Page 49 of The Favorite Sister

I hear “Beet salad?” and half raise my hand to claim it, but the plate is set in front of the man to my right. I turn my attention back to my email. Vince has forwarded me the details of my flight to Marrakesh. 5:47P.M. out of JFK, three days from now. We’ve arranged for him to meet me in the airport with a suitcase packed for Morocco; this way I didn’t have to pack for my book events, the Female Director dinner, and Brett’s trip. I wince. It’s going to be a brutal day of travel. But backing out of Morocco is not an option, not like backing out of Brett’s engagement party was, especially since I’ve recently come to the conclusion that now is the opportune time to extricate myself from the show. You may think such a shift in mind-set would give me carte blanche to bail on all the events I would never attend if the cameras weren’t there, but if anything, I’m under even greater obligation. I need to make it clear that I was an integral part of this season, that nobody phased me out. I want to quit while I’m on top, as they say. The top is like Mars, hostile to human life.

The gentleman to my right is now cutting into a small steak, grilled a diligent brown, just as he ordered it. That’s what the bartender called him, indicating to a busser where to place the plate, “The filet is for the gentleman.”

I move on to the mini carafe of wine. Also the temperature of soup, but nonetheless helping to fuel the bold fantasy I’ve nurtured since before my memoir came out;The Site of an Evacuationis a number oneNew York Timesbestseller (done), I am both a massive commercial success and a critics’ darling (done), and a very famous and timely director or actress is committed to adapting my memoir for screen (almost done). I’m of course asked to return to the show, even though I will be a crusty thirty-five next season, but I demur, because I’ve got a better idea. Lauren Conrad crowing at Heidi—You know what you did!—may be the highest-rated reality TV episode of all time, but did you also know thatKeeping Up with the Kardashianspeaked in popularity when the sisters had babies? A motherhood storyline may sound heretical, but remember, our audience loves seeing unconventional women caving under the pressure to do the conventional thing.

With this in mind, I pitch a spinoff where I get pregnant and move to Los Angeles to oversee the film project. I’ll live in a house with a yard and have a meltdown trying to put together a crib. A storyline about the comic discordance between having a baby and having zero maternal instincts is a classic knee-slapper.Is this right?I can imagine myself saying in the trailer, holding up my baby with her diaper on inside out and backward.Stephanie Ever After, Jesse would probably want to call it, and I would tell her, laughing,absolutelynot.

“Excuse me, you had the salmon?” A lonely filet is placed before me, but before the server can set down the accompanying plate of sautéed spinach, I stop him.

“I never got my appetizer.”

The server extends an unsympathetic “Oh.”

“Excuse me.” I wave down the bartender, and this time he doesn’t dare give me a cute smile back. “I never got my appetizer.”

“Oh no. Really?”

“Really.”

The bartender flags down a passing waiter. “Nathan,” he says. “This young lady had ordered a beet salad. Can you go back in the kitchen and check on that for her?”

Everyone seems appeased by this, and the server attempts to set the side plate of spinach down again. “I would like my appetizer first,” I say, firmly, “then I would like my fish.”

The gentleman to my right sets his steak knife down. A few people in the dining area break off their conversation, eavesdropping, but I have no problem standing up for myself when it’s clear I’ve been wronged. It’s the nebulous, middle-of-the-road disrespect where I can’t find my footing.

“Of course. Of course,” the bartender says, removing the plate before me and dumping it into the trash so I can be sure they won’t try to reheat and reserve. “We are so sorry about this.” He disappears under the bar for a moment and reappears with the bottle of fruity wine, topping me off.

“And can I get a glass of ice?” I ask, fearlessly. “The glass was a little warm.”

The bartender does me one better and switches out my wineglass. “Again,” he says, “so sorry about this.”

When the bill arrives, all I have been charged for is a single glass of wine. I leave a fifty-dollar tip and something else, holding tight to the merchant’s copy as I place my dinner napkin on the bar and reach down for my purse, hanging on a hook by my knee. It’s only when the gold chain strap is over my shoulder and I’m on my feet that I slip the signed receipt, upside down, into the check holder. I hurry out of the restaurant like I’ve just hidden a bomb in a trashcan, like I will be blown to smithereens if the bartender makes the discovery before I board the elevator to my room.

I wake to a noise in the dark, like the sound of someone shaking open a new garbage bag, the way the plastic gasps for air. I am verystill, waiting to find out if my broken brain has produced this track or if a maid is simply emptying the hallway trashcan. The last time I was in Phoenix, five months ago on my first book tour, a man chased me down after I passed through security.

“Ma’am? Ma’am?”

I refused to respond to “ma’am,” and so he had to say it twice.

“I think this fell out of your bag,” he told me, giving the pill bottle three shakes, the world’s glummest tambourine. I about fell over thanking him, explaining that I need to be better about latching my purse, my husband is always on my case about latching my purse. And God, wouldn’t my husband die to hear me tell a stranger that he is right?

The man laughed, his face shiny, like his smile had stretched his skin to its tearing point, the way men’s faces get when you let them believe that they are of any use to you anymore. “I know my wife can’t step foot on an airplane without her Xanax.” He gave me a neighborly wave good-bye. “Safe flight.”

“Thank you,” I said, watching him go the other way, thinking how nice it was to be mistaken for a silly woman with a silly fear of flying.

The next stop on the first book tour, five months ago, was Nashville, and there I decided I would again “forget” to latch my purse before sending it through the CT scanner, and I did the same thing in Milwaukee and Chicago too. I could have just tossed the prescription for Cymbalta into the trash, but that felt too intentional. I’d been using a pill cutter for the last few weeks anyway, under doctor’s supervision, and, well, my book tours are the ten days out of my year when I’d really rather not feel so... dampened.

It took me ten years to admit to a doctor that occasionally, I hear things. Not voices, well, I suppose it isavoice, but it isn’t speech I hear. It is a word, sometimes a first name, sometimes a familiar sound—shaking open a garbage bag, or revving the engine of a lawn mower.

Before I told my doctor about the voice, my blood pressure was one-forty over ninety. After my doctor told me that hearing things is not synonymous with schizophrenia or manic depression, that some 13 percent of adults will hear voices at some point in their lives, andthat the cause can be anything from bereavement to stress, I clocked in at one hundred over eighty. I was predisposed to depression, that much was likely true, but my symptoms were dull and textbook, easily managed through sixty milligrams of Cymbalta daily. I have weaned myself off the drug once before, when the second book in my fiction series sold one million copies and the show was in its newlywed phase with fans, long enough to remember thatoh, I do like sex as enthusiastically as I appear to in my books.

The noise does not repeat itself, and I remind myself of what my doctor told me, that success is a stressor too. Although it’s a stressor I might enjoy, it’s a spotlight nonetheless, shining on things I thought I’d jettisoned on the therapist’s couch when—surprise!—all I did was stuff them into a coat closet before the company arrives. The reassurance fails to soothe, and I turn over in bed and locate my phone, charging on the nightstand. It’s 4:40A.M., and Gwen has responded to my email. I read the exchange in its entirety, twice.

Me: Gwen! I think you meant to send this to your assistant, Steph! Not me, Steph. But why do you need my AQ? All okay?

Gwen:So sorry, honey! Yes, meant to send this to Stephanie my assistant. How is wherever you are?

I compose a response.