The Favorite Sister

by Jessica Knoll

  Kelly ducks beneath the banner and pauses before the red door. “Is this . . . ?”

  “She says it’s Rectory Red.”

  Kelly peers closer. “Looks a lot like Blazer.”

  Blazer is the shade of Farrow & Ball paint used in all my studios. I can barely bother to shrug. That I am an object of imitation for some women is old news. “She says it’s Rectory Red.”

  “Well, I mean,” Kelly says, knocking, “we should take it as a compliment.”

  We. It’s like a guy you are very obviously blowing off, very obviously getting ready to break up with, who sends you flowers in a last desperate attempt to rekindle the flame. We.

  I can hear laughing and revelry inside. A Chainsmokers song that will be dubbed over with some nondescript track. (Production music libraries are much cheaper than licensing commercial music.) I can smell food Jen pretends to eat browning on the stove. It’s a decent imitation of a fun summer party, but it’s the difference between a cardboard cutout of your favorite celebrity and having him rescue you in his big strong movie-star arms after you’ve fainted onto the subway tracks. Usually, by the last group shoot of the season, we’re like rubber bands that have been snapped too many times, all the bite of wet spaghetti. The Martini Shot is an old Hollywood term to describe the final setup of the day—because after that, the next shot is out of a glass. This crew has a taste for a different spirit, and thus, this weekend Lisa is here to get her Tequila Shot. It’s a spectacular display of senioritis, the few days of the year Lisa really earns her paycheck. She circulates the room in an attempt to get a current going, whispering in our ears to remind us of all the season’s petty slights, trying to live-wire the action. But tonight feels different. Tonight feels like the start, the music and the laughing a trap when they only used to be a trick.

  Maybe it feels that way because we’ve never been upended by a bombshell this far into the season. Stephanie, man, what were you thinking? In this day and age of digital espionage, you do not tell a lie before you become the lie. If Stephanie wanted to peddle a triumphant survivor’s story as her own, she should have gotten herself invited to dinner at Bill Cosby’s house first.

  She’s been in hiding for the last month, ever since we got back from Morocco. She won’t open her door for anyone—not even Jesse, who knocked two days in a row. I heard she’s still selling a lot of books, but the New York Times has removed her name from The List, as has her agency’s website. Both outlets extended their heartfelt apologies to women of color who are survivors of domestic and sexual abuse. The Oscar-Nominated Female Director publicly denounced The Site of an Evacuation on Jimmy Kimmel, calling it a cowardly appropriation of survivor culture, and everyone cheered and clapped. Search Stephanie Simmons and Google will vomit-spatter all the scorched-earth headlines you can imagine. Is Stephanie Simmons the most hated woman in America? Stephanie Simmons is the reason no one believes abuse victims Four black women will die today at the hands of their abusers and Stephanie Simmons has made millions off their backs.

  I don’t know how you come back from this.

  I thought about knocking on her door. About sitting with her in her mostly white living room, the Roman shades pulled flat against the photographers still skulking around outside. I still love her, though I have no right to.

  In the end, I didn’t have the stones. I still don’t know what she knows and doesn’t know about Vince and Kelly and Vince and Jen, and I’m deeply disturbed by what she did in Morocco. An accident, we told the reporters who asked about it, but I watched it happen, and she was clear-eyed. Kelly is convinced Stephanie thought Kweller was Layla, but I think the only person Stephanie was aiming for was herself, and at the last moment, she reneged.

  The red door swings open on an exuberant Lauren Fun in shredded white jeans and a shredded white tee, braless, barefoot, toenails black. “Happy bachelorette!” she cries, offering me a rainbow-tiered Jell-O shot from the tray she’s balancing on her right palm. She backs up so that we can enter and the crew surrounds us like a rival gang.

  “Vegan and alcohol free,” she makes a point of saying, because I guess we are still pretending like she’s not drinking, even though the shot is so loaded with Tito’s it leaves grill marks on the back of my throat. “And also Greenberg’s organic sex sprinkles!”

  “So that’s why I’m hard,” I deadpan as I follow her into the kitchen.

  “I’m hard for your sister in that adorable little playsuit,” Lauren returns over her shoulder.

  “Net-a-Porter,” Kelly says correctly, rubbing the goose bumps out of her arms. It is Siberian in here. The house is designed for indoor/outdoor living, but every window, every double French door is latched shut against the summer. My nipples feel like knives. Good thing Jen’s tree-hugging brand doesn’t advertise its intent to reduce the impact of climate change or anything.

  In the kitchen, Jen is shaving corn off the cob with a serious butcher knife. Behind her, three hopeful dog noses press against the glass doors from outside. Yvette told me Jen makes them sleep in the backyard now that the house is done. She is paranoid about dog hair and dog urine, dog laughter and dog joy.

  “Our guest of honor is here,” Lauren says, presenting me like the evening’s entertainment, and for a moment we pause and regard each other somberly. It’s the shaking of the hands before the duel.

  “How was traffic?” Jen asks, civilly.

  “Not bad.” Kelly drops her bag at her feet. “We just got a late start. I had to get Layla to a friend’s in New Jersey.”

  Jen looks at me. “Where’s Arch?”

  “She’s going to come out tomorrow,” I say. “Stuck at work.”

  Jen nods, running a finger along the steel plane of the knife.

  “May I offer you a beverage?” Lauren asks us formally, trying to be funny.

  “Whatever you’re having,” Kelly makes the mistake of saying.

  “I’m having club soda,” Lauren says laughably, “but we have a bottle of Sancerre chilled.”

  Bottles of Sancerre, it appears, as she tugs open the refrigerator. Sancerre and Tito’s and Casamigos and a carton of almond milk that’s been turned on its side to make room for more booze. Lauren shuts it quickly, before the camera responsible for the wide shot tells on her.

  On the stove, a pot boils over. “Want me to . . . ?” Kelly offers, heading for the utensils holder by the sink. She lifts the lid and something puke-colored spits at her. My stomach grumbles. I haven’t eaten since noon and I need a real meal, not a mushy plate of ancient grains.

  “Oh!” Jen cries, like she just remembered something. She steps around Kelly and brings out a platter of chips and dip. “I picked up that guac I know you like from Round Swamp, Brett.”

  Kelly gives me a little smile over her shoulder. See! She isn’t so bad!

  Kelly still doesn’t know about Jen’s middle-of-the-night conversation with Vince, on the balcony of the riad in Marrakesh, or about my suspicions that he is the one who broke her heart last season. I tried just that once, the morning of the accident. Then came that nightmare of a day, and my focus was on damage control for SPOKE. After speaking with my shareholders and having a lawyer review my partnership agreement with Kelly, I figured she was in for enough of a kick. No need to add insult to injury by telling her that Jen was only pretending to be her friend to find out if she was having an affair with Vince, because she might still be in love with Vince herself. Let Kelly believe the friendship was real. Who could it hurt?

  Jen wipes her hands on an apron that reads Viva Las Vegans! “So. The plan for tonight is dinner, then Lauren has organized some bachelorette games—”

  Lauren blows into a party horn, immediately whispering Sorry when Jen glares at her for interrupting.

  “And then, I don’t know?” Jen continues, using the base of her wide knife to rough-chop raw walnuts for the salad. “Maybe Talkhouse if everyone is up for it?” She glances up, mischievously, and for a moment she is not the drippiest drip I know. Jen ca
n be fun when the cameras are not around, and Talkhouse is the fraternity rager you go to after having dinner with your family when they’re in town for parents’ weekend. The network has never been able to obtain the permit necessary to film there, which means everyone can take as many shots of piss-colored tequila as they’d like without record.

  “You are here until eleven,” Lisa squeaks from behind the camera. It’s like a reverse curfew—we have to stay home until a certain time, deliver some decent footage, and then we get to go out and paint the town red.

  “Yes, Mom,” both Lauren and Jen say at the same time.

  “Call me that again and you’re fired,” Lisa says, touching the drooping skin on her neck. “And for the love of God, someone bring up the elephant in the room.”

  Jen sets down her knife and inquires with over-performed concern, “Has anyone heard from Steph?”

  We all pooch our lips—No.

  “What about Vince?” I don’t look directly at Jen at first, so as not to be obvious, but when I do, I find she’s picked up the knife again and is chopping those nuts into sawdust.

  “I heard,” Lauren hinges at the waist and sets her elbows on the counter, chin in hands, voice gossipy, “she served him with divorce papers but he’s refusing to sign.” She rubs her thumb and three fingers together, indicating money. “He gets nothing in the prenup.”

  There is a glitch in my heartbeat. “She’s divorcing him?” Steph divorcing Vince means that she no longer cares enough to keep up the façade of their happy marriage. It means she can go public about the things that happened in that house, if she wants to.

  Lauren smirks at me. “Don’t sound so surprised. You of all people should be well aware the wheels had fallen off that marriage.”

  I feel like I swallowed Jen’s big butcher knife. I need to stop doing that—giving Lauren openings to contribute winky commentary to further the Brett and Stephanie lesbian affair storyline.

  “Brett.” Jen turns to me in a way that makes me think she’s about to accuse me of something. My breath catches in my throat. “I made up the downstairs guest bedroom for you and Arch. Laur and Kelly, you’re in the upstairs guest room.”

  I exhale and steal a glance at Kelly. Disappointment streaks her face that Jen doesn’t want to share a room with her again. It’s because Jen no longer feels like she’s got some detective work to do on Kelly, but Kelly doesn’t realize that.

  “Thanks, Jen.” I give her a warm smile. In this group, niceness is power-saving mode, and I may need to reserve my strength too. Hoisting my weekend bag higher on my shoulder, I say, “I’m just going to drop my stuff in my room and freshen up.”

  “Dinner in fifteen!” Lauren calls after me, my buddy once again.

  I take my time in the hallway, waiting for the conversation to resume before quickly opening the door to the garage and stepping inside. I hit the switch on the wall and blink a few times, my eyes adjusting slowly. Things used to scatter when you turned on the light in here. There were beach chairs and old bikes and pool toys, plenty of cobwebby places for creatures to hide. All that’s left in the garage after the gut is a collage of fuse boxes on one wall and the old popcorn-textured refrigerator that never kept anything cold. It looks like a fossil humming next to Jen’s new metallic Tesla, charging from the flank. I yank open the freezer door and angels sing when I discover long-expired bagels and pizza inside.

  “I’ll be back for you later,” I whisper, before turning off the light.

  With its blue-and-white-pinstriped wallpaper and toile linens, I feel like I should be wearing pearls to sleep in the downstairs guest bedroom. Closer, I realize that instead of a pattern of regal-looking people and animals in a classic landscape setting, the sheets are covered in skulls and skeletons, and that those aren’t stripes on the wall, they’re femur bones. I zoom in with my phone and send a picture to Arch, flicking a low-battery notice out of the way. This is where Jen has stuck me to sleep. Creepshow.

  Almost immediately three typing dots appear. I plop onto my back on the bed, stretching an arm behind my head, too lazy to find my charger in my bag. Arch responds with three monkeys covering their eyes. I wish I could see the creepiness in person but I don’t think I can make it after all. Up to my elbows. Do u mind?

  I pull a face that is much more disappointed than I feel. In truth, I’m happy to keep Arch as far from this circus act as possible. I’ll miss you!!! I’m not mentioning it to anyone, though. They all think you’re coming so I get my own room. I don’t want to get stuck with Kelly. I’ll probably let it slip in my sleep.

  My screen is white and judgmental for a few moments. Then, Arch lets her real feelings be known. She deserves to know.

  I type with a sigh, I know . . . but if I tell her before we’re finished filming it will be a part of the show. And I owe it to her to keep it from being a storyline. I don’t want to humiliate her any more than necessary.

  Arch texts back, Any chance you haven’t told her yet because you’re not sure this is the right decision?

  I close a second low-battery warning and text back at righteous speed, It’s not UP to me. A girl almost DIED after being struck with one of our bikes. And it wouldn’t have happened if Kelly had agreed to pay THIRTY-SEVEN DOLLARS EXTRA for the thumb grips. The investors want a blood sacrifice, or they’re going to pull out. And Kelly is the one who is accountable. She’s got to go.

  Arch doesn’t respond for so long my attention wanders to the lights prod has taped to the corners of my room. When I check my screen again, I realize my phone has died.

  “Kids!” Lauren calls down the hallway. “Dinnertime!”

  I find my charger in my purse and plug my phone into the wall. Outside, the rain returns, as immediate as a gun going off at the starting line of a race.

  A fire chews wood in the sitting room, because that makes sense on an eighty-degree evening with 95 percent humidity. The low-for-effect coffee table is covered in a tray of desserts that, like dinner, have to be explained before consumed. I tune out while Jen moves her hand around the board, listing ingredients, but a lot of dates and cashews are involved. Kelly grabs a black bean brownie and pops it into her mouth.

  “Mmmm,” she lies, getting to her feet. “So good. Just running to get a sweater real quick.” She makes a brrrrr noise as she trots up the stairs.

  Lauren is on the floor, her back against the raised white brick hearth, laptop on her thighs, blond hair cast orange by the fire. Marc circles the perimeter of the room to zoom in on her screen when there is a brief burst of a familiar voice. Lauren rushes to lower the volume.

  I lean over the arm of the sofa. “What is that?”

  “Just your Mrs. and Mrs. quiz.” Lauren sets the laptop on the coffee table, turning it so that the group has a view of Arch paused on the screen, eyes wide and mouth agape, the most unattractive I’ve ever seen her. Outside, thunder grumbles softly—or is that my unhappy stomach?

  “What the fuck is a Mrs. and Mrs. quiz?”

  “It’s to see how well you know each other,” Lauren says. “You both answer the same set of questions about the other and then we see if they match.”

  Answering questions about my personal life in front of Jen Greenberg sounds about as much fun as replacing my toilet paper with kale. “Why don’t we just do this tomorrow when Arch is here so you don’t get electrocuted?”

  “Please.” Lauren presses her palms together and repeats the word in quick little puffs, like a child begging for ice cream before dinner. “Come on!” she demands when I groan my reluctance. “What else are we going to—”

  She jerks her head in the direction of the front door opening. My stomach plummets as I take in the figure in the classic Burberry raincoat. Stephanie removes the hood of her slicker and shakes free her hair, which is as perfect as it ever was. Her pedicure is fresh and her hips look like two towel hooks, holding up her white jeans. Her face is carefully made up and haggard.

  “Oh my God,” Lauren says, getting up to gree
t her. “You look amazing.”

  “I’m on the most hated woman in America diet,” Steph says, returning Lauren’s hug, grateful someone has seen fit to give her a warm welcome. The rest of us are staring at her in stunned silence.

  “Lis, is it okay that I’m here?” She seems to hold her breath.

  Lisa assesses Stephanie for a few suspicious moments.

  “I just wanted to close out the season with a little bit of my dignity still intact.” Stephanie laughs, self-deprecatingly. It is a rare thing to see—Steph laughing at herself. Maybe what happened to her has humbled her, slightly.

  “Do you want the makeup person to paint on a black eye for you?” Lisa jokes, and Stephanie’s face drops. “Jesus,” Lisa rolls her eyes, “I’m kidding. Just steer clear of motorized vehicles, please.” She snaps her fingers at one of the audio guys to mic Steph up.

  Jen, little weasel, adds, “You can room with Laur.”

  Lauren looks panicked. “But Kelly is—”

  “She can move her stuff into my room,” Jen says through a hard smile.

  “Or you could stay in Brett’s room?” Lauren suggests, her voice high. Stephanie may seem subdued, but you’d be a fool not to sleep with one eye open next to her. “Arch doesn’t come out until tomorrow.”

  “Guys,” Steph says, holding her arms straight out for the audio guy like she’s being patted down by a TSA officer, “I’ll sleep on the couch. I’m just grateful you’re willing to let me stay.” Stephanie addresses me directly, “How is Kweller doing, Brett?”

  “Um,” I say, not really sure how to respond. I am unaccustomed to dealing with such a deferential version of Stephanie. “She’s good. She was released from the hospital last week.”

  “I’m so relieved to hear that,” Stephanie says, sincerely. The audio guy clips the mic to the collar of her blouse and fans her hair over it, telling her she’s good to go. Steph comes and takes a seat next to me on the couch. “I’d like to reimburse you for the cost of her care.”