First Comes Love (32 page)

F
our days, two off-Broadway plays, one musical, and endless hours of wandering the city later, I can't tell if I'm feeling a little better or much worse. I decide it's closer to the latter when I get a call from Josie, gushing about how cute Harper looked in her butterfly costume. “Did you get my photos?”

“Yes. Didn't I thank you?” I say, knowing that I did.

“Yes,” she says. “You did.”

“I'm really glad you stopped over to see her…because of course Nolan only took one shot. And it was dark and blurry.”

She laughs and says, “Typical guy.”

I murmur my agreement, and a long pause ensues before Josie brings up her visit to the cemetery.

“Yeah. I heard y'all went,” I say, tensing. “How was it?”

“It was nice,” she says. “Difficult, but nice…I feel a little better.”

“Well…good. Great…Does Mom know you went?” I ask, feeling certain that the answer is no.

“I don't think so….Unless Nolan told her…I haven't mentioned it to her yet.”

“Well, maybe you should tell her? You know—since she's been wanting you to go for
years,
” I say.

“Yeah. I know. I will,” she says. “I actually need to talk to both of you….”

“Oh?” I say. “About?”

“About…some things,” she says. “When are you coming home?”

I lean back on Ellen's sofa and stare at a large water mark on the ceiling as I tell her I don't know.

“Soon?” she presses.

“I don't know,” I say again, irritation creeping into my voice.

A long silence follows, but I am determined to outlast my sister. “
Are
you coming home?” she finally asks.

“Now, why would you ask that?” I bark, enraged by her insinuation that I would abandon my child.

“God.
Sorry,
” she says. “I didn't mean to offend you….I'm just worried…about you and Nolan. And Harper.”

“Well, don't be,” I say. “You have your hands full with your own life.”

I know my response is over-the-top bitchy, and I brace myself for a brawl, or at the very least, one of her signature hang-ups, but Josie floors me by taking the high ground.

“You're right, Mere. I do,” she says. “But I'm really trying here.”

“Trying to do what, exactly?” I snap.

“Trying to get it together…and I just really, really want to see you in person. If you're not coming home, do you think I could come up there?”

I shake my head and roll my eyes, getting the sudden feeling that Josie is using my crisis to justify a trip to New York
and
score a free place to stay. “Is it really that urgent?”

“Yes, Mere,” she says. “It kind of is, actually.”

I sigh, telling myself not to fall into Mom's trap and start worrying that it's something dire or health-related. “Can you at least tell me the topic?” I ask, betting that it involves Will, or her sperm donor guy and their half-assed birth plan, or maybe even some other new guy, Josie never going very long before some new male character emerges in her life.

A long pause follows—so long that I think we've been cut off. “Are you still there?” I say.

“Yes,” she says. “I'm here.”

“Okay? Well? What's the topic?” I ask again.

“It's about Daniel,” she says, her voice cracking. “I need to talk to you about Daniel.”

All of my instincts tell me to say no—that Josie is somehow manipulating me and my situation, or otherwise pulling some sort of attention-grabbing stunt. But of all the things my sister's been dramatic about over the years, our brother has never been one of them. I think back to the days immediately following the accident, how she disappeared into her room for hours on end while the rest of us milled about the kitchen. I think about her demeanor at the funeral—how self-contained and withdrawn she was. I can't recall her crying at the service at all, and have a vivid memory of her standing apart from our family at Daniel's graveside until my grandmother pulled her over to the front row of folding chairs, practically forcing her to sit down.

So on the off chance this is all legitimate, I sigh and say yes, she is welcome to come to New York this weekend.

J
OSIE'S FLIGHT LANDS
around seven on Friday night, and she pulls up in a taxi less than an hour later, just as I'm arriving home from the corner bodega. She sees me first, calling out my name through her open cab window. She is wearing her hair wavy and natural around her unmade-up face, and my first thought is that she looks stunning—
way
prettier than when she spackles on the makeup and irons all the life out of her hair. I try to wave, but my grocery bags are weighing down my arms, so I simply smile and yell hello, waiting for her to get out of the car. It takes her an unusually long time to pay her fare and finish chatting with her driver, and I feel myself growing annoyed. She is the kind of person who will finish her phone call and touch up her lip gloss while someone waits for her spot in a packed parking lot. It makes me crazy.

I tell myself to stop my mental rant, then take a deep breath. I have enough on my plate right now. A few seconds later, her door swings open, and she plants a black suede platform boot onto the street, before heaving a giant roller bag out of the backseat.

“Perfect timing!” she declares as she gets out of the taxi, slams the door, and waves goodbye to her cabbie.

“Yeah, I just ran to the store.” I smile brightly while eyeing her suitcase. “That's a lot of luggage for two nights,” I can't resist saying.

“I know, I
know
….I'm a terrible packer. I just threw a bunch of stuff in before school this morning.” She steps toward me, then throws her arms around me. “It's
so
good to see you, Mere.”

I lower my plastic bags to the sidewalk and hug her back, stiffly at first. Then I relax, as I realize that in spite of my cynicism, I'm genuinely happy to see her. We separate, and I watch her glance up, then down the block, as if to get her bearings. She then squints and points up at Ellen's building. “That's it, right?”

“Yes. Fourth floor. It's a walk-up,” I say with a grimace. “No elevator.”

“That's okay. I need the workout,” she says, making a muscle, then motioning toward my grocery bags and asking if we're eating in tonight.

That hadn't been my plan, but I say yes anyway, trying to gauge her reaction. “Would that be okay with you?”

“Sure,” she says, passing the test—at least for now. “Whatever you want to do is cool with me….”

I smile, then turn and lead her up the stone steps of Ellen's building. We walk into the bare-bones lobby, past the small grid of mail slots, then enter the musty stairwell. All the while, Josie rambles about how tired she is, what a long week it's been, how exhausting it is to be a teacher, especially with young children who have no self-control or respect for your personal space. After two flights, she's completely winded, and by the third, she has to put her bag down to catch her breath.

“How many pairs of shoes did you bring? Tell the truth….” I say.

“Oh, I don't know…four or five.” She flashes me a sheepish, yet somehow still proud smile.

“Including the pair you're wearing?”

“Okay. So five or six,” she says.

“And yet…you'd be okay staying in?” I say as we climb the last flight.

“I said
yes,
” she says. “Why do you keep asking me that?”

“I've only asked you twice.”

“Right. But I already said yes….Whatever you want is fine, Mere.”

“Okay,” I say, rounding the corner, then unlocking Ellen's door and pushing it open. Once inside, I put my groceries down and slowly remove my boots, lining them neatly up next to the doormat, her cue to do the same. But of course she does not, sauntering right past the entryway, her filthy airplane-airport-city-sidewalk boots clunking on the hardwood.

“Hey, Josie,” I say. “Your shoes?”

She rolls her eyes and says she was just about to take them off; would I
please
give her a chance?

“Okay.
Sorry,
” I say, though I don't actually believe her. “You know it's my thing….You overpack; I obsess about germs.”

“I know,” she says, retreating a few steps. “But still. Don't you remember how Mom used to tell us to say ‘thank you' before we had a chance to spit the words out?”

“Yeah,” I say with a laugh. “The cupcake wouldn't yet be transferred to our hands before she was like, ‘Gir-
ls
! What do you
saaay
?' ”

Josie sits on the floor, pulling off her boots. “Exactly. And don't you remember how much it always annoyed us? Because we were totally
going
to say it? Only
now
…we no longer got the credit for having good manners? We just looked like a couple of dolts….” She stands and looks at me, her brows raised.

I smile, thinking, not for the first time, that although some of our worst sibling rivalry involves vying for our mother's favor, some of our best bonding has come at her expense.

I carry the groceries into Ellen's tiny galley kitchen, putting away the few perishable items before washing my hands. Josie does the same, this time without prompting, then turns and eagerly asks for a tour.

“Well, this is pretty much it,” I say, gesturing toward the living room. “Plus her bedroom in the back.”

“It's nice,” she says, walking over to the windows and looking out to the street below. “Very cute…and cozy…What's the rent run?”

“They bought it. And I have no idea what they paid for it,” I say, despising the way Josie talks about money.

“Must be nice,” she says under her breath, “having that kind of loot.”

“Better than being broke, I guess,” I say, refraining from my usual commentary about how money can't buy you happiness.

“Yeah…that's an understatement,” Josie says with a laugh, picking up a little bronze Buddha from an end table. “This is cute.”

I nod, thinking Ellen probably isn't going for
cute
. “Yeah. She has good taste.”

“What would you call her style, anyway?” Josie asks, putting down the Buddha and running her hand up and down the base of a lamp made of cork.

“Oh, I don't know…eclectic? The opposite of Andy's?”

She nods, then inspects Ellen's coffee table books, now in full-on nosy mode. She opens one on photography, reading the inscription from Andy, then flipping randomly to an edgy black-and-white portrait of Lenny Kravitz. “Cool shot,” she murmurs.

I nod.

“Did Ellen take any of these?” she asks, still flipping through the pages.

“I don't think so…but maybe,” I say, thinking that Josie seems to have such love-hate feelings about Ellen, sort of the way I felt about Shawna in high school, both fascinated by and disdainful of her at once—which often boils down to jealousy. “She's shot a few famous people.”

“Oh, I know. She's told me,” Josie says, rolling her eyes, implying that Ellen brags—which couldn't be further from the truth. “Does she know I'm here this weekend?”

I nod. “Uh-huh.”

“What did you tell her?”

“I don't remember
exactly
. Just that you were coming for the weekend.”

“And?”

“And
what
?”

“Did you tell her
why
I was coming?”

I raise my eyebrows and stare at her pointedly. “Um. No…How could I do that?”

She gives me a blank look.

“I don't
know
why. Remember?”

She glances away, crossing her arms over her chest as she sits on the far end of Ellen's contemporary sofa. “God. This is
so
uncomfortable,” she says. At first I think she's talking about the two of us, until she adds, “Why would she buy a sofa that's this
hard
?”