Sisterland (20 page)

It was, in some ways, a tempting idea. But the one plane trip we’d taken so far with both Rosie and Owen, to visit Jeremy’s family in Virginia, hadn’t gone smoothly, and the prospect of getting through the flight to Denver, convincing the children to sleep in unfamiliar cribs, all of us in the same hotel room, and looking out for them by myself for three days while Jeremy attended panels—it actually would be the opposite of a vacation. In fact, I wouldn’t even be able to take Rosie swimming without Jeremy because I couldn’t watch her and Owen in the water at the same time. Plus, I’d be worried about leaving my father and Vi behind in St. Louis; I was sure that neither of them would consider leaving town.

“Just think on it,” Jeremy said. “So I’ve already gotten emails from people who saw Vi.”

“Who?”

“Let’s see—from Sally, from Cockroach’s wife, and from Xiaojian Marcus.” These people were, respectively, the wife of Jeremy’s cousin, the wife of his best friend from college, and the wife of Jeremy’s department head, a professor herself at Wash U’s medical school, who had no children and who had told me when Jeremy and I were engaged that being a good mother and a good employee were mutually exclusive. That Xiaojian had emailed Jeremy meant, presumably, that she’d told her husband—that Jeremy’s boss now knew for sure that the earthquake psychic was his sister-in-law. But if Jeremy wasn’t going to point out this fact, neither was I. “Do only women watch the
Today
show?” he was asking. “By the way, Owen had a blowout.”

“Which pants?”

“The gray ones.”

“Put them in a plastic bag and leave it at the top of the basement stairs.”

“Done and done.”

“I’m actually not on my way home yet,” I said. “Stephanie—Vi’s girlfriend—or whatever—she also came for the taping and she wants us to take Vi out for breakfast at the Four Seasons. Is that okay? You don’t teach until eleven today, right?”

“The Four Seasons? This woman must really like your sister.”

“So what did the email say from Xiaojian? Something snotty?”

“It was one line. I think all it said was ‘I just saw your sister-in-law on television.’ ”

I said, “ ‘And P.S. I’m still gloating that I turned out to be right about your wife not being able to handle motherhood and a job.’ ”

“I guarantee you’ve spent more time thinking about that conversation than she has.” I could tell Jeremy had turned his mouth away from the phone receiver as he said, “Let him play with it, too, Rosie.” To me, he said, “Go have fun at your fancy lesbian breakfast.”

The silverware was
big and heavy and the tablecloths were thick and white and there were fresh roses in a vase. The person who approached
us as we were finishing our food was someone I had never seen before: a woman in her fifties wearing running shorts and a red mesh T-shirt that seemed so inappropriate for the restaurant that she had to be someone who found herself in elegant settings frequently enough to have become indifferent to them. Looking right at Vi, she said in a scolding tone, “Didn’t I just see you on TV?”

“Oh—” This was probably the last time being recognized surprised Vi. “Yeah, I guess you did.”

“I don’t usually watch those morning programs, but I was on the treadmill upstairs.” The woman pointed vaguely above her head, then said, “I’m so glad I don’t live in St. Louis! I’m here for a meeting, and thank God I’m flying out this afternoon.”

Stephanie said to the woman, “Do you want Vi’s autograph?” Was Stephanie being sarcastic? It appeared not.

The woman made an expression of distaste. “No,” she said. “I need to go shower.” She looked again at Vi and said with self-satisfaction, “I knew I recognized you.”

After she was gone, Vi said, “That was kind of weird.” She didn’t seem entirely displeased, but I could feel the way she didn’t yet have a framework for thinking about such encounters.

“Get used to it, sweetie,” Stephanie said, and the surprise wasn’t the “sweetie”; it was that Stephanie sounded proud. At what point had Vi revealed her occupation—at the same time as or prior to mentioning her upcoming appearance on the
Today
show? How did a conversation like that unfold? I recalled telling Jeremy about having senses in the car on a drive back from an overnight trip we’d taken to see a concert in Kansas City, but we’d been together for six weeks at that point, not a few days, and even that amount of time had later seemed to me inadequate to have supported the weight of the disclosure. And besides, when I’d told Jeremy, I’d presented the senses as involuntary and private—not as my calling or vocation, certainly not as anything I’d be chatting about on TV.

When the bill came, Stephanie picked it up immediately, and I said to her, “Let’s split it.”

Stephanie was sticking her credit card in the leather folder. She shook
her head. “Definitely my treat. It’s not every day I get to have breakfast with a gorgeous set of twins.”

“Although you did once date the winner of a beauty pageant,” Vi said. Nodding toward me, she said to Stephanie, “Tell her.”

Stephanie laughed. “This was in another lifetime, and I’m not sure
dating
is the right word. I grew up in the sticks, in a tiny town in Arkansas called Cave City, and back in high school, I had a fling with our town’s Miss Watermelon.”

“Whose official title was Queen Melon.” Vi was beaming.

“She now has three children,” Stephanie said. “And a plumber husband.”

“She’s become Mrs. Melon,” Vi said.

“I guess we all have our claim to fame,” Stephanie said.

After Vi and
I were inside my car, I said, “I like her.”

“We’ll see.”

“What’s the problem? I thought that was a totally fun breakfast.”

“What’s the problem besides that she’s female?” From the passenger seat, Vi smirked at me. Then she said, “Have you ever heard the joke about how a lesbian takes a U-Haul on a second date? Well, I think she’s ready for us to move in together.”

“Literally?”

Vi leaned forward and changed the radio station from pop to classic rock. “When you went to the bathroom, she mentioned getting together tonight. For like the sixth time in less than a week!”

By my own calculation, it would be the fourth time. I said, “She’s into you.”

“Do you think she’s pretty?” Vi’s voice was surprisingly vulnerable, and I thought how I had forgotten this part—how when you got together with someone new, you had to adjust to the ways in which they implicitly represented you. First you had to figure out what those ways were; then you had to determine whether you could put up with them.

“Yes,” I said. “I do.”

“She looks kind of like Mrs. Kebach,” Vi said, and I began laughing. Mrs. Kebach had been our elementary school music teacher, a woman who led us in rounds of “Row, row, row your boat” and group sessions on the xylophones.

“She does!” I said. “But Mrs. Kebach was pretty, too. I mean—” I paused. “I never imagined you’d end up going out with her, but she was pretty. So what did you tell Stephanie about tonight?”

“I said I’d look at my schedule.”

“Don’t game her, Vi.” I switched into the left lane, passing a van, and glanced over at my sister. “She seems like a straightforward person.”

“You know what a wise woman once told me?” Vi said. “She told me the homosexual lifestyle is complicated, and all things being equal, I should date a man.”

I said, “But all things are never equal.”

I knew that
Hank and Courtney were meeting with the genetics counselor that day, but I wasn’t sure what time; I waited until Rosie and Owen were up from their naps and texted Hank, keeping it vague in case he was in Courtney’s presence:
U guys around? Hope things going well.…
Thirty seconds later, Hank texted back,
Come on over, in yard
.

Rosie helped me push Owen in the double stroller down the sidewalk and up the Wheelings’ driveway to the backyard, where Hank and Amelia were kicking a soccer ball back and forth; to my relief, I didn’t see Courtney. As we approached, I heard Hank saying, “Only the goalie uses hands.” He turned toward us, and though his appearance and demeanor were entirely normal, I knew.

“Rosie, want to play soccer with Amelia?” I said.

“Rosie wants chalk,” Rosie said.

“Don’t feel obligated,” I said, but Hank was already opening the plastic bin where they stored their outdoor toys. (That even the Prius-driving, organic-cotton-wearing, non-meat-consuming Wheelings owned things made of plastic—it made me feel better.)

“Draw a octopus, Daddy!” Amelia shouted as I set Owen on a blanket
in the grass and placed toys around him. Hank was squatting in the driveway, the chalk scraping across the pavement, and the girls were hunched beside him. I walked over and watched as he finished the octopus—I often forgot about his artistic abilities—and then he began the outline of a cat. When he was finished with the whiskers, he passed his piece of chalk to Amelia and said, “Now you color the octopus, and Rosie, you color the cat.” He dusted off his palms and came to stand next to me. “Courtney definitely wants to terminate.”

“Hank, I’m so sorry.”

“Daddy, she’s messing it up!” Amelia cried as Rosie scribbled over the cat’s face.

“Chill out, Amelia,” Hank said. “Let her do it her own way.” To me, he said, “I once went to a pro-choice march in college. You know, up on Beacon Hill in Boston, holding my sign, sporting my dreads. I definitely think it should be legal. But somehow the idea of it and then, like, my own wife—” He stopped talking, and I wondered again if he was about to cry.

After a minute, in a relatively composed voice, he added, “She says she doesn’t want to try again, that the pregnancy was all a big mistake. We knew we only wanted one kid, we changed our mind, and ever since then, things have sucked—the infertility, the morning sickness when she finally did get pregnant, and now this. Her attitude is, put it behind us and enjoy life again.”

“I’m sure that everything is overwhelming right now.”

“Sure, but Courtney rarely changes her mind.”

Owen had backed into a sitting position from his knees, and I said, “Good job, O. Good sitting up.” He flashed me a proud, gummy smile.

“I usually admire her stubbornness,” Hank said. “Whether it’s not accepting excuses from an undergrad who tries to turn a paper in late or standing up to some crusty-old-man scientist who’s condescending to her. But being stubborn doesn’t work for this. You can’t just erase a pregnancy.”

“Do you not want her to terminate?” I felt conscious of using the same language he did, not saying
abortion
.

“I want us to consider our options.”

“Maybe she’ll feel different in a few days.”

Hank shook his head. “The procedure is scheduled for next Tuesday. She’d have had them do it today if they were willing.”

My cellphone, which was in the pocket of my fleece vest, rang then, and I said, “Sorry. Let me just see if it’s Jeremy.”

It was. “Are you at the Wheelings’?” he asked, and his voice contained a weird ridge of hardness that put me on alert.

“Yeah, why?”

“I just tried you at home, and the voice mail is full. So I listened to it, and it’s all calls about Vi’s prediction. Have you checked your email today?”

“Not yet. Are the phone messages from strangers or people we know? How would a stranger find me?” Especially when my name was completely different from Vi’s. And in this moment, I arrived at a belated understanding that
this
was what I’d been preparing for. For more than half my life, I’d been laying the groundwork for my own invisibility—for far longer, in fact, than Vi had been laying the groundwork for her exposure. But as a fluttery sensation passed through my stomach, I thought how unsurprising it would be if her preparation, her power, trumped mine.

“St. Louis isn’t that big,” Jeremy said. “In the age of the Internet, the world isn’t that big.”

“So who called?”

“For starters, my mom, my dad, my brother, and your Mizzou friend Meredith. Also someone from the
Riverfront Times
, a reporter who says her editor went to high school with you.” The
Riverfront Times
was the free alternative weekly that cheekily covered bands and restaurants and local political scandals and featured advertisements for transsexual escorts; I had read it when I’d first moved back to St. Louis but not since I’d had children. “And there was a message from Janet,” Jeremy was saying, “and someone named Elise, who said she’s Travis’s mom—”

Janet was my old friend and co-worker, and dimly, I had a recollection of a boy named Travis from Rosie’s music class, but how would his mother know I was Vi’s twin—how could she connect Violet Shramm to Kate Tucker?

“She wanted to know if you’re planning to leave town. And one from the mom in that family you babysat for growing up. Melissa Barrett?”

“Melissa Garrett,” I said.

“And also there were some—I don’t want to upset you. I don’t see this as a big deal.”

Again, my stomach fluttered. “What?” I said.

“Some anonymous calls. Just two. One was a person saying, ‘Tell your sister she’s irresponsible,’ and the other was someone who yelled, ‘Fire!’ and hung up. I think as in—”

“Yeah.” I swallowed. “I get it.”

“The person who yelled fire just sounded like they were playing a prank. Is your refrigerator running, that kind of thing. And the other one sounded kind of schoolmarmy, like a self-righteous little old lady. I deleted them, but now I wish I hadn’t, because describing them makes them sound weirder than just hearing them.” And yet there was that hardness in Jeremy’s voice; he didn’t like this, either.

I said, “So what are we supposed to do?”

“Have you checked on your dad today? I bet reporters are calling him, too. But tonight let’s get takeout and just relax. Maybe Thai?”

That was all Jeremy had to offer? Thai food?

“We can’t let this be about us, Kate,” he said. “It’s about Vi.”

But that morning I had done her makeup for the
Today
show; from the end of sixth grade through to our high school graduation, we had cooked dinner together so as to pretend our mother hadn’t failed us; and thirty-four years earlier, we’d been one person. Of course it was about me.