Page 76 of The Favorite Sister

CHAPTER 18

Stephanie

Jesse Barnes knocked on my door two days in a row, and on the second try I texted her to come back after six, when the reporters leave their empty Starbucks cups on my front steps in retaliation for my downed blinds. I take solace in the fact that mixed in with the vermin fromTMZ, there are journos from theNew York Times, Vanity Fair, andNew Yorkmagazine. My scandal is news fit to print.

Jesse brought me flowers, like someone I loved had died. I was fleetingly touched—Wow, she gets it—before realizing that was what made her choice so deplorable. She got it, and still she would disavow me.

Because death was all around me. My love for the page? For those mornings the alarm of creativity woke me early, the way my fingers played the keyboard like a concert pianist sight-reading inspiration? Dead. My romance with my phone? Also dead. No more thunderbolts of excitement every time I open my email or Instagram, no more prestige interview requests, fawning mentions from fans, fromcelebrities. Who knows what lies in wait for me on that handheld fieldstone now. I know better than to charge it.

My marriage is dead too, but that was a funeral that should havebeen held long ago. Vince and I are the two losers fromWeekend at Bernie’s, everyone laughing at our bungled attempts to convince them our love is alive.

Jesse’s flowers were potted in a long, narrow glass box, a series of hot pink orchids. Very modern. Very Jesse. I set it between the two of us on the kitchen counter like a fragrant dividing line and grabbed her a beer from the depths of the meat drawer while she laid out a proposal. She wanted to not pay me and a bunch of black survivors of abuse to go on her aftershow and talk about how deeply my deceit has damaged the community. To talk about the fine example I’ve provided for the men’s rights activists who say women lie about abuse for attention and sympathy and book sales. To acknowledge theStephanie Simmons effectI’ve created in the publishing industry, which rarely takes chances on black women writers, and when they do, and when their books hit, it’s not likeGone Girl, a sign that the consumer wants a million more domestic thrillers with the word “girl” artlessly thrust into the title. When a black woman’s book blows up it’s an anomaly, and there can only be one of you, and that the one of us it got to be was a dirty, filthy pretender who hurt not just black women with her lies but black men too is the ultimate injustice.

After I am appropriately dressed down on national television, after we’ve turned this into ateachable moment, I will apologize to the public and make a gracious donation to a local women’s shelter. Then? I take my garden leave.We’ll stage a comeback together, Jesse lied to my face. I’ll write my next book and she’ll document my rise from the ashes, call itReturn of the Stephi, proving that not even a faux-hawk can resuscitate your cool once you hit your forties.

I walked Jesse to the door, where she gave me a long hug.Think about it, she said to me, and also,Orchids need light. So I gave them none. They’re sitting right where I left them, their neon limbs lost to the floor.

But I did think about it. And I would rather have my ears surgically attached to the insides of Brett’s thighs so that she can ride me like a SPOKE bike than give Jesse the mea culpa ratings boon she’s after, to pardon her of the supporting role she played in all of this. Jesse Barnes is the heroin dealer stationed outside the middle school whose bedtime lullaby isBut I didn’t stick the needle in anybody’s armevery time a thirteen-year-old is found purple-lipped beneath the bleachers. Like the seventh-grader, I had a choice: feel like every other normal loser in his class, or feel so extraordinary that you almost believe you are extraordinary.

For her role in creating such an obvious, fatal option, Jesse must pay. So must Lisa, and Brett, and our whole coterie of Janus-faced feminism. I will not be their straw man. I will not be tarred and feathered in the town square for gaming a game that gave me an unfair start. They want to hold me responsible for an endemic culture of not believing women while at the same time telling me my story is “a little slow” without mention of crushed windpipes and torn arteries. They want a black woman on their “diverse” show, but only if I have been through something sensational, and all those times a white woman has mistaken me for her waitress, her hotel cleaning lady, her salesgirl at Saks? Unfortunate, but not sensational. I don’t know who “they” is—Jesse, Lisa, my publisher, men, women, you.

So here I am, the second to last weekend of summer, a bounty hunter on behalf of personal responsibility. For the time being, I am how we like our women: contrite, trussed, eyes on the floor. But know I’m doing it through clenched pelvic floor muscles. (Where are you now, Vince? Oh right, the Standard on my dime while we move ahead with the divorce proceedings.) I just have to keep up this yes, ma’am and no, ma’am act through the night so Lisa allows me to attend the brunch at Jesse’s tomorrow. And that’s when I drop the motherfucking nuke.

You should have seen Brett’s face when I came to her defense during the asinine Mrs. and Mrs. game! She’s actually buying what I’m selling. I’m sure she’s twisted the whole thing in her head,managed, impressively, to fashion herself as the victim in this sordid tale. And now here I am, catering to that delusional fantasy. Brett’s biggest blind spot has always been her willingness to believe her own hype.

Lauren is locked in the upstairs guest bathroom, crying animatedly about the back of her head, and I can’t say I blame her. Haha. It’s totally charred. Kelly, her rhinestone-studded Victoria’s Secret thong (probably) in a twist, marched up the stairs to Jen’s bedroom, chin held at a righteous angle, Greenberg behind her, repeating her name in consolatory tones. I’ve always wondered how much Kelly knew. Clearly, she knows enough to know that Brett has no business marrying Arch. I’ll make her suffer too.

I turn to Brett and laugh awow everyone is crazy but uslaugh. “Talkhouse?” I suggest. Because you know, if I’m going to do this, tequila wouldn’t hurt.

“I can’t believe I said that to Kelly,” Brett says to me in the cab, her long hair hanging in wet panels over her ears. We waited until the crew packed up and left, even going so far as to change into our pajamas to make everyone think we had called it a night, then put on ho clothes that show our ankles and snuck out without telling Kelly, Jen, and Lauren where we were going. The minivan Lindy’s sent over takes a glacial left at the end of Jen’s drive, the rain pummeling the windshield harder than the wipers can keep up. “About having regrets,” Brett says. “What if they use it? Layla will see that.”

God forbid Layla know she’s not the reason Kelly was put on this earth.“She already knows,” I say, pulling my ponytail out of the collar of my shirt. I tucked it in to protect it from the dash from the front door to the cab but it did no good, which is a shame. My nails are done. My toes are done. I dropped eight hundred bucks on a new pair of Aquazzura wedges and I had a hydrafacial yesterday. I plan on looking absolutely fucking perfect when I do what I am planning on doing tomorrow.

Brett turns to me. “Knows what?”

“That Kelly regrets having her so young.” I put my phone back into my Chanel. For the last few seasons, I’ve tried to make those raffia woven clutches from Roberta Roller Rabbit work out here. I’ve tried for the low-maintenance, beachy look, but as I packed for the weekend, I decided I couldn’t spend another night in an ikat print skimming my shins. I packed clean white jeans and sleeveless tops and red lipsticks. I packed things that make me look like a classic beauty.

Brett is mulling over what I’ve just said, rolling her bottom lip in her top teeth. “You really think she’s picked up on that?”

I prop an elbow on the back of the seat, shifting so that my knees point in her direction. It’s like the Wonder Woman pose but for empathy—if you put yourself in the position for it, maybe actual empathy will come. “Of courseshe’s picked up on it. That’s why she’s so lucky to have you in her life. You are the one who makes her feel loved and wanted. You are setting an example of hard work and perseverance.”

Brett waves me off bashfully—You don’t mean that but yes of course you do because I am the ne plus ultra aunt, businesswoman, lesbian, human being. I swallow repeatedly to force the acidic truth back down:She’s twelve going on twenty-eight for a reason, you halfwit. When I was twelve, I was painting my friend’s nails and making up dances to Boyz II Men songs, not attending staff meetings with my aunt and running her company’s social media campaign. She feels like she has to contribute or you won’t love her. That she can’t just be a kid because being a kid is a burden on you.

Brett tips her head back, running her fingers through her wet hair. I can smell her Moroccan oil shampoo again. Mixed in with the Febreze and cigarette smell of the cab, my brain marches in olfactory protest. “Steph,” she says, “are we okay? I mean, real okay. Not TV okay. I know you have a lot going on right now so I can’t tell if it’s that or if it’s something... something I did.”

The almost-admission makes me hold my breath.Keep going, I urge her,exonerate yourself.

“Because.” She takes a shaky breath.It’s coming! She’s going to do it!“Imiss us,” she continues, “but it’s never going to go back to the way it was. I’m not the runt of the group anymore. I’m not going to stop being successful because you’re uncomfortable with my success, Steph.”

It is all I can do not to laugh in her fat, beautiful face. They should listimpaired hearingas a side effect on the bottle of fame. There are so many people clapping for you all the time, for walking, for breathing, for wiping your own ass, that it drowns out what I like to call yournot thatinner voice, the one that says you’re not that smart, you’re not that talented, you’re not that funny. Some may confuse this gag for progress, as women come out of the womb hearing we are not enough. But having been on both sides of the fence I can tell you this: If you don’t hate yourself just a little bit, you are intolerable.

In any case, I am back in touch with mynot thatinner voice as of late. No one is clapping for me anymore. I’m probably a lot more fun to be around for everybody else, but when I lie in bed at night I can’t help but wish that this human suit of mine came with a zipper, that I could hang it in my custom white oak closet with the Chanel spotlights and take a break from myself, even for an hour.

I have been saying I am too old for Talkhouse since before I was too old for Talkhouse. The crowd tonight is twenty-one years old or fifty, no one in between but the two of us. It’s the first time I’ve ever been where there is room to rest my elbow on the bar in the main room, with a clear view of the empty dance floor and the stage, where a few roadies are busy assembling a drum set. The rain has kept it quiet so far. My new wedges are squeegeeing water with every step and I don’t dare release my ponytail for fear of the shape my hair will take on its own, but the cameras aren’t here, two fingers of tequila are playing the tendons in my throat, and downwind, a pack of fraternity brothers in pastel shorts are debating how old to tell us they are.

“Girls?” The bartender places two plastic cups in front of us, half-full with something clear.Vodkashots. Shit. They might not even be twenty-one. “From the gentlemen down the way.” The bartenderindicates with a thumb. That two adult women with multimillion-dollar empires between them are referred to as girls and this group of rosy-cheeked pussy grabbers as gentlemen—even facetiously—is the problem with the world in two words.

The boldest one calls over the Pool Party 2017 playlist, “You were looking too serious over there!”