About My Sisters (25 page)

“I brought you something,” I tell Maya as we turn onto the freeway.

“Nuts from the plane?” she says. “I really hope it's nuts from the plane.”

“How did you know?” I ask her, and pull them out of my bag.

november

This year, Lavander hosted Thanksgiving at her place. It is usually held at my parents' house. This was the second Thanksgiving in a row at her house and, despite some reticence on her part (“Um, are we going to do this here every year now? How did this get to be the location?”), I think this might be a new tradition. Part of the reason for the switch in scene is that there is more space in Lavander's house than any of our other homes. She had just moved in when we gathered for Thanksgiving last year and was eager to get her house broken in and comfortable and so she offered to host. It turned out to be one of the best holidays we'd ever spent together as a group.

Thanksgiving is an important day in my family. Every year, my father goes around the table questioning all of us as to what
we are all truly thankful for in this life. Despite the fact that all of us take the opportunity to give at least one flippant answer, we always take some time to reflect on what is really important to all of us, and family is usually uppermost on the list.

Unfortunately, Thanksgiving is also a time for at least one argument (or, as Blaze has taken to calling it, a family conflict). After thanks are given, the food is consumed, and we're playing any one of a variety of board games, the disagreements start, the competition for attention heats up, and, presto, there's a fight. There's no real reason this has to happen every year, but I believe that all families operate along the lines of conditioned responses (especially at the holidays) and ours is no different. Last year, however, there were two key changes in the pattern. The first was the new venue. The second, although I hate to admit it, was the karaoke machine. Don't get me wrong, I love music and enjoy singing as much as the next person, but karaoke is, in my opinion, just plain geeky. Or, if you prefer,
dorky
. It was Maya, self-proclaimed queen of the dorks, who bought the karaoke machine and then turned everyone into a believer. She brought the machine, along with an astonishing variety of tunes (Motley Crüe on karaoke—who knew?) to Lavander's house last year and it was an immediate hit. Instead of playing games (or even speaking to each other) after we ate dinner, the whole family gathered in Lavander's living room and we made unabashed fools of ourselves singing karaoke. Although Maya is the only one who would admit to having the heart of a lounge singer, once the microphone was in our hands, the rest of us had no trouble adopting that persona as well. The highlight of the evening was my parents' duet of “I Got You Babe” with my father doing vocals that sounded like Sonny Bono via Bob Dylan. We laughed until we were breathless and weeping. Despite some jockeying for the microphone and Blaze's insis
tence on listening to feedback every time he had a turn, there was nary a single argument the whole night.

Because the combination of karaoke and Lavander's peerless abilities as hostess was such a success last year, we attempted to re-create it again this year. Maya spent a great deal of money (so much, in fact, that she wouldn't even disclose the exact sum) on karaoke CDs this year in an effort to find something to please every taste. She hit the karaoke store hard, coming home for at least two weeks with this greeting: “Look what I found! Gershwin! Tom Petty! Snoop Dogg! Frank Sinatra!”

She stayed up all night creating and printing out multiple listings of her collection, cross-referenced by artist and song title.

“You need help,” I told her.

“Don't be such a wet blanket about the karaoke,” she said. “I want to make sure everybody gets something they like. Everybody must sing!”

What she meant by “everybody,” I knew, included some of the more reserved participants (Danny and Bo) and Tony, who Lavander had told us was also going to be joining us for Thanksgiving. To this end, Maya's list included plenty of hip-hop for Danny and Bo and a collection of heavy metal ballads for Tony.

In retrospect, it was perhaps predictable that karaoke lightning wouldn't strike twice. This is not to say that sparks weren't generated, but Thanksgiving this year turned out to be a largely subdued event. For one thing, it was the first family dinner for almost a year that included Tony and it seemed to me that there was a concerted effort on our parts to be pleasant and low-key for Lavander's sake. For
his
part, Tony was fairly jovial and kept up his end of the rotating conversations. He seemed well-informed as to what was going on in everybody's lives. He seemed, in fact, very
familiar
and I found it disconcerting. On Thanksgiving, I realized that he was in possession of some personal information
(certain items about Blaze and about my love life) that had certainly come from Lavander, the only person with whom I'd chosen to share these things. What's more, he was talking to me as if
I'd
told him all of this, as if…well, as if he
knew
me. I tried as well as I could to shrug it off, but I found it perturbing. Adding to this mild but persistent vexation was the fact that Lavander seemed to be watching me when I talked to him, as if she were waiting for something to happen. I was clueless as to what that something was, but I felt as if I should, somehow, be on my best behavior.

The place I felt the most comfortable at that point was at Lavander's kitchen counter, parked in front of a tray of mozzarella caprese, so that was where I stayed until we all sat down for dinner. The food was something else that distinguished this Thanksgiving from all the others. For the first time ever, there was actually too much of it. Lavander made a giant version of her appetizer platter (a dish she appropriated from my father) and it was impossible not to pick away at her marinated mushrooms, cheeses, and olives until well past the point of satiety. My father made two large trays of baked ziti and lasagna and Maya prepared a huge pot pie. There were groans of discomfort well before dessert landed on the table.

Dessert was my course this year and I made the mistake of introducing something new and different for this crowd of pedestrian eaters. Having recently discovered an affinity for baking cheesecake, I made three of them: pumpkin, rum raisin, and pashka. The boring, standard pumpkin went over just fine, but I got into trouble with the other two. The rum raisin was made with cottage cheese, among other ingredients, which was apparently some sort of affront to nature. “Cottage cheese is
food
,” Danny protested, “not dessert.” I protested that he wouldn't even have detected the cottage cheese if I hadn't told him that it was there, but it was to no avail—he got plenty of support on his
position from others at the table. At least the rum raisin cheesecake was sampled. The pashka (a cheesecake made with ricotta, glacé fruits, and molded overnight in a flower pot) was too exotic for anyone to even try.

“Weird texture,” Déja said.

“Smells funny,” Lavander said.

“What
is
that?” Danny said.

“Bunch of ingrates,” I countered.

“You know how it is,” my mother said, and repeated an oft-quoted Yiddish expression that translates, roughly, into “When the mouse is full, even the grain tastes bitter.”

Tony was the only one who didn't offer an opinion on the cheesecake. He couldn't eat any, he said, because he had a second dinner to attend somewhere else. Family obligations, he said. Lavander seemed disappointed. Her table was spread with uneaten cheesecakes and her kitchen was full of leftovers. Nobody seemed to know what to do about this and, for a while, we just stared at it all, stunned.

“Where did all this food come from?” Déja asked. “Seems like we really overdid it this year.”

“Is it time for karaoke?” Maya asked, and got a lukewarm response along the lines of “Maybe later.” Undaunted, she proceeded to hand out copies of her cross-referenced song list.

“Could you be a bigger dork?” Déja asked, laughing over her copy.

“No,” Maya said. “Not really.”

While everybody was shuffling through the lists, picking out songs that they maybe, possibly, might sing, I went in search of Lavander, who had drifted away from the table. I was on a mission, actually, and I was hoping she could help me.

I've recently lost enough weight so that none of my clothes fit properly anymore. Like many women I know, I have clothing that falls into two categories: “fat” and “thin.” When pants or
skirts get too tight, I've got other, more forgiving clothes to replace them and for those happy times when there are loose folds of fabric, I've got slimmer backups. These days, though, even my “thin” clothes are too big and nothing looks right. Shopping for clothes has never been particularly fun for me and the thought of searching through endless stores looking for a pair of pants that wasn't too long, so high it hugged my ribcage, or so low it required thong jewelry, was totally repugnant. I was hoping that Lavander would have a pair or two of blue jeans that she didn't wear anymore and wouldn't mind passing on to me. It was a risk because my sister is a tiny thing (Lavander also has two categories of clothing: “thin” and “thinner”) and I'd just eaten a full Thanksgiving dinner, but I was willing to take it for the possibility of a pair of jeans that fit me.

I found her upstairs in her bedroom, tidying.

“What are you up to?” I asked her.

“I had a phone call,” she said. “And then I just saw some stuff that needed to be put away.”

“Maya's got all her karaoke stuff ready down there, rarin' to go,” I told her.

“Yeah, I saw,” Lavander said. “I was going to come down in a second.”

“I was wondering if you had any old jeans that are maybe too big for you,” I said. “I really need a pair of jeans and I think I might actually be able to fit into one of yours.”

“I'm sure I've got something,” she said, and marched into her walk-in closet, one side of which looked very much like a department store since dozens of the garments there still had their sales tags attached. Unlike me, Lavander loves to shop and has no problem finding clothes that fit. I rarely go shopping with her for this reason. For example, I'll be standing on my side of the dressing room, agonizing over whether to buy a pair of boring black pants that might look okay if I have them hemmed and Lavander
will stand next to me, tossing around bell bottoms that lace up the side and tops trimmed in fake fur that all look great on her as is.

“You should get some of these,” she'll say.

“I can't wear that.”

“Why not? You know, you ought to
live
a little, Deb.”

Come to think of it, I can't really go shopping with any of my sisters. Maya is what my mother calls a “depressed shopper.” For her, nothing ever looks good and everything is overpriced. This attitude usually extends to me as well when I am with her:

“Do you like this?” I'll ask her.

“No.”

“What about this?”

“No.”

“This?”

“No.”

Déja hates shopping as much as I do and would much rather go the vintage or resale route than to a department store. She has little patience when it comes to trying on clothes and can never find anything in her price range. My mother calls her “an irritated shopper.” Lavander, on the other hand, is a “frantic shopper.” While the rest of us will at least look through the sale racks for bargains, Lavander never buys on sale what she can get for full price. In fact, Lavander overspends on just about everything she buys. For her, “cheap” is an ugly concept on every level and in her quest to avoid looking, acting, or being cheap, Lavander often goes to extremes. In our family, Lavander is the top earner by far and always the person with the least cash on hand. As I peered into her closet, I had a clear view of where some of that money had gone.

“Okay,” she said, emerging from the folds of her wardrobe. “Here are three pair. I haven't worn these forever. See if they work.”

I held the jeans in front of me, becoming a little frightened when I saw how small they looked.

“Are these your
big
jeans?” I asked her. “I can't believe I'm going to try these on after eating a Thanksgiving dinner. Could there be a worse time to do this?”

“Just try them,” she said. “You always think you look bigger than you do. You've got a great body. I've always thought so.”

“What do you mean?”

“When I was little, I thought you were hot. I always wanted to look like you.”

“When was that?” I asked her, baffled.

“I don't know. When you were about sixteen, I guess, and you were going out with that guy. What was his name?”

“Never mind him,” I said, “when I was sixteen you were
seven
. You thought I was hot when you were seven? You noticed things like that? You were so little.”

Lavander shrugged and pulled a black jacket from her closet. The sleeves and collar were trimmed with faux leopard.

“Did you hear about this jacket?” she asked me.

“Is that the one you paid a million dollars for that Mom found for thirty bucks at Marshall's?”

“I can't believe it,” she said. “It's the
same
jacket. I bought it at this boutique and they
swore
it was one of a kind.”

“And I suppose you can't return it.”

“No, I can't,” she wailed.

“How much did you pay for it, really?”

“I can't tell you.” She bit her lip. “Three hundred dollars.”

“What!?!?”

Déja walked in as I was sputtering and smiled at the two of us.

“What's going on?” she said.

“Lavander's jacket,” I said, as if this would explain it all.

“Ooh,” Déja said. “Is that the one you paid all that money for?” She looked at the jacket. “It
is
nice. Can I try it on?”

“Go ahead,” Lavander sighed. While Déja tried it on, I squeezed myself into Lavander's jeans. They were on the tight side, but, to my grateful astonishment, they all fit.