Dead Certain by Adam Mitzner
PART ONE
DAY ONE
TUESDAY
Ella Broden
1.
I have news!!!
For someone who fancies herself a writer, Charlotte’s texts are extremely heavy on exclamation points.
I text back, wat—no question mark. My sister and I have used this shorthand since texting began, even though it’s actually more difficult because my phone autocorrects to what, and then I have to manually change it back.
No! In person! Tom’s!
That it’s the middle of a workday didn’t seem to enter Charlotte’s consciousness. Nor did the fact that she’s asking me to go to 112th and Broadway, a few blocks from her apartment. She undoubtedly knows that I’m in my office in Midtown, at Fifty-Seventh and Madison. In other words, a two-minute walk for her and a forty-minute commute for me. But my sister and I long ago established that when she asks me to come to her, I come, no questions asked. One of the privileges of being the baby, I suppose.
KK. We always text that too, even though that autocorrects to OK, and then I change it back.
Leaving in 10.
C u there at 2!!
On my subway ride to the Upper West Side, I consider the possibilities regarding my sister’s news. Given that we are both of that age, marriage is always what I suspect by default when a single friend says she has news, or a baby if she’s already wed. Charlotte is unmarried and enough of a traditionalist that I reject pregnancy in favor of nuptials. I know I should be happy for her if that is her big reveal, but I hope to God it’s something else. Not because Charlotte is six years younger than I am and I don’t even have a boyfriend—it’s because I’m not a fan of her current beau, Zach.
Zach is the kind of guy you date in your twenties because he’s beautiful and damaged and you think you can change him. The problem is that when you reach your thirties, you realize he’s not always going to be beautiful, you’re never going to change him, and being with him has already damaged you so profoundly that you can’t even imagine the wreck you’ll be if you remain together even one more day, much less ’til death do you part.
When Charlotte and I last discussed Zach—which was only a few weeks ago—she seemed ready to end it, so I doubt that she’s suddenly decided to marry him. Then again, stranger things have happened after a man proposes. And Charlotte is nothing if not a romantic in that way.
The next possibility my mind runs to is that Charlotte’s news might be employment related. But here there really couldn’t be much for her to say. She just finished her first year of a two-year MFA program in creative writing at NYU—all on our dad’s nickel. I couldn’t imagine her giving up that cushy life for an entry-level job anytime soon.
It isn’t until I’m coming up from the subway at 110th and Broadway that I consider the possibility that her news might not be good. Could she want to tell me that she’s got some health issue? That she’s pregnant and doesn’t know what to do?
I shake off the idea that it could be negative. Bad news doesn’t come with three exclamation points.
Even though clients pay $750 an hour for my time and all Charlotte has is time, she isn’t at Tom’s when I arrive. So I take a booth in the corner and wait.
A note about Tom’s. It’s the most famous diner in the world because its exterior was used for the coffee shop on Seinfeld. The sign shown on television was on the 112th Street side, where it only says the word Restaurant, but from Broadway it reads TOM’S RESTAURANT. Before Seinfeld, though, Tom’s was immortalized in Suzanne Vega’s eponymous song, and even before it made A-list connections, Tom’s had been a haunt of the Columbia University crowd for years.
At a quarter after, Charlotte bounds into the restaurant. She’s absolutely beaming. If anyone else made me travel for close to an hour and then showed up fifteen minutes late from a location two minutes away, I would have been furious. But I’ve never been able to be mad at Charlotte. Not when I was nine and she was three and she cut my hair when I was asleep; not when I was thirteen and she was seven and she poured chocolate milk in my favorite boots; not when I was sixteen and she was ten and she told Bradley, who was my boyfriend, that I wished Ryan would ask me to the junior prom.
Charlotte slides into the booth and sits up straight. When we were younger, my sister’s main ambition in life was to be taller than me. It wasn’t a very lofty goal considering I’m all of five three, but our parents’ short genes caught up with her too, and she topped out at five two.
“Sooooo . . . ,” I tease out. “What’s the big, exciting, three-exclamation-point news?”
A delicious smile comes across her lips. As if she wants to savor her news before letting it out into the world.
“Well,” she finally says, “your . . . sister . . . has . . . just . . . ,” and then she quickly runs through the rest of it, “sold her first novel!”
“What?” I say, although I understand completely. I just can’t get my head around it.
“Our major assignment is to write a novel. You submit the first half of the manuscript as your final first-year project, and you’re supposed to finish it your second year. My advisor loved mine so, even though it was unfinished, he sent the chapters I’d written to a friend he knows over at Simon and Schuster . . . long story short, they’re going to publish it!”
It takes me a moment to scan through my emotions. It feels a bit like watching the wheel spin on Wheel of Fortune—jealousy, envy, and anger click by, but I don’t come to rest on any of those things. I finally stop on shame.
I’m ashamed of myself. Charlotte has followed her dream, and now it’s coming true. And I, who could have done likewise, chose a safer course. I’m left wishing with all my might that I could go back and redo everything in my life.
My dark emotion quickly lifts, however. Sitting across from Charlotte, with her glistening eyes and a smile whose wattage could illuminate the city, I am quickly consumed with pride. My baby sister is going to be a published author.
“That’s amazing! I don’t even know what I’m supposed to ask. What’s the book about?”