Page 85 of The Favorite Sister

“Why would you humiliate yourself like this, Steph?” Vince whispers next to me.

“People, people!” I admonish, cheerfully. “One at a time with the questions. Let’s start with you first, love of my life and light of my loins.” I turn to Vince. “I am doing this for equity’s sake. Either we are all punished for aggrandizing our backstories or none of us are. No exceptions. Brett does not get to be spared by virtue of the effect she has on Jesse’s granny panties.”

I face Kelly. “Next! Who else has seen this? I am happy to report, Kelly Courtney, that you are the first. It’s an exclusive! A scoop! A breaking-news bulletin interrupting our regularly scheduled programming!”

I lean around Vince to address Lauren’s question last:What is it?“It’s a homemade movie of Brett getting—”

“I don’t want to hear another word about this,” Jesse says, severely.

It is quiet. Not silent. Not with the rowdy ocean so close below, exchanging shorelines with Nantucket, ninety-eight nautical miles away. It’s so much more than a view. It’s the sound of power, always in your ears. That’s why Jesse spends all her time at this place.

Jesse. The garden-fresh betrayal that first appeared on her face as she watched the video of Brett getting drilled by my husband frombehind is already receding, creating an illusion of composure. For a moment there, I actually felt bad for her, this middle-aged woman fleeced by her proudest protégée, like some blue-haired grandma in a nursing home wiring the entirety of her life savings to help a “relative in distress” in Guam. Jesse Barnes has been elder abused.

“Brett,” Vince sneers, defying Jesse’s mandate. “Brett is a fucking bitch and a fucking fat liar.” Cleverness tends to deteriorate the closer you get to the truth—not that Vince ever knew how to turn a phrase.

“Not in my house,” Jesse says, because she can’t permit a man to call a woman fat in her presence, even if she is a fucking bitch and a fucking fat liar.

Vince grips my thigh under the table. “She wanted you to leave me,” he tells me desperately. “She hated that you had somebody and she didn’t. She was always threatened by me.”

I laugh. A cold, annihilating laugh that sends Vince’s hand slithering back between his thighs to check to make sure it’s still there. “Take a look around this table, Vince. You are not a threat. You are adrain on our resources. Your day has dawned. We should preserve your body and mount you in the Museum of Natural History. Unimpeachable Men: The Dinosaurs Among Us.”

Vince’s breath shortens and quickens, audible only on the exhale, like being ceremoniously emasculated in front of a group of millionairesses is a cardiac event. Fun fact: Spell check red-flags the word “millionairesses,” but not “millionaires.” There is no entry for “millionairesses” in the dictionary, which beautifully illustrates my point—the world will only permit one of us to make it. Is it any surprise then that women continue to be so horrible to each other? Supporting your kind is supporting your own fucking mediocrity. It’sunnatural.

Jesse slaps the table to get my attention, with a gentle but commanding thump. “Stephanie,” she says. My full name—uh-oh, Mom is mad. “You have been through a lot over the last few weeks and I am not unsympathetic to that. But I won’t sit here and listen to you drag Brett through the mud with lies and defamation when she isn’t around to defend herself and offer her side of the story.”

“When she isn’t around...” I trail off in befuddled helplessness.A story ceases to have “sides” when there is empirical proof of my husband screwing my best friend in my pantry, on my Scalamandre Le Tigre sofa, on my beloved, creaky stairs. You better believe I moved that camera around for the next couple of nights so that I did not have to hear that it was “just a one-time thing” should I ever confront Brett or Vince with what I saw. I don’t know when it started, but I know how. They must have met one of the nights Brett snuck downstairs to stuff her face. How did it start? Did Brett find Vince aglow by the light of aNarcosepisode, halfway through an auction-house bottle of Brunello? Did he offer her a glass? Did he sigh sadly and say a distance had grown between us? Did he tell her he wished I could see the good in him, that way she could? Did he laugh and joke,If only you played for my team, Courtney?DidBrettkisshim? Did she think it wouldn’t hurt me, did she think I didn’t love him, did she even think? Did she tell Vince she wasn’t gay, or did she let him believe she was straight only for him? That there was something different about him, something special. Brett always did know how to make ordinary people feel special.

I couldn’t bring myself to confront either one of them. Going into the fourth season, I was still determined to hold my marriage together. But once Brett found out I had waged a cold war against her, she must have put two and two together and gottenSteph knows I rode Vince like a SPOKE bike around the first floor of her house and she’s trying to destroy me. And still, she didn’t apologize. Still, she chose to save her own skin over showing an ounce of humiliation or remorse. I do not blame her, but I do hate her.

“We are done here.” Jesse speaks directly to the lens, in effect speaking directly to Marc. “Shut the cameras off.” Marc removes the F55 from his shoulder, slowly, as though setting down a weapon. The assistant cameraman follows suit.

I want to laugh. I want to cry. Why didn’t I control for this? That Jesse wouldn’t do a thing about this? I thought the commander in chief of the queer world would tear into Brett for appropriating hercommunity. I thought the same punitive action that has been taken against me would be taken against her. In all my reveries, I never considered that it would behoove Jesse to protect Brett, not for Brett’s sake, but for her own. If it comes out that Brett conned Jesse so close on the heels of me conning her, Jesse is just another example of why men make better bosses.

The relief that relaxes Kelly’s face would be enough to send me over the edge if I hadn’t already taken the plunge. She gets what Jesse is doing. She knows Brett’s secret will stay a secret. With cloying sympathy, she adds, “I know you have been under an inordinate amount of pressure since we got back from Morocco. With what happened”—she clears her throat cryptically—“there. But it was not your fault. We don’t blame you and we just want to see you get the help you need.”

The help I need? Oh, honey-bunny. Just like your leaky, weak-walled post-baby vagina, only surgical repair could restore me now.

“There should be an age requirement to ride those things,” I say to Kelly.

“But,” Jesse looks around the table, to confirm that everyone has heard what she has heard and that it doesn’t make any sense, “Kweller wasn’t riding.”

“No, I mean like for adults.Seniors. Spatial awareness declines sharply after age thirty-four, or so I’ve heard.”

“I’m sorry,” Jesse sighs, “but you’ve lost me.”

“There has never been a woman past the age of thirty-four on the show,” I say.

“Whoa,” Lauren breathes, her brow furrowed, taking inventory of our fallen soldiers, realizing I’m right. Jen raises a glass of water to her lips, taking a trembling sip. She has not said a word or even made a facial expression since we sat down, just sat there like a pasty statue. I had almost forgotten she was here.

Jesse fans her face. “Everyone is overheated and exhausted, Stephanie. Jen is clearly not feeling well and we should get her into the air-conditioning. We came out here and we did this for nothing.Just let it go. Go home. Get some rest. There will be a new chapter for you, but not until you take the time to step away and reflect.”

I am not going home, getting some rest, andreflecting. I am never going home again. I lean across the table, serving myself some salad from the large ceramic mixing bowl. These hypocrites have worked up my appetite. “Why has there never been a woman past the age of thirty-four on the show?” I persist.

Jesse turns her hands palms side up, as though I must be kidding her. “I guess not then. Sorry, ladies—and, well, I was going to say gentleman, but I’ll just say Vince instead—that Stephanie is dead set on making your Sunday so unpleasant.” Jesse focuses in on me, her tone that of a reasonable person tasked with subduing a madwoman. “The reason,” she continues, “that there has never been a woman on the show past the age of thirty-four is because it’s a show about female millennials who have accomplished amazing things without the financial support of a man.”

“Thirty-four-year-oldsaremillennials.” I smack her down. “In another year, thirty-five-year-olds will be millennials, and a year after that, thirty-six-year-olds will be and on and on and on. A generation’s ages are fluid, not stagnant.” I dazzle her with a smile. “Try again.”

Jesse decides to antagonize me further by matching my smile. “Forgive me. I misspoke. It’s a show about young women who have accomplished amazing things without the financial support of a man. Is that more to your liking?”