Last night we did something we haven’t done since we were all on this earth together. We slept as if we had no fear. There were eight solid hours where neither child nor adult made a disruptive sound, no boogeyman came to visit Owen, and no financial markets melted my dreams. When I woke up, Bruce joked that I had gotten a face-lift during the night. A simple compliment to me and I filled with hope again, hope that our marital train wreck was just hitting track bumps, that maybe it was all just job stress that was making me so mad at him.
After the sledding Carron and I drive into Chamonix, a town torn from a page of a fairy tale. Weathered farmers have set up stalls in the main square where we go to shop for food. With so many growing bodies, the hunt for sustenance is constant and my kids’ newfound appetite for these slowly cooked and lovingly prepared meals is notable.
My sister is a younger, hipper version of me: prettier, more fun, and always bouncing on the front of her feet while she tells you about the next big adventure she’s going to have. Her career has always involved skis, first as a champion racer and then as a product promoter for certain brands. Sprung from Bronx apartment dwellers, champion skier was a less predictable career path than even mine. Carron never got the capitalistic itch the way I did. Her existence has always been about living her life, rather than planning her life. But I see her in this town with her healthy tribe of girls and her marriage that seems solid enough and I’m wondering, what’s she faking? I’ve never seen such an uncomplicated life.
As we walk amid the stalls, men lift their tankards of beer to us asking “êtes-vous des jumeaux?” or, “Are you twins?” I feel the glow that only the French can reflect. Carron flits around as if she’s in the place she’s meant to be and I wonder what that feels like. She showers petals of compliments on each shopkeeper and they appear to swoon over this “Anglais,” as they keep calling her.
“American,” she keeps correcting them in her lilting, beautiful French and they all wave and wink as if to imply she is far too cool to be from anyplace real.
Carron is the only human I can share the bizarre Henry saga with. I feel like my chest will implode if I don’t tell someone what happened.
I take a deep breath. “So I cover Henry,” I say simply enough, but Carron stops moving. She’s holding a bag of clementines.
“Cover? Like, you have his account?” she asks.
“Yes.”
“You mean Henry, right? Like, from . . . our life?” She puts down the bag and gives me her full attention.
“Henry is dead to us,” Carron says, drawing her hand across her throat. “Do you hear me?”
“Yeah. Except he works for my biggest client, therefore he is my biggest client.”
“Rather . . . inconvenient,” she says.
“Well, it’s not a problem,” I say. “I mean, we get along fine.” I’m speaking so stiffly that she turns toward me.
“Define ‘fine’?”
“I mean, we do a lot of business together.” I feel my face redden and she stares, waiting for me to say more.
“What sort of business?”
“Not that sort of business.”
“How can you and Henry be in the same room without fireworks?”
“Easy. We grew up.”
“Very hard to believe.”
“Look. Some of us need a job that pays something,” I say a tad defensively and off-subject. I did not mean to imply that my sister lives hand to mouth and saves nothing but that’s what she has heard.
“Oh, right. You have to keep that fabulous Manhattan lifestyle going. Yes. Got to get a board of directors seat at the Met. I forgot.”
When she seems to be done ranting I say, “It’s just been really hard with Bruce. Like, crazy-hard, and I think the Henry reentry program . . .” My voice trails off. “It was just nice to see him again, that’s all.”
She remains quiet for a moment before replying.
“Yeah. Does he remember what he did? That filthy dippy-do?”
“We all don’t have to hate him forever. I think nine years of abhorrence is about the correct penalty time.”
Carron softens her tone. “Belle, you loved him so much. When he heart-slammed you, right before Daddy died? You just never recovered. That girl we all loved? She left. Went right out the door with Henry. Henry made me lose part of my sister.”
Carron’s eyes are misting. “Henry made you all hard and businesslike. All you do is worry and plan and push yourself.”
I feel some vile thing rising in my throat, some animal I should swallow back down but instead let it sneak out. “So easy for you to say. Have you ever had to work for anything? Just smile, swivel your genetically blessed hips, and doors open.”
I want her to get mad at me, for us to have some sort of confrontation, but that’s not what we’ve ever done in our family, we just sort of take it. We were raised to be stoic; we’d rather swallow the acid of fight than let it out but I’ve been swallowing so much, it’s getting harder to breathe.