Confessions of the Sullivan Sisters (8 page)

When I got home after breakfast the next morning, the house was quiet. Ginger and Daddy-o and Jane were still sleeping, and Miss Maura was cleaning up the kitchen. I heard TV noises coming from the den, and looked in. Sassy was on the couch watching cartoons with Takey, her arm over his shoulder, his hand on her leg. They didn’t notice me. They were both mesmerized by the show, with that TV zombie look on their faces, unself-conscious,
cherry Popsicles melting in their hands. In that pose Sassy looked like a little kid, unaware of the way her left foot bounced off the end of the ottoman or the sticky Popsicle juice dripped down her fingers.

I felt old suddenly. Or maybe not old, but mature. I felt happy and sad. I touched my face, my bony new cheeks.

Everything was different now.

YOU INVITED SASSY, AND ONLY SASSY, FOR TEA THAT WEEK.
Ginger, Jane, and I got the message: You were mad at us. I don’t know what Ginger did to upset you, but I figured some of the rumors about me had gotten back to you. As for Jane, her crimes were no mystery: the
Sun
had just published the story about her blog and all the scandalous family secrets, and then she was suspended from school for blasphemy. She expected trouble—no, she
wanted
trouble.

I came home from school and then realized I’d forgotten to get tampons, so I asked Jane if she wanted to drive to Roland Pharmacy with me. She was restless from being stuck at home all day so she said yes. It started raining. We drove to the pharmacy accompanied by the slap of the wipers, the swish of the water under our tires, and the smell of wet wool.

I pulled up in front of the pharmacy. “Come in or wait in the car?”

“Wait in the car,” Jane said. “Get me a Mounds bar.”

I picked up a box of tampons and stopped to scan the magazine rack for a second. I heard a familiar voice say, “I’m picking up a prescription for my mother.” Brooks Overbeck propped his
elbows on the pharmacy counter, handing a prescription slip to the pharmacist.

“It’ll be ready in just a minute, son,” the pharmacist said.

Brooks turned and leaned against the counter to wait, surveying the after-school activity in the store. His eyes brushed past the middle school girls giggling over greeting cards and a woman studying moisturizers until they reached the magazine rack and caught me staring at him. As he ambled over, I casually held the box of tampons behind my back.

“Hey, Norrie, what d’ya know?”

“Hi, Brooks.”

He pulled a cream-colored envelope from his jacket pocket. “Got this in the mail today. You’ll be getting my official reply in writing, of course, once my mother shows me the proper way to write it, but off the record the answer is ‘Yeah, baby!’”

“Answer?” I didn’t know what he was talking about. “Answer to what?”

“You’re a cool one.” He tapped the envelope against his palm. “Always were, weren’t you?”

“Cool? Me? No, I’m not cool at all.” I shifted the box of tampons to the crook of my arm—let him see them, I didn’t care anymore—and snatched the envelope out of his hand. It was thick, creamy Downs’ stock, addressed to him, and the return address was mine. But the handwriting—thin, scratchy, yet forceful—was unmistakably yours, Almighty.

“I was hoping you’d ask me,” Brooks said. “I got a few other invitations too, but I was waiting for yours.”

I opened the card.
Mr. and Mrs. Alphonse Sullivan III request the pleasure of your company at the presentation of their daughter, Louisa Norris, at the Bachelors Cotillon, Saturday, December 21…

This might surprise you, Almighty, but I don’t like it when people take actions in my name without my permission. My first thought was:
How dare she?

My mind raced furiously, but I didn’t know what to say to Brooks. This wasn’t his fault.

“Overbeck,” the pharmacist called.

“I’ve got to go,” Brooks said. “I’ll be in touch.
Ciao!
”

He returned to the counter for his mother’s medicine. I grabbed a Mounds for Jane and paid the cashier. Then I ran out to the car.

“Did you see anybody in there?” Jane asked, because we almost always see somebody we know at Roland Pharmacy.

“Brooks,” I said. “And you’ll never believe what Almighty did.”

“Oh, I’ll believe it,” Jane said. “There’s nothing you can tell me about Almighty that will surprise me.”

“You’re lucky, then,” I said. “Because she sure shocked the hell out of me.”

And it wasn’t going to be the last time, was it?

“Ginger!” I yelled when I got home. I threw my coat down at the foot of the stairs. Jane gleefully hovered nearby, ready for a dustup. “Ginger!”

It was strange that she wasn’t in the sunroom with a cup of tea, talking on the phone with one of her friends. I don’t know why I yelled for her. I wanted her to fight for me—for my right
to choose my own escorts, to live my own life. But of course Ginger was probably in on the whole thing, wasn’t she?

At last she appeared at the top of the stairs, looking rattled. She had her glasses on—her big bug-eye glasses—and her hair was half-teased on one side and flat on the other. She was wearing her flowered silk pajamas. Obviously something was wrong.

“Stop yelling and come upstairs, girls. Something’s happened.”

Jane and I looked at each other. Jane was anticipating something juicy. Most of her facial expressions contain an element of satanic glee.

We went into Ginger’s room and found Sassy facedown on the bed, sobbing. Takey patted her clumsily on the head.

“What happened?” I asked.

“Wallace is dead,” Ginger said.

“What?” Jane cried.

Ginger shook her head and sat down next to Sassy, rubbing her back. “Sassy found him. She was leaving Almighty’s and saw Wallace in his car. Dead.”

“Just sitting there?” I asked.

“With his eyes open,” Takey reported.

Sassy lifted her wet, rosy face and nodded.

“Oh! Creepy,” I said.

Jane and I curled up on the bed with the others. “Poor Sass,” Jane said.

“It was awful.” Sassy sobbed harder.

“How did it happen?” I asked.

“We’re not sure,” Ginger said. “Your father’s at the hospital now, with Almighty. I’ll bet it was a heart attack. What if it had happened while he was driving? He might have hit someone.”

Sassy cried even harder, then bolted up. “I can’t stand it! It’s too awful!” She jumped off the bed and ran out of the room. A second later we heard her bedroom door slam.

“Why is she so upset?” Jane asked. “I mean, I know she just saw her first dead body, but she’s acting like she killed the guy herself.”

“He was always kind of a stiff,” Ginger said.

I sighed. They were heartless. We all were.

The phone rang. Ginger reached over to get it. From the way she talked to the person on the other end I could tell it was Daddy-o.

“He’s on his way home,” she said, hanging up. “The doctors said it was a stroke. The funeral is on Friday.”

“Poor Wallace,” I said.

Having St. John and Sully home felt like a holiday, and Jane and Takey and I had trouble suppressing our happiness at seeing them in our time of mourning. Only Sassy grieved consistently. She sat quietly with us, listening to St. John’s and Sully’s stories of adventures in the wider world, wearing black at all times—she’d even dug up black pajamas somewhere—and bursting into tears over nothing. She was sadder than anyone else in the family, but that wasn’t so strange, for Sassy.

On Friday we all dressed up in our black clothes and piled into a limo that took us to the cathedral.

I couldn’t see your face very well through your lace veil. It was hard to tell exactly what you were feeling. I think you loved Wallace, but who knows what secrets you keep locked up in your heart?

I tried to stop Takey from pretending to shoot the mourners while we walked up the aisle, but he only listens to Miss Maura. Brooks was already seated with Carrie and his parents and Mamie. He nodded at me as I slid into our pew.

I stared at Wallace’s body, all waxy-looking in his coffin, and it gave my heart a little pang, but I couldn’t cry. I wanted to cry. It would have felt right. People around me were sniffling and wiping their eyes. Sassy wept and trembled through the whole mass. Not hard-hearted Jane, of course. Ginger was crying, but who knows over what. Maybe she’d lost an earring.

The sight of Daddy-o quietly weeping got to me. Daddy-o doesn’t fake tears. Wallace wasn’t his father, and if you think about it, Daddy-o has been to a lot of funerals for your husbands. Maybe he was remembering his real father. Or maybe he’s just tenderhearted. Sassy got her tender heart from him.

Finally the ceremony ended and we filed out of the cathedral row by row. I felt tired. The faces in the pews blurred until, in the very last row, one face jumped out at me. Robbie. He looked at me so sweetly that I burst into tears at last.

“Oh, Norrie!” Sassy draped her arms around my waist and clung to me as we walked. That was all that kept me from rushing into Robbie’s arms. The flow of people pushed us past him and out of the church.

I hadn’t told him about the funeral; he must have seen the announcement in the newspaper. I longed to be with him, but I had to go to the luncheon. I don’t know why the sight of his face set me off like that, but in the limo, all the way to Gilded Elms, I hid my face in a handkerchief and cried. And then I worried: What if I was turning out like Ginger? What if I couldn’t be happy unless I was with Robbie, the way Ginger can’t be happy without Daddy-o?

THE NIGHT AFTER WALLACE’S FUNERAL, WE SETTLED AT THE
kitchen table for a quiet supper with Miss Maura. Sassy said she didn’t feel well and went upstairs to her room. The rest of us fixed turkey sandwiches and ate them with glasses of milk, and gossiped about who had said what at the post-funeral luncheon.

“Brooks Overbeck told me he’s already bought a white tie and tails getup for the Cotillon,” Sully said.

“Good for him.”

Sully and St. John exchanged a glance. In all the fuss around the funeral I hadn’t forgotten about Brooks and the Cotillon, but it didn’t feel right to talk about something so frivolous while wearing mourning clothes.

“I’m going upstairs for a smoke,” Jane announced. “And I don’t care who knows about it,” she added to Miss Maura’s raised finger, poised for scolding.

“I’ll go with you.” I got up from the table, my sandwich half-eaten. “To make sure you don’t burn my room down.”

Jane and I went upstairs to the Tower. Jane cracked a window and lit one of her cloves. I collapsed on my bed.

“So what made you cry?” Jane asked. “I mean, at the end of the funeral. Why were you really crying?”

“What kind of question is that? It was a funeral. Everybody was crying. Except you, of course.”

“I know you think I’m mean. You weren’t crying over Wallace. I’m sad about him. I really am. And I’m sad for Sassy that she found him dead. It seems to have broken something inside her.”

“I wish she’d talk about it,” I said.

The door pushed open—no one ever bothers to knock in this family—and Sully and St. John came in.

“The place looks like crap without my posters,” Sully said. “Looks like a girl’s room.”

“It’s my room now.” I wasn’t in the mood.

“It is and will always be my room, officially,” St. John said. “I’m only lending it to you squibs.”

St. John stretched his long self across the foot of the bed while Sully settled in the armchair by the window. They both looked at Jane.

“What?” she said. “I’m smoking. Deal with it.”

“We need to have a talk with Norrie,” St. John said.

“So talk.”

“Get out of here, you feel me, shorty?” Sully said.

Jane stubbed out her cigarette. “Shut up, Sully. You and your dumb college slang.”

“Oooh, Jane said ‘shut up,’” Sully said.

Jane sashayed to the door. “Kiss my skinny white heinie.”

“Oooh, Jane said ‘heinie,’” Sully crooned. “Everybody in this house talks so twentieth century.”

“Including you,” St. John said. “When you’re not trying to sound like a drug dealer on
The Wire
.”

Which
is
how Sully talks when you’re not around, Almighty, so forgive the swears. I cut some of them but for others there’s just no substitute word that gives the same meaning.

Jane left, grumbling and slamming the door behind her. I sat up and propped myself against the pillows.

“We heard about this older dude you’re with, N,” Sully said. “Not cool.”

“Sully, I thought you were going to let me do the talking,” St. John said.

“Knock yourself out,” Sully said.

“Daddy-o told us, Norrie. He’s trying to pretend he’s not worried, but you know he is. How old is this guy, twenty-five?”

“Yeah. So?”

“That’s four years older than me,” St. John said. “He’s too old for you.”

“You don’t know what guys are like, Norrie,” Sully said. “I hate to break it to you, but we’re shitheads.”

I looked to St. John for confirmation. Sully might be a shit-head, but St. John?

He nodded solemnly. “Not always, but we can be. Some guys are. And usually the guys who go after the young girls are not the best kind.”

“But you don’t know Robbie,” I said. “He’s not like that. He doesn’t go after young girls. All his ex-girlfriends are his age. This is just…an accident.”

Sully sprang up. “Oh no. You’re pregnant?”

“No,” I said. “Not that kind of accident. I mean, it just happened. I know the timing’s not perfect, but I can’t help that. I met the love of my life now. I’d rather have met him later, in my twenties, but I didn’t. It’s fate. There’s nothing I can do about it.”

“Fate? Oh no, don’t give me that,” St. John said. “Whenever girls talk about fate it means trouble.”

“Yeah, fate boys are always the real assholes,” Sully said. “That’s how girls justify their assholosity—‘I can’t help it if he’s a creep, it’s fate!’ Don’t go falling in love, Norrie. It’s all a big lie.”

“Like you know,” I said. “When have you ever been in love?”

“Norrie, listen to me,” Sully said. “There’s this guy in my frat, he’s a senior. Every year when the new freshmen arrive he goes through the directory and finds the cutest girls. He picks them off, one by one. He invites them to a party, gets them drunk, has his way with them, and then checks them off his list. He even keeps a big chart with their pictures on the wall of his room. After he gets one, he draws a red X through her face. Then he goes around telling everybody that he’s seen her naked and she’s fat.”

“So? All that proves is that your frat is full of creeps,” I said.

“That’s only one example,” Sully said. “I could give you dozens of others, even worse.”

“How do you know this guy Robbie’s not seeing three other girls at the same time?” St. John asked.

“Well…I guess I don’t know, for sure.”

“He could be up to all kinds of things and you’d never know about it,” Sully said.

“You haven’t even met him,” I said. “Why don’t you at least meet him before you decide he’s the devil incarnate?”

Sully laughed. “Ha! He’ll never want to meet us. Your older brothers? He’d be scared shitless.”

I didn’t like to admit it to myself, but they had put some doubts in my mind. What did I know about Robbie, really? I only saw him once or twice a week. What was he doing with the rest of his time? Did he dangle me on a string while seeing other girls on the side? How would I ever know?

“What about Brooks?” I said. “He’s a guy too. How do you know he’s not just as bad as those guys in your frat?”

“He could be,” Sully said. “But he would never be a jerk to you, because you’re too connected. He knows that whatever happens between you will get back to Almighty and Mamie, and he wouldn’t risk that.”

“So the only reason I can trust him is because he’s afraid of pissing off the family?” This was a troubling way of looking at love. I didn’t like thinking about Brooks as a coward any more than I liked thinking of Robbie as a predator.

“What about you?” I asked. “Are you an asshole too? St. John?”

“Nah, not me,” St. John said. “Sully is, though.”

“I am not,” Sully said. “I’m a nice guy. I can’t help it if girls throw themselves at me. What am I supposed to do, resist?”

“Yes, that’s exactly what you’re supposed to do,” St. John said.

“Dude, I’m only human,” Sully said.

“You know what? I don’t trust either of you,” I said. But they’re my brothers, and they were only trying to protect me. If I couldn’t trust them, who could I trust?