by Unknown
Mom and Norah talked about area preschools. Phil picked up Eliot when he started to fuss, planted a kiss on Norah’s forehead, and disappeared with him into the house. The late afternoon edged into dusk. After a while, the conversation ebbed, and I realized it was just the four of us at the table. My sisters, my mother, and me. And all the baggage we carried with us and crowded into our little family circle. All the ghosts and the lies and the betrayals. Ancient history cheek by jowl with the present day and I didn’t know, any longer, what I saw when I looked around.
“Uh-oh,” Raine said with a laugh. “Welcome to the ominous silence portion of the evening. Someone better hurry up and say something, or who knows what could happen?”
“I think we all know exactly what could happen,” Norah retorted with a sniff.
I thought, very clearly: Here we go. And then: I can’t do another round of this.
I turned and looked directly at Raine. “Why didn’t you tell me years ago that you and Matt were more than friends?”
Raine’s face briefly took on that expression I’d last seen in the dressing room at the King of Prussia Mall. It was still an upsetting expression to view on your sister’s face, I found. Then she made a great show of blinking in astonishment.
“Wow,” she said. She let out a small laugh. “Really? That’s what you want to talk about?” She shrugged and looked sad. For me. “I thought you were over that whole thing.”
Mom looked sad as well, I thought. But then, she also thought I was the bunny boiler in this scenario. Norah frowned.
“It’s probably difficult for Courtney to get over the fact that you ran off to California with her first boyfriend,” Norah snapped at Raine. “And—shocker—I think you’ll find most people would be similarly unable to get past that kind of thing.”
I hadn’t been expecting Norah’s support, and neither, it seemed, had Raine. I let out the breath I’d been holding in a rush. Mom looked at me as comprehension dawned across her face. But if I’d thought the truth of my relationship with Matt would change things, I was mistaken.
“Kind of the way most people might be opposed to their younger sister getting together with their boyfriend?” Raine snapped at Norah. Her gaze was hard when she turned to me. “How could you get together with him, Courtney, when you spent your whole life watching him be with me?” She let out a small laugh. “Why would you want to?”
“Which brings me back to my original question,” I said quietly. “Why did you lie about your relationship with him?”
“Why did you?” she countered.
Raine and I stared at each other across the table. I was sure I could see actual dislike in her eyes. I didn’t know what to do with that. But then, that was a feeling I was starting to get used to.
“Because she lies about everything,” Norah said with a sigh. “It’s what she does, Courtney.”
Raine turned a withering look on Norah, but instead of saying anything, looked to Mom instead.
“See?” She shook her head. “She’s the instigator, not me. She goes out of her way to make every single moment a character assassination.”
“Are you tattling on me?” Norah’s voice was amazed, and cuttingly sarcastic. “You’re telling Mom on me?”
“That’s enough out of both of you,” Mom said then, but it was like ordering a wave not to break. Raine was already scowling at Norah.
“You’re so desperate to claim the moral high ground, aren’t you?” she sneered.
“That’s because I have the moral high ground,” Norah retorted with a sharp laugh. “I thought it was bad enough what you did to my wedding. But the fact you broke Courtney’s heart as well? All in one fell swoop? What aren’t you capable of?”
“And you wonder why I didn’t come home for six years.” I wasn’t sure who Raine was speaking to. Her voice was low, and furious. “I don’t know why it even surprises me anymore. This is what you do, Norah. You drive people away. No wonder Dad had to get the hell out of here!”
We all sort of froze at that one. I saw Norah’s eyes practically shine red with temper, and she opened her mouth—
But Mom cut her off.
“Enough,” she said, slapping her hands down on the table. Her palms cracked loud in the night. “The two of you and this constant bickering! Where does it end? I’m about to write the pair of you off altogether!”
It was an uncharacteristic flare-up on her part, one she punctuated by snatching up her plate and stalking toward the back door. It slammed behind her.
“And off she goes,” Norah said. “Unbelievable.”
She and Raine laughed a short sort of laugh together. I looked at each of them. I didn’t know which part was more surprising—that they agreed on something so much that they could share a chuckle over it, or that they were capable of agreeing on something in the first place.
“The fact is,” Norah said, turning to me, “you’re the baby. You probably don’t remember how destroyed she was when he left. She mourned him for whole decades, and believe me, I know, because I had to pick up the pieces.”
“She never stopped dating that guy,” I informed her. Because she wasn’t the only one who knew things. “Leonard. They’ve been together for years.”
My sisters looked at me as if I had announced that a spaceship had landed three feet to the left of us, in Mom’s bushes, and aliens were emerging as we spoke.
“I saw them. She told me all about it.”
“Courtney, give it a rest,” Raine said then. “It’s not funny.”
It had never occurred to me that they would refuse to believe me. I didn’t quite know what to do.
“So let me see if I’m following this,” I said, and I could hear the temper crackling in my voice. “I’m gullible. I’m naïve and a bit stupid. I didn’t know what was happening then, or, clearly, now. I’m not even allowed to have an opinion about the things our mother told me personally, because what I remember about our childhood is worthless. Am I missing something?”
“Settle down, Courtney,” Norah ordered me, every inch the bossy older sister. “I understand that you’re upset.”
“I’m not upset,” I contradicted her. “I just don’t agree with you. Historically, you don’t like that very much.”
“Historically, everyone did the best they could for you.” Norah even waved her hand a little bit, dismissively.
Because they knew best, was the unsaid undercurrent there. I couldn’t see how to interpret that as anything but a confirmation of what I’d said three seconds before.
When was I going to matter? Lucas had asked the question, and I couldn’t let myself think about Lucas at the moment, but I could let his outrage on my behalf motivate me.
“No, you didn’t,” I said. Fiercely.
Norah raised a quizzical brow at me, professor to unruly student. Raine was sipping at her wine, perfectly content, in the center of another maelstrom.
“No, who didn’t?” she asked, almost lazily.
“No, everyone did not do the best for me they could,” I snapped out. And then I just kept going. “What everyone did was abandon me. I’m not talking about Dad. If I hadn’t had my cello, what would I have had? Certainly nothing from this family. Certainly nothing from either of you.”
“I practically raised you myself!” Norah retorted. “Mom was nowhere to be found, and I was the one who picked up the slack around here.”
“Mom was working, Norah,” I snapped at her. “Not off wailing at Dad’s grave, or eating bon-bons, or whatever you tell yourself. Working.”
“I never abandoned you!” she hurled at me.
“The two of you have only ever been interested in fighting with each other, and scoring points,” I threw back at her. “You boss me around, and you,”—I turned to Raine—“try to make me feel bad about my life.”
“You control how you feel,” Raine replied, all kinds of San Francisco Zen. “You shouldn’t let other people take your power.”
And the worst part was, she
was right. Hippie-dippy as that might sound, she was absolutely right. I’d let her bully me, passive-aggressively and outwardly, with all her talk of tiny lives and dead white composers. She couldn’t have done it so well without my silence and inability to stand up for myself. I was complicit in how badly she’d made me feel. And I hated that.
“This might come as a shock to you,” I told her, furious at all of it, her part as well as mine. “But it’s actually hard to do what I do. It takes years of practice to even get into the orchestra, and constant practice to stay on it. It’s not a backup plan or somehow disappointing to play dead white guys, it’s prestigious. How can you not see that?”
“My God.” Raine’s eyes were lit up with something calculating as she gazed back at me, her voice wondering. “Is this about your Matt issues? I feel like I don’t know you at all, Courtney.”
“I feel like you don’t, either,” I agreed. “And no, this isn’t about Matt. It’s about the fact that you should think before you put down the career I’ve spent my entire life working toward.”
“I had no idea you were so conceited,” Raine said. As if it hurt her to be so wrong about me.
“Conceited?” I repeated. I couldn’t believe she’d said it. Or that Norah wasn’t jumping in there to defend me.
I looked from one sister to the other, and then back.
“Are you kidding me?” I asked. Rhetorically. “How am I conceited?”
“It’s bad enough we’ve had to spend our whole lives bowing down to you and your cello,” Raine continued, her eyes hard on mine. “Courtney has to practice. Courtney has to have extra classes and special tutors. Courtney has her seven hundredth recital. Courtney has to get all the attention, because she’s such a prodigy. I had no idea you were still so enamored of yourself.”
“I don’t think that’s fair,” Norah interjected. As defenses went, I thought that was pretty lame.
“I’m surprised you have the nerve, to be honest.” Raine was still looking at me, her chin jutting out. “After all we did for you.”
“Like what, exactly, did you do for me?” I asked her acidly. “Sleep with my boyfriend? Steal him? At least Norah did the grocery shopping.”
“You know what?” Raine got to her feet. “I’ve had enough. I don’t need this. I came back home to reconnect, but it seems like neither one of you is interested, and that’s fine. I’m happy to go right back to my life, with my actual friends, where people appreciate me.”
I thought of that wacky bar in Cow Hollow, and the woman who had gushed over Raine’s photographs, and I thought that she probably preferred adoration to simple appreciation.
“Taking your ball and going home, again?” Norah asked. “Typical. I realize you expected everyone to welcome your prodigal self with open arms, Raine, but after everything you did the last time you were home, are you truly surprised it didn’t end up that way?”
“I’m not surprised by anything,” Raine said with a sniff. Then she looked over at me. “Except you, Courtney. I should have realized that you aren’t trapped in a small little life. You’ve chosen it.”
“You don’t know a thing about my life,” I told her, a sudden, hot river of fury roaring in my ears and making my voice shake.
“Don’t try to justify selling out to me,” she threw back at me. “I’m sorry that you’re so divorced from your own artistic drive that you can’t even see what you’re doing anymore.” She laid a hand across her heart. “I live my art, Courtney. I can’t even comprehend what you do.”
“This is all my fault,” I said then, feeling slightly lightheaded. “I had this fantasy about our family, about sisters. But I don’t have it anymore. I don’t care if either one of you comes to my engagement party. Or my wedding.”
“Very dramatic,” Norah said into the humming sort of silence that followed that, her voice as impatient as ever, “but don’t be silly. We can all pull ourselves together—”
“I don’t care,” I said again, and the craziest thing of all was that I meant it. I honestly didn’t care what Raine or Norah did. At that moment, I could have cheerfully washed my hands of my entire dysfunctional family.
And then I wondered, Why not do exactly that?
“Of course you care,” Norah was saying crossly.
“Norah.”
Something in my tone must have surprised her, because she stopped talking. Raine was standing a few feet away, her eyes narrow as she watched me.
“I really don’t,” I told them both quietly. So there could be no mistake. “Lucas has enough family for the both of us.”
But of course, I couldn’t call Lucas, or run to him, because even though I wanted to, that would mean a conversation I wasn’t ready to have. Maybe ever. Also, after my recent behavior, I didn’t deserve him and I knew it. So when I got on the train, I called Verena.
“I’m not sure we’re talking,” she said instead of saying hello. “I may be staging a protest against all things Matt Cheney.”
“I don’t care what you’re doing,” I told her. “I need to go out and get very, very drunk. So drunk that I might wake up as someone else.”
“That never really happens,” she said with a sigh. “You always end up as you, only worse off. Believe me, I know.”
“We’ll see about that,” I told her.
We met in Manayunk, a former manufacturing town turned emergent neighborhood to the northwest of Center City, where the bars were always crowded and Verena was always claiming she was about to get a loft space in which to celebrate her artistic vision. We set about warding off the approach of clean-cut yuppie sorts of men at a place called Tonic, as we sat near the bar and became a part of the crowd surging all around us.
I told Verena every detail of what had happened earlier at Family Dinner, and she expressed her outrage and disgust. In honor of my sisters and the fact they were currently and for all time dead to me, I decided that something called the Poison Apple Martini was my drink of choice. It called to mind fairy tales and evil stepsisters, and I felt it was appropriate. Verena chose to drink Cherry Bombs, because she was wearing red. And despite the fact I was knocking drinks back at an alarming rate, I didn’t think I was drunk.
In the cab ride back into Center City, many hours and innumerable drinks later, I still didn’t think I was drunk. I cursed out both of my sisters, at length, and confessed to the taxi driver that I suspected no member of my family had ever loved me and I couldn’t be asked to care—because Verena was no longer listening to me, being far too busy sending X-rated text messages to various people in her phone book.
I waved a cheery good-bye to Verena outside my apartment building, and was taken aback to discover that someone had messed around with the outer door, making it almost impossible to open. It took me ages to turn the key in the lock. I made a mental note to speak to the landlord, and then staggered inside and up the stairs to our apartment.
I didn’t think I was drunk when I threw open our front door, so hard that it rebounded off the wall and careened back into me. I thought it was strange that the hinges were so loose. I didn’t think I was drunk when Lucas emerged from his office, rubbed his eyes, and stared at me.
“Look at the state you’re in,” he said, shaking his head. Or maybe he wasn’t, in fact, shaking his head. “Do you know what time it is? I thought you were dead in a ditch!”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said with great dignity. “Verena and I had a few drinks. So what? Stop trying to control me.”
Or anyway, that’s what I meant to say. I suspected what came out sounded a bit different.
“Go to bed, Courtney,” Lucas said, and I could see that he was Not Happy With Me.
I thought he was behaving like a jealous, controlling freak, and told him so. At great length. Then I decided he was too crazy to deal with, so I headed toward our bedroom, stripped, and crawled into bed.
I knew I wasn’t drunk. But I was exhausted beyond the telling of it.
It didn’t c
ross my mind that I might have been drunk until several hours later, when I found myself naked and crouched on the cold tile floor of the bathroom, cheek against the toilet seat.
I really, really wanted to crawl back into my warm and soft bed, where I could drift off into much-needed sleep. And I would have, were it not for the odd seasickness I was experiencing.
It took me longer than it should have to figure out that no, the nausea and dizziness was not some strange flu that had come on while I dozed. Oh, no. It was my body’s sin tax on debauchery.
I had been drunk—was in all likelihood still drunk—and now I had to pay.
I pulled Lucas’s comfy robe down from the hook on the back of the bathroom door and pulled it around me for warmth, then cradled my head on my arms. Then, there was nothing to do but breathe and hope the horrible spinning went away.
I breathed in. I breathed out.
So far, so good.
It was amazing how the whole world could shrink down until it was no more than the space of our tiny green bathroom, with the ancient heat vent and the draft, and me with my head propped up in front of me.
I held myself perfectly still, and waited for sleep, only briefly waking up when Lucas appeared beside me, gathered me up, and carried me to bed.
Chapter Twenty-Three
A few hours later, I woke up again and wished I were dead.
Mostly because I felt like I already was. It was immediately evident to me that I had been involved in a horrible, horrible accident.
I rubbed my hands over my face and tried to assess the damage. I appeared to be wearing a T-shirt. My hair was a rat’s nest. I lifted my head off the pillow and felt the headache kick it up from a waltz to more of a Lindy Hop. Ouch.
I struggled into sitting position, and that was when I saw Lucas.
He was standing at the foot of the bed, dressed, his arms crossed, and a brooding sort of look on his face.
