Page 36 of The Favorite Sister

“I agreed not to film with her,” I remind Jen, icily. “And unlike some people, my word means something.”

Jason returns the mascara wand to its bottle in consensus.

“Fine, Steph.” Jen sets her wine on the vanity—Put down a coaster, you animal!I almost shriek. “She’s going to get the good edit, you know that, right? She’s going to Morocco to help little illiterate rape victims and she’s planning a wedding to Amal lesbian Clooney. Yvette wanted us to know so we have the opportunity to make things right with her before she tells us. Otherwise, you know what it’s going to look like? Like we’re a bunch of calculating mean girls who changed our tune when it became clear Brett was going to be everyone’s favorite this season because she’s getting married, and guess what? Suckers like to see fat chicks get married. It gives their little artery-clogged hearts hope.”

Vince sucks in a horrified breath. “Jesus, Jen.”

Jen shoots him an eviscerating look, but her face is a shameful red.

“She’salwaysthe favorite,” I mutter, sounding so petulant I can’t stand myself.

“Listen to yourself,” Jen says, and I am shocked when her voice nearly cracks. Is she close to tears? I stare at her in wordless disbelief as she swipes the heel of her hand across her face. What isupwith her tonight?“Jesse’s going to be pissed if you don’t go. Do you know what they’ll do to you in the edit room?”

Jen is not wrong about any of this, unfortunately, as it is a much more reliable characteristic of humanity that we’re happier for people in love than we are for people in the highest tax bracket. Perhaps because we need to see ourselves in our heroines, and the modest accomplishment of finding a spouse and having babies is achievable by most of the general population, Green Menace notwithstanding. Our audience in particular likes nothing more than to see unconventional people getting to partake in conventional traditions. It’s why Vince and I were so popular at first, it’s why Jesse is taking a chance on Kelly and her mixed-race, non-nuclear family, hoping for a Cheerios commercial backlash, promptly followed by a Cheerios commercial defense.

“Guys,relax,” Vince says, daringly. It takes a set of steel to chance on the r-word around two women with a combined net worth ofnot in your lifetime, bud, but my husband does not exactly conduct himself in a risk-averse fashion. “You’re getting way too worked up about this. Just go and tell Brett you’re happy for her and get on with it.” Not waiting for my answer, Vince peels off his T-shirt and locates the top of his pajama set. The tier-three trainer at Equinox is doing an abysmal job of taming Vince’s baby potbelly, I see. Jason pretends not to look anyway; those heart-shaped lips and that strong, scruffy jaw make up for that much.

The first time Vince ever had that effect on me, he was the bartender at a promotional event for a women’s razor blade. My friend from college worked for the PR company that represented Gillette, and she brought me as her plus-one. The event was held at awindowless warehouse in the theater district, and I remember exactly what I wore: a DVF wrap dress and a pair of nude, patent leather Manolo Blahniks. I was twenty-six and he was twenty-four, a two-year infinity. He was an aspiring actor whose biggest break to date was biting into a BLT in a Hellman’s commercial. His dark hair fell into his light eyes each time he looked down to mix up a fresh batch of the event’s signature cocktail (a Hairy Navel—haha), and every woman in the room was imagining what he would look like on top of her, with that hair in those eyes. I still get weak in the knees remembering how, at the end of the night, he beckoned for me to come closer so that he could shout into my ear (the acoustics were poor in the windowless warehouse), “Your boyfriend is an idiot.”

I made a dubious expression in an effort to play along. “But he graduated from Harvard Law top of his class.” My boyfriend didn’t graduate from Harvard Law top of his class. I didn’t have a boyfriend.

“There’s no way,” Vince said, buffing a wet wineglass dry with a dish towel. “Because no one that smart would be so dumb to let you out of his sight for even a minute.”

I rolled my eyes with brute force, but inside, I was jumping up and down, screaming,Don’t stop! Keep trying!

“Seriously,” Vince said, flinging the dishrag over his shoulder and going very still, so that he could be sure to take in every inch of me. “You are incredibly beautiful.”

Do you know what I felt like saying in that moment? I felt like sayingI know. All my life, people have complimented my looks, but nothing they said ever rang true to me.She has a nice smile, I overheard a friend of my mom’s say when I was eleven. What does it even mean to have a nice smile? Hitler had a nice smile. Sometimes the girls at school would express an appreciation for my skin that they would never actually want to trade me for—about how lucky I was that I didn’t have to worry about my “tan” fading in the winter. Then there were the guys who fetishized me, declaring,You’re hot, with such lascivious fervor that I’d want to go home and take a shower. I’d look at myself in the mirror, perplexed no one else could see it. Idon’t just have a nice smile or nice skin. I’m not hot. I’m beautiful.Incredibly beautiful.

The fact that I believe myself to be beautiful—and talented, I might add—does not run counter to my deep-seated insecurities. If anything, it is salt on the ever-open wound that is going through life unseen. But for five minutes on a Tuesday night in a windowless warehouse in the theater district, I felt seen by someone who happened to be incredibly beautiful himself, and that part mattered. Because when we walked down the street holding hands, Vince acted as my conduit.Oh, people thought, making the jump after taking in Vince’s good looks without needing to parse and qualify them first.He’s with her. She must be beautiful too Come to think of it—wow—she is so beautiful.And that’s why Vince.

It must be said that we weregoodin the beginning. There is a picture of us on New Year’s Eve, caught mid-kiss in the drunken crowd, unaware the lens was turned on us (those were the days, huh?). Vince had his hands on either side of my face, my lower lip pierced between his teeth. Passion had distorted our faces, made us appear tormented and deprived of some basic human need.Oh, God!I cried, slapping my laptop shut and covering my face in mortification when I saw the photo on Facebook. Something so private and primal should never be for public viewing.

The sex was no frills, constant, and torrid. Which makes the reality that we don’t have any now—at least not with each other—all the more gutting. You know how couples rarely make it if they have a child who dies? It’s simply too awful a reminder of the life that was lost to stay with the person who helped create it. Sex is the dead baby in my marriage. It rips my heart in two to look at Vince and be reminded of what has been lost. We will not escape the reality TV marital curse. The only question that remains is when. When?

“You’re a good friend for coming over here and telling us this, Greenberg,” Vince says, stepping in front of me and working some of my pomade through his thick, wavy hair. For a few moments, withVince’s flat ass in my face, I’m at least spared the replica of my grief in the mirror.

No matter what anybody says, I know that Vince loved me once,beforeI was rich and famous. I will go to the grave knowing somebody saw me for who I really am, and he didn’t turn away in revulsion. I don’t think Brett could say the same.

The doors to the lower terrace of the penthouse are flung open, June at night like a bath you wake up in, lucky you didn’t drown. Outside, lanterns illuminate wisteria-wrapped pergolas and Franny’s hand-stretched dough chars in the wood-burning fireplace. Well, that would have been the scene, had the Greenwich Hotel been willing to sign the release form and had Franny’s not pulled out as the caterers once they discovered they would have to cook their pizzas in a conventional oven. As a result, we are in a very gold bar at a four-star hotel in midtown, trays of oversalted tuna tartar shoved in our faces every seven steps.

Jen and I trade stiff compliments about the décor because we’ve been mic’d, and the cameras will pick up our audio even though they’re not turned on us yet.This is nice, Jen says, with a half grimace, half smile. My contribution:I never really get to this part of town.

Natural Selection, the production company employed by the network, allocates three crews that rotate between the five of us for garden-variety home shoots, but for an all-cast event, the whole unit is deployed. Out on the small, cement terrace, catty-corner to a third open bar, two crews have staked out a space. Between the camera operator and the gaffer and the grip and Lisa, they appear like one big roving alien, stalking its target in a square of spotlight. Lisa notices me and raises her arm, wiping the air in short, frenetic waves.

I pause before our showrunner and she squints at me, yanking the tail of a Canal Street pashmina worn by a production assistant. “Can we maybe...?” She goes to dab at my lips with the scarf, stillleashed to a pop-eyed PA. I duck out of her way before she can touch me. Lisa and Jesse hate how much makeup I wear.

“What am I walking into?” I peer behind her and am relieved to see that it’s only Lauren in the shot.

“Lauren trying in vain to convince us that she’s not drinking,” Lisa says. Next to me, blotting his forehead with oil absorbing papers, Vince snorts.

“How many glasses of prosecco have you snuck her in the bathroom?” Lisa asks the PA, who is carefully turning her scarf around her neck again.

“Four?” she guesses.

Lisa punches four fingers inches from my face. I gently lower her hand. “Four glasses of prosecco. I get it.”

“Don’t be shy about blowing up her spot.” She reaches around me and pats my back, finding my mic pack between my shoulder blades. “Good.”