Skipping a Beat

by Sarah Pekkanen

  I couldn’t be too prepared. Cheryl and I had won the two chances to present our Gloss campaigns, and she was a wild card. Many of her campaigns were uninspired, but when she nailed it, she was spectacular. I was dying to sneak a peek at her storyboard, but I knew she was guarding it like a hostage. As I was mine.

  Cheryl was thirty-three, four years older than me, and she worked hard. But I worked harder. I lived, breathed, and slept my job. Seriously; if I weren’t so chastened by Donna’s disapproving huffs when she noticed the imprint of my head on my couch cushion, I’d barely have any reason to go home at night. Even though I’d lived in New York for seven years—ever since Richards, Dunne & Krantz came recruiting at my grad school at Northwestern and made me an offer—I’d only made one real friend in the city: Matt. My job didn’t leave time for anyone or anything else.

  “Lindsey?” Donna’s head poked into my office. “It’s your mom on the phone. She said she’s at the hospital.”

  I snatched up the phone. Could something have happened to Dad? I knew retiring from the federal government wouldn’t be good for him; he’d immediately begun waging a vicious gardening war with our next-door neighbor, Mr. Simpson. When I was home for Thanksgiving—two years ago; last year I’d missed the holiday because I had to throw together a last-minute campaign for a resort in Saint Lucia that was suffering a reservations lull—I’d had to physically stop Dad from climbing a ladder and sawing off all the branches of Simpson’s trees at the exact point where they crossed over our property line.

  “Oh, honey, you’ll never believe it.” Mom sighed deeply. “I bought a subscription to O magazine last month, remember?”

  “Ye-es,” I lied, wondering how this story could possibly end in a mad rush to the hospital to reattach Dad’s forearm.

  “So I bought the November issue and filled out the subscription card that comes inside,” Mom said, settling in for a cozy chat. “You know those little cards that are always falling out of magazines and making a mess on the floor? I don’t know why they have to put so many of them in. I guess they think if you see enough of them you’ll just go ahead and subscribe to the magazine.”

  She paused thoughtfully. “But that’s exactly what I did, though, so who am I to cast stones?”

  “Mom.” I cradled the phone between my shoulder and ear and massaged my temples. “Is everything okay?”

  Mom sighed. “I just got my first issue of O magazine today, and it’s the November issue! Which, of course, I’ve already read.” Her voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper: “And so has your father, but you didn’t hear it from me. That means I get only eleven issues and I’ve paid for twelve.”

  “Lindsey?” It was Donna again. “Matt’s here. Should I send him in?”

  “Please,” I said, covering the mouthpiece.

  Mom was still talking. “. . . almost like they’re trying to trick you because they say ‘Save fourteen dollars off the cover price’ but if you end up with two of the same issue and you paid for them both, you’re really only saving ten forty-five with tax—Dad sat right down with a paper and pencil and did the math—and—”

  “Mom,” I cut in. “Are you at the hospital?”

  “Yes,” Mom said.

  Pause.

  “Um, Mom?” I said. “Why are you at the hospital?”

  “I’m visiting Mrs. Magruder. Remember, she had a hip replacement? She won’t be able to manage stairs for six weeks. Last time I was here I noticed the waiting room only had copies of Golf Magazine and Highlights and I thought, No sense in me having two copies of O magazine. Maybe someone else can enjoy it. And there’s a recipe for low-fat cheesecake with whipped cream—the secret is applesauce, of all things—”

  “Mom, I’ll take care of it.” I cut her off just before the pressure in my head began boiling and shrieking like a teapot. “I’ll call Oprah’s office directly.”

  Matt stepped into my office, one eyebrow raised. He was wearing a black blazer, which looked good with his curly dark hair. I’d have to tell him black was his color, I thought absently.

  “Thank you, honey,” Mom said, sounding the tiniest bit disappointed that she couldn’t milk it a bit longer. “It’s so nice to have a daughter who knows the right people.”

  “Tell Stedman we should go fly-fishing again sometime,” Matt stage-whispered as I made a gun out of my thumb and index finger and shot him in the chest.

  “By the way, did you hear about Alex?” Mom asked.

  I should’ve known it would be impossible for us to end our conversation without a mention of my twin sister. If she compliments me, Mom has to say something nice about Alex. Sometimes I wonder if Alex and I are as competitive as we are because Mom is so scrupulously fair in the way she treats us. Probably, I thought, feeling comforted that I could reliably blame my personal failings on my parents.

  I sighed and squinted at my watch: fifty-eight minutes.

  “Oprah,” Matt croaked, rolling around on my office floor and clutching his chest. “Rally your angel network. I’m seeing . . . a . . . white . . . light.”

  “The TV station is expanding Alex’s segments!” Mom said. “Now she’ll be on Wednesdays and Fridays instead of just Fridays. Isn’t that wonderful?”

  When people learn I have a twin, the first thing they ask is whether we’re identical. Unless, of course, they see Alex and me together, in which case their brows furrow and their eyes squint and you can almost see their brains clog with confusion as they stutter, “Twins? But . . . but . . . you look nothing alike.”

  Alex and I are about as unidentical as it’s possible to be. I’ve always thought I look like a child’s drawing of a person: straight brown lines for the hair and eyebrows, eyes and nose and mouth and ears generally in the right places and in the right numbers. Nothing special; just something to pin on the refrigerator door before it’s covered by grocery lists and report cards and forgotten. Whereas Alex . . . Well, there’s no other word for it: she’s flat-out gorgeous. Stunning. Breathtaking. Dazzling. Apparently there are a few other words for it after all.

  She started modeling in high school after a talent scout approached her at a mall, and though she never made it big in New York because she’s only five foot six, she gets a steady stream of jobs in our hometown of Bethesda, in suburban Washington, D.C. A few years ago, she got a part-time job for the NBC affiliate covering celebrity gossip (or “entertainment,” as she loftily calls it). For three minutes a week—six now that her appearances are being doubled—she’s on camera, bantering with the movie review guys and interviewing stars who are shooting the latest political thriller film in D.C.

  I know, I know, I hear you asking what she looks like. Everyone wants to know what she looks like. Alex is a redhead, but not one of those Ronald McDonald—haired ones with freckles that look splattered on by Jackson Pollock. Her long hair is a glossy, dark red, and depending on the light, it has hints of gold and caramel and chocolate. She can never walk a city block without some woman begging her for the name of her colorist. It’s natural, of course. Her skin defies the redhead’s law of pigmentation by tanning smoothly and easily, her almond-shaped eyes are a shade precisely between blue and green, and her nose is straight and unremarkable, the way all good, obedient little noses should be. My father can still fit into the pants he wore in high school; Alex got his metabolism. My mother hails from a long line of sturdy midwestern corn farmers; I got hers. But no bitterness here.

  “I’ll call Alex later and congratulate her,” I told Mom.

  “Oh, and she booked the photographer for the wedding,” Mom said, winding up for another lengthy tangential chat. Alex’s upcoming wedding could keep our phone lines humming for hours.

  “I’ve got to run,” I cut her off. “Big morning. I’m going after a new account and the clients are flying in from Aspen this morning.”

  “Aspen?” Mom said. “Are they skiers?”

  “The really rich people don’t go to Aspen to ski,” I told her. “They go to hang out with
other rich people. My clients have the mansion next door to Tom Cruise’s.”

  “Are they movie stars?” Mom squealed. The woman does love her People magazine. And so does Dad, though he’d never admit it.

  “Even better,” I said. “They’re billionaires.”

  I hung up and took a bite of blueberry muffin, but it tasted like dust in my mouth. It wasn’t the muffin’s fault; it was the unpleasant thought tugging at me like an itch. I’d told Mom about my presentation so the message would get back to Alex: You’re prettier, but don’t ever forget that I’m more successful. Don’t get me wrong; I love my sister—she can be generous and outspoken and funny—but no one can push my buttons like Alex. Around her, I light up like a skyscraper’s elevator control panel at rush hour. We’re complete opposites, always have been. It’s like our DNA held a meeting in the womb and divvied up the goods: I’ll trade you my sex appeal strands for a double dose of organizational skills, my genes must’ve said. Deal, Alex’s genes answered, and if you’ll just sign this form relinquishing any claim to long legs, you can have my work ethic, too.

  If Alex and I weren’t related, we’d have absolutely nothing in common. The thing about Alex is that she doesn’t just grab the spotlight, she wrestles it to the ground and straddles it and pins its hands to the floor so it has no chance of escaping. And it isn’t even her fault; the spotlight wants to be dominated by her. The spotlight screams “Uncle!” the second it sees her. People are dazzled by Alex. Men send her so many drinks it’s a wonder she isn’t in AA; women give her quick appraising looks and memorize her outfit, vowing to buy it because if it looks even half as good on them . . . ; even cranky babies stop crying and give her gummy smiles when they see her behind them in the grocery store line.

  If Alex weren’t my sister, I probably wouldn’t be nearly so driven. But I learned long ago that it’s easy to get lost and overlooked when someone like Alex is around. In a way, she has made me who I am today.

  I pushed away my muffin and glanced over at Matt. He was sprawled on my couch, one leg hooked over the armrest, half-asleep. How he always managed to stay calm amid the chaos and frenzy of our agency was a mystery. I’d have to ask him for his secret. When I had time, which I didn’t right now, since I was due downstairs in forty-four minutes. Mason was letting me greet the clients, since I was presenting first, and Cheryl would get to walk them to their car afterward.

  “Can we do one more run-through?” I begged.

  “We did twelve yesterday,” Matt reminded me, yawning. He opened one sleepy-looking brown eye and peered up at me.

  “You’re right, you’re right,” I said, lining up the pencils on my desk at a perfect right angle to my stapler. “I don’t want to sound overrehearsed.”

  “Knock it off, OCD girl,” Matt said, pulling himself up off the couch and stealing a bite of my muffin. “Mmm. How can you not be eating this?”

  “I had a bowl of Advil for breakfast,” I told him. “High in fiber.”

  “You’re beyond help,” he said. “What time is the party tonight?”

  “Seven-thirty,” I said. “Is Pam coming?”

  Pam was Matt’s new girlfriend. I hadn’t met her yet, but I was dying to.

  “Yep,” he said.

  Tonight was our office holiday party.

  Tonight was also the night the name of the new VP creative director would be announced.

  “Nervous?” Matt asked me.

  “Of course not,” I lied.

  “Step away from the Advil,” Matt ordered me, slapping my hand as it instinctively went for my desk drawer. “Let’s get your storyboards into the conference room. You know you’re gonna kick ass, Madam Vice President.”

  And just like that, the cold knot of anxiety in my stomach loosened the tiniest bit. Like I said, Matt was my only real friend at the office.

  Read an excerpt from Sarah Pekkanen’s

  All Is Bright.

  I was rounding the corner of a grocery store when my cart almost collided with one coming the other way.

  “Sorry!” called a voice from my past.

  I froze, gripping the cold metal handle, as Griffin’s mother’s sweet, crisp voice conjured a series of memories that swept through my mind like flashcards: her giving me a lime-flavored lollipop and bandaging my skinned knee after I tripped on a rock during a game of tag in her backyard. The expression on her face—pure disappointment; so much more potent than anger—when she caught Grif and me sharing a Marlboro Light, purloined from his aunt’s purse, at the age of fifteen. The tears she didn’t try to hide the night of my senior prom as she snapped photos of her son and me, our dark straight hair, blue eyes, and the bright red of my dress and his cummerbund all forming a pleasing match.

  “Elise! What are you doing back in town?” Janice cried now as she hurried over in her parka and puffy down boots—a far more sensible ensemble for the Chicago winter than the Levi’s and brown leather boots I’d pulled on before my flight in from San Francisco. “Your dad and Clarissa are in . . . India, is it? Or could it be Iceland? They send postcards, but it’s hard to keep track! Does Griffin know you’re here?”

  Another Janice memory: Her questions tumbled over one another like socks in a spinning dryer. But the habit had always soothed me. Janice’s chatter wasn’t demanding; you could pick which questions you wanted to answer, and she’d skip ahead to new ones without backtracking over the ones you ignored.

  “Indonesia,” I said into her auburn-tinted hair, because her arms were wrapped around me. Janice always hugged like she meant it. “They’re in Jakarta right now. I came home because I didn’t want Nana to be alone on Christmas.”

  “Of course. How is your grandma? Your dad said her arthritis hasn’t worsened much, thank goodness. But you’re staying alone in that big old house?” Janice asked. Her eyes widened. “Unless you brought someone with you . . .”

  “Oh, no way,” I blurted. “I’m not seeing anyone.” That had come out wrong. “I mean, not that it’s bad to be dating already—I’m happy Grif is. Truly.”

  Smooth, my inner critic threw into the conversation.

  “Did you just get in today? The house must be so chilly. And nothing in the fridge, of course, after all these weeks . . . If I’d known, I would have dropped off some milk and bread. But that’s what you’re taking care of right now, isn’t it?”

  I nodded. “I took the red eye in, ran into the house and blasted the heat, and headed straight back out for coffee and groceries. We were delayed on the runway for three hours and I sat next to a guy with a bad head cold. I’ve never been happier to walk off a plane in my life.”

  “Poor thing.” Janice reached out and rubbed circles on my back. I swallowed against the lump filling my throat. Janice was small and thin, with quick birdlike gestures, yet she managed to be all soft edges. How could I have imagined she’d hate me? I thought as her brown eyes smiled up at me.

  I hadn’t talked to Janice in more than eight months—since the night I sat next to Griffin in his bottle-green Jeep as we drove away from a sushi restaurant, tears staining both of our cheeks. Seeing Janice again made my heart constrict with the realization of how much I’d missed her. Not Grif—her. That encompassed the reasons why Grif had broken up with me, and why I hadn’t been able to end things with him long ago. The truth was, I was more afraid of losing his mom than of losing him.

  Griffin and I had dated on and off since our sophomore year of high school—taking a long break during college, and another, longer one when we were twenty-five. After we got back together for the final time, he moved to Los Angeles for a new sales job and I went along, hoping things might finally work out for us. But over a carafe of cold sake at a restaurant in Huntington Beach, a week after my thirtieth birthday, he asked if I wanted to get married. He wasn’t proposing, just revisiting a discussion we’d had before. I’d always told him I needed more time.

  “You’re never going to be ready, are you?” he’d said. “Will it ever be the right time, Elise?�
�� I’d looked down at the napkin twisting in my hands, thinking about the chemistry lab we’d once taken together. We’d spent the whole semester putting two different elements together and waiting for reactions—a fantastic explosion, a fizzle, or something in between. Grif was funny, handsome, and smart, and yet I never saw sparks or felt a burst of heat with him—I was always stuck somewhere in between.

  Two weeks later, I left L.A. for San Francisco, hoping distance would help both of us heal. I’d sent Janice a note a month later, and she’d written me back, both of us being careful and polite. Too polite. I hadn’t known how she really felt until now.

  “You know, we’re on our own this year, too,” Janice was saying. “Jake came home for Thanksgiving”—Jake was their older son, who’d gotten married to his boyfriend a few years earlier—“but they flew out to be with Dave’s parents for Hanukkah. They rotate their visits every other year. And Griffin went to Minnesota to meet Ilsa’s family. It’s funny how empty the house seems. We’ve gotten used to it, for the most part, but during the holidays . . .”

  Grif went to meet Ilsa’s family? For Christmas?

  I felt a pang in the middle of my rib cage. Grif and I spoke or e-mailed every month or so—we were still trying to navigate our way back to the friendship that predated our romance—but I hadn’t realized his new relationship was so serious.

  “I brought something for you and Stephen,” I said when I realized the silence had stretched out a beat too long. “I was going to drop it off tomorrow on my way to see Nana.”

  She hesitated, then smiled. “Why don’t you come over tonight for dinner?”

  “Are you sure?” My voice was so eager it embarrassed me. Janice’s house was never unwelcoming, but oh, at Christmastime . . . She made homemade gingerbread whoopie pies, layered with whipped cream and caramel, and spiced cider bubbled on the stove. The hearth was lined with stockings for two cats and a shaggy old dog along with the rest of the family. And every year since I’d turned seven or eight and began spending almost as much time at Griffin’s house as my own, there was a gift labeled with my name under the tree. Neighbors popped by with jugs of eggnog or plates of iced sugar cookies, and everyone gathered around the upright piano as Stephen played and he and Janice sang carols—a tradition that had deeply humiliated Grif as a teen. When he entered his twenties, he joined in the singing, and so did I.