The Sisters Club Read online

  “Inconclusive,” Dr. Gupta announced, as we all sat in his office a short time later. “You see these shadows here?” I nodded, but really, it all looked the same to me. “It is so hard to tell. There could be something there,” he said, then he shrugged, “or it could be nothing.”

  “I guess that’s it then,” I said again, starting to rise.

  “Next step,” he said, “is a surgical biopsy.”

  “You want to cut me?” I said.

  “It will just be a small incision.” He shrugged, held his thumb and forefinger about an inch apart. “Whoever looks at it will barely see it afterward.”

  Funny man. He thought I was worried all my sexual suitors would find me less attractive.

  “And I suppose you’re just going to do the surgery right now too?” I said. I looked around the office, as though he might be hiding a surgical table under his desk or something. “I didn’t see an operating theatre anywhere when I walked in.”

  “Oh, no,” he smiled. “We may be one-stop shopping, but we are not one-stop cutting. We will be doing the surgery at the hospital. Next week.”

  Lise

  I was supposed to be teaching a class, but my mind was on everything but. Instead of teaching, my mind was worrying if my novel was good enough and worrying about Sylvia in the operating room. Hell, I was even fantasizing about Tony.

  “Ms. Barrett?”

  Was the ending of my novel the right one? To have everyone die just seemed too obvious and yet a happy outcome wouldn’t have fit. And what was going on in the operating room right now? What were they finding?

  I may not have known Sylvia all that long, in the greater scheme of things, but her circumstances touched me deeply. She presented herself to the world as a prickly pear, but anyone could see that what she was going through was deeply frightening to her and that part of the reason for her prickliness was as a defensive gesture against disaster. Not that I was certain the surgery would reveal anything deadly—lumps turned out to be nothing all the time—but with her twin’s medical history it was worrying. And, if nothing else, even if she were a complete stranger whose story I’d only been told, hey, I was a woman, I had breasts; I could empathize with her greatest fears.

  “Ms. Barrett?” It was then I realized I’d missed something.

  “What is it, Danitra?” I said.

  Danitra’s black hair, usually kinky, was braided into seemingly a hundred tiny braids held together loosely at the base of her neck by one more braid. She’d taken the marginally improved weather to heart and was prematurely wearing a yellow sundress with spaghetti straps.

  “We were talking about John’s story,” she said. “I was saying that it was fine to know a lot of big words, and even use them occasionally, but that if readers had to keep running for their dictionaries every five minutes they’d feel dumb, not to mention pissed.”

  John, his own brown military hair looking as though it’d been freshly trimmed just prior to walking through the door, his dark eyes glowering, scowled at her.

  “John said I was totally wrong,” she continued, “but everyone else was agreeing with me, so we were all looking to you to arbitrate but—knock, knock!—you don’t seem to be home today.”

  She was right. There was a lot on my mind. Not only was I worried about Sylvia, but I’d also e-mailed the first draft of my novel to Dirk Peters, Diana’s sister’s friend. He’d said it was OK to send it as an attachment file, and I’d done so two nights ago. I knew it was unrealistic to think he’d read it already. He was a busy literary agent, after all. I hadn’t known who he was when Diana first called, but I’d started to read the publishing trade magazines like they were bibles for a new religion and knew now: Dirk Peters was a modern legend who was known for his mane of blond hair and his seven-figure deals, and who was called, but not to his face, the “Jaguar.” Still, I obsessively checked my e-mail anytime a computer was within spitting distance, as though even if he didn’t really have time to read my work, and he probably hadn’t, it might have leaked into his brain on its miraculous own, like poison filling Hamlet’s father’s ear.

  I looked at my students’ expectant faces.

  I didn’t care right then about yet another petty skirmish between Danitra and John, always more petty on John’s part than Danitra’s. All I cared about doing right then was: first, verifying that Sylvia would be all right; second, checking my e-mail again. If everything were fine with both, then I’d hunt Tony down and have some sex.

  “Danitra and the others have a point,” I spoke severely to John.

  “How would you know?” he sneered. “You weren’t even listening when I read from my chapter.”

  He was right, of course. I hadn’t been listening.

  But by then, a few months into the spring semester, I was all too familiar with John’s work.

  “Look,” I said to him, running out of patience, “if your hope is to someday have more than just a few literary snobs read and appreciate your work, you’re going to need to change a few things.”

  “What are you suggesting I do? Talk down to my readers?” he said.

  “Of course not! But there’s a vast sea of difference between talking down to readers and walking on a cloud of such rarefied air that no one really gets your work but you. Is that what you want? To be your own audience of one?”

  It was a mistake to say that. I knew it even as the words were flying out of my mouth, like the little girl in the story who opens her mouth only to have toads hop out. And if I didn’t know it then, I certainly knew it when John hastily gathered up his things and nearly tripped in his rush to get out of his chair.

  “What do you know anyway?” he said, getting so close to my face I could see the tears in his eyes. He was only twenty. He would hate me for this. “When was the last time you wrote a novel?”

  I could have told him I’d just finished one and that I was hoping it was a good one, but it hardly seemed like the time. Besides, he didn’t give me a chance because, in an instant, he was gone.

  The other nineteen students had the grace to keep their eyes on their desks, but somehow this averting of their eyes, as though embarrassed for my sake, was worse than John challenging me head-on. Were they embarrassed for me because of what I’d said to John? Or because of what he’d said to me?

  Danitra was the first to look at me again.

  “Ignore him, Ms. Barrett,” she said. “You know John. He’s just mad because he couldn’t think of a comeback that used the words ‘ineluctable’ or ‘gravitas.’”

  She was right, of course, to a certain extent. But I knew that what had just happened wasn’t good, not at all.

  • • •

  I’d ended class early, telling the students that it was always good to write when the passion was high and that they should all go back to their dorms and write me essays about conflict. They could handle the material anyway they wanted to, they could even fictionalize it, but I wanted the theme to be what happens when irresistible force meets up with immovable object.

  “Shouldn’t we all write it as fiction,” Danitra had pointed out, “since this is supposed to be a fiction-writing class?”

  “Of course you’re right,” I’d laughed at myself, adding, “Duh-me,” which made them laugh too.

  Now I was racing across the campus to my office, barely noticing the more determined leaves insisting upon appearing on the branches of the mostly stark trees or the trickling sound of water rushing downhill into the gutters, the sun rapidly melting the snow remaining from the end-of-season New England storm we’d been sucker-punched with earlier in the week.

  But once I was there, the LISE BARRETT, MFA plaque mocking louder than ever after John’s words, neither of the things I’d been racing toward were waiting for me. Cindy hadn’t called with news about Sylvia, and there were no e-mail messages from Dirk Peters. Declaring the day a total loss, I decided to cancel office hours for the afternoon. But I didn’t bother to put up a sign before heading off to faculty
parking to retrieve my car. No one ever came anyway.

  • • •

  Back at the cottage, I paced the afternoon away, waiting on e-mail, waiting on the phone to ring.

  I thought to call Cindy, but then I remembered she didn’t own a cell phone. Even if she had one, she’d probably have to turn it off at the hospital.

  At four o’clock, the phone rang.

  “Lise?”

  “Cindy?” It was very loud wherever she was.

  “Believe it or not,” she shouted, as though trying to hear herself, “we’re at the mall. After the surgery, Sylvia insisted we come here.”

  That sounded promising.

  “It went well then?” I said.

  “We don’t have the results yet,” she said. “First they need to send what they took out off to the lab to do a biopsy. But Sylvia came through it like a champ. And, for some reason, afterward she just felt like going shopping.”

  “I need some new shoes,” I heard Sylvia growl. She must have been standing right next to Cindy. “I figure, if it’s good news, new shoes would be a good thing to have. And if it’s bad news? New shoes couldn’t hurt.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” I laughed.

  “The surgeon said he should get the test results back on Thursday,” Cindy said. “And Sylvia wants us all to meet her that night at Sylvia’s Supper.”

  “I can issue my own invitations, thank you!” Sylvia shouted. “I’m not dead yet.”

  “I think we’d better go,” Cindy said. “See you Thursday!”

  She hung up.

  I felt somewhat relieved, as though someone had mercifully poked a nice tiny hole in the anxiety ball I’d been carrying around in my chest. Even if they had no solid news yet, at least their spirits sounded high.

  Feeling as though maybe their high spirits might overflow into a positive effect on my life, I checked my e-mail one more time. And there it was: a message from Dirk Peters. Feeling like I was opening Pandora’s box, but then telling myself it must be good news if he’d written back so quickly, with trembling finger I pressed READ on Dirk’s e-mail.

  From: [email protected]

  To: [email protected]

  Dear Ms. Barrett,

  I’ve had the chance to review your pages. I must say, this is the most unmitigating pile of overwritten shite it’s ever been my displeasure to read. Sorry I can’t be more encouraging. You did indicate you have a day job. You still do, don’t you?

  Cheers!

  Dirk

  • • •

  Two hours later, I was sitting in front of the fireplace when Tony let himself in the door with his key. When he’d phoned a short time earlier, asking if I wanted to catch a movie and then a late dinner, I’d said no, I was too busy working. But he must have heard the cry in my voice, for here he was.

  “What are you doing?” he asked quietly, settling down on the floor behind me, stretching his legs out around my hips and putting his arms around my neck.

  I shrugged off his arms, picked up a few more sheets of paper from the stack beside me, and fed the pages into the flames.

  “I’m burning my book, of course,” I said.

  The Women

  Recommended Reading:

  Cindy: The Girlfriends’ Guide to Pregnancy, Vicki Iovine

  Diana: The Reading Group, Elizabeth Noble

  Sylvia: Crazy about Cupcakes, Krystina Castella

  Lise: Jeff Herman’s Guide to Book Publishers, Editors and Literary Agents, Jeff Herman

  • • •

  “You should have seen her,” Sylvia said to Diana and Lise, champagne bottle in hand, nodding her chin to indicate Cindy. “We were just driving around in the van, killing time, waiting for Dr. Gupta to call with the results. My cell rings, I answer it, she hears me say, ‘You mean everything’s OK?’ and she whips the cigarette right out of my fingers and tosses it out the window.”

  Then Sylvia popped the cork on the champagne.

  Sylvia’s Supper boasted two tables for two. One was next to one of the display cases and Sylvia often used it at the end of the workday to go over the day’s receipts. The other was for people who stopped in for lunch or a snack and then felt like eating there instead of taking the food back to work or eating in their cars. On the odd warm days, which would come more often now as spring arrived in earnest, Sylvia carried the tables outside so that customers could eat on the sidewalk, enjoying the sun and the sound of traffic. That night, Sylvia had pushed the two tables together in the middle of the room, covering them with a linen tablecloth and hanging up the hand-painted CLOSED sign an hour early.

  Diana and Lise looked at Cindy as though she might be certifiable. Who would have the nerve to take a cigarette away from Sylvia?

  “You should have seen the look on her face!” Cindy said, laughing. “You’d think I kicked her cat or something.”

  “You’re lucky she didn’t kick you,” Lise said, laughing too.

  “I just told her what I thought,” Cindy said. “That it was dumb for her to keep on smoking after what she’d just been through.”

  “She was right,” Sylvia acknowledged, pouring the champagne. Cindy put her hand over her glass to indicate she didn’t want any. “It was dumb,” Sylvia continued. “So I quit right then and there, not that it’s been easy.”

  “Then everything really is all right?” Diana said. “There’s no cancer?”

  “No,” Sylvia said, breathing a sigh of relief as she set down platters of stuffed mushrooms, mini empanadas, and fresh vegetables with low-fat dip, the latter items prepared with Diana in mind. “But Dr. Gupta said I was lucky this time. He said that with my family medical history, it’ll always be a concern.”

  “Still,” Diana said, “you must be incredibly relieved. I know I am.”

  “Of course I’m relieved,” Sylvia said. “But I’m something else too.”

  “Explain,” Lise said, reaching for a mushroom and popping it into her mouth.

  “It’s just that, when I thought I was dying,” Sylvia said, taking her time framing the thought, “I guess I just kind of figured, ‘OK, fine, crap, but still, game over, nothing I can do to change things now.’ But as soon as Dr. Gupta told me the news, I started thinking about the life I’ve lived so far. And I started realizing that I haven’t hardly lived at all. I’m not saying I didn’t love my sister—I loved Minnie tremendously, still do—but all the time she was alive, we were too busy being twins for me to let much else enter my life and hardly anything in the way of romance. And since she died? I’ve been a shell. But now I feel as though I’ve been given a second chance and maybe I ought to do something with it.”

  “Like what?” Diana prompted.

  “I’m not sure yet,” Sylvia shrugged. “Live. Now that I know I’m not going to die, yet, I feel like what I’m supposed to do is live, really live.”

  “I’m going to do something too,” Diana announced.

  The others looked at her.

  “I’m going to go back to London for a bit soon,” she answered the question in their eyes. “Artemis and my mother have been after me to visit—far be it for them to come here—and Dan’s been so busy with business trips lately, I thought I’d pop across the ocean.”

  “They’ll be thrilled when they see you,” Lise said. “How much have you lost so far?”

  “Forty pounds,” Diana said, proudly displaying the loose waistband on her pants for all to see. “It’s been coming off so rapidly, I’ve promised myself only to go shopping for new clothes once a month. My size keeps changing so much, although I do think it’s starting to taper off. But no, somehow I don’t think thrilled is the right word for what Artemis and Mother will be.” She looked directly at Lise. “Did you ever hear back from Dirk Peters?”

  Lise made a face. “And how,” she said.

  Then she told them about Dirk’s e-mail.

  “That’s the cruelest thing I’ve ever heard,” Cindy said.

  “Dirk sounds like a dick,”
Sylvia said.

  “The funny thing is,” Lise said, “as soon as I read his words, I realized he was right. I don’t know about unmitigating, but the novel I’d written was overwritten crap.”

  “Still,” Diana said, “I feel so responsible. I think I’ll look this Dirk up when I’m over there and give him a piece of my mind. Maybe he was in a bad mood that day. Perhaps he’ll reconsider and ask to see it again.”

  “I doubt it,” Lise said, “and it wouldn’t matter if he did.”

  “Why do you say that?” Diana said.

  “Because I burned it, every last page of the manuscript,” Lise said. “I fed it to the fireplace. For good measure, I deleted the file, threw away the disc.”

  “Oh, no!” Cindy said, clearly distressed.

  “I think it’s sad too,” Sylvia said to Cindy, “but don’t you think you’re taking this a bit too hard? After all, it’s not your book she burned.”

  “No, I’m not taking it too hard!” Cindy said. “And what’s with the crack about it not being my book? We all know I could never do anything like write a book. Look at all of you: you all do such grand things.” She looked at Sylvia. “You’re going to do something, even if you don’t know what it is yet.” She turned to Lise. “And you’ve written a whole book, even if you turned around and burned it.” She turned to Diana. “And you, you’ve got…London and new pants every month.” She looked down at her champagneless glass. “But what do I have? Nothing. I never even finished school.”

  “You never finished school?” Sylvia asked.

  Cindy shook her head.

  “It’s not too late,” Lise said. “You could start taking classes.”

  “It’s the middle of the semester, isn’t it?” Cindy sniffled. “What school starts new classes at the end of March? I’d have to wait until summer. Or fall.”

  “So take online classes,” Lise advised. “Take classes on a computer.”