Sisterland

by Curtis Sittenfeld

  Gabriel—Gabe—was born four days before his due date, on June 30, and we gave him the middle name Earl, after my father. Gabe’s skin at birth was only the slightest bit darker than Rosie’s and Owen’s had been, though he definitely had more hair, and even a few curls, to the delight of the nurses. He’s over two now, and he does have a different complexion than the rest of us; perhaps I think this only because I’m his mother, but I’d describe it as a golden glow. I can honestly say that he reminds me less of Hank than of Owen and Rosie when they were toddlers—Owen is now three, and Rosie is five—though sometimes Gabe makes an expression that causes me to gasp with recognition. At such moments, I wonder about my obligation not just to Hank but to Amelia as well. But I still believe that, at least for the time being, it’s best to do nothing. It would be foolish for me not to realize that the older Gabe gets, and the further he ventures into the world without us, the more likely he is to be perceived, accurately, as half black. I think, of course, of Dr. Jeff Parker—Scary Black Man—and I worry for Gabe; there are so many large and small uglinesses around race, and how can I realistically expect other people to be better than I myself have managed to be?

  But for now, Gabe is just a toddler. He loves singing “The Itsy-Bitsy Spider.” Outside, he passes me leaves and says, “Thank you.” In one of his books, there’s an illustration of a scarecrow, and he always points at it and says, “It’s Mama.”

  Around Jeremy, I’ve always been more careful with Gabe than I was with Rosie or Owen—careful not to complain, mostly. Sometimes when Rosie and Owen were really tiny and waking up eight times a night, if I couldn’t take it anymore, I’d pass them off to Jeremy, telling him to go downstairs with them, or anywhere—I just needed to sleep. I never did that with Gabe, even when he and I were both in tears. When he was a newborn, I slept with him in my arms—not between Jeremy and me but between my body and the mini-crib we’d pushed up against our bed. I knew Jeremy didn’t consider this safe, so I did it without mentioning it to him, though surely he must have noticed. But Gabe was soon a better sleeper than Owen had been, and when Gabe was six months old, we moved him into his brother’s room. Jeremy is warm with Gabe, he is patient and silly and boisterous, and perhaps the fact that I detect the slightest withholding on Jeremy’s part, the absence of a reflexive rather than a decided love, is only my imagination; perhaps I am seeing what I’ve primed myself to see.

  I wondered if Jeremy would want us to have another child, if he’d decide it could be a further means of chipping away at my infidelity, reinforcing the balance of our family as our family. I didn’t think I could stand it, but what could I say if he insisted? And so at my six-week postpartum appointment, I requested an IUD. But Gabe was only four months old on the autumn evening when Jeremy said he’d been thinking that over Christmas break, he should get a vasectomy.

  This past spring, while I was changing Gabe’s diaper, he looked up at me, smiled, and said, “Mama’s other name is Daisy.” Vi and Stephanie have visited us a few times, so it’s not impossible that he’d heard Vi call me Daisy, but I don’t believe this is how he knew; when he spoke, my heart clenched. “Mama’s other name is Kate,” I said firmly. “It used to be Daisy, but now it’s Kate.” And then, a few weeks later, while the children and I were in the playroom off the kitchen, he turned to me and said, “Daddy is Rosie’s daddy.”

  “That’s true,” I said.

  “And Daddy is Owen’s daddy.”

  “That’s true, too,” I said.

  He said, “Who’s my daddy?”

  I swallowed. “Daddy is your daddy. Daddy is all of your daddy.” I didn’t say anything to Jeremy about this specific comment or its larger implications—time will tell if I’m overreacting, though again, I don’t think I am. If it were to be only one of them, I’d have guessed Rosie, maybe because she’s a girl like me. But I have guessed wrong about many things.

  My father had left no will, and after his estate went through probate, Vi and I received nineteen thousand dollars each. I had indeed ended up paying Emma Hall with a credit card—two credit cards, actually—and I used the money from my father to pay off the balances. I suspect Vi would have chipped in if I’d asked her to, but it felt like another kind of penance, given my complicity in everything, not to ask.

  When people here in Ithaca learn where we moved from, they often mention Vi’s prediction, not knowing that Vi is my sister. They don’t remember her name, but they say something friendly and derisive, like “Ah, St. Louis, where the earth didn’t shake.” And though it feels slightly cowardly or dishonest, I merely nod and change the subject. I feel that Vi’s prediction is past and has concluded; I don’t want to mock or defend or explain it, not to anyone, not ever again.

  How peculiar, that morning we pulled out of our driveway on San Bonita Avenue for the last time, to think that Rosie and Owen wouldn’t remember living in this city, this house; if Rosie did remember, it would be only vaguely. There are, I have learned, so many gifts of motherhood, and so many sadnesses, and one of the sadnesses is the asymmetry of the family experience: that in spite of all the daily nuisances, and in spite of the unforgivable way I transgressed, these years of the children being little are the sweetest time in my life. And yet, for Rosie and Owen and Gabe, these won’t be their best years. They’ll grow up and go away, they’ll find spouses and have sons or daughters, and no matter how much we loved them, they’ll probably recall their childhoods as strange and confusing, as all childhoods are. The happiest time in their lives, if they’re lucky, will be when they’re raising their own families.

  Shortly before we left St. Louis, the day Jeremy cleaned out his office at Wash U, he came home from campus and passed me an envelope, saying, “I took this from your dad’s apartment that day.” He meant the day my father had died, and I must have made an alarmed expression because Jeremy added, “It’s nothing bad—just pictures.”

  My father had put my name on the front of the envelope, spindly letters in blue ballpoint, and I felt a little ache seeing his handwriting. The envelope wasn’t sealed, and inside were three photographs, all taken by my father on the evening of his birthday the previous September: one of Rosie, blurrily running across the grass; one of Vi sitting in a not particularly ladylike way in our recliner, Owen on her lap; and one of just Jeremy and me, standing side by side. It had been a while—longer than Rosie had been alive, I was pretty sure—since I’d seen a picture of Jeremy and me together and no one else. Usually, one of us was the photographer.

  As I held the edges of the picture, I had an intimation—perhaps I mean a sense—of our children looking at it years in the future, when they themselves were adults: Rosie at thirty, say, and Owen at twenty-eight and Gabe at twenty-seven. Who would Jeremy and I be by then? Would we still be married, would we even still both be alive? I hoped so, I hoped it desperately, but the future (this is true for all of us) is opaque.

  Our children, our grown-up children, who might or might not know the secrets of their parents but who’d surely possess secrets of their own—would they regard us with affection or resentment? The answer, presumably, is both, but still, it is hard not to wonder in what proportions, hard not to yearn, as I did at my father’s burial, for those proportions to be favorable. As little girls, Vi and I studied an image of our parents at the Arch, our mother in her belted orange wool jacket and matching beret, our father with his dark sideburns. And surely the clothes Jeremy and I wore in this picture, the haircuts we had, would seem as amusingly outdated to our children as the Arch photo had seemed to Vi and me, the year 2009 as faraway to them as 1974 had been to us.

  And then one of my adult children speaks; I imagine it being Rosie. She and her brothers are clustered around the picture of Jeremy and me, examining it with the combination of disdain and curiosity we all feel when confronted with evidence of a world that dared to exist before our consciousness of it. “I can’t believe how young they were,” Rosie says.

  Acknowledgments

  Je
nnifer Hershey, I am endlessly grateful for your calmness, sharp intelligence, and good humor. At Random House, I also have benefited from the wide-ranging talents of Gina Centrello, Theresa Zoro, Maria Braeckel (my best and most constant e–pen pal!), Sally Marvin, Susan Kamil, Tom Perry, Sanyu Dillon, Avideh Bashirrad, Erika Greber, Joey McGarvey, Janet Wygal, Bonnie Thompson, Kelle Ruden, Virginia Norey, Robbin Schiff, Beck Stvan, and Paolo Pepe.

  Jennifer Rudolph Walsh, you are my fierce advocate, and your wit and wisdom sparkle. I’m lucky to have the support of many other people at William Morris Endeavor, including Suzanne Gluck, Alicia Gordon, Cathryn Summerhayes, Claudia Ballard, Tracy Fisher, Raffaella DeAngelis, Margaret Riley, Michelle Feehan, Kathleen Nishimoto, and Caitlin Moore.

  At Transworld, I get to work with, among others, Marianne Velmans (who is not only smart and charming but an identical twin to boot), Suzanne Bridson, and Patsy Irwin.

  Jynne Martin, you have forever earned your own category.

  My wise early readers and fellow writers, thank you for saving me from myself: Shauna Seliy, Emily Miller, Susanna Daniel, Lewis Robinson, Anton DiSclafani, and Katie Brandi.

  Several friends and friendly strangers were very generous in helping me answer particular questions about a variety of topics: Michael Wysession, Edward J. Moret, Aimee Moore, Kelly Judge, Mariah North, Rebecca Hollander-Blumoff, Susan Appleton, Rhoda Brooks, Andrea Denny, and Patrick Randolph.

  I also want to recognize the public radio show St. Louis on the Air, hosted by Don Marsh, a particular episode of which influenced my understanding of the New Madrid Seismic Zone. That show aired in February 2011 and featured as guests Michael Wysession and Seth Stein. Among my other sources of information about the aftermath of earthquakes were New York Times articles by Deborah Sontag. Any mistakes that appear in Sisterland are, of course, my own.

  To my sisters (who read an early draft) and to my parents and brother (whom I wouldn’t allow to), thank you for still putting up with me after four novels.

  And to Matt and our little St. Louisans, there’s no one I’d rather miss deadlines with than the three of you.

  About the Author

  Curtis Sittenfeld is the author the word-of-mouth bestseller American Wife, which was longlisted for the Orange Prize, as was her first novel, Prep, a New York Times bestseller. It was followed by The Man of My Dreams. Her books are translated into twenty-five languages. She is married, with two young children. Visit her website, www.curtissittenfeld.com

  Also by Curtis Sittenfeld

  American Wife

  The Man of My Dreams

  Prep

  For more information on Curtis Sittenfeld and her books, see her website at www.curtissittenfeld.com

  TRANSWORLD PUBLISHERS

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  First published in the United States

  in 2013 by Random House

  an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group

  First published in Great Britain

  in 2013 by Doubleday

  an imprint of Transworld Publishers

  Copyright © 2013 by Curtis Sittenfeld

  Curtis Sittenfeld has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

  This book is a work of fiction and, except in the case of historical fact, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

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  ISBN 9780385618502 (tpb)

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