Page 39 of The Favorite Sister

CHAPTER 10

Brett

It was last year. Steph’s thirty-fourth birthday. I had moved back in with her for the second time, after breaking up with my very needy ex-girlfriend. Sarah and I had lived in a newly constructed high-rise on North End and Murray that cost us forty-five hundred a month. The apartment had one hundred and fifty more square feet than my first place on York and Sixty-seventh, with a dishwasher and a view of a better high-rise across the street and nary a rodent nor a kitchen drawer wide enough to accommodate a utensils divider, and in New York City, that is the height of luxury living. No rats and no room. It was the nicest place I had ever paid to live in, almost nice enough for me to pretend like the relationship was working, but in the end, I couldn’t take one more drunken accusation that I wasn’tall in. The process of breaking a lease on a New York City apartment is more soul crushing than lunch hour at the DMV, so Sarah and I worked out a deal where if I moved out, I only had to pay a quarter of the rent until our lease was up in the fall, just a few months away. Sarah wasn’t totally wrong about me not beingall in, and I felt I owed it to her to let her stay in an apartment neither of us could have afforded on our own, at least for a few more months. Meanwhile, like a Pew Research statistic come to life, I was forced for financial reasons to move back in with my surrogate parents at twenty-six years old.

Steph had declared that for her thirty-fourth birthday, all she wanted was a quiet night in and Vince’s killer coq au vin, which was very unlike Steph. But later, over dessert, she admitted the truth, which was that she didn’t want proof of a birthday celebration on anyone’s social media or in the press. She was afraid to remind Jesse that she was another year older.

“You are... ridiculous,” I said, catching myself in time. Iwantedto call her insane.

“You’re too young to understand,” Steph said, hysterically, toppling her untouched slice of Milk Bar Birthday Cake onto its side with her fork. She told me once that her medication makes anything sweet taste like cardboard.

“Try me,” I said, thinking about reaching for her plate, but I didn’t want to look like a pig, having already cleaned my own.Why can’t you just be normalcame my mother’s voice.I’m not saying to not eat dessert, I’m saying don’t eat your dessert plus everyone else’s.I’d sneak down here later tonight and eat it straight from the box, I decided. If I polished it off, which was likely, I’d just tell them I noticed roaches in the kitchen and I threw the cake out before it could attract more. The plan had soothed me at the time.

“So,” Steph said, resting her fork, tongs down, on her plate, “there’s this German word,torschlusspanik. It literally translates to ‘gate-shut-panic.’ Are you familiar with this?”

I pushed a pair of imaginary Coke bottle glasses farther up the bridge of my nose. “Intimately.”

On the other side of the table, Vince dropped his head with a soundless laugh.

“Forget it.” Stephanie’s shoulders tightened, and she clutched her water glass to her chest defensively. There was wine, but only Vince and I were drinking it.Alcoholism runs in my family, she has said to me enough times that I’ve started to suspect there is more to it than that. Like maybe Stephanie is someone who lubricates life’s edges by staying in control at all times.

“Aw, babe. Come on.” Vince reached for the hand that was pinnedbeneath his wife’s armpit and settled on holding her wrist when she wouldn’t give it to him. Stephanie never could laugh at herself. People say that I’m quick to make others the butt of my jokes, but I am the first one to recognize when I’m being too Brett-y. Stephanie doesn’t have that ability, and I never realized before I moved in how delicately Vince had to tread around her. He seemed to not mind it, but later I learned he was exhausted.

“Please,” I begged. “Tell us. I didn’t graduate from college. How else am I supposed to learn about...tushy...spank?” I glanced from Stephanie to Vince with big bimbo eyes, my palm flipped up by my shoulder—is that right?Vince tried not to laugh again, but even Stephanie couldn’t hold a straight face.

“I hate you.” She laughed, despite herself.

“But in direct proportion to how much you love me, right?” I stole one forkful of her dessert and immediately regretted it. It only made me want to pick up the piece of cake in both hands and bite into it like a sandwich.

Stephanie drummed her fingers on her forearm, taking her time being convinced to share. “Torschlusspanik,” she said finally, resting her water glass on a white marble coaster, “is the sensation—the fear—that time is running out.” She jabbed at her heart with a finger. “I have that. With this birthday. Thirty-three was my lastsomethingbirthday. The last year your success is special. It’s the last age anyone can call you a wunderkind, if we’re sticking to the German theme.”

I cleared my throat and chose my words carefully. “Um. Okay. Go on.” I raised my eyebrows at Vince, who sighed wearily.

“It gets better,” he said, gesturing at his chin, meaning I had frosting on mine. I wiped my face with their lattice-woven linens.Japanese,sixty bucks, Stephanie had told me when I said they were pretty, which is something Stephanie always does, volunteer a brand name or a price when you pay her a compliment, as though you don’t even know the half of how nice her things are.

Stephanie bowed her head, as if summoning the patience to explain a very advanced concept to very advanced imbeciles. “Afterthe obvious markers—sweet sixteen, you can drive, eighteen, you can vote, twenty-one you can drink, there is a whole chunk of time where you are presumably getting your ducks in order as a young adult. If you’re going to do something exceptional with your life, it takes until twenty-seven to get society to notice. Unless”—she silenced me with a hand before I could object—“you are Brett Courtney, girl wonder of the boutique fitness world.”

“Damn right,” Vince said, topping off my wine.

“Damn right,” I agreed, raising my glass in what turned out to be a solitary toast.

Stephanie waited for me to set my glass on the table before continuing. “So that brings us to the twenty-seven club, of which icons like Kurt Cobain and Janis Joplin and Amy Winehouse are members. The clubromanticizesthe very idea of the young virtuoso, taken from us too soon. Next we have the thirtieth birthday, your dirty thirty, which is an overtly sexy birthday that doesn’t need much explaining. That’s when all the lists start, the thirty under thirty most powerful, most influential, wealthiest, yada, yada. And everyone gets to say, oh my God, she’s only thirty? You don’t believe me now but you’re such a baby at thirty. You are,” she said off my skeptical look. “And then thirty-one is the year women peak in their beauty and then thirty-three is your Jesus year. Your next special birthday after that is thirty-five, when the medical community categorizes your pregnancy as geriatric.”

“I’m sorry,” I sputtered, “aJesusyear?”

Vince tossed his napkin onto his plate. “Talk some sense into her, Brett,” he started, collecting our dirty dishes, “because I’ve tried.”

“Leave it, Vince,” Steph said.

“It’s your birthday, babe.” Vince came around to Steph’s side of the table and kissed the top of her head. “Sit with your friend.”

“I gotta find myself someone who cooksandcleans,” I said, in a blatant attempt to get Stephanie to warm to her own husband, to recognize how much he’d done for her today, to appreciate it. Some days I was Vince’s publicist and some days I was Stephanie’s, depending on who was the one who needed to be pitched to the other more.

“I’m a man of the millennium, Brett!” Vince said from the kitchen, turning on the faucet and running his fingers under the water, waiting for it to warm. “You should come over to our side. We cook and clean and fold your thongs into adorable triangles.”

I emptied the bottle of wine into my glass. “Great! I need more rosé, millennium man!” I drew a knee to my chest and addressed Steph. “Okay, so, Jesus year...”

Steph paused long enough for me to stop smiling. “The Jesus year,” Stephanie said, with such reverence I cleared my throat to cover my laugh, “is a year of great historical precedence, given that it’s the age God decided his son had accomplished everything he needed to accomplish on this earth. Your Jesus year is the year you realize it’s now or never. You cash in your 401(k) to open an ice-cream shop in Costa Rica. It’s the last year you’re ever young enough to make a major career change, and it’s the last year anyone can fawn over how young you are if it hits.”