The Favorite Sister

by Jessica Knoll

  “Did you have trouble finding it?” I ask her when we pull away.

  “Finding what?”

  “The shoe department. I know there’s the other one on the seventh floor and you don’t get up here much.”

  Brett seems confused. “I mean, I don’t. But I found it fine.”

  “Just late then.” I grin at her, savagely.

  Brett checks that nice Cartier on her wrist. Looks vintage. How cool is she? “I was five minutes early for you.”

  For a moment, the last eight months never happened. We both turn and glare at Rachel. “I was told eleven!” she says, sounding guilty.

  Occasionally, Lisa has production supply varying arrival times for the cast. It’s a dirty trick, designed to load us with resentment before we even walk onto the set. You make an egomaniac wait, make her feel like her time hasn’t been respected, and you work her into a state. Even if she puts it together, which I just did, I’m glowering. I will be cordial but gruff toward Brett, and everyone will think I’m a bitch for saying I’m over it when I’m really not, and it will make for a delicious two minutes of television.

  Well, if I’m going to be portrayed as a hag I may as well make my money. I reach into my purse for the gift I wrapped for Brett earlier. I had second-guessed myself up until now, unsure if I should give it to her or not. That nasty production hack cemented my decision.

  Brett laughs.

  “What?”

  She reaches into her purse and offers me a small, long box in wrapping paper. “I got you something too.”

  We open them at the same time. Mine is a pair of red Wayfarer sunglasses with the word SPOKE in white along the temple. Brett’s gift is my memoir, signed. Could we be any less subtle?

  “Damn, we are thirsty bitches.” Brett laughs, directly into the camera. I take it back—we couldn’t be any less subtle, but Brett could. I have placed my books into scenes sparingly over the years, knowing that the Internet stops and frisks women for being too self-promotional. Unless you are Brett, who can’t sneeze without wiping her nose with a SPOKE embroidered hankie. The Big Chill always manages to get off without even a warning.

  “The sunglasses are to wear in Morocco,” she tells me, then clutches my book, cover up, to her chest. “And I will display this in my new apartment with pride.”

  “How’s it going?” I ask, my eyes twinkling with obligatory curiosity. “Totally different than living with Sarah, I imagine. I mean, you are engaged.” I laugh as though we have just shared some sort of inside joke.

  “We’re both so busy we hardly see each other,” Brett says, neutrally. It is a smart answer. A politician’s answer.

  “That’s not necessarily a bad thing,” I return. “Time apart makes time together exciting. Vince and I can’t keep our hands off each other after I get home from a book tour.” I curl one side of my mouth into a suggestive half smile. You’re not the only one in a hot relationship, honeybuns.

  Brett is visibly uncomfortable, as I’d hoped.

  Victorious, I turn my attention to my feet. “Which ones for dinner with the Female Director?”

  “The sandals,” Brett says, without hesitation. “Definitely.”

  “The pink ones with a bow?” I hoot. “That girl has made you soft.”

  Brett stands up straighter. She didn’t like that. I knew she wouldn’t. “They look beige to me.”

  I sit down and thread the ankle strap through the buckle. “Blush,” I say with a tiny little smirk. Brett is far girlier than she lets on. “They’re blush.” I look up as the saleswoman approaches. “I’ll take the Isabel Marant boots and the Aquazzura sandals—but the Aquazzuras in a size eight.”

  “Do you want to try them on first to be sure they fit?” the saleswoman asks.

  “No,” I tilt my head in Brett’s direction, “but she does.”

  Brett chops the air with her hands, refusing. “No,” she says. “Absolutely not.”

  “Absolutely yes,” I say, firmly. I cannot let my book be my present, not after we were both caught on camera gifting each other our own swag. “This is my engagement gift to you. I’m going on a book tour again, and then I have this dinner in L.A. obviously, and I feel bad I can’t make your . . .” I stop. Brett’s engagement party is meant to be a surprise. “I mean, I feel bad I haven’t gotten to celebrate with you yet.”

  Brett gives me a quizzical look, but she doesn’t probe, just stoops to pick up the sandal and check the price tag on its arch. She gasps and sets it back down. “Get me a candle or something,” she says. “This is too much.”

  “Give me a break,” I scoff. “They’re not much more than those ratty things.” I raise an eyebrow at her sneakers. Brett turns her toes inward as Marc lowers the lens, as though trying to conceal the incriminating label on the tongue. All it takes is one Google search to find out that our hopeful young striver paid five hundred dollars for a pair of gym shoes.

  The saleswoman returns with the sandals in Brett’s size and reluctantly, she slips off her sneakers and buckles them on. Everything about her changes with those vampy four inches. It’s as though her appearance finally matches what I know about her. I cast about for some kind of veiled insult.

  “Giving your upper appendages a break?” I comment, noticing her latest tattoo along the inseam of her foot, some word in another language, looks like Arabic. The ink is SPOKE red, of course.

  Brett rolls her eyes. “For now, Mom.”

  I blink, protectively, as though she has aimed a laser pointer at my eyes. Whether she meant to highlight our age difference or not, how dare she.

  “You are one of the most generous people I know, Steph,” Brett rushes to say, hearing how the joke landed. “But I can’t accept. Putting your baby-making on hold to come to Morocco is more than enough of an engagement gift.”

  I rummage around in my purse for my wallet. She is leaving with those shoes, if I have to stake them in her eyeballs. “My doctor said Zika isn’t even in Morocco right now. There’s really no sacrifice. Besides,” I find the steel-colored card I intend to use, “they’re bridal-looking. You’ll have plenty of events to wear them to in the near future.” I lock eyes with her. It feels like the moment in a wedding ceremony when the priest addresses the crowd: If anyone can show just cause why this couple cannot lawfully be joined together in matrimony, speak now or forever hold your peace.

  “I still can’t believe you’re going to have a baby,” Brett says instead.

  “I still can’t believe you’re getting married,” I reply without missing a beat. We smile out of formality, both of us holding our peace for now.

  CHAPTER 12

  * * *

  Brett

  “New Year’s Eve?” I vault a puddle in the street, barely clearing its littered shoreline. I’m feeling wildly precious in the shoes Steph bought me, which I’m only wearing because Arch asked so nicely. With the lace dress, she suggested. The last time Arch was in L.A. for work she brought me home a tea-stained, bell-shaped floral paneled caftan. It looks like something straight out of the Green Menace’s closet, but I must admit, it does look rather fetching on me. I think it would have paired cutely with my sneakers, but what’s that old sexist adage? Happy wife, happy life.

  I need to say something here, which is that I didn’t set out to own a pair of five-hundred-dollar sneakers. I ended up with them by way of bad weather and distracted walking. I stepped into a puddle on my way to check out the construction at the Soho studio one morning, and I popped inside the first store I came across that featured sneakers in the window display. I didn’t even think to check the price—how much could a pair of sneakers cost?—and the salesgirl had been so sweet and helpful, with nothing but wonderful things to say about SPOKE. I wasn’t about to kill her commission when she rang me up, though I almost fainted when she announced the damage. You’ll wear them every day, she promised when she saw my face, and so to justify the splurge, I have, to the point that Arch has asked me to stash them in the hall closet so that they
don’t stink up our bedroom.

  The truth is, five-hundred-dollar sneakers are not a splurge for me anymore. I can’t afford to spend like that every day, but to occasionally treat myself and those I love to some big-ticket items without breaking a sweat? Yeah, I can do that. I am in a different tax bracket this season than I was in previous years, and I haven’t figured out how to square that with my role as the “low-income one.” I am proud of how far I’ve come, but I don’t want to alienate the women who relate to my former financial struggles. Unsurprisingly, my colleagues seem dead set on outing me before I am ready to address the discrepancy. They want to punish me for their own cowardice. Yes, I asked the network for more money and I got it, okay? That doesn’t prevent my castmates from stepping up and doing the same.

  “I always pictured myself getting married outside,” Arch says, bearing down on the hand I’ve offered her and stepping off the curb like a praying mantis. She’s wearing high sandals too, only hers tie at the ankles with two furry pom-poms.

  “We could do New Year’s Eve destination,” I say, looking both ways before crossing the street. “Anguilla?”

  “It’s already going to be such a haul for my family.” Arch slips her thin body sideways between two parked cars. “Thank you.” She smiles at me winningly as I hold the door for her.

  “We don’t have a reservation,” I tell the hostess at L’Artusi. “Anything at the bar?”

  She hmmms, jamming a fist beneath her chin as she scans her tablet. “Actually, we just had a cancellation.” She punches various coordinates on the screen with her finger and locates two menus, pinning them under her arm. “I have a table open upstairs.”

  My eyebrows practically fly off my forehead. No wait at L’Artusi on a Saturday night? Money!

  Arch steps ahead of me, grabbing my hand and leading me through the restaurant. I pass a girl who drops her bread knife in recognition. “Brett!” she calls, waving drunkenly. “I love you!” Her friend seizes her hand, groaning, Oh my God, Meredith.

  “Have a good night, Meredith.” I laugh over my shoulder, and Meredith rips her hand away and gets in her friend’s face as if to say, See? She liked it.

  “What about a destination wedding at a midway point?” I shout over the Saturday-night racket, clomping up the stairs behind Arch. Pick up your feet, Brett, Mom used to complain as I shuffled into the kitchen, wondering what low-carb nightmare she was making for dinner that night. There are countable moments of silence between Arch’s steps. Another reason my mother probably would have preferred her to me.

  At the top of the stairs, Arch pauses, waiting for me to catch up. My first reaction is that there is a glitch in the reservation system, because there are absolutely no tables available up here. There are no tables, period, only people standing around, champagne flutes resting at their hips. Then I see the cameras and Lisa, Arch’s parents, Kelly and Layla and Jen and Lauren and Vince and most staggeringly Jesse, and the collective congratulatory cry is the last piece of the puzzle.

  “Arch!” I clasp my hands over my nose, tears springing to my eyes.

  “Mom and Dad wanted to surprise you,” Arch says, laughing a little, but her eyes are misty too. “Oh my God, come here.” She grabs my wrist and tugs me into her chest. Everyone aws, and Arch’s parents approach us first, Lisa, Marc, and the rest of the camera crew steps behind.

  “You are really surprised?” Arch’s mom asks, sweetly skeptical. Her smile makes me feel like a hot, hair-covered turd. I don’t deserve to have you or your daughter in my life, I think as I wrap my arms around her neck.

  “I am so surprised,” I promise Dr. Chugh, sinking into her warm, plump body like a cushion. This is how my mom would have felt if she had let me hug her more. This is how a mom should feel—soft but solid, with some weight on her, some permanence. Arch gets her stature and long limbs from Satya, her father. I wasn’t sure how the parents of a first-generation Indian woman would react to their daughter dating a tattooed American with a nose ring and nipples that lactate, but Arch pointed out that she introduced her first girlfriend to her parents when she was twenty-three years old, that she’s thirty-six now, and have I seen her ass? Do the math; there have been many who came before me.

  The filthy family money comes from Satya’s side and the progressive female ambition from Dr. Chugh, a retired surgeon at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital who thrust scientific literature onto her wary husband when Arch first came out. There is no medical cure for homosexuality and we have one daughter, Dr. Chugh said, extracting tolerance from reason. She has offered to talk to my father the way she talked to Satya, but the problem is, my father has two daughters.

  I release Dr. Chugh and lean back to get a better look at her. Dr. Chugh wears the same uniform whether it is day or night, summer or winter: a dark blazer, dark soft jeans, red or navy loafers, and always, a colorful silk scarf that starts exactly where her gray-streaked bob ends. “Thank you so much,” I tell her. “You planned this?”

  “We suggested Per Se but Arch says that is not your style.” Dr. Chugh deploys the bunny ears after she finishes speaking, though it’s clear the words they are meant to bracket. “We are not cool.” The bunny ears come after, again.

  “I said Per Se is not cool, Mom,” Arch says, planting a kiss on the top of her mother’s head.

  I laugh. “You are the coolest, Dr. Chugh. You too, Satya.” I rise up on the balls of my feet to hug Arch’s dad. His hug is weak; but it is a hug.

  “We are happy for you both,” Satya says. He pats me on the shoulder and his hand gets tangled in my hair. We laugh, awkwardly, as I weave him free.

  Arch rests her elbow on her mother’s shoulder. Like Kelly, she’s a head taller than the woman who bore her. “Mom and Dad want to know if there is any way they can convince you to have the wedding in Delhi.”

  “We were married at the Roseate,” Dr. Chugh says. She swoons, remembering. “Beautiful.”

  Satya nods, eyeing the boom pole above our heads uncertainly. “It really was.”

  Arch walls her face with her hand and speaks out of the side of her mouth to me. “We’re not getting married at the Roseate.”

  “What did you just say?” Dr. Chugh swats her daughter.

  “We’ll think about it!” Arch laughs. “Oh, Brett,” she says, as the crowd starts to press forward. “I think you need to make the rounds.” I look up in time to see Jesse, moving through the room like an ambulance blaring. Women step out of her way as though lives depend on it.

  “I can’t believe you’re here!” I cry, as she jumps into my arms and—oh, God, no!—straps her legs around my waist. I check quickly to make sure my future in-laws aren’t looking, but they are gawking. I pretend to stumble under the double-digits of Jesse’s weight, hoping she will take a hint and unravel herself from me.

  “It was that or plunge headfirst into a bottle of Casamigos.” Jesse sets her feet on the ground, to my great relief, and locks her elbows around my ribs so tightly I grunt, like I’m being given the Heimlich maneuver. “You’re breaking my heart, woman.” She sighs, peering over my shoulder. I don’t have to turn my head to know she’s eyeing my fiancée. “If I had to lose you to anyone, I’m glad it’s to someone as special and, honestly? As camera friendly as Arch.” She rests her forehead against mine and whispers, loudly, “You are going to bring in a shit ton of wedding advertising dollars for me on your spinoff show and for that reason I am supremely happy for you.” She lays a kiss on the tip of my nose. “What do you think about Bride Pride as the name of the show? We could time it to Pride month.”

  I wave a hand, unenthusiastically.

  “We’ll work on it.” She turns to the camera and addresses Lisa. “Obviously this does not make final cut.”

  “It doesn’t?” comes Lisa’s sarcastic, piercing voice. It’s impossible to see her on the searing side of the Fresnel.

  Jesse lays her hand on my shoulder, in a departing sort of gesture.

  “You’re not staying?”

>   “It’s my only night off from the aftershow this week,” Jesse says. “And this, Miss Bride, is work.” She spins me and steers me toward the crowd. “Please clock in now.”

  I shield my eyes and scan the crowd that has formed a small circle around me. I’m looking for Layla, but I lock eyes with Lauren first. “Congratulations, gorgeous!” she cries, throwing her arms around my neck and sort of collapsing against me. She smells like an old blowout and a bender, and she’s wearing short jean shorts and a prissy white top. It makes no sense, but she looks incredible.

  The Green Menace, on the other hand, greets me looking asexual as ever in a sack the color of an old Band-Aid. She tells me she likes my dress and it’s the meanest thing she’s ever said to me.

  Vince is right behind them, with a hug that lifts my feet off the ground. “Steph is so sorry she couldn’t be here but she asked me to take a picture of your shoes to see if you’re wearing the ones she bought you.”

  Vince slips his phone out of his pocket and turns it sideways at my feet. There is a burst of bright light, my blush shoes the star. “Whoa, Brett,” Vince says. “Those are a little sexy for you.”

  “Thanks, Dad.”

  “Sorry. I’ve just never seen you in shoes like that before.”

  Lauren sets down her glass of water (questionable) and takes my left hand in hers, swinging it like we are two schoolgirls turning a jumping rope for a third friend. She is rougher than she realizes—I feel like she might pull my arm out of the socket. “Have you seen the woman she’s marrying? Of course she’s feeling sexy.” She brings my knuckles beneath her nose, examining my engagement ring at cross-eyed length. “Were you so surprised?”