The Sisters Club Read online

Then they’d all found places to sit in the living room—Lise sat at the other end of the couch down by Diana’s feet, Sylvia dragged over a side chair, and Cindy settled down on the floor—while Lise ladled up Sylvia’s soup.

  “Thanks,” Diana said, accepting a plate. “I think I can just manage this without dumping. Dumping—that seems to be all my body can do since that wretched surgery.”

  “Dumping?” Sylvia said. “That is definitely more than I want to know.”

  “Dumping Syndrome, actually,” Diana said, as though the other woman hadn’t spoken. “It’s when the stomach contents move too rapidly through the small intestines. The symptoms are bloody awful, and when I tried to eat just one chocolate kiss the other day, my intestines immediately said to me, ‘Hel-lo! Don’t you remember what you just put us through?’ That’s why it’s so great you brought this soup. I’m pretty sure you didn’t put any chocolate in it.” She tried to laugh at the absurdity of it all. “You didn’t, did you?”

  “Of course I didn’t,” Sylvia said. “What do you think I am—stupid? And I’ll tell you something else, if my intestines were having conversations with me, I’d be worried.”

  Diana colored.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Sylvia said dismissively. “As a matter of fact, I think you look thinner already.”

  Diana brightened at that. Then she said, “But you know, it’s not fair for us to talk about just me. We should talk about everyone else too, you know, if we’re to be kind of like sisters.”

  “Sheesh,” Sylvia said, “you’re still stuck on that? And whoever said anything about being like sisters? Give it a rest. Why do we have to be like something? Why can’t we just be four women eating soup?”

  “I don’t know,” Lise said. “I think it’s kind of nice to have a theme. Maybe we should even have a group title,” she laughed, “like a book?”

  “Oh, that’s right,” Sylvia said. “Cindy said something on the phone about you starting to write a book.”

  Lise leaned forward, immediately caught up in the topic shift. “It’s amazing,” she said. “All those years I spent putting off trying to write a novel, I think I was putting it off because I imagined it would be very difficult.”

  “And it’s not?” Cindy said. “I can’t imagine writing anything more involved than a grocery list.”

  “I don’t mean to say it’s easy,” Lise said, “and I’m sure it’s not the same with everyone. It’s probably not even the same for individual writers from one book to the next. I guess it’s just that the idea of the novel has been living for so many years in my head, taking its shape, developing its own tentacles of subplots, once I finally sat down to write it, it’s just all spilling out. In just three weeks, I’ve racked up over two hundred pages.”

  “What’s it about?” Cindy asked. “Is it a romance? I love romances.”

  “Yes, it does have romantic elements—it’s a contemporary retelling of one of Shakespeare’s plays—but it’s not strictly a romance,” Lise said. “I guess you could call it a literary novel.”

  “About?” Diana prompted.

  “It’s about a pair of star-crossed lovers,” Lise said.

  “Well, that’s descriptive,” Sylvia snorted. “I don’t think anyone’s ever read one of those before.”

  Diana sat up straighter against her pillows. Ignoring Sylvia, she spoke directly to Lise. “You know,” she said, “my sister, Artemis, works for a gossip magazine, and she knows lots of literary agents and editor types. Of course, they’re all in London, so maybe you wouldn’t want that, but I’m sure she could find someone to look at your book if you’d like that, perhaps help you out.”

  “Do you really think it’s going to be that easy?” Sylvia said. “You write a book one month, and the next someone buys it? Whatever happened to artists needing to struggle first?”

  “Of course she’s right,” Lise acknowledged. “Almost no one makes it right away as an author. As a matter of fact, anytime you read about an overnight success story, chances are that person has a half dozen or more unsold books in a cedar chest at home. I’ve heard that. Still,” she smiled at Diana and shrugged, “I guess there’s no harm in talking to your sister.”

  “I’ll call Artemis tomorrow,” Diana said, obviously pleased. Then she looked expectantly from Cindy to Sylvia. “Who’s going to talk next?”

  “Don’t look at me,” Sylvia said with such outraged vehemence that Diana started to laugh.

  “Stop being so funny,” Diana begged, holding her midsection. “You’re going to make my staples pop.”

  Sylvia looked at the others. “I’m funny?”

  “Are you kidding?” Cindy said. “You’re the funniest one here.”

  “I am?” Sylvia said.

  “As some of you already know,” Cindy said, “or at least Sylvia sort of does…I’m trying to have a baby!”

  “Oh, that’s terrific news!” Diana said. “If I weren’t so sore, I’d jump up and hug you.”

  “Here’s what I don’t get,” Sylvia said.

  The other three looked at her, puzzled.

  “I told the three of you to write a book, have a baby, and lose weight, pretty much in that order, and you listened to me. What were you all, crazy?”

  “It’s not like I never tried to lose weight before,” Diana said. “I tried, many, many times. You just made me want to look for one last method.”

  “For me,” Lise said, “it was like an epiphany. All those years feeling like I should be writing a novel and feeling guilty all the time but never really doing anything about it. Talking to you I suddenly realized: Why not now? So I take a chance on myself and maybe I fail. But at least I should try.”

  Cindy laughed. “Are you kidding me?” she said to Sylvia. “That night, you were like the Voice of God. You were like Morgan Freeman, doing a voice-over! ‘You, do this. You, do that.’ I’d have been scared to not listen to you. Besides,” she shrugged, “it’s like Lise says: Life is short, and if you really want something, why not at least try?”

  “I don’t think those were my exact words,” Lise said.

  Cindy shrugged. “They might have been.”

  “You really are all crazy,” Sylvia said.

  “What does Eddie say about it?” Lise turned to Cindy. “About the baby.”

  “You know, it’s funny,” Cindy said, “Eddie usually has a lot to say about everything.” She paused, looked up at the ceiling as though the answer to her perplexity might be found there. “But he hasn’t said much about this.”

  “Oh, I’m sure he must be thrilled,” Diana said. “I’m sure you both are.”

  “Well,” Cindy said, “it hasn’t happened…yet. But enough about me.” She turned to Sylvia. “You know,” she said, “that night at the bookstore, you left before you had a chance to tell us about your sister, or anything really. What’s she like?”

  Life is short. Sylvia heard the words in her head, the words Cindy claimed Lise had said, even if she hadn’t. And if you really want something, why not at least try?

  And suddenly, in a big rush of words, like a dam had broken, in more words than she’d spoken in one sitting in an entire year, Sylvia told them about Minnie. She told them about the lump. She told them everything.

  • • •

  Dan Taylor opened the front door to his house and dropped his suitcase on the glossy black-tiled floor of the foyer.

  “Diana!” he called.

  As soon as he’d realized that the business part of his trip was done, and all that remained was to go on client dinners to girly bars and karaoke clubs, he’d hopped the first plane that would let him overpay to fly on it, figuring on surprising his bride by coming home several days early. He couldn’t wait to see her.

  “In here!” Diana called.

  Dan Taylor followed her voice and walked into his own living room, finding his wife lying on the couch with a comforter over her lower body as though she’d been ill, surrounded by three women he’d never seen before. All t
he women had tears in their eyes, as though they’d just received some sad news.

  “Dan!” Diana smiled through the tears. “You’re home early!”

  “I couldn’t wait to get back to you,” he said. “What’s going on?”

  “Funny you should ask,” Diana said with a nervous smile. “I have a little something to tell you.”

  Cindy

  “I can’t believe you’re smoking that thing!” I said.

  “What?” Even in the dark confines of the catering van, I could see the surprise on Sylvia’s face.

  Back at Diana’s house, after her husband walked in on us, we’d all made ourselves scarce pretty quickly. Well, except for Diana, of course. Lise said she had some student papers to go over and left first. Then Sylvia and I walked out at the same time. I said good-bye to her and started walking down the long driveway.

  “What are you doing?” Sylvia had asked. I think it was then that she looked around the Taylors’ driveway and must have realized the only cars there, outside of her van, belonged to people who lived in the house.

  “Walking,” I’d shrugged. “It’s too much money to take the cab both ways. I figured I’d just walk until I find a stop on the bus route.” Not that I really thought there would be one close by. There was no need for the bus to stop anywhere near Diana’s neighborhood.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Sylvia had said. “Hop in.”

  “I don’t want to inconvenience you any,” I’d said. “Don’t you have somewhere you need to be?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” she’d said again. And in that instant, I realized she really did find me ridiculous. But now she was the one behaving ridiculously.

  “That cigarette,” I said. “You just told us all you found a lump in your breast and now you’re smoking?”

  “It calms my nerves,” she said. “Besides, I didn’t feel right about lighting up back there.” She gestured with her head back toward Diana’s house. I could see what she meant: Diana’s house was so perfect, no way would you want to smell it up with smoke.

  “If it bothers you so much, I can put it out,” she offered. But she didn’t make a move to put it out. The cigarette dangled free out of the corner of her mouth as she shifted gears to pull out into traffic.

  “It doesn’t bother me,” I said. But I was lying. There was something, a secret I hadn’t told the others back at Diana’s house. Eddie and I’d had sex the night before and I woke up that morning certain I was pregnant. I know you can’t get pregnant that quickly—or at least I think you can’t, or maybe it’s that the symptoms don’t start that quickly—but I was almost sure that I was. And, being almost sure of that, I was sure Sylvia’s cigarette smoking was making me nauseous. “It just bothers me because I don’t think you should be doing that right now.”

  “First you say it doesn’t bother you, then you say it does bother you. I wish you’d make up your mind,” she said, rolling down her window and tossing the lit cigarette out into the night. “Fine. I’ll smoke when you’re gone.”

  The drive from Diana’s house to my apartment, even though both were within city limits of the same small city, took time—a slow, sliding progression from the wealthiest area of the city to an area that was, well, substantially less so. As we drove, the mansions disappeared and became just regular big houses, then condos, then strip malls as we drew closer to my neck of the woods.

  “Wow,” I said, looking for something to talk to Sylvia about. She seemed like such a hard person to talk to. We’d only talked twice in person, once on the phone, and yet every word seemed to be its own potential minefield. “This van doesn’t stink at all.”

  “What did you expect?” she barked a laugh. “Did you think it would smell like garlic and onions?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I guess I did think it would smell like food.”

  “Insulated door,” she said, gesturing with her head at the barrier between where we sat and the back of the van.

  “Ah,” I said, feeling stupid even as I said it. What kind of jerk says, “Ah”? Something about Sylvia made me feel stupid.

  Maybe she somehow sensed that and took pity on me, because for once she asked me some questions. I’d noticed that before about Sylvia: Diana and Lise asked other people things, but not Sylvia. I just figured maybe she didn’t care to know.

  “So,” she coughed, but it wasn’t like a cough from the cigarette she’d been smoking. Rather, it seemed like a cough of nervousness and it occurred to me, not for the first time, that maybe Sylvia wasn’t so good at talking to people. Not that I was all that great at it myself. When you get right down to it, some days, it’s amazing human beings are able to communicate with each other at all, like each of us is a play with our own programs and no one knows the songs in anyone else’s plays.

  “So,” Sylvia said again, “I guess I missed a lot of that, um, girl talk the night we all met at the bookstore. But after tonight, I know about Lise’s writing and I know about Diana’s foolish attempt to lose weight.”

  I didn’t think what Diana had done was foolish, just desperate, but I didn’t feel brave enough to say that to Sylvia. Getting her to throw her cigarette away seemed to suck up all the bravery I had in me for one night, at least where she was concerned.

  “But what’s your story?” she said. “I mean, outside of wanting to have a baby.”

  So I told her about Eddie. And, since I wanted her to think the best of Eddie, I told her my best Eddie story: the one about blind people and cars. When I was done, she didn’t laugh like the others had.

  “Eddie sounds real, er, interesting,” she said.

  “He is,” I said. “He’s the most interesting person I’ve ever known.” It was true. Unlike the high-school jerks I’d gone out with before meeting him, Eddie had big dreams, even if they hadn’t come true yet.

  “Must be nice,” she said, “to be in love.”

  We were almost at my street. Just a few more turns and we’d be there. A few minutes ago, I thought I’d summoned up all the bravery I had where Sylvia was concerned for one night, but I knew I was going to have to summon up some more. And quickly.

  “Look,” I said, “it’s just dumb of you not to go get that lump checked out.”

  “You’re calling me dumb?” Sylvia said. I could feel the anger coming off of her in an instant wave, like one of those tsunamis. But I was determined not to let her wash me away.

  “No, I’m not calling you dumb,” I said. “I’m calling what you’re doing dumb. It is dumb not to get a thing like that checked out.”

  “I know what they’ll find,” she said grimly.

  “No, you don’t know that,” I said. “Maybe they’ll find it’s nothing. Or maybe they’ll find it’s a little something they can take care of.”

  “Or maybe they’ll find that it’s a big something that’ll just kill me anyway,” she said.

  “But you don’t know that,” I said, feeling exasperated with her. For a woman who was smarter than me, she wasn’t being very smart. “That’s the whole problem,” I said, “you don’t know anything.”

  “Thanks a fucking lot.”

  “But I mean it.” Now that I was standing my ground with Sylvia, I found I couldn’t back down. “You’re in the worst place you can possibly be in: not knowing. At least once you do know, even if it’s really bad, you’ll be able to make choices about how you want to deal with it. You’ll know.”

  She didn’t say anything.

  “I’m going with you,” I announced, making the decision right while I was saying the words.

  “What?”

  “You make the appointment,” I said, “you tell me when it is, and I’ll go with you. I’ll take you. Even if I have to take the day off from work, I’ll take you.”

  “But you don’t have a car,” she snorted. Sylvia was big on snorting.

  “Of course I have a car. Or I should say, we have a car. The only thing, I like to keep it free for Eddie to use it.”

  She didn�
��t say anything about that. Then: “So, what? I’ll have to pick you up, and then you’ll come with me?”

  It did sound kind of silly in a way and convoluted when she put it like that. Still…

  “Once you pick me up,” I said, “I’ll do the rest of the driving. That way, you won’t have to worry about that part of it at all, and you can just think healing thoughts. I can drive,” I sniffed. “Sort of.”

  “And you think you can drive this van? Because, you know, it’s not like a regular car.”

  “Piece of cake.”

  “Fine,” she said. “I guess it’s a deal.”

  Sylvia pulled into a parking space on the street across from the apartment. She looked at me with her hands on the wheel, like she expected me to get out right away, but I didn’t. Not caring if she thought I was the oddest woman who ever lived, I stretched across her, craning my neck so I could see our apartment over the florist. There, silhouetted in the window against the drapes, was Eddie, pacing back and forth. Was he pacing because he was eager to have me come home or was he pacing because he was mad I’d been gone so long?

  “What the hell are you doing?” Sylvia said.

  I ignored her question.

  “Could you just drive me around the block,” I said, “and drop me somewhere on the next street over?”

  “But isn’t this where you live?” she said.

  “Yes, but…” I had to think of something quick. I patted my belly. “All that soup from before.” I forced a laugh. “You know—sodium. I thought maybe I should just walk it off.”

  Diana

  “Diana, are you OK?” Artemis asked, naked concern in her voice.

  “Of course I am.”

  “Thank God. It’s just that I was so worried after getting your e-mail saying you’d gone and done something drastic like having surgery, and then when I couldn’t raise you on the phone.”

  “Well, as you can see—or at least hear—I’m totally fine now, or mostly, at any rate. The first few days, even weeks, were damned awful—nothing you read in the literature can prepare you for it. But now that I’ve mostly healed and have gotten used to a new way of eating—”