The Almost Archer Sisters (6 page)

Around that time, Lou went to great expense to restore two minutes of Super 8 footage featuring Nell and Beth on the front lawn of the farm chasing after me. I couldn’t have been more than two in the film, the smallest blur soundlessly running away from a medium-sized blur and a tall blur, presumably Nell.

“That’s it?” Beth asked, rolling off the love seat. “We can’t even see anything.”

“That’s it,” Lou said. “The film’s mostly damaged. Want me to replay it?”

Beth shrugged.

“Yes,” I said. “Again.”

Lou had hoped the film would jangle whatever was left of the grief stored inside her, but Beth lost interest after the third play. Eventually, Lou said no to the pills and the therapy, figuring plain old love and simple understanding would straighten Beth out long enough to reawaken her ambition to leave us.

I
N BETH’S FINAL
year of high school, she managed to score not only entry-level marks, but her risky style sense secured her a place at Parsons School of Design in New York. Despite her rancid outbursts, Lou began to miss her long before her goodbye. Once, over breakfast, I watched as he became momentarily lost in Beth’s puffy lips. She was absently stuffing pancakes into her mouth, her other hand negotiating an unruly sketchpad, the stainless-steel fan pivoting back and forth, mutely following what wasn’t being said between them. I remember wondering if he was thinking, like I was, that Beth’s lips were just like our mother’s, before Nell’s
began to wrinkle around the edges like the dozens of clay ashtrays we brought home from art class. Every birthday and Mother’s Day we’d bring her some kind of handmade round thingy which eventually took the form and function of an ashtray. Pick her some flowers, Lou would beg. Buy her candy, something she can’t stub a goddamn cigarette out on. Lou was not being lascivious that morning, but something odd had made itself at home across his stubbled face, something I would call now nostalgic ardor. Finally, Beth looked up at him and grinned, her tiny teeth studded with pancake bits.

“Loo-ooou?” She slammed down the sketchbook. “You were, like, totally staring at me all weird there for a second.”

Her syrupy finger hovered six inches away from Lou’s face.

“Sorry, Beth Ann. I was staring and that is rude.”

I tried to change the subject.

“Hey Beth, where’s my book I lent you?”

Beth ignored me, waving the fork in Lou’s face like a court lawyer.

“Why are you looking at me funny? Do you think I’m very beeeeoootiful?”

Lou threw down his napkin.

“Actually, yes, I do, Beth Ann,” he said, crossing his arms and leaning back from the table as though he’d been challenged. “You looked just like your mother there for a second, and I was thinking, I miss Nell very much and I wish she could see how beautiful her daughter has become. And what a great success she’ll be in New York. You do have your ma’s mouth. Is there something wrong with that?”

“Yeah, old man. It’s creepy,” she said, seductively closing her mouth around a forkful of pancakes.

As Lou stood up to leave the kitchen, Beth rose too, and smashed into him. It looked like an accident. “Ow. Lou. My boobs!”

Beth covered her breasts and glared at him as he stomped toward
the foyer. While he scrambled to put on his shoes, she dramatically collapsed back into the vinyl chair and laughed like a diva.

“Jeez, Peach. That was funny.”

Lou headed outside, slamming the door behind him. Beth ran to the kitchen window, still giggling, as I wordlessly joined her, unsure of whether I could handle the image of Lou crying into his hands in the carport. But instead he seemed to be looking for something to smash to bits against a wall. His hand found the novel Beth had been reading, the one I had asked about, sitting dog-eared on the corner of his workbench. It was
Flowers in the Attic
, Nana Beecher’s old book. He glanced at the back cover where it described a “tale of passion” between “innocent and beautiful siblings” who were “locked away from the world by their selfish mother.” The opening chapter was titled “Goodbye, Daddy.”

He must have skimmed through the book for ten minutes, seeming to stop on the first of several sex scenes between the young brother and sister.

“Beth reads this shit and passes it on to Peachy?” Beth said, mimicking Lou with a deep-voiced, Southern accent. “No wonder she’s overly sexed-up and makin’ funny ’bout incest!”

Lou wiped his eyes and carefully shut the book. In a house full of estrogen, he was the only one easily brought to tears by teasing. That was Beth’s cue. She left my side, slapped open the door, and stood like a superhero, fists on waist, in the carport.

“
There
it is,” she said, startling him. “You shouldn’t read that book, Lou. It’s not your kind of book. Or
is
it?”

“I’m sorry. I just found it over there. Here you go.”

She snatched the book out of his hands.

“Don’t tell Peachy you found it, okay? I’m not done with it yet.”

“Sure, Beth. But it’s not real smart reading, is it?”

She fanned out the pages of the paperback with her thumb, the slight breeze blowing back her bangs.

“Lou? Know what I wish for sometimes?” she asked, rocking on her hips. He seemed a little heartened. This was the kind of conversation he had always craved, had so wanted to have with her. He once told me he missed those times when we’d absently finger our wet hair while he dried our legs after a bath, the both of us nattering at him about girly things like ponies, the Fonz, unicorns.

“No, what? Tell me, Beth.” Lou pulled up a stool.

“Well … I wish—I wish I had a
gorgeous
older brother,” she squealed, holding the sickening book aloft and running back into the kitchen. “I’m kidding, Lou. It’s just a joke!”

“I wish you had an older brother, too,” Lou yelled.

He stomped after her into the kitchen, unfurling a finger inches from her shocked face.

“This must stop. What have I done to deserve this, Beth Ann? How have I made this environment conducive to such frank talk? Jesus Christ, I work long hours. I just want some peace in this house. And I want to see you learn to be kind, for godsakes. Why are you like this?”

“Lou, calm down,” Beth said, plucking a cigarette from an open pack in the freezer. “We both already read that book.”

“Smoke that goddamn thing outside. I don’t want me and Peachy to die before our time just ’cause you’re so damn stupid!”

“Fine. Let’s go, Peachy. Lou’s clearly got his period.”

She sauntered out of the house, and I looked to Lou for that almost imperceptible nod that said
Go after her
. When she was like this, I did often join her. Not because I took her side. But rather because I was afraid that she’d feel abandoned or unloved, even when her banishment was self-inflicted.

We walked silently into town, over the tracks, past the high school, past the tavern and into the Starlite Variety. We strode down the toys and notions aisle to get to the cold drinks.

“Oh my God this place is depressing,” Beth whispered, holding
up a toy soldier whose stern little face was pressed up against a loud plastic bag. “Imagine buying this for your kid? Mom
was
insane.” She tossed the doll onto the bottom shelf, then shoved a bag of Nibs down the front of her jeans. We paid for our pops and left, the glass door tinkling shut behind us. We ate and drank on the swing set until we sensed Lou’s storm was over, the same trip I’d make a year later—a stop at the Starlite before a vigil in the park—when a different drama played out on the Archer Compound.

S
AM AND
J
AKE
loved their aunt the way children do when they can sense someone’s not terribly big on them. After Beth dropped her bag on the floor, and exactly twelve hours before she fucked my husband in our pantry, the boys had begun their aggressive preening. I loved how they’d trot out toys and tricks and books, hoping maybe one of those lucky props would do the job of puncturing Beth’s mysterious ambivalence toward them. It was heartbreakingly great of them. And though it troubled Beau, I couldn’t get enough of those parades. Made me root for them.

“Come here, boys, and let your gorgeous auntie grabble her hairy little monkeys!” Sam and Jake scrambled into her stomach, accidentally banging head-on into the fake boobs.

“Ow, boys, mind the machinery!”

Beth had recently replaced the old set of tits Lou accidentally bought her when she graduated. She had told him the money
would go toward a Vespa to boot around Manhattan. But instead she parlayed the scooter into a stellar set of tits, which had sent Lou into a depressive funk for months.

“Where’d you pick up this idea that boobs are going to make you happy? How’d you come to think butchering your body’s the thing to do after all these years in this household? You were perfect like you were. For godsakes, Beth Ann, didn’t I teach y’all to be feminists? Nell would roll in her grave.”

“Yeah, so sorry I’m not following in her stellar footsteps, Lou. And I
am
a feminist. But I also want to be feminine. I think of myself as a feminine-icist.”

Eventually, she admitted that had she known some implants had to be replaced, she would never have gotten them done in the first place. But now that she owned no less than five thousand dollars’ worth of imported lingerie, there was no going back to the old A’s.

“Oh. That’s a fine rationale,” Lou had said. “Wanna know Victoria’s Secret? She doesn’t have one. ’Cause there’s nothing mysterious about her.”

“That’s why I don’t buy their cheap thongs.”

Beth hadn’t blown herself up to porn star proportions. She bought a firm pair of high C’s, the same I sported twice with the pregnancies, before they reverted back to their default consistency of loose tapioca spooned into Baggies. But I loved her too in that moment. Beth was an unhappy woman, completely and utterly by choice, I thought.

“Hi, Peach,” Beth said, straightening herself up and looking right at me. In her tone I could tell we had a long talk ahead of us.

“Hello, Miss Archer. Looking well,” I said, smiling and hugging her.

“Thank you, Mrs. Laliberté. As are you.”

“Tell me, Miss Archer, what brings you here on a Thursday may I ask?”

“Interesting question, Mrs. Laliberté. First of all, we’re not in production for six weeks, and since I own the show, I can do what I want, pretty much when I want. It’s called the perks.”

“How marvelous for you.”

“Yes, it is marvelous. Also,” she added, knowing her cover was blown, “on the morrow’s morn we are departing this little hellhole called home, because Jeb and Nadia are hosting a dinner party in your honor tomorrow night in Brooklyn, and
we
have fancy reservations on Saturday night. More on that later. And on Sunday, breakfast at Tartine before I take you to the airport.”

“Hmm … interesting. Are those places nearby? Because, you see, I have two young sons who need minding,” I said, smiling over to the boys to cue their surprise reactions.

“Why no, they are not nearby. They are located in the city of New York, on the island of Manhattan. Come on down, Peachy Laliberté, you’re the next contestant on
You’re Coming to New York With Your Sister Tomorrow
!”

On cue, the boys knocked out their strangely aggressive little jazz numbers.

“So? Whaddya think, Peach? I know you’ve never flown and you don’t want to leave the boys, but—”

“Beth. Really. I can’t wait,” I said, pointing to my already-packed carry-all behind the front door.

“Beau, you have a big mouth,” Beth said, tiptoeing into the kitchen where he was digging out beers from the bottom of the fridge. She slapped his ass hard with an open palm. Then she began to dig down the back of his jeans to tug up his underwear, which made the boys giggle with delight. Beau squirmed away from her in discomfort.

“Ow.
Hey
, I didn’t say anything. Peachy’s the snoop.”

He knew I could get touchy about any intimacy between them. So did Beth, which is why she would launch these little attacks in the first place. It was her way of reasserting that his body was
territory she had originally conquered, then discarded. She got there first, not me. And though I couldn’t imagine Beth wanting Beau again, he was, indeed, an average male starved for affection and attention, more so now since worrying about Sam’s illness had long supplanted sex as the number one thing I liked to do with my husband in bed.

As though to cut the tension caused by Beth’s teasing, the boys began their customary show-and-tell. Sam displayed several cool rocks he found by the river, one by one, on Nana Beecher’s oak table. And Jake talked through a hand puppet into Beth’s muscled shoulder, saying, “I’m Bernie. I can fly.” Beau poured Beth a beer into a glass, no doubt fighting off the image of having sex with the both of us at the same time. What would it be called? The Archer Deluxe?

Lou came up from the salon stripping off his hair-dye gloves like Gypsy Rose Lee. He’d recently booked a clutch of teenaged boys from town who all wanted bleached crew cuts.

“Hello, my love. How was the flight?”

“Fast. Nice. Nothing,” Beth said, standing up for one of Lou’s hugs.

“You are thin, Beth Ann. I feel like I’m clutching a bouquet of lollipops.”

“Good. That is the goal, Lou.”

We sat around the table for a few minutes focusing intently on the boys, while Beau wiped down the granite counter top, took out the cutting board, and tenderly laid out chicken breasts he’d marinated in mustard and honey.

“Peachy, after the barbecue, let’s go to the tavern for nightcaps. Beau can babysit,” Beth said, tunneling through Sam’s carefully placed stones to grab my hand. “I’ve got some more news about Marcus.”

I felt my heart leap at the sound of his name.

“I thought that was all over, Beth,” I whispered.

“Who’s Marcus?” Beau asked. I couldn’t tell if he sounded blandly curious or mildly jealous or both.

“Some guy who ripped out my heart.”

“Wow, was there a reward for finding it?”

“Score one for Beau,” Beth said.