The Sisters Club

by Lauren Baratz-Logsted

“You’ll know how it’s going when you see me on TV,” Sylvia said with a rare devilish smile. Then: “Some days I wonder if those TV people know what they’re doing. But me, I just keep cooking.” She turned to Lise. “You’re a fine one to talk about being out of a job. I can’t believe you just quit teaching. What did Tony say?”

  Lisa gave a rueful grin. “Plenty.”

  “Tony?” Cindy opened eyes that were filled with shock. “But I’m sure everything he said was positive…right?”

  Another grin, this time wry and tinged with resentment. “Not exactly. You’d think the man I’ve been sleeping with for the past few years would be supportive at least, but no such luck.”

  “I can’t believe that!” Diana said. “What did he say?”

  Lise tilted her head, considering. “I believe his exact words were, ‘How the hell do you plan to pay your mortgage without a job?’”

  “No!” Diana said.

  “He has a point,” Sylvia muttered.

  “Yes,” Lise countered Diana, ignoring Sylvia. “Believe me, I’m an adult. I have my financial bases covered. I just wish Tony would treat me like one. So I said, ‘What’s it to you? You don’t pay my mortgage.’ It just got better from there. Apparently, Tony always looked upon my writing as a hobby.”

  “So that’s it?” Cindy asked. “You and Tony are breaking up?”

  Lise looked at her strangely. “Of course not. It’s just one fight. It’ll all work out.” Then she sighed. “But maybe he’s right. Maybe it is just a hobby. I’m sure if the second book was any good, I’d have heard from Dirk Peters by now.”

  “Funny,” Diana said, “Dirk hasn’t mentioned your book lately.”

  Lise sat up straighter. “You’ve talked to him?”

  Diana moved back a bit. “Not talked. We e-mail.” Then in a quieter voice but with a certain pride she added, “Every day.”

  “Hey,” Lise laughed, “you’re not trying to steal my agent from me, are you? Not that he’s my agent…yet.”

  “Of course not.” Diana reddened. “We’ve just found that, well, we have a lot of things to talk about.” She squinted up at the sun as though angry with it. “God, it’s getting hot out.”

  “So take off that caftan,” Sylvia suggested.

  Slowly, like a virgin on her wedding night, Diana removed the outer garment to reveal a new black bathing suit. She was still a large woman, but she was much less large than she had been.

  “Wow,” Sylvia said, “you look fantastic. See? I was right. I told Cindy to get pregnant, I told Lise to write a book, and I told you to lose weight. Everybody listened to me and everything’s working out great for everybody.”

  “Fat lot of good it’s doing for me,” Diana said.

  “What does that mean?” Sylvia asked.

  “It means Dan never even touches me anymore.”

  “What?” Cindy said.

  “Oh, he touches me,” Diana said brusquely. “I mean, it’s not like he never kisses me good-bye. But we used to have sex nearly every day. Lately, though? It’s like I have the plague or something. You’d think he’d want me more now, not less, wouldn’t you?” She shook her head as though the shaking would make the thoughts go away. “I can’t believe how hot it is already.” She looked out at the water. “Do you think we might swim out to that raft over there?”

  The lake was cool against their skin and the other three got to the floating wooden raft before Diana did. They waited then held it in place so she could climb on first. Once they were all aboard, Cindy spoke.

  “How are things going with Sunny?” she asked Sylvia.

  “How many times do I have to tell you? We’re just friends.”

  “I never said you weren’t friends. I just asked how things were going.”

  “Not good,” Sylvia said.

  “Oh, no!” Diana said. “What’s wrong?”

  “I think Sunny wants to be more than friends.”

  “And what’s wrong with that?” Lise wanted to know.

  Sylvia shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe I keep feeling like he must be putting me on. I mean, why would he want to be with me? I don’t know. I guess I just keep thinking about Minnie.”

  “What does that have to do with anything?” Cindy asked.

  Sylvia just shrugged again. Then: “I guess it’s just Memorial Day, and I’m missing my sister.”

  “Wow,” Cindy said after a moment, “it’s so weird. It’s like everyone is having man trouble except me.”

  Sylvia snorted so loud, it was impossible to ignore her.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Cindy said.

  “You’re not having any trouble with Eddie?” Sylvia said. “Like, none at all?”

  Cindy looked confused. “Well, he did get mad at this guy I was shooting pool with a couple of weeks ago.”

  “He got mad at the guy just for shooting pool with you?” Sylvia said.

  “Well, sure,” Cindy said. “But that’s just Eddie. Stuff like that just bothers him, I guess.”

  “It’s not normal,” Sylvia said, “for someone to get that mad over a pool game. And what was Eddie doing while you were shooting pool?”

  “He was at the bar, having a drink with some girl who bought him one.”

  “Weren’t you jealous?”

  “No.” Cindy shrugged. “Girls are always buying Eddie drinks after shows.”

  “And yet he felt like he had the right to get mad at you just for shooting pool?”

  “Well, not just that.” Cindy squirmed. “He was also mad because the guy asked me out. The guy was someone I used to know back in high school. He’s always been really sweet. But I said no of course.”

  “And did he hear you say no?”

  “Well, yeah. It was right before he attacked the guy. But can you blame him for getting jealous?”

  “God!” Sylvia said, banging her hand down on the raft.

  “What?” Cindy said.

  “Why are you with that guy?”

  “You mean Eddie?” Cindy was puzzled. “Because he’s wonderful and he loves me. Because—”

  “Yeah, yeah, I know all that. He hates blind people, and he thinks everyone should just get their own fucking rock ’n’ roll bands. I get all that. That Eddie’s a real great guy.” Pause. “But why are you with him?”

  Diana

  From: dianat@yahoo.com

  To: dirk.peters@dirkliterary.uk

  I used to sit in movie houses watching Flashdance. I must have seen Jennifer Beals get hit by that bucket of water while she sat in that cabaret chair, must have seen her soar through the air and then dance on the judges’ table in her legwarmers a hundred times. I used to walk down the streets of London hearing that soundtrack in my head as though it could possibly score my life:

  “I can't have it all, now I'm dancin' for my life”

  Even tore the necklines, tore the sleeves off my sweatshirts, and wore pink legwarmers. “You can dance right through your life!” As if any of that was going to happen; as if I was ever going to soar through the air. It was pathetic, really. Do you have any idea what it’s like to go through your entire life knowing it doesn’t matter what you do or what you accomplish, you’ll never achieve your ideal?

  D

  I’d written it the previous night before going to bed, and now here was my response.

  From: dirk.peters@dirkliterary.uk

  To: dianat@yahoo.com

  You wanted to be Jennifer Beals then? But don’t you realize, D? Jennifer Beals wasn’t even Jennifer Beals! There was that other woman—what was her name again?—who it turned out did all the major dancing for her. Just like someone else did the singing for Natalie Wood in West Side Story. You know, it’s funny when you think about it: all over the world people dream of being someone they see on the silver screen, but when you get right down to it, half the time it’s someone else doing the parts they most want to be like. Don’t long to be other people, D, just long to be more yourself.

  D

&nbs
p; P.S. I’m fairly certain the lyric is “I can have it all…” Or if it’s not, it should be.

  Hearing Dan’s alarm go off, I shut off the computer. It was still so early in the morning that, once the glowing screen was off, the room went dark and I had to blink against it. Grabbing the new clothes I’d set out the night before, I went into the bathroom. Before stepping into the shower, however, I stepped on the scale, but first I closed my eyes.

  For the past week, I’d been frozen at two hundred pounds, and it was making me feel crazy, not to mention worthless. Come on, 199! I’d tell myself. Come on! Was it so much to ask? Was I doomed to spend the rest of my life seeing that annoying two as the first digit in my weight? It wasn’t fair! I was doing all the work: walking, eating properly. The day before I’d walked an extra hour in the heat and for dinner I’d only allowed myself a small green salad with lemon squeezed on top in place of dressing. I’d eaten that dinner at four-thirty in the afternoon, not allowing myself even a glass of water between then and bedtime. I wanted to see the scale move that badly.

  If this had been my scale back in London, one of those old-fashioned ones with the moving needle, I’d have leaned over to the right as far as possible without falling off to take some of the weight off the scale, eyeballing the number through my left eye. That was always good for taking off a few quick pounds. But this bloody modern scale wouldn’t let me do that. No matter where I moved on it, it always knew exactly what I weighed.

  At last, I opened one eye, slowly, squinting down at the number beneath me.

  199!

  Yes! Yes!! Yes!!!

  I stepped into the steaming shower, vowing not to eat more than a piece of fruit for breakfast, foregoing the usual dry toast, so that the scale wouldn’t betray me by jumping back to 200 the next day. But who needed toast? I was jubilant.

  I was a woman who weighed 199.

  • • •

  Layla Kozinsky looked to be a woman who weighed ninety-nine. She also looked perfect in her pink polo shirt and matching miniskirt, with her long chestnut ponytail pulled through the gap in the back of her pink visor, pink leather gloves on her hands.

  Richter was a sea of vivid green, the golf course spread out before us.

  I’d met Robert, Layla’s husband, before when he’d come to the house to work on something with Dan. Robert was one of Dan’s vice presidents, one of those bald men with a slight paunch who wore it all with a confidence that said, “It doesn’t matter what I look like, does it? I’m making so much money, you’ll talk to me anyway.”

  Six months ago, I’d have never agreed to such an outing—a foursome for golf, a game I’d never played—but when Dan suggested it this time, I’d been game.

  “But you’ll need to take a few lessons first,” Dan had cautioned. “I hate to put it like this, but golf is a sport that’s very big on etiquette and it would be considered extremely bad form to have a total novice on the course. Would you mind terribly?”

  I’d told Dan of course I wouldn’t mind, but when the day for my first lesson with the golf pro arrived, I called in sick, preferring to go shopping, telling Dan when he’d called later that day that the first lesson had gone well. The idea of a strange man standing behind me, staring at my big butt as I tried to master my swing, was too much. And besides, how hard could golf be?

  If nothing else, I’d figured golf would present a great opportunity to take up a new sport, and a great opportunity to buy new clothes for that sport in a lower size than I’d ever worn as an adult. Now, as I stood before Layla, who was her all pink glory, in my new belted tan trousers with my navy polo shirt tucked in, I was sorry I’d come.

  “Diana,” Robert said, pecking me on the cheek, “it’s always good to see you.”

  “Dan,” Layla said, her voice flowing out like liquid silver. Then she kissed him straight on the lips and linked arms with him before turning to me. “Diana, such a pleasure to finally meet. Where has Dan been hiding you?”

  As if someone could hide a 200-pound wife. OK, 199. But still. I didn’t hide easy.

  “Is everyone ready to play?” Layla’s voice glittered.

  “I’m not sure…” I said vaguely, suddenly daunted at the idea of playing a game I didn’t know anything about, really. Thankfully, Dan came to my rescue.

  “This is Diana’s first time playing with others,” Dan said, “so perhaps I’d better help her a bit.”

  He set up that impossibly small ball on its even tinier tee, selected a club or an iron; I couldn’t tell the two apart. Then he positioned my body and got his arms around me from behind as best he could, placing his hands over mine as he demonstrated how I was supposed to hit the ball.

  I’m not sure what he had in mind for me, but I’m fairly certain it didn’t involve striking the golfing instrument he’d given me into the ground and churning up dirt.

  “When you used the phrase ‘first time playing with others,’” Layla observed coolly, “I assumed you meant it was her first time playing here. I had no idea you meant it was her first time holding a club anywhere.”

  I resented Layla talking about me that way, as though I wasn’t even there, like maybe I was a comical character she was watching on the TV, a character who couldn’t hear her remarks. I also resented the intimacy with which she spoke to my husband.

  And it only got better from there.

  The men both hit the ball very nicely. Well, they would, wouldn’t they? It being their game and all. Layla had elected to go last, and when it was her turn, her body became one fluid line as she swung upward, sending the ball soaring into the sky.

  “Wow,” Dan said enthusiastically, “that may not have been a hole in one, but it was pretty damn close.”

  “Do you remember when we played together at Trump International,” Layla said, “and you bet me a hundred dollars I couldn’t hit under par on the eleventh hole?”

  “How could I forget?” Dan said. “That’s a hundred dollars I’ll never see again.”

  “Did you mind very much?” she teased.

  “Not at all,” Dan said. “It was a thrill watching you play that day.”

  She caressed the side of his neck with her iron, which I’d finally figured out was an iron since the whole thing was, well, iron. It was such an odd move for her to make, and I felt like she was trying to hook him with the thing, show possession.

  “It’s always thrilling,” she said, “when we play together.”

  I wanted to snatch that iron out of her hand and smash it over her pink visor.

  Robert and I might not have even been there. Oh, Dan was always very patient with me, helping me line up my shots when it was my turn, even though he must have realized how futile it was, and I suppose he may have been just a tad frustrated, since surely he must have realized I hadn’t exactly made the most of the lessons he’d paid for. But the rest of the time? It was as though he and Layla were on a date, with Robert and me as chaperoning parents, trailing behind.

  Robert, walking beside me, cleared his throat. “You mustn’t mind them,” he said with a nod of his head at the two beautiful people walking on ahead of us. “They’re always like this when they’re in the same room together or on the same golf course, as it were. Layla and Dan go way back.”

  “How far back do they go?”

  “Let’s see…I’ve been with Dan for ten years now, and Layla and I were already married when he hired me, so it’s been ten years.”

  Ten years.

  Dan and I had been married less than six months and hadn’t known each other all that long before marrying. It was a drop in the bucket compared to how long he’d known Layla. Funny, but as the wife, you assume, based on your union, that you know your partner better than anyone else in the world. But the amount of time I’d known Dan, been with him, was nothing when taken against the history of ten years. Ten years of golfing together. Ten years of company parties. Ten years.

  Even as I listened to them laughing ahead of us, I told myself it didn’t matter.
I was Dan’s wife, not her, even if she was acting like it. Moreover, I had Dirk, didn’t I, and his e-mails?

  The June sun had risen higher in the cloudless sky, and I could no longer ignore the nausea of not eating anything much that morning, and not having had enough to drink. Damn, I should have brought my water bottle with me. Double damn, I should have worn a jaunty little visor like perfect Layla to keep the worst of the heat off of my face. Oh, well. Nothing for it now.

  I stood before the ball and tee on the ninth hole getting dizzier by the minute. Beside me, as through a wall of water, I heard Dan’s voice encouraging, “Come on, Diana, I know you can do it this time.”

  And I wanted to do it. I really wanted to do it for him.

  I pulled the club back to the right, swung upward to the left, and felt the world spinning around me, never even knowing if I’d successfully hit the ball that time or not as the earth melted away and I blacked out.

  Lise

  I could never drive by the Fairfield train station without thinking of 9/11. Not long after that ineffably horrible event, the papers ran a picture of the commuter lot the following morning. It was empty, save for a few scattered cars—cars whose owners would never be coming home. At the time I’d imagined similar scenes in commuter lots all up and down the Metro North line.

  A few months after 9/11, I attended a professional conference in Iowa that had professors from all over the country. Everyone was still talking about the tragedy all the time in those days, and yet for the first time I realized people processed it differently. Oh, to be sure, it was difficult for everybody. But in Connecticut, everyone I knew, if they didn’t personally know someone who died that day, knew someone who lost someone. It was that close: just one degree of separation.

  And the emotional devastation never got any better. In college, I’d taken a course in psychology where I’d learned all about systematic desensitization, the process through which people exposed to violence in the media become less sensitive as time goes on. And yet here was the thing: every time I saw pictures of those two towers coming down, even five years later, I didn’t grow less sensitive, but more so. It got worse and worse, never better; it got harder to look at.