Sisterland

by Curtis Sittenfeld

  “Thank you for sharing your opinion. Have you gotten shoes for the wedding?”

  Vi and I had found her maid of honor dress at T. J. Maxx, a deep pink cowl-neck sheath that looked great on her. My only reservations were that, because it was unusual for Vi to wear something so fitted, she’d have a change of heart after it was too late to get anything else or that she’d decide it was humorously subversive to wear, say, Doc Martens on her feet.

  “I bought some flats that will totally pass your smell test,” Vi said. “And they were on sale for nine dollars. You have nothing to worry about.”

  “What color?”

  “Black.”

  I definitely wanted to see them before the ceremony. I said, “Tomorrow after work I’ll drive you around.”

  We ended up leaving the apartment together, and when we were outside, before we turned in opposite directions to walk to our cars—I was about to go pick up Jeremy for dinner—I said, “Call the police and just see what they say.”

  When Jeremy’s department head, Leland Marcus, had said he and his wife, Xiaojian, who was an oncology professor at Wash U’s medical school, wanted to take us out to celebrate our engagement, it had felt awkward given that we hadn’t invited them to the wedding; we hadn’t considered it. They were both about fifty and didn’t have children, and I hardly knew either of them. Xiaojian had been born in Shanghai and had recently led a high-profile study on hormone therapy and breast cancer; Leland had started his career at NASA. The previous winter, at a department holiday party, I’d had a twenty-five-minute conversation with Leland about fishing in Minnesota’s Boundary Waters that was basically a monologue on his part, and on the car ride home, Jeremy said, “That’s the longest any human being has ever spent talking to Leland.” (Later, it was odd to think that this party was where I’d met Hank and Courtney, speaking to them first by the buffet table and later when we happened to leave at the same time, heading out into the cold night and exchanging pleasantly distant farewells, with no idea of the friendship that would eventually develop among us.)

  At the restaurant with Leland and Xiaojian, we somehow got through the selection of wine and food, our appetizers and entrées—I could hear myself prattling on about the view from the grassy cliff where Jeremy and I would exchange our vows, and I was conscious, though less than I once would have been, of being the only person present without a PhD—and then the waiter brought out cappuccinos for Xiaojian and me and a raspberry tart for Leland.

  Xiaojian turned to me. “After the wedding, you will have babies.” It was hard to tell if it was a question or a comment.

  “Probably,” I said.

  “It is babies or job. You know this, yes? Women pretend they can do it all, but it is a lie. Babies or job. Never both. You work with elderly?”

  I nodded, unsure if it was more surprising that she knew what field I was in or that she was, without apparent hesitation, delivering this diatribe.

  She said, “If you have babies, say bye-bye to elderly.”

  “A lot of the women I work with have children.”

  “Small children?”

  “Some of them.”

  “Then they are bad mothers or bad workers. On this, trust me.”

  Was Jeremy listening? I hoped so, because I doubted I’d be able to do justice later to Xiaojian’s remarks.

  “I guess everyone has to figure out their own path,” I said, and Xiaojian replied, with a mirthful expression, “I see you do not believe me, but you will soon find out.”

  And then someone had approached our table and was standing at the corner between Xiaojian and me. At first, I thought it was the waiter, but the person leaned in and touched my elbow. “Daisy Shramm?”

  Even before I looked up, my body tensed. It wasn’t that this never happened. I lived in St. Louis, after all, where your next-door neighbor would turn out to be your co-worker’s cousin, where you’d run into your bank teller at the gym and your gynecologist at the farmers’ market. The suburbs were crawling with people with whom I’d gone to elementary school, middle school, high school, and college. But out in public I often noticed these people before they noticed me; the truth was, I could usually sense them. And then I could lower my head or walk away or, in particularly dire cases, hide in a bathroom stall. Once, in the parking lot of Ted Drewes, Jeremy and I had been sitting on the hood of his car, eating our concretes, when I’d said to him, “Give me the keys.” And I’d hit the Unlock button, jumped into the front passenger seat, and slumped there with my frozen custard until Alex Cooke—the first guy I’d ever kissed, while watching TV at Marisa Mazarelli’s house, who now appeared to be a father of four—had walked by with his large family. Afterward, when I tried to explain, Jeremy said, “For a minute there, I wondered if you’re in the Witness Protection Program.”

  In the restaurant, this person from my past had come upon me without my noticing; I had been distracted by Xiaojian Marcus’s rant. The person was male, about my age, and I knew that I knew him, but I didn’t know who he was. He had a cheerful face, and he held one hand to his chest and said, “It’s Laird. Laird Mueller. Tom’s brother.”

  “How are you?” I said. I didn’t stand because it seemed like if I did, we might have to hug. The last time I’d seen Laird, which was when his brother had been my high school boyfriend, he hadn’t yet entered puberty.

  “So the weirdest thing is, your name came up last week,” Laird said, and I was aware that Leland and Jeremy had gone quiet and were, like Xiaojian, observing this interaction. “What are the chances, right? I’m at the Cards game with a couple buddies from work—I’m at Selvin and Associates in Clayton—and one of my co-workers is another fellow from Kirkwood, Kevin Chansky. Don’t know if you’d remember him, but he was my year. He says to me, ‘Didn’t your brother go out with Daisy Shramm?’ and I say, ‘Did he ever!’ ” Laird cupped one hand around the side of his mouth, as if he were conveying confidential information rather than performing for a table of four. “Between you and I, I had a mondo crush on you back in the day. Anyway, Chansky says, ‘Daisy was a witch.’ And I’m like, ‘Huh? No way!’ And he’s like, ‘Yep, her and her twin sister both. They had crazy psychic powers.’ And I’m like, okay, so that’s why Mom always hated Daisy. Good old ultraconservative Peg Mueller.” Laird laughed then with warmth and sincerity, and the moment was so unendurable that a part of me couldn’t believe we were all still in the middle of it.

  “So, Laird,” Jeremy said. “It’s Laird, right?” Jeremy’s tone was mild; it might even have seemed friendly, if you didn’t know him. “We’re just finishing up dinner here. But thanks for coming over.”

  There was a little delay while Laird absorbed Jeremy’s diplomatic snub, and then with great enthusiasm, Laird said, “Likewise! Awesome to see you, Daisy, and nice to meet the rest of you.” As he wandered off, returning to a stool at the bar near the front of the restaurant, it was hard to feel true relief; it was like when you find yourself on a street where a menacing dog comes toward you, then walks away but without your having any assurance that he won’t turn back with renewed, unwholesome interest.

  And lest I should have comforted myself by imagining that Laird’s babbling had been too convoluted for my fiancé, his boss, and his boss’s wife to follow, Xiaojian said brightly, “So you are a—” Truly, I thought she was about to say witch, but instead she finished with “twin.” Again, it was unclear whether she was asking or observing; however, the follow-up was definitely a question. She said, “You are the good twin or bad twin?”

  If Xiaojian hadn’t rubbed me the wrong way before Laird’s appearance, I would have offered her my twin boilerplate (identical, really fun, didn’t try to trick people much growing up, still close, almost every day); I’d have felt that it was only polite. Instead, without smiling, I said, “I’m the bad one.”

  In the car, I said to Jeremy, “I’m so sorry.”

  “For what?”

  “We don’t have to pretend that wasn’t excruciating wh
en Laird came over.”

  “Do you seriously think I hold you accountable for what some doofus you went to school with twenty years ago does?”

  I was quiet and then I said, “Are you nervous about marrying a witch?”

  Jeremy laughed, which I hadn’t expected. “I’m just hoping you’ll twitch your nose and get me tenure.”

  “Do you think it’s weird that I don’t want to leave St. Louis even though I hate running into people?”

  “You don’t want to leave because of your dad and Vi.” Jeremy was driving my car, and he made a left onto the ramp for 40 East.

  I could have told him then about Vi and Brady Ogden, but instead I said, “I’m afraid Vi’s going to wear Doc Martens to our wedding.”

  “Whatever floats her boat,” Jeremy said.

  The next afternoon, I picked Vi up, and we got on the highway at McKnight; normally, it would have taken about twenty minutes to drive to Chesterfield, but because it was rush hour, it was more like forty.

  We passed the hospitals, several big new office parks, and as we closed in on Chesterfield, I said, “Which exit?”

  “Oh, God. Your guess is as good as mine.”

  “Clarkson Road? Chesterfield Parkway?” Later, I would go to the Chesterfield Babies “R” Us on a regular basis, but on this late afternoon in September 2004, I had an idea of where I was going only from having looked at a map I kept on my backseat.

  “Either one,” Vi said, and I wondered how long she envisioned us driving. I’d told Jeremy only that I was meeting up with Vi about her wedding outfit and that if he got hungry, he should go ahead and eat dinner without me.

  Vi and I circled Chesterfield Parkway and then I went north, somewhat arbitrarily, on Olive Boulevard, past the Butterfly House—another place I never went until I had children—before pulling off in the parking lot of a gas station and reversing direction. I could feel Vi’s alertness, her head angled toward the window, but she was quiet. “Anything seeming familiar?” I said, and she didn’t answer. Because there wasn’t much reason not to, I turned onto a residential street, but it was lined with new-looking, nice houses, and I knew it wasn’t right even before Vi said, “It’s an apartment building.”

  We ended up in Ellisville, then Ballwin—St. Louis County was divided into dozens of towns and cities with no centers, some with only houses and populations of just a few hundred—and I said, “You know we’ve left Chesterfield, don’t you?” and Vi said, “Maybe we should go back. Sorry.”

  I turned, and we found ourselves back on Clarkson Road, which led us to Baxter Road, Wild Horse Creek Road, Eatherton Road, Olive Street—we were passing the small Chesterfield airport—and near the mall again, there were a few clusters of townhouses, but Vi repeated that we were looking for an apartment, and then there was a cluster of apartment buildings, but they weren’t the right ones. We’d been in the car for an hour and a half, and the sun was setting. Without consulting Vi, I got back on the highway and began driving toward St. Louis. Twenty-five yards from the exit for Woods Mill Road, she said, “Get off here.”

  I wasn’t even in the right-hand lane; I glanced in the side mirror, swerved over, and got on the exit ramp. “Go right,” Vi said. Though I still wasn’t expecting much—we’d already passed Woods Mill Road on our way west—we’d been driving for no more than two minutes when she said, “Turn into that parking lot,” and she was gesturing just up ahead, where a wooden sign said terrace view apartments, and beyond it was a paved driveway that dipped down then rose up. In the parking lot proper, where I pulled into a space but didn’t turn off the engine, Vi and I both craned our necks back. In front of us were three enormous, identical buildings covered in cream-colored stucco; they were five stories high and contained perhaps fifty units each. Though it was a fuzzily golden late summer evening, I felt their ominousness right away, their containment of something bad. I wanted to leave, even as I believed Vi with a new certainty.

  “It’d be like finding a needle in a haystack,” Vi said. “Jesus.”

  “Why don’t you sleep on it?” I still hadn’t turned off the car or even set the gearshift in Park, and I added, “You don’t want to get out, do you?”

  Vi looked up through the windshield at each building, one after the other, but to my relief she said, “No.” On the ride back, neither of us spoke, and in front of the four-unit brick building where she lived—it seemed so little after the Terrace View Apartments—I didn’t have the energy to ask if I could see her wedding shoes.

  At home, Jeremy said, “Did she feed you?” It was almost eight, and he was scrambling eggs.

  “Actually, no,” I said. “Did you make enough for both of us?”

  “I’m about to,” he said.

  That night I awakened just before twelve o’clock, which was less than an hour after Jeremy and I had gone to bed; I felt that old sense of menace from my childhood, and I wondered at first if there’d been a noise in the apartment, an intruder even, but as I continued to listen, I heard nothing irregular. Jeremy was next to me, sleeping on his side, and I considered waking him but resisted; usually, it was enough just to know I could. I smoothed out my T-shirt, which had ridden up, and tucked my hair behind my ears, and I thought to myself, Everything is fine, and in the next instant, I thought, He doesn’t work in a post office, he works in a copy shop on New Ballas Road. Though I could see why Vi had been confused, because his uniform, his button-down shirt, was pale blue. He was a clean-shaven guy in his forties, with a blond, almost military crew cut, and the name tag over the left pocket of his shirt said DEREK.

  I got up and went into the living room; I dialed Vi’s cell number and sat down on the couch. (I sometimes had to stop and think, when I called Vi, which was her phone number and which was mine. Once, shortly after moving in with Jeremy, I’d meant to call Vi from my cellphone but called my own home phone, had heard but not really paid attention to my voice on the outgoing greeting, and had proceeded to leave a message for Vi. Later, I was briefly bewildered listening to it.)

  “What are you doing up?” Vi said when she answered. In the background, I could hear music and the rise and fall of multiple voices.

  “Where are you?” I asked.

  “A few of us are at this guy Maxwell’s house, but I’m leaving in a sec.” Then she laughed. “Wait, you know Maxwell.” She lowered her voice to a whisper and said, “Should I tell him you’re about to get married, or you think that’d break his big, bearded heart?”

  “Vi, I saw the kidnapper,” I said. “In a dream, I mean. I think he works at a copy shop.”

  “A coffee shop?”

  “Copy. Like Kinko’s but not a chain. I think you’re right, though—I think he lives in one of those buildings. So what do we do now?”

  “He has really short hair, right? And he’s almost handsome in this cheesy way, like he should be on a reality show except that he’s so creepy?”

  “His name is Derek. I could see it on his badge.”

  She was quiet for so long that I might have thought, if I hadn’t still been able to hear the background noise, that we’d been disconnected. At last, she said, “I’ll make you a deal. If you call the police, then you can say you’re me.”

  If I’d looked on the Internet to find the number for the Florissant Police Department, surely I’d have seen that the tip line was anonymous, but I didn’t look on the Internet. Instead, I pulled down the White Pages that Jeremy and I still kept, back in 2004, on top of our refrigerator, and I called the main number, and the person who answered connected me to the tip line, and I said the following: “I hope this doesn’t sound too weird, but I’m a person who sometimes has premonitions or I guess you could say ESP, and I’ve had one about Brady Ogden and what I think is maybe the person who kidnapped him—well, who was involved in kidnapping him, or could have been—I think it’s a man named Derek—that’s his first name—and he works in a copy shop, like a Kinko’s but not Kinko’s, and he lives in a complex called Terrace View Apartments, whi
ch is on Woods Mill Road. I don’t know any of this for sure, but I think maybe. And my name is Violet Shramm, Violet like the flower and Shramm is S-H-R-A-M-M.” I left Vi’s cellphone number; she didn’t have a home phone. Then, as ordinarily as if I’d called to cancel a dentist’s appointment, I said, “Okay. That’s all. Thanks so much.”

  When I returned to bed, Jeremy said, “Who were you talking to?” But he seemed barely awake.

  “I was watching TV,” I said. “I couldn’t sleep.”

  On Thursday nights, Jeremy played what he called nerd poker—all the players were professors from either his department or the physics department, and the only woman who participated was Courtney Wheeling—and I took my father to the grocery store. We still returned to the Schnucks on the corner of Manchester and Woodlawn; from year to year, it was the closest I got to our old house on Gilbert Street. In the cereal aisle, my father said, “Your sister has liked living on her own.”

  “I’m trying not to take that too personally.” I had last spoken to Vi the night before, about forty-eight hours after I’d left the message on the tip line, and she hadn’t heard from the Florissant police, which made me unsure whether to be relieved or disappointed. Either way, I couldn’t imagine she’d have mentioned the Brady Ogden business to our father.

  Then he said, “I know the bride’s family usually pays for the wedding,” and for about a second, I felt a surge of hope—I hadn’t even been sure that he was aware that this convention existed—but my hope began to wither when he said, “My dilemma is that I question if Vi will ever marry.”

  Though I questioned the same thing, it was still a bit shocking to hear him state it so baldly. “We’re barely twenty-nine, Dad. People get married later now.”

  “Well, don’t forget I was a good deal older than you girls when I married your mother. But I’m referring less to your sister’s age than what you might call her temperament. I don’t know that she’s the marrying kind.” Again, I felt a little shocked, even a little defensive on Vi’s behalf, while essentially agreeing.