These Girls (13 page)

“Ooh, perfect—” Renee started to say, then she quickly amended her order. “But mixed veggies and brown rice for me.”

“I thought General Tso’s chicken was your favorite,” Cate said.

“It is. But it’s a mortal enemy of my ass.”

Cate grinned and hurried to the kitchen to order the food. “Music?” she called out.

“Yes!”

Cate scrolled through her iPod until she found John Mayer and tucked it into its speaker. She came back with the wine bottle and two glasses. Renee took a long sip as she plopped down on the floor, and Cate joined her.

“Careful,” Renee said, pointing at the newspaper under Cate. “You’re sitting on Justin Bieber’s face, and that’s just a thousand levels of wrong.”

Cate laughed and shifted over a few inches as Renee rolled her neck around in a circle, working out the kinks. “Oh, I needed this wine,” she said, wincing as her neck made a popping sound. “Should we take a break and get back to painting after we eat?”

“Sure,” Cate said. “Hard week at work?”

Renee shook her head. “It’s sort of a weird story.” She took another deep swallow, relishing the way the Chardonnay burned a gentle trail down her throat. “I’ll blurt it out like they do on
Jerry Springer.
I’ve got a half sister. I just found out about her.”

Renee thought about that phone call from her father, and how he’d sounded so formal, as if he was reading from a script. Renee wondered if he actually was; if he’d written down his
words so he could be sure he’d choose the right ones. It had taken her a moment to do the math when he’d told her that Becca was thirty, then she’d said, “But weren’t you and Mom—”

“Yes,” her father had said, cutting her off, as if he couldn’t bear to hear the complete question. He’d gone on to say that it was the only time something like this had ever happened, and he’d apologized, profusely. But all Renee could think of was how strange it felt to be having this conversation with only her father. She was used to important family discussions being conducted by a three-person conference. Not having her mother’s quick, crisp voice weighing in, counterbalancing her father’s deeper tones, made an already bizarre phone call feel even more alien.

Her father had clearly felt it, too. “Do you want to talk to Mom?” he’d finally asked.

“Sure,” Renee had said. “Um, Dad?” She’d had no idea what to say; her loyalties were divided. One part of her understood how awful it was that her father had slept with another woman just a month or so after he’d married Renee’s mother. And yet, he was so young back then. Renee had seen photos of him from that time, wearing knee-high white tube socks with shorts, his hair shaggy around his ears. He was like a different person.

She’d tried to picture him sitting on the nubby brown couch in the living room, one of his dog-eared crossword puzzle books nearby. Her father, who drank Metamucil in the mornings, loved soup for lunch, and had worn his tuxedo, slightly shiny with age, to take her to the father-daughter dance in the fifth grade. He must feel so adrift now that his steady, predictable world had flipped upside down. “I love you,” she’d finally said, and he’d whispered the words back to her.

Cate’s eyes revealed a flicker of surprise at Renee’s revelation. “Did your mother have a baby when she was young and give her up for adoption?” she asked.

“No. It’s—she’s—my father’s daughter. He had a fling. No one knew about her, not even him. Her name is Becca. She’s a year older than me.”

Cate’s expression stayed calm and encouraging. Renee was surprised by how grateful it made her feel; the magazine world was an incestuous arena, and Renee wasn’t ready to share her news yet because she still hadn’t absorbed it, but she desperately needed to talk to someone. Her instincts told her she didn’t need to worry about Cate telling anyone. With that realization, Renee found herself opening up.

“Becca lives back in Kansas City, not too far away from my parents, actually. I guess my dad fooled around with a woman he knew in high school. Anyway, the woman never told him she was pregnant. She died recently and when . . . when Becca was going through her things, she found papers that revealed my dad’s name.”

“Your parents are still together, right?” Cate said.

“Yeah. My mom’s mad, but she’s taking it surprisingly well. I guess three decades of marriage are going to cancel out a one-night stand. . . . Anyway, Becca and I chatted for a few minutes the other day on the phone, and she wants to meet in person.”

Cate topped off Renee’s glass. “How do you feel about that?”

“I feel selfish,” Renee blurted out. “Part of me wants things back the way they were, with my parents happy and my dad faithful. But it isn’t her fault, and she’s got a right to know my dad, too.
Our
dad. God, it sounds so strange to say that.”

“Are you going back to Kansas City to meet her?”

“She wants to come here, actually. I feel like I should invite her to stay with us, but . . .”

“You don’t want to rush into a relationship before you know more about her.”

“Exactly.” Renee looked at Cate in surprise.

“I’m the new editor of an advice column, remember?” Cate said.

Renee laughed again, and she could see Cate’s shy smile bloom.

“I think your instincts are right. She should stay in a hotel, and you two should have dinner together,” Cate continued. “See what happens. You might hit it off or you might have nothing in common.”

“Except for DNA,” Renee said. “I keep wondering if we look alike. Wouldn’t that be weird, to suddenly see a stranger with your eyes and hair color and smile?”

“I think it’s going to be odd even if she doesn’t look like you. But you might really like her. And if you do, you can invite her back to visit again. If you don’t . . .”

Renee looked at Cate. “That’s the problem. I think that’s what I’m the most scared of. What if I don’t like her? She’s my half sister. I can’t
not
have a relationship with her, but what are we going to talk about? We don’t have any shared childhood memories. And I feel kind of badly that I got to spend birthdays and Christmases and weekends with my father, and she never even knew who he was.”

“Hmmm,” Cate said. “Well, I guess if you can’t stand her, you’ll be like ninety-nine percent of the world, hiding from their relatives except when they’re forced to endure them at holidays. And you can always drink heavily then.”

Renee was still laughing when Cate went to buzz in the delivery guy a minute later. She brought back the warm white cartons of food, and they dug in, not bothering with plates. For several minutes they just ate in companionable silence. Tonight felt like a turning point in their relationship, Renee thought. They’d never talked like this before.

“I think the thing that freaks me out is the idea of my dad having this clandestine affair,” she said as she nabbed a snow pea with her chopsticks, then lost it when she tried to carry it to her mouth. “Slippery sucker. Anyway, I didn’t think my
parents had such big secrets. I guess, because I’m incapable of keeping one, it seems strange to me that other people can do it. I wonder if my dad just put the affair out of his mind, or if he still thought about it over the years. It would feel so weird to be hiding such a big lie for so long, wouldn’t it?”

Cate began choking on her food. She coughed and took a big sip of wine and coughed some more. Her face turned bright red, and her eyes watered.

“Are you okay?” Renee asked. She jumped up, not waiting for an answer, and ran to the kitchen for a glass of water.

“Something just went down the wrong way,” Cate said as she accepted the glass and took a big sip. She smiled, but it looked all wrong—forced and too bright. Her eyes were still watering, and Cate dabbed at them with her napkin.

“I was thinking I could get up early and run out and pick up a rug for Abby,” Cate said. “It’s getting colder, and that would really warm up the room, wouldn’t it?”

Renee scooped up her last bite of food and chewed it slowly to cover her surprise. Cate had changed the subject so abruptly . . . She’d seen Cate close herself off before, and Renee didn’t know if it was shyness or something else that caused her withdrawal. Or it could be that Cate felt, because she worked
and
lived with Renee, they should keep personal boundaries clearly drawn. Maybe she thought Renee was oversharing; it wouldn’t be the first time Renee had been guilty of that.

Renee stood up and brushed invisible dust off her pants. “That’s a great idea, about the rug. Should we get back to painting?”

“Sure,” Cate said. She put down her chopsticks, and they worked in silence for a few minutes. Finally Cate said, “Renee? Would you want to come with me to get the rug tomorrow?”

“Yeah, okay,” Renee said. “Sure.”

There it was again—another flip-flop. Renee had never felt
so grateful for John Mayer’s mournful voice, even though she hadn’t quite forgiven him for dumping Jennifer Aniston. His rendition of “Gravity” filled the silence, diminishing the awkwardness between them.

Soon Renee’s arms were aching from wielding her roller, but the bedroom was transformed. The dust was gone, the walls glowed, and the window was flung open to air out the sharp smell. They’d put back the furniture, and Renee was wiping down the bureau, cleaning every speck of dust from the drawers, while Cate made the bed with her extra set of rose-colored sheets.

“It looks amazing, doesn’t it?” Renee asked, standing back to survey the room. A moment later, another surprising thing happened: Cate slung an arm across her shoulders and gave her a mini-hug.

“I can’t believe we did all this,” Cate said. “She’s going to love it.”

Eight

THE NEXT MORNING CATE
skipped her usual run. She showered and tidied up the kitchen and living area, wiping down counters and sweeping the floor and lighting a vanilla-scented candle. She felt awful about cutting Renee off, but she’d panicked when the subject of old lies had come up. The insecurities Cate usually felt around other women—the sense of not belonging—had evaporated in the face of Renee’s easy chatter, yet she still couldn’t reveal the truth. What was wrong with her? She poured a cup of coffee, suddenly needing its warmth.

“Marry me,” Renee said as she stumbled out of the bedroom a few minutes later and Cate handed her a steaming mug of coffee. “Seriously, don’t you think half of all divorces could be eliminated if spouses took turns getting up early and fixing each other coffee? Caffeine deprivation should be a box you can check, like adultery or abandonment, as a valid reason for dissolution of a marriage.”

“We’ll do an article on it,” Cate said, laughing.

By nine-thirty they’d found an inexpensive four-by-six-foot, blue-and-green woven oval rug at a nearby discount store, along with a glass vase in cobalt blue. Cate bought a bouquet of
gerbera daisies in a splash of bright colors from a street vendor.

“Is there anything else she needs?” Cate asked as they walked back to the apartment, each woman lugging an end of the rug. “I mean, she only had that backpack with her, right?”

“Didn’t a certain magazine just publish an essay about how the only things a woman really needs in life are a great smile and a willingness to take risks?” Renee said.

“I hated that piece,” Cate confessed. “Like skydiving is going to solve all your romantic problems?”

“If it did, a lot of women in New York would be carrying around parachutes instead of purses,” Renee said.

They finished laying the rug just as the buzzer sounded, and Cate pushed the intercom button to let Trey and Abby inside the building. Renee hurried to the bathroom with a tube of lip gloss while Cate opened the door.

She’d put a welcoming smile on her face, and it took work to keep it there. Cate had focused so much on Trey that she’d barely thought about his sister. Now she was struck by how terrible Abby looked. She was so thin! Her skin was chalky, and her eyes were ringed with dark circles. Worst of all, the expression in them was broken.

“Come in,” Cate said after a pause she hoped didn’t stretch out too long.

“Thanks.” Trey entered and Abby followed, moving like someone who was very old or very sick.

“So . . .” Cate cleared her throat, feeling at a loss for words again. “I’ll give you the two-second tour,” she finally said. “You can see everything if you stand here and spin in a circle. Kitchen, living room, bathroom. Oh, and Abby, your bedroom is here.”

Abby stepped into the room and looked around. “Thanks,” she said. “Was it just painted?”

“Last night,” Cate said, laughing and holding out her hands
so Abby could see the yellow paint stubbornly sticking to her cuticles.

Trey looked surprised. “That was really nice of you,” he said.

“It was Renee’s idea,” Cate said quickly. “She did most of it.” Trey gave Renee a quick, grateful look as she came into the room, and two circles of red bloomed on Renee’s already rosy cheeks.

“Thank you,” Abby said. She set her navy blue backpack on her bed, and Cate tried to guess what it contained—a toothbrush, maybe, and a few changes of clothes? She wondered again what had made Abby leave everything else in her life behind. She was like the survivor of a shipwreck, or earthquake, who’d taken only what she could grab before fleeing.

Cate tried to study Abby without being obvious. She was really pretty, in an Abercrombie & Fitch–ad kind of way. Her long dark hair shone, and her brown eyes were big and long-lashed. Their family had some seriously enviable genes, but she didn’t look a thing like Trey; you’d never guess they were related.

“We brought some bagels and cream cheese,” Trey said, holding up a brown paper bag. “Did you guys have breakfast yet?”

“Ooh, they smell yummy,” Renee said, neatly sidestepping his question. She and Cate had picked up breakfast wraps on their way to the store. How like Renee, to spare someone’s feelings even on such a small point, Cate thought.

Twenty minutes later, Cate had forced down a half bagel slathered with cream cheese, but Abby hadn’t eaten a bite or spoken more than a few words. She just sat there, sipping a cup of tea. Her shoulders were hunched, as if she was drawing into herself, and she looked terrified.