Sisterland

by Curtis Sittenfeld

  Following dinner, the older generation and the parents of young children returned to their rooms and the rest of us sat around on big outdoor couches—Vi and Patrick were intertwined in a nearby hammock in a way that I was glad my father wasn’t awake to see, because it could only have confused him—and someone from the inn turned on two patio heaters, and I had that feeling, with the cool, sweet-smelling night air and the warmth of the heaters, of being inside a Christmas carol. This was the moment when I decided that instead of giving my father an excuse later on, I would wear my mother’s charm bracelet after all. I had packed it at the last minute, and really, there was no reason not to.

  It was one o’clock when Jeremy and I returned to our room; we weren’t avoiding each other the night before our wedding, and he’d already seen my dress, hanging in a clear plastic bag in our coat closet in St. Louis for the last five months. He was in the bathroom brushing his teeth, and I was already in bed, when there was a knock on the door. I startled—after wanting so badly for Brady Ogden to be found, I now just wanted not to think of him, for his existence to be suspended until we got through the ceremony the next afternoon—and when I looked through the peephole, my fears were not allayed; it was Vi in the hall.

  But when I opened the door, she was grinning. “I’m here to kidnap you.” An expression of alarm crossed my face, I knew, because she said, “Sorry, bad word choice. I’m here to squire you away.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s a surprise.”

  “That can’t wait until tomorrow?”

  “If you must know, I’m throwing you a bachelorette party. It’s only going to last five minutes, but it’ll be the best bachelorette party ever. You thought I didn’t know the maid of honor’s supposed to do that, didn’t you?” She was clearly pleased with herself.

  I called, “Jeremy, I’m going with Vi for a second.”

  He opened the bathroom door, his toothbrush in his mouth. “Now?”

  “Hi, Jeremy,” Vi said. “She’ll be back before you know it, so don’t worry your pretty little head.”

  I let her lead me down the hall and around the corner to her own room, and she did the shave-and-a-haircut knock on the door, then followed it herself with the two bits. Then she turned the knob, and when we walked in, a gaggle of women whisper-shouted, “Surprise!” I saw that they were my almost-sister-in-law, Meg; my almost-mother-in-law, Carol; my friend Janet; and Patrick, who apparently was an honorary woman, or maybe he was just there because he and Vi were sharing the room. Along the dresser, Vi had lined up six shot glasses of something pink, and she began passing them out as Patrick set a plastic tiara on my head; I was still, of course, wearing pajamas. “What is this?” asked Carol, and Vi said, “Bridal ambrosia. Everyone on the count of three?” She counted down, and, somewhat to my astonishment, all six of us threw back the liquid. It was vodka, I was pretty sure, mixed with lemonade. “That wasn’t nearly as disgusting as I anticipated,” Carol said.

  Vi was holding an ice bucket against her hip, and she said, “So I have an announcement. I couldn’t find a male stripper to come to the hotel, which I know will really disappoint Kate.”

  Meg said, “You’re telling me I woke up in the middle of the night for no stripper? I feel cheated!”

  “Here’s the good news.” Vi dug one hand into the ice bucket. “Look what I did find—penis confetti!” She flung a fistful at me, she began flinging it at the other women, and sure enough, when I glanced down at a piece that had landed on my upper arm, I saw that it was a tiny, glittering yellow penis. At one end was the rounded tip, and at the other end were heart-shaped balls; the other penises were pink and blue and green, and they all glittered, too. “Kate, on behalf of the female species, congratulations on getting married. May Jeremy’s penis always appear as sparkly to you in the years to come as it does right now.” She looked around, grinning lewdly. “Okay, everyone, the party’s over. Go back to your rooms.”

  An hour and a half before the ceremony, Janet was doing my makeup—I was sitting in a chair we’d pulled into the bathroom, facing the sink, and she was standing—when Vi burst in and shouted, “They found him! This morning, they found him, and the dude who took him is in police custody.”

  I was barefoot but already wearing my wedding dress, with an old T-shirt over it. (When my makeup and hair were finished, Janet would cut the shirt off me with scissors, which was a trick the professional makeup artist she’d hired for her own wedding had taught her.) I leapt up, and Vi and I embraced, and I said, “I can’t believe it,” and Vi said, “I know! Holy shit, right?”

  “Found who?” Janet said.

  Vi and I both were quiet—Vi was deferring to me, if only because it was my wedding day—and then I said, “Brady Ogden.”

  Janet appeared confused. “Do you guys know him?”

  After a pause, I said, “No, but we’ve followed the case really closely.”

  “I couldn’t.” Janet was shaking her head. “Too depressing.”

  I sat back down in the chair, and Vi hoisted herself onto the marble counter by the sink. I could feel the energy coming off her, the excitement, and I desperately wanted to ask what else the detective had told her. I settled on saying, “Do they know how he is?”

  “Well, alive,” Vi said. “So that’s a start. The guy, the kidnapper”—she was speaking slowly, choosing carefully what to say and eyeing me—“he works in a copy store. It’s on New Ballas Road.”

  “Ew, a grown man kidnapped him?” Janet said. “That’s so sick. The poor kid will be messed up forever.”

  “No,” Vi said quickly. “People recover.”

  Before Vi had entered the bathroom, Janet had been applying foundation to my face with a triangular white sponge, and she resumed rubbing it across my cheeks. I could tell she was offended, that she believed she’d been scolded by Vi. I said, “Vi, you remember the photographer is expecting family members outside by the flagpole at four o’clock, don’t you? Maybe you should go take a shower.” But then—because Janet was only my friend while Vi was my sister—I added, “But I agree. People do recover.”

  How naïve I was to imagine, that afternoon in the bathroom, that if I could conceal Vi’s involvement in the discovery of Brady Ogden, I could conceal her senses altogether; how naïve to merely imagine I could conceal her involvement. It wasn’t Detective McGillivary who had called Vi the day of my wedding to tell her Brady had been found. It was Vi’s friend Jocelyn, with whom Vi was in the meditation group, and the news was apparently all over St. Louis. When she spoke to reporters, Detective McGillivary never said the break in the case was a tip from a local psychic. But Vi told her New Age friends about having talked to the police, and they told their friends, and soon she began to get calls from people she didn’t know who wanted her to perform readings. The first few times, she did it for free, and Jeremy was the one who told her she ought to charge, which is to say perhaps he’s complicit, too, in everything that eventually happened.

  Intermittently—when Derek Smith was indicted, then went on trial, then was convicted of kidnapping and child molestation and began serving a life sentence—there would be flare-ups, recapitulations of the story of what Brady Ogden had been through, and Vi would complain that she’d missed her due. Yet within less than a year after Brady had been found, Vi was able to support herself just by holding readings. Increasingly, she held group sessions; there was, it turned out, more of a market for the lower-priced ones and, on occasion, she hosted them for bachelorette parties. What really surprised me was that she had a few corporate clients, including a regional burger chain and a real estate firm; she had to sign confidentiality agreements before she started working with them, but of course she told me anyway.

  She once said to me, “So it never bothers you at all that the cops gave us no credit for finding Brady?”

  This is one of the most confusing parts of life: that even when confronted with an amplitude of evidence, we find it impossible to believe that others want what
we don’t or don’t want what we do. The expression on my face must have been one of incredulity, because Vi said, “Right, right. I forgot who I was talking to.”

  I don’t remember my wedding that well, which I think isn’t particularly unusual; all I really recall is the sensation of time unspooling more happily and also more quickly than ever before or since. I hadn’t put much stock in the idea of a wedding being the best day of one’s life, but I would say that for me, it was. The days on which my children were born have been more consequential and, certainly, joyous in their ways, but delivering a baby hurts, whereas a wedding can just be fun.

  During the brief ceremony, the ocean sparkled below the cliff; exchanging our vows, with their familiar cadences, was like joining the club of adulthood. For the reception, the inn had decorated the tables with pale blue cloths and dark blue napkins and shiny wineglasses, with vases of delphiniums and cornflowers, and after a first dance with Jeremy and a second dance with my father, I danced third with Vi. We danced to “You May Be Right,” and I could feel the guests being reminded of, being tickled by, our twinness. There was a moment when Billy Joel, via Patrick’s iPod, was singing, and Vi and I found our faces close together, both of us flushed, me in my white strapless dress and her in her pink sheath (she was already barefoot, though she had indeed worn flats for the ceremony), and she said, “Did you know Dad wants to give me the down payment to buy a house? He must feel guilty for spending so much on your wedding.” And then we’d danced apart, so maybe she didn’t hear what I said next, though I actually meant it. I said, “That’s great.”

  This is the part of my wedding I remember clearly: that after the photographer took family pictures before the ceremony, Jeremy and his brother went to stand beside the cliff where the justice of the peace had taken his place; that Vi walked down the short aisle formed between white folding chairs; and that then, on my father’s arm, accompanied by no music except the wind, wearing no jewelry except my mother’s charm bracelet, I followed her. And there Jeremy was with the sky behind him, in khaki pants and a navy blazer and a green tie, and I thought with amazement that he was a surprise again, though I’d seen him less than five minutes before: the man who was about to become my husband, waiting for me to become his wife.

  Chapter 14

  Rosie and Owen had just one framed print each hanging in their rooms—Owen’s featured the alphabet with animals clinging to various letters, and Rosie’s was a drawing of a little girl walking on a beach—and I had removed them and stored them in their closets the day after Vi made her prediction. It wasn’t until the morning of Tuesday, October 13, that I waited until Jeremy had left for work, inserted Owen into the baby carrier, started Dora the Explorer for Rosie to watch in the living room, and walked around the house taking everything else down from the walls: the large black-and-white photo of mountains over the fireplace, and the mirror close to the front door; the painting in the dining room that we’d bought at an art fair; the three pictures from our wedding hung in a row by the staircase.

  After I’d carried the wall hangings to the basement, I took the standing lamp next to the living room couch down there, too, and the smaller lamp on the end table. I didn’t touch the chandelier in the dining room or the track lighting in the kitchen, not because they didn’t pose a threat but because they were too much trouble; also it seemed a little extreme, even for me, to sit around in darkness for the next three days. As if preparing to move, I pulled the glasses and dishes from the kitchen cabinets, wrapped them in newspaper, and stacked them in cardboard boxes. Our TV wasn’t flat-screen, so my plan was to just lift it off the table and set it on the floor on the night of the fifteenth.

  When Kendra arrived to babysit, I was making a list for Target. Rosie jumped into Kendra’s arms and said with great excitement, “Kendra wants to play with Play-Doh.”

  “I would love to play with Play-Doh,” Kendra said as she carried Rosie from the front door into the living room.

  I’d considered texting Kendra to warn her about Rosie’s split lip but neglected to do it. Jeremy, upon arriving home from work the previous afternoon, had looked at Rosie and said, “Yeesh.” Then he’d lifted her up, spun her around, and said, “I hope you showed the other guy what’s what.” He’d glanced at me. “Don’t beat yourself up. This stuff happens.”

  In the morning, the once-bloody area between Rosie’s upper lip and nose was a dark yellow gooey patch, and I murmured to Jeremy, “She has a Hitler mustache.”

  Jeremy murmured back, “I think the comparison you want is Charlie Chaplin.”

  Yet again, in advance of Kendra’s arrival, I’d pretended to myself that I’d leave both Rosie and Owen with her, and yet again, seeing Rosie’s delight in Kendra’s presence, I decided to let my daughter have the sitter all to herself. This was how I ended up driving to Target with Owen, and at the checkout I realized I’d forgotten our reusable bags in the trunk of the car, which was what I usually did. The cashier was a middle-aged black woman who said to Owen, “Hi there, Mr. Man. You’re a good-looking Mr. Man, aren’t you?”

  As I laid our purchases on the conveyor belt, she said to me, “I bet you were looking for the bottled water, but soon as we get a new shipment, we sell out again.”

  “I got some before today,” I said, though in fact I had planned to buy more and had uneasily taken note of the empty shelves. But I’d been most intent on stocking up on paper plates and cups, now that all of ours were boxed, and I’d succeeded in finding these.

  “You know what?” The woman leaned toward me, as if confiding. “I figure when my time is up, my time is up. It’s not for me to question the good Lord’s plan. Now, I live alone, so I’ve got no one but myself to worry about. My youngest baby is twenty-eight years old. If I had a little one under my roof, sure, I’d buy some bottled water. Sure I would.”

  I had to pass her my credit card after I’d run it through the machine, and she looked at the front of it, then at me; this might have been the first time she was really taking in my face. And then she made that whistling noise people make when they’re impressed, though not necessarily by something good. She said, “Girl, if you aren’t the spitting image of that psychic!”

  After Target, we stopped by the Galleria, where I bought sneakers—even if the earthquake didn’t occur, and I didn’t need to walk across a broken city while pushing a stroller, my old pair had gotten worn out—and the fountain on the Galleria’s first floor delighted Owen. By the time we left, it was a few minutes after noon and I was craving a hamburger. In the parking lot, I looked at Owen in the rearview mirror; he’d pulled a sock-clad foot up to his mouth and was sucking away. I leaned into the backseat and removed his sock—if he was going to suck his toes, he might as well enjoy them without a barrier—and I said, “Should we go out for a lunch date, then home for a nap? Is that a good plan for Mommy and Owen?”

  I decided we’d head to Blueberry Hill, a St. Louis landmark where an eighty-something-year-old Chuck Berry still performed regularly, though I’d never been to see him until Jeremy bought tickets for us shortly after we started dating. I carried Owen inside in his car seat; he still wasn’t quite big enough for a restaurant high chair. “Seat yourself,” a bartender in the front told me, and I turned right, into a large room with booths, tables and chairs, arcade video games, a pinball machine, and lots of music paraphernalia—framed concert posters and albums and covers of Rolling Stone—plus random knickknacks like Simpsons figurines and lava lamps. I slid Owen’s car seat across the bench in an empty booth and sat down next to him. When the waiter brought water, I said, “I already know what I want: a hamburger cooked medium.” I paused. “And fries.” After a second pause, I said, “And what kind of beer do you have on tap?”

  “We’ve got an Oktoberfest that’s kind of malty and—”

  “Perfect,” I said.

  “Lettuce, tomato, or onions?”

  “Yes,” I said. “All of them.”

  When the waiter was gone, I groped und
er the table, where I’d set the diaper bag, and found Owen’s orange star rattle. I had just given it to him when I felt a hand on my back, and I turned and discovered that Jeremy was standing next to the booth and that Courtney Wheeling was standing beside him.

  “Kate?” Jeremy seemed surprised but genuinely pleased to see me. He leaned in to kiss my forehead, then kissed Owen’s as well. “When we walked in, I thought, Wow, that baby looks like Owen,” he said. “And then I was like, And that woman is wearing Kate’s vest.” Jeremy and Courtney were dressed professionally: Jeremy in a jacket and tie and Courtney in a pantsuit. “Can we join you?” He gestured to the bench opposite Owen and me, and then, just before Jeremy slid in, he exchanged a look with Courtney in which I could have sworn he was apologizing to her. Are you fucking kidding me? I thought. Was the apology because I was Vi’s sister or because of the tension during our pizza dinner? Or was it because now, with me present, they wouldn’t be able to talk about, say, lunar radar altimetry and instead would have to discuss potty training?