Two Sisters: A Novel (36 page)

Muriel looked up at her, confused.

“
Kneel
.”

She knelt on the hard stool.

“Pray.”

Pressing her palms together, her cheeks on fire, she prayed.

“I can’t hear you,” Babcia said.

“Dear God, please forgive me for taking a little bit of Babcia’s icin—”

“For
stealing
the icing.”

“For stealing Babcia’s icing. It looked so delicious I couldn’t resist.”

“Good. I’ll be back in a few minutes. God wants you to kneel here and think about what you’ve done. Don’t move until I get back. God is watching.”

Muriel didn’t move. She faced the wall and bit the flesh on the inside of her lip. Her knees ached. The bare wood pressed a grain pattern into her kneecaps. She felt God’s angry eyes burn two holes into the back of her head. Later, after dinner, when the cake was sliced and served to her on a plate, she felt so ashamed she could barely choke it down.

“We are witnessing a miracle, Lord!” Papa boomed at the table. “This one doesn’t like cake.” When Jula scolded him for his insensitivity, he lifted his keg of a chest and bellowed, “She’d better learn now how to take a joke.”

From the first moment of her arrival—to the last—Muriel’s time in Pawtucket was torture. God, she learned there, was a spiteful voyeur. He crouched behind sofa backs and hid in drapery folds waiting to catch you in a sin. “Aha! I knew your evil would show itself sooner or later.” The Lord clapped with enormous thundering hands. She was certain God kept His teeth in a glass of cloudy water at night the way Papa Czerwinski did.

Each morning in the shower Muriel hid her body in the steam so God couldn’t see her nakedness. After Pia called her “bovine” in her superior way, Muriel prayed that her sister would eat something poisonous at the bakery and die. Instantly she regretted it, certain that God was
tut-tutting
above her, His gnarled finger pointed accusingly. At night, she begged God for forgiveness. She pulled a hard chair into the corner of her dark bedroom and knelt on it until her knees hurt so badly she could barely hobble down. In bed she prayed that the month would end quickly so she could return to her own room in Queens with her
Playbill
collection. There, God wasn’t judging meanly when she pretended to be Jane Eyre singing, “If I leave this unhappy bliss where will my Eden be?”

God saw it all. He knew she wasn’t a liar. Still, He had also seen her mother and Father Camilo.
If one parent goes to hell
, Muriel worried,
do you automatically have to go, too?

Surely the Lord noticed that Logan disappeared at some point in the middle of the second week. Though no one else did. He stuffed his clothes in his backpack and hitchhiked to the train station in Providence while Muriel and Pia worked in the bakery with their grandparents.

“Why did you leave?” Muriel asked Logan from her perch on his couch in Galisteo.

“Have you ever
thought
something was going to be much better than it actually turned out to be?”

She nearly did a spit take with her tea. Remembering her fantasized mother/daughter Broadway relationship with Lidia, she said, “Why, yes. I believe I have some familiarity with the concept.”

“That house in Pawtucket was as oppressive—if not more so—than our parents’ house in Queens. All I wanted to do was get back to New York, pack the rest of my things, then quietly go back to school. Of course, that’s not quite what happened.”

As if reliving that day so many years ago, Logan leaned back on his sofa and stared into nothingness.

“I was so sure Papa was going to come booming up those stairs at the train station and drag me back.”

“He thought you were working on an art project in his woodshed!”

“Yeah. That’s what I told him. Still, I don’t think I took a full breath until I reached Penn Station.”

Once he was back in New York City, Logan took the A train to Fourteenth Street, then the L subway all the way to Wyckoff Avenue before transferring to the M line and riding it to the end. Metropolitan Avenue. A few short blocks from home.

“Owen and Lidia were yelling at each other when I came in. They didn’t hear me.”

It didn’t escape Muriel’s notice that her brother called their parents by their first names. Had he always? Had they let him?

“Honestly,” Logan said, “I didn’t
sneak
in. But I didn’t say anything, either. I walked upstairs and tried not to listen to their fight.”

But how could he not stop on the top step and turn his head and cock his ear when he heard his mother shout, “What the hell do you care? You have your son.”

Owen had curtly replied, “We’re a family, Lidia.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. You’re no more interested in me than I am in you. What we have is an arrangement.”

“It’s a
sin.
The worst kind of sin.”

When Logan heard that, how could he
not
freeze in place and listen?

Downstairs, Lidia had marched into the kitchen. Logan heard the familiar suction sound of the refrigerator door opening. He could picture the moist rubber strip, the differential pressure created against the stainless steel. A green Perrier bottle clinked against the row of green bottles and carbonation was released into the air with a distinct
fzzt
. The sparkling water glugged into a glass already on the table. In a controlled voice, Lidia said, “Don’t you think we’ve questioned God’s role in all this? Why us? Is He testing us,
chosen
us? I’ve prayed about it endlessly. We both have. But only one answer keeps coming back to me: in the eyes of God,
love
is transcendent.”

“Jesus Christ, Lidia. He’s a
priest
.”

Logan heard his mother take a gulp of water then set the glass back on the table. “God has forgiven my sin,” she said. “He’s forgiven both of us. We’re consenting adults.”

“If the church finds out—”

“You think this has never happened before? Don’t be naive. The church has had enough other scandals not to care. Besides, I’ve made sure no one will tell. Who would? You? Are you prepared to drag your family through the mud?”

The refrigerator door slammed shut with the same tight sound. “Let’s be adults, shall we, Owen? For a change.” With her efficient gait, Lidia exited the kitchen and marched down the hall toward the entryway. Soundless in his sneakers, Logan tiptoed into his bedroom and slipped behind his open bedroom door. Owen said, “I don’t appreciate your condescending tone.”

“All right, then. As equals. The pretense stops here. Let’s finally face what we’ve been avoiding for twenty years. Never in a million years would you have married me if I wasn’t pregnant with Pia.”

“But you were. And I did.”

“For that I gave you a son. We both had what we wanted.”

Logan’s heart pounded. He imagined his father’s hurt face. Never had Owen been able to detour Lidia when she was steamrolling his way. “All I’m asking,” she said, “is for you to look the other way. As I have. Let’s stop pretending, Owen. At long last. We both know a divorce is out of the question. I also know you stopped loving me the moment you found out that Pia wasn’t yours. Not that I blame you. But we made a decision—as
parents
—not to tell the children. It was the right decision. Now, between us, can’t we quietly live our
own
lives?”

With the stealth of a cat burglar, Logan slid open his closet door. The musty smell of airlessness comforted him. It was the aroma of his childhood. A few old flannel shirts still hung on the rod, his dress shoes lay in a corner, barely worn. Gingerly setting his backpack on the floor, Logan noiselessly folded his lean body into a corner of the closet as he heard both of his parents climb the stairs. Lidia’s crisp footfalls were followed by Owen’s leaden ascent. They passed Logan’s open door on the way to their own room. In his mind Logan imagined his father standing passively in a bedroom with a girly satin bedspread and gilded edgings—a space that had always been Lidia’s domain.

“I won’t be a divorced man,” Logan heard him say. “I told you that from the start.”

“Don’t you think I know that? Neither one of us can get divorced. That’s why I chose you. I don’t want a divorce. All I want is for you to
accept
it, Owen. Cam is the man I love. The father of my first child. I won’t stop seeing him. I can’t. Do you understand that? He’s part of me.”

Through the strumming of his heartbeats, Logan heard his mother step closer to his father and say, seductively, “In exchange, I’ll give you your freedom. Think about it. What’s more alluring than a married man?”

At that moment, the phone rang, startling everyone. Owen picked it up and said, “Yes?” uncharacteristically harsh. “Oh, hello, Jula. Forgive me.” He cleared his throat. “How are you? The kids okay?”

Logan’s eyes shot open. He shrank deeper into the closet and gathered the few hanging shirts about him. For the next few moments, the Queens house was as silent as death itself. He could picture the blood draining from his father’s face. After a long, dreadful minute, Owen simply said, “I see.”

“What is it?” Lidia demanded to know.

Owen didn’t answer her. Instead, he said, “Thank you for alerting us,” and hung up the phone. With a panic Logan had never before heard in his father’s voice, Owen Sullivant said to his wife, “Check your son’s room. I’ll check the basement.”

Forever, Logan told his sister in Galisteo, he would remember the sound of Lidia’s high heels on the hardwood floor. “To this day,” he said, “I can close my eyes and hear that awful scraping.”

Crouched as low as he could in the back corner of the closet, Logan prayed to disappear. He begged God to help him disintegrate into a pile of dust so he could flatten to the floor and blow away. Feeling like a child, he pressed his eyelids together and willed himself small.

“There was a rush of air as Lidia swept the clothes to one side. I was hunched in a corner, my eyes glued shut. I didn’t want to see her face.”

Yet, he
heard
her. First, a sharp intake of air. Something between a gasp and the gulp of oxygen a person attempts after a punch in the gut.

“What are you doing here?” she asked accusingly. Logan didn’t answer. His knees were pressed up to his forehead, as if his mother might disappear if he refused to look up. Perhaps he could
will
himself back to Pawtucket? Silently, he breathed in the buttery smell of the bakery that still clung to his jeans.

“Get up, Logan.”

When he didn’t move, Lidia poked her son’s knee with the tip of her pointed shoe. “I said, get
up
.”

Slowly, Logan lifted his head. He brushed the hair from his eyes and looked full into his mother’s face, bracing himself for the furnace blast of her rage. Instead he saw something worse. For the first time, Lidia’s face was stripped of all pretense. Her son saw the woman she really was: frightened, weak,
caught
. She had the panicked white-eyed look of an animal with one foot in a snap trap. Logan burrowed his head back into his knees. No longer could he bear to look.

“What did you hear?” Lidia whispered, dry lipped.

Unable to look up, Logan muttered into the denim, “I won’t tell anyone, Mama. I swear. No one. Not ever.”

Until that day with Muriel, he never ever did.

F
ORT
L
EE
, N
EW
J
ERSEY
, was the same tangle of lanes and semitrucks as it had been when they’d rented the car there a week earlier. The George Washington Bridge had the same gray Erector Set style. Manhattan was a brown skyline in the blue distance. Seated in the cab home, Muriel smelled a familiar scent: cologne-covered body odor. The sweet staleness of eight hours on vinyl. The aroma of
home.

Reaching across the backseat, Joanie took Muriel’s hand in hers and held it silently for a few moments. Then she squeezed. “We rarely get the families we deserve, baby girl. That’s what chocolate is for.”

It made Muriel laugh. As Joanie always did.

“I guess you’re my family now,” Muriel said quietly. On the long drive across the country she’d had ample time to ponder the fact that Logan had overheard Lidia say, “I gave you a son. We both had what we wanted.”

What we wanted.
Muriel was never mentioned once.

“In that case,” Joanie said, “I hit the jackpot.”

Chapter 36

I
T WAS
S
UNDAY
. Muriel’s favorite day. The night before, she’d gone with Joanie to see the first preview of an off-Broadway play that was so inventive it restored her faith in the future of theater. Joanie’s, too. Perhaps the Disney invasion might be waning after all.

That morning, Muriel nestled into the warmth of her comforter, luxuriating in the perfection of the moment. No one needed her to be anything that day. If she didn’t want to, she didn’t even have to get up. She could order in, lie around, live in her pajamas. At the other end of the room, the radiator hissed. It was probably chilly out. Maybe she
should
stay in bed after all.