“Half a degree from Dartmouth is like a full degree from CUNY,” I pointed out.
“I’ll get a scholarship,” Layla had said, dutifully. Little perfect angel that she is, she had found a broom and was sweeping the area around the yoga mat, because it was dirty and the instructors were going to be auditioning barefooted. When Layla was born, the doctor told me she had 25 percent of my genes, but I think those cells have copied and split a few times since then. It was Layla’s idea to curate an Instagram account and online shop that hawks the wares of Imazighen women. The feed is filled with gorgeous rag rugs, pottery, and cold-pressed olive oil, and 100 percent of the proceeds go back to the women of the High Atlas Mountains. Just like her auntie, Layla thinks with her heart, not her wallet. We have Kelly for that.
“It’s not that easy to get a scholarship, Layla,” Kelly said. “Especially to a top school.”
“Uhhhhh,” I said, making prolonged eye contact with Layla, whose smile was a dare: Say it. “I think she’ll be fine.”
“Don’t do that, Brett,” Kelly muttered, plopping into a chair while her daughter continued to sweep the floors.
I walked over to her and rested my hands on the back of her chair, bringing my face close enough for her to smell the lavender rose poppy seed we could have just gone to Dunkin’ doughnut on my breath. “Pretending to be colorblind is just as offensive as the n-word, you know.”
Kelly covered my whole face with her palm and shoved me away. “Stop.” It came out an exhausted plea. Kelly is a mother, and heretofore exhausted in a way that I as a child-free individual running a multimillion-dollar corporation cannot begin to even contemplate.
Kelly had Layla when she was nineteen years old, in a confounding act of defiance against our recently deceased mother. Growing up, my mother’s shadow darted after Kelly as she moved between AP classes, piano lessons, Habitat for Humanity, SAT tutors, college essay editors, college interview coaches, Dartmouth, premed summer sessions, and finally, a fellowship with the International School of Global Health in North Africa that Kelly returned from motherless, pregnant, and more chill than I’d ever seen her. Our mom was far from the traditional definition of a tiger mom. Her fixed state was mopey, immobilized, one stain on her blouse away from crying. Kelly was the court jester, but instead of juggling and telling jokes, she got straight As and played Bach with soft fingers. When our mother died (took three strokes), Kelly was released from duty. Why she decided to celebrate her freedom by holding out her wrists for another set of handcuffs still escapes me, but then we wouldn’t have Layla, who, listen, I know on a subliminal level has to love my sister more than she loves me. But it doesn’t feel that way. Not to me and not to Kelly either. And it’s a reversal of fortunes for both of us.
Because when I was in high school, I was the least loved. I was smoking pot when I should have been in Spanish class, piercing my nose instead of my ear cartilage, eating white cheddar Cheez-Its for breakfast, and looking more and more like my mother every day, an egregious crime, in her eyes. I never understood it. Kelly may have gotten the thin genes but my mother and I got face. A boy in high school once said that if you put my head on Kelly’s body we could be a supermodel. And this is the problem with the way girls are raised, because both of us were flattered. One of us even gave him a blow job.
Erin returns from the bathroom, shaking her wet hands. “No paper towels in there,” she says. I stick my hands in my sweatshirt and reach out to dry hers. For a moment, our fingers intertwine through the terry cloth material, and we feel that our hands are the same size. I love introducing other women to the eroticism of equality.
“Thanks.” Erin is flushed. She takes a seat next to me, pressing play on her recorder with a cutely scolding glance in my direction. I lift a hand with a shrug—No idea how that happened—and a prism of light distracts her.
“Ah,” she says. “There’s the famous ring.”
I hold out my hand so we can both admire the gold signet I wear on my pinkie. “It’s a little cocktail-hour-at-the-club for me,” I say, “but I got absolutely no say in the design.”
When the show was renewed for the third season, Jen, Steph, and I realized we were the only original cast members still standing, and Steph proposed having rings made to commemorate this momentous achievement. She sent me a link to the website of a designer Gwyneth Paltrow featured on Goop, $108 for an inch of plated gold, plus the cost to have them engraved SS, for Standing Sisters. This was before the $23.4 million, the book deal, and the speaking fees that still haven’t made me rich, because it is very hard to be rich in New York City. Does Claire’s still exist? I texted back. On me, was Steph’s response. A lot of things were on Steph, and despite what she tells you, she likes it that way. Sometimes, I catch Kelly staring at the ring. She’ll look away when she realizes she’s been seen, sheepish, like a guy busted staring at your tits when you bend over to pick up something that’s fallen on the ground.
Erin’s attention travels up my bare arm. “Is that new?”
I flex my bicep for her. I am not the type of woman who gets a tattoo on the nape of her neck or the underside of her wrist. “A woman needs a man—”
“Like a fish needs a bicycle,” Erin finishes. Another Straight Girl Flirts with Me (And I Love It) should be the name of my fucking memoir.
“That’s so clever,” Erin gushes. “Especially with the reference to the bicycle.”
“Oh, Brett is extremely clever.” Kelly gets me in a headlock and gives me a noogie, her preferred method of attack whenever she feels like anyone is stroking my ego too hard. She likes to try to break off my Cher hair at the root. I sink my teeth into her arm hard enough to taste her Bliss body lotion, the only body lotion Kelly can afford at Bluemercury, and she releases me with a sharp cry.
Erin reaches out and irons my hair back into place.
“Can you please tell everyone it’s real?” I ask her.
“Hair is real.” Erin pretends to jot it down in a pretend notebook. “It’s interesting,” she says, “but I’m noticing a pattern here that the show parallels. You as the little sister to the group.”
“Mmmm,” I say, unconvinced. “I think Jen Greenberg would rather hump a hot dog than share a bloodline with me.”
Erin controls her laugh, but her eyes are twinkling with shared detestation for Jen. “I’m sure that’s not true.”
There is no love lost between Jen Greenberg and me. We were acquainted through the wellness industry years ago, something approaching friends that first season. Viewers watched as I grew close to her famous humanist mother, Yvette, who loves Jen because she has to and me because she does, and everyone thinks this is why we can’t speak the other’s name without a lip curl of contempt. The reality is that there is a gap between Jen’s onscreen persona (Vegan. Groovy.) and real-life one (Vegan. Mega bitch.), and I have no patience for that particular brand of inauthenticity.
And guess what? It’s okay that we do not get along. It is a dangerous thing to conflate feminism with liking all women. It limits women to being one thing, likable, when feminism is about allowing women to be all shades of all things, even if that thing is a snake oil saleswoman.