vegan. Mega bitch.), and I have no patience for that particular brand of inauthenticity.

  And guess what? It’s okay that we do not get along. It is a dangerous thing to conflate feminism with liking all women. It limits women to being one thing, likable, when feminism is about allowing women to be all shades of all things, even if that thing is a snake oil saleswoman.

  Erin continues, “I guess I just mean everyone has their role, right? You’re the baby. The scrappy up-and-comer. Stephanie is the grand dame. The one with it all—money, success, love. Jen is obviously feminist royalty and Lauren’s the straw that stirs the drink. Hayley was, I don’t know . . . I guess she was the normal one?”

  And that’s why you’re speaking about her in the past tense. Hayley’s obituary came in the form of an Us Weekly announcement detailing her desire to concentrate on new and exciting business opportunities. As if the whole point of the show isn’t to document that very thing. I liked Hayley and I think she had another season in her, but she got greedy, asking for all that money when she was bringing nothing to the table.

  Cast members drop every year and I see no reason to go into crisis mode worrying that I might be next. We all have a story that will come to an end at some point or another, no use making myself crazy trying to manipulate the inevitable, as is the way of some of the cast. Still, I’d rather deal with that than with my sister, buzzing in my ear the last few weeks. Would the producers consider her to replace Hayley? Would I talk to Lisa again? Would I talk to Jesse this time?

  I submit. “I guess I’m kind of the underdog.”

  One side of Erin’s mouth tugs down, wryly. “Well. If the underdog has three million followers on Instagram while the rest of the cast has yet to break a mil. But in terms of your socioeconomic standing, yes, though I’m so interested to see how this season plays out now that you’re catching up to everyone else financially. It seems like you’re really firing on all cylinders, you know? You’re in a serious relationship with a drop-dead gorgeous human rights lawyer—”

  “Who volunteers with sexual assault survivors and speaks five languages,” I pad.

  Erin laughs. “Who volunteers with sexual assault survivors and speaks five languages. Then you’ve got the book deal. The two new studios. You’re trying your hand at yoga. All of this, it’s going to cause a power shift in the group. I mean,” she smirks—not at me; at her, “it already has, hasn’t it?”

  Kelly watches me, curious how this is going to go. This is the first time anyone in the press has asked me about her. Stephanie. My former best friend.

  I gather my wits and say, “I’m not one for beating around the bush.”

  Erin leans forward with a collaborating smile, as though to assure me we can shape this any way I want if I’m willing to spill the tea. “I heard you and Stephanie had a fight and are no longer talking.”

  I speak around her, to Kelly, “It was on TMZ, right? So it has to be true.”

  Erin shrugs, unfazed. “TMZ was the first to break the news about Michael Jackson’s death and the Kim Kardashian robbery.”

  “I love TMZ.” Kelly grins at me, thrilled to see me in the hot seat. Kelly knows all about my falling-out with Stephanie. But unlike TMZ, and unlike what I’m about to tell Erin, she knows the truth, and I can count on her to keep it a secret. Sisters are reliably good for two things: hating and loving.

  “We haven’t spoken in six months,” I admit.

  Erin purses her lips, saddened by this news. But the sadness is only an angle to solicit more information. “I loved your friendship with Stephanie. It felt important to see a relationship like that between two women. Important and remarkable, especially for the reality TV landscape that feeds off women in conflict. And you didn’t—” She cuts herself off, searching for a better phrasing. “I don’t want to sound blamey. I guess I’m trying to understand how two women whose bond seemed unbreakable don’t reconnect given the serious revelations made by one in her memoir.” She waits for me to respond. I wait for a question to actually be asked. “Unless . . .” Erin squints as if to filter out
everyone and everything but me. “Unless you already knew about the sexual abuse?”

  I am prepared for this. “Stephanie is a really private person.”

  “So . . . you did know?”

  “Just because we’re going through a rough patch right now doesn’t mean I’d betray her confidences. Violence against women, and particularly women of color, is a cause I feel very strongly about. I would never want to speak for Stephanie about her own experience.”

  Erin frowns and nods: Fair enough. “Clearly, you still care about her. Does this mean we’ll get to see a reconciliation next season?”

  I gaze at the old cash register in the corner. There’s still a dish of Bazooka Bubble Gum on the counter. I’d like to keep that, if possible. Some original touches as penance for the fresh hell of athleisure that’s about to rain down on this unsuspecting corner of an innocent fishing village. “It’s really up to her. She’s the one who is upset with me. Maybe it’s for all the reasons you said. I know she’s having her big moment with her memoir right now, a moment I want to make clear is well-deserved, but maybe she liked me better when I was the underdog.”

  Erin props her elbow on the folding table, resting her chin on her fist, giving me her best I’m listening eyes. “Or do you think it’s because you wouldn’t pass on an advance copy of her book to Rihanna?”

  I do a double take. Not even TMZ knew about the Rihanna part. Yet.

  “Full disclosure.” Erin raises her hand like she’s about to take an oath. “I called Stephanie for a quote earlier this week.”

  It’s a good thing I’m sitting down because I’m pretty sure my kneecaps have liquefied. She called Stephanie? Does she know?

  “I had pitched this as a piece about our new yoga suite,” Kelly inserts with an amicable smile. And it’s true, she did. I didn’t see the need to have a member of the press present for today, but Kelly wants it printed in New York magazine that she is chief of SPOKE’s first foray into exploiting an ancient and sacred practice for its low overhead.