The Sisters Club

by Lauren Baratz-Logsted

  After I’d placed a bottle of whiskey on the table before her, she consulted her watch again. “Time’s a-wasting. So let’s cut to the chase here, as you no doubt say now that you’re living down here on the prairie.”

  “I don’t—”

  “You must reconcile with Dan. You must throw yourself at his mercy; if he still has any left, that is.”

  “But you never even liked Dan!”

  “You’re right. I didn’t like Dan. I was suspicious of him. I was certain he was using you in some way. But no man would react the way he has to what you’ve done, if he didn’t deep-down love you. E-mail. I swear, it’s ruined more marriages than happy hour ever did! If technology keeps accelerating the way it has been, people will need to get divorced from each other before they’ve even bothered to get married.”

  “But Dan cheated on me. And he didn’t cheat on me in e-mail; he cheated on me in the flesh.”

  “True. And I understand how it must hurt you. But don’t you realize that, in a very real sense, what you did was far worse than what Dan did? He made one mistake, an accident practically. But you? With open eyes, you carried on an e-mail affair—and with Dirk of all people! God, Diana, if you’re going to wreck your marriage, at least wreck it with someone who’s worth wrecking it for.”

  “But I don’t understand.”

  “Fine. Then I’ll repeat myself. I said, ‘True. And I understand—’”

  “No, I get that part, thanks. I maybe even agree with it…now. But what I don’t get is: Why? Why, Artemis? Why would you come all this way to try to save me, to save my marriage? You’ve never even liked me before!”

  “You’re joking, aren’t you? I’ve always loved you, Diana. More, I respected you enough to treat you like I treat everyone else—horribly. No free ride for being my sister. No free ride for being fat. The rest of the world treated you like you had some sort of handicap, always tiptoeing around as if, were they to speak within your hearing the words they said behind your back, it might kill you. But I always accorded you the same dignity I would to anyone else, and thus I treated you horribly. Still will, if given half the chance. Don’t think that now that you’re practically thin, I’ll let you off the hook.”

  “You know,” I said, “in a sick sort of way, that’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”

  “Thanks. And now that we’re feeling all cozy and sisterly here, it’s time I tell you the truth.”

  Uh-oh.

  “Ever since you’ve had that weight-loss surgery,” she said, “you’ve turned into a thin monster.”

  “A thin monster?”

  “Yes, a thin monster. All you talk about is how much weight you’ve lost, what foods you’re eating and not eating, what the scale says in the morning, and what size clothes you’re buying.”

  “And that makes me a monster?”

  “When you care more about the numbers on your scale than what’s going on in the rest of the world? When you care more about how you look in clothes than you do about the feelings of flesh-and-blood people? When you’re so desperate for attention that you turn to a prat like Dirk when you have a good man like Dan? When you focus on what you look like and how much you weigh, the outward appearance of yourself, to the exclusion of all else? Then, yes, I’d say that makes you a monster. A thin monster. And it has to stop.”

  I told her about throwing out the scale.

  “That’s a terrific first step,” she conceded, “and while it’s difficult to believe you thought to do so on your own without my guidance, I’m glad you’ve done it. You need to stop defining yourself by a number, no matter if that number is high or low, it must stop.”

  Funny how quickly Artemis could make my temper shoot from zero to one hundred. But, honestly.

  “You’re a fine one to talk!” I practically shouted at her. “All your life you’ve been the thin one! You have no idea what it’s been like for me.”

  “Why don’t you tell me, then?” she said coolly.

  “Do you have any idea what it’s like, choosing not to go to the gynecologist for your yearly physical, risking cervical cancer because you know that if you do go, they’ll insist on weighing you, and when they do that, all they’ll want to talk about the entire time you’re there is how fat you are and what’s to be done about it?”

  “I’m sorry, Diana, that trips to the gyno have been a trial for you. But do you honestly think the rest of us like going? Do you think I like lying there, legs in the stirrups, wondering why the man who has his finger up my bum hole ever thought to go into that as a specialty in the first place? No one likes going to the gyno, whatever the reason!”

  Then Artemis did a thing she’d never done before. She reached across the table and cupped my face in both her hands.

  “You must stop, Diana, before you throw your life away in addition to throwing Dan away. You’re not the person you used to be before. You need to let it go.”

  “But who will I be,” I asked, “if I stop defining myself by what I look like? By what I weigh?”

  She let my face go, and then settled back onto her stool.

  “You’ll be a human being,” she said, “a person.” She shrugged. “You’ll be Diana.”

  Sylvia

  Dear Sunny,

  I’m writing to you at Cindy’s suggestion. Well, really, she didn’t actually tell me to write to you. She told me to talk to you, but this is one conversation I just can’t have with you face-to-face.

  I have a secret, something I’ve told only one other person in the last three decades, and that only recently. Thirty years ago, my twin sister was gang-raped while we were both in college. I’m not quite sure how it happened—not the rape; I know how that happened because Minnie told me. I mean I’m not sure how it happened that Minnie decided afterward to give up sex for the rest of her life and I somehow followed suit, but there you have it: I am, in essence, like a virgin. That’s a good one, isn’t it? The Virgin Sylvia? It’s like the greatest story never told, now told. Or maybe it’s not funny. In fact, I know it’s not funny. But it is what it is.

  I know this is a lot to burden you with, but I also know that you’ve been wondering all these months why I wanted to keep our relationship platonic, why I didn’t want to, um, consummate things.

  I guess what I’m trying to say is that I’m ready now. But now I’m not sure if you’re ready; ready, that is, to be with a woman who basically has no experience; or, what experience she has had, it’s all so long ago, she’s practically forgotten what you’re supposed to do with all those body parts.

  OK, I’m rambling here. Bottom line? If you want to find out what we’d be like together, if you’re brave enough to go ahead with this, and you’re not laughing as you read every word, then come by and see me tonight after work. If you don’t show up, I’ll understand completely. No matter what, we will always be great good friends.

  Love,

  Sylvia

  I folded the two sheets of paper, placed them in the envelope, licked the envelope shut, and, closing the shop up for an hour, I went across town and delivered the letter to Sunny’s receptionist.

  • • •

  The rest of the day moved slowly, even though I was busy. Thanksgiving was still two weeks away, but already people were coming in to place their orders for turkeys of all sizes and oyster stuffing and cranberry relish and pumpkin pie. I made a great pumpkin pie.

  When I got home that night and put my key in the lock, I told myself not to expect anything. I made dinner for the girls—chicken pot pie, because all Cindy wanted was comfort foods these days—and insisted on doing the dishes myself just to keep busy.

  Seven o’clock, eight o’clock, nine.

  I left the girls in the living room watching TV, and went to lay down on the bed with the shirt and skirt I’d worn to work that day and the flip-flops I always wore around the house still on. Sunny wasn’t coming. He must have read my stupid letter, laughed at my foolishness, and then thrown the letter away.
r />   So that was that.

  All of the pent-up anxiety of waiting for something that wasn’t going to happen must’ve finally gotten to me, because I dozed off. I awoke to a soft knock at the door. Looking at the alarm clock, I saw that it was ten.

  “Sylvia?” Cindy poked her head in. Her eyes were sleepy, like maybe she’d dozed off in front of the TV herself. “Sunny’s here. Should I send him in or tell him you’re sleeping?”

  I rose to a sitting position, my feet dangling over the side of the bed. Then I took a deep breath. “Send him in,” I said.

  “OK,” she said, yawning. “I think I’m going to hit the hay, Carly too. ’Night.”

  “’Night.”

  She shut the door on her way out. A minute later, there was another tap.

  “Come in,” I said, my words practically a croak, I was that nervous. Sunny was such a gentleman. He was probably coming to tell me in person that he didn’t want me. I took another breath.

  And then he was there in my room.

  “I thought you weren’t coming,” was the first thing I said.

  “How could I not?” he countered. Then, as though reciting something in school, he said, “‘The robbed that smiles steals something from the thief.’”

  “That’s beautiful,” I said. “What does it mean?”

  “It means that even if someone has harmed you, if you go on to have a happy life anyway, in spite of that harm, then you have achieved your own revenge. Someone—some ones—once took something from your sister and, in the process, managed to rob you of something as well. It is time for you to have that happy life, Sylvia.” He paused. “The quote is from Othello, act V, scene III. It is one of the reasons I took so long getting here. I was trying to find the exact quote.”

  In Sunny’s hands, he held a brown paper bag. I watched as he reached into the bag and pulled out handful after handful of white votive candles, which he arranged on my dresser and night table. Then he reached into the bag again, this time coming out with handful after handful of rose petals, which he scattered on my bed. He was so serious about it all, I almost laughed.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  “I am trying to create a moment,” he said, lighting the candles before turning off the lights. “I must say, it is not so easy, creating a moment knowing there are other people in the house.”

  Then he knelt at my feet, gently removed my flip-flops, and kissed the feet that had stood thousands of hours in the shop.

  “What are you doing?” I asked again. It seemed, suddenly, like they were the only words I knew how to say anymore.

  “I am going to resurrect the girl in you,” he said. “The woman, as well.”

  He took my hands in his and raised me to my feet. I felt unsteady until he placed his arms around me, lightly kissed my neck, and then my lips. When he started to lift my shirt, I stopped him.

  “I can do that myself,” I said.

  When I was standing before him in just my bra and skirt, I felt as though I might have been naked.

  “I’m not sure if I’m ready for this,” I said with a nervous laugh as he slid one bra strap off my shoulder.

  “Oh, I think you are ready,” he said, kissing the place where the strap had been.

  “No,” I said, pushing him away, “I’m really not. You’re probably expecting me to look all great once you get this bra off me, but I won’t.”

  “I understand all about gravity,” he said gravely.

  I had to laugh at that. Hands on hips, I said, “I’ll thank you to know that gravity has not become my enemy…yet.” Then I felt nervousness overtake me again. “It’s just that I have this scar, see, that no one’s ever seen before, not like this.”

  “I know all about that scar,” he said, reaching around me and, with surgical precision, unhooking my bra. “I put it there.”

  He kissed the scar he’d created by cutting into me, all those months ago.

  He started to unzip my skirt.

  “I’m anxious,” I said, “the nervous kind of anxious.”

  “You think you have anxiety?” He laughed softly. “It is an awesome responsibility to be entrusted with making love to a woman who has not been made love to in thirty years. And yet, here I stand, with that woman, the kind of quick-witted woman who will probably laugh if what I am carrying between my legs is not impressive enough, and you are anxious?”

  But in the end, I didn’t laugh.

  Not to put too fine a point on it, but my doctor, as it turned out, was hung.

  He kissed every part of my body, as though I were a temple he had come to worship at. And when he rose above me, with the flower petals all around me on the bed, the candlelight from the moment he had created flickering across that beautiful and familiar face, for once in my life I was at a loss for words.

  “You, Sylvia,” he said, “are a goddess.”

  I had thought, when I’d imagined this previously, that it would hurt, that this was one bike a person couldn’t get back onto after such a long dry spell and have the ride go smoothly.

  But it wasn’t like that at all.

  As he slid inside me, I felt him penetrating my entire being. And, as he began to move inside me, I felt a long groan coming out of me, a sound I’d never made before.

  “Shh.” He smiled, placing one finger on my lips. “You will wake the kids.”

  • • •

  Afterward, I lay with him, his arms twined around me, my arms twined around him.

  “I love you, Sylvia,” he said to the top of my head. “You are not only my great good friend. You are the love of my life.”

  “I love you, Sunny.”

  Lise

  “Can I get you a glass of wine?” Tony asked.

  “Please.”

  We were at his place, a rare thing. He’d called up, inviting me to dinner, a rarer thing since Tony was even worse at cooking than I was.

  Tony lived in a cottage, not dissimilar to my own in terms of size, yet he was better at nesting than I was, meaning the place was filled with overstuffed furniture, comfy chenille throws in forest and cream and burgundy to cuddle up in on a cold night—like this one—and the sea-green walls were covered with silver frames, not framing photographs of famous authors he’d met or awards he’d won, but rather letters he’d received from students over the years.

  “Here you go,” he said, handing me a glass of Shiraz. “I’ll just go check on the steaks.”

  Since I’d been there last, Tony had invested in an outdoor grill, and, as he headed out the door, he threw on a parka over his Oxford shirt and jeans.

  While he was gone, I wondered what he’d invited me for. Rather than using the dining room table, or even the one in the kitchen, he’d set our places at the pink marble-top coffee table, on which he’d already put out the salad and fresh rolls, not far from the fire that roared in the fieldstone fireplace. Near his own place setting, he had a brown paper wrapped package, approximately eight inches by eleven, tied with a string.

  “Just the way you like it,” he said, coming back in, carrying a platter with two steaks in one hand, another platter with baked potatoes still in their aluminum casings in the other.

  “The perfect man meal,” I said, after he took off his parka, as we both settled down on the pillows he’d put on the floor in front of the table, “meat, potatoes, and a salad just in case your mother has X-ray vision and can see what you’re eating. Are we having strawberry shortcake for dessert? Or apple pie ala mode, maybe?”

  “If you behave yourself,” he said with a smile, considering, “perhaps both.”

  The food was excellent.

  When I’d still worked at the university, there’d always been someone to eat with, if I wanted to, every day. But lately I’d had to content myself with three squares all on my own, all cooked by myself too. I’d forgotten how pleasurable it was to have someone else do all the work, and then place the food in front of me with the simple command: “Eat.”

  I was so inten
t on my eating, I was halfway through my potato, melted butter pooling in the creases, before I asked, “What’s in the package?”

  He ignored me. “I’ve been wondering,” he said, spearing a piece of meat, “what do you want out of life?”

  “Oh, God.” I groaned and then laughed. “If I’d known you were going to want to have a philosophical discussion, I’d have gone to McDonald’s by myself instead.”

  “I’m serious, though. Do you miss teaching?”

  “I do,” I acknowledged. “I didn’t think I would, but I do. Every day.”

  “Enough to give up writing?”

  “Not that much,” I said, making a face.

  “It was a shame,” he said, “what happened with Dirk.”

  “Yes,” I said, “it was a huge waste of time, but I did learn a few things.”

  “Such as?”

  “It’s funny,” I said, between chewing, “but sometimes, things happen that cause you to learn as much about what you don’t want to be as a writer as what you do want.”

  “Tell me about it,” he said, but not in the sarcastic or flip way the mere words might indicate. He really did want to know.

  “OK,” I said, taking another sip of wine. “I learned that I don’t want my writing to be written by committee. After Dirk, I’ve had enough of agents who want to play Svengali. If I’m ever lucky enough to land another agent, I’ll only make positive changes that make sense to me or lateral changes: changes that please the other person but don’t affect the integrity of the book. No more running around like Chicken Little, though, making endless changes, even conflicting changes, just because some agent—or any other publishing professional—keeps telling me the sky is falling.”

  “Good. Sounds like a metaphor for life. More wine?”

  “Please.” I held out my glass. “I also don’t want to write stupid books, empty books that have nothing to say.”

  “Also good. But if you’re not going to do what you’ve been doing these past few months, then what are you going to do? What kind of book do you want to write?”