“It doesn’t look it but I think it’s still good,” I say, holding up a jacked-up wheel of Brie.
Jen holds out her hand, regally, as though I am a huntsman who has brought home the heart of a warring queen. I place the lump of cheese in her palm with a deep curtsy, playing along. I’m uncomfortable, and trying to act like none of this is that big of a deal, which I realize is very much in keeping with my nickname. Jen chucks the ball of Brie into the trash bag, hard, without bothering to examine it. Okay then.
“I had amenorrhea,” she says, tightly.
“I don’t know what—”
“I hadn’t had my period in four years.” Jen speaks over me without raising her voice. “My hormones were all out of whack. You can’t have your hormones out of whack when you’re trying to freeze your eggs, so that you can have a baby, which I would like to do, someday. My doctor suggested I try to go pescatarian to see if it would help. It’s just temporary, while everything stabilizes.”
I scan the groceries left on the deck. Not a piece of salmon in sight, but dairy and fatty cuts of animal hind legs for days. I can’t help but feel a teeny bit vindicated—See? Your way is not the healthy way. “Good for you, Jen,” I say. “You aren’t a strong woman for denying your hunger. You are a strong woman for standing up to society’s expectations of how we are supposed to—”
“Yvette sent you out here?” Jen demands, before I can say look.
I lift one shoulder in a vague non-answer, not wanting to betray Yvette, who clearly wanted me to discover Jen’s illicit affair with breakfast meats and put her on blast. Jen tightens the strings of the trash bag with a scowl. “She’s angrier than I thought that I’m selling. Or maybe she just actually hates me.” She hurls a carton of hazelnut coffee creamer into a trash bag and it splatters back at her in retaliation.
“Your mom doesn’t hate you, Jen. She hates that you are suffering and depriving yourself for an unjust cause. She hates that you see yourself as a body first and a person second. She just wants you to be—”
“I’ll get Lauren to invite you to her party. That won’t be hard. Getting Steph to film with you will be the real bitch.” Jen’s eyes are bright, unblinking. She looks away with a difficult swallow. “I’ll do my best.” She’s going to cry, I realize. In fact, I think I mumble Thanks so that she doesn’t cry. I can’t think of anything I’d rather do less than wrap my arms around an emotional Jen Greenberg. I’d come away with thorns, I’m sure.
I know, on paper, that this looks like a bribe, and that bribes are measures only dishonest and despicable people resort to, but it isn’t like that. (I also know It isn’t like that is something only dishonest and despicable people say.) But it’s really not like that! My investors are expecting a three-episode arc in Morocco with gratuitous placement of the e-bikes. I have gladly participated in all the other group trips for all the other women, who are older, more accomplished, and more established than I am. I arrived at the airport on time for Greenberg’s trip, with a smile on my fucking face, the morning after she told me Willpower is a muscle that can be strengthened when I asked for more bread at dinner. I have shown up for these women. I have ohh’d and ahh’d over their expensive, rat-free apartments. I have read their four-hundred-page books and drank their chunky juices and downloaded their dating apps when I am in a relationship to help boost membership. I have supported them getting richer, more famous, and more important. Now, I get a little taste of that kind of success myself and they can’t stand it. They have banded together to keep the little guy in her place.
So this bribe, which wasn’t even my idea, really really isn’t like that. If anything, it’s a course correction. It’s what is right. Still, I offer to toss the bag of spoiled food in the Dumpster at the end of Jen’s street on my way out. A small act of penance. Because if I’m being really really honest with myself, it might be a little bit like that. I might be a little bit despicable. But I’m not ready to be that honest yet.
CHAPTER 8
* * *
Kelly: The Interview Present day
“Jen and Brett reconciled because of you,” Jesse says to me in a complimentary way that induces me to reply, almost involuntarily, Thank you. The gas fire is pistoling hotly behind us and the lights are searing my corneas. The effect is similar to that of the hot yoga classes that have recently become a part of SPOKE’s new suite of services, how the heat allows you to sink more deeply into the poses. Jesse and I are warm now. We are plunged into our story.
“I don’t know about you,” Jesse goes on, “but I find some comfort in knowing that Brett left this world at peace with all of the women. When we first met Brett and Jen, they were friends, and one of the great joys I found in this season—and there were many, despite how it ended—was watching these two strong women overcome their differences and recommit to supporting each other. It seemed it was important to you to see your sister call a truce with Jen—why was that?”
A truce. Is that what it was? We’ve been at this for an hour or two now, and my mind feels melted and gooey. I wish someone would open a window, but they’ve been sealed with the crew’s portable blackout curtains. I take a sip of the warm water on the end table between my chair and Jesse’s, and I concentrate on the word “truce.” No. It hadn’t been a truce. It had been a deal. When Brett told me what happened, she had been very careful to phrase it as such—a deal—though Jen convincing the others to film with Brett in exchange for Brett keeping Jen’s secret sounded like a bribe to me.
I did not facilitate the reconciliation, but I guess that’s the spin production put on it. I can see how my actions would provide them with the raw materials. I did make a play for Jen’s friendship, after all. And not just because I admired the way she scaled her product (and I did!), but because it was glaringly obvious that Brett didn’t want me on the show—her show, is how she thought of it—and I had to do something that made me integral to the drama. Befriending my sister’s sworn enemy was the sort of biblical betrayal that secured you a sophomore season.
“I’ve always admired Jen,” I say, which is true. I admired all of them. Brett treated her castmates like old Barbie dolls she was tired of playing with. I was the less fortunate kid jumping up and down to receive her gently used toys for Christmas.
“I wanted to get to know the women on my own merit,” I continue. “I went into this experience with an open mind. I didn’t want to be influenced by Brett’s relationships with the other Diggers.” This is true too. I did want to stand on my own, separate from my sister, because I didn’t feel like I could count on her. That is the hurtful but totally unsurprising truth about my sister. She did not have my back. Slowly, over the years, Brett had co-opted the concept of SPOKE as her own. Even though we were fifty-fifty partners, she used possessive vocabulary around the business—SPOKE was hers, the idea was hers, the seed money was hers.