The Good Sister (19 page)

In those early days Simone had friends, other young women married to rich and prominent men. One had studied marketing in
college and another had a degree in music, but none cared to work when they didn’t need the money. They were creatively idle
and engaged in good works. Simone tagged along frequently enough to be considered one of the group and became the queen of
envelope-stuffing. On Tuesdays and Thursdays these women played tennis and she met them for lunch afterward on the terrace
at the club. If someone asked her to make up a doubles team, she laughed and said she was a klutz, born to watch sports but
never play them. That had been a happy time as Simone remembered it. The women didn’t seem to mind that she was quiet during
their conversations, a lot of which went right over her head. She
knew these expensive and intelligent women included her in their group because Johnny was her husband, that otherwise they
would not be interested in her. But sometimes she was funny and they laughed at her jokes and she thought that in a small
way they liked her.

After Merell was born she had been too depressed to go out. Occasionally she was invited to lunch or a movie but not often
and after a while not at all. When they met at dinners and benefits the women drew Simone aside to ask, their voices just
above a whisper and so sympathetic, if it was true she’d had another miscarriage. She sensed how the misses one after another
embarrassed and fascinated them. There was a kind of thrill in their horrified sympathy.

Roxanne was the only real friend Simone had ever had unless she counted Shawn Hutton. When Billy Winston called Simone a dummy,
Roxanne chased him, caught him, and thumped him until he begged for mercy. In first grade a girl with corn-colored hair called
her a retard, but she took it back when Roxanne twisted her arm. And yesterday she had slapped Johnny, defending her. Recalling
the shock on his face would make Simone smile for the rest of her life.

“What I said about getting an abortion, you know I didn’t mean it. I’d been upset all day.”

“You’re upset
every
day.”

He sat on the edge of the bed, his shoulders bent, reminding Simone of his father, who had risen every
morning before sunrise and carried bricks on his back for eight or ten hours. A wash of love and regret overcame her, and
she laid her head against Johnny’s shoulder, feeling the damp warmth of his freshly washed skin on her cheek, the citrus fragrance
of his cologne. She didn’t have fingers and toes to list all the times and ways she had let Johnny down. “You’d be happier
with someone else.”

“Leave it, Simone. I’m too tired to talk about this.”

“I’ll try harder.” To be estranged from him in any way was unbearable. “I promise I will, Johnny.”

“Let’s just get you into the third trimester. You’ll feel better then.”

The late months of pregnancy were her reward, a time when she fell under the enchantment of her body’s astounding ability
to stretch and shift and make room, always more room. At night the baby kicked or rolled or jabbed her with its bony elbows
and her bladder was under constant pressure, but she didn’t mind being kept awake because after a day when her hips and knees
and back—even her feet and toes!—ached as if the bones would shatter under the strain, lying down was a blessing for a few
moments, until even being stretched out flat became uncomfortable. Mostly, during the last trimester she lived in a kind of
daze, her mind clouded by the miracle that she who was unable to serve a tennis ball or properly pronounce the governor’s
name could create a human life and hold it inside her for nine months, until it was more perfectly accomplished than anything
Johnny
built or Roxanne crossed off her endless lists. She liked that her belly grew huge and cumbersome and seemed to roll out ahead
of her so that people in stores and on the street smiled when they saw her coming and moved aside to make room. Anyone looking
at her could see that she wasn’t just a pretty, slow-witted girl pointlessly taking up space in the world, that she had importance,
a purpose, a reason for breathing and being.

She ran her hand down the swale of Johnny’s backbone. “Did you have a bad day?”

“Long,” he said, stretching. “These Chinese guys are really perfectionists and working with an interpreter slows everything
down. It bugs me I never know what the dudes are really saying to each other.”

He talked, and she let her thoughts drift away and back again. Eventually, talked out, he pulled the sheet over them. “How’d
you manage without Franny?”

“I called Roxanne three times, but she didn’t answer. I left messages.”

“She’s got her own life, Simone. You forget that sometimes.”

“Merell was good.”

Morning and afternoon, while Simone dozed intermittently on the sectional in the family room, Merell had kept Valli and Victoria
occupied. At lunchtime she found a chicken-and-rice casserole in the freezer, and Simone put it in the microwave. They had
eaten the leftovers for dinner.

“Olivia?” Johnny asked, his voice drowsy.

Simone had put the baby in her crib and closed the door. She and Merell and the twins went into the tot lot and she pushed
them in the swings and on the merry-go-round. It was quiet in the house when they went back inside and watched a video.

“I think maybe she’s getting better.”

“We can all hope for a miracle.” He yawned again. “I’m going to call Alicia, get her over here to help out for a few days.
She might be better than someone from the agency.”

An arrow of alarm shot through Simone. Mention of Johnny’s oldest sister confirmed her fear that his forgiveness was conditional.
Simone had to remodel herself or Alicia would come in and take over everything. Childless Alicia had been divorced for decades
and had run the accounting office of Duran Construction like a totalitarian state before she retired. If she walked into the
house carrying a suitcase, she’d never leave.

“You know she doesn’t like me.” Simone pressed herself against him, whispering. “Be patient with me, Johnny.”

“I’ve been patient since the day we got married. It gets old, Simone. If there was just something you knew how to do, that
you liked to do, you’d have a reason to get up in the morning. If you weren’t so fucking helpless.”

He threw his forearm up over his eyes. “I can’t come home to disaster every day. And forget about me, it’s not good for the
girls either. Firing Franny was the last straw,
Simone. You’ve done a lot of stupid things but that was the worst. We needed her to make this work.”

“You wouldn’t divorce me, would you?” She blurted the horrible question without thinking, followed by a short, squealing giggle
unlike any sound she’d ever made.

“No, honey, not divorce, never divorce. I’ll always take care of you. I promised that. But maybe we could make some kind of
arrangement. Alicia could live here. She could manage the kids and the house.”

“She’s too bossy, Johnny, and the girls don’t like her.”

“You could have your own little house.”

“I don’t want my own house, I want you.”

“The girls and I would live with Alicia and you’d see them, of course.”

She was terrified into silence.

“And then if you got better…”

“I’m not sick!”

“You’re miserable all the time, Simone.”

“I can be happy.”

“And you lie in bed like an invalid. If you’d just
do
something.”

I am doing something
, she thought.
I’m having another baby. For you.

“You knew what I was like when you married me. Why did you marry me?”

Convulsively, he grabbed her, pulling her close. “Because you were beautiful and I could see our children in you. My son.”

He pushed her away, making a sound—a sigh mixed up with a laugh or a sob. She didn’t know what a sound like that meant, and
she was afraid to ask.

*       *       *

Ellen spent Wednesday mousing around her apartment in her dressing gown, eating nothing but aspirin and a few saltines, and
drinking flat ginger ale to settle her stomach. Her phone rang and she didn’t answer it. She left her computer unopened. She
did not fully remember Tuesday night after she left the Mariposa but she must have gone somewhere else; there was Scotch all
over her dress. The blackout had brought back too vividly the memory of her years with Dale, and if she could have crawled
under the house to hide from herself she would have done it. Later in the day, when her brain had stopped banging against
her skull, her mind cleared enough for her to remember what BJ used to say, that no experience was so terrible it couldn’t
be learned from: no more drinking and no more online and telephone love affairs.

By Wednesday she felt herself to be back on track.

During her twenty-four-hour recuperation she did a lot of hard thinking and admitted to herself that she was never going to
be happy while she lived over Johnny’s vintage-car garage. Ellen wasn’t cut out to be a boarder; and nice as it was, this
apartment would never be home. But she could not just leave with the home situation so precarious. First something would have
to be done about Simone for the sake of the children. Ellen and Johnny
were going to have a good talk and she would share some down-home truth about his wife. If she had to tell him what really
happened at the swimming pool that made Merell call 911, she would even do that.

But by the time she got down to the house on Thursday morning Johnny had already left for work. Upstairs she found Simone
dressing for the day and abuzz with determined energy. There had been a girl in one of BJ’s offices years ago who chewed amphetamines
like breath mints.

“Have you taken something?”

“What?” Simone asked. “You mean Xanax? Hardly!”

“Where did all this energy come from?” Simone had showered, and the door to her steamy bathroom was open, filling the bedroom
with the fragrance of lemon leaves. “Are you sure you’re not taking diet pills or something?”

“The kids and I are going to make cupcakes.” Simone’s beauty had a fire in it when she was manic. “Want to help us?”

On Ellen’s list of one hundred possibilities for the day, baking with her daughter and granddaughters had its own special
place at the very bottom. Still, she wondered if it was safe to leave Simone alone, and did her resolve to be the new and
improved Ellen require that she make cupcakes?

“Where’s Merell? Will she be here?”

“Of course. School doesn’t start until next week.”

“Let her help you, Simone. Don’t try to do too much.”

“I’m fine, Mom. Really. You don’t have to hang around. You have plans?” She cocked an eyebrow. “Coffee date?”

Ellen felt her cheeks flush. Matter-of-factly, she said, “I’m having breakfast at the Hob Nob. Alone. After that, I have some
appointments.”

She would order poached eggs and bacon and read the real estate listings while she ate. Since early that morning her mind
had been occupied with plans.

Though Ellen had been half out of her mind for several months after BJ died, she was not so far gone that she let any of her
licenses lapse. She had sold the Vadis Group and the new owners had kept the name to capitalize on the reputation of the firm.
They would hire her back but she didn’t want to work for anyone.

She liked the highbrow ring of
Ellen Vadis Properties.

*       *       *

In the kitchen Valli announced, “The milk’s got chunks.”

“I’ll take care of it,” Simone said. “Merell, go around the house and check the windows, make sure they’re closed.”

The air conditioner whirred noisily as it struggled to cool the big house.

Merell said, “Daddy says it’s broken.” She pointed to a printed sheet of numbers tacked to the wall next to the phone. “You
can call the repairman.”

“Just close the windows like I told you to. We’ll keep the cool air inside.”

In the pantry there was a big box of powdered milk she would mix with cold water and whirl in the blender. If she rinsed out
the carton of sour milk and poured in the reconstituted, the twins wouldn’t know the difference, and Merell could do without
if she didn’t like it.

The pantry smelled of onions and old apples, of a life far away from the one she was living. Simone wished she could pull
the door shut and just sit in that place for a while, breathing in the comforting, rural smell; but she had a full day ahead
of her, and it was going to be a wonderful day. It had to be. What was the saying?
Today is the first day of the rest of your life.

For now she would pretend that everything Johnny had said last night was a nasty dream; and if his words came into her mind,
she drove them away by singing the alphabet song. The twins thought this was hilarious and joined in at the top of their lungs;
and then they all got silly, mixing up the letters on purpose, and Simone forgot what she didn’t want to remember.

She found the dry milk, and while she was about it she grabbed up the flour and sugar and chocolate she knew she’d need for
cupcakes.

In the kitchen she sang out, “Countdown to cupcakes! Ready-set-go in a few minutes.” She set the canisters of flour and sugar
on the counter.

“Mrs. Duran.” Celia, the housekeeper, stood between the kitchen and the family room with a dust rag in her
hand. Though she had been with the Durans since Merell was an only child, Simone had never warmed to her. “Upstairs already
it’s hot.”

“Well, I can’t help that. The air conditioner’s on as high as it’ll go. Complain to Mr. Duran if you’re unhappy. Did you check
Olivia?”

“Is not my job to babysit.”

“I know that, but it wouldn’t kill you to look at her.”

“She not crying.”

“Never mind then, just do your work.”

Simone stared at the directions on the side of the powdered milk box until they made sense, dug around in drawers and cupboards
for the measuring cups, and poured dry milk into one of them. There was probably an expiration date printed somewhere on the
box but she didn’t want to know it. Watching every move she made, the twins pressed against her until they made her skin itch
and she pushed them away. The reconstituted milk roared in the blender.