Sisterland

by Curtis Sittenfeld

  On the mornings Amelia Wheeling was in preschool, I took Rosie and Owen either to story hour at the Richmond Heights library or for a long walk to a park on Wydown, but not to our usual parks on DeMun or at Oak Knoll. So Rosie wouldn’t be bored without Amelia, I told myself, though maybe it was so I wouldn’t be bored without Hank.

  On Monday, October 12, which was sunny and cool, we skipped the library because I couldn’t face hearing the other mothers discuss Vi’s prediction. We had just arrived at Wydown Park—Rosie and I called it the acorn park because it had a huge stone acorn statue set in a little garden above a low brick wall—when my cellphone rang. I saw that it was Vi.

  “I’m at your house.” She sounded cheerful. “But where are you?”

  “Why are you at our house? Wait—did you drive?”

  “I took a taxi. I have a question for you.”

  “That you have to ask in person?”

  “It’s nothing bad,” she said. “Don’t start freaking out.”

  “We’re at a park, the one on Wydown across from the deli.”

  “That’s kind of far.” I said nothing, and she added, “But I’ll be there as fast as my little feet can carry me.”

  After I hung up, I sprang Rosie from the stroller, and she took off toward the acorn statue. There were only four other people in the park on this morning, two of whom were an old man and a boy, a little younger than Rosie, who I assumed was his grandson; we’d seen them here before, and Rosie and the boy usually sniffed each other out without exactly playing together, while the grandfather and I nodded in greeting (I was pretty sure he didn’t speak English). Also, at a table near the fence between the park and the street, a man and a woman dressed in business clothes drank from paper coffee cups; she was skinny, wearing a pin-striped silk suit and stylish, uncomfortable-looking black heels.

  I pulled Owen from his stroller seat and inserted him into the baby carrier I’d put on before leaving the house (it had long ago stopped seeming strange to me to walk around wearing an empty baby carrier). When he was secure, I squatted to get a ball from the undercarriage of the stroller and followed Rosie across the grass. As I got close, she looked over her shoulder, smiled mischievously, and took off running again, this time toward the man and woman at the table. Owen and I stayed close behind. Rosie slowed down a few feet from the couple and said loudly, “That man’s not Daddy.”

  The man and woman both laughed, but an unhappy energy hovered around them, as if Rosie had interrupted a serious conversation. And then, with a start, I realized that the woman was Marisa Mazarelli. I hadn’t seen her for nearly seventeen years, since our high school graduation, and she looked simultaneously the same and much older. Patrick had run into her a few years earlier and had described her to Vi and me as “hagged out,” and while this was definitely an overstatement and she was still pretty, she did appear diminished. She was brown-eyed and brown-haired and pertnosed, but there was nothing exceptional about her beauty, about her presence. Was that only because middle school and high school, the era of her power, was long past? Or was it that her power had always hinged on an audience and here in this park, on this sunny October morning, she no longer had one? Surely she knew about Vi’s prediction, and probably found it risible. But even if she chose at this moment to make a ruthless comment about my sister and me, who’d witness it except the grandfather and grandson and Marisa’s boyfriend, or whoever he was? Then I thought he had to be her boyfriend, because once you were married, you didn’t hang out in parks on weekday mornings without kids.

  Warmly, the boyfriend said to Rosie, “How old are you?”

  I was reluctant to speak; I suspected my voice would give me away, if Marisa didn’t already know who I was. But after a few seconds of silence, it felt weird for me not to prompt Rosie. “Do you know how old you are, sweetheart?” I said. “How many years old?” I avoided Marisa’s gaze and looked instead at the back of my daughter’s head, her wavy dark brown hair.

  “Seven!” Rosie shouted.

  “You’re two and a half,” I said. “You’re not seven.”

  “You’re seven!” Rosie yelled, and she started running away from them. I turned, too, saying in a tone of light regret, as if I’d hoped to stay and visit, “Onward.”

  I could feel Marisa’s eyes on my back. She definitely knew who I was, and she probably knew that I knew who she was, but we’d silently decided not to acknowledge each other. And as I chased Rosie, I was fairly sure that I’d come out ahead in our exchange, or nonexchange. Because here I was with my two cute children, and I’d noticed that the ring finger of Marisa’s left hand was bare. This was the nastiest, most elemental math, made no less ugly for its undeniability: I ended up with a husband and you didn’t. Or at least she hadn’t so far, or if she had, she’d gotten divorced.

  Rosie made her way to the little boy and his grandfather, who were standing near a bench on which the boy had set a bunch of plastic action figures. The grandfather and I smiled at each other. By the time Vi arrived, Rosie was busy repeatedly burying a plastic soldier under mulch, then yanking him up and flinging mulch everywhere.

  “That was at least two miles,” Vi said from a few yards away. Her cheeks were flushed, her forehead sweaty. She waved at the grandfather. “Hi there,” she said. “Violet. Kate’s sister.”

  With a thick accent, he said, “A pleasure to meet you.” So he did speak English. In any case, it felt as if Vi had violated park etiquette by introducing herself. Then she said to me, “See that woman over there? I swear it’s Marisa Mazarelli.”

  I hesitated before saying, “It is.”

  “What, and you weren’t planning to tell me? Are you afraid I’ll go punch her?”

  It was within the realm of possibility. But all I said was “What’s the question you want to ask?” Was it weird to be having this conversation in front of the grandfather, knowing now that he did speak English?

  Vi was still gazing across the grass. “You think Marisa’s having an affair with that guy?”

  I’d had the same thought, that he could be married—I hadn’t taken note of his ring finger, only hers—but I shrugged. Owen had started fussing, and I reached into my pocket for a pacifier. I stuck it into his mouth and he immediately spit it onto the grass. When I retrieved it, I had to bend at the knees and hold my palm against his chest so he didn’t topple out of the carrier.

  “Should I ask if Marisa caught me on the Today show?” Vi’s voice had turned proud, and I thought of what Courtney Wheeling had said about people appearing on Today because they had extended cases of the hiccups or had been attacked by a shark—that it didn’t mean you’d succeeded in life.

  And then the grandfather said, with the same thick accent as before, “You are on the television program for earthquakes. You are famous lady!” He was smiling broadly.

  Vi seemed pleased and not particularly surprised. “Oh, did you see it?” she said. “Yeah, that was me.”

  “I come from Turkey, where there is terrible earthquake in Izmir. Buildings there not strong like here.”

  “Right,” Vi said. “No retrofitting.”

  “Here the buildings are strong.”

  “Let’s hope,” Vi said.

  “It is honor to meet such a famous lady.” The grandfather was looking at me as he spoke, as if I would verify that he was having this encounter.

  Owen spit his pacifier onto the grass again, and I glanced at my watch and realized that it was time for him to eat and that—I could see it in my mind—instead of packing the jar of squash, the little spoon, and the bib for him in the diaper bag, I’d left them all on the kitchen table. Which meant that unless I wanted him to become frantic, even though I preferred to nurse only at home, I had to do it here.

  “Vi,” I said. “I’m going over to that bench to feed Owen. Will you make sure Rosie doesn’t put mulch in her mouth?”

  Vi rolled her eyes at me.

  I went two benches away, where I’d left our stroller. As I eased Owen from t
he carrier, I thought maybe I could get away with feeding him on only one side. Back across the grass, I saw that the boy and his grandfather were leaving, and I hoped Rosie wouldn’t have a fit when they took the action figures. Then I saw Vi get on all fours and let Rosie climb onto her back, which made Rosie squeal with happiness. Vi crawled forward, her hair flopping into her face, and then she flung her head backward and let loose with an enormous neigh. “The horsey likes to eat carrots,” I heard Rosie say. Maybe I’d underestimated my sister, I thought; maybe I was always underestimating her. At some point, Rosie slid off Vi, and Vi remained on her hands and knees while Rosie frolicked around her. “The horsey takes a nap!” she shouted, and Vi rolled onto her side.

  And then I heard Vi say, “Oh, Rosie, watch out! Oh, no. Oh, yuck.” But she was laughing as she said, “Your mom will not be happy.”

  “What is it?” I called.

  “She stepped in dog poop. Whoops.” Vi was still laughing.

  “Weren’t you watching her?”

  “I didn’t think there’d be poop in the middle of the grass.” I hadn’t either, or else I wouldn’t have kept popping Owen’s pacifier back into his mouth after it fell out. Still, it felt like it wasn’t a coincidence that this had happened under Vi’s supervision.

  Rosie was wearing pink sneakers, and as she and Vi walked toward us, I saw that the poop was of the fresh, moistly glistening variety; it clung to the upper part of her left sneaker. “Can you take her shoe off?” I said.

  “I’m not touching it,” Vi said.

  “Vi, my hands are kind of tied right now.” The clock was ticking; I was sure of it. “Come on,” I said. “There are wipes in the diaper bag.”

  “Sorry,” Vi said, and she didn’t sound sorry at all. “But there’s a reason I don’t have kids.”

  And then, exactly as I’d known she would, Rosie reached down, swiped her hand against her left shoe, raised her brown-streaked palm victoriously, and said, “Rosie makes a mess.” She sprinted away from us, back toward the acorn statue.

  “Rosie, stop!” I yelled. I pulled Owen off my boob—he wailed, of course—and passed him to Vi so I could run after Rosie. When Rosie sensed me behind her, she shrieked with joy. I was only a few feet from her—I probably could have reached out and grabbed the back of her jacket—and then, just as she got to the sidewalk in front of the low wall, she tripped and fell face-first onto the pavement. Immediately, she was hysterical, and as I lifted her from behind, I felt that dread, not yet knowing how bloody she’d be. The answer was very: The blood was surging from her nose and lips, and her upper lip was already swelling. My heart pounded against my chest.

  “It’s all right, Rosie,” I said. “You’re okay.”

  She was screaming so loudly that I don’t think she could hear me; tears cascaded down her face. Carefully, I carried her in my arms—it seemed safe to assume that by this point there was shit on both of us—and we walked toward Vi and Owen. He was still crying, too; both my children were sobbing desperately.

  Vi’s brow was furrowed, and in a tone of concern, as if it hadn’t been mostly her fault, she said, “Is she okay?” Then Rosie turned her face toward Vi and Vi said, “Oh my God.”

  “I need to wash off the blood,” I said. “Put Owen in the stroller, and get the wipes out of the diaper bag, and I’ll clean her hands and face the best I can now and do the rest at home.”

  Vi did as I said, and her obedience was disturbing. I kept Rosie on my lap while I wiped my own hands, then her hands, then brought a wipe toward her mouth, at which point she howled and backed her head away from me. “I’ll be very careful,” I said. “I know it hurts. I know.”

  “Daisy,” someone said—not Vi, but someone whose voice was simultaneously familiar and unfamiliar. I looked up, and Marisa Mazarelli was standing in front of the bench in her pin-striped suit, dangling car keys from her fingers. “Does she need to go to the hospital?” Marisa said. “I’m not sure how far away you guys live, but it looks like you walked—” She sounded tentative in a way that was utterly unlike the Marisa from before, as if she were not offering a favor but requesting one.

  I hesitated for less than a second before saying, “We’ll take a ride to our house. Vi, can you push Owen home in the stroller?” Marisa and Vi said nothing to each other.

  She drove an enormous white SUV, and I sat in front, holding Rosie on my lap, not bothering with the seat belt; I was simultaneously breaking about three different laws. Also—did Marisa realize this?—Rosie smelled like dog shit. Maybe I did, too.

  As Marisa pulled out of the space where she was parked, she said, “I saw her fall, and I thought, Poor thing!”

  “She’ll be okay,” I said. “Right, Rosie? We’ll make you feel better.” I didn’t think the cuts were that deep, though it was hard to tell with all the blood.

  Sorrowfully, Rosie said, “Rosie fell.”

  I was almost but not quite too distracted to take note of the clutter piled on the floor under my feet—running shoes and home furnishings catalogs and half-full bottles of water and more than one Steak ’n Shake bag (surely, as skinny as she was, there was nothing Marisa could get from Steak ’n Shake besides Diet Coke). When Marisa had started the car, a loud Kenny Chesney song had burst out of her stereo speakers, which she lowered in volume without turning off. (Marisa listened to country music?) But mostly I just wanted us to get home. I said, “We live on San Bonita Avenue, which is off DeMun, but you should take Big Bend to Clayton because you can’t cut through from this side.”

  There was minimal traffic, and we drove without speaking, listening to a very faint Kenny Chesney. Rosie was insubstantial in my arms; given how much bigger she was than Owen, I often forgot how little she herself still was.

  In front of our house, I opened the car door before Marisa had turned off the engine. “Thanks,” I said.

  “I hope she’s okay,” Marisa said.

  I started up the walk, Rosie in my arms, and behind me, I heard the passenger side window opening and Marisa calling, “Daisy—”

  I turned.

  “There’s something I want to ask you,” she said. “Can I call you?”

  “Yeah, fine,” I said, and I turned again.

  The way I got Rosie to hold still while I cleaned her wounds was by parking her in front of the TV and letting her watch Curious George. I dabbed at her lips and nose with a soapy washcloth, then with a wet washcloth, then with Neosporin (which made me think, as I suppose it always will, of Brynn Zansmyer); every time I made contact, Rosie whimpered and her eyes welled. Both her upper lip and her right nostril had been scraped and were oozing pink fluid—also, her upper lip was twice as big as normal—but she was no longer crying, and the cut was soon clean. To reduce the swelling, I gave her a Popsicle. I considered taking a picture with my phone and sending it to Jeremy, but it seemed like that would be alarming without serving a purpose; I’d call him later. Through the living room window, I saw Vi and Owen approach, then Vi heaved the stroller up the four steps leading to our front porch, Owen still strapped in. I wondered, did I appear as unsteady as she did when I carried the stroller? I opened the front door, and Owen smiled at me and said, “Da-da.”

  “Ha,” Vi said. “Almost. How’s the patient?” Looking at Rosie, she said, “What’s that snot-looking stuff?”

  “I think just drainage.”

  “First dog poop, now facial leaking. What a morning, huh?” She sat down in the armchair, eased off her clogs, and propped her socked feet on the coffee table. “I could go for one of those Popsicles.”

  Holding Owen, I sat on the couch next to Rosie, pulled up my shirt—I had, apparently, never refastened the front of my bra after nursing Owen in the park—and let him latch on again. To Vi, I said, “Help yourself.”

  When she returned from the kitchen, Vi said, “Did the Bitch of Christmas Past say anything interesting in the car?”

  “We didn’t talk. I was pretty focused on getting home.”

  “Did she ment
ion my prediction?”

  “I’m telling you we barely talked,” I said. “You have to admit it was nice of her to give us a ride.”

  Vi snorted. “I don’t have to admit jack shit.” Then she said, “Aren’t you curious what I want to ask you?”

  I had forgotten she wanted to ask me anything.

  She said, “I’m going back on the Today show on Friday morning, and this time, the producer wants you to come on with me.”

  “Why?”

  She laughed. “You should see your face right now. It looks like you licked a lemon.”

  “I just don’t know why they’d be interested in me when I have nothing to do with your prediction.”

  “You know how people are about twins, though. They want us all to have ESP, and here we are, the ones who really do.”

  “You didn’t tell the producer I’m psychic, did you?”

  “I described you like you are—total suburban mom, white picket fence—and the guy was like, ‘Even better!’ Because as Emma put it—you’ll love this—you give me credibility. You’re a stand-in for Mrs. Normal American Viewer who’s skeptical about”—here, inexplicably, Vi adopted her awful British accent, which I thought she might have put to rest during her contact with the authentically British Emma—“these very, very strange predictions.”

  “So you did tell the producer I’m psychic,” I said. Like Jeremy, Vi was unaware that I’d done my best to kill my senses.

  “It’s time to get over your hang-ups,” Vi said. “Because guess what? The thing you always thought was so embarrassing turns out to be the thing that makes us cool. Plus, when will you next get invited on the Today show?”

  “I’m definitely not going on TV with you,” I said. “There’s no possible way.”