Sisterland

by Curtis Sittenfeld

  “Don’t tell me Hank’s about to walk in with Rosie and Amelia,” Courtney said. Her tone was warm, as if this possibility would delight her, but I didn’t trust her. In fact, although this wasn’t fair of me, just a week after her abortion, I found her normalness, even cheerfulness, jarring.

  I said, “Not that I know of. Rosie’s actually with a sitter.”

  Jeremy nodded toward Owen. “Why isn’t he?”

  A lie presented itself, and I seized it. “He was fussing when I was about to leave, but I knew he’d calm down in the car.”

  “You decided not to get a manicure?” Jeremy seemed disappointed.

  “I needed to run errands,” I said.

  Jeremy made a mock-scolding face at Owen, waving his index finger. “This is supposed to be Mama’s downtime, O. This isn’t your time with her.” With the handle of the rattle jammed in his mouth, Owen beamed. “Pass him over here,” Jeremy said. Though I’d been considering saying that I was finished eating—if I’d thought I could get away with changing my order to takeout and secretly waiting for it up at the bar, I would have—I went ahead and unbuckled Owen, pulled him from the car seat, and handed him across the table.

  This was when the waiter materialized, carrying my rather large glass of beer. An expression of alarm flashed across Jeremy’s face, an expression he took care to eliminate before saying in a neutral tone, “What kind is that?”

  I hadn’t yet taken a sip, but I nudged the glass toward him. “An Oktoberfest special. Want to try it?”

  As Jeremy took a sip, Courtney said, “God, that looks good,” and he passed it on to her, an act that somehow contained the intimacy of their sharing a glass rather than her drinking from mine. After she’d swallowed, she said to the waiter, “I’ll take one, too.”

  “Then make it three,” Jeremy said. “I can’t be outdrunk by two girls, can I?”

  The waiter took their food order—a chicken sandwich for Jeremy and red beans and rice for Courtney, the virtuous vegetarian—and after he had left again, Courtney said good-naturedly to Jeremy, “Did you really just call Kate and me girls? I think that was the most sexist thing I’ve ever heard you say.”

  Jeremy laughed, and I felt a strong desire for him not to apologize to Courtney. Not that he necessarily was going to, but before he could, I said, “So do you guys come here a lot?”

  They both laughed before looking at each other—I then felt an antipathy for Courtney so intense that it was hard not to believe it hadn’t been there all along—and Jeremy said, “That sounded like the classic pick-up line. You come here often? I guess I’ve been a couple times with Schwartz and Marcus, but we’ve never been together, have we?” He glanced at Courtney, lowering his eyebrows as if trying to recall information, and I thought, Stop looking at each other!

  My plea worked, or at least Jeremy turned back toward me. He said, “So what errands were you running?”

  I’d once read an article about a study showing that the stereotype of men not liking to date or marry smart women was false; men were fine dating and marrying smart women, just as long as the men were smarter. She can have her master’s, the article had said, as long as he has his PhD. And maybe I was flattering myself that I was, by anyone’s definition, smart—after all, I’d never earned a master’s—but the article had made me uncomfortable. Because was this what I was in Jeremy’s eyes: his sweet, tedious wife, with whom he had conversations about what had been on sale at Target? And then I wondered, was part of the reason Jeremy was insisting on going to Denver so that he could spend time there with Courtney?

  I had never been gripped by such insecurity. I said, “Well, we just came from the mall, but I’ll spare you the boring details. Owen was really into the fountain.”

  “I hope not literally,” Jeremy said.

  “Wait, you think it was irresponsible of me to let him go swimming?”

  Jeremy laughed politely, and Courtney said, “Speaking of which, I think I’ve convinced Hank that we should go to Hawaii for Thanksgiving.” Looking at me, she said, “To a resort where Julia Roberts supposedly stayed with her family. Ooh la la.”

  The salient piece of information here seemed to be that the Wheelings wouldn’t be celebrating Thanksgiving at our house, though they had for the last two years. And it wasn’t that I’d have hoped they would, if I’d thought about it, but there was a kind of double snub from Courtney in not acknowledging that we’d shared the holiday in the past.

  “You get your own cottage with a kitchen, so you don’t have to eat every meal out,” she was saying. “And they give surf lessons right on the hotel beach. Fun, right?”

  “I guess if you go for that kind of thing,” Jeremy said. “We prefer the glamour of November in Missouri, right, Kate?” At that moment, my exciting and embarrassing burger and fries arrived.

  “Go ahead and start,” Jeremy said. “I’ll give O back to you when mine comes.”

  The waiter brought their meals a few minutes later, but Jeremy kept holding Owen, even when I offered to put him in the car seat; Jeremy took me up on the offer only after I’d finished. Somehow, the food made things normal, or normal-ish, among us. Yes, I no longer liked Courtney, and yes, she and Jeremy were sitting on the same side of the booth together, even though I was married to Jeremy and Courtney wasn’t, but our conversation stopped seeming quite as fraught and off-kilter. By unspoken agreement, none of us mentioned Vi or her prediction—not that I was in the mood to defend Vi anyway, given how she’d stormed out of our house the day before.

  Eventually, Owen, bless his heart, really did begin to fuss, and I was able to leave without it seeming weird. I didn’t pay first, because Jeremy would cover my portion. “Tell Hank I say hi,” Courtney called as I carried Owen’s car seat out.

  At home, I took Owen right up to his room, nursed him, and put him down, then returned to the living room to pay Kendra before she left. Rosie walked with us to the front door and grabbed at Kendra’s hand. “Kendra wants to stay,” she said.

  “Kendra does want to stay,” Kendra said. “But I have to go to class, and I think it’s time for you to take a nap. Will you let me come back next week?”

  By which point an earthquake would or wouldn’t have happened, I thought. By which point was it unrealistic to hope that regular life might have returned? As a child, when Christmas or my birthday—our birthday—was approaching, I’d note the expiration dates on cottage cheese containers or cartons of orange juice and feel excitement if the date fell after the one I was anticipating. I experienced a darker version of this urgency as I closed the door behind Kendra: Let these days pass quickly. Please, please, just let them pass.

  After I’d wrestled Rosie into letting me apply Neosporin, then put her down for her nap, our home phone rang, and when I saw that it was Jeremy, I simultaneously felt relief and a gamey, adolescent temptation not to pick up. But then what? I’d want to talk to him in an hour, and he’d be teaching.

  “I know that was weird,” he said when I answered. “But it wasn’t weird for the reason you think it was.”

  “What’s the reason I think?”

  “Well, Courtney and I aren’t having an affair,” he said, and honestly, tears pooled in my eyes—idiotic tears, because Jeremy was so nice and I was so ridiculous—and he added, “Kate, if I ever cheat on you, I won’t be sneaking away to Blueberry Hill for my adulterous lunches.” In a more serious tone, he said, “When we ran into you, Courtney had just told me about her abortion. As in, about a second before I saw you. She even asked me if I knew, if Hank had told you, and I lied and said no, which felt really fucked up. And then we see you and Owen and—well, you know the rest. It was awkward all around, but it had nothing to do with you.”

  I did feel assuaged; in fact, I felt humiliated by my lack of trust in Jeremy. “How did she seem about the whole thing?” I asked.

  “We barely ended up talking about it. She brought it up a little after you left, just saying it’s been a rough few weeks, but she didn’t
say much.”

  “I’m starting to think Courtney’s more like a man than a woman,” I said. “The way she keeps her feelings to herself.”

  Jeremy didn’t reply immediately, and I wondered if he was checking his email, but when he spoke again, I knew he wasn’t. He said, “I don’t like it that she doesn’t know Hank told you. If he eventually does tell her, she’ll realize I was lying today. But more than that, what’s he doing confiding in you and withholding information from his own wife?”

  Was Jeremy subject to the same spasms of jealousy about my friendship with Hank that I was to his friendship with Courtney? This dynamic had always seemed so obvious and expected—so retro, even—that I think we’d all imagined it was beneath us. But now that it turned out it wasn’t, was it pathetic that I found Jeremy’s jealousy, if that’s what it was, reassuring and flattering?

  “Maybe he’s scared of her,” I said.

  “Of Courtney?” Jeremy’s tone implied that the suggestion was silly.

  “I’m kind of scared of her,” I said, and he laughed.

  “No, you’re not. How’s Rosie?”

  “They’re both sleeping.”

  There was a pause, and I knew Jeremy was about to turn back to his work. Beyond the general sense I had of him teaching, meeting with students and colleagues, and dipping into his own research when he could, his days were mysterious to me, though in some ways my own days were mysterious to me, too; in the late afternoon or evening, I often struggled to recall how it was I’d spent the time. I said, “In case you’re wondering, I don’t usually drink beer for lunch.”

  “I was a little surprised.” His voice was mild; he wouldn’t have asked if I hadn’t brought it up.

  “It was an impulse order. I think the last time I had beer before five P.M. was tailgating in college.”

  “Kate, the hard-partying sorority sister—it kills me I never got to meet her.”

  “I wasn’t that hard-partying,” I said. “You didn’t miss much.” Then I said, “See you when you get home.”

  “I love you, Greenie,” Jeremy said, and I said, “I love you, too.”

  The knock on the door came around eight forty-five, when Jeremy and I were finished with our ice cream but still watching TV. We looked at each other quizzically, and I said, “If it’s a reporter, maybe we should call the police.” I’d have preferred for Jeremy not even to check who it was, but we were right there in the living room, with the lights and television on.

  He got up, opened the door just a little, and said, “Can I help you?” I could tell that he didn’t know who it was but also didn’t consider the person threatening.

  “Sorry to bother you,” a female voice said. “I’m here to see Daisy. I didn’t know—I know you have kids, so I thought maybe after they went to bed was a better time—”

  “Does my wife know you?” Jeremy asked. This—my wife—was his way of handling the Daisy-Kate confusion. He never called me Daisy.

  I went to the door myself and said, “Hi, Marisa.”

  “Sorry,” she said. “I just—I couldn’t find your phone number, and I didn’t know when you’d be around, and who knows what will happen Friday, so I thought it would be better if I came before. How’s your little girl?”

  “She’s fine.” I was incapable of sounding as distant, as coolly neutral, as Jeremy, though of course Marisa was a stranger to him. She’d never held power over him, not in middle school or at any other time. And it was so clear that Marisa wanted to enter our house, that she wanted something, which gave her an air of neediness. “Would you like to come in?” I heard myself say. To Jeremy, I said, “This is Marisa Mazarelli. We went to school together.” To Marisa, I said, “My husband, Jeremy.”

  She sat in the armchair, and Jeremy and I returned to sitting side by side on the couch. She was wearing another professional outfit: shiny brown pants, a sheer white blouse, and a brown jacket. She took the jacket off, folding it in her lap, and I saw that her blouse was sleeveless and her upper arms were very skinny. She gestured toward our frozen TV screen and said, “I won’t keep you. It’s just, yesterday, seeing you in the park, it was like fate. Because you know that guy I was with?”

  I nodded.

  “That’s Ryan. And it’s on-again, off-again, on-again, off-again—it’s been seven years. We’ve been this close to getting engaged—” She held her thumb and index finger a few centimeters apart. “I mean, he has the ring. He keeps it in his sock drawer, which is basically an invitation for me to find it. Hello, I’m not an idiot! And there was this time we’d more or less decided to get engaged, we were going on vacation to Miami, but we got in a big fight there, and the whole trip was a disaster. And that was two years ago.”

  Was she waiting for me to speak, or was there more? Next to me, I could feel in Jeremy a vague amusement.

  “We don’t live together,” Marisa added. “Our places are around the corner from each other, but a long time ago, I was like, I’m not taking it to the next level unless there’s a ring on my finger. Why would he pay for the cow and all that, but look where it’s gotten me.”

  This time, she was obviously expecting me to speak. I said, “That sounds hard.”

  “I’m just wondering, is he going to propose? Ever? Or is he stringing me along?”

  I felt foolish that it had taken me until this moment to understand where she was headed. “Oh, I don’t do that anymore,” I said. “I can’t. I haven’t been able to for—a while.” The quality of Jeremy’s attention was shifting; he was watching me with an interest he’d been unable to muster for Marisa, and he must have assumed I was lying.

  “I’m not saying, like, how many children will we have or will they be boys or girls.” Marisa laughed in a bitter way. “Just, do I stick it out with him or do I give up? Because after seven years—I was twenty-eight when we started going out, and I’ll be thirty-five in April. And for a woman, thirty-five’s a major cutoff.”

  “It’s not that I don’t want to help you,” I said. “I really can’t. Vi is the one who still does this, but I don’t.” Would it be karmic justice for Marisa to have to pay Vi for her insights, or was it unfair to inflict Marisa on Vi even when I was mad at my sister? It was possible, I thought, that Vi would find it more gratifying than I did to encounter this pleading, needy version of Marisa. I added, “But if you get in touch with her, you should wait until after this Friday.”

  “Are you kidding?” Marisa said. “We’re getting the hell out of town tomorrow. Aren’t you?”

  She was actually the first person I knew who was leaving St. Louis because of Vi’s prediction, and although it felt like her plans ought to have been proof of something to Jeremy, he wouldn’t see it that way. “No,” I said. “I don’t think we are.”

  “But what if you and your kids get trapped under rubble? Aren’t you scared?”

  “We’re taking precautions,” I said.

  “Why don’t you ask Ryan about getting married?” Jeremy said then. “Ask him what you’re asking us.” Even if he was only trying to change the subject, there was something decidedly surreal about my kind, sensible, good-looking husband giving romantic advice to my adolescent nemesis. Jeremy added, “Be clear about what you want, and if Ryan doesn’t want the same thing, dump him. Plenty of people get married after the age of thirty-five.” He patted my thigh. “I was thirty-four, and look how lucky I got.”

  Marisa squinted at Jeremy. Was she noticing that my husband was good-looking, or was she too mired in her own self-absorption? She said, “I bet you’re not from St. Louis.”

  “Northern Virginia,” Jeremy said.

  “Yeah, see, if you’re from somewhere else, that’s why you think thirty-five isn’t old. But for here, it is. Trust me.” She turned back to me. “I don’t understand how you can just not be psychic anymore. Isn’t that like losing your sense of smell?”

  I shook my head. “Yeah, I’m not sure why.” If she thought I was going to explain, let alone apologize, she was mistaken.
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br />   She glanced around the living room, and I could feel her energy adjusting itself. She hadn’t gotten what she wanted, and we weren’t being solicitous enough that she’d feel welcome just to settle in and chat, or at least I hoped she wouldn’t. “You took stuff off your walls, huh?” she said. “I’m really surprised that you’re not leaving town.” And it was only then, after it became apparent that it wouldn’t happen, that I realized I’d been expecting an apology from her. I would have accepted it graciously, unfussily; I wouldn’t have made her grovel. I’m sorry I was such an awful person when we were growing up, she’d have said, and I’d have said, Don’t worry. It was a long time ago.

  “We’ll be fine,” Jeremy said.

  Marisa was standing, pulling on her jacket over her skinny arms, lifting her hair around the jacket’s collar. She looked at me. “You should move back to Kirkwood. It’s such a good place to raise kids.” Then she withdrew a phone from her black leather purse and said, “Tell me your number and I’ll text you mine, so if anything pops into your head, you can reach me.”

  She was loathsome; she was just as unrepentant, just as much of a user, as she’d always been. And of course I gave her my number—the number for my cellphone, which somehow seemed like it would limit her ability to infiltrate my family’s life more than giving her our home number would. I never wanted her to come back. If she did, I would think of a way to prevent her from walking inside.

  After I closed the door behind her, Jeremy said, “Wow.”

  “Wow that she’s leaving town or wow about the boyfriend?”

  “The smartest thing poor Ryan can do is run really far and really fast in the other direction.”

  So Jeremy preferred not to discuss the fact that Marisa was heeding Vi’s warning; he would have if I’d forced the subject, but I wasn’t going to. I wasn’t leaving it alone because it didn’t bother me, however. I was leaving it alone because hearing about what a rotten couple Marisa and Ryan were, I wanted us to be better. At the least, I wanted us not to be experiencing discord currently. And so I said, “In her defense, two years of the ring in the sock drawer has to be a mindfuck.”