He had stopped wearing pants with whales on them. He wore jeans in the picture, like everyone else, and a designer army jacket, like everyone else. He even had on the obligatory Hollywood hat, a small brimmed straw hipster hat with a ribbon band. And the red string. She hadn't noticed that last night. The red fucking Kabbalah string. Beside him was the actress, Ingrid Chopin, a slight, dark woman with a voluptuous chest and a dazzling smile. Her long hair tumbled like wild vines onto her shoulders. She was irresistible, Miranda could see. She was at least forty, though she passed for thirty-five. A less-older woman, but another older woman nevertheless.
What does she have that I don't have? Miranda asked herself. Let me count the ways.
She pushed the laptop away. She returned to the position Annie had left her in, a tight fetal loop of enraged humiliation. Her arms, extraneous things, coiled around her. Her thoughts raged. You moron, you cretin, you thick-headed, gullible old bag. You thought you would have a little family with a little white picket fence, you and your handsome hero and your innocent little child friend. But you have nothing. Your life is a mess. A folly. A blank. You will not be spending your waning years with your attentive husband and adoring little boy. You will be alone, ranting, in a cardboard box in Riverside Park. White picket fence? Your home will be spattered by the white excrement of pigeons. Your life is empty. A shoe box. A few dead bees.
"It's just a nobby," she growled into the pillow. "It's just a fucking nobby."
Annie slunk from the blazing outdoors into the bedroom, hoping somehow to be alone, but there was her sister, knotted up on her bed, embalmed in air-conditioning. For just a moment, Annie thought of confiding in her. She would sit on the side of the bed and tell Miranda how profoundly let down she was, how fatigued and defeated, how beleaguered, how disappointed. She would sink back into the bed in her misery and stare at the ceiling, and Miranda would lie beside her, and they would talk and talk and talk until Frederick and Amber were dismantled, torn into smaller and smaller pieces, bits so small and tattered and insignificant they just floated away.
Miranda opened her eyes, said, "Jesus, Annie. Go away," and closed them again.
Rebuffed, rejected before she had said a word. Annie felt the heat she had just left and the chill of the room coursing through her. It was all too much. It was all too little.
"Why are you just lying there?" she said.
She poked Miranda's shoulder.
She was suddenly, finally, thoroughly angry, so angry the blood came rushing to her head. Poor little Miranda, poor ever-suffering Miranda. "It's pathetic! Get up!"
Miranda sat up, her hair stuck to one side of her face. "What is your problem?"
"What's my problem?" Annie was almost dizzy now, a blind ferocious nausea of fury and disillusionment. "That's a first."
"What the hell is that supposed to mean?"
"It means you're a diva," Annie said. "It means you're a self-important diva. Do you even notice that other people have problems?"
Miranda looked stunned, then the color began to creep up her neck. "Since you bring it up, at least I don't try to control everyone else's life like you." Her voice darkened with strangled tears. "Why don't you get a fucking life of your own?"
Now they began to fight the way they had as girls--nasty, vicious, both of them crying. It went on like this, ugly and loud.
"I'm tired, okay?" Annie sobbed. She wiped away tears with her hand. "Stupid," she said. "Damn." She drew her arm across her eyes. "Tired. Tired of figuring out the money while you buy boats and Mom buys Chanel suits. Tired of being the grown-up . . ."
"Whoa! And you call me self-important?"
"Miranda is upset, Annie, so we can't possibly take you to ballet class . . . You and your theatrical breakdowns devoured my childhood . . ."
"Ballet class? You mean where you stomped around wearing an undershirt under your tutu? With sleeves . . ."
"I was shy. I was cold."
"You stole my troll."
"You stole it from Debby Dickstein. I gave it back. I was just trying to help." Annie's voice veered into the hated high register of female weeping. "That's all I ever do. I try and I try . . ."
"Yeah? Well, instead of being such a martyr, why can't you just leave me alone to mind my own business?"
Annie shot her sister a venomous look. She said, "Business? That's a good one."
Miranda was suddenly still. There was no sound but the hum of the air conditioner. She said softly, "Fuck you, Annie. Fuck you and your worries and your budgets and your cramped little life. Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you."
Annie, watching herself in disbelief, threw a lamp at her sister, a white lamp shaped like a giraffe, the giraffe's head popping up over the white shade. The giraffe bounced on the bed, lay there peering sideways.
"Amber is pregnant," she said. "Frederick is the father."
Watching Miranda's eyes widen, Annie thought, So there.
"Oh, Annie . . ."
"So fuck you, fuck you, fuck you." And Annie left the room, slamming the large shivering glass door behind her.