The Sisters Club

by Lauren Baratz-Logsted

  “Have you talked to Diana since that first call after she passed out at the golf course?” Tony asked.

  “Every day,” I said. “She promises she’ll be careful to eat more, but I worry.”

  “Speaking of food, what do you think your folks will serve?” Tony asked.

  “The usual,” I said, looking out the window, breathing easier now that the train station had passed. “Or maybe they’ll surprise us. One or the other.”

  My parents were having a picnic at the home I’d grown up in to honor Sara’s safe arrival home from Africa.

  Everyone else was already there, I could see from the cars lined up when we pulled into the drive: my parents, cousins, my father’s family, and my mother’s older sister Tess, ten years senior to Mom’s sixty-two. I didn’t recognize the emaciated bald woman who threw open the screen door, racing across the lawn toward the car before it was even stopped. But as I opened the passenger door and heard her shout “Lise!” I sure recognized that voice.

  “Sara!” I shouted back, stunned, catching her up in my arms so that her feet came clear off the ground—she was that light. Then: “What happened to your hair?”

  “Oh, that.” She laughed. “After I got out of the hospital in Nairobi, I kept imagining there were bugs in my hair, so finally I just shaved it all off.” She shrugged, smiled. “And then I just kept it that way.”

  I looked at her. Even without hair, she was beautiful, a constant laugh in her dark eyes. Her skin, though, had an unsettlingly uneven quality to the coloring, her face much darker than her scalp. The latter having been exposed to the African sun for a shorter duration.

  “Come on,” she said, after giving Tony a quick hug. “Everyone else is out back at the pool.”

  In the backyard, my dad was already manning the grill, with an unlit cigar clamped in his mouth, a Mets cap jammed low on his head, and his diamond pinkie ring glittering as he poked at whatever mystery meats he was cooking. Oh, sure, there were the usual hamburgers and hot dogs. But just for fun, every now and then my dad liked to throw something like venison steak into the mix without telling anybody. At least the rabbit I could always identify. “Princess,” he said, tilting his cheek to receive a kiss.

  “Art, do you need more rolls?” my mom screamed out the back door.

  “How could I need more,” my dad answered her without looking up, “when I haven’t even served anything yet?”

  • • •

  Two hours later, and everyone had eaten so much food we were like a group of waddling ducks, funnel-fed grain for foie gras. Even Sara had managed to put away a surprising amount, although she’d eaten tentatively at first.

  “More cake, anyone?” my mom offered.

  “Give it a rest with the food, Ann,” my dad said.

  “I’ll take another beer,” Tony called out from the pool. Despite my mother’s admonition that no one go swimming until at least thirty minutes after eating, Tony was already back in the water. “I’ll stay on the chair raft, promise,” he’d told her. “And if I tip over and sink? Maybe, just maybe, Lise will save me.”

  If it was OK for Tony to break the rules, then it was OK for the cousins, and they soon joined him. That left me with Sara, my parents, and Aunt Tess at the redwood table, under the umbrella.

  Aunt Tess adjusted her bathing suit cover-up, a polyester floral thing with some seriously scary mutant-sized flowers, and leaned over, tapping Sara’s wrist with one long gnarled finger to get her attention.

  “Now that you’ve got Africa out of your system,” she said, “what do you plan to do?”

  “God, I barely just got home and it’s Sunday,” Sara said. “Do you want me to go out looking for work today?”

  “Tomorrow would be nice,” my dad said, adding, “I’m kidding!” when he saw the horrified look on Sara’s face. “You know, though, your grandfather always said how important it was to have a steady paycheck.”

  It was true. Both sets of grandparents had inculcated my parents as children with the value of a dollar and the importance of saving for a rainy day. This advice had served my parents well: they had a large house in Fairfield, on which they’d long since paid for the mortgage, and they’d been able to pay for both daughters’ college educations without anyone having to take out a loan. But none of that took away from the fact that it had been a bitch repeatedly getting subjected to “The Money Talk” growing up.

  “I don’t know yet what I’m going to do next.” Sara shrugged. “Maybe go to work for Habitat for Humanity?”

  “Oh,” my dad snorted, “that sounds like something that’ll come with a steady paycheck.”

  “At least the things Sara does constitute ‘good works’,” my mother said.

  “What about you, Lise?” Sara turned to me. “What are you going to do now that you left your job?”

  I’d been so busy missing and worrying about Sara the past year, I’d forgotten this about her: how good she’d always been at shifting the attention to me when the focusing light grew too hot for her. And of course I’d told her about my move in an e-mail right after I’d made the decision.

  I just hadn’t told my parents yet.

  “What the hell’s she talking about?” my dad said. “She’s kidding, right?”

  I felt all eyes on me.

  “No,” I said, “she’s not. I gave notice at the university.”

  “Don’t tell me you’re going to become one of these charity workers too!” he said.

  “No,” I said evenly, “I quit so I could devote all my energies to revising the novel I’ve written.”

  “Oh, Lise.” My mom’s words dripped disappointment. “I thought you gave up on that silly dream ages ago.”

  “It’s not silly,” I said, “but it does require all my energy. I’ll never make it if I’m working full time.”

  “When will the book be in stores?” Aunt Tess asked. “I can’t wait to buy it. I love to read.”

  I was grateful for her enthusiasm, even if it was naïve.

  “I’m afraid it doesn’t work like that,” I said. “It’s not as easy as just writing the book and then—poof!—it’s published and I’m John Grisham. Once I finish revising it, I’ll need to find an agent. And if I can find an agent, then I’ll have to hope and pray the agent can interest an editor who will then publish it.”

  “Sounds more complicated than I thought,” she said. “Is that hard? Finding an agent?”

  “I think usually it must be,” I said. Then, despite my tendency to be cautious, I allowed myself to get a little excited as I spoke. “But a friend of mine, Diana Taylor, hooked me up with this literary agent in England. In the beginning he was dreadful, at least about the first novel. But then I wrote this second book and sent it off to him. For the longest time he was silent, but lately he’s been e-mailing me about it and—”

  “You never said you heard from Dirk Peters again,” Tony interrupted from the pool.

  “Sorry,” I said. “You haven’t shown much interest in my writing lately.”

  “Well, what did he say?”

  “He said he likes it, mostly, but he says he wants…changes.”

  “What kind of —”

  “Who cares about some Dirk Peters?” my dad said. “What I want to know is: How do you plan to pay the mortgage now that you’re out of a job?”

  “Exactly,” my mom said. “It’s not like novel writing is in any way ‘good works,’ not like what your sister does. At least if it was something like that…”

  “That’s what I wanted to know,” Tony said, propelling the chair raft by lazily paddling the water. “How is she going to pay the mortgage? But she never has an answer.”

  • • •

  Not long afterward, some of the others were piling into their cars, arms filled with aluminum-covered leftovers, when Aunt Tess came up to me and pulled me aside.

  “You know,” she said, “my father always said to get a good job and never quit that job until you have a new one lined up.”


  Not her too, I groaned inwardly.

  “I believe I may have heard something like that somewhere before,” I said, arms crossed.

  “Hey,” she said. “I was born during the Depression. Jobs weren’t something to take lightly, certainly not good ones. But there was something else my dad taught me, two things really: one, always save ten percent of what you make; even if someone gives you ten cents, you save a penny.”

  “It sounds like great advice,” I said, while inside I was thinking, Who can afford to do that? No one I know does that. “And what was the second thing?” I asked, more to be kind than out of any real interest. I always liked Aunt Tess. “You said your father taught you two things.”

  A devilish gleam entered her eye.

  “The other thing my dad taught me was, never trust banks,” she said.

  “What are you saying, Aunt Tess?” I asked, my eyes narrowing because now she really did have my interest.

  “I’m saying my father convinced my husband, your uncle, about his finance theories. When your uncle was still alive, he used to bury ten percent of everything we made in mason jars out in the backyard.”

  “You’re telling me you’ve got a fortune in your backyard?”

  “Of course not.” She dismissed my ignorance with a wave. “After your uncle died, I dug it all up one night and put it in brown paper bags, then I put all the bags up on the top shelf of the closet in my bedroom. I was sick of not being able to have a garden.”

  “Just how much is in those paper bags?” I asked.

  “Enough,” she said, smiling with certitude. “Enough to last you a good long while, however long it takes to get your book published which, the good Lord willing, will be soon.”

  I couldn’t believe she would do this for me. And, by the way, was she crazy? A part of me wondered what she did at night, alone with her money. Did she go through it, count it, turn small bills into bigger ones?

  “But why, Aunt Tess?” I said. “Why would you give me some of your hard-earned savings? You and Uncle Henry saved it. That money should be yours.”

  “Why?” she echoed my question. Then she took my hand in hers. “Because I wish I’d had the nerve when I was younger to do what you’re doing now. Saving ten percent and living safe is for the birds. Write your book, Lise. Write the best book you know how.”

  I hugged her.

  “Thanks, Aunt Tess, but I don’t need your help, not just yet.”

  “What do you mean?”

  I could feel my eyes twinkle. “I’ve got my own jars filled with money in the backyard.”

  “You do?”

  “Well, no. That was a metaphor. But I do have money saved, enough to last me a while.”

  “How long is a while?”

  “Long enough to give myself a fair chance at this novel-writing thing.”

  She laughed. “But why didn’t you tell Tony that? Or your parents? Get them off your back.”

  “Because, I’m tired of being treated like a child who can’t be depended upon to think things through for herself like an adult. I’ll bet if I were a thirty-seven-year-old man, everyone wouldn’t be questioning my judgment at every turn. Tell me, if you were me, what would you do?”

  Her laugh was practically a cackle. “I’d let them keep squirming.” She paused, considering. “And I’d move my money to paper bags in the top of the closet.”

  Cindy

  Six weeks after the night at the Bar None, I was home alone, trying to get the damn computer to work right, when there was a knock at the door. Eddie had another gig at the Bar None, but I’d pleaded out of going, saying I wasn’t feeling well. In truth, I was feeling great. I’d had my monthly visit with the obstetrician that morning—I was twelve weeks’ pregnant, if the OB’s projections were correct—and heard my baby’s heartbeat for the first time. It was so strong and it was amazing to think that now there wasn’t just one heart, my own, beating within my body, but two.

  I was so mad at the computer. One of the reasons I’d stayed home—well, aside from the fact that I simply did not want to go—was so I could get some work done for one of my classes. But the Internet link, which ran through the phone line, got interrupted by a prank call. And no matter how many times I tried to get back online, I kept getting a message on the screen saying that attempts to connect had failed. Damn technology! How was I supposed to work so I could get smart so I could leave behind my job at Midnight Scandals forever if I couldn’t even access the Internet? And the help link was useless. Whatever that purple question mark was telling me, I didn’t get it; I just could not be helped.

  Knock, knock.

  “I’m coming!” I shouted, reluctantly leaving the uncooperative computer behind to open the door and fly down the long interior flight of stairs from our apartment door to the door at the bottom that led to the sidewalk and the street outside.

  I was in such a hurry to get back to what I’d been doing, or trying to do, that I didn’t even bother to ask who it was. Maybe Eddie had forgotten his key? But that didn’t make any sense. It was only ten o’clock at night. Eddie should just be starting his second set and wouldn’t even be home for another two hours, probably three.

  I flung open the door just as my caller was raising his hand to knock again.

  “What are you doing here?” I said, seeing who it was. Not the friendliest greeting, I’ll admit, but I was that stunned.

  It was Porter.

  “Can I come in?” he asked.

  He was dressed differently than he had been the night I’d shot pool with him at the Bar None, the night Eddie got so mad. Instead of business clothes, he had on khakis with a button-down white shirt and loafers without socks on his feet. It was the kind of outfit Eddie hated seeing on other guys, calling them “preppies” or “yuppies” and claiming they were stuck up. It was the kind of outfit I’d talked him into wearing that day we’d gone to Lise’s book-finishing celebration party.

  My eyes narrowed. I was tempted to just turn him away, but I was desperate.

  “Do you know anything about computers?” I asked.

  • • •

  Porter sat at my computer, completely at home with the mouse. I couldn’t help but contrast it with the awkward look Eddie always had when he sat there trying to download music.

  “It’s usually just something simple,” Porter said. “Did you try calling the help line?”

  “No, should I?”

  “Probably not.” He shrugged. “Every time I call it takes forever to get through, and then they only reroute my call to some guy in India who says, ‘And how may I make your day even better, sir?’ That might sound racist, but that’s exactly what happens.”

  He fiddled around some more, and when he still couldn’t log on, he clicked the help link for troubleshooting.

  “Um, Cindy?” he said.

  “Yeah?”

  “Did you check the phone first?”

  “What?”

  “The phone. Where is it?”

  I showed him the wall phone in the kitchen. Even I could see that after the prank call earlier, when I’d replaced the phone, I hadn’t put it completely on the hook. As he picked it up, I could hear the automated voice saying, “Please hang up and try again. If you need assistance…”

  Carefully, Porter replaced the phone on the hook, and then picked it up to check for a dial tone before putting it down again.

  “Problem solved,” he said. “And you didn’t even have to call India.”

  “Great,” I said. “Now I can get back to work.”

  “Aren’t you going to at least offer me a drink?” he said. “After all, I did put your phone back on the hook for you.”

  “What are you doing here?” I asked a second time. Maybe I should have been more gracious after he’d made it so I could use my computer once more, but he did only have to put the phone on the hook. It wasn’t like he’d had to take it apart and put it back together again or anything like that.

  He leaned back against
the counter, arms loosely crossed like he had all the time in the world. It was funny, because if I’d gone to the apartment of someone I barely knew and that person asked me what I was doing there, I’d have gotten the hell out.

  “Ever since that night at the Bar None,” he said, “I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you.”

  “You must have been doing a lot of thinking,” I said, keeping my distance, “or you must lead a pretty empty life, because that was weeks ago.”

  But I might as well not have said anything, because Porter just kept on talking.

  “There you were, this sharp, funny girl, just like I remembered you from back in high school. You could even shoot a good game of pool—something I didn’t know about you back then. Then your boyfriend comes along and terrifies you, steals the light right out of your eyes, and spoils all the fun.”

  “I was not terrified of Eddie. It was just time to go.”

  “I would have gone after you. I was worried about what he might do. But I’ve read enough to know that sometimes, if people try to intervene, it only makes it worse for the victim afterward. Besides, when I called to you, you just ignored me and kept on walking.”

  “I’m not a victim. I don’t know what you’re talking about. It was just time to go, like I said. How did you find me here anyway?”

  “I’ve been trying to find you since that night. I looked for a number, but you’re not listed. Then I tried calling your old number and your dad answered, said you were living with Eddie when I asked after you. ‘That scumbag,’ were, I believe, his exact words, but he just hung up when I asked what your new number was. I’ve checked at the Bar None every weekend but haven’t seen you or Eddie since. Then, when I saw Eddie walk into the Bar None tonight and you were not with him, I asked around if anyone knew where Eddie lived. It’s amazing. Everyone at the Bar None knows Eddie. I figured while he was playing, it’d be safe for me to stop by here, see if you were really OK.”