Confessions of the Sullivan Sisters (7 page)

I FELT THE DIFFERENCE AS SOON AS I WALKED INTO SCHOOL
on Monday morning. Girls said hello to me as always, but there was a tentativeness to their greeting, as if they were keeping their distance. They looked at me with curiosity or scorn, when no one had ever been curious or scornful toward me before. What was there to be curious about? I was just another girl like them, even less interesting than they were since I never got into trouble and always seemed to be on the right track: the boring track.

But word of Carmen’s party must have gotten out, because everybody knew about it. I could feel it. I had become a different person in their eyes. I had become a pariah. I had become Shea.

Claire met me at my locker and confirmed my suspicions.

“Norrie—really? You were at a party with Shea and two guys in their twenties? How did this happen?”

“How does everybody know?”

“Caitlin must have blabbed. I think she’s jealous of Shea.”

I didn’t see how anyone could be jealous of Shea.

“Why didn’t you tell me about it?” Claire asked.

I didn’t need to tell Claire about it, because I had Jane and Sassy. And then there was Brooks…Claire wouldn’t understand. Also, I feared the Caitlin effect: that Claire would blab and everybody would get the wrong idea.

“I don’t know,” I said. “It was weird. The girl who had the party turned out to be Robbie’s ex, and I think she still likes him or is mad at him or something. Then Shea threw up in her bed and that didn’t help at all—”

“Are you, like, friends with Shea now?” Claire asked. “Because that’s what everyone’s saying. That you and Shea are going to parties downtown together and picking up older guys.”

“
That’s
what everyone thinks?” I was shocked. How could my own classmates change their image of me so suddenly? “That’s crazy. I went to a party and Shea just happened to show up. Doesn’t that happen to you all the time?” This city is a big spiderweb that catches you no matter where you go. That’s how it seems to me, anyway.

“I’ve got to meet this Robbie guy,” Claire said. “I don’t see how you can like anybody else when you could have Brooks. But that’s just me.” I knew that’s what she’d say. She’s on your side, Almighty.

How could I explain it to her? I liked Brooks, but I had the feeling he was just being polite when he paid attention to me, that he was just playing his role, doing his family duty and making his grandmother happy by playing prince to my princess.

Robbie changed everything. Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t squeeze myself back into the old snow globe everybody wanted to keep me in. The glass was already broken.

AND NOW, ALMIGHTY, I’M GOING TO WRITE A PART OF THE
story I never planned to tell you. I feel very uncomfortable about it. Not embarrassed, just uncomfortable. But I promised myself I’d tell you everything, and this part is important.

Maybe if you could forget that I’m your granddaughter and try to think of me as a person you don’t know, or a character in a book…it might help you get through this without having a heart attack.

One November night after Speed Reading class, Robbie asked me out again. Just the two of us. And to make sure we wouldn’t be disturbed by ex-girlfriends or wastoids I go to school with, he offered to cook dinner for me at his place. He lives in a studio apartment in an old building in Charles Village that’s filled with other grad students. He wrote down the address for me. Friday night.

I told Miss Maura and Ginger that I was spending the night at Claire’s house. I didn’t tell anyone else what I was doing—not even Claire. I had a feeling something big would happen that night, and I didn’t want any interference.

Robbie lives in a run-down brick building, twelve squat stories dotted with windows. The lobby has a dingy, chipped mosaic
floor that was probably pretty once, a long time ago. The elevator is slow and creaky. I rode it up to the seventh floor and rang Robbie’s buzzer. He opened the door wearing a plaid apron, his hair standing straight up from the steam in the kitchen.

His iPod was playing some old-fashioned music: a baby-voiced woman singing playfully about peeling a grape. I gave him some flowers I’d brought and he kissed me on the cheek.

The apartment is tiny, with a loft bed wedged in one corner, a desk underneath it, and a little kitchen with a window that looks into a courtyard filled with dozens of other windows, lit and unlit, a fascinating hive of students buzzing in their tiny cells.

I sat at the kitchen table, which was set with an open bottle of red wine, a bottle of sparkling mineral water, and a plate of cheese and crackers. Robbie stood at the stove, stirring a boiling pot of pasta.

“I hope you like spaghetti and meatballs,” he said. “Because that’s what we’re having.”

“I love spaghetti and meatballs.” I helped myself to a cracker with goat cheese.

Clutching a big wooden spoon, Robbie poured some wine into two glasses. He lifted his, clinked it against mine, and said, “Cheers.”

“Cheers.” I took a sip. For some reason I thought of Communion wine.

Robbie’s cell phone rang. He frowned at the screen, then took the call, waving the spoon at me. “One second. Doyle? Yeah. Nah, man, I can’t. Not tonight. I’m busy. None of your business.
I’m not telling. I won’t say if you’re right or wrong. Think whatever you want, man. Okay. Check me at the theater tomorrow night. Yeah. ‘K-bye.”

“Doyle,” he said as he pushed buttons on his phone, turning it off.

“Graduate school stuff?” I asked.

He laughed. “Yeah, grad school stuff.” He gave the pasta another stir, then poured it into a colander in the sink. “Dinner is almost ready.”

The funny baby-voice on the iPod was growing on me. “Who is this singing?”

“Blossom Dearie. She was a cool old lady.” He tossed me a CD with a picture of a blond woman on the front. While I studied it, he made up a plate of spaghetti and meatballs for me. “Would you like salad? I can make a salad.”

“Do
you
want a salad?” I asked.

“I could live without it. But if you want one, I can whip it up easy.”

I didn’t want salad. I felt like gorging on decadent delicious things and not bothering with fiber and vitamins and health. I wondered what was for dessert.

“Don’t make a salad,” I said.

He grinned and offered me a basket of garlic bread. I took a piece. It was warm and slick with butter. We started to eat. We didn’t talk. I didn’t know what to talk about. I looked around the tiny apartment, at the drawings on the wall that were probably done by his friends, the framed poster from
Rushmore
, and the toy robot on the windowsill.

“Tell me a story,” I said to Robbie. “Something that happened when you were a little boy.”

“Hmm. Okay.” He ate some spaghetti and thought of a story. “When I was twelve, my mother finally let me walk to school by myself. It was only three blocks away, but until then she always walked there with me.”

“What neighborhood did you live in?”

“Greenwich Village. It is not the least bit dangerous, as New York neighborhoods go. It’s nothing like West Baltimore or even this neighborhood. But when I was little it wasn’t quite as fancy as it is now.”

He paused to take a sip of bubbly water.

“So there I am, I’m twelve, I’m walking to school alone for the first time, and this woman runs out of an apartment building, screaming and covered in blood. I can’t understand what she’s saying except for ‘Help me! Help me!’ I froze on the sidewalk. I was completely wigged out.”

“Did she kill somebody?”

“I didn’t know. I ran to the newsstand on the corner and told the guy to call the police. A police car arrived and they took the woman inside the building. They told me to go on to school. I couldn’t just stand there so I went to school. I got in trouble for being late, and they called my mother to tell her. She was really mad. My first day walking to school alone and I get there late.”

“Parents fixate on the least important things! So did you ever find out about the lady?”

“It was on the news that night. Turns out she was from Indonesia and had been brought here as a domestic slave. They
made her work day and night, fed her gruel, and never let her leave the house. She got fed up and tried to kill the couple who were holding her captive with a carving knife. But she only managed to chop off her mistress’s hand.”

“Ew!” I reflexively grabbed my own hand to make sure it was still there.

“I know. After that, my mother didn’t let me walk to school alone anymore. I wasn’t allowed to go anywhere alone for another year.”

“But that’s ridiculous,” I said. “That Indonesian woman was no danger to you.”

“I tried to tell Mom that, but the screaming and blood freaked her out.”

“What happened to the slave?”

“She was sent back to Indonesia and her captors were put in jail.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah.”

“That’s one of those stories that makes you wonder what’s really going on in your neighbors’ houses. Are they secretly hiding domestic slaves in their attics? Do they live in a maze of old newspapers they refuse to throw away? Are they working on an invention that will solve the mysteries of time travel?”

Robbie laughed. “See that window right there? Fifth floor, third from left?” He pointed to one of the glowing windows across the courtyard. The light was on but the shade was drawn.

“Yeah?”

“There’s a girl in there who puts on a gypsy costume and dances around.” He stood up and whirled around the kitchen,
waving his arms. “Late at night, every once in a while. She keeps her shades closed except when she’s doing her gypsy dance.”

“Is she casting a spell?”

Robbie shrugged. “I don’t know what she’s doing. But she sure seems to want people to see her in that costume.” He reached over to the stove for a pot. “More meatballs?”

“Just one more, please. They’re delicious.”

“Thank you.” He spooned more sauce onto my spaghetti. “I also make a great shrimp risotto. Dad’s recipe.” He passed me more garlic bread. “Your turn to tell a story.”

“Okay.” I decided to tell him a story I’d never told anyone else. “One time Daddy-o decided to take St. John and Sully sailing for the weekend. They were going to sail all around the Chesapeake and fish and sleep on the boat. Jane and Sassy and I protested—it wasn’t fair. We wanted to go. But there wasn’t room for all of us on the boat, and anyway, it was supposed to be a father-son thing. This was before Takey was born.

“So Ginger said we girls could have our own fun weekend without them, and she took us to New York. We’d get a suite in the Pierre, she said, and go to shows—especially the kind of girly, cheesy musicals Daddy-o won’t go to, like
Wicked
—and shop and eat out and ride in a carriage through Central Park…the works. Daddy-o and the boys would be jealous.”

“The Pierre,” Robbie said. “Wow—you’re really rich, aren’t you?”

“Um—not really…but in a way. It’s a long story.” I felt embarrassed. Don’t hold it against him, Almighty.

“I’m sorry. It sounds like a fun weekend.”

“That’s what we thought. We took the train up to New York and checked into the Pierre. We had a beautiful suite overlooking the park and tickets to see
Wicked
that night. We got dressed up and went to the show and it was great. Afterward we went out for a late supper and Ginger said we could order whatever we wanted, so I ordered lobster. Ginger ordered garlic shrimp. She said she could be as stinky-breathed as she wanted that weekend since Daddy-o wasn’t around. But then she didn’t eat it. She didn’t eat anything.”

I ate the last bite of my garlic bread.

“Sassy and Jane and I chattered about the show and how we couldn’t wait to watch
The Wizard of Oz
again now that we knew the real story behind the Wicked Witch of the West. Everything seemed wonderful. But near the end of dinner I realized that Ginger had been pretty quiet. I glanced at her and caught her staring at the next table with the saddest look on her face.”

“What was at the next table?”

“Just some old married couple. I don’t know if something about them made her sad or if she just happened to be staring sadly in their direction. It’s weird for Ginger to look sad like that, though. She’s usually very cool and unflappable.”

Robbie offered me more garlic bread. “I don’t care if your breath is stinky.”

“Thanks.” I took some, because he was eating it too, so we’d both be stinky. If it came to that. “We went back to the hotel and went to bed. I got up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom and saw Ginger sitting in the living room, and she was crying.”

“Oh. Poor Ginger.”

“You don’t understand—that’s
so
not like her, at all. I asked her what the matter was, and she said, ‘I’m sorry, honey, but I think we have to go home.’ And I said, ‘Why?’ and she said, ‘I just miss your father too much.’”

“Wow. That’s kind of romantic.”

“I didn’t think so. I was ten at the time, and I was pissed that we had to go home before our big weekend was over. But I was scared too, because she was so miserable she looked sick. This weepy, pale person wasn’t the Ginger I knew. She called Daddy-o, and he and the boys came home early too. She ruined everybody’s weekend because she couldn’t stand to spend one night without Daddy-o. I know it doesn’t sound like a big deal but the whole thing shocked me. I realized my parents had never spent a night apart for as long as I could remember. They act all blasé about their marriage but they’re actually completely dependent on each other.”

“My mother would probably say that wasn’t too healthy.”

“I’m sure it isn’t. It made me think of my parents in a new way. A new, kind of pathetic way. It was the first time I thought of Ginger as…well,
needy
.”

“I think you’re being too hard on her,” Robbie said. “Your parents love each other. That’s good.”

“I guess. But it’s not one hundred percent good.”

I took a breath and stared at my plate, which had somehow been cleaned. When did I eat all that spaghetti?

Then I looked up at Robbie. He was waiting to hear why Ginger and Daddy-o loving each other wasn’t one hundred percent good.

“Because they love each other more than they love us,” I said.

“That can’t be true.”

“Yes it can.” I drank some water. Time to change the subject, quick. “Whew. I just talked your ear off.”

“That’s okay. I talked yours off first.”

“Both of our stories happened in New York.”

“Stuff’s always happening there. You should go back sometime.”

“I will.”

We sat in silence for a minute. It was a comfortable silence. I thought about what had just happened. I had blabbed to him a stupid story about my family. I had blabbed without self-consciousness. It was almost like talking to one of my sisters. And he seemed completely into it.

I looked at his hair, his liquid brown eyes, his smooth skin with its ever-changing happy expressions, his dimpled cherry grin.
That’s it
, I thought.
I’m in love.

“What’s for dessert?” I said.

“Norrie, I think I’m in love with you,” he said.

We stared at each other across the table in a strange, full-bellied, ecstatic moment of communion. Then he stood up, and I stood up, and he reached for me and pulled me to him.

We kissed until I thought I would lose consciousness. And I did lose consciousness in a way. I didn’t faint or pass out, but my mind drifted away into another world where it sat numb and unthinking, put on mothballs until later, when I would need it.

I will now draw a curtain across this scene. I think this is about as far as a girl and her grandmother should go when
discussing matters of the heart. But there is one little coda I want to add.

Late in the night I woke to find myself in a loft bed, the ceiling only a few feet above my head. Robbie lay next to me, snoring softly, one arm flopped over my belly.

I gently moved his arm and slid off the loft bed. The apartment was dark. The candles had burned to stubs, but light came in through the window. I put on Robbie’s T-shirt and sat at the kitchen table and looked out.

The moon was full and shining in a clear, cold sky, beaming its light into Robbie’s kitchen. Across the courtyard, a checkerboard of windows glowed even though it was two o’clock in the morning. The shade was open in the gypsy girl’s apartment, and I saw her, dressed in a head scarf and shawl and long, bright skirt, whirling and twirling and singing. I looked into the other windows. A stocky young man climbed into a loft bed like Robbie’s, and a gray cat jumped up next to him and rubbed her fur against his cheek. The guy nuzzled her. They rubbed their noses together, then settled down for the night. The gypsy girl whirled and danced. All was well in the hive of students.