Confessions of the Sullivan Sisters (5 page)

BY THE END OF OCTOBER I ASSUMED THAT ROBBIE WOULD SIT
next to me in Speed Reading class. My reading speeds were inching up but not as much as they should have been. I kept getting distracted by the words. I’d see one I liked and would stop to admire it. Robbie was the star of the class. He had the highest numbers every week.

“Why are you even bothering with this stupid class?” I asked him. “You’re already a speed reader.”

“I wasn’t before I started,” he said. “And besides, I like my classmates.”

After class he told me that Katya was in a group show at the Cader Gallery and he was going to the opening party Friday night. “Want to come?”

“Yes,” I said, and then I started thinking about what I’d said yes to and added, “Wait—I take it back.” Katya had been nice to me that night at Maurice’s, but a lot of Robbie’s other friends were bound to be there too. Including maybe snide Marissa, creepy Josh, and the jealous Charles Theater girl. What if I felt weird there?

“Too late,” Robbie said. “You said yes. You can’t take it back.” Then he looked at me more carefully. “Why do you want to take it back?”

“I’m afraid your friends will be mean to me in such a subtle and sophisticated way I’ll barely know they’re doing it,” I confessed.

“I’ll protect you,” he said.

“Then I’ll go.”

Jane wanted the Mercedes that night so she dropped me off downtown, and I met Robbie just outside the gallery. It was packed. People spilled out onto the street, laughing and smoking cigarettes. The first person Robbie saw when we walked in was Doyle.

“Hey—we’re all going over to Carmen’s for dinner after this,” Doyle said. “You guys in?”

Robbie glanced at me. “Sure,” I said. “Dinner is good.”

We wandered around looking at the art. Katya’s piece was a video monitor mounted inside an elaborately painted gold frame. The video showed a girl dressed up like the
Mona Lisa
, sitting still as if posing for a painter.

“Do you like it?” Robbie asked me.

“Yes, I do.”

“It’s so late eighties,” Doyle whispered to us. “But I won’t tell Katya that.”

We found Katya in the middle of a crowd of her friends and congratulated her. I felt shy. Waiters passed around bottles of
beer and plastic cups of wine. The room got hot and crowded and stuffy. Robbie said something to me but I couldn’t hear him over the noise, so he shouted whatever it was and I still couldn’t hear him.

“LET’S STEP OUTSIDE FOR SOME AIR,” he yelled.

I nodded and we threaded our way through the people. Just as we got to the door, who should come in but Ginger and Daddy-o. They looked out of place yet somehow perfect, Daddy-o in a bow tie and one of his old tweed suits, and Ginger draped in mink and crimson lipstick. It hadn’t occurred to me that they’d be at Katya’s opening, but it should have. Sometimes I forget that the medieval artifacts Daddy-o works with and pieces like Katya’s video are part of the same world.

“Well, well, look who’s here!” Daddy-o said in his jovial way. “I didn’t know you ran with the art crowd, sweet pea.”

“Who are you here with?” Ginger asked. “Claire?”

They smiled reflexively at the sight of me, their delightful daughter, but looked a bit baffled as they took in the young man standing beside me and realized he wasn’t Claire in any way, shape, or form.

“Darling, who’s your friend?” Ginger purred.

I summoned my manners. “Ginger, Daddy-o: This is Robbie. Robbie, these are my”—gulp—“parents.”

Robbie shook Daddy-o’s hand. “It’s very nice to meet you.”

“Robbie
who
, darling?” Ginger asked.

“Pepper,” Robbie said. “Robinson Pepper.”

Ginger accepted his offered hand at last. “Charming to meet you.”

“What do you think of the show?” Daddy-o asked. “Should we bother braving this mob or simply turn around and head for dinner?”

“It’s good,” I said.

“Definitely worth a look,” Robbie said. I was proud to see that he didn’t seem rattled by suddenly meeting my parents. He held his own with them, cool for cool.

“Would you two like to join us for dinner after we have a look round?” Daddy-o asked. “We’re only going down to the Prime Rib, but I still say they have the best steaks anywhere.”

Oh no. God no.

“We can’t,” I blurted.

“We’re invited to a friend’s for dinner,” Robbie said.

Ginger raised one of her overplucked brows. “Oh? A friend? And I don’t suppose
that
would be a Miss Claire Mothersbaugh, would it?”

“Who?” Robbie said.

“No, Ginger, it’s a friend of Robbie’s. Don’t worry, I won’t be home late.”

“Who’s worried?” Daddy-o said. “You can’t stay out late in this town no matter how hard you try. Nothing stays open past two!” He pressed Ginger forward, into the crowded gallery. “We’ll see you in a few minutes.”

Oh no they wouldn’t. I waved them off and we stepped outside into the chilly night air, pungent with cigarette smoke and car exhaust.

“Well, that’s that,” I said. “We can’t stay. We have to get out of here.”

“But Carmen’s dinner doesn’t start for another hour.”

“We can kill some time, get a coffee or something.”

“Was it that bad? What did you tell them you were doing tonight?”

“They didn’t ask. I guess Ginger just assumed I was doing something with my friend Claire. Or maybe one of my sisters told her that, to cover for me.”

“Are you going to get in trouble now?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “They could bombard me with annoying questions. Or they might never mention this night again. It could go either way.”

“I thought they were nice,” Robbie said.

“They know how to talk to people,” I said. “They’re always ‘nice.’”

Robbie scuffed the sole of his shoe on the dirty sidewalk. “Well, let’s walk down to Carmen’s. By the time we get there we’ll only be a little bit early.”

We walked downtown. Robbie took my hand. I was nervous about what Ginger and Daddy-o would say when I got home, but I tried to push that out of my mind because I was also nervous about my ability to make it through a whole evening with Robbie’s friends without looking like an idiot.

“What are your parents like?” I asked. “I bet they don’t go around calling everybody ‘darling.’”

“That’s for sure,” Robbie said. “My mother’s a psychiatrist. She’s half Jamaican and half Jewish—she calls herself a Double J—and she’s very cutting and blunt. She wants everyone to be honest and face the truth all the time. It’s brutal. I really
appreciate people like your parents, who take the trouble to pretend to be nice, even if they don’t mean it. You have no idea what a wonderful thing that is, Norrie. It’s so civilized.”

I’d never thought of it that way. I always wished Ginger and Daddy-o would stop talking around things and just say what they’re really thinking. But you never have trouble speaking your mind, and I don’t always like that either. No offense. So maybe Robbie had a point.

“What about your dad?” I asked.

“He’s as bad as my mother. Maybe worse. He’s a market-research consultant. He studies people’s facial expressions to see how they feel about commercials and products. He used to be a psychologist but he makes more money helping big corporations dupe the public. The worst part is he can look at your face and say, ‘Your upper lip just twitched! Anger! You’re angry. Don’t try to hide it from me, young man. Why does it make you so angry when I say those pants make you look like a girl? Do you have something against girls? Perhaps some unresolved Oedipal feelings?’”

“Ouch.”

“Maybe denial is the reason your parents are still together,” Robbie said. “Mine split up when I was ten. Two aggressive people can’t live in the same house for long, analyzing every word and facial twitch. They tear each other apart.”

We strolled through Mount Vernon Place. People poured out of the Peabody Library, having just seen a concert. A group of music students sat on the edge of a fountain, their instrument cases propped up in front of them, passing around a bottle in a paper bag.

“I really like Baltimore,” Robbie said. “It’s so chill.”

I pointed to the Walters Art Museum. “Daddy-o works there.”

“I love that you call your father Daddy-o. It makes him sound so fun and not scary.”

“He is fun and not scary. He likes to have a good time. Your dad sounds scary, I have to say.”

“I make him sound worse than he is. If you met him you’d like him, I think, because he’s smart and you like smart people. He’d like you. He can read faces, and you have one of the great ones.”

We stopped at a second fountain—the one with the Sea Urchin statue. The rushing water chilled the air. Robbie looked down at me. I could read his face very easily. Maybe he’d learned to telegraph his feelings clearly, having been raised by crazed psychologists. He wanted to know if I’d mind if he kissed me.

“No,” I said. “I wouldn’t mind.”

He leaned down and kissed me quickly and lightly on the lips. “That’s enough for now,” he said. Then we continued on our way downtown.

Carmen lived in a loft near Fells Point. It turned out we weren’t early after all. People were already drinking wine in the kitchen and helping Carmen make salad. Carmen wiped her wet hands on her canvas apron. She kissed Robbie and pinched his cheek, murmuring “Robbila, Robbila,” like a Jewish grandmother, then shook my hand. She’s small and wiry as a dancer, with long black hair and rich dark skin and full red lips. She’s
sexy, and I felt jealous of her immediately. It turns out I had good reason to, but I didn’t know that yet.

Robbie introduced me to everyone. There were too many names to remember, but they all seemed to remember mine.

“Wait…Sullivan?” a shaved-headed girl said. “You’re not from that evil family, are you?”

“Yes I am,” I said, thinking she was making some kind of odd joke. “We’re all evil. How did you know?”

She wasn’t joking. “From that blog, you know? Myevilfamily.com? This girl named Jane Sullivan tells all about her rich family who lives up in Guilford somewhere—”

Jane. I should have known this would have something to do with her. Should I admit that she was my sister, or pretend to be from a completely different Sullivan family? It’s a common name, after all. I could’ve gotten away with it.

“I’ll show you.” The girl went to a Mac on Carmen’s desk and typed in www.myevilfamily.com. There at the top of the page was a drawing of our house. In a side column, under “About Me,” was a caricature of Jane, probably drawn by her friend Bridget.

“That’s my sister,” I blurted.

“Really?” the bald girl said. “That’s hilarious. Listen to this”—she started reading out loud from one of Jane’s entries—“‘Almighty was born with lots of money. I’ve already told you some of the evil ways her ancestors earned it. But she has even more money now. How did she get it? By marrying people.’ She calls her grandmother ‘Almighty.’ Is that not a riot?”

“Do you really call her ‘Almighty’?” a guy asked me.

“Everybody calls her that.” I never gave it much thought until that night.

“You have to read the whole thing,” the bald girl said. In my mind her name had become “Shavey.” “It’s the context. You know, this poor little rich girl bitching about her terrible family—” She paused. She must have remembered that the poor little rich girl’s sister was standing right next to her. “Sorry. I mean, you think it’s funny, don’t you?”

“I haven’t read it yet,” I admitted. “But when I do, I’m sure I’ll be in stitches.”

Katya and the rest of the gallery contingent arrived, and the loft began to fill up with people. Robbie knew most of them. I was enjoying my uncomfortable anonymity when it was shattered by the entrance of Shea Donovan. Even worse, she walked in on the arm of Josh. He wore yoga pants and a T-shirt that said
BE PRESENT
. She wore jeans and a sweater. She didn’t look all that slutty, really. Not that night anyway.

“God save us, Josh is here,” Anjali muttered to Robbie. “With that little kid.” I tried to take it as a compliment that she’d already forgotten to think of me as a little kid too.

“I know that girl,” I told Robbie. “She goes to my school.”

“She has crap taste in men,” Robbie said. “Josh is a skeeve.”

“Yeah,” I said. “She likes skeeves.”

“Dinner’s ready,” Carmen announced. The long table was spread with tall candelabras and all kinds of delicious food, from curried chicken to vegetable samosas to salmon teriyaki and pork dumplings. Some people settled at the long table to eat, and some
filled their plates and made satellite groups on the couches and cushions scattered through the living room.

I sat next to Robbie at the long table and we passed the dishes around. Music was playing and the room was buzzing with talk and laughter. Robbie grinned at me and I felt warm and happy all of a sudden. I pressed my hand on the top of his head. It was an irresistible urge. His curly black hair flattened under my hand. I laughed.

“Why are you doing that?” he asked.

“I don’t know. I can’t help it.” I lifted my hand and his hair sprang back into its usual fan shape. “Does it bother you?”

“Not when you do it.”

Then we laughed the strangest laugh, like we were co-conspirators. I’ve had that feeling with my sisters before, but never with a boy or even Claire.

Carmen sat down next to me. “Hey, you two. So. Norrie. You’re Robbie’s new girlfriend?”

She was staring at me intensely. I got the feeling her interest in this question was not casual.

“We just met a few weeks ago,” Robbie said.

“That doesn’t answer my question,” Carmen said. “Which was directed at Norrie, not you, Robbie. Don’t do that thing.”

“What thing?” Robbie asked.

“That thing where you think you know everything and you answer questions for everyone, even those that weren’t directed at you,” Carmen said. “Norrie’s old enough to speak for herself—aren’t you, Norrie?”

She was smiling, but her incisors suddenly made me think of a wolf’s teeth.

“Of course I am,” I said. I had to stop playing the shy little girl or people like Carmen would eat me alive. “Robbie and I are friends.”