Two Sisters: A Novel Read online

  Dedication

  To Diane Barbera Coté

  1953–2010

  Contents

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Epigraph

  Part I: Solitary Confinement

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Part II: None So Blind

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Part III: Gone Today, Here Tomorrow

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  P.S

  About the author

  About the book

  Credits

  Young Adult Novels by Mary Hogan

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Acknowledgments

  I USED TO think writing was a solitary profession. It is. Publishing, however, is not. To the creative, caring, brilliant people who made this book better than it ever would have been without them, my deepest gratitude. First, limitless thanks to my agent, Laura Langlie, who is invaluable from beginning to end. To an extraordinary editor, Carrie Feron—smart, sensitive, slyly funny, and possessing just the right touch. Her assistant, Nicole Fischer, is a professional, cheerful delight. And I am over the moon with Emin Mancheril’s haunting cover design.

  For her help with Polish spelling and usage, thank you, Martyna Sowa. For letting me tap into her infinite reservoir of creativity, love to the late Liane Revzin. And to the goddess and author Adriana Trigiani—an amazing alpha female—thank you for inspiring and advising this lone wolf.

  Finally, there are two people who merit more than thanks. First—and always—my husband, Bob, who fills my heart with joy and my life with uninterrupted hours to work. Second, my late sister, Diane, who inspired some of the character of Pia. Wherever you are in the Universe, Diane, I know you would be pleased to see how many times I used the word “perfect” to describe Pia.

  Epigraph

  That which ye have spoken in the ear in closets

  shall be proclaimed upon the housetops.

  —LUKE 12:3

  Part I

  Solitary Confinement

  Chapter 1

  MURIEL UNFOLDED THE old bath towel and flung it open with a snap of her wrists. Gently, it floated over her duvet like a jellyfish, the frayed ends dangling in a tentacled kind of way. Each time she washed that towel the ends unraveled more, ensnaring socks and underwear in a knotted mangle. The dryer load was a mass of hapless intimates. Yet she loved the way the nubby rectangle looked so rugged and outdoorsy. So very make-do. It was the most absorbent towel in her apartment, perfect for the task at hand.

  Guy Fieri was shoving an obscene amount of food into his mouth. Its contents dribbled down the back of his hand and clung to the hieroglyphic stubble around his chin. Both eyelids fluttered as he moaned, “Seriously, man, off the hook.” Jalapeño, he said, added the perfect kick, while raw red cabbage cut the fattiness with its spicy crunch.

  Barefoot, Muriel scurried into her kitchen. The soles of her feet slapped across the parquet floor onto the faded linoleum. A huge tin of Garrett’s popcorn—half CheeseCorn, half CaramelCrisp—sat on the kitchen counter like a grain silo. Still in her pajama shorts and cotton cami she cursed her late start. The Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives marathon had begun nearly half an hour ago. She’d forgotten to program the DVR. Guy’s vintage red convertible had already motored into the drowsy town. The local chef had plopped ingredients into a vat of spitting oil. Brined pork butt had already practically shredded itself. Guy had taken a second sloppy bite and offered his official stamp of approval: a fist bump and man hug that he pulled into his keg-shaped chest.

  Muriel hated when a perfect Sunday got off to an imperfect start. Grabbing the popcorn tin, she dashed back to her bed and popped the lid with a metallic bwang. She slid beneath the covers. Two pillows and a sham propped up her back. Atop the raggedy bath towel she balanced the open tin between her thighs and plucked one plump kernel of cheesy popcorn between two fingers. She inhaled the cheddary smell, let her eyelids flutter. Then she placed the popped kernel between her lips and sucked lightly, feeling the explosion of flavor excite the taste buds along the length of her tongue. “Seriously off the hook,” she said out loud, feeling the day realign. Like a carp on bait she gulped the kernel to a back molar and bit down, hearing the satisfying crack of the truly well popped.

  Sunday was Muriel’s favorite day of the week. She used to prefer Saturdays with her mother/daughter excursions downtown, but that was a long time ago. Before everything went awry. Now, while New Yorkers strolled with children and walked dogs and met for brunch and read the real estate section of the Times, Muriel swaddled herself in bed inside her apartment on a vicarious road trip through middle America with a stringy towel spread over her comforter to keep the neon orange cheese oil from staining the bedding she’d bought on clearance at T.J.Maxx.

  The phone rang. Muriel ignored it. Who would be foolish enough to call during a Triple D marathon? Moaning luxuriantly, she nestled into the soft crater of her mattress and awaited Guy’s next segment with a fistful of Garrett’s nirvana. After two more rings, the caller gave up. Robocall, she decided, searching her palm for the next bite. With each crack of a popcorn kernel, a memory floated into Muriel’s mind: scampering across a crew-cut lawn, executing a flawless cartwheel, selling pink lemonade from a rickety folding table (“Ice cold! Only twenty-five cents!”), shooing away a pillow-footed puppy energetically licking cookie crumbs off the hem of her sleeveless white dress. None were her memories, of course. They were a cinematographer’s version of childhood, Vaseline lensed and shot in the tangerine light of sunset. Muriel preferred manufactured memories to her own. Unfettered by the recriminations of real life, fantasy flashbacks comforted her.

  The phone rang again. Now she was sure it was Joanie. Only Joanie Frankel, her boss and best friend, would know exactly what she was doing. She was probably watching the same show and knew it was a commercial break. Wiping her hands on the ratty towel, Muriel fished around the bedding for her cell. “Talk to me,” she said, her mouth full of popcorn. “Porkapalooza is next.”

  “You’re home.”

  Her heart went flaccid. It wasn’t Joanie. Oh, why hadn’t she looked at the caller ID?

  “I was thinking I might drop by after mass.”

  “Might?” Muriel tried to swallow but her mouth had become the Gobi Desert. Guy Fieri was back on the air introducing a Georgia pit master and his barbecue. Andouille sausage from scratch. Dude!

  “Just a minute.” Muriel put the phone down and hoisted herself out of bed, duck-walking into the bathroom to spit the half-chewed popcorn into the toilet. She swished tap water around her mouth and spit again. She washed her hands with soap. Splashing cold water on her face, she dabbed it dry with a hand towel the way they do in moisturizer commercials. By the time she got back to the phone, she hoped her sister had hung up.

  “I’m relieved you’re ho
me,” Pia said in a clipped sort of way. Muriel sat on her bed and watched the popcorn tin wobble.

  “Is everybody okay?”

  “Fine, yes.”

  “Good.” She swiveled her neck left and right and evaluated her surroundings. Then she sighed a silent sigh. Muriel wasn’t nearly prepared for a visitor. Certainly not her impeccable older sister, Pia. The limes in her fridge were green rocks and the club soda was flat. A brownish ring encircled the inside of the bathtub. Her fingernails needed filing and were truck driverish with their grubby edges. She’d been meaning to manicure them, do a whole evening of beauty maintenance and repair. But it was all so dreary and futile. Leg hair regrew instantly, teeth yellowed with the first cup of coffee, a décolletage crease formed whenever she slept on her side, and nose pores darkened overnight like freckles after a day at the beach. Nature was clearly out to get her. It began its annoying downward pressure after she turned twenty. Twenty! Didn’t normal women start their disintegration a full decade or two later?

  “You’ll be home in a couple of hours, won’t you?” Pia asked.

  Muriel didn’t want to answer. Not once had Pia failed to exhale an accusatory puff of air through her perfectly narrow nostrils when she saw her younger sister. Never had she forgotten to notice Muriel’s untidy life, the way her rent-stabilized studio on New York’s Upper West Side was a weaver finch nest—elaborately woven from found objects: a three-legged bedside table, a squat hand-painted pine dresser with brown, black, beige, and latte-colored coffee rings, two splotchy framed mirrors, and a spindled corner bathroom shelf missing half of one spindle.

  Alone within her own four walls Muriel felt peaceful. By herself she could ignore how life had sort of fallen on her, the way raindrops splatted the bare heads of careless pedestrians. They should have planned better, tucked a collapsible umbrella in their handbags at the very least. Had they paid attention to the darkening sky, or believed the dire weather reports, they would have worn impervious gear and left the suede shoes at home. They wouldn’t plod through life with strands of dripping hair.

  “Well?” The impatience in Pia’s voice was as sharp as a hangnail. This time, Muriel’s sigh was audible.

  Eight years older, Pia was not the kind of woman who needed days of notice before her life could be viewed. She lived in an endless house in Connecticut with her thicket-haired husband, Will, and their reedy tween daughter, Emma. Root Beer, Emma’s Labradoodle, had custom dog beds built into cabinetry throughout their home. Days, Pia bopped about their white-washed village wearing Ferragamo flats and ironed cotton shirts tucked into True Religion jeans. Nights, she made family salads with organic micro greens and herbs from her garden. She took “me” time to pray and do yoga. Recently, she’d announced that Jesus Christ was her personal savior. The Bible, she said, taught her everything she needed to know.

  Good God, thought Muriel, asking, “A lion never ate a lamb on Noah’s Ark? How could you possibly believe that?” Then she rolled her eyes to heaven.

  “Faith,” Pia replied, without further bothersome thought. With Pia, life was uncomplicated and pristine. An easy smile was pasted on her lips. Shop owners knew her by her first name: “Put the cashmere in the Pia pile, will you, DeeDee?” In every imaginable way Pia was a custom-tailored sort while Muriel was hopelessly off the rack.

  With the phone cradled between her shoulder and ear, Muriel said the only thing she could think of on the spur of the moment.

  “Um.”

  Walking over to the window, she hooked her index finger around the sheer curtain and looked out. Four stories below, spring was still holding its breath. The sky was baby blanket blue. Her beautiful brownstoned block was lined with trees, their branches resembling stalks of Brussels sprouts: tightly packed buds all poised to pop. One more week and the whole city would stretch awake after its long gray nap, squinting like a newborn in morning sunlight. Soon New Yorkers would stash their folded winter personalities somewhere out of sight, the same way they stored cable-knit pullovers, ski socks, and flannel sheets.

  Pia groaned into the phone. She’d always been impatient with her sister’s inability to think fast on her feet. At that moment, the only other thought Muriel could muster was how much she wished Verizon would accidentally drop the call to give her a few extra seconds to plot a way out of her sister’s visit. Once, she’d tried to fake a dropped call, but Pia only shamed her by calling right back, saying, “That was beneath even you.”

  “Muriel.” A sharp blast of air pierced Muriel’s eardrum.

  “Yes?”

  “Well?”

  Muriel loved the way spring looked through the window of her walk-up. Unlike most people, she didn’t need to be outside to enjoy it. Sun gave you skin cancer, air conditioners fell from high-rise windows, cabs jumped curbs, strangers coughed directly in your face, dog owners left poop on the sidewalk, schizophrenics heard atmospheric messages from the CIA, planes flew into buildings, and manhole covers exploded straight up. Bad things happened outside. Muriel preferred sateen sheets—when she was lucky enough to unearth them in a clearance pile—a remote with fresh batteries, and sunshine filtered through gauzy curtains.

  Two Chihuahuas were off leash down on the sidewalk. What if they darted into the street?

  “Muriel?”

  Of course Muriel would be home. When she wasn’t at work or at the theater for work or in line at Tasti D-Lite, she was always home. And when she wasn’t, she wanted to be. Attempting an air of breeziness, she said, “I’ll be in and out.” Pia, they both knew, didn’t even slightly believe her. Muriel reached up to smooth the spaghetti tangle of her hair.

  “We need to talk,” Pia said with a period.

  There it was. Muriel’s chin hit her chest. Her head dangled off the end of her neck. They’d “talked” many times before. Rather, Muriel had listened with eyelids hanging like velvet drapes. Dispatched by their mother, Lidia, Pia had nattered on about slimming down, toning up, getting a better job, moving into an elevator building, living a holier existence, highlighting her hair. (“Men really do prefer blondes, Muriel. It’s a proven fact.”) The female Sullivants couldn’t comprehend a person functioning in a kitchen the size of a powder room or disfunctioning in a life that was perpetually blinking, on hold, as if at any moment a purpose might pick up. The Sullivant men—Muriel’s father, Owen, and brother, Logan—seemed to do what most men did around her: they regarded her as if she were a window.

  “Why don’t we talk right now?” Muriel said to her sister over the phone. “You know, like we already are.”

  Pia got quiet before she said, “I need to see your face.”

  Her face? It had been months since her last facial. And three times as long since her last haircut. Dear God.

  “How’s noon?” asked Pia. Muriel replied, “Hmm.” Noon was a tough hour to reject. Not early enough to say that she was in the middle of reading the book review, not late enough to claim it would affect her fake evening plans. Plus noon meant lunch and preparing a meal for her perfect sister with her perfectly highlighted hair and perfectly toned body and perfectly arched eyebrows would totally ruin Muriel’s perfect Sunday.

  “Noon, noon,” she said, as if flipping through an appointment book. “Let’s see here.”

  “Noon it is,” Pia said, not waiting for a final okay.

  “Well, all righty then.” Muriel tried to sound chipper.

  “I’m taking the train in.”

  “Can’t wait.” Lying, as well as lying around on Sundays, was a Muriel Sullivant specialty. God forgive her. Honesty required explanations and justifications; both wore on her like a vinyl shoe, always rubbing the same spot raw. It was much less stressful telling everyone what they wanted to hear.

  “Love you,” Pia said in the same breezy tone she used with the Korean woman who did her nails.

  “You, too,” Muriel replied automatically. Then she pressed the off button on her phone and for a full five minutes didn’t move at all. Her shoulders melted into two
parentheses. Her bare feet felt the imprint of the perfectly good remnant of sisal someone had willy-nilly thrown away. Unmade and billowy, her bed called to her, the remote looking like a Hershey bar against the white sheets. A grunt formed deep in her stomach and made its way up her windpipe. Finally, she lifted her chin and put the lid back on the popcorn tin. She pulled the cheese-oil towel off the duvet, shook the cheddar dust into the tub, folded the towel, and put it away. After making her bed in a manner that would impress a hotel’s management and shoving her strewn-about laundry in a suitcase at the back of her closet, Muriel buttoned herself into outside clothes and descended four flights of stairs to the sidewalk below where she cursed herself for forgetting her sunglasses. Head down, scanning for dog poop and fallen gingko berries—which were aromatically exactly the same—she marched to the end of the block to buy limes, club soda, and something lunch worthy, bracing herself for the storm that was about to blow into her cozy nonlife out of the clear blue.

  Chapter 2

  THEY MET IN a movie line.

  “Warren Beatty could convert me to communism.”

  That’s the first thing Owen Sullivant heard Lidia Czerwinski say. Though she didn’t say it to him. Or maybe she did. It was hard to know with Lidia. She was a woman of ulterior motives.

  “Or any other ism.” She giggled like a girl.

  Flushed and fluttery, Lidia huddled with her two married girlfriends outside Pawtucket’s only cinema, their Rhode Island winter edging into town. She stamped her feet and rubbed her palms together, anxious to get inside so she could sit in the dark warmth and swoon over the Clavius moon crater in Warren Beatty’s chin. It didn’t matter that he was old enough to be her father. All three women agreed. For two hours, they would surrender to his rakish hair and tumescent lower lip and forget that their own husbands drank beer from a can and let their toenails grow until they poked through their socks. Or, that they had no husband at all.

  “He likes blood and guts.” Owen’s date, Madalyn, inserted herself into the conversation with a flick of her thumb at Owen’s sweater-vested chest. United by some secret chromosomal code, the women acknowledged her with a knowing nod and pinched lips. Owen wanted to accidentally kick Madalyn’s shin.