The Favorite Sister

by Jessica Knoll

  I pay for the half hour of in-flight Internet on the way to L.A., but after the first thirty minutes I still haven’t heard back from Gwen, and still nothing after an hour. I film a few clips of myself on the GoPro camera production gave me to use on the plane.

  “On my way to meet the Oscar-Nominated Female Director,” I whisper, so as not to disrupt the other Mint passengers, and the line works like an affirmation. I’m on my way to meet the Oscar-Nominated Female Director. Gwen isn’t avoiding me. It means nothing that she has requested my AQ.

  It’s not until I’ve shelled out $7.95 for the fourth time that Gwen gets back to me.

  The director dinner!!! You must tell me how it goes!! Don’t worry about the AQ—just wanted to check on something! Did you see your piece in the Times?! That picture—you look like you’re twelve! I think Gwen has hit her yearly exclamation-point quota in a single email to me.

  Of course I’ve seen the Times piece. I’ve seen the Times piece and the People piece and the HuffPo piece and the piece on The Cut and in a few months there will be the Vogue piece and an interview with Vanity Fair. There are so many pieces coming out that when I land and listen to the voicemail from a reporter fact-checking a story, I don’t even pay attention to what publication he says he is from. I call him back and when he tells me he’s with The Smoking Gun, I apologize, telling him I didn’t put this interview date into my calendar.

  “We didn’t have one,” he says, as I pass under a sign that reads “Yoga Room This Way.” Definitely in L.A. “I was hoping to confirm that your birth date is 10/17/82 and that the date you graduated high school was May 2000.”

  I stop walking. “Why?”

  “Are those the correct dates?”

  “They are correct, yes,” I say, and they are, so why do I immediately regret my answer?

  “Thank you,” he says, and hangs up.

  I dial Gwen, who is in a meeting. “Can you please tell her it’s urgent, Stephanie?”

  “I will,” Stephanie promises, dutifully.

  “Stephanie, do you know why The Smoking Gun would be calling me?”

  “They called you?”

  The alarm in her voice turns my stomach. I am right there with her, but I can’t bear to hear it echoed in my own. I make it sound like it wasn’t a big deal. “They just wanted to confirm my birthday and the year I graduated high school.”

  “What did you tell them?”

  “I confirmed it.” Silence. “They had their dates right.”

  “I’ll let Gwen know they’re calling you now,” Stephanie says.

  “Calling me now? What . . . have they been calling you? Does this have something to do with Gwen asking for my AQ?”

  “I really don’t know all the details, Stephanie,” Stephanie says, softly. But of course she does. She’s the receptionist at the oncology unit, telling you not to worry while looking at your lab results that say stage four. “I’ll have Gwen call as soon as she’s back at her desk, okay?”

  I’m in my tiny corner room at the Sunset Tower Hotel, House Hunters failing to attenuate my anxiety, when my phone seizures on the nightstand. It’s my motion picture agent, not Gwen.

  “Hi,” she says, then, “so.”

  The Oscar-Nominated Female Director has to head to Chicago unexpectedly. She sends her deepest regrets. It means nothing, my agent assures me, and we will find a time for us to get together sometime soon. The good news is that I still have the reservation at Bestia if I’m up for going, just her and me. Or maybe Jesse and I want to go? Jesse. I glance up at the ceiling. She texted me earlier to let me know she had arrived, and we’d worked out that she is in the room directly above mine. I’ll refrain from doing my step aerobics then, she’d joked. The thought of harpooning her good mood with this news plunges me deeper into the mattress.

  I thank my agent for the update and we hang up. I don’t risk asking if the cancellation is in any way connected to my conversation with the reporter from The Smoking Gun. Asking would be akin to flaunting symptoms of a flesh-eating plague, like if anyone were to hear me cough, I’d be brutally exiled from mankind’s last surviving community.

  I hold the ceiling in contempt, knowing I need to get up and go upstairs and tell Jesse not to bother breaking out the good Dr. Martens, but upstairs feels far enough away to require a passport. I bargain with my eyelids—five minutes—as the sunset pinkens the smog on the 405.

  I wake to a gaveling on the door. My room is dim and cool, perfect sleeping conditions really, and when I eventually creak to my feet, walking feels like a new skill. Jesse is on the other side of the door, looking like the model-dating member of a boy band in a blaze orange beanie, tight black jeans and a black leather jacket, black Converse sneakers and black socks. “Steph!” She laughs, admonishingly. “We’re going to be late.”

  “Oh my God, Jesse.” I grope the wall for the light switch and flip it on. The bright burst feels like a million hot needles in my eyes. “I fell asleep. I’m so sorry.”

  “Well . . . let’s go! Splash some water on your face and throw on those Jimmy Choos.” She claps her little hands: Chop-chop! “I’ll meet you downstairs.” She starts for the elevator.

  “No, Jesse, no. Wait. The dinner is rescheduled.” I cannot bring myself to say canceled, although that’s what it is.

  Jesse stops and turns, looking forty-whatever again when she furrows her brow. “To when?”

  “I’m not sure. She had to go to Chicago unexpectedly.”

  Jesse exhales through her nose, a single hot puff, like a bull. She lolls her head in a slow arc, the physical embodiment of the words “of course.” Of course she canceled on you. Of course this was going to be a waste of my time. You’re Stephanie Simmons, not Brett Courtney. “Were you going to tell me?”

  “I just found out.”

  “But you were sleeping.”

  “I mean, I found out an hour or so ago. I was going to tell you. I don’t remember falling asleep. I guess I’m more jet-lagged than—”

  Jesse raises a hand, silencing me. “Is this your way of trying to stretch this storyline into another season?”

  It’s not. “It’s not.”

  “Because frankly, Steph, the abuse stuff is too depressing to warrant a two-story arc.”

  I know. “I know.”

  Jesse smashes the elevator button with the heel of her hand.

  “We still have the reservation at Bestia if you want to go,” I try. “I actually do have something to talk to you about. Something not depressing.” It hurts to smile.

  Jesse tugs off her beanie, spiking her short hair with her fingers. “No, well, I actually have work to do.”

  “I think I’m pregnant,” I call out into the hall. The words feel like the bell lap of a race, like emptying the tank; they wind me.

  Jesse checks the panel above the elevator, watching its protracted climb. “But you’re not sure.”

  “I mean, I’m so tired.” I gesture at my disheveled appearance for proof. Sometimes, I think I’m too quick on my feet. I’ve gotten too good at this game.

  Jesse regards me as though I am the last cupcake in the box, left on the counter in the office kitchen overnight. I’m sort of dried out, my buttercream swirl smooshed. But she has a sweet tooth and I’m still a cupcake. “Let me know when you’re sure.”

  She takes the stairs.

  I pass out in my clothes during a Seinfeld episode and when I wake, Kathie Lee and Hoda are drinking wine and my cell is buzzing. I slide my thumb right to answer. “Gwen,” I croak.

  “Did I wake you? I forgot it’s early out there.” There is a raised-eyebrows pause. “Well. Not that early. Want me to call back?”

  “Don’t call me back,” I say, struggling to sit up in bed. “I’m freaking out.” My stomach is screaming and I remember I couldn’t stand the thought of dinner last night.

  “Don’t freak out. This happens all the time with nonfiction.”

  “The Smoking Gun calls up authors to validate their birthdays an
d the year they graduated high school?”

  “Normally they go through the publisher. That’s why I was pulling your AQ. I wanted to be the one to give them those answers so that they wouldn’t call you and make you worry.”

  “But what are they even planning to do with that information?”

  “You know, cross-reference to make sure it all checks out.”

  I need water as a matter of life or death. I clomp a hand around the nightstand, finding the Dasani I took from the airplane yesterday. “What if it doesn’t check out?”

  “You wrote a memoir, Steph, not an autobiography. If some of the dates or details are screwy, it’s really not a story, and they’ll let it go. Like I said, this happens all the time with nonfiction. I doubt it will come to a head.”

  The Dasani bottle is empty. I throw it across the room in despair. I don’t want anyone to make me feel better. I want my misery shared; I want responsibility shared. “I said in the AQ that the book was fiction, Gwen.”

  Gwen is silent so long I pull the phone away from my ear to make sure the call didn’t drop. “I know,” she says, at last.

  “You were the one who said it would have so much more impact if we could package it as a true story. And then when I wouldn’t agree to that—because I’d have to be a real fucking Judas to womankind to lie about being raped!—you said”—and here I do my best impression of a dumbass white girl—“well, like, how about we call it creative nonfiction, not a memoir? So that, like, I could explain to people that the abuse never happened but was a metaphor for, like, how the subtle racism I dealt with growing up was as painful as a physical assault?” I drop my voice. “And I am the fucking weakling who agreed to that, to assuage my guilt just a teensy bit knowing neither of us would correct anyone who assumed it was real, and I am the monster who also agreed to make him black because you said a white kid in a black neighborhood could be more easily traced. So, Gwen, don’t you ever leave me hanging for over twenty-four hours like that again. If I go down, I will do everything in my power to make sure you are right there with me.” I hang up, feeling like I shouldn’t have done that and also like I could have chewed her out for another hour and it wouldn’t have been enough.

  I labor into the bathroom and stick a glass under the tap, examining myself in the mirror while I gulp down aluminum-flavored water. God, it is so much work to be a human being. Eight glasses of water a day—no wonder I look like shit, life is utterly demanding even on the best of days. I turn away from the mess in the mirror and limp back into the room, timbering into bed. I don’t have to leave for the airport for a few hours; I should probably get up and do something. Take advantage of the fact that I am in L.A. Go on a hike. Meditate on a mountaintop. Eat an egg-white frittata. I think about closing the curtains, but the bed is quicksand. I sink into sleep with the sexy SoCal sunshine aging my face.

  Vince is waiting for me in the Air France departures gate at JFK, sitting on my extra-large rose gold Rimowa suitcase in line to check in. When he sees me, he climbs to his feet, guiltily, knowing that I hate it when he treats my nice luggage like a beanbag chair in a dorm room. He threads his fingers through his hair and gives me a busted! smile.

  “I tried to check in for you,” he says. “But apparently that’s a security issue.” He laughs and tosses a flap of hair that is not in his eyes.

  “No shit it’s a security issue.” I send the carry-on I’ve been living out of for the last few days wheeling his way.

  Vince stops it with his foot, his pink pouty lips ajar. He’s been using my Fresh sugar lip scrub while I’ve been away, I see. “Babe?”

  “You can’t check in for somebody else, Vince. Not even someone as devastatingly handsome as you.” I balance my foot on my overturned suitcase and rest my Fendi power bag on my knee, pushing aside old plane ticket stubs and Quest Bar wrappers in search of my wallet. The inside of my purse has never looked like this before in my life. I am not one to take my nice things for granted. I have lived the good life since I was six months old and yet I somehow always knew it would be temporary.

  Vince crouches at the knees so that his face is below mine and he’s gazing up at me. His hair flops forward, skimming his searching, soulful eyes. How he imagined he would look on the movie posters outside Regal Cinema one day. “Steph. Babe. You okay?”

  I have shuffled all of my credit cards and medical ID cards and Sweetgreen rewards cards and I still can’t locate my passport. I tip my head back and tears spill into my ears.

  “Babe,” Vince says, gently, reaching into his back pocket and pulling out my passport. “Is this what you’re looking for?”

  I forgot my passport and Vince suspected I forgot my passport. He looked in the drawer where I keep it before he left for the airport just in case I had. I feel suddenly, overwhelmingly grateful for him, and suddenly, overwhelmingly certain that it is a bad idea I go to Morocco.

  “Come here.” Vince straps his arms around me. “I know you’re disappointed about the dinner with the Female Director. And it’s a lot of travel. You’re tired.”

  I hook my chin over his shoulder, remembering the bartender, and the regret is as express and dangerous as a flash flood, waterlogging my heart. Not regret because I love Vince and I broke our vows—I am so far past that kind of regret—but regret for doing something so careless when there are already so many cracks in the façade and I am running out of caulk. “I am tired.” I sigh, tearfully. “But I’m also scared.” Admitting this turns my tears into physical, silent sobs.

  “But Gwen said not to worry, right?” Vince rubs circles into my back. “This sort of thing happens all the time with nonfiction?”

  “It’s not nonfiction, Vince.”

  Vince’s hand dies between my shoulder blades. He pulls away from me. He takes a step back. The look in his eyes—like he has turned over his meal ticket and realized Oh, shit, she has an expiration date. I shouldn’t be surprised, but still it twists. We loved each other once. I think.

  “Steph,” Vince groans, bringing his hand to his cheek, his revulsion exemplary in case anyone is eavesdropping. Someone is always eavesdropping on this termite mound of a life I’ve built out of my own saliva and dung. “Jesus. You made that up?”

  I look into my husband’s guileless eyes, showing off the acting chops he honed playing cute guy in a bar/elevator/towel in so many CW pilots that never got picked up I’ve lost count. My contempt for him is superhuman. I could pick him up and throw him through the plate glass revolving doors, send him all the way back to the Joey Bag o’ Donuts town where he came from. “Aw,” I say, with pitying scorn, “poor, innocent Vince. Just another victim of his fame-hungry wife’s desperate grab for her sixteenth minute. You must be shocked. Appalled! I’m sure that’s how you’ll try to sell me out to TMZ once the divorce is finalized and you’re searching between the couch cushions for quarters.” I shake my steepled hands at the heavens. “Thank you, Mom, for talking me into signing that prenup before you died.”

  Vince checks over his shoulder. Yes, the couple ahead of us in line is listening. In a stage whisper, he says, “Steph, I actually am appalled. You lied about being assaulted? That’s a new low. Even for you.”

  I snort. “You knew none of it was true after chapter five.”

  The memoir is a memoir for the first seventy pages. I did hear things. I did have what felt like an unquenchable thirst for sleep. I did immediately jump to the worst-case scenario, as most teenagers do, that I was showing early signs of a debilitating case of schizophrenia. I did become convinced that if I could get in touch with my biological mother and understand my mental health history, I could somehow outsmart my genes.

  A few months after I heard my first voice, I did pay to run a background check on her. At seventeen, I did gather the courage to drive my baby blue BMW to my biological mother’s residence in a banal middle-class suburb of Philadelphia. As I parked my car across the street from the townhome where my mother lived with my grandmother, on a circle preposterously nam
ed Kensington Court, a boy about my age happened to be walking by my window. He looked like he had just come from some sort of sports practice, the smell of grass and dirt and sweat clinging to him, alluringly. I was quick to call out to him.

  The boy stopped. He looked at my car, eyebrows cocked in appreciation, before registering me and doubling back in surprise. I don’t think he expected to find someone like me behind the wheel.

  “I’m looking for somebody,” I said. I read my mother’s name, written in blue pen at the top of the MapQuest webpage printout. I’m prehistoric, remember.

  The boy made an indeterminable face. He had pretty, curled eyelashes and a strong jaw; the combination of hard and soft was extremely appealing. There were no boys like him in the magazines my friends and I read, but if there were, I would have cut out his picture and taped it to the wall, over the tear of Leonardo DiCaprio dragging down his lower lip with his thumb. I never got the Leo lust, but as a matter of survival, I performed it.

  “I have her address as fifty-four Kensington Court. But this is Kensington Court and there is no fifty-four.”