by Delia Ephron
“Twelve-thirty.”
“Let’s make it one.”
I hung up. I didn’t say anything to Adrienne. She turned the TV back on, we both watched Nixon in silence, then abruptly Adrienne hit the power button, turning the TV off. “I hope you don’t mind my saying—”
“What?”
“Every time you’re upset and you call your sister, you feel worse.”
“No I don’t.”
Adrienne took off her shoe and slammed it on the floor. “Goddamn these roaches.” She went to get a paper towel to pick up the dead roach. “Where’d it go?” she asked.
“Isn’t it there?”
She looked around the floor, then under the couch. “No.”
“My father’s like a roach. Just when you think you’ve gotten rid of him … Oh God, suppose he moves here?”
“You’ll hardly see him, it’s a big city. And when you have to, I’ll go with you, I promise.”
“Thanks. You know, Georgia told me last week that a person’s ears and nose keep growing forever. I mean the rest of you completely stops and your nose and ears go on and on and on.”
“Why did she say that?”
“Because it’s interesting. She’s always learning things like that.”
Adrienne smacked at another roach. “I missed.” She slipped her shoe back on, crossed her legs demurely, and fluffed her hair as if she were now a lady again. “I don’t mean to criticize Georgia, but you think she dresses so amazingly—”
“I think she’s chic.”
“She looks like someone’s mother, someone’s very chic mother. I bet she has her hair done every week.”
“No, she doesn’t.”
“I can’t tell whether she’s twenty or forty.”
“She’s twenty-six.”
“Well, she doesn’t look young. She looks youthful.”
The next day, while I was writing a press release about higher entrance fees to the Central Park ice-skating rink, Madeline called from Los Angeles.
“I have to talk fast because I’m broke.”
“Do you want me to call you?”
“No, I charged this to a fake number, but you usually only get caught if you talk a long time.”
“Maddy, that’s illegal.”
“Oh, Evie, don’t be so uptight. What’s new?”
“Dad may be moving to New York.”
“This is my lucky day,” sang Maddy. “Ruby Tuesday, this neat store in Venice, took thirteen sets of my bead earrings on consignment. Presto’s friends with the manager, but he really liked them. He would have taken them anyway. I had to call the minute I left the store.”
“That’s great, Maddy.”
“And now Dad’s moving to you. Ha, ha-ha, ha-ha.”
“It’s not for sure. Besides, it’s not as if you ever see him.”
“But I know he’s in L.A., and that’s practically the same thing. Who put him in the hospital when he took all those pills?”
“That was two years ago. And you didn’t put him in, you just called an ambulance.” This last remark is good-natured only on the surface. I change the subject. “So, are you going to college?”
“God, do you and Georgia make plots?”
“Excuse me?”
“That’s all she asks about too. She never asks about Presto or my earrings. Eve, would you do me a favor?”
“What?”
“Would you ask Georgia if she’ll put my earrings in the magazine? If she’ll use them in a fashion spread?”
Georgia was now the associate fashion editor of Harper’s Bazaar. When she had landed the job, she had called. “Do you realize that I’m only twenty-six? This is big.”
Then my father had phoned me. “Your sister’s going to be president.”
“Of what?”
“Hearst. The country. Who knows?”
I answered Madeline. “Why don’t you ask Georgia yourself? Why should I have to ask her?”
“My phone’s disconnected, okay? Anyway, she never takes my calls. Sometimes she doesn’t call me back for a whole day. I don’t ask you for things. I hardly ask you for anything. I never ask anyone for anything.”
“Fine, I’ll do it.”
Maddy brightened immediately. “Thanks, Eve. This really means a lot to me. I’d better get off, before I end up in San Quentin.”
I sat in The Hare and the Tortoise pretending to make notes in my Women’s Liberation Appointment Calendar, which Adrienne had given me for Christmas, and glancing up every few seconds to check for Georgia.
Finally she appeared, bestowing on the hostess her half-smile, the one in which her lips stayed together but the corners of her mouth turned up. She was dressed in a very long sweater—it was a turtleneck that continued past her hips to become a dress, and it was cinched with a wide leather belt, reminding me that she had a better waist than I did.
I was always making these calculations: How do we compare? Being a sister, especially a middle sister, I could understand myself only in comparison with someone, and usually that meant with Georgia.
I suppose I fixated on her because she came first, was there when I arrived. We both shared our parents’ dark hair and dark eyes, so the obvious physical distinctions between us were few. And Georgia was so definite, not just now but always, in what she thought, in all her choices. Faced with her certainty, I had trouble fathoming where she stopped and I began.
If Georgia proclaimed an affection for anything—say, macadamia nuts—I couldn’t prefer cashews without feeling I’d betrayed her. I never admired her straight and narrow aristocratic nose without remembering that mine turned up slightly, giving me the eager look of a kid while she had the serious appearance of a woman. Today I saw that her waist was not just ideally small and round, but smaller and rounder than mine, which was an oval leading not to broad, but to broader, hips. Madeline was so much another person—five years behind me, much taller, willowy even—a kind of free, not freer, spirit, who swung her arms loosely when she walked. Georgia acted as if she owned the street, Maddy strode along oblivious to it. I tended to watch where I stepped, trying to make my way without causing anyone else too much discomfort.
As I observed Georgia weaving her way over, quickly sizing up the food on tables she passed, I noticed that, around her shoulders, on top of this sweater dress, she had tied another sweater, a matching sweater. I had never seen anyone who was not on a playground walk around with her sweater tied around her, but seeing this style on Georgia made me want to tie everything I owned around my shoulders.
Which reminded me of my father’s call several weeks before. “They pay your sister to wear clothes,” he had said. This particular call had come when I was doing that humiliating thing known as “waiting for the phone to ring.”
I’d met an architect while handing out press releases at the opening of an adventure playground in Central Park. Philip hadn’t designed the playground, his boss had. Philip had done the specifications for the jungle gym. He’d asked for my number.
The phone had been sitting next to me on the couch while Adrienne and I watched the evening news, all about Rose Mary Woods and how she had accidentally erased eighteen and a half minutes of a White House tape. I waited two rings, not to appear eager, then answered.
“They pay your sister to wear clothes. Bet you never heard of that before.”
“Big deal.”
“You said it.” He hung up. The phone rang again. Again I waited two rings. “Hello.”
“Get a load of this. They pay Georgia to wear clothes.”
“Dad, you just called me.”
“I thought I dialed Maddy. Don’t be mad.”
“I’m not,” I lied, barely disguising it.
“You know your old man. He gets carried away.” He hung up again.
Georgia sat down and blew a kiss across the table. “Hello, darling.” Adrienne was right, it was hard to tell what age Georgia was. This kissing bit she had done for a year now, but the “darling” was new
. Even though it was an affectation, she knew it was, you could tell by how she said it. “Darling.” I liked the sound of it. It was comforting. I leaned closer across the table, a tree leaning to the sun.
“Have a menu.” I handed mine over. I saw her eyes whip down it; then she laid it neatly next to her napkin. “I snacked all morning at the office. You eat. I’ll just have a tomato juice. Could you have the waiter bring a tomato juice with a slice of lime on the side?” she asked the hostess.
“Dad says they pay you to wear those clothes.”
“They don’t pay me. They just give me free clothes.” She cupped her hand coyly along the side of her mouth, as if someone might overhear. “They normally do this only with the fashion editor. This is the first time they’ve done it with the associate fashion editor.” She returned her hand to her lap. “This dress is Halston.”
“Is that a material, like cashmere?”
Georgia smiled. “God, the things you don’t know. Halston is a very famous designer. You know, Eve”—this was the first time I’d heard her voice drop a level and sound vaguely as if she’d been brought up in Europe—“if you don’t know something, it’s usually a good idea to wait awhile and see how the conversation goes, because sometimes you can figure it out for yourself.” Then she added, in her normal tone, “That was a really good piece of advice.”
“I know all about Halston,” I bluffed. “I was just kidding around.” I changed the subject. “You know Madeline’s earrings?”
“You mean the reason she’s not going to college. Because she’s becoming an earring factory.”
“I know it’s completely dumb.” We both started laughing. “Does she actually think she can live off this?”
“Who knows?” Georgia squeezed lime into her tomato juice.
“She asked me to ask you if you would put them in the magazine. In a fashion spread. Actually, she practically started crying, she begged me to ask you, but don’t tell her I said that.”
Georgia seasoned the tomato juice with pepper. “She should go to college.”
“She doesn’t want to.”
“Here, taste this. Isn’t it delicious?”
I took a sip. “Yeah.”
“She’ll never meet men if she doesn’t go to college.”
“That’s not too liberated, Georgia.”
“Is that one of Adrienne’s opinions? Adrienne probably doesn’t shave under her arms. I’m as liberated as she is. I’m simply being practical.”
“Well, you don’t have to worry about Madeline and men. She meets guys just waiting for a green light.”
“Sure, those kind of guys.” Georgia raised her eyes to acknowledge the waiter. “I’m only having tomato juice.”
“I’ll have the chef’s salad.”
“Does her chef’s salad come in a big wooden bowl?” Georgia asked.
“I’ll check.” He disappeared.
“He doesn’t even know how the chef’s salad comes? What kind of a restaurant is this?”
“The food’s good. Philip and I eat here. It’s near his office.”
The waiter returned. “Yes, it does.”
“Then you don’t want it,” said Georgia. “It’s too much. You’ll get tired just looking at it. Have the crab bisque. I saw one go by.”
“Crab bisque, please. So will you use Maddy’s earrings?”
“I’ll look at them, but they’re probably not avenue enough.”
I didn’t ask what that meant. I figured it would become clear, but it didn’t.
“Tell her to send them to me,” Georgia said.
“If Dad moves here, will we have to spend Thanksgiving with him?”
Georgia assumed a pose. She put her elbow on the table. Her arm and hand were straight up and her chin was balanced on the tips of her fingers. She narrowed her eyes and thought. “Yes.”
Six months later, Adrienne, Philip, and I were going uptown in a taxi to meet my father. He had been living at the Algonquin hotel for a month and now had found an apartment. I had to drag Adrienne away from the TV. Nixon had resigned the presidency that day and she was watching his speech over and over on the news. “Parallel lives,” said Adrienne. “Your father moves in, Nixon moves out.”
It was a muggy August night. We stuck to everything—our clothes, the cab seat, one another. The taxi had to dodge geysers from several fire hydrants that had been turned on by kids and were sending torrents of water into the street. We were all three soaked with water and sweat when we reached my father’s apartment at Seventy-first and Third.
It was a tall white brick semi-luxury building, the type that promises cookie-cutter apartments with low ceilings and wallboard instead of plaster. “I can’t enter this place,” said Philip.
“Is this a political position?” Adrienne blew upward in a futile attempt to cool herself off.
Philip did not need to consider this. “Yes.”
“Nouvelles political positions,” said Adrienne. “Refuses to enter ugly buildings. I could do a cartoon based on this, would you mind?”
“That would depend on where you sold it,” said Philip.
“I’ll try The New Yorker first,” said Adrienne.
“Fine.” He walked over to the bus stop.
“Philip, my father is renting an apartment here.”
“So?”
“He’s all alone. You could at least be kind enough to go up and look at it. You could even say something nice.”
“I’ll say congratulations. That’s as far as I’ll go.”
We entered the building, got on the elevator, and rode up in silence. The door to 6A was wide open. “Dad?” I called.
“Eve? Hey, it’s my Evie. Hi, kid.” He started crying.
“He always cries,” I explained. “He says hello, he cries.”
“It’s a family tradition,” said my father, taking out his handkerchief. “Eve, this is … what did you say your name was?” He looked at the woman who was with him. She was short, and not plump but solid like a sausage, packed into a flowered pantsuit. She wore large square glasses and looked like a woman in those “Don’ts” features Georgia had run in Mademoiselle.
“Virginia Hazen. Call me Ginny.” She offered her hand. “I’m your father’s realtor.”
“Nice to meet you.” I introduced Adrienne and Philip.
My father threw his arms out. “This place is a hit, don’t you think?” We looked at the room, which, if it had not been L-shaped, could have been the interior of a plain white gift box.
“The couch can go here,” said Ginny, standing against the long wall. “And the dining room table here.” She moved over to the alcove.
“It’s great, Dad.”
“Fantastic,” said Adrienne.
“Congratulations,” said Philip.
“Too bad there’s not much of a view.” My father walked over to the window and looked across Third Avenue to an apartment house remarkably similar to this one. “Big deal, I’ll put up Venetians.”
“I can arrange that for you,” said Ginny.
At that moment, I noticed that my father’s shirt was misbuttoned. One side of the collar poked up two inches above the other. It was like wearing a “Needs a Wife” sign around his neck.
He clapped his hands, signaling that his attention span had expired. “Who can stand an empty apartment? Let’s go eat. Ginny, you like spareribs?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “We used to get the best spareribs, didn’t we, Evie?”
“We sure did.”
“Where was that?” asked Adrienne.
“Ah Fong’s on Glendon, right?”
“Right, Dad.”
He led the way back down the hall. “Georgia’s coming. Did you hear, Eve, Georgia’s coming?”
“Yeah, of course, I know. We’re meeting her at the restaurant.”
Ginny locked the apartment and gave my father the key. We all crowded into the elevator. “God, it’s great to be together, isn’t it, Evie?”
Sorry, no answer, no way. I
watched the floor numbers flash—five, four, three …
The elevator doors opened. Thank God, more air. Breathing room. I was the first one out, through the lobby and onto the sidewalk.
The streets were not empty exactly, but lonely. In August most Upper East Side residents split for their vacation homes, and those who remained looked droopy, as if they belonged on the sale rack. The humidity had the effect of leg weights, causing people to move slowly, sloggingly. The only reason Georgia and Richard were in town (they shared a rental with friends in Bridgehampton) was that she had to cover for her boss, who wasn’t.
Adrienne, my father, and I started down Third Avenue. Philip trailed behind with Ginny. I could hear him haranguing her about how these apartment buildings were faceless monsters.
“How do you like Ginny?” my father asked.
“She’s very nice.”
“I’m thinking of marrying her.”
“What? How long have you known her?”
But my father was on to something else. “Hey,” he boomed. “Hey, there’s Georgia.” He waved his hand back and forth like a windshield wiper at Georgia and Richard a block away. Georgia wore a rain cape of a flamboyant flimsy material, and when she waved back, it unfurled like a flag.
“How much do they pay you to wear that?” my father asked.
“It’s parachute silk, don’t you like it?” Georgia twirled.
“Hello, Lou.” Richard shook Dad’s hand. Even in this heat, he was dressed properly—blue blazer, striped rep tie, white shirt—although he kept wiping his forehead with a handkerchief. Richard had probably been his high school’s student body president and most likely to succeed; and still, in his early thirties, he looked arrogant and innocent, as I imagined he appeared in his yearbook picture. He was fine-looking, not handsome, but parent-pleasing. He had a perfectly apportioned amount of black hair, parted neatly with every hair in place. Georgia had good hair too. Thick, short, also black and straight, it had spun out when she twirled, then dropped right back in place. Adrienne had speculated that they probably first fell in love not with each other but with the way their hair matched. “Adrienne, darling, nice to see you again. Philip.” Georgia kissed everyone’s air and Richard shook hands, three shakes each. “Who stuffed him?” my dad whispered.
