Three Story House: A Novel (18 page)

“I always thought you were the better-looking sister,” she said, taking up the photograph.

Elyse swallowed the bile that rose in her throat. “She favors our mother—one of the reasons she’s the darling of the family. Mom loves her because they’re alike. Dad loves her because he loves Mom.”

Lizzie started to speak, but Isobel interrupted her and held the picture up, her thumb covering most of Landon. “Can you believe Sissy Daphne is all grown up and getting married?”

Elyse forced herself to look at the photo again. Daphne had the body of an adult, but her face held the same wide-open expression of a child. Elyse remembered that feeling—the way time opened up in front of you and the pull of the adult-run world with its obligations and expectations seemed as distant as the first snowfall of the season.

“I wish we were closer. There’s such a vast chasm between twenty-seven and twenty-two,” Elyse said.

“Twenty-eight,” Lizzie said, twisting her lips into a rueful smile.

Isobel returned the photograph. “It gets better. My brothers didn’t speak to each other for, like, five years, but then they got married and had kids and I’m the one they don’t speak to. Sometimes it takes that long to work through what happened to you as a kid.”

“Nothing happened to you,” Lizzie said. “You have to give it time. Distance narrows with age—at least that’s what my parents are always saying.”

Isobel exchanged a quick look with Elyse and shrugged. At the very beginning of getting to know Lizzie, she’d planted her flag in the territory of hardship childhood, and she never let anyone else even get a foot in. Mention how much you hated your parents and she was right there to remind you that at least you knew who your parents were. Complain about a sibling, and she’d bring up that her mother and stepfather had the nerve to prove they were sleeping together by bringing her half-siblings into the world when she was a teenager.

“Are we going to do this?” Isobel asked, pushing Elyse toward the hallway. “Put on something other than shorts. It doesn’t hurt to look a little fancy now and then. Besides, I know this guy who works at the bar that overlooks the river and you’re exactly his type.”

Elyse left the room as Isobel continued to talk about the chef she’d met a few days earlier. She kicked off her bunny slippers at the landing to the second floor. They’d finally finished the work on the third floor last week. Although tiny, the bathroom now had a shower and gleaming white porcelain tile. She’d moved her things from the small room on the second floor to the small room on the third floor. The newness of the flooring and the paint made what few possessions she had look used up. She sat on the twin bed, which still needed a frame, and took another look at the photograph. Bending it in half, she separated her sister from Landon and then ran her fingernail down the crease until the photo lay flat. She slipped it into the frame of the oval mirror she’d hung on the back of the bedroom door. Landon’s face looked back at her while her sister pointed that wide-open smile toward an infinite reflection of itself. Lizzie had said to give it time, but she didn’t have time. She had eight weeks to find a way to separate the two of them.

In an effort to distract herself from the agony of her sister’s wedding (and to lose a little weight), Elyse had agreed to serve as an assistant coach for Lizzie’s soccer team. The farther the Olympics slipped from her cousin’s grasp, the more tightly she held onto her dream. The day before, Elyse had overheard Lizzie on the phone with someone from the team—a friend or maybe the trainer—and they hadn’t told Lizzie what she wanted to hear.

As they drove, Lizzie kept up a steady stream of chatter about the girls she coached and what she knew of their families. “You can do them so much good,” she said.

“I don’t know.” Elyse unzipped and then rezipped her recently purchased athletic jacket. “I’m not exactly qualified to coach soccer.”

“But you can be the good cop,” Lizzie said. “Besides, it’s like Rosa May is always telling me. These girls have a way of making you exactly what they need.”

“And what is that?”

“A backup.”

Elyse made a stab at confronting her cousin about her plans. “For if you leave?”

“I’m not leaving yet.”

“But you might?” Elyse knew she was being disingenuous, letting her cousin think that she’d still be here after the wedding, but she couldn’t risk sharing her plans. She understood that trying to stop her sister’s wedding with the idea that she and Landon would ride off into the sunset together was a little like telling someone you were abducted by aliens.

“We all might.” Lizzie pulled into the turning lane. She seemed to be considering adding to her response. Or maybe not. Elyse tended to read too much into people’s actions. “I keep thinking about that wedding invitation and how fancy they’ve gotten. How much do you think it costs to get that gold-embossed lettering and then seal the whole thing with wax?”

“A shitload,” Elyse said. Lizzie was acting for all the world as if this conversation she were having about the wedding and the invitations were normal, but Elyse couldn’t shake the feeling that she was up to something.

She continued to talk about weddings as they neared the school. “Did your sister do the postmark thing?”

“Huh?”

“You know, send it off to Bridal Veil, Oregon, or Loving, Texas, and get them to do the postmark?”

Elyse shook her head, and as Lizzie looked for a parking spot, she explained that a bride could for some nominal fee send all the invitations to some other post office in a better-named place and instead of being postmarked Memphis or Boston, the envelopes got a special stamp and an appropriate postmark. “People do it for valentines too, and secret admirers. Although I’m not sure those exist anymore. How can you keep who you are a secret these days with Facebook and Twitter and Google?” Lizzie squeezed the Datsun into a spot and put her hand to her heart and then mock collapsed back into her seat. “Curse you, technology.”

Elyse couldn’t keep herself from smiling. “Surely somewhere in America there are still second-graders slipping anonymous valentines into shoebox mailboxes.”

Lizzie cleared her throat. “You’re okay aren’t you?” she asked with a timidity that signaled an acknowledgment that the subjects they’d danced around were difficult.

“I’m fine,” Elyse said.

The reflexive response didn’t satisfy her. “You’ve been so angry lately. Letting little things like that picture—”

“I’m not angry.” She fumbled with her door.

“I’m good with body language. You know that. And right now, yours says you’re angry as hell and maybe a little bit sad.”

“I’m tired,” she said, finally opening the door.

“You’re not the only one.”

Elyse hesitated, realizing that her cousin hadn’t been picking up on her own insecurities but had been wanting to confess her own secrets. “What’s going on?”

“I’ve got to have another surgery.”

“Shit,” Elyse said.

“Scar tissue.” Lizzie rubbed the top of her knee.

“When?”

Lizzie opened her own door and stepped out into the summer heat. “After the wedding.”

“What does it mean for your plans?” Elyse couldn’t bring herself to say Olympics.

“It isn’t good. I think.”

Elyse didn’t let her cousin stop talking. “You think what?”

“That I never had a chance. One of the girls told me last week that the coach is already set on the team and plans to make the announcement early—at the end of this month.”

“But she might not?”

“She doesn’t have to until July, but nobody thinks she’s going to wait and nobody thinks I should keep pushing myself to try to be ready.”

“And now surgery,” Elyse said, a wave of shame creeping up her neck. She’d been so consumed by her problems.

“I’ll need help then. That’s where you come in.”

“Or Isobel could help,” Elyse said, and then realizing that what she’d said could give away her own secrets, she amended the statement. “I mean I’m happy to. But, you know, Isobel’s been there before for you after surgery, so she knows what to expect.”

“We’re late.” Lizzie put her arm around Elyse and they walked to the field, which looked like more dirt than grass. She hugged her. “You ready?”

Elyse wiped at the sweat on her forehead, glad her cousin hadn’t followed up with any more questions. “Bring it on.”

“Take these,” Lizzie pushed the keys to the car into Elyse’s hand. “T. J.’s picking me up afterward and he can bring me home.”

Elyse smiled. It gave her hope that Lizzie had found someone like T. J. She put the keys into her purse.

“You coming, coach?”

Elyse looked up to see a tall girl with heavy eyeliner waving at them. Lizzie waved back.

“How does she play in that?”

“At least I convinced her to stop wearing foundation.”

“What does a sixteen-year-old girl need foundation for? That’s the only time in your life when your skin looks as good as airbrushed.”

“Boys,” Lizzie said.

“Boys,” Elyse echoed.

Lizzie leaned in close. “You’ll be fine,” she whispered. For a moment, Elyse wavered, thinking she should come clean with her cousin, but she knew she’d hold her accountable, lead her toward the moral choice, the decision that might make her miserable in the short run but that would at least open the door to future happiness.

“I will,” she said and followed Lizzie as she took off in a slow run.

By the end of practice, Elyse’s ponytail had come undone and her bangs were plastered to her face. The new jacket, which had looked so crisp in the store, lay abandoned by the chain-link fence. She’d gulped down all of her water and had resorted to putting her mouth dangerously close to a spigot on the side of the community center to quench her thirst. Driving home, Elyse made promises she wouldn’t keep. At a red light, she pulled her phone from her purse and dialed her sister. It rang until the next light and then before the voicemail could make demands of Elyse, she hung up the phone, dropping it back into her tote. As she neared Spite House, which was tucked away at the very edge of downtown, her eyes lingered on the small storefronts that populated South Main Street—the only bright spot in the city’s failed attempt at urban renewal. A bunch of balloons tied to a sandwich board caught her eye.
Post Perfect
the sign read in bright pink letters. Without fully considering her motives, she pulled into a parking spot and walked toward the store.

A bell rang as she entered.

“My first real customer,” the woman behind the counter said.

Elyse nodded at the girl, who continued talking.

“I mean you can’t count my mom or sorority sisters, they were coming because it’s the right thing to do, but here you are. In off the street as they say. What caught your eye? The window display? Those are all my own designs, but I have more traditional stuff, you know fancy pens and invitations you can custom order.”

“The balloons,” Elyse said faintly, gesturing outside. She wondered how the girl could talk so much without pausing for air. She must be a swimmer—the only explanation for her lung capacity. “What kind of store is this?”

“Oh,” the girl said, finally drawing a deep breath.

Elyse waited for her to finish.

The girl recovered herself and put on a bright smile. “Stationery. I sell customizable sets and original designs. I know, I know,” the girl put her hand up. “My dad already said it was like opening a store that sells records or heaven forbid eight-tracks, which he says are like old cassette tapes, but then I asked him what those are and he shook his head. Of course I convinced him it would be a good investment. I feel like we’re hungry for nostalgia and that people writing real letters is going to be fashionable—”

From the depths of her tote, Elyse’s phone began ringing. The girl continued talking and in desperation, Elyse grabbed up the phone without looking at who was calling, hoping that the girl would let her be.

“Seeester,” Daphne said, drawing out the word as they had as children, mimicking some since forgotten television star with a heavy accent.

Elyse was unprepared to speak with Daphne. The store had given her the idea that she could write her confessions in a letter. She looked at the storeowner, who fidgeted from the effort at keeping quiet for Elyse’s phone call.

“Are you there?” Her sister’s voice sounded like their mother’s.

“I’m here. I’m here,” Elyse said.

“Mom and I’ve been shopping all day and my phone must have died—I didn’t even realize it until Landon called Mom’s phone trying to find out why I wasn’t answering mine. So that’s why I’m—”

Her mother’s voice, sounding far away, interrupted Daphne. “Tell her I still need her measurements for the bridesmaid dresses.”

“She can hear you—she’s on speaker phone,” Daphne said, holding back a giggle. Their mother’s inability to understand technology had always been a running joke. In high school, she’d broken their first DVD player by putting in both discs of the special edition
Gone with the Wind
box set she’d gotten for Christmas. When it jammed, she pulled the tray out, breaking it off and then sliding both discs back into the machine. The clerk at the electronics store hadn’t honored their warranty.

“I need to know your bust size. Have you gotten any larger since we last saw you?”

Elyse didn’t understand why her mother had insisted on making the dresses. She hadn’t sewed since the girls were in grade school. The wedding was making her regress. “I haven’t changed,” Elyse said and then under her breath she added, “not one bit.”

“Still, send me the measurements,” her mother said. “You know how you have a tendency to get bigger without you noticing. And I wish you’d consider a breast reduction. Your grandmother had hers done and her back has been a thousand percent better.”

“I’ll send them,” Elyse said, desperate to end the conversation.

“Sooooooo,” Daphne said. “What did you think? I picked out the gold embossing myself. Wicked nice, huh?”

The noise of her mother’s car blinker sounded extraordinarily loud to Elyse. “They’re nice. Quite lovely.”

“I’m so glad you think so. Daddy was the one who fought for the bells and whistles. You should have seen him in the boutique. He had the clerk chasing down examples from her storeroom. I tried to be practical and go with a basic invitation, but he insisted on calligraphy, embossed lettering. The whole kit and caboodle.”