4
AS GUS WATCHED THE HEADLIGHTS of Perri’s SUV fade into tiny suns, then vanish into black holes, a feeling of dread overtook her. How would she and Olympia fill the time while Perri was gone? Gus suspected that she knew more about her middle sister than anybody. Yet she also felt she no longer knew how to talk to her, or even what to talk about. In recent years, Olympia had become so unreachable, so cold ultimately—except maybe with Lola. She was like a house with no doors or windows: it was impossible to get inside to see if it was even heated.
Gus knew she could be bad-tempered and confrontational. But at least she had emotions! At least she admitted to being a member of the human race. These days, she found it far easier getting along with Perri than with Olympia, even though she and Perri had almost nothing in common and much less shared history since, growing up, they’d been nearly four years apart. But that didn’t mean Gus was above making fun of Perri to Olympia. “I’m sorry—I love Perri,” she began, recalling that Olympia never tired of critiquing their oldest sister’s outfits. “But what the hell is she wearing today?”
“Don’t ask me. She has terrible taste in clothes,” concurred Olympia, a half smile already in evidence.
“Like, who wears a f*cking skirt suit to go to the hospital?!” Gus went on. “Unless they’re, like, a drug rep or something.”
“Perri, apparently.” Olympia’s half smile had already turned into a full-blown grin.
“Remember that time she was wearing those jodhpurs, or whatever they were, and Dad asked her if she was going to a Halloween party?”
“He thought she was dressed as a pirate, or something.”
“Didn’t he ask her why she had no eye patch?”
Olympia burst into bosom-vibrating guffaws, gratifying Gus, who remembered that her middle sister had always had a wonderful laugh, deep, hiccupy, and, well, warm. Maybe she was still human after all, Gus thought. Keen to leave their conversation at a high point, she reached for the remote and proceeded to flick through a dozen channels. “So, what do you say?” she said. “Animal Cops: Houston, local news, or a mysteriously Tivo’d The Bachelor?”
“Whatever you want,” said Olympia, who wasn’t a big fan of television.
“Well, I vote for The Bachelor.”
“Fine with me.”
“What? You don’t think homosexuals are allowed to watch heterosexual shows?”
“I didn’t say anything!” cried Olympia.
“But I could tell you were thinking that,” said Gus, aware that she sounded vaguely pathetic. These days, something about Olympia’s very presence made Gus defensive. Maybe it was the fact that, even when her sister was physically there, she gave off the impression that her mind was somewhere else, somewhere she’d rather be. “Actually, I can’t tell anything about you,” Gus went on.
“What?” said Olympia, squinching up her face.
“Never mind,” said Gus, embarrassed.
The sisters watched in silence as a young woman with a blond ponytail dabbed at her mascara-caked eyes and declared, “I would have bet my life savings I was getting a rose.” Then the camera cut to the bachelor himself, a smug-looking guy in a polo shirt with swooshy side-parted hair. “That last rose ceremony was seriously one of the hardest decisions I’ve ever made,” he said with a weary laugh. “I mean, Kristy is a great girl—fun, warm, superhot. I guess I just didn’t feel the connection.” After that segment ended, another contestant came on the screen—a horsey brunette with visible gums. The TV identified her as “Debbie from Delray Beach, FL.” “Speaking of Debbies,” said Olympia. “Heard anything from yours lately?”
“We’ve texted a few times,” said Gus, somehow surprised that her sister even remembered Debbie’s name.
“Any chance of getting back together?”
“Zero.”
“Sorry to hear it.”
“She and the new lady love are adopting a baby from North Korea, or something.”
Olympia squinted at her. “Are you serious about North Korea?”
“It might be Myanmar or Thailand. I can’t remember. Anyway, I’m over it.” And it was true, or mostly true. Gus’s ego was still wounded. But reflecting on the relationship, she’d come to the conclusion that all she and Debbie did was bicker, with Debbie accusing Gus of being needy and demanding, and criticizing everything she did; and with Gus accusing Debbie of not being supportive, not taking Gus’s work as seriously as she took her own, and caring only about herself. What’s more, Debbie rarely told Gus she loved her. Plus, Gus was always worrying about Debbie getting killed on her Harley-Davidson. And she’d only ever read the introduction to the book that Gus had spent five years slaving over, On Dykes and Documents: Towards a Lesbian Legal Practice (Routledge, 2009). Which is maybe why Gus’s hurt over the split was conflated with relief. At least, that was what she told herself. A part of Gus felt as if she’d been made to sit through some shrieky, seven-hour-long German opera. And the curtain was finally, thankfully coming down—even as another part of her physically ached at the thought of Debbie’s muscular arms wrapped around somebody else’s midriff…
“Well, that’s good,” said Olympia.
“I guess,” said Gus, gaining nerve. She glanced quickly at her sister. “What about you? Any handsome young Captain von Trapps on the scene?”
Olympia seemed startled by the question. “Me?” she said.
It was one of Gus’s pet peeves—how no one in the family ever dared ask Olympia anything about her personal life. As if it were that much more important than everyone else’s. At least, that was the way Olympia acted—as if she were sleeping with the president. “Who do you think I’m talking to?” she said. “The wall?!”
“Oh, sorry,” said Olympia. “Well, in answer to your question—not really.” She paused, looked away. “Though I got an email last week from my ex. Which was kind of strange since things between us didn’t exactly end on a good note.”
“Which ex?” asked Gus, amazed by the rare admission.
Olympia visibly swallowed before she replied, “Patrick. I don’t think I ever told you about him.”
“I met him at your housewarming party, like, ten millennia ago,” said Gus, who still recalled that Olympia had introduced him as her “good friend” and that he’d been wearing a wedding ring. (Did she think Gus was that stupid?) Why did Olympia not seem to realize that sisters could tell almost everything about each other’s feelings simply by observing the tilt of each other’s heads, the set of each other’s mouths?
“Oh, right,” said Olympia, looking confused.
“So why didn’t it end on a good note?” said Gus, longing to hear the truth from Olympia’s own lips.
Olympia appeared to hold her breath—before she announced, “Because he was married to someone else.” She looked into her lap. “A paraplegic.”
The honesty of her sister’s answer shocked Gus. “Was married and still is?” she asked.
“I assume so.”
“Huh—that sounds complicated,” Gus said with a nod. As if learning this information, too, for the first time. In fact, in the years since Lola’s birth, she’d formulated the working hypothesis, shared with friends and family alike, that No Saint Patrick (as Gus liked to call him behind closed doors) was Lola’s “mystery father.” There was no other good explanation for Olympia’s secrecy and defensiveness on the subject. “So, what did the email say?” Gus pressed on.
“That he wanted to talk to me.”
“About what?”
“Unclear.”
“And what did you say?”
“I didn’t answer.” Olympia shrugged quickly. “There’s nothing left to say. It ended years ago.”
“Right.”
Olympia cleared her throat imperiously. “I’d appreciate it if you kept this all to yourself.”
“You barely told me anything! Also, who am I going to talk to?” said Gus, bristling at having been accused of being a gossip before she’d even gossiped.
“Perri,” said Olympia.
“I’m sure she already knows,” said Gus, squirming. In fact, it was she who had told their older sister about Olympia’s illicit affair. “Perri makes it her business to know everything about everyone. Also, if you haven’t seen the guy in five years, or whatever, it’s not exactly news.”
“Well, I’m pretty sure she doesn’t know about my relationship with… Patrick.”
“Whatever you say,” said Gus.
The show cut to a commercial, and the two fell silent. As a Gillette razor traced a slow smooth path down a disembodied jaw, Gus felt newly riled by Olympia’s obsession with privacy. It struck her as not just ridiculous but presumptuous, even self-aggrandizing. “You were always into married guys,” she blurted out. It was unkind, maybe. But wasn’t it true?
“Excuse me?!” said Olympia, clearly offended.
“Remember Mr. Grunholz, the English teacher dude in high school with the leather jackets? Weren’t you in love with him, or something?” Gus could no longer remember the specifics, but she knew that something embarrassing had happened between him and Olympia that had led their mother to intervene and the man to be let go.
“In love with him?!” scoffed Olympia. “Hardly. He was a total lech who was always hitting on all his students!” Olympia, who rarely appeared to be rattled, seemed suddenly undone, her mouth slack, her eyes wild. “I had nothing to do with him.”
Gus immediately regretted the gambit. As much as she longed to strip the layers (and ego) from her sister, there was something strangely upsetting about seeing Olympia look so vulnerable. “Oh, maybe that was it,” Gus said, even as she strongly doubted the veracity of Olympia’s version of events. Per Gus’s recollections, at the very least there had been heavy petting against or inside Mr. Grunholz’s car.
More to the point, Gus couldn’t understand why Olympia wasn’t proud to have been a teenage slut. By all accounts, Olympia had lost her virginity at sixteen to a nineteen-year-old lifeguard at the local pool. Gus’s teenage love life, on the other hand, had mainly consisted of nursing impossible crushes on straight girls while listening to K. D. Lang’s “Constant Craving.”
The commercial break was over. The Bachelor and his five remaining girlfriends were boarding a yacht. “Oh, come on,” said Gus, now keen to make amends. “That woman is not wearing a bathing suit. That’s like a clothesline with doilies.”
“I’ve always hated that word—doily,” said Olympia.
Gus could tell her sister was relieved to find the conversation turning to people they didn’t know. (Gus was relieved, too.) “Still not as bad as ointment,” she offered.
“Goiter is up there, too.”
“And tushy. God, I hate that word so much.”
“It’s still not as bad as heiny,” said Olympia.
Somehow, they made it through the hour.