I babysit her kids.
She cooks me dinner and gives me hand-me-downs and punks them up with me when they’re too prissy.
She apologized for the gift certificate, for the things she didn’t understand.
She is making plans to take out her implants.
She says she made a lot of mistakes and she is trying to unmake them or at least not make any more.
When she hugs me, she means it.
She is my big, unspeakable secret.
Once or twice a year I consider telling Arizona and letting her into the fold, but I can’t seem to bring myself to admit I’ve broken one of our sister-promises. Or maybe I can’t stand the thought that Natasha would like her better too. That there would be no one left who was mine.
I like to think it’s the first thing. That I’m a girl ashamed to have broken a promise, and not that other girl who’s all lame and selfish and needs more than I’m supposed to.
After too much of everyone else, I find myself at her place, where I’m safe. It’s like hiding out when you’re little. Under the table or in the closet or whatever. No one knows I’m here, and they’d never think to look for me at Natasha’s.
We sit on her couch, side by side, and share our Lists of Things to Be Grateful For.
“Victoria’s wonderful spirit,” she says.
“The stoop,” I say.
“The Starbucks barista who told me I look like Denise Richards.”
“Coffee after nine p.m.”
“The way we change over time and become better and worse, in tandem,” Natasha says. She always has one thing on her list that blows my mind a little.
“Karissa. That she exists, but not what she’s doing,” I say, because I’ve never not read something on my list. It’s a weird intimacy between us. We don’t hold back.
“New friend?” Natasha says.
“Sort of.” I kind of can’t believe she hasn’t been on any other lists I’ve read to Natasha, but sometimes it takes a while to admit you are grateful for something or someone. Sometimes I’ll write about a great dinner with my father three months later. Like I can’t appreciate it from up close, the way some paintings are better from a distance.
“New mom?”
“No. She’s not the stepmom type. She’s one of the in-betweeners.”
It feels mean to talk about Karissa that way, in the old lingo that I’ve always used about Dad’s wives and girlfriends.
“I can live with it. I have love in my life. I’m filled with gratitude. I’d like those things for your father even though he is incapable of that reality.” Natasha says all these yoga things that would sound like total bull coming from most people, but she is legitimately serene. I’ve seen the change, and that’s even better than meeting someone who’s always been sweet and kind and wise. I like Natasha even more because she used to be so heinous. “I want your dad to be happy. And you. I want you to have what you want.” She knows but doesn’t say that what I want is to have had a mother. Wanting a mom is not the kind of thing you say out loud. Not unless you’re five and have a boo-boo. “And Arizona,” Natasha says, with a sigh. She always says Arizona’s name with a sigh, because she can’t fix what went wrong there and it twists her up inside.
There was only one time that I actually tried to tell Arizona about my relationship with Natasha. I floated the idea that Natasha had changed. Said I saw her walking down the street, pregnant and looking all cherubic. Arizona scoffed and said that poor baby and stomped instead of walked the rest of the day.
I wonder if it would be different, now that Arizona has actually used the gift certificate. It’s the thing that made Natasha worse than the others. The thing that made her unforgivable. I wonder if Arizona actually using the thing makes her hate Natasha less. Or, I guess, more.
Maybe more, since no matter what happiness crap she’s spouting, I think Arizona did it to get closer to my father, to be the daughter he wants in the hopes that that would make him stop finding new women in his life.
And now that she’s met Karissa, she must know she failed.
“Monanana!” Victoria calls out, waking up from her nap. Veronica doesn’t have as many words as Victoria, but she’s every bit as loving. She hugs my legs and gurgles in my direction.
“They love you,” Natasha says. “Their big sister.”
“Except not,” I say. I love-hate when Natasha calls me their sister. I even love-hate it that Victoria knows my name. It’s light and heavy, right and wrong. I lift Veronica in the air. She has brown eyes and her mother’s old nose. I remember Natasha’s old nose from when she was first with my father, and seeing it on Victoria feels right.