Sisterland

by Curtis Sittenfeld

“God, no.” Vi laughed. “Patrick and I did it in ninth grade, and it’s how he figured out for sure he’s into dudes. Caldwell’s not a pedophile, by the way. Pedophiles like children who haven’t gone through puberty. Anyway, we were in touch when I was at Reed, but his wife just had a baby, and I’m thinking we should end it. It’s a little gross now that he’s a dad.”

  “But it wasn’t gross when he was your teacher?”

  Vi shrugged.

  Her nonchalance—it was infuriating. “It’s like you’re trying as hard as you can to make a mess of your life,” I said. “And you know what? I bet eventually, you’ll succeed.”

  “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

  “Why can’t you just be a normal person? Why do you have to have sex with teachers and talk to spirits and drop out of college?”

  “Why do you have to be so narrow-minded and judgmental?”

  “Judgmental?” My voice was raised in a way I’d regret later, not because I cared about offending Vi but because other people on the hall might have heard. Almost in a shout, I said, “Judgmental is what you call letting you stay here after you show up with no warning? You’re wearing my clothes, you’re using my toothpaste, you’re sleeping in my bed, for Christ’s sake. So if that’s judgmental, then I’d hate to see how you’d be treated by someone who doesn’t feel as sorry for you as I do.”

  As I stalked away, it wasn’t that I forgot I was holding the room key—taking off with the room key accounted for the only satisfaction I felt. What I had forgotten was that I was wearing a sweaty T-shirt and shorts and that, as with my abrupt departure from my own high school graduation, I had no particular place to go. I’d find Lauren, I decided, but when I knocked on the door of her room, two floors below mine, her roommate said, “I think she’s at a barbecue.”

  Ben’s fraternity barbecue—I’d forgotten that, too. If I’d still been interested in Ben, I wouldn’t then have decided to go; I wouldn’t have wanted to appear before him unshowered. But my wish to tell Lauren what a terrible person my sister was exceeded my concern over Ben’s opinion, and I walked down Rollins Street to the DU house. I had just turned onto Mary-land Avenue when Ben himself appeared with another guy. Seeing me, Ben smiled so broadly that it was like I really had shown up for his benefit. “We forgot the ketchup and mustard,” he said. “Want to go on a Hy-Vee run?”

  “Sure,” I said. (Sometimes when I look back, it feels as if what he said wasn’t Want to go on a Hy-Vee run? but, rather, Want to be my girlfriend for the next six years? and with just as little thought, I still said sure.)

  He drove a black BMW, which made me understand that he probably came from a rich family. The other guy, Nate, let me sit in front. Even on the ride, I could feel Ben’s solicitousness, how his attention had shifted from his frat brother to me, a girl he barely knew.

  By the time we got back to the DU house, my outrage at Vi had subsided; besides, it wasn’t as if I’d have told Lauren or anyone else the whole story. Lauren was the one who approached me, saying, “Why are you wearing workout clothes?” She had on a striped knee-length skirt and a cardigan sweater.

  “My sister is driving me crazy,” I said. “I look terrible, right?”

  “You look cute,” Lauren said. “Sporty.”

  Ben had gotten me a plastic cup of beer and, when I finished the first, another; I ate a hot dog and some potato chips, and I joined a badminton game occurring on the lawn. U2 was playing on speakers set in windows on the second floor, and it was a nice autumn evening that grew cool as darkness fell. “Are you cold?” Ben asked. “I could get you a jacket.”

  Had Heather let Vi into the room, or was she out roaming the campus? I wasn’t still furious, but I also wasn’t ready to see her again. This barbecue, this was what I had come to Mizzou for. Not to be weighed down by Vi’s weirdness, her bad choices and creepy spirituality. “Maybe I will borrow a jacket,” I said.

  What Ben had meant, of course, was from his own dorm room, which wasn’t in the DU house and was in fact as far from it as my dorm, but I walked with him there, solidly buzzed, and when we got to his room—it was on the first floor of Hatch, a double he shared with a roommate who conveniently was elsewhere—he turned on the overhead light and we’d been inside no more than thirty seconds before he kissed me. Then he nudged me toward his bed, and he was on top of me, nibbling my left ear in a way that seemed ridiculous. He pushed up my T-shirt and stuck his hand under my sports bra, the base of which was still slightly damp from my time on the StairMaster hours before, but Ben seemed either not to notice or not to care. I kept tuning in and out of the moment—it was hard to decide if it was more alarming that Vi had slept with Mr. Caldwell or been forced to withdraw from Reed—and I was half-aware of when Ben eased my shirt over my head. (Presumably Vi had done with Mr. Caldwell the very things I was in the midst of doing with Ben.) I was the one who removed my bra, because it wasn’t the kind that hooked in back, and then my shorts and underwear were off, too, but Ben was still dressed. At some point, he’d unfastened the dark brown leather belt he was wearing, then unbuttoned and unzipped his khaki pants, pulling them and his boxers down below his butt, but he didn’t remove them, and the two sides of the unbuckled belt, the buckle and the leather tip, kept slapping my thighs as he thrust against me. No penetration had occurred when, without warning, he came. He froze immediately, and I said, “Oh—okay.” I didn’t want to offer reassurance if that would only embarrass him. But the fact that the hook-up had apparently concluded, that he didn’t understand there was a way to make it up to me—it made me suspect he’d never had a girlfriend. Finally, I said, “Do you have some Kleenex?”

  What he handed me was a full-sized maroon bath towel, and I mopped up between my legs. He was standing by the bed, and he said in an almost mean tone, as if I were the one who’d done something I shouldn’t have, “Are you going to tell Lauren?”

  “No.” I slid on my underwear and shorts and reached for my sports bra.

  Again, accusingly, he said, “I’ve had sex before.”

  “Okay,” I said, and I pulled on my shirt. Remarkably, or not, I’d never removed my socks and running shoes. It seemed agreed upon that I would leave, and I stood and stepped toward the door.

  In a voice that was only incrementally less hostile, he said, “We should hang out again.”

  Back in Schurz Hall, Heather was sitting at her desk eating yogurt, and there was no sign of Vi. “Have you seen my sister?” I asked.

  Heather shook her head. “Not since this afternoon.”

  “I hope it’s okay that she’s still here,” I said.

  “Oh, she’s not bothering me.” Heather took a bite of yogurt. “She can stay as long as she wants.” After a pause, she said, “I apologize if this is weird to ask, but are you guys identical twins?”

  Growing up, Vi and I had gotten the question endlessly, sometimes on a daily basis, but this was the first time it had come from someone who seemed to think the answer would be no rather than yes.

  “Yeah, we are,” I said.

  “Really?” I could tell she was surprised. “I was wondering, but I didn’t—” She smiled. “I’m so jealous of you.”

  Around eight in the morning, I became aware of someone lightly shaking my arms, saying my name. The room was still more dark than light because the shades were drawn, and I had two groggy realizations at the same time. The first was that the person waking me was Vi—the name she was saying was Daisy—and the second was that she had never returned to the room the night before and I’d had my best night’s sleep since Monday.

  I propped myself up on my elbows, and Vi whispered, “I need to talk to you in the hall.”

  I climbed from bed and followed her out. Facing me, Vi looked wild and agitated: messy-haired and baggy-eyed and jittery, smelling like cigarettes.

  “I got in trouble,” she said.

  A window in the hall overlooked an oak tree, and even though the window wasn’t open, I could feel what a pleasant fa
ll morning it was; something about the sunny weather, the turning leaves, made me less alarmed by Vi’s summoning than I should have been. It took her perhaps five minutes to explain what had happened: The night before, she’d had dinner in town and wandered around for a while before making her way back to Schurz Hall. Then she’d parked herself on a couch in the empty common room on the third floor and watched television for seven hours. Some students had come in and out during this time, but she hadn’t spoken to them. Just before six in the morning, while Vi was watching the old movie The Philadelphia Story, a group of three girls had shown up in spandex shorts and tank tops, one of them toting a Buns of Steel tape. (Rising at the crack of dawn to exercise—I couldn’t imagine.) The girl carrying the tape had told Vi that they worked out together at this time, in this place, every morning, and that it was their turn to use the TV and VCR. The movie was almost finished, Vi said. There were only a few minutes left, and then they could have the common room. But they’d reserved it starting at five-thirty, the girl said, and she retrieved a clipboard hanging from a hook outside the room to show Vi where she’d written her name in the time slot. Fine, Vi replied, but she just wanted to watch the end of the movie; surely the girls’ buns could wait? No, the group’s leader said. The room was theirs.

  I had a hunch and said, “Had you been smoking?”

  “Just cigarettes,” Vi said, and I thought that this violation must have particularly galled the early-morning exercisers.

  The girl stood in front of the television screen, blocking Vi’s view, and said again that it was their turn to use the common room, fair and square, and because the movie ended then and the credits started and the girl had made her miss the last part, Vi said, “Are you happy now, you selfish cunt?” At that point she either tossed the remote control to the girl (Vi’s version) or threw it at her head (the girl’s version); in any case, the corner of the remote hit the girl in the jaw.

  “And she started bleeding, but like, the tiniest, tiniest bit,” Vi said. “From inside her mouth. She spit, and seriously, it was the amount of blood when you’re flossing.”

  As I listened, the leaves outside the window seemed considerably less cheerful, the day less promising. Really, what had Vi been thinking?

  The girl freaked out, Vi said, claiming Vi had attacked her, and Vi insisted that it had been an accident, and the next thing she knew, two officers from campus security had appeared—one of the other girls had slipped away and called them—and Vi had been handcuffed.

  “Are you kidding?” I said.

  “Well, the handcuffs were plastic,” she said. “Kind of like garbage ties.”

  One officer had escorted her on foot to the university police station, which was on Virginia Avenue, and though she hadn’t seen them while walking over, once there, Vi spotted the three Buns of Steel girls across the room. She was interviewed—not in an interrogation room, just sitting in a chair while the officer behind the desk took notes, and he’d already removed the cuffs during the walk from the dorm. He consulted with other officers, including the one who’d interviewed the girls, and after about forty-five minutes, by which point the girls had left, Vi’s officer told her she was free to go but he was turning the matter over to the Office of Student Conduct, and she should expect to receive a letter from them shortly.

  “Wait,” I said. “You never told him you don’t go here?”

  “I know I fucked up,” Vi said. “I know, okay? And I’m sorry, but I didn’t know what else to do.” Then she said, “They don’t think I’m me. They think I’m you.”

  Campus mail was, apparently, quite efficient, and I received the letter from the Office of Student Conduct in my mailbox in the entry of Schurz Hall by noon that very day. It listed which of the Collected Rules and Regulations of the University of Missouri System might have been violated by Daisy Kathleen Shramm—“Physical abuse,” which was further defined as “conduct which threatens or endangers the health or safety of any person”—as well as the date and time of the incident of concern; the letter also provided instructions on scheduling my meeting with a Student Conduct officer and warned that if I failed to do so, a hold would be placed on my student account. I called the number and made an appointment for the following morning at eleven. Then I called campus information to get the number for Ben Murphy because I had no idea where the slip of paper was on which Vi had written it several days before. Vi was in the shower, after having slept for most of the morning.

  When I identified myself, Ben sounded surprised as he said, “Oh, hi.”

  “I’m wondering if you can drive my sister and me to St. Louis,” I said. “She’ll stay there, and I’ll come back with you. I’ll pay for gas.”

  “When?”

  “Now,” I said. “It’s sort of an emergency.”

  “A medical emergency?”

  “No, she just needs to go home, but if she gets on a bus, I’m afraid she’ll go somewhere else.”

  “I didn’t know you have a sister who goes here.”

  “I don’t. She’s been visiting. Can you take us?”

  “I have class at two-fifteen, but I don’t know—I guess I could skip it.”

  “Come here at two-fifteen,” I said. “I’m in Schurz, so you can pull up right in front.”

  It wasn’t that I’d changed my mind about dating him; it wasn’t that I trusted him; it wasn’t even that I felt he owed me after our botched hook-up. It was that he was the only person I knew at Mizzou who had a car.

  I told Vi after she returned from the shower, wearing my bathrobe, carrying my plastic bucket of shampoo and conditioner. Her hair was a wet rope that she’d twisted over her left shoulder—she’d squeezed it out after turning off the water, I knew the exact gesture—and it was then, observing her hair, that it first occurred to me to cut my own.

  She looked at me with a wounded expression. “You’re kicking me out?”

  “If you stay here, I’ll probably get kicked out. There are rules against people who aren’t students living in the dorm, and now I can’t take any chances.” I hadn’t gotten angry when she’d told me what she’d done in the common room; if she had proven that my wariness of her was warranted, she had simultaneously given me the reason I needed to send her away.

  “Just let me have a few more days,” she said.

  “What difference will that make?”

  “I’m thinking I’ll start taking classes in January. And don’t worry, I won’t stay with you until then. I walked by a house on Bouchelle Avenue with a sign saying they have a room for rent.”

  “Do you have any money?”

  “I’m planning to get a job.” She was quiet. “You could spot me.”

  “Vi, I barely have money. Anyway, why do you want to live somewhere that you don’t know anyone?”

  In a quiet, defeated voice, she said, “I know you.”

  Oh, Vi, I think now. Oh, Vi, forgive me. I have no idea which house on Bouchelle she meant, but in my mind it’s a co-op where they’d all smoke pot together while making tofu and kale for dinner; I never entered such a place, but Columbia was crawling with them. And in this alternate version of events, in the help wanted section of the Missourian, we find Vi a waitress position, and she remains in my dorm room until she’s made enough for first and last month’s rent, if the co-op hippies would even have required that much. She does indeed start taking classes at Mizzou in January, my second semester. She and I meet for coffee a couple times a week. She doesn’t crowd or embarrass me; I don’t exile her. We both have our own lives, and they overlap, but not excessively. After she catches up with a few summer classes, we graduate together in 1997. She enters the Peace Corps, or she enters law school, or she goes to work for a nonprofit, or she becomes a physical therapist or a vet.

  Or maybe she never earns her degree in this version of events, either, but at least I don’t force her out. I let her stay a little longer, until she leaves on her own. What I did—making her go—was justified more than it was necessary; i
t was defensible more than it was right.

  In the version of events that did occur, the real version, I didn’t want the Buns of Steel girls to connect us, didn’t want to risk them seeing us together, and so as Vi stood there in my bathrobe, her hair dripping, I said, “I really think it’s better if you leave.”

  In Ben’s car, I sat in the front seat and Vi sat in back, and Ben, looking at Vi in the rearview mirror, said, “I talked to you on the phone, didn’t I? You guys sound alike,” and Vi said, “I assure you the similarity ends there.” And then she continued, embarking on a kind of monologue: “But really, I only have myself to blame. No one knows Kate here better than I do, and that’s why I should have realized she’s not the person you turn to when you need a helping hand. If you behave yourself, if you’re dressed up in your pretty clothes and acting all happy, then sure, Daisy will give you the time of day, but at the first sign of trouble, she’s out of there. She doesn’t like conflict, she doesn’t like weirdness. And watch out, because according to her, I’m just getting weirder. I had this amazing spiritual experience, probably the most amazing experience of my life, and Daisy’s like, ‘Yep, ignore it, pretend it didn’t happen.’ ”

  In equal measures, I wanted to silence Vi and I felt hypnotized by the drone of her voice, the inappropriateness of her disclosures—the way that if I could have scripted her dialogue in this moment, everything she was saying was the opposite of what I’d have chosen. It was hard to gauge how much sense she was making to Ben, especially given that she’d switched back to calling me Daisy, but it seemed safe to assume that neither of us was coming off well.

  “You know what, Daisy?” Vi said, but even then, when she was ostensibly addressing me, her words still had a distant, performative quality—they were more for Ben than for me, and more for some invisible, sympathetic audience than for either one of us. “Just because that stuff in eighth grade with Marisa sucked for you, that doesn’t mean all spiritual communication is bad. You can choose to cut yourself off, and hey, it’s a free country, that’s your choice. But that’s not how I want to be. I want to open myself up, I want to experience other dimensions, I don’t want to be bound by the rules of this world. Does that make me a freak? So be it. Now, what’s your name again? Ben? Ben, don’t worry that Daisy is like me. She’s not weird. Yes, she has the senses. I cannot tell a lie. But she’s going to hide them or die trying, so you’re good to go with your vanilla romance. And you seem like a typical preppy guy, which I’m not saying to insult you, I’d assume most typical preppy guys are glad to be called typical and preppy. To each his or her own. What I’m trying to say is that I wish you and my sister a long and happy life together.”