About My Sisters (31 page)

“That's true,” she says. “Did he really choose all of these songs himself?”

“Of course,” I tell her. “This is one thing he didn't need any help with.”

She turns up the volume on the CD as the song switches to
Bo's selection, Sly and the Family Stone's “If You Want Me to Stay.”

“So, part one went okay,” I tell her. “Don't you think?”

“Yes, I think it's a good idea to change locations during the day,” she says. “That way people don't get antsy and start fighting.”

I wait for a moment, and then I ask her, “Do you like your present?” I gave her a violin pin that she saw, coveted, but didn't buy for herself when we were shopping together several months ago. She's wearing it now.

“I love it,” she says, touching it lightly.

“Do you remember when we looked at it, you asked me, ‘Why doesn't somebody get this for me?'”

“No,” she says. “I'd totally forgotten I ever saw this pin.”

“Well, I remembered.”

“Yes.”

“I want to tell you,” I say, a conspiratorial tone creeping into my voice, “that I spent more than the allotted sum on your gift. Just so you know. In fact, I spent almost
twice
that amount.” I wait a beat or two to let this sink in. “But don't tell the others,” I add.

Maya smiles, a little Mona Lisa thing that turns up the corners of her mouth.

“Don't worry,” she says. “I won't.”

january 2003

It's a new year and raining like mad. It's going to be another El Niño year, they say, and so we should expect more of the same in the months to come. Weather phenomenon or no, southern California rain always seems a bit crazy to me. The drops are fat and heavy, the palm fronds slap and whip with fury, and something, usually the mall parking lot, always floods. Rain falls with a great deal of drama here and so I suppose it's appropriate that I'm going out in it today to meet my sisters for breakfast.

The four of us haven't spent much time together since Christmas. There has been quite a bit of shuffling and readjusting in
the last few weeks. Déja's new gender-bending play is about to open and she's fully immersed in her character, a bitter misogynistic
man
. She claims to have come to a whole new realization of what men are all about. “They just don't go very deep,” she says. In the middle of this, she and Danny have just moved into another apartment without Bo, who is now staying with Lavander.

Maya's been booked solid lately, either playing, teaching, or rehearsing for concerts. She spends more time out of the house than in it these days. For the first time ever, we've had to start scheduling things like grocery shopping, which we still do together.

Lavander is perennially busy, but even more so now than usual. She's so busy, in fact, that she doesn't even answer her cell phone anymore. At this point, she's operating solely in “I'll return your call as soon as possible” mode. Her relationship with Tony seems to be coming to an end as well, but it's a protracted process. They've broken up a number of times already and now even she seems tired of talking about it.

As for me, I've gone further into my internal space, disappearing, for days at a time it seems, into whatever is on my desk. Unlike my sisters, my radius of activity has gotten smaller. It's a safe bet that, at any point during the day, I can be found at home or very close to it.

There's no event to celebrate today and no passage to mark. But we've been spinning like planets in our own little spaces long enough now for the inevitable pull of gravity to bring us together, to center, for a couple of hours. This is the reason for today's breakfast.

It's just after ten in the morning when Maya and I pick Déja up at her new apartment and the three of us head out to a nearby restaurant that I've chosen for our rendezvous. Maya
makes a last-ditch attempt to change the venue to Honey's, a restaurant she knows that makes “great potatoes.”

“You can get potatoes anywhere,” I tell her.

“Not like Honey's.”

“Then think of it this way—I'm doing you a favor. Do you really need those potatoes?”

“Okay, forget it,” she says.

In the backseat of the car, Déja just laughs.

We scan the restaurant for Lavander before we seat ourselves, hoping that she's already arrived, but there's no trace of her. A tall pleasant waitress gives us three menus and takes our coffee order. Maya and Déja scan the offerings and Déja wonders out loud if it's too early to order lunch.

“They have potatoes,” Maya says.

“Told you,” I say.

“What are you having?” Déja asks me.

“I don't know. Just a bagel or something. I'm not really that hungry.”

Déja and Maya put down their menus and stare at me accusingly.

“Why did you want to come out to breakfast, then?” Déja says. “You're never hungry. What's the point?”

“It's not about the food,” I tell her. “You know that.”

“I don't know about that,” Maya says. “In a restaurant, it really
is
about the food, wouldn't you say?”

The waitress returns with two cups of coffee and Maya's tea and pulls out her order pad.

“Are you girls ready to order?” she asks.

I look at my watch and then at the empty seat at the table. “Can we hold off for a few minutes?” I ask the waitress. “We're waiting for one more girl.”

The waitress gets flustered. “Oh, I'm sorry,” she says. “I didn't
mean to call you girls. I mean, um,
ladies
, or, er…” She seems lost and uncomfortable.

Déja, Maya, and I all start talking at once:

“Oh no, it's okay—”

“Girls, ladies, whatever—”

“We
are
girls—”

“She should be here any minute,” I tell the waitress. “But just let us know if you need the table and we'll order if she doesn't get here soon.”

The waitress assures us that there's no problem and backs away from our table in a hurry.

“Oh no,” Déja says. “I think we offended her.”

“I think she thinks she offended us by calling us girls,” I say.

“It's so not like that,” Déja says. “Can you imagine being one of those women who gets all bent out of shape being called a girl? I wait on those types all the time. It must be such a strain to get upset about things like that.”

“Maybe she sensed that we're sisters,” I say. “Sisters are always girls, somehow.”

“Whatever
that
means,” Déja says after a moment. “But it just doesn't sound right to say ‘Are you
women
ready to order,' does it?”

“Guess not,” Maya says.

After a few more minutes and another coffee refill, Déja says, “Do you think Lavander got stuck in traffic? She knows what time we were supposed to meet, doesn't she?”

“I confirmed with her twice,” I tell Déja. “Let's call her and see what's going on.”

All three of us pull out our cell phones, but Déja gets to hers first. “Hi, Lavy,” she says to Lavander's recorded message. “Where are you? We're waiting for you. Call us on one of our phones….”

 

By the time Lavander arrives, we've been in the restaurant for an hour. It's no longer raining and the sky has lightened enough to promise sunshine. We've ordered and are almost finished eating. Lavander has called three times, as she passed various exits on the freeway, to make sure we would wait for her. She got caught in a meeting, she said, and the traffic is horrendous, and she's so sorry.

“There she is,” Déja says, glancing out the restaurant's window and we all turn to look as Lavander parks her car and hustles inside. She's a vision in beige and taupe today, outfitted in a dress shirt, slacks, and the pointiest snakeskin boots I have ever seen.

“Poor thing,” Maya says. “She looks so stressed out.”

“She really does remind me of Grandma,” Déja says.

“It's true,” I say. “Grandma was the only other person in this family who could put herself together like that.”

“I am so sorry,” Lavander says by way of greeting. “That meeting just took forever.” Déja and Maya pat her shoulders affectionately.

“It's okay,” Maya says. “We ordered for you.”

And it really is all right. We don't care that she's an hour late and that we have little time left before we all have to go our separate ways again today. We're just glad that she's here, that our quartet is complete. In the last half hour, our conversation has been petering out and we've been leaving our sentences unfinished. We've started complaining about everything we have to do today. Now that Lavander is here, though, I can feel the shift in attitude at the table. We've become revitalized and we're all talking at once.

“How's your new roommate?” Maya asks Lavander, referring to Bo.

“He's fine,” she says. “I think it's going to work out. He did eat all my food, though.”

“You need to watch him,” Déja pipes in. “He'll eat everything. And you need to make sure you get money from him for bills, otherwise he won't—”

“Don't tell her that,” I chide Déja. “Let them work it out. You're finished living with him now.”

Maya rushes to Déja's defense, telling me that I have no idea what she went through living with our brother. Lavander says that Bo is different
with her
. I tell Maya she doesn't know anything firsthand and tell Lavander not to pay attention to either one of our sisters. And, just like that, it happens. Like the angles of a square, we settle immediately into our own familiar corners. We are comfortable, even relaxed, in our positions and the crisscrossing lines of tension and energy between us.

Maya switches topics and asks Lavander why she's wearing so much makeup.

“Do you think it's too much?” Lavander asks. “I keep feeling like I have to cover my skin.”

“Way too much,” Maya says.

“Get some of it off, will you?” Lavander asks her. Maya picks up an unused napkin and wipes off some of the base coating Lavander's face while I pull a mirror from my purse so that Lavander can study the results.

Déja watches and smiles. “Sometimes I just can't get over it,” she says.

“What's that, Déj?”

“You're all just so…
beautiful
,” she says. “I have the most beautiful sisters in the world.”

We all share this feeling, but only Déja could give it voice. In anyone else's mouth, these words would sound syrupy and insincere. Déja manages to convey their real meaning. My sisters
are
lovely, but she's not talking about physical beauty. Together, we illuminate each other. When we reflect off each other, whatever light we possess individually is made that much brighter. It is this brightness that Déja finds beautiful. It is the brilliance and power of sisters.