Twisted Sisters (8 page)

Jack happens to be one of those folks.

Everyone on the block is at a loss to explain why Ethel refuses to leave him. His
verbal abuse is legendary, and I remember having to close our windows on summer nights
to suppress the sound of him berating his wife over some minor offense, such as not
having swept the front porch or cooking a dry meatloaf.

The verbal abuse is but the tip of the iceberg, too. Whenever Ethel visits her sister
in Madison, Jack invites strange women to the house, not caring in the least that
the entire neighborhood witnesses his infidelity. Over the years, we’ve easily seen
fifteen different makes and models of mistresses’ cars parked in front of his place.

Given how tight my parents’ block is, and how much everyone hates Jack Culver, I’m
perpetually shocked at Ethel’s reticence to listen to reason or accept help. More
than one Tupperware party–cum-intervention has been staged to convince Ethel that
he’s a bum.

At Ma’s insistence, I offered to work with her pro bono when I was first licensed,
but she didn’t care to upset the applecart that was her life.

I have to take a deep breath before answering. “I do use my skills to make a difference,
Ma. But in this case, I can’t counsel anyone who doesn’t want my input.”

My mother looks at me long and hard. We’re at a stalemate here and she knows it. Resigned,
she says, “Well, the least you can do is grab some more Jungle Juice drinks for the
kids.”

“Mmm, nothing says ‘pure refreshment’ like high-fructose corn syrup and artificial
red dye number five,” I reply. “Are you all out of arsenic and need a less expedient
way to poison the kids?”

“They add vitamin C,” Ma argues.

“Which they could get naturally from actual orange juice instead of this science experiment
gone wrong.”

Ma’s nostrils flare as she exhales. “Just bring up the damn juice, Reagan. It’s in
the utility room downstairs.”

“Will I have to pay the basement troll a quarter for permission to cross her bridge?”
I ask.

Ma’s eyes narrow into little slits. “If you mean your sister, she’s not here, Dr.
Smartypants.”

“Really? Geri lives for gatherings like this. Where is she? There’s no home game at
the Cell, is there?”

“Her girlfriends gave her a Mexican cruise for her birthday! She left two days ago
and comes back next week. I guess everyone at her salon pitched in and surprised her.”

“That’s amazing!” I exclaim.

Ma beams. “Right? Our Geri, everyone fights to be in her orbit.”

“No, I mean that it’s amazing that she’s found an entirely new group off of which
to sponge.” Before Ma can grab my ear, I duck and skitter backward. “Okay, getting
the Jungle Juice now!”

I take the back stairs into the basement. When I was in junior high school, my parents
finished off a couple of rooms down here, so not only is there a bedroom and full
bath, but there’s also a whole living area and a kitchenette. A lot of the houses
in the neighborhood are two-family dwellings, so my parents are already zoned to rent
this out as an apartment, if Geri would only leave already.

I pass the living area and approach Geri’s bedroom. I ease the door open and I’m immediately
assaulted by the sickly-sweet smell of her perfume. Pfft, more like Lady
Gag
.

Even though she’s out of the country, her presence is practically breathing down the
back of my neck. This must be how Batman feels when he happens upon the Joker’s lair.

Anyone else would assume a teenager lived down here due to all the pink furnishings
and the unicorns. I’m sorry, what kind of adult still collects stuffed animals? Her
bulletin board is filled with stubs from seeing football games and crappy bands, with
ropes of Mardi Gras beads and placards from various hair shows.

Geri’s floor is littered with shoes and purses and clothing, much of it turned inside
out. I imagine this is what the dressing room at Forever 21 looks like every night.
Her bed’s unmade and her desk is piled with magazines and catalogs. I shudder to imagine
what’s in the space between the mattress and the floor.

When my dad finished the basement, this was originally my room, so he turned two entire
walls into built-in shelves to hold all my reading material. Books are how I escaped
as a kid. Between my dad watching the ball game in his boxer shorts, my ma smoking
with her sisters in the kitchen, and Geri being Geri, sometimes I’d head downstairs
with a book on Friday afternoon and not come up for air until Sunday.

Naturally, there are no
books
in Geri’s bookcases now. Instead, they’re full of trinkets, gewgaws, some profoundly
creepy big-eyed Japanese dolls, and tons and tons of snapshots. Seems like Geri’s
forced every single person she’s ever met to pose for a picture with her. Typical.
Toward the back of the shelf, I spy a couple of family pictures that include Boyd.

You guys; stop trying to make Boyd happen.

It’s not going to happen.

Being in here is giving me the heebies as well as the jeebies, so I start to pick
my way over the detritus to take my leave. As I’m about to walk out the door, I notice
a newly framed picture hanging on the wall next to her closet. I’d recognize the ocean
backdrop anywhere, of course, even if my wearing a cap and gown weren’t a heavy clue
as to date and location.

Geri and I are standing close together, sun shining on our faces, and the breeze ruffling
her long red hair. She has her arm around my shoulders, wearing a huge grin on her
face, likely because she was moments away from congratulating me on earning my
Battle of the Network Stars
degree.

But still, in this one moment captured on film, we actually look like friends.

Like sisters.

How have I never noticed that we have the same chin and identical bows on our top
lip? Her eyes are green while mine shift from slate to blue, but we have a markedly
similar dark ring around our irises and a matching arch in our left eyebrows.

I guess I’ve always concentrated so hard on what makes us different that I’ve never
taken the time to appreciate what’s the same.

And for one brief second, I wonder if I’ve not misjudged Geri, and maybe misinterpreted
her intentions.

Before I can process this thought, I feel a pinch in the vicinity of my earlobe and
I find myself being dragged into the laundry room, face-to-face with my mother’s fury.

“Did you just tell your nephew that it ‘sucks to be him’?”

And just like that, I’m nine years old all over again.

•   •   •

“Thank you for joining me.”

“It’s my pleasure, Reagan Bishop.” Deva and I are sitting outside at Caribou Coffee.
I called her when I returned home from the south side. I have other friends, of course,
but there’s something calming and comforting about Deva, and I needed to feel anchored
to someone after yet another stressful parental visit.

Sitting across from Deva, I already feel cheered.

Or maybe it’s just that it’s hard to be in a bad mood when your coffee date is dressed
liked Princess Jasmine/I Dream of Jeannie (depending on your generation).

She sips her tea and appraises me. “I’m seeing a blockage around your heart chakra.”
She pulls out her enormous carpetbag and begins to rifle through it. “Have you experienced
feelings of loneliness and anger? I may have some ylang-ylang essential oil, which
will help. You may also find that completing a series of the Ushtrasana posture will
loosen your blockage, Reagan Bishop.”

“Or we could have a conversation,” I offer.

“Isn’t talking about your feelings new age nonsense?” she asks with a wry grin.

“Do people realize you’re funny?”

“I had everyone in the Lakota sweat lodge laughing last week, Reagan Bishop,” she
replies. “My one-liner about tai chi and chai tea had them rolling in the aisles.”
Then, more to herself than to me, “Or maybe that’s because it was a hundred forty
degrees in there.”

“Your karma ran over my dogma,” I quip.

She clutches her massive hand to her chest. “Oh, Reagan Bishop, I’m so sorry, I didn’t
realize. We must mourn the loss immediately.”

“Um, Deva, I was kidding.”

She laughs so hard her turban shakes. “Zing!”

See? Cheered. I didn’t get my run in today, but I am sitting outdoors with an iced
beverage, so it’s not a total loss.

Deva leans back in her chair and folds her legs underneath herself. “Tell me about
your childhood, Reagan Bishop.”

“Are you doing another bit?” I ask.

She cocks her head to the side and peers at me. “No, I was asking about your childhood.”

That catches me by surprise. “Oh. What do you want to hear?”

“What do you want me to hear?”

I sigh. “I don’t know.”

Deva nods. “Then I don’t know, either.”

“Then I guess we’re at loggerheads.”

Deva grabs her bag again. “Okay, then, Reagan Bishop, essential oils and yoga it is.
Would you prefer we do Camel Pose here or shall we take it indoors?”

I clap my hands together. “Conversation it is!” I hesitate before I begin to speak,
unsure of how what I’m going to say will be received. “Let me give you the caveat
that I don’t want to sound like a spoiled brat. For all intents and purposes, I had
an ideal childhood. I was fed and clothed and educated. We had enough. Or, close to
enough. I suspect our occasionally having to share resources is why I don’t get along
with my sisters now. They always seemed to wheedle their way into just a little bit
more than they deserved, and it made me crazy. But still, people built bookcases for
me. I was loved.”

“I can see why you’re troubled, Reagan Bishop.”

“Sarcasm is not part of the therapeutic milieu,” I retort.

Deva is completely guileless. “I’m serious. There’s no problem like a first world
problem, Reagan Bishop. There’s a tremendous amount of guilt associated with a feeling
of unhappiness despite having ample resources. I see it all the time in my line of
work. You have everything, yet you feel bad about not feeling good and then you feel
worse. It’s a vicious cycle. Some of my clients have every luxury at their fingertips,
yet they’re soul sick over the smallest slights. I work with a gentleman from Texas
who has a G550. Then his nemesis bought a G650. Even though both airplanes can fly
from Seoul, South Korea, to Orlando, Florida, in a single trip, my oilman’s depression
was palpable.”

“How did you help him?” I ask.

Vaguely, she replies, “Sometimes my solutions are unconventional and subject for a
different conversation. My point, Reagan Bishop, is that a problem feels like a problem,
no matter of which world it’s a part. So this is a safe space. Please share.” Then
she clasps her mighty paws into prayer position.

I swish the ice in my drink with the straw. “I’d say everything boils down to my childhood.
As you know I have a couple of sisters; one of them’s just like my mom and the other’s
exactly like my dad. I’m not the same as anyone else in the family. For years I was
sure that I was switched at birth. The rest of them have red hair with scads of freckles,
and they’re all short and, let’s be honest, a bit tubby.”

“Have you any suspicion of adultery, Reagan Bishop? Tell me about your mailman.”

I wave her off. “No, nothing like that! My parents are about the two most upstanding
people on the face of the earth. Apparently I resemble my great-grandmother, who was
already gone before I was born. But it’s not even about physical features. I’m so
different
from them. On the inside. They’re all content to live in our old blue-collar neighborhood
and do the same things and see the same people. Personally, the idea of never living
more than three blocks from my family home makes me feel so claustrophobic I can’t
even breathe.”

Deva nods, saying nothing, so I continue.

“Mary Mac was satisfied to dance and chase boys and Geri reveled in being the life
of the party. Neither one of them ever have had lofty goals, no huge aspirations.
But I wanted more and I was made to feel like an outcast because of it. Plus, both
my parents worked, so we didn’t have a ton of time with them. We girls were always
jockeying for their attention. From a very early age, I realized that what made me
special was academic performance, so I threw myself into studying, and when I wasn’t
studying, I was reading.”

“How did you get along with other children?”

“No problems. Kids seemed to like me. I wasn’t bullied, nor was I a bully. I was sort
of . . . removed from it all. I was too focused on grades and books to really worry
about schoolyard politics. How about you?”

Deva swallows hard and replies, “About the same,” and yet I’m not sure I believe her.

“Anything you want to discuss?” I ask. She seems like she’s hiding something.

Breezily, she replies, “Perhaps another day, Reagan Bishop. But I’m curious as to
why you chose the profession you did.”

“Promise not to laugh?” I ask.

“Indeed.”

“Frasier.”

She cocks her head. “As in the fir?”

“No, as in the psychiatrist from
Cheers
and then from
Frasier
. I was just hitting my teens when the spin-off show came on, and it was the one program
on which the whole family could agree. Of course, my folks loved it because they thought
the retired-cop dad was so great, but I identified with Kelsey Grammer’s character.
He breathed life into what I felt every day—like he was a lotus who grew out of the
mud.”

“I thought your parents had a pool in their yard.”

I reply, “Nice mud, solid middle-class mud, but still. Mud. Outside of Mary Mac’s
feckless year at Northern, no one’s educated, no one’s white-collar. Financially,
my parents have made a number of sound decisions, but try explaining that to the snotty
little shits at Taylor Park. I knew I was out of my league socially when I got there,
so I threw myself into academics to avoid potentially being ostracized.”

A flash of something darkens Deva’s features for a moment, but she blinks hard a couple
of times and it quickly passes. “The best thing about high school is that you never
have to go back,” she says lightly. “But at least you love what you do now.”