The Spinster Sisters

by Ballis, Stacey

  “I haven’t started. I never start without you. You know that.”

  “I know, I’m just excited. How come so late? I was expecting your call ages ago.”

  “I got a little caught up with the marshmallows.”

  “Why?” she asks.

  “I went to four different places before I found them, and once I did find them, they required a little finagling.”

  “Interesting. Finagling for marshmallows. More details, please.”

  “I finally found them at Dominick’s. In the hands of the sinister gentleman who was attempting to purchase the final bag. I had to use my feminine wiles to get them away from him.”

  She nods. “I see, did you use whining, crying, or flirting?” she asks.

  “Whining and flirting. And the dead mom guilt trip.”

  “Nice,” she says. “Extra points for the combo with the guilt trip. And the gentleman was swayed, clearly.”

  “Well, I also had to ply him with alcohol.”

  “Really, a drink?” she asks.

  “He was holding the marshmallows hostage.”

  “You’re all smiley. This must’ve been a nice guy.”

  “Yeah, actually he was, er, is.”

  “Where did you go for a drink?”

  “Quenchers.”

  “I’ve always wondered about the place. Is it any good?”

  “It’s small but nice. They have like a hundred different types of beer.”

  “And he was nice. What’s his name?”

  “Connor. Connor Duncan. Yeah, very nice. Smart, good sense of humor, cute. I liked him.”

  “You going to see him again?”

  “I think so.”

  “How old is he?

  “I think thirty-eight or thirty-nine, forty tops.”

  “Aha! Right in the middle.” She laughs.

  “What does that mean?” I ask.

  “Well,” she says. “You already got the older guy and the younger guy; this one is in the middle.” Then she pauses and grins. “The Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.

  “Are you saying that I’m dating the Holy Trinity?”

  “I’m not saying anything. But you have to admit, it kind of works.”

  “Well, we had one beer. We will have to see if he calls before we add him officially to my roster. Now, let’s get these marshmallows done.”

  It’s nearly eleven by the time Jill and I stop messing around in the kitchen. We grab a couple of beers out of my refrigerator and head into my living room.

  “I’m glad we didn’t lose you for Thanksgiving this year,” I say. “I know you and Hunter are probably going to have to do that one year here, one year there thing, but I’m glad it hasn’t started yet.”

  “Actually,” she says, “Hunter and I made a deal. Since Thanksgiving is our holiday, I get to always be here. They can always have us for Christmas. Hunter may occasionally need to go to his folks’ place for Thanksgiving, but I’m not required to go with.”

  “Really? That doesn’t bother him?”

  “Well, think about it, we don’t celebrate Christmas, and it’s a big deal for his family. So, actually, I think he feels like he’s getting away with something, guaranteeing our presence with his family celebrations every year at Christmas.”

  “Very sneaky. Let me guess. They get Easter, and we get Passover.”

  She giggles. “You betcha!”

  “Very diplomatic of you. How many of these lifestyle negotiations have you guys been through?”

  “Not too many,” she says. “He agreed to move in with me here for now, provided I’m willing to discuss a bigger place if we end up having more than one child. We got the holiday issue squared away. We agreed to give equal time and energy to both religions and then let the kid or kids decide what they want to be when they grow up. And we agreed that we could both do as much travel and work-related weird hours as necessary for the time being, with the understanding that once we start a family, we both have to make an equal commitment to a more rational lifestyle.”

  “That sounds like about all of them. I’m glad he’s going to move in here, though. I hate to think about you not being right downstairs.”

  “No more than I hate to think about you not being right upstairs. But Jodi . . .” She gets a very serious look on her face. “You and I are both going to have to be very diligent about making sure that he isn’t overwhelmed. He loves you, and he loves the aunts, but I don’t think he has a genuine concept of how casual we all are about bopping in and out of each other’s houses and lives. One too many three A.M. ‘I have to watch Sixteen Candles right now’ phone calls, and he might kill me.”

  “Hunter doesn’t get the need to watch Sixteen Candles at three in the morning? Ever?” Seems suspicious to me.

  “Top Gun, maybe. But not Sixteen Candles.”

  “I’ll try to only do it when he’s traveling for business. How’s that?”

  “Perfect,” she says.

  “When is he going to move in?”

  “We figure, after the first of the year. Too insane right now with all the holidays.”

  “I think that’s great timing,” I say.

  “I know. And then the wedding on May nineteen, the party out East the following weekend, and if the TV thing goes through, we’ll start production next summer. Holy moly. We are in for it this year, huh?” She makes a face.

  “The TV thing still scares me. But I know Krista and Paige both really want us to do it.” Krista is our agent. She’s based in New York, so we rarely see her, but she’s worked very hard to ensure that if we move forward on creating a television show, that Jill and I have the protections that we need to maintain the integrity of our message. And to guarantee that we would film in Chicago.

  “I know. It scares me, too, but in that good, excited way. I mean, think about it; it could be really cool.”

  “Or it could be really awful.”

  “Hey, I’m usually the pessimist; you’re the one who thinks we can do anything!” She looks puzzled.

  “I know, I just, I know that it’s possible that some things will change. Once you’re married, I mean. I didn’t want to take for granted that you would still want to pursue the television deal.”

  “I’m just getting married. I’m not moving to Stepford.”

  “Very funny. I just meant that we might want to push the dates forward a bit. Give you a chance to be a newlywed for a year before we launch such a huge project.”

  “Okay, what’s really bugging you? That was the biggest load of crap I’ve ever heard.”

  “Nothing. I just think we should talk realistically about the timing of doing a show.” I can’t help that my concerns are rising to the surface.

  “Jodi, I know when you’re bullshitting. Out with it.”

  “Fine. I think that we should push off the show another year.”

  “Why?” Jill looks perplexed.

  “Because it may very well take that long for the negative publicity to die down, and I don’t want to start our television show on the defensive. That is, if they still want to take a chance on even doing a television show with us.” So there.

  “What the hell are you talking about? What negative publicity?”

  I get up and thrust a folder at her. It is filled with almost nine hundred e-mails and letters. “This represents this week’s take of angry correspondence. It’s been at about that level for the past three weeks. They are pretty evenly split between the ‘You bitches are ruining the American family’ letters and the ‘Why the fuck should I stay single if you’re getting married?’ letters. The choices you make affect our business, and we can’t pretend they don’t. This is going to blow big, little sister. We’ve got Kim working on a press release, and I talked to Mike Thomas over at the Sun-Times, and he is going to do a feature. Hopefully, we can get some stuff out before someone else does. But don’t sit there all wide-eyed and ready to go on TV when any network exec in his right mind is going to give us a big fat ‘Thanks but no
thanks’ when this hits the fan.”

  Jill riffles through the pages with a clenched jaw, pausing occasionally to read something. She looks up at me. “Three weeks, you said. Kim’s working on the release, you’re talking to Mike . . . When exactly were you going to fill me in?” There is venom in her voice.

  “When we got all the strategies in place.”

  “Why. The fuck. Wasn’t I. Informed?” She is spitting the words at me. “Equal fucking partners, Jodi. Equal! We run this business together! Major decisions, minor decisions, we make them together! Who the hell do you think you are to go running around with our employees making proclamations and keeping me out of the fucking loop? Do you have any idea how much that undermines my authority with them? How impotent that makes me look? How dare you take this on without consulting me!”

  “Hey. Fuck you. I was just trying to spare you some of the ugliness so you could enjoy the holidays in the flush of your new engagement. So sorry if I didn’t want you to have to face the shitty side of this without a plan in place. I wanted to be able to say, ‘Here is what is going on, and here is how we are going to protect you and the business,’ so you didn’t have to worry!”

  “You can’t protect me from my own business.”

  “Trust me, I’ll never try again. You can have it.” I go over to my desk and grab the rest of the files of letters and drop them in her lap. “You send the answers to all these people, then. You talk to Kim about how to fix it. You stay up wondering if the entire business is about to go under, with all the people who work with us at risk. You talk to the fucking security company about how to keep us all safe. I’m fucking done. I’m tired of being the fucking FEMA director of our lives.”

  “Fine.” Jill stands up.

  “Fine?”

  She nods. “Fine. This is my mess, you seem to think. My fault. My problem. I’ll take care of it.”

  “Fine.”

  We look at each other.

  “It doesn’t matter if your intentions were good, Jodi. You had no right.”

  “Whatever.”

  “Let’s just get through tomorrow and try to have a happy day. We can talk about this on Friday when we’ve cooled off.”

  “Yeah, okay.” I’m suddenly crushingly exhausted.

  “I’ll see you in the morning.” Jill turns, carrying her armload of poison, and leaves.

  I’m too shocked to even cry, at once furious at her for being so angry at my well-intentioned efforts and even more furious with myself for not just keeping my mouth shut.

  I head to the kitchen to clean up and then go to check e-mail before bed. There is a message in the website in-box from C. Duncan. I open it.

  Jodi—

  Imagine my surprise when I Googled your name and got over 10,000 hits! You are quite the cottage industry. I couldn’t help but glance over the website. I don’t think I’m your target demographic, but I was still impressed. Hope the casserole turned out good. Just wanted to wish you a very happy Thanksgiving.

  Talk to you Friday,

  Connor

  This makes me a little bit fuzzy. In a good way. In a way that momentarily makes me forget the recent unpleasantness. I hit Reply.

  Connor—

  Imagine my surprise when I opened my mailbox to find your note. You are a very efficient stalker. The casserole looks good, but the proof, as they say, is in the pudding. I’ll have to tell you on Friday if it tastes as good as it looks.

  Happy Thanksgiving,

  Jodi

  It appears that this year, whatever shit may be hitting the fan, I may actually have one extra thing to be thankful for.

  “Please pass the mashed potatoes,” I say softly, stuffed to the gills but desperate for one more creamy mouthful of comfort.

  Jill picks them up and hands them over without a word.

  “Another triumph, Shirley,” Aunt Ruth says, patting her mouth with a napkin. “The turkey was perfect.”

  “Thanks, Ruthie. It’s all in the brining.” Shirley is beaming, having truly pulled off an extraordinary meal. “See, the thing is, there’s all this flavor in the brine outside the bird and no room inside the bird. So you have to let the bird sort of stew in its own juices overnight to get it to give up some room, so that the flavor can work its way inside.”

  “Interesting.” Ruth takes a sip of wine. “So what you are saying is that in order for the bird to be the best it can be, it has to let some outside influences help.”

  Sweet Calvin and Hobbes, they’re baiting us! “Oh goodness gracious, the two of you are ridiculous,” I say.

  “And very, very unsubtle,” Jill says.

  “Well, what do you expect?” Ruth asks. “All that stomping and muffled yelling and slamming of doors and huffing up and down staircases. We’re old; we’re not deaf or stupid. And the two of you have been polite-ing each other near to death since eight this morning.”

  “We’re having some issues related to work, that’s all; we didn’t want to make a big deal of it,” I say.

  “We just want to have a nice Thanksgiving,” Jill says, not looking at me.

  “The two of you are full of hooey,” Shirley says.

  “Oh, hellfire, Shirley, they’re full of shit,” Ruth snaps. “How can we have a nice day when clearly the two of you didn’t work through this last night, and now, having slept little, I’m sure, you’re working so hard not to say anything that it’s making you unbearable company!”

  “Maybe we should just . . .” Hunter tries to speak.

  “Please,” Jill whispers. And she does it in a tone that tells me that he knows everything, and might not have been totally on her side in the matter. Interesting.

  “Don’t shush the poor boy; he’s getting the brunt of it!” Shirley pipes in. “Hunter, darling, would you join Ruth and me for sherry in the parlor while the girls clean up?” She rises, Hunter automatically getting up and offering her his arm.

  “Don’t forget to soak the roasting pan,” Ruth says, and follows her sister and almost-nephew from the dining room.

  I look at Jill. She looks at the table and sighs. “We’d better start.”

  I fork in one more mouthful of potatoes and get up to begin clearing the mess. One wouldn’t think five adults could create such an enormous amount of dirty dishes, but there is at least an hour of work ahead of us.

  I begin putting leftovers in containers and plastic bags, while Jill starts scraping and stacking plates and dumping silverware into a large bowl. The only noise is the tinkle and clink of china and crystal and a low rumble of talking from the other room. I can’t fucking stand it. I won’t be the first one to say something here; she’s the one who blew up at me instead of acting like a rational person and talking it over.

  “Stop thinking so damn loud; this is not all me,” Jill says quietly.

  “I’m sorry, were you addressing me or those Brussels sprouts?”

  “I can hear your determination not to be the first one to talk from a mile away, Jodi. You’re pretty predictable.” She runs water into the sink and splooshes a bunch of dishwashing liquid over it.

  I stick the last of the food in the fridge and open the dishwasher and start loading the silverware. “You know we don’t sleep on an argument, and you were the one who bailed last night. I tried to talk to you about this, and you shut me down and yelled at me.”

  Jill starts rinsing dishes and adding them to the dishwasher. “You stepped way over a line, and I didn’t feel like we were going to come to a resolution last night. I was too angry. I’m still angry.”

  “I appreciate that, and I’m sorry you’re angry, but all I was doing was . . .”

  “Keeping me out of the loop,” Jill spits out.

  “Protecting you!” Why can’t she see that?

  “I said it before: You cannot protect me from my own business. These aren’t schoolyard bullies calling me Bill because of a bad haircut!”

  I did have to beat up a couple of kids once upon a time when what was supposed to be a Doro
thy Hamill ended up more of a Donny Osmond.

  “I know. This is worse. This could cause us to lose everything.”

  “We can’t lose everything—we haven’t done anything wrong! I’m not doing anything wrong! And what I’m doing has not one fucking thing to do with our business!”

  I slam the last fork into the basket. “You have got to be kidding me! You saw the mail, you read the e-mails, how can you think things are separate? It’s all there in black and white. People who trusted us feel betrayed. Who are the Spinster Sisters if you aren’t a spinster anymore? And who are we if we aren’t the Spinster Sisters?” Hot tears begin to fall down my cheeks.

  Jill puts down the plate she is holding, dries her hands on a towel, and comes over to me. She opens her arms and we hug tightly. “We are Jodi and Jill, and we will always be sisters and best friends and partners, always. It doesn’t matter if I get married or you do, or if the business folds or changes into something else. We are always us; nothing can change that.”

  I hiccup. “I didn’t mean to belittle you or be overbearing.”

  “I didn’t mean to accuse you of ill intentions.”

  “I’m really happy you’re getting married.”

  “I promise it won’t change me or us.”

  We look at each other and smile.

  I tweak her nose. “I love you, Moose Face.”

  She pinches my cheek. “I love you, too, Butthead.”

  “Let’s get them the hell in here to help dry the damn glasses.”

  “Indeed.”

  Jill goes to let Hunter and the aunts know that the storm has passed and that it is safe to come into the kitchen, and I turn to the sink. I hope she is right. I really need her to be right on this one.

  Which Way the Wind Blows

  Honesty isn’t really always the best policy. Whenever you choose to share something potentially hurtful with a friend or lover, you should stop to think about why you are sharing it. Yes, it can be important to talk about issues that are negatively impinging on a relationship. If someone is doing something that hurts your feelings, it is essential to confront them about that. However, some things truly are better left unsaid. If you are jealous of your friend’s new job, that isn’t about her; it is about you, and telling her will only make her feel self-conscious about talking to you. If the problem rests with you, keep it to yourself, work through your own issues, and try to look at why you are feeling the way you are feeling. I would bet that you are really dissatisfied with your own work situation, and if that is the case, be happy for your friend, and get off your tush and try to do something to alter your own career path.