(65 page)

“It’s from Proverbs.” Joe found the place in the small prayer book Rivka had provided for them, which included English translations along with the Hebrew text. In a voice full of feeling, he began to read, ” ‘A good wife, who can find? Her worth is far above rubies. The heart of her husband trusts in her and nothing shall he lack. She renders him good and not evil all the days of her life …’ “

As she listened, Laurel felt her heart catch, and her eyes begin to sting. The ruined drawings faded. All that mattered was this man beside her, his fine profile limned against the soft glow of the Shabbat candles, his gentle voice filling the room like music. He loves me, she had thought, rejoicing inside. He loves me… .

Now, years later, in her studio with its ceiling that had been replastered and painted so that not even the faintest watermark showed, Laurel was no longer sure of Joe’s love.

She dropped her head onto her arms and closed her eyes.

She felt so tired. The truth was, she needed Adam’s nap times more than he did. He was always complaining that naps were for babies, and that he was way too big for them … and probably he was right. But except on weekdays, when Adam was in school, these were the only quiet times when she could work. There was so much-two more illustrations for Mimi’s book, by next week … and she hadn’t even begun the cover painting. And Georgia Millburn at Little, Brown had called twice yesterday to ask if

SUCH DEVOTED SISTERS

485

she’d done those trial sketches for Beggar Bones … or was it Bag o’ Bones! She’d promised to get to it before the weekend, but how?

Oh, why had she volunteered to make that dress for Annie? Why was she always trying so hard to please her sister? Sometimes it felt as if … well, as if she were struggling to make amends for some terrible injustice she’d inflicted on Annie. But what? Not Joe. Not really. He had come to her willingly. Hadn’t he?

And it wasn’t Annie who was making her feel this way, either. Annie was terrific. And so great with Adam. It was just that she could be so … so overwhelming at times. Like a tornado-blowing in through the front door, high heels clacking, gold earrings flashing, leaving a trail of her musky perfume like a slipstream as she travelled from one room to the next, doling out hugs, kisses, gifts, compliments, advice. With Annie around, Adam became wild, hectic, uncontrollable even … then a half-hour or so after she’d gone, he’d simply collapse. She’d find him curled up on his bedroom carpet amid the wreckage of his Legos, or burrowed into a corner of the livingroom couch. Then when he woke up he’d be whiny and impossible, asking over and over when Annie was coming back, until Laurel wanted to scream.

But she knew how he felt. After Annie’s visits, things did seem duller somehow. This house, with its bright quilts and woven wall hangings, its stripped-pine furniture and pewter bowls filled with pine cones and cedar shavings, seemed to lose its color, bleached like curtains exposed to the sun for too long. Stirred up by Annie, even the air seemed to sparkle like champagne-just breathing it made you feel a little tipsy-but once she closed the door behind her, it settled into flatness.

Did Joe feel it too? He must … and sometimes it drove Laurel crazy with jealousy, thinking how Joe must be longing for Annie. At times, seeing the high color Annie brought to his face, how happy and … well, charged he was around her, Laurel would feel as if she were fading right into the walls. She had to remind herself that she, too, was an interesting and active person. Besides taking

486

EILEEN GOUDGE

care of Adam and this house with its big garden, two of the books she’d illustrated had been nominated for the Caldecott. Her show at the Robson Gallery on Spring Street had gotten two respectful notices and one glowing one, and she’d even sold six of those paintings at those outrageous gallery prices, one to a small museum outside of Philadelphia. She sewed most of her clothes, baked her own bread, and was a pretty good cook. So why on earth should she feel second-rate?

No reason … no reason at all. Unless it was because her husband seemed mesmerized by Annie … while with her he was, well, affectionate.

Thank God it’s not Annie he’s having an affair with. The thought clung to the back of her mind. Another woman she might be able to handle … but Annie? God, no.

An image of Joe and the pretty auburn-haired woman-who from a distance had actually looked a bit like Annie-stole into Laurel’s mind. Pain surged low in her belly, knifing, like the cramps before her miscarriages.

She had to stop this. She had to stop torturing herself, and simply ask Joe. There had to be some perfectly innocent explanation, and when she heard it, wouldn’t she feel silly?

But, still, would it make up for everything else? For the million times she’d spied him staring off into space with that weighed-down look, like he was carrying the world on his shoulders and had no one to confide in when, dammit, she was supposed to be his best friend, wasn’t she? And the nights she lay on her side of the bed, rigid with longing, praying he would make love to her. Once, nearly choking with embarrassment, she’d asked him if there was something wrong with her. Did he want someone more glamorous, instead of a wife who bummed around the house in jeans and Tshirts most of the time, who couldn’t remember the last time she’d bothered with makeup? And Joe … God, he’d been so stricken that he’d taken her into his arms right then and made love to her so tenderly that afterwards she’d wept, but not with joy. No, for that one moment she’d had a taste of what they’d had in the

SUCH DEVOTED SISTERS

487

beginning, of what had almost been hers, and it had pierced her heart.

No, even if he wasn’t having an affair with that woman, in a way he had already left her. Though how could you be left by someone who was never wholly yours in the first place?

God, what could she do? What should she do? Stand by her man, like her life was some country-and-western song, and hope that one day he’d come around? Was she that pathetic, that needy?

But losing Joe … what could be more awful? She’d loved him as long as she could remember. She’d grown up loving him. How could she give that up? Would her feelings for him ever fade the way she seemed to have faded for Joe?

Annie. What would she do if she were in my place?

Oh, why did it always have to come back to Annie, Annie, Annie? This was her life. She didn’t need Annie, or her butting in. Remember how she hit the ceiling when you told her about Val?

Casually, one day over lunch at a little Indian restaurant on Third Avenue, Laurel had told her sister that Val had written that he wanted to see her and get to know his grandson-Adam was two at the time-and that she’d agreed to having him come for a short visit.

“How can you?” Annie stared at her, dropping her fork onto her plate with a loud clink. “How can you even consider it?”

“Adam has a right to know his grandfather,” Laurel had told her quietly but firmly. “Even if Val is a little flaky.”

“Flaky? You think that’s all he is? My God, Laurey, I wouldn’t put anything past that man. How do you know he won’t pull something?”

“Like what? You make him sound like some sort of hardened criminal. He’s not like that, Annie. In fact, I sort of feel sorry for him. He’s got nothing much going for him. And nobody but Adam and me, really.”

“And so you’re going to fill in the blanks?”

Laurel had stared at her, seeing something in Annie’s

488 EILEEN GOU DGE

eyes that made her realize that Annie, under her steely surface, could be insecure, too. “This isn’t a contest,” she told her. “I’m not putting him over you … or saying you didn’t do the right thing taking me away from him.”

That had silenced Annie, but from the tight look on her face, Laurel knew Annie was far from convinced.

But it wasn’t as if Val visited all that often; since that first time, he’d only flown out here twice. The truth-and this Laurel hadn’t admitted to her sister-was that Val couldn’t afford the plane fare.

Laurel now imagined how outraged Annie would be if she knew about the money she’d been sending her father. Not much, just small checks here and there-never enough so that Joe would miss it and maybe question her. It had started years ago, Val phoning and explaining sheepishly about this bind he was in, just temporary, but could he “borrow” enough to tide him over until the deal he was putting together came through?

Somehow, though, Val’s “deals” never seemed to come through, and the loans were never repaid. Laurel didn’t really mind. She felt sorry for Val … and guilty in a way. As if she were partly responsible for the way he’d ended up, though she knew she wasn’t.

Oddly, it was Rudy she missed. Though she hadn’t answered any of the dozens of letters he’d sent, and when he called her she always hung up immediately, the thought of her uncle always brought a lump to her throat. She knew she ought to really hate him for what he’d done … but she sensed that his lying to her-about Val, and later about that couple wanting to adopt Adam-wasn’t born of malice. He couldn’t have meant to hurt her. And in a way he’d done her a favor, hadn’t he? If it hadn’t been for Uncle Rudy, she might actually have given Adam up for adoption. Imagining what her life would be like without Adam, she felt sick.

Laurel needed badly to talk to someone. Should she tell Annie about this thing with Joe? If she didn’t talk to somebody, anybody, she felt as if it was going to burn a hole right through her.

Maybe somehow she’ll be able to help.

SUCH DEVOTED SISTERS

489

Thinking of how good it would feel just to unburden herself, Laurel straightened up and, with pieces of masking tape, began fixing a clean sheet of thick drawing paper to the table’s tilted surface. With a charcoal pencil, she roughed out a sketch of a unicorn. Not an ordinary unicorn-this one had wings, iridescent wings like rainbows-and it was flying, soaring among the stars.

” A

/A. little higher, I think,” Annie told her. “Just above

the ankle.”

Laurel, on her knees on the living room’s braided rug, removed the quiver of pins clamped between her lips.

“I could make it really short, if you like,” Laurel teased. “Miniskirts, I hear, are coming back.”

“In Vogue, maybe … but not on me. Isn’t it enough that practically my entire backside will be showing? Anyway, this isn’t a swimsuit competition. I want the judges to concentrate on my truffles, not my thighs.”

Laurel peered up at Annie. “They’ll love your stuff. What are you so worried about?”

“Everything.” She put on a confident smile, but Laurel didn’t miss how her hand fluttered up toward her mouth befoie she forced it down against her side. She was biting her nails again … a bad sign. But if not for that, who would guess Annie ever suffered a moment of worry?

Laurel rocked back on her haunches, and gazed up at her sister, glorious in the gown that until a few minutes ago had been just a hank of fabric sagging from its hanger. On Annie, it rippled, it glowed, it danced, rubbed velvet the pinkish-gold of hammered copper, supple as silk. Scoop-necked, with a subtle drape that softened her angular shoulders and emphasized her small breasts. The back, as Annie had joked, dipped way down past the Mason-Dixon line, but Laurel thought it looked spectacular. Annie’s back, as she turned to let Laurel pin the hem, was fascinating to watch, the way her muscles, beneath her smooth olive skin, seemed to flex and ripple. And how smart of her to keep her hair short-Annie’s

490

EILEEN GOUDGE

hair was like Annie herself … sleek, practical, to the point.

Somewhere along the way, Laurel realized, Annie had become a real beauty. Not a Grace Kelly kind of beauty … more like Sophia Loren-exotic, her huge eyes made even bigger with eyeliner and mascara, and her wide lips colored unfashionably in deep plum that on her looked exactly right.

Laurel, dressed in old jeans and a checked cotton shirt washed to the softness of flannel, felt mousy in cornparison. When was the last time she’d had her hair styled … or her nails manicured? She wore her hair exactly as she had in high school and college, parted in the center, hanging down to the small of her back. Now it was pulled back in a messy ponytail fastened with the rubber band from this morning’s Times. She looked down at her hands. Her nails were rimmed with red and green and yellow from the poster paints she’d mixed for Adam, who’d been given special permission to paint at her easel while she measured the hem on Annie’s dress. Manicure? Forget it.

Annie, like the fairy godmother in “Cinderella,” bent to touch Laurel’s shoulder. “You should come,” she said. “Really. You’d have fun. Plenty of people you know will be there.”

She shrugged. “Oh, I don’t know.”

This wasn’t the first time Annie had asked her. Laurel felt Tom, wanting to please Annie, to support her at such a big event, but she was so uncomfortable at parties.

She remembered the last fancy party she and Joe had gone to, his wine supplier’s twentieth-anniversary bash. All those people, total strangers, laughing loudly, shouting to be heard over the thumping of the band, their wet glasses brushing her bare arm as they shouldered past. She hated having to think up things to say, trying to be witty or even interesting to people who wouldn’t even remember her name the minute her back was turned, when all she wanted was to be home, in her old bathrobe, curled up with a book or watching an old movie on TV.

“Joe would love it,” Annie said.

SUCH DEVOTED SISTERS

491

Laurel felt a dart of resentment. What makes you such an expert on Joe? she felt like snapping.

But she knew Annie meant well. And in all these years, honestly, had she ever, ever done or said-in even the smallest way-anything to imply she was more than a friend and sister-in-law to Joe?

“I’m sure he would,” Laurel replied evenly. Actually, she’d already suggested he go by himself, or maybe escort Aunt Dolly.

“Then you’ll think about it?”

“Okay, I’ll think about it.” Easier this way. Arguing with Annie was like trying to get out of one of those Chinese finger puzzles-the harder you pulled, the more stuck you got. “Now stand straight so I can get this even.”