19
GUS FELT ALMOST AS anxiety-ridden about what to wear to the Sisters’ Summit as she had been when selecting an outfit for her rendezvous with Jeff. Today’s choice had come down to: her court outfit (i.e., a men’s suit) or one of her new “girlier” ensembles, if only so her sisters would find her easier to relate to. Right now, they were treating her, not Jennifer Yu, as if she were the interloper fourth sister. Multiple messages to both Perri and Olympia had gone unreturned. Meanwhile, Gus was no longer speaking to Jeff, ostensibly for the crime of having told Mike exactly what she’d asked him not to, but also because she’d suddenly become repelled by the very idea of him. The one time they’d spoken since Gus had chewed him out, Jeff had claimed to be suffering without her. Though Gus had read between the lines that he’d already started flirting with a SoHo housewife whom he’d met at the tennis bubble. And so, while she felt sorry for him, she didn’t feel all that sorry. Clearly, he was obsessed with her only because she’d dumped him.
Figuring that it was in her best interest to remind her sisters of her “old self,” Gus settled on black jeans, a striped boatneck jersey with a shredded bottom, and a black suit jacket. She was already in her car when she glanced at the radio and realized that she was running ahead of schedule. In need of a time killer, she detoured south to Fairway. Gus had never cared much for cooking, but she enjoyed strolling down the produce aisles of upscale supermarkets, examining the brightly hued pyramid-shaped pilings.
She liked to examine the customers, as well. She was feeling up a Georgia peach when she became aware of a man standing next to her with a strong nose, a sculpted chin, lightly freckled cheeks, and golden brown eyes. His light brown hair had an auburn tint. He was wearing a canvas jacket, blue jeans, and tennis shoes. Objectively speaking, he was cute, if in a slightly weather-beaten way. Not that Gus was interested! She’d had enough of men for the moment and possibly forever. But something kept her gaze fixed. He must have seen her looking. “Hard as a rock,” he muttered while attempting to gain traction in a peach of his own. Was he flirting with her?
“Yeah, these things are tough,” said Gus. Even worse, did he think she was flirting with him?! She cleared her throat. “I know this sounds like a line, but you look so familiar.”
“Oh,” he said, seeming amused as he lifted his eyebrows. “Well, I’m Patrick.” He stuck out his free hand.
“Gus,” she said, meeting his, while her mind thought: Patrick? The Patrick?! Was that why he looked so familiar? “Wait, do you know my sister Olympia?” she asked, squinty-eyed.
An emotion that resembled anxiety crossed with wistfulness and softened by time came over his slim face. He parted his lips, then pressed them together again. “Olympia Hellinger?”
“That’s the one.”
“I know her well,” he said, nodding. Having placed his peach back in its pyramid, he’d taken to pulling at his ring finger, on which—Gus couldn’t help but notice—there was no ring. Which also seemed strange. Wasn’t the whole tragedy of Olympia’s love for Patrick Barrett that he was married to a woman he couldn’t abandon because she’d bungee jumped off a volcano, or something? “We go a ways back, actually.”
“I know,” Gus said pointedly. So he would know that she knew. Patrick pursed his lips and looked even more uncomfortable. “Hey, I’m not here to judge,” she went on.
“Thanks,” he said, half smiling. In doing so, dimples formed in his cheeks, and his eyes sloped down as if to meet them. The expression was uncannily like Lola’s. Or was Gus’s mind playing tricks on her? Her heart raced with excitement and fear at the thought of exposing a closely guarded secret. “Well, please send her my best,” Patrick continued.
“I will,” said Gus. “You know—she has a kid.”
“Right,” he said vaguely. “I heard something about that.”
“She’s turning four next month. Her name is Lola.” Gus paused. “Do you want to see a picture?”
Patrick looked shell-shocked at the request. “Sure,” he said. Not that he had a choice. Gus had already whipped out her phone and was scrolling through her digital album. She stopped at her favorite shot of her niece, grinning in a pink party dress with a heart decal, and stuck it in Patrick’s face.
“Sweet,” he said. Then, “A redhead, no less.”
“I wonder how she got that,” Gus shot back.
“What do you mean?” asked Patrick, his face scrunched up.
Gus didn’t answer, lifted one eyebrow.
“I’m honestly not following,” said Patrick.
Gus shot him another pointed look and left it at that. How could he not suspect what she did? “Anyway, sorry to bother you,” she said. “Go ahead with your shopping.” But no sooner had she given Patrick permission to flee than she had second thoughts. What if she never saw the guy again? Moreover, her middle sister was still barely speaking to her. What did it matter now if Olympia got even angrier? For that matter, what if Gus’s meddling were to bring love into the life of her romantically challenged sister, who would be eternally grateful for said meddling and resume speaking to Gus as if she were a human being, not a piece of dung? It had taken the events of the past few weeks for Gus to realize how much her sisters mattered to her and how dependent she was on their alternately comforting and critical presences. “I was just wondering,” she added. “Do you have an email address I could use if I wanted to get in touch for any reason?”
Patrick visibly recoiled, as if she’d just announced her intention to become his stalker. “Um, sure,” he said cringingly. Who could blame him? Patrick rattled off the address.
“Great!” said Gus, making a mental note of the address. “I mean, thanks. Oh, and it was nice running into you.”
“Same here.” He scurried away. Gus grabbed two unripe peaches, tossed them into her cart, silently repeated Patrick’s email address to herself, and pushed away, toward the cheese section…
He had to be Lola’s father, she was thinking as she examined a hunk of fresh mozzarella. The only question was whether her sister realized this, or not. Carol had recently broken the bizarre news that Lola was a sperm donor baby. But Gus suspected that the “revelation” was just another of Olympia’s elaborate ruses, designed to throw off those who dared to seek the truth.
The Hellinger sisters had finally decided to conduct their summit in Hastings because it seemed like the most neutral of all potential locations. The only problem was, of course, the presence of Carol and Bob, who were still barely speaking to one another. But at Perri’s request, Carol had begrudgingly agreed to sit next to her husband for the duration of a community performance of Death of a Salesman. (She considered Arthur Miller to be the only twentieth-century playwright who came close to achieving Sophocles’s grasp of catharsis and remorse.) It was Perri who opened the door to Gus that afternoon. “You’re late,” she said in a voice as cold as the instant ice packs she kept in her freezer by the dozen.
Gus glanced at her watch. “It’s only two minutes after one.”
“Well, that’s two minutes late,” said Perri.
“That’s not actually late, but whatever,” said Gus.
“I guess it depends on your perspective.”
“I guess,” said Gus, noting that her oldest sister’s obsession with promptness was almost as pathological as her middle sister’s inability to arrive on time. In fact, Perri had the maddening habit of showing up early and then asking where everyone was. “Speaking of late,” Gus went on. “What’s Pia’s ETA?”
“Naturally, she sent word of a delay.” Perri made mock air quotes around the word “delay.”
“Well, I might as well make myself a sandwich, then,” said Gus. She followed Perri into the kitchen. “Is there anything to eat in this house that isn’t Ming Dynasty stir-fry?” It was one of the Hellinger sisters’ favorite themes of recent years—i.e., how their parents’ never threw out the Chinese food containers that cluttered the fridge.
“Beats me,” said Perri, refusing to play along.
It was the first time that Gus had seen Perri since Perri had returned from Florida. Her scoop-neck T-shirt was scooped practically to the waist, while her skirt was so short that her crotch was visible through her underpants when she sat down. Gus was no expert in fashion, but it seemed clear to her that, if her sister was going to wear minis that mini, she needed to wear shorts or tights underneath. Under the circumstances, however, Gus decided to keep her opinion to herself. Instead, she crammed her Fairway groceries in the fridge, then made herself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with some questionable Jif.
Perri sat in silence reading Fortune magazine. Forty minutes went by.
Finally, Olympia arrived. She was wearing dark sunglasses and clutching a high-end shopping bag. “Sorry I’m late,” she said, removing her glasses and shaking out her luxurious mane like a movie star sitting down to lunch at Nobu. Upon closer viewing, however, she appeared to have some kind of huge zit on her forehead.
“Since I’m not officially speaking to you,” began Perri, “I can’t ask you the question I’m tempted to ask you right now. Which is ‘Why bother apologizing for being late when you’re always late?’ ”
“Great unofficial question,” said Olympia, pouring herself a glass of water.
“And since you’re not speaking to me,” Gus said to Olympia, “I guess there’s no point in asking you the question I’m dying to ask you, either,” said Gus.
“And what’s that?” said Olympia.
Gus couldn’t help herself. “What’s on your forehead?”
“Could you be any ruder?” asked Olympia.
“Probably not,” conceded Gus.
“It’s a hive.”
“That must be itchy.”
“It is.”
“I have another question, too. Were you serious when you told Mom that Lola’s a sperm-bank baby?”
“I was,” said Olympia, blasé even under fire, it seemed to Gus.
“What?!” screamed Perri.
“Mom didn’t tell you?” asked Olympia, sitting down at the table. “Wow, that’s a first.”
“Mom told me nothing. Are you serious?” Perri turned to Olympia, her eyes as large as billiard balls.
“Serious as the day is long,” said Olympia.
“I don’t believe you.”
“Then, don’t… So moving along to more important matters—what do you want to do about our other sister?”
“Half sister,” said Perri.
“Half sister—fine,” said Olympia, clearly relieved to have moved the topic away from herself.
“That is, if she’s not a complete fraud,” Perri added.
Olympia released a porcine snort. “Honestly, I can’t imagine anyone wanting to be a member of this family.”
“Has there even been a DNA test?” asked Perri, ignoring the implied rebuke.
“I could arrange for one,” said Gus. “My office uses this place up in Riverdale. I was actually just on the phone with them yesterday. Actually—” An idea suddenly sprung into Gus’s head that had more to do with Lola Hellinger’s father than with Jennifer Yu’s.
“Actually, what?” said Perri.
“Nothing,” said Gus.
Perri turned to Olympia. “Since you’re the only one who’s met her, how about you ask her if she’d take one?”
“You want me to ask her to spit in a cup?” said Olympia, recoiling. “It’s kind of an off-putting way to start a relationship, no?” She took a sip out of her own cup… of water.
“Who says anyone wants to start a relationship?” asked Perri.
“No one’s talking about being best friends with the woman,” said Olympia. “But now that we know she’s out there, I don’t see how any of us can go back to the way things were before—and pretend she doesn’t exist.”
“Well, I’d be perfectly happy with none of us ever making contact with the woman ever again!” said Perri.
“Why? Because you can’t bear not being the oldest sister who’s always right about everything?” Olympia shot back, her jaw jutting.
“Come on, you guys,” said Gus, relieved to find that she was not currently the object of her sisters’ ire, even as she rued the day that she’d ever tattled on one to the other.
“No, because I think this woman has some nerve just showing up like that and upsetting Mom!” said Perri. “What ever happened to writing letters?”
“Well, I think we should check out her creds first,” said Gus. “If her DNA doesn’t pan out, we don’t even need to be having this conversation.”
“I agree,” said Perri.
“Fine with me, too,” said Olympia, shrugging. “I just don’t want to be the one who asks for saliva.”
“She’s a doctor,” said Gus. “I really don’t think she’s going to be squeamish about bodily fluids. But if you can’t deal, I’ll ask.”
“I’d appreciate that,” said Olympia.
“And what if, by chance, her DNA is a match with our father, who I’m also not speaking to until further notice?” asked Perri.
“Then we invite her out to come meet us,” said Gus.
“Oh, Jesus,” said Perri.
“Sounds like a plan to me,” said Olympia. She and Perri separately got up to leave.
That was it?! “Wait!” cried Gus, heartbroken at the thought of them all going their separate ways again. She wasn’t entirely sure what she’d expected to happen at the summit—only that their meeting wasn’t supposed to end this soon. “We have other things to talk about.”
“Like what?” asked Olympia, all business as she cleaned her sunglasses with a dishcloth.
Gus felt her eyes filling with tears. “For one thing, I wish we could go back to the time when you guys didn’t hate me—or each other. But that’s a separate matter.”
“Well, you shouldn’t have betrayed my trust,” said Perri.
“Or tattled on me for something I didn’t do,” added Olympia. “Though, to be honest, I’m so exhausted right now that I don’t even have the energy to be mad at you.”
“Too much shopping?” quipped Perri.
“I actually haven’t been shopping in about two months,” Olympia scoffed, clearly offended again. “That bag I was carrying is filled with hand-me-downs for Lola from my friend, Danielle.”
“Well, you couldn’t be any more tired than I am,” said Perri. “Noah woke up at four forty-five this morning.”
“I thought you wake up then anyway.”
“No, I wake up at five forty-five.”
Olympia released a long sigh. Then she said, “Perri, do you even hear yourself? You’re always competing with me over whose life is harder. Honestly, it’s really tedious.”
Seemingly stunned by the accusation, Perri stared silently back at her sister, her mouth ajar. It was so quiet in the kitchen that you could hear the ticktock of Great-Uncle Abe’s old mantelpiece clock in the dining room. Finally, she spoke: “Well, you always act as if I have it so much easier than you because I live in a big house in the suburbs and have a husband. Or used to.” She grimaced.
“I never said you had it easier,” said Olympia, sighing. “Obviously, we all have our challenges.”
“What if we all make the decision to forgive each other and try to get along,” offered Gus.
“Fine with me,” said Olympia.
“Who’s fighting?” said Perri.
There was more silence, interrupted by the distant hum of a leaf blower. Or was it a chain saw? Gus took a deep breath. “I just want to say again that I’m sorry I blabbed to both of you about the other one. A part of me was just sick of all the secrets. We’re sisters. Why do we have to hide so much from each other? I’m not trying to excuse my behavior. Maybe what I did was immature. I’m just telling you where I was coming from. I was also kind of out of my mind with the whole Jeff thing. Which, by the way, is officially over. Anyway”—her voice cracked—“I love you both a lot. And you, not Jennifer Short-last-name, will always be my mean older sisters who I worship and resent.”
Gus thought she saw tears spring into the corners of Perri’s eyes. Or was she projecting through her own?
“Thank you for saying that,” Perri said quietly. “And I’m sorry too—for burdening you with more private information than you could apparently handle. I should have remembered you were an incorrigible gossip.” She smiled quickly at Gus, then turned to Olympia. “I’m also sorry the whole mess in Larchmont fell on your shoulders.” Pausing, she flared her nostrils and looked away. “Though, to be honest, it’s going to take me a little more time to get over whatever happened between you and Mike. Not that I actually understand what happened, but—”
“Pia left the table upset that night,” Gus cut in, determined to make the story go away once and for all. “And Mike said he was going to go upstairs and see if she was okay. That’s all it was.”
Perri looked from one to the other of them, clearly trying to suss out if she was being taken for a ride.
“But I should have kicked him out of the bathroom more quickly than I did,” Olympia muttered, her eyes now in her lap. “I’m sorry for that too. He was clearly missing you, and I was as close to a substitute as he could find.”
“Thank you for saying that. I appreciate it,” said Perri. “I’m glad we cleared the air. Now, if you’ll all excuse me, I have a tennis lesson to attend.” She stood up, again revealing the shortest skirt known to man, and threw her canvas tote over her arm.
So it was a tennis outfit! For Gus, the world was starting to make a little bit of sense again…
At work the next day, Gus tried to put her family drama aside and concentrate on the career that, until further notice, she’d chosen. First, she went to court and asked for a protective order on behalf of a battered woman. Later in the day, she arranged for a shelter to take in another client in need. Then she jumped on a train, went down to Fordham, and gave a lecture about the landmark Baby M case and its meaning for contract law. Gus had been home for only five minutes, maybe ten, when the bell rang. Assuming it was a restaurant deliveryman (the couple next door ate take-out nearly every night of their lives; then again, so did Gus), Gus bellowed “Wrong bell” into the intercom.
The static was so intense that it was impossible to hear the answer. “Who?” Gus asked again.
This time, the answer was clear: “Debbie.”
Debbie, as in Debbie Medallo, her ex-girlfriend?! What in the world… In the months since she and Gus had broken up, Gus had somehow convinced herself that Debbie had completely forgotten she’d ever existed.
Gus buzzed her up, then walked into the hall to wait for her. She didn’t want Debbie coming into her apartment. That privilege had been revoked the day that Debbie had walked out. Finally, the elevator doors opened, and Debbie stepped out—in an old pair of painter pants and a T-shirt that read, NAOMI HIT ME. Despite the advertised slogan, there were no bruises on her face. But there were circles under her eyes. And her cheeks looked sunken—her butt smaller, too. Had she been dieting? “What are you doing here?” asked Gus.
“I need to talk to you,” said Debbie, her hands in her pockets and her mouth downcast.
“What about?” asked Gus.
“Can I come in?”
Gus grimaced before issuing a chilly “Fine.” She pushed open the door to her apartment and stepped aside.
Debbie entered first. Gus followed. The TV was on, but with the mute button pressed. “Please don’t tell me you’re watching Say Yes to the Dress,” said Debbie, chuckling wryly.
“Wait, let me get this straight,” said Gus, her outrage building along with her embarrassment. “You screw me over. Then you show up here, uninvited, to mock my choice in shows?!”
“Sorry,” said Debbie. She sighed heavily. Then she turned back to Gus. “I showed up here to tell you—I’m not okay.”
“Who is?” said Gus, wondering what this was about. Did Debbie need money or something?
“I’m serious,” said Debbie.
“Well, what do you want me to say?”
“Nothing. I don’t want you to say anything.” It was Debbie’s turn to grimace.
Gus was suddenly cognizant of how much she missed having a confidante. “Well, in case you were interested, which you’re probably not, my life sucks right now, too.”
“I am interested,” Debbie said simply.
“That’s a new one.”
“No, it’s not.”
“Well, for one thing,” said Gus, taking Debbie’s declaration at face value, “my sisters are barely speaking to me right now. I’m, like, the family pariah.”
“What did you do to them?” asked Debbie.
It wasn’t the retort that Gus had been expecting, or hoping, to hear. Debbie had never been supportive, Gus thought. Not that it mattered now. “Nothing that concerns you,” she told her.
“At least you have a family,” said Debbie, who’d grown up among distant relatives in Texas after her mother and father had died in a car crash when she was still a toddler.
“More than I ever wanted,” said Gus. “A week ago, I also found out there’s a fourth Hellinger sister—thanks to my father’s philandering in the late nineteen sixties.” Why couldn’t she ever keep her mouth shut?
Debbie seemed strangely unimpressed. “Huh—weird. But I guess, from where I’m sitting, the more family, the merrier,” she said, shrugging.
Gus was suddenly reminded of Debbie and her girlfriend’s rumored plans to adopt. “Speaking of families, I heard you and your special friend were about to make your own beautiful lesbian one,” she said, her voice slathered in sarcasm.
Debbie looked at her shoes. “Maggie and I broke up.”
So she’d come to Gus for sympathy? “Bummer,” Gus said blithely. “So what happens now? You have to ship the baby back to Myanmar?” She knew it was a tasteless thing to say. But then, after all the heartache that Debbie had caused her, didn’t she deserve to be ridiculed?
It was Debbie’s turn to be offended. She narrowed her eyes and set her jaw. “We hadn’t even gotten the baby yet. And that’s not how it works, and you know it. Also, it was Mongolia.”
“Well, I don’t know much about adoption,” offered Gus.
“You just teach classes on the legal ramifications,” Debbie shot back. There was silence. Outside, a car alarm moaned like a sick dog. Finally, Debbie blurted out, “Look, I’m here because I want to get back together. Okay?”
“You want to what?!” said Gus, not sure if she was hearing correctly.
“Get back together.”
Gus wasn’t buying it. “Because you can’t bear to be alone for a single day?”
“Because I miss you.” Debbie paused, hung her head. “It was only ever a sex thing with Maggie. We never got close—not like you and I got close.” She looked up again, met Gus’s eyes.
Excitement and jealousy, outrage and disbelief, swirled around in Gus’s head. “You mean, you miss fighting?” she said.
“That’s not the relationship I remember,” said Debbie.
“Well, which relationship do you remember?” Until just then, Gus hadn’t realized how hurt and furious she still was. The thought flashed through her brain that her entire affair with Jeff Sims had simply been an attempt to seek vengeance on Debbie.
“The one where we were snuggling on the sofa with a bowl of popcorn,” mumbled Debbie, “watching women-in-prison movies.”
“Except you didn’t love me, never have,” said Gus, her heart now pounding. “But that’s just a minor matter. Right?”
Debbie visibly swallowed. Then she looked at the wall. “It was never that. You just put so much pressure on the whole topic.”
“So it was all my fault,” Gus said defiantly. But inside she cringed at an image of herself badgering Debbie, demanding yes or no answers to questions that were more complicated than that. Debbie was right about that part at least, she thought: Gus had a way of harping on things until they turned toxic. Well, in the past few months, she’d taken the opposite approach, taken more steps backward than she could count. She wasn’t even sure if she was a lesbian, anymore!
“Not all your fault,” said Debbie. “We just got into a bad rut. The more you asked for, the more I withdrew.”
“And what’s going to prevent you from withdrawing again?” asked Gus.
“Maybe we can both try harder to keep the channels of communication open and not play on each other’s weaknesses. You know I need my space. And I know you can get insecure.”
“I see,” said Gus, recoiling at the description of herself, however accurate it was.
“Also, I promise to buy toilet paper more often.”
“So you’re inviting yourself to move back in?” The nerve was astounding, Gus thought.
Debbie looked hopefully at her. “If you’ll let me, I’d like to try.”
“To be honest, I don’t know what I want right now,” said Gus. And it was true. She was just beginning to adjust to life on her own. And she still had so much anger at Debbie; it was hard to say when, if ever, she’d be able to let it go. And she’d never felt so needy in a relationship as she had with Debbie. Why would she want to repeat that experience? Then again, it was Debbie who was the needy one right now. But how long before they reverted back to their old roles? And who was to say that, in six months’ time, they wouldn’t find themselves in the same bad place as before? “All I know,” Gus told her, “is that when I heard you’d left me for that bitch from Lamda Legal, I felt like someone had put a bullet through my chest.”
“I’m sorry,” said Debbie. “I was tired of being criticized. That was part of it. I felt like nothing I did was right.”
“Well, I’m sorry you felt that way,” said Gus.
Debbie stood up. “Gussy,” she said. “Take me back. I’m begging you. You’re my family—not Maggie. I was just sick of all the fighting. It seemed like we didn’t know how to have fun anymore.”
“And what makes you think we’ll have fun now?” asked Gus.
“Because”—Debbie gulped—“I love you.”
“Is that right?” asked Gus, her eyes filling with tears at all the accumulated hurt and longing. “Well, maybe I love you, too.” With that, she fell into Debbie’s arms and wept. If that made Gus a masochist, so be it.
At midnight, the two could be found eating defrosted burritos on the living room sofa and reminiscing about their lame week in Provincetown the previous summer—they’d accidentally booked a room for Bear Week instead of Women’s Week—when Gus saw Jeff’s name flash across the caller ID screen on her phone. She didn’t pick up. “F*cking telemarketers,” she said.
“You know, you can put your name on a no-call list,” said Debbie. “I have the number somewhere.”
“Oh, yeah?” said Gus. She figured Jeff would get the message eventually, if he hadn’t already.