Sisterland

by Curtis Sittenfeld

  For a full ten seconds, Vi gawked at me, speechless. Then she said, “Holy crap.” After thirty-four years, I had completely shocked my sister, but there was no satisfaction in the achievement. “I mean—” She blinked several times. “Just—wow. Wow.”

  “I know.” Because I couldn’t help myself, I said, “It was only that once. I’ve never cheated on Jeremy besides that, with Hank or anyone else.”

  “Does Jeremy know?”

  “I’ve gone back and forth about whether to tell him, and it just seems selfish. Or more selfish than not telling.”

  “He’ll know if a black baby pops out of your cooter.”

  “Well—” I paused. “That’s why I’m here.”

  As I followed her into the living room, she said over her shoulder, “If you and Jeremy split up, my faith in heterosexuality will be destroyed.”

  Unexpectedly, my eyes filled with tears, but I willed them away. “Maybe it should be.”

  Before she sat in her lounger, she said, “I’ll help you, but why don’t you just do a reading for yourself?”

  “I’m not psychic anymore. You know Nancy’s New Year’s Eve party when we wrote down things we wanted to get rid of and burned them? I did that with my senses.”

  Vi looked skeptical but not hostile. “When?”

  “After Rosie was in the hospital with her eye thing. Every time a thought came into my head, I didn’t know if it was a normal new mom anxiety or a premonition. I couldn’t live like that.”

  “And it worked?” Vi said. “You don’t have senses anymore?”

  “For the most part. I mean, apparently, I was wrong about October sixteenth.”

  “Well, yes and no. There may not have been an earthquake, but it turns out something huge happened in your own life that night.”

  “Yeah, because I made something happen.”

  “But if you hadn’t sensed you’d cheat, think of how things could have gone with the day-care accident.”

  I had groped for this justification in my own mind, but I remained unconvinced. Because really, wasn’t the opposite just as likely? After all, the roads had been less crowded on October 16, which meant the driver of the eighteen-wheeler reached Hanley Road earlier than he otherwise would have, which was why, when he fell asleep, he crashed into the front room of the day-care center. Under normal circumstances, he’d have been twenty miles back, or ten, or seven; he’d have crashed into a field of grazing cows, or an empty office space for rent, or a sandwich restaurant.

  I said, “I think if I want to put the senses to rest, I have to put them to rest. If information comes to me, I can’t exactly stop it, but I shouldn’t try to be psychic.”

  “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me.”

  “I thought you’d disapprove.”

  “I do.” She looked admiring, though, as she added, “I had no idea you were so good at keeping secrets.”

  She settled herself in her lounger, and I sat in the folding chair just to her right. She closed her eyes, and they’d been closed for thirty seconds when she opened them and said, “This’ll be easier if—I know you don’t like this, but is it okay if I ask Guardian?”

  I nodded, and she closed her eyes again. This time only two or three seconds passed before she opened them. “How can you be pregnant when you’re still breast-feeding all the time?”

  “This is you talking, right? Not Guardian.”

  “Yes, this is me.”

  “You can ovulate before you get your period. And Owen doesn’t always nurse for that long. He’s eating more and more solid food.”

  “Okay, sorry.” She closed her eyes again, then opened them a third time. “Have you told Hank?”

  I shook my head. “He and I don’t hang out now.”

  “And here I thought they weren’t at Thanksgiving because of me. You think Hank told Courtney you guys did it?”

  “I hope not.”

  Vi cackled a little. “Oh, you’d know if he had. She’d come to your front door and shoot you.”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  Vi leaned forward and swatted my arm. “Lighten up, Daze. I’m kidding.”

  This time when she closed her eyes, she was quiet for several minutes, a peace overtaking her features. She didn’t speak aloud—I had wondered if she would, and she didn’t—but I still knew when she’d made contact with Guardian. I felt the presence in the room, and Vi was right, it was a presence entirely different from the one that had been there when Marisa Mazarelli and I had used the Ouija board. This was a compassionate presence, a protective one—it was wise and calm, like an older relative or a boss who has great affection for you while recognizing that the calamities in your life aren’t as significant as you believe them to be. I had never imagined I’d think so, but abruptly I was glad that Vi had had this companionship all these years; it meant that even when we’d grown apart while I was at Mizzou, even during our fights, even when I’d married Jeremy and she hadn’t yet met Stephanie, she had never, I understood now, been alone.

  When she finally looked at me again, her expression was so carefully composed, so sympathetic, that I knew immediately.

  Gently, she said, “If you got pregnant on October sixteenth, you’re not that far along.”

  “I can’t get an abortion,” I said. “I just can’t.”

  “I could go with you. I once went with Nancy.”

  “Nancy had an abortion?” Then I shook my head. “I can’t.”

  “Jeremy is as supportive as they come, but if you say to him—”

  “I know.”

  We both were quiet, and she said, “Some mixed-race people have really light skin. Remember that guy Kent I used to work with at Trattoria Marcella?”

  “Believe me, I’ve been telling myself that.”

  She squinted. “Are you pro-life?”

  “You know how Courtney Wheeling miscarried? Well, she didn’t miscarry. They found out the baby had Down’s, and she had an abortion. And at the time, I thought that I wouldn’t have done it if I were her, so how can I live with myself aborting a healthy baby?” After a few seconds, I said, “Is this a healthy baby?”

  “Guardian didn’t give any indications to the contrary. But, Daze, it’s totally normal to disapprove of what other people do until you’re in the same situation.” Vi grinned. “It’s one of my hobbies. And it’s not like you rented a billboard and publicly declared that Courtney is a bad person.”

  “I just can’t.”

  “But will you share custody with the Wheelings? Half the week at your house, half at theirs?”

  “I don’t know.” I stood up. I hadn’t even removed my coat. “I should go. Thanks for this.”

  “Hold on.” Vi was still sitting. “Want to know the sex?”

  This seemed such a peripheral piece of information at that moment, so inconsequential, but when she told me, it started to make the baby real.

  She said, “It’s another boy. Hey, it’s not too late to finish that blanket I started for Owen.”

  I read to Rosie before bed, and she sat on my lap. When I was turning a page, she pointed to my left hand and said, “What’s those on Mama?”

  “They’re my knuckles.” I held up my right hand, making a fist. “I have them on my other hand, and you have them, too.”

  Her plump little toddler hands—they would soon vanish. They’d vanish along with her fixation on the baloney puzzle piece, her pronunciation of lion as “nion” and bathing suit as “babing suit,” her fondness for holding up individual strands of spaghetti at dinner and making them dance. Rosie wasn’t yet three, and already her babyhood was forever irretrievable.

  She wiggled her fingers. “Rosie have knuckles.”

  “That’s right.”

  “And Mama have knuckles.”

  “I do.”

  “Mama and Rosie are having knuckles together.”

  I kissed the top of her head. “We’re very lucky.”

  Downstairs, Jeremy was sitting on the couch, the TV
turned to ESPN. He was eating ice cream from a mug, and a second mug waited for me on the table. He said, “We ran out of chocolate chip, so I supplemented with lemon sorbet.”

  What would I have said on a night on which I wasn’t planning to announce that I was pregnant with another man’s child? I might have said God forbid. Or I think I can manage. Without touching the mug, I sat in the armchair. “What are you doing all the way over there?” Jeremy said.

  “I have to tell you something.” My heart was beating rapidly.

  “Something bad?” His eyes were warm and crinkly, his tone light.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Really?”

  “Yes, really.”

  He started to speak again, and I held up one hand and said, “Let me just say it.”

  His expression changed—he was beginning to understand that I wasn’t kidding, that what I would tell him would not be that I’d been in a fender bender in the parking lot of Schnucks, or that I’d gone online and ordered four-hundred-dollar organic mattresses for our children. Regarding me seriously, Jeremy said, “Okay.”

  After I said it, I would never be able to take it back. Even if we stayed married—please, I thought, please let us stay married—the information would always exist between us. But what was the alternative? The alternative was to have an abortion and shut the fuck up for the rest of my life, and these prospects, especially in tandem, felt impossible.

  I said, “No matter how mad you are, please remember this: I love you so much, Jeremy. You’re the best thing—” My voice cracked, but it would be unfair to make him comfort me. I swallowed. “You’re the best thing that ever happened to me. Our life together—I think we have a really good life. And I don’t know why I did what I did. I mean, I can come up with reasons, but they’re stupid.”

  He had to know, I thought; at this point, surely he could guess. But he simply watched me in an unfamiliar, unsmiling way, and there was nothing left to do but tell him. I said, “When you were in Denver, I had sex with Hank, and now I’m pregnant and it’s his.” I had decided ahead of time that both parts had to be in the same sentence, a one-two punch, because it would be too terrible if he thought I had finished delivering the bad news when I was only halfway through it.

  I’d let my gaze wander toward the fireplace as I spoke, but I made myself look at him, and he was blinking rapidly behind his wire glasses.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I can’t explain how sorry.”

  A minute passed without him saying a word, and finally, in a tone I had never heard—it was so cold yet also so small, much too intimate for him to use with a stranger—he said, “You’re sure you’re pregnant?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I’m sure.”

  “How do you know it’s Hank’s?”

  “Well, you can do a procedure called CVS or else if you’re past twelve weeks you can have an amnio, but you still need a DNA sample from—” I hesitated. “From the guy. So instead I had Vi do a reading for me.”

  This was the first moment since I’d told him that Jeremy’s face revealed any real emotion, and the emotion it revealed was scorn. “Seriously?” he said.

  “I know you think it’s all nonsense, but this is the kind of thing Vi is really good at.” Of course I had considered that she could be wrong, but at the moment when she’d opened her eyes, it had felt like she was confirming what I already knew.

  “You need to get tested,” he said. “Have you told Hank?”

  “No.” We were both quiet and I said, “I hope you believe that I’ve never—I’ve never done anything like this. I’ve never considered it. I realize I’ve messed up really badly.”

  He was silent, and I thought how in the past there wouldn’t have been a conversation between us in which he didn’t protest when I said, I’ve messed up really badly. Finally, because I couldn’t stand it, I said, “You’re surprised, right? I hope you don’t think—it wasn’t something—” Fair or not, I was asking him to comfort me after all; seeking his comfort was such a habit between us that I didn’t know how not to.

  He still was blinking. “Yes, I’m surprised.”

  “You’re just not—the way you’re reacting—I can’t tell what your reaction is. You can yell at me if you want to.”

  Again, there was an incredibly long silence before he said, “You’re telling me that you fucked Hank once?” I had never, I was pretty sure, heard Jeremy use fuck to mean have sex with.

  “It was definitely only once.”

  “But you got pregnant?”

  Did he think I was lying? “I haven’t gotten my period since having Owen, but I guess I was ovulating already—I don’t—Jeremy, I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”

  He said, “And then you fucked me when I got home from Denver, right? So Vi’s reading notwithstanding, there should be a fifty-fifty chance it’s mine.” That fucked again—I didn’t like it, though certainly I had no grounds for objecting. “And you’re what, nine weeks along?”

  I said, “Even if it’s Hank’s, which I’m sorry, Jeremy, but I think it is—even if it is, I would rather not have an abortion, but if you want me to, I will. If I’m choosing between staying married to you and having the baby, I’d choose you.”

  “But you want both?” Again, in his otherwise impassive face, there crossed that scorn. He made my wish to keep the baby seem greedy, not humane. But he didn’t need to convince me of my own venality. If in fact I was willing to terminate the pregnancy, why hadn’t I done so without telling him anything? Did I hope to make the termination his decision, his responsibility? Either to absolve myself of guilt or to use it as currency, expressing my aversion so that when I went through with it, he’d understand I was making a sacrifice and be likelier to forgive me? So thoroughly did I distrust myself that it was hard to remember that my desire not to have an abortion was sincere.

  I said, “Courtney’s abortion—I just—I found it really sad. And then to turn around …” I trailed off.

  “After Courtney and I ran into you at Blueberry Hill and I told you I wasn’t having an affair with her, did you not believe me?” A confused and tentative hope flickered across Jeremy’s face. He was broaching a possible explanation, and he was a person who liked explanations. He said, “Do you think I’ve been cheating on you?”

  Maybe it would have been wiser or kinder to lie, but it felt like the time for lying had passed. “No,” I said. “I don’t think you’ve cheated.”

  The clouds collected in his face again; what he’d been offering, he rescinded. He said, “If you don’t want to have an abortion, what happens when you give birth to a biracial baby? People aren’t idiots.”

  I’d had time to consider the question since Vi had asked it earlier that day, and I said, “I think we do nothing. We don’t try to explain it. We have a son with dark skin—Vi said the baby is a boy—and so what? Family members can have different complexions.”

  “We have a son with dark skin?” His tone of coiled but unconcealed anger made me understand how completely I had, prior to this conversation, stayed within Jeremy’s good graces; from the time we’d met, even when we’d quarreled, he’d never directed real hostility at me, and I had assumed it was because such hostility didn’t exist within his personality. But I had been wrong.

  I said, “Jeremy, I already told you that I’ll do whatever you want.” I looked down at my lap—my knuckles—and he said, “I need some air. I’m going out.”

  I looked up. “Are you coming back tonight?”

  “Maybe.”

  “If you don’t, will you just text and let me know you’re fine? You don’t have to say where you are.” Had I surrendered all my rights as a wife this abruptly? It appeared I had.

  His voice was sarcastic as he said, “I appreciate your concern.” And then he’d stood and was putting on his coat, and my back was to him, and I didn’t turn; neither of us said anything as he let himself out the front door, and I heard him locking it from the other side. A minute later, his car started
. I leaned forward then, held my palms up to my forehead, and sobbed and sobbed.

  Was he driving to a bar? His office? A hotel? Was he about to kill himself, or sleep with an undergrad, or go tell Courtney Wheeling? No, he probably wasn’t telling Courtney—for that, he could have gone on foot. But we had no script, and I couldn’t imagine where he was; I couldn’t follow him in my mind.

  I cried for a while, and then I started to get that itchy feeling, even given the circumstances, of wasting time, so I put the ice cream mugs in the sink, picked up toys from the living room floor, and replaced books Owen had pulled off the shelf. It was while setting the lunch puzzle pieces back in their slots—sans baloney, because that was upstairs in Rosie’s crib—that I had an awful thought: Jeremy could remarry. He could re-create our life, a second version of it, with someone else. It would be easy for him to find another wife—he was cute and nice and had a good job—and that wife would probably be younger than I was. She’d like Rosie and Owen but want children of her own. Would I be able to find another husband? Depending on whom I’d settle for, maybe, but I wouldn’t have my pick—a single man with two young kids was sympathetic and endearing, while a single woman with three was needy and baggage-laden. And no matter what, I’d never find a husband like Jeremy, as easy to be around, as kind and calm and unpretentiously smart. All of which raised the question—but, no, I’d just start crying again if I went down that path. I had long believed that my own mother had made our lives unnecessarily hard when I was growing up, but it now seemed I’d done the same to my family. And then I thought, was my notion of Jeremy remarrying a fear, or was it a sense?

  If he left me, I’d definitely need to return to work. Should I, I wondered, send an email to my former boss at this very moment? Would they take me back, in light of the economy, and even if they would, would they take me back pregnant? I’d have to put this baby in day care when he was three or four months old, though with three children, wouldn’t a nanny be cheaper? But it made no sense to return to work only to pay another woman to take care of my own children in my own house. Did any divorced mothers who didn’t get huge settlements from rich ex-husbands not have jobs? Oh, to be able to undo that moment when I’d sat too close to Hank on the couch, to have just said yes when he’d asked if it would be a bad idea if he kissed me. Yes, it had been a bad idea, it had been a terrible idea, and I had recognized it as such at the time; that had been part of its irresistibility.