Chapter 7
Chapter 7
When I get home, there’s a Mercedes SUV in my driveway that I don’t recognize. Austin and I were never into showy cars. Even though our combined salaries put us in a high-income bracket, we were always practical with our money, stashing it away for that proverbial rainy day.
I go in search of the vehicle’s owner and find Lolly sitting on my back porch. She looks like a vintage Hollywood postcard with her big white sunglasses and Hermès scarf tied around her head, reminding me of Grace Kelly.
“You’re here!” If it wasn’t her in the flesh, I wouldn’t believe my eyes.
“I’m here.” She offers a weak smile.
“Where are the kids?”
“With their father.” Lolly turns to the cabin. “So this is it, huh?” Her tone and expression are flat. She’s clearly unimpressed.
“Did you walk down to the lake?”
She leans back in the lounge chair and lifts one foot in the air, showing off a designer shoe with a four-inch heel.
“I have some hiking boots you can borrow.”
She scowls in distaste. “It’s cold.”
“Well, come inside. I’ll crank up the heat and make a fire.”
“Do you have Diet Coke?”
“No, but I have coffee and tea. We can go to the market later.”
She trails after me, showing the same enthusiasm for the inside of the house as she did for the outside. I leave her in the living room while I head to the hallway to turn up the thermostat.
“Where did you get this furniture?” she calls, and before I can answer, says, “Chelsea, you’re filthy rich, and this stuff looks like it came from the Goodwill.”
I plop down in the chair across from her. “First of all, I’m not filthy rich. I work hard and make a good living. There’s a difference, you know? If anyone is filthy rich, it’s your ex-husband. As far as the cabin, it’s the whole point. It’s supposed to be comfortable, relaxing, a place where you can put your feet up, not a designer showcase.”
“No risk of that,” she says, looking around.
“Should I put a pot of coffee on?” I get up and take the five steps to the kitchen.
Lolly is right behind me. “It’s like camping, not even glamp-ing.” She opens and closes a few of the cupboard doors, then takes a seat at the table.
“Are you hungry?”
“No, I stopped in some godforsaken town on the 5 and got a sandwich.”
I can hardly believe she’s here. “What time was that?”
“I don’t know. Noonish, I guess. The drive took forever. By the time I got to Sacramento, I was ready to book a hotel.”
“Are you tired? Do you want to take a nap?”
“I’m fine. What is this you’ve got going?” She points at me and moves her finger up and down.
“What?” I drop my chin to have a better look. “My clothes?”
“Chels, hon, you need a stylist.”
“This is the country, Lolly, not Rodeo Drive. Part of being stylish is dressing appropriately. Jeans and a sweater as opposed to . . .” I turn my finger on her and mimic her up-and-down gesture. “Hermès? Prada? Is that jumpsuit Prada?” I may not be as familiar with designer labels as my sister, but I know Prada when I see it. “Really?”
“Had I known it was going to be this . . .” She stretches out this . “I would’ve worn my overalls. Oh wait, I don’t own any overalls.”
The overalls comment is funny, but she didn’t say it as a joke. In fact, from the moment I found her sitting on my back deck, I could feel the hostility coming off her in waves. She’s trying to pick a fight, and I don’t want to fight. I want us to be best friends again.
“Let’s not do this, Lolly. You came all this way. We should try to have a good time, make the best of our weekend together.”
The coffee maker signals that it’s done brewing, and I pour Lolly a mug. Hopefully coffee will warm her up.
“I have cookies in the car.” I race out to get them.
“None for me,” Lolly says when I return, waving the package of vanilla wafers in the air. “Carb overload.”
That’s when I take the time to look at her. Really look. She’s thin as a rail, and her face is hollowed out so that she’s all cheekbones and pumped-up Botox lips. If I didn’t know my sister better, I’d worry that she was sick. No, her waifish appearance is quite intentional. Her obsession with weight started when she met Brent, her now ex-husband, and apparently hasn’t subsided with her divorce.
“Well, they’re here if you want one.” I put a few on a plate and place it in the center of the table, then catch Lolly looking at them with hungry eyes. But I know better than to insist. That’ll only make it worse.
“I’m disappointed Taylor and Luna couldn’t come. Besides getting to see them”—I say that pointedly—”they would’ve enjoyed the parade. Ghost goes all out for Halloween.”
“It’s Brent’s weekend, and he would’ve thrown a tizzy fit if I’d asked for them. He was an asshole husband, but when it comes to the kids . . . he loves them.” She turns away, staring out the window.
“I’m sorry, Lolly.” Though I don’t know what I’m sorry for. We all knew she’d tire of him eventually.
“Yeah, well, what are you going to do?” She plays with the handle on her coffee mug. “So, Austin is getting married, huh?”
“Yep.” I let out a breath.
“Are you going to try to get him back?”
“Why would I do that? He’s in love with someone else.”
“Are you still in love with him?”
“If you’d asked me a week ago, I would’ve said yes. But now . . .”
“You’re not so sure?”
I lift my shoulders. “Sometimes I think I’m living in an alternative universe. Anyway, what do you say we don’t talk about Austin this weekend?”
“That’s fine by me,” Lolly says. “I never much liked him anyway.”
I start to say her dislike of Austin isn’t fair, but we’d just agreed to not talk about him anymore.
“Would you like to go out to dinner tonight? I’d love to show you the town and this newly refurbished hotel that has an amazing restaurant that I know you’ll appreciate.” It’s about the only thing in Ghost that is up to Lolly’s impossible standards.
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
“Where’s your stuff?” I don’t remember seeing any luggage.
“It’s still in the car.”
“Let’s get it and you can unpack, get comfortable, and later we can decide about going to town.”
Lolly totters all the way to the car on her four-inch heels. We’ll have to look for a good shoe store.
She’s brought enough bags to stay for a month, but I bet nothing she’s packed is practical for the country. That’s my sister for you. I help her carry them into the house, then show her to the guest room.
“Where’s my bathroom?”
“There’s only one,” I say. “We’ll have to share.”
My sister scrunches up her nose.
“Lolly, we grew up sharing the same bathroom. It won’t kill you to do it again for a few days.”
“It might.” She glances around the cramped room and zeroes in on the tiny closet. “Oh boy.”
“There’s room in mine.” I take her to the primary bedroom and shove my clothes to one side of a closet that is only slightly larger than hers.
“Where’s the bathroom?”
“You passed it when we came in here,” I say through gritted teeth.
She’s intentionally being difficult, but I vow to keep my cool. I’m thrilled she’s here and don’t want to do anything that’ll make her leave. It’s a delicate balance with us.
She grabs two toiletry bags from her suitcases and hogs all the space on the sink vanity. “Honestly, I don’t know how you live this way.”
“Don’t be so melodramatic, Loll. It’s a vacation cabin, not Folsom Prison.”
She lets out an aggrieved sigh. “Whatever, I’ll make it work.”
“Thank you. It means a lot to me.”
She studies me to see if I’m being facetious, which I sort of am but am trying not to be.
“Where were you earlier?” she asks.
“I went to town, then drove over to my handyman’s farm. He’s actually a biophysicist who’s on sabbatical from his teaching job to write a book. But he’s fixing my roof.”
She doesn’t seem to find that odd in the least and nods. “Why were you over there?”
The real answer is, I don’t know. His unfiltered opinions should be a blow to my already fragile ego, but strangely, I find them refreshing, even liberating. “He didn’t show up today, and I wanted to make sure he was okay.”
“Maybe you should get a more reliable handyman.”
“Perhaps,” I say, not wanting to argue with her. “Finish unpacking and meet me in the living room.”
“Where is it?”
I shoot her a look. “If you have any trouble finding it, text me.”
While she’s in the other room, I build a fire, then scroll through my emails. Still nothing from Ronnie. What in the world is going on with her? This is so unlike my assistant. Before I can dwell on it, Lolly makes her grand entrance in a pair of jeans, albeit designer ones, and a cashmere hoodie. The four-inch heels have been replaced by a pair of furry boots that she probably bought at an over-the-top ski shop on one of her annual treks to Park City.
“Look at you,” I say. “Apparently, you do know how to dress for a weekend in the mountains.” The mountains of St. Moritz, but she’s at least making an attempt.
She plops down on the sofa, grabs the throw blanket off the back of the chair, and wraps herself in it.
“Between the heat and the fire, you should be warm in no time.” I want to say, if there was a little more flesh on your bones, you’d realize it’s sixty-eight degrees in here.
“How’d you find this place, anyway?” She stares up at the open-beam ceiling.
“Austin and I had been looking for a long time. Originally, we wanted something in wine country, but even a shack was over a mill.”
“First off, this is a shack. And second, the two of you are loaded.”
“Would you stop saying that? I’m not loaded. Yes, I make good money, but San Francisco is an expensive city. And if this was a mansion perched on a cliff above the ocean in Carmel, I wouldn’t love it more than I love this.”
“You’re just like Dad,” Lolly says. “Beer taste on a champagne budget.”
“Dad was a cop, Lolly. Mom was a housewife. Their budget was hardly champagne, unless you count Cold Duck.”
“You know what I mean.” She waves her hand in the air.
And the thing is, I do. Dad took perverse pleasure in driving the same car for twenty years, in eating the same leftovers five days in a row, and in wearing a pair of jeans until they were threadbare. It wasn’t because he couldn’t afford new ones; he just didn’t believe in waste. I suppose a similar ethos rubbed off on me. Not Lolly, obviously.
“There’s nothing wrong with being frugal,” I say.
“I much prefer the way Uncle Sylvester lives. Now there’s a man who likes fine things.”
“Is he still driving that Maserati?”
“Nope, a Porsche Cayenne.”
“At least it’s a grownup car. Ridiculously ostentatious, but grownup. The Maserati was embarrassing.”
Lolly laughs. “Yeah, kind of. I think Freud would say he was compensating for something.”
“Eww. Don’t make penis jokes about our uncle.”
Lolly tucks her legs under her. “You think Mom would’ve wanted us to go to Uncle Sylvester?”
“I do. Grandma was in no shape to raise two young girls, and Dad’s people . . . well, that wouldn’t have gone over well.”
“No, I guess not.” She pauses, letting the room fall silent, letting it say all the things we won’t. “And Uncle Sylvester loves us.”
“He does.” That was never a question.
“You think our lives would’ve been different if it never happened, if they didn’t . . . die?”
“How do you mean different?” I ask.
“I don’t know. Like, would you have become a therapist? Would I have married a man twice my age?”
It would be a lie to say I don’t ask myself the same things. Did I study psychology in search of closure? Did my sister settle for an older man she never loved to fill the gap my father left behind?
As kids, we’d planned to become detectives, which was obviously influenced by my father’s law enforcement career and probably one of the silly TV shows we used to watch. We would spend hours playing “detective” in our bedroom. Dad would give us a make-believe crime to solve, and three or four suspects. Lolly and I would work through the clues, presenting our theories at the dinner table. Looking back on it, it was sort of a weird game for two little girls to play. But we got lost in the challenge of it, Lolly standing on her bed, acting out each scenario.
It’s no wonder that in high school, she joined drama club. I’d always thought she’d become an actor. But when she met Brent, any aspirations of having a career seemed to fade away.
So, would we have chosen different paths if our parents hadn’t died? “I wish I could tell you the answer to that. But I can’t. No one can,” I say.
“Loll, what’s got into you?” I don’t recognize this side of my sister. The contemplativeness, the visit to our parents’ grave, her willingness to bury the hatchet for a weekend and come all this way to see me is so out of character that, frankly, I’m worried.
“Nothing has gotten into me.” She unfolds her legs, stands up, and stretches. “Let’s go to dinner.”
“Okay.” Her sudden shift throws me, but if she wants to go to town, we’ll go to town. “I hope you brought a coat.” The nights can dip down to the thirties.
“Can I borrow one of yours?”
Of course she didn’t bring one. It’s always warm in sunny Los Angeles. I rifle through the coat closet until I land on something Lolly will find acceptable and grab a down jacket for myself.
“Here you go.” I toss her a shearling coat I splurged on last winter when I was going through post-divorce-stress syndrome.
She puts it on and goes in search of a mirror.
I shake my head and yell, “It’s on the back of the bathroom door. Meet me in the car.”
It takes her ten minutes. “I had to refresh my makeup.”
“Unless you care about impressing a bunch of men in plaid shirts and beer guts, it was unnecessary. But you do you.”
“I always do. What kind of food do they have at this place? I’m a vegan now.”
“Since when?”
“Why do you have to act like that, Chelsea? If you bothered to spend time with me, you’d know that I’ve been a vegan for a long time, now.”
I don’t bother to correct her. “I’m sure they have plenty for you to eat.”
I take the highway this time, saving the scenic route for tomorrow, when it’s lighter outside and Lolly can better enjoy the view.
Lolly’s purse rings, startling us both.
“It’s probably one of the kids.” She pulls her phone out of her bag and with one look at caller ID her whole face lightens up and time melts away, making her look fifteen years younger.
That’s the sister I want back. The happy, loving sister. The sister without armor.
It’s Luna. It’s clear from their conversation that my niece is angry with her father for something he won’t let her do. Lolly is patient but stern. After Lolly talks Luna off her ledge, she tells her she loves her and hangs up.
“What was that about?” I ask.
“Brent won’t let Luna watch an R-rated movie.”
“Ah. It sounded like you were taking your ex’s side.”
Lolly sighs. “For the sake of the kids, we need to be on the same page. He’s stricter than I am. I probably would’ve let her watch the movie. I’ve seen it, and it’s a silly rom-com with some bad language and a few kissing scenes. Nothing she doesn’t hear and see at school. But Brent is from a different generation. What am I talking about? He’s old as shit. The bottom line is it’s not going to do Luna and Taylor any good if we contradict one another.”
“That sounds sensible,” I say, impressed.
“They’re good kids. I only pray that our divorce doesn’t screw them up.”
I know she’s thinking of our parents and the toll it took on us. “It’s not the same thing, Lolly. Mom and Dad are not you and Brent.”
“No, they actually loved each other.”
I can’t disagree. In the end . . . well, who knows what was going through my father’s mind? But there is no denying that they loved each other. They always had.
We both become quiet, having said more than we usually do on the topic of our parents. From a young age, we learned to compartmentalize our memories of them, especially the last ones. I’d be the first to say it isn’t healthy, but it’s less painful.
I pull into the public lot and cut the engine. It’s dark, but the streetlamps throw off enough light that it’s an easy walk to the hotel.
“See all the scarecrows?” I stop so Lolly can get a better look.
“They’re kind of creepy, don’t you think?”
“What are you talking about? They’re cute.”
“They remind me of a Chucky doll,” Lolly says.
“You’re nuts.”
I open the door to the Ghost Inn and am welcomed with a din of voices. It’s crowded tonight. Everyone up from the city for the weekend’s festivities.
“I hope we can get a table. I should’ve called ahead for a reservation.”
Katie is behind the bar, sees me, and flags us over. “It’s crazy. The hotel is completely full. I heard they’re even booked at the Prospector.” She makes a face, because the motel on the other side of town is a little long in the tooth.
“This is my sister, Lolly. She’s visiting me for the weekend.”
“You guys staying for dinner?”
“We’d like to, that is if we can get a table.”
“Let me see what I can do.” Katie comes out from behind the bar and whispers something to the hostess.
Next thing I know, we’re getting whisked away to the back of the restaurant and seated at a table next to the fireplace.
“Your friend the bartender came through,” Lolly says, surveying the place. “Is it always like this?”
“No. It’s because of the parade tomorrow. People come from all over to celebrate Halloween. Because . . . you know . . . Ghost.”
“People are morons. Hand me that menu.”
Katie brings us tonight’s cocktail special. “A little creation I cooked up called the Ghost Ghoul. It’s basically a Moscow Mule with tequila instead of vodka. Tell me what you think.”
“Clever name,” I say.
Lolly takes a sip. “It’s good.”
I test it and nearly choke on the tequila. “Whoa, how much booze did you put in here?”
“Too strong?” Katie swipes mine off the table. “I’ll make you another one and be right back.”
Lolly smirks. “You’re a lightweight.”
“What I’m not is an alcoholic. Slow down there, girl.”
“It feels good to have a night out.” She leans her head back and takes in a deep breath. “You were right, this is a fun place.”
“It is, isn’t it?” I turn away so she doesn’t see the tears shining in my eyes.
We’ve been so distant for so long, I didn’t know if we could ever get back to the place where we were each other’s everything. Sister, mother, survivor. But today feels like progress. Maybe, just maybe, we can put the past behind us and start to heal.
Katie returns with a revised Ghost Ghoul, then rushes back to her post behind the bar. I glance around and note there isn’t a plaid shirt in the house. Tonight, it’s a sea of city wear. Lots of sweaters in dark colors.
“What’s good here?” Lolly is studying the menu.
“To tell you the truth, all I’ve had here are chips and guacamole. Pretty hard to mess that up. But the menu looks interesting.”
When the server comes, we order a variety of small plates to share. It’s not until later, when we’re in the car, that I say, “You do realize that absolutely nothing we ate tonight is vegan?”
“Uh-huh, the brussels sprouts were.”
“They were dripping in butter.”
“Oh well,” Lolly says, and stifles a giggle. Those Ghost Ghouls have made her slightly drunk.
But when we get home, we polish off a bottle of wine, getting good and soused. Lolly passes out on the couch, and I practically carry her into the guest room, convinced that she’ll be less hung over in the morning if she sleeps in a bed instead of the sofa.
I tuck her in, the way I used to do when we shared a room in Uncle Sylvester’s penthouse apartment, and wait in the dark, watching the steady beat of her heart, trying not to remember.