The Sisters Club Read online

  “I can’t believe you had major surgery without consulting me first!”

  Artemis’s scream was so loud, I held the phone away from my ear.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, “if you’re bothered by it, but it was a rather sudden decision.”

  “How could you decide to do something so major so suddenly? And why didn’t you tell anyone about it first? God, Diana, you told me about it in an e-mail! Do you have any idea how you’ve made us all feel over here?”

  I walked the phone from the kitchen to the living room. When we’d first moved in, the kitchen—with its wide-open spaces, central island, and the skylight overhead, all that black marble and the hanging array of copper pots and pans and the Sub-Zero fridge—had been my favorite room in the house. Except for the bedroom I shared with Dan, of course. But now the kitchen felt like a mockery. I could no longer make the huge meals I used to love to, and the only appliance I still used regularly was the Cuisinart to pulverize vegetables and fruits and wheat germ into health shakes.

  “I just didn’t see the point in telling you before,” I said. “After all, you’re there, I’m here. I could hardly put you down as an emergency contact in case something went wrong. I mean, you are a bit far away.”

  “Yes, but to wait a whole month to tell us—and then to do it in an e-mail!”

  She had a point: I should have told my family what I was doing before I did it, even if they’d given me grief over my decision. Still, my insides hurt, as they did occasionally since the surgery, and I was in no mood to concede her point, so instead I said, “I believe you’ve said that already.”

  “What does Dan think about it all? No, wait. I don’t know why I didn’t think of this sooner. He put you up to it, didn’t he? That rat bastard. I knew he was too good to be true.”

  “Of course Dan didn’t put me up to it! As a matter of fact, his reaction wasn’t much different than your own.”

  “You mean you didn’t tell Dan in advance either? But why ever not?”

  “Because I wanted to surprise him. He was away on business in Japan when I had it done.”

  “And you say he was just as upset about it as we are?”

  It was true. That night he’d returned from Japan, Dan had been very upset with me.

  “Why didn’t you tell me you wanted to do this?” he’d said.

  “Because I knew you’d only try to talk me out of it,” I’d said, trying to convince myself I was in the right when I knew, deep down inside, I was in the wrong.

  “Perhaps,” he’d admitted with a nod. “But isn’t that what marriage is about? Talking through major issues together before reaching a decision both parties can live with?”

  I’d shrugged.

  “You wanted this so badly you went through this alone?” Dan had pressed.

  “Not exactly,” I’d admitted. “I put Lise—she’s the one you just met with the auburn-streaked black hair and the tweed jacket—down as the person to contact in case of emergency. And you should have seen her,” I added, smiling. “Every time the slightest thing went wrong, she’d sweep in, setting the hospital staff straight in no time.”

  “You had a stranger, some woman you’ve only met a handful of times, put down as your emergency contact instead of me, your own husband?”

  Dan’s sense of betrayal had been profound, despite my explaining how the people I’d normally put down as next of kin, he and my family, were all on different continents at the time. Still, he had a point. If the roles had been reversed, I would have felt so betrayed I’d have hit him with my copper pots.

  “Yes,” I told Artemis now, hating to give her the satisfaction, “Dan was beyond upset. But when I explained to him what the surgeon told me—that I was morbidly obese and that to go on being so presented a potentially deadly health risk, which I guess is why they call it morbidly obese—he came around.” This was true as well.

  “Of course I don’t want you to die, Diana,” Dan had said. “I just wish you’d trusted me enough to tell me first. And, anyway, aren’t there potential health risks with the surgery as well? You could have died on the table while I was in Japan, and I would have only learned about it in a phone call from some complete stranger.”

  “I’m sorry,” I’d said. “I’m so sorry. I promise I’ll never do anything like that again.”

  And then Dan, in an instant going back to the wonderful man I’d fell in love with, laughed.

  “I should hope not,” he’d said. “I’d like to think that if there are any more secret surgeries in your future, you’ll keep me in the loop.” Then he’d reached for me with the passion in his eyes that always telegraphed his desire to make love, perhaps more than once since he’d been gone so long. But I’d had to disappoint him: my staples still hurt.

  “So how much have you lost so far?” Artemis asked. It was a sneering sort of question, as though she expected my response to indicate that I’d yet again failed, even after taking such a drastic measure. But maybe that was just my own insecurities talking. Maybe she was merely trying to be encouraging, and I was only imagining the sneer. It was always so hard to tell with Artemis. She either tried to protect me or made me feel worse. It was as though she’d invented carrot/stick. Sometimes I wondered why I still bothered with her. But the answer was obvious: she was my sister. So even if our relationship had its flaws—OK, major fault lines—I always hoped that this time would be different, that one day she’d lay down the stick and finally become carrot through and through.

  “Twenty-five pounds.” I spoke the words proudly.

  “Can you convert that into British weight, please? Some of us haven’t renounced our citizenship yet.”

  I converted it for her.

  “That’s insane!” she said. “It’s just too much.”

  “What do you want me to do,” I said, “put it back on?”

  “No.” Even when she said it, I wondered if she was telling the truth. “No, of course not.” She was protesting too much. “But what does your surgeon say? Surely, he can’t approve of such a fast weight loss.”

  “On the contrary. He says it’s perfectly normal in the first month. He says it will slow down to a more normal rate very soon, which makes sense, since if I kept up at that rate, by the end of the year I’d weigh zero. He did also say that what I’d read about losing two-thirds my weight was inaccurate and it would probably be closer to one-third. He said that’s the problem with the Internet, that too many people try to become their own doctors and that sometimes the information you read on those sites is laughably false. Oh, and of course I’ve started exercising. That makes a difference too.”

  “You? Exercising?”

  “Just walking every day. My first goal is to make it all the way down the driveway and back up to the house again without getting out of breath.”

  “Oh,” she scoffed, “the driveway.”

  “It’s a very long driveway, Artemis.” My voice was steely. “You haven’t seen the house, but I can assure you, the driveway is very long. And once I conquer that, I’ll go farther.”

  She digested that for a moment. Then: “Twenty-five pounds? Mother will be livid! She’ll be worried you’re turning into one of those anorexic actresses. It’s all she’ll talk about.”

  “Hardly.” I laughed at the idea of me giving anorexics a run for their money. “I’ve got a long way to go before anything like that happens. But,” I added, suddenly wanting to share one of my first triumphs with my sister, “when the postman came up the drive the other day with a large package for Dan that wouldn’t fit in the box, he said, ‘My God, Mrs. Taylor, you look wonderful! I swear, one of your chins is completely gone!’”

  “And you’re proud of that?” Artemis said. “How rude.”

  “Of course I realize it was crudely put, but you had to be there to see the look on his face. He meant it kindly.” I sighed. Why had I ever thought Artemis would be happy about someone, even if it were only the postman, paying me a compliment? “Never mind all that,”
I said. “I’ve been meaning to ask you, do you think one of the literary agents or editors you know over there would be willing to look at a manuscript a friend of mine over here is working on?”

  “You’ve made a friend? But that’s wonderful news!” she said, and I could almost see her smiling through the phone, and it wasn’t a sneering smile at all; this was a genuine smile. She was all carrot for once.

  “Three friends, actually.” I smiled, feeling encouraged. Even though Sylvia was rarely what one would call “friendly,” it would have felt churlish to leave her out.

  “And one of these three spanking-new friends has written a book? And you think that—what?—I can just call up one of my pals and, boom, lickety-split she’ll be snapped up by a publisher and become an overnight smashing success?”

  And now she was back to being stick.

  I might have known better than to ask Artemis.

  I said as much.

  “Don’t be so hasty,” she said, sounding carrot again. “I’ve got the perfect person for your friend to talk to about her little book. I’ll shoot you out an e-mail with his contact info in it.” And suddenly it was almost as though I could hear her smiling again through the transatlantic phone lines, although this time, I couldn’t quite make out what that smile looked like. “His name is Dirk Peters.”

  “Are you sure he’s any good?” I asked. I was skeptical.

  “Oh, come on, Diana. You and I may have our…issues, but you sell me short if you think I’d refer your new friend to anyone who wasn’t on the up and up. After all, I am a professional. And if you still have any doubts, you can look Dirk up on the Internet.”

  • • •

  As soon as Artemis rang off, I punched in Lise’s number. I couldn’t wait to tell her the great news. She’d told me a bit about her schedule and I thought she might be on lunch break just then. Ah, lunch. I remembered lunch.

  “But what does this Dirk Peters do?” she asked, quite sensibly, making me wish I’d thought to ask Artemis that question. “Is he a literary agent? An editor?”

  “I honestly don’t know,” I admitted. “Shall I ask Artemis when she e-mails?”

  “No, that’s OK,” she said. “I trust you. I’ll let it be a surprise to me. Just the idea that a publishing insider is going to be looking at the words I’ve written…”

  We both let that dream hang in the air for a moment.

  “Anyway,” Lise said, being the first to puncture the dream, “I wonder how Sylvia is doing. When I talked to Cindy, she told me she was taking Sylvia to see the doctor on Thursday, that she had insisted Sylvia make the appointment.”

  “Oh, that’s so kind of Cindy,” I said. For all of Cindy’s youth and peculiar fashion sense—so much suede all the time—she was a good person. “Can you imagine trying to talk Sylvia into anything?”

  “That must have been some talk,” Lise agreed with a laugh.

  Suddenly I was embarrassed over what I’d said. “It’s not really very charitable of us, is it?” I said. “Here Sylvia has this dreadful problem—or perhaps she has a dreadful problem; none of us really knows—and you and I are laughing at her.”

  “Oh, come on,” Lise laughed. “You have a sister, don’t you? If we can’t laugh at each other’s foibles, who can?”

  I supposed Lise was right. There was a definite difference between the way Artemis laughed at me and the way we were talking about Sylvia. Sylvia was hard to talk to, let alone talk into anything. It was simply a fact. I liked to think that if Cindy hadn’t thought of it first, either Lise or I, both probably, would have done the same thing.

  “I suppose you’re right,” I said. “Still, the not knowing must be so hard. Can you imagine what Sylvia must be going through?”

  Sylvia

  I’ll tell you one thing. It didn’t take a brain surgeon, or a mammographer, to figure out, no matter how attached Cindy was to that I- don’t-like-blind-people-because-they-can’t-drive-cars story, that that Eddie character of hers was no great shakes.

  But there might as well have been a blind person driving the Sylvia’s Supper van from Cindy’s apartment to the surgeon’s office on Federal Road.

  “Watch with the shifts!” I said. “I’d hate to survive breast cancer only to have to spring for a new engine or something.”

  She stared out the windshield grimly, her hands at ten and two on the wheel whenever she wasn’t stripping my gears. “Just shut up and let me drive,” she said.

  Whoa, that girl had some kind of balls on her when she wanted to.

  I stared out the window too, watching the spring rain fall. It wasn’t much more than a drizzle, but, having the soul of a cat, I hated the idea of getting out into it. Beyond the gray and white of the sky, there was a kind of glow, like maybe the sun was thinking about fighting its way through.

  “Hey, I’ve got a great idea,” I announced, as she took the sharp turn from White Street onto Federal. “Why don’t we just drive right by the doctor’s office? We could go to lunch instead. My treat. It could be like a caterer’s holiday or something.”

  “We’re not blowing off this appointment,” she said, pulling into the parking lot. “If you want to buy me lunch so bad, you can do it afterward.”

  Like I’d be hungry then.

  We went inside. The waiting room was windows on three sides, which made me suddenly glad the sun hadn’t won the war with the rain clouds yet. It’d have been a bitch to die of the greenhouse effect before finding out I was dying of breast cancer.

  While I filled out a bunch of forms, Cindy, sitting at my side, pulled a paperback out of her giant purse. The book didn’t have a front cover.

  Huh, I thought. Maybe Cindy was even poorer than I thought, if she had to buy used books with the covers torn off.

  “What are you reading?” I asked.

  “Just a book,” she said, moving her hand so it covered the title.

  “Yeah, but what kind of book?” I said, moving her hand out of the way: Love’s Exploding Embers. “Hey, you like romances?” I was just trying to be friendly.

  But she reddened. “It’s just a book,” she said, shoving it back in her purse. Then she got up and picked something from the selection of magazines on the glass table: People magazine. Everyone in the waiting room was reading magazines.

  When in Rome, do what the Romans do and read magazines.

  I got up and got a magazine too: Martha Stewart’s Living. Might as well see what the competition was up to, heh. As they say, as if.

  “Sylvia Goldsmith?” the nurse called from the doorway separating the waiting room from the examining area.

  I tossed Martha back on the table. It was do-or-die time. Probably die.

  Cindy tossed People down on top of Martha.

  “What are you doing?” I said as she got up and started to follow me.

  “You don’t think I’m letting you do this alone, do you?” she said. On another day, I might have given her a fight; but I could see there was little point to it. Besides which, I was so scared, there was little fight in me.

  We went to the examining room where I exchanged my light sweater and bra for a hospital gown, and then sat on the edge of the examining table, waiting, waiting.

  The surgeon was about forty years old or so with coffee skin and black hair. I hated it that most of my doctors were now younger than me. His name was Dr. Gupta.

  “How’s things in India?” I asked.

  “Fine, I suppose,” he said, “but I am from Pakistan. Things are not always so good there these days, but some of us are surviving.”

  Cindy sat on a swivel stool in the corner while Dr. Gupta felt up my breast. If I weren’t so scared, I’d have probably laughed at the absurdity of it all.

  “Ah, yes,” he said, looking up at the ceiling as he gently moved his cool fingers around. It was like he was a blind person who could only divine the future through touch. “This pea-sized marble over here? This is what you were feeling, yes?”

  He didn’t hav
e to make it sound so small, but yeah, I nodded, that was it.

  “Well,” he said, “I could, of course, do a needle biopsy on it, but I see little point. It is so small and hard, I doubt I would be able to draw any fluid from it.”

  “Great,” I said, pulling the Johnny coat back around my breasts and moving to jump back off the table. “I guess that’s that then.”

  “Not so fast,” he said. “When was your last mammogram?”

  I thought about it. “About two years ago,” I finally said.

  “Tut-tut,” he tut-tutted. “A woman your age, Ms. Goldsmith, you should be getting them done every year.”

  “Yeah, well.”

  “This is your lucky day,” he said. “We have a mammography machine right here in the office. You know, a lot of us surgeons are one-stop shopping these days.” He laughed at his own joke. On another day I might have laughed too, but it wasn’t a laughing day for me. “I will get the technician, and once she has done the test, we will go over the results together in my office.”

  When the technician came, a burly Brunhilda if I ever saw one, I started to follow her. And Cindy started to follow me.

  “What are you doing?” I said. This make-way-for-ducklings act was getting old. Was I to be allowed no privacy?

  “Just keep moving,” Cindy said, putting her hand on my back and pressing me forward.

  Great. This was just what I always wanted: to have Cindy, with her perky young breasts, see my fifty-year-old breasts get flattened like a pancake in a vise.

  “Will I be exposed to a lot of radiation just by being in here?” Cindy asked Brunhilda once we were all in the mammography room.

  Brunhilda looked at Cindy just as oddly as I did.

  “Uh, no, dear,” she said.

  Then she made the machine come together so that my right breast, the offending one, was as thin as cookie dough after the rolling pin’s been at it. Afterward, for good measure and since maybe this wasn’t a total day at the carnival yet, she flattened the left side as well.