Tuesday, May 9
To Liv’s credit, she’s excellent at making her presence known. The live updates of her drive to Evergreen begin promptly at 7 a.m.
Liv: Loading up the car. Do you have a blowdryer?
Liv: Getting gas
Liv: Stopped to pee. Got coffee.
Liv: [Blurry picture of a rabbit nibbling a leaf outside the Farley Plaza rest stop]
I’m already awake, unloading the dishwasher and trying to figure out what the hell to text Marco. I need to thank him, of course, but I also need to assert my dominance. Reclaim the upper hand in this little fantasy we’re building together. My fortress has never been infallible, but the very least I can do is not swing open the doors, let down the drawbridge, and shout, Come and get my ass! Hurt me so good, baby!
I pour myself another cup of coffee and step out onto my deck.
I settle into a rocking chair and open our text thread. The last thing we’d said to each other had been when Marco was at the snack stand on the Miss Teak Skye, and I’d decided I also wanted a Diet Coke.
Nadia: I changed my mind lol can I have a DC?
Marco: Can you have a DC . . .
Nadia: Pleaaaaaaaaaaaase
Marco: there we go
Another little rush of pressure and warmth through my belly as I reread our texts. The easy intimacy he’s so good at is like toxic waste inching closer, threatening to gobble me up and turn me into someone unrecognizable.
Suddenly, Liv texts me. Omg boardwalk is crowded????
Shit. That means she’s on the island. She’ll be here any minute.
Time’s up. Without thinking, I open my phone’s front-facing camera and take a picture of myself in the loose cardigan, fabric pooling around my wrists, coffee mug in hand. I cut out most of my face except for my tongue, which is poking out between my lips.
She’s beautiful, I caption the photo. Thank you . . . and I’ll see you tomorrow.
Marco replies, immediately, with a heart.
“Rapunzel, Rapunzel! Let down your long hair!” Liv shouts up at the balcony from the carport. I’m still reeling in the bathroom over this damn heart emoji, rubbing skin tint into my face with one hand and gripping my phone with the other, when I hear Liv. She really missed her calling as an opera singer or foghorn.
Also . . . hair.
I look up at my reflection.
“I should have warned her,” I say out loud to my reflection. We stare at each other, terror in our eyes, pixie-length curls and coils smoothed neatly into place. It’s a great look; I’m a huge fan. But I know Liv will take this dramatic physical change very personally.
Whatever. Rip the Band-Aid off. How many Liv meltdowns have I dealt with in my life? You’ll survive, I tell myself. A real rouser of a pump-up speech.
I give myself one last stern, meaningful look before exiting the bathroom and heading toward my fate.
Instead of running out onto the balcony, I jimmy the living room window open and pop my head out. Then I shout, with all the charm of a prison guard: “Ta-daaaaaaa!”
Liv throws her purse onto the couch, kicks off her shoes, opens and slams shut every cabinet, grimaces and scoffs at all my belongings, then asks me a series of questions, including, “Have you seen my hair straightener from middle school? Did you steal it?”
Apparently, the haircut has stunned Liv so profoundly, I actually overrode her freak-out feature.
I lean against the archway to the hall, watching her spin around the kitchen and living room in an endless huffing frenzy. She yanks open all the blinds, pulls back all the curtains, and tosses open the deck doors.
As much as I hate to admit it, it does feel markedly less dreary in here.
“Aren’t you going to say something?” I demand when she pauses to hunt for a snack—nuts, specifically. Salted, mixed nuts.
“About what?”
“About my hair.”
Liv pulls her head out of the fridge and appraises me for a moment. “I don’t know, it looks good. Can you make me a coffee?”
“That’s it? It looks good?”
Liv pares me with a look of total exhaustion. “Jesus, what do you want me to say? Fine. It looks awesome. Happy?”
Awesome is my least favorite word ever, and Liv knows this. She’s being a bitch—but a different type of bitch than usual.
After brewing a fresh pot of coffee, we fill our mugs and head down to the stretch of quiet beach on the far side of the houses. There, we kick off our shoes and begin walking along the chilly, damp sand.
“So.” Liv eyes me over her mug. “Tell me all about this episode you’re having.”
“An episode? You sound like Mom.”
“Everyone always said I was the dramatic one, but you’re really making up for lost time.”
“You’re not wrong.” I take a sip of my coffee, pressing my toes deeper into the sand. All those frail Englishmen were onto something about the healing properties of ocean air. I’m feeling better almost instantly once we get walking on the solid, sturdy shoreline sand, the muscles in my neck and back relaxing under the soft sun. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about my hair.”
Liv shrugs. “I would have found out from Mom eventually.”
“That’s not true! You always get the news first.”
“Since when? You never told me you got fired or about your nose ring or about that weird mole on your stomach that kept bleeding. Mom had to break the news on all three. You’ve never told me about a single boyfriend—”
“Because I’ve never had a serious boyfriend.” I rush to defend myself and then immediately feel a pang of embarrassment. Ha, gotcha! I’m incapable of emotional intimacy!
“What about that fireman guy from Edison—Dante?”
I roll my eyes. “Unknowingly being someone’s mistress does not count.”
“Oh, yeah.” She giggles into her mug. “He was like, the fourth married fireman that year.”
“Two thousand eighteen was a year of learning and growing,” I confess into my cup of coffee. We’ve organically reached boyfriend talk, and I know what I have to do. My haircut may have been forgiven, but withholding Marco would land me in the Hague. “Speaking of boyfriends . . .”
Without missing a beat, Liv shoots me the eyes. It’s a look that transforms her face into a carbon copy of our father’s. It’s terrifying. Nicky calls this act of eyeball contortion her gobstoppers because no matter what you’re about to say, the eyes stop you in your tracks and make you think twice. A mix of shock and forewarning floods her gaze, then she tilts her head down and arches her eyebrows. “Don’t tell me you’re in love with an Evergreen townie.”
“No,” I say with a nervous laugh, “and I don’t really even have a boyfriend. It’s more like . . . like an arrangement.”
“Oh God.” She comes to a complete stop. “Not another married guy, Nadia.”
“Shockingly, no—”
“You’re a sugar baby?”
“What? No, let me tell my story—”
She gasps. “Oh my God, you’re a sugar mommy.”
“Jesus, Olivia.” I give her a shove strong enough to send her stumbling toward the water. “Let me talk!”
“You know, when most people go fancy-dress shopping, they don’t usually stop for Auntie Anne’s and Nathan’s Hot Dogs first.”
“That’s because most people are fucking boring,” Liv replies, handing me my cinnamon-sugar pretzel and my coveted frozen lemonade. Around us, the Surf City Mall glistens and glitters with midmorning energy as we settle onto a bench by the fountain, mismatched snacks in hand.
Big to-dos go against everything we believe in, but Liv has a particular affinity for keeping things utilitarian and pragmatic. It’s why she’s worn OPI Bubble Bath on her nails for the last ten years, and also why one day, she will run a small totalitarian ethno-state. She hates bridal parties, vanilla cake, overpaying for mediocre food, and saying hi to family members who can’t recall her birthday off the top of their head. Needless to say, this puts us all in a very tricky position when it comes to anything matrimonial.
So far, she’s handled all of the planning in the most Liv way I can imagine: I was unceremoniously dubbed maid of honor via text message; a bridal shower was declared ILLEGAL at Sunday dinner; then we were all asked, via email, to keep Halloween free.
And now, we’re dress shopping at a living shrine to the late nineties.
“Should I take a picture of you deep-throating that dog and send it to your soon-to-be husband?”
Liv gives me the finger. “Should I take a picture of you in your Crocs and send it to Marco fucking Antoniou?”
“Ugh,” I scoff, dusting my sticky fingers off on my bike shorts. “He’d probably write back something like: wow smiley-face emoji nice feet heart-eyes emoji.”
After wiping some relish off her maw, Liv cocks a brow. “He’s that into you?
I let out a small, noncommittal grunt. “I don’t think he’s actually into me. I think he’s into the idea of me or maybe just women in general.”
“I have no sympathy, Nads. You have a rich, famous hottie in your DMs and your pants for a month.” We start meandering with our food and drinks.
“He’s not really in my pants,” I murmur, trying to suppress the sudden memory of my overalls on his bathroom floor.
“But he could be—or would be—if you stopped being such a tight-ass about everything.”
“Oh, hi, kettle. You look great in black.”
“Oh, come on. I’m less of a tight-ass than you.”
“You have the tightest ass out of everyone in our family. You could crack a fucking coconut with your ass, that’s how tight it is.”
I don’t realize how loud we’re being until a group of women in matching Lycra outfits across the fountain silence their chatter to glare at us.
“I don’t know why you’re hesitating so much. Don’t you love flings?” Liv says, pulling me by my wrist in the direction of the boutique where we have an eleven o’clock appointment.
I did, or I used to prefer flings. My reservations about Marco are almost entirely wrapped up in the simple truth that there is a chasm in my life—a before and an after. I know how fragile I am now. I know how easily I can break, how delicately my body and mind are connected. I’d just gone through that, and I’d only just barely glued myself back together.
Liv has always known exactly what to say (and how to say it) to make me feel like I’m being exceedingly childish and thoughtlessly overdramatic, even when I know I’m heeding to my own deep-rooted instincts. Whatever Marco’s intentions—even if they are just to have a real and true no-strings-attached month of fun—I would hold on tight to my right to be scrupulous, and I would hold my diagnosis as close to my chest as I possibly could.
But before I can think of a succinct way to shut my sister down, she’s yanking me through the doorway of a brightly lit storefront sandwiched between a toy store and the restrooms. The shop window showcases a veritable explosion of tulle and sequins, mermaid dresses and mermaid-y colors.
“This is where they buried Liz Claiborne’s final Horcrux.”
“Shhhhhh, shut up,” Liv stage-whispers, death-glaring me into submission. “Mike’s mom knows the shop owner. Do not misbehave.”
“Me?” I hiss back. “You’re the one who looks like a bug just flew into your mouth.”
“So?” Liv retorts while glowering at an enormous peach-pink organza mess strapped to a mannequin. “At least I’m not being a smart-ass.”
I respond by miming that I’m locking my mouth up and throwing away the key.
Eventually, after thumbing through an entire wall of hot-pink prom dresses, we’re approached by a woman with a very geometric haircut, corralled into a dressing room, and interrogated to the point of perspiration and dehydration.
“You have to know at least one thing you want in a bridesmaid’s dress,” she chastises Liv, dressing her down in a way that brings me so much joy.
“Uh, black? Satin, maybe?”
Miss Geometry is appalled, and we are instead given an armful of eggplant and mauve war crimes.
I try on a litany of dresses—some tragic, some kind of nice but nothing interesting enough to move Liv out of her current position: head in her hand, nose scrunched. She gives me a little “Nah” or “Meh.” Only one dress is bad enough to merit a loud and swift “Ugh!”
“Okay, we’re done.” I throw my arms up in defeat. I’m trapped in a trumpet-cut dark blue nightmare. It’s long-sleeved, but there are cutouts on my hips. I look both slutty and sad about it. “Why won’t you just tell me how you feel about my hair?”
Liv is already standing up, grabbing her sunglasses and purse. “I told you it looks great. What else do you want me to say?”
I try to shuffle after her, but my shins are imprisoned. “You don’t think it looks great. You never think anything looks great.”
“That is not true,” she says, pushing her sunglasses up into her dark waves. “I think lots of things are great. Like—”
I don’t even give her a chance to pretend like she can recall the last time she liked something. I lean over and yank a purple organza-tiered disaster off the designated No! rack and hold it back up against my chest. “You told that woman that you’d rather swallow a screw than look at any more dresses like this.”
“Okay, so, you know I’m being honest! Clearly, I don’t hold back.”
I take a shaky step down off the platform, wobbling on my borrowed heels as I clomp back toward the chair where I left my clothes. “I can’t deal with you anymore.”
“Nadia, wait.” To my surprise, Liv grabs my arm, nearly pulling us both off-center. I catch her eyes in the mirror as I trip over my own feet. She’s chewing at the inside of her cheek. “I really do think you look nice.”
“But?”
“But I don’t think you cut your hair off because you wanted a nice, new haircut. I think you did it because you want everyone around you to fuck off and leave you alone, and you figured if you cut off all your hair, I might get so mad at you, I would fuck off and leave you alone and let you rot.”
My breath comes out quick and tight. The lights overhead are buzzing and this dress, with all its buttons and itchy tags, makes me feel trapped and strangled. My skin prickles and itches, and I may start screaming.
“I’m not going to let you push me away anymore. It’s stupid. You’re being stupid. And I know things are hard right now, but it’s me—”
“It’s in my kidneys,” I blurt out. “Lupus. In my kidneys. I found blood in my urine, and they ran some extra tests and now, I’m scared—terrified, actually. It’s not uncommon, but—but it means I’m getting worse even with all the medicine I’m on. I’m still getting worse. I feel like shit, Liv. I feel sick and exhausted and—what if it gets so bad that I can’t do it anymore? I just started to feel normal again, and I know you think I’m being dramatic, but there’s so much I don’t know right now—”
“Who else have you told?” She cuts me off.
“No one,” I say quietly. “Just you, for now.”
Without any hesitation, she pulls me to her chest.
We get home and change into sweatpants before driving down to the boardwalk to pick up a pizza, which we eat on the balcony, in our rocking chairs, facing the ocean. I wrap myself up in my new cardigan, delighting in how it clashes ridiculously with my mustard-yellow St. Cecilia’s High School of Philadelphia sweatpants. We eat in silence, Taylor Swift playing from my phone. If Liv was cooler, I’d ask her to split the joint chilling in the ashtray between us. Unfortunately, my beloved sister is a narc.
“If you need a kidney, I’ll give you one,” she says, wiping grease from her chin.
I reach over and swipe at the single, thick droplet of orange she missed. “No way.” I shake my head. “You have a semi-husband. He has first dibs—legally.”
“Oh, yeah,” she mumbles around another mouthful. “I guess he does. Maybe Marco can give you a kidney.”
I let out a tut of laughter. “As much as I’d love to see that headline, I don’t think I’ll be making Vinny Baldacco aware of my internal organ situation.”
“So,” Liv says, dragging out her vowels. “Do we get to meet this guy?”
I furrow my brow at the horizon. For some reason, I like the idea of Liv meeting Marco. I think he’d actually really get a kick out of her. Liv is endlessly entertaining—she’s so extremely normal, she’s actually circled back around and become a freak again. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. There’s no way that could be arranged in the next twenty-some days. “Hell no,” I conclude.
“Boooooring,” she sings.
“It is what it is.” I punctuate this piece of wisdom with an eye roll. “We’re not actually anything. Twenty-odd days and it’ll all be a memory.” When I look up, she’s giving me the gobstopper, but with a twist—she’s grinning like she has a wild hare up her ass, like she’s auditioning to play the Joker. “What?” I demand.
“Nothing.” Liv’s eyes twinkle. “You just sound sad, that’s all.”