Page 52 of The Favorite Sister

“Don’t freak out. This happens all the time with nonfiction.”

“The Smoking Guncalls up authors to validate their birthdays and the year they graduated high school?”

“Normally they go through the publisher. That’s why I was pulling your AQ. I wanted to be the one to give them those answers so that they wouldn’t call you and make you worry.”

“But what are they even planning to do with that information?”

“You know, cross-reference to make sure it all checks out.”

I need water as a matter of life or death. I clomp a hand around the nightstand, finding the Dasani I took from the airplane yesterday. “What if it doesn’t check out?”

“You wrote a memoir, Steph, not an autobiography. If some of the dates or details are screwy, it’s really not a story, and they’ll let it go. Like I said, this happens all the time with nonfiction. I doubt it will come to a head.”

The Dasani bottle is empty. I throw it across the room in despair. I don’t want anyone to make me feel better. I want my misery shared; I wantresponsibilityshared. “I said in the AQ that the book was fiction, Gwen.”

Gwen is silent so long I pull the phone away from my ear to make sure the call didn’t drop. “I know,” she says, at last.

“You were the one who said it would have so much more impact if we could package it as a true story. And then when I wouldn’t agree to that—because I’d have to be a real fucking Judas to womankind to lie about beingraped!—you said”—and here I do my best impression of a dumbass white girl—“well, like, how about we call it creative nonfiction, not a memoir? So that, like, I could explain to people that the abuse never happened but was a metaphor for, like, how the subtle racism I dealt with growing up was as painful as a physical assault?” I drop my voice. “And I am the fucking weakling who agreed to that, to assuage my guilt just a teensy bit knowing neither of us would correct anyone who assumed it was real, and I am the monster who also agreed to make him black because you said a white kid in a black neighborhood could be more easily traced. So, Gwen, don’t youeverleave me hanging for over twenty-fourhours like that again. If I go down, I will do everything in my power to make sure you are right there with me.” I hang up, feeling like I shouldn’t have done that and also like I could have chewed her out for another hour and it wouldn’t have been enough.

I labor into the bathroom and stick a glass under the tap, examining myself in the mirror while I gulp down aluminum-flavored water. God, it is so much work to be a human being. Eight glasses of water a day—no wonder I look like shit, life is utterly demanding even on the best of days. I turn away from the mess in the mirror and limp back into the room, timbering into bed. I don’t have to leave for the airport for a few hours; I should probably get up and do something. Take advantage of the fact that I am in L.A. Go on a hike. Meditate on a mountaintop. Eat an egg-white frittata. I think about closing the curtains, but the bed is quicksand. I sink into sleep with the sexy SoCal sunshine aging my face.

Vince is waiting for me in the Air France departures gate at JFK, sitting on my extra-large rose gold Rimowa suitcase in line to check in. When he sees me, he climbs to his feet, guiltily, knowing that I hate it when he treats my nice luggage like a beanbag chair in a dorm room. He threads his fingers through his hair and gives me abusted!smile.

“I tried to check in for you,” he says. “But apparently that’s a security issue.” He laughs and tosses a flap of hair that is not in his eyes.

“No shit it’s a security issue.” I send the carry-on I’ve been living out of for the last few days wheeling his way.

Vince stops it with his foot, his pink pouty lips ajar. He’s been using my Fresh sugar lip scrub while I’ve been away, I see. “Babe?”

“You can’tcheck infor somebody else, Vince. Not even someone as devastatingly handsome as you.” I balance my foot on my overturned suitcase and rest my Fendi power bag on my knee, pushing aside old plane ticket stubs and Quest Bar wrappers in search of my wallet. The inside of my purse has never looked like this before inmy life. I am not one to take my nice things for granted. I have lived the good life since I was six months old and yet I somehow always knew it would be temporary.

Vince crouches at the knees so that his face is below mine and he’s gazing up at me. His hair flops forward, skimming his searching, soulful eyes. How he imagined he would look on the movie posters outside Regal Cinema one day. “Steph. Babe. You okay?”

I have shuffled all of my credit cards and medical ID cards and Sweetgreen rewards cards and I still can’t locate my passport. I tip my head back and tears spill into my ears.

“Babe,” Vince says, gently, reaching into his back pocket and pulling out my passport. “Is this what you’re looking for?”

I forgot my passport and Vince suspected I forgot my passport. He looked in the drawer where I keep it before he left for the airport just in case I had. I feel suddenly, overwhelmingly grateful for him, and suddenly, overwhelmingly certain that it is a bad idea I go to Morocco.

“Come here.” Vince straps his arms around me. “I know you’re disappointed about the dinner with the Female Director. And it’s a lot of travel. You’re tired.”

I hook my chin over his shoulder, remembering the bartender, and the regret is as express and dangerous as a flash flood, waterlogging my heart. Not regret because I love Vince and I broke our vows—I am so far past that kind of regret—but regret for doing something so careless when there are already so many cracks in the façade and I am running out of caulk. “I am tired.” I sigh, tearfully. “But I’m also scared.” Admitting this turns my tears into physical, silent sobs.

“But Gwen said not to worry, right?” Vince rubs circles into my back. “This sort of thing happens all the time with nonfiction?”

“It’s not nonfiction, Vince.”

Vince’s hand dies between my shoulder blades. He pulls away from me. He takes a stepback. The look in his eyes—like he has turned over his meal ticket and realizedOh, shit, she has an expiration date.I shouldn’t be surprised, but still it twists. We loved each other once. I think.

“Steph,”Vince groans, bringing his hand to his cheek, his revulsion exemplary in case anyone is eavesdropping. Someone is always eavesdropping on this termite mound of a life I’ve built out of my own saliva and dung. “Jesus. You made thatup?”

I look into my husband’s guileless eyes, showing off the acting chops he honed playingcute guy in a bar/elevator/towelin so many CW pilots that never got picked up I’ve lost count. My contempt for him is superhuman. I could pick him up and throw him through the plate glass revolving doors, send him all the way back to the Joey Bag o’ Donuts town where he came from. “Aw,” I say, with pitying scorn, “poor, innocent Vince. Just another victim of his fame-hungry wife’s desperate grab for her sixteenth minute. You must be shocked.Appalled!I’m sure that’s how you’ll try to sell me out toTMZonce the divorce is finalized and you’re searching between the couch cushions for quarters.” I shake my steepled hands at the heavens. “Thank you, Mom, for talking me into signing that prenup before you died.”

Vince checks over his shoulder. Yes, the couple ahead of us in line is listening. In a stage whisper, he says, “Steph, I actually am appalled. You lied about being assaulted? That’s a new low. Even for you.”

I snort. “You knew none of it was true after chapter five.”

The memoir is a memoir for the first seventy pages. I did hear things. I did have what felt like an unquenchable thirst for sleep. I did immediately jump to the worst-case scenario, as most teenagers do, that I was showing early signs of a debilitating case of schizophrenia. I did become convinced that if I could get in touch with my biological mother and understand my mental health history, I could somehow outsmart my genes.