Page 86 of The Favorite Sister
“It is extremely to my liking.” I spear my bed of lettuce with my fork. The leaves are fluffy in texture, young green in shade. Rich-people-who-mistreat-their-staff lettuce. “Closer to what I’m getting at. So after thirty-four, you’re no longer young?”
Jesse tilts her head at me, pityingly. “No, you’re not. I’m sorry if that’s a reality that scares you, but that says more about you than it does about me. I’m forty-six years old and I’m proud of my age.”Oh yeah, you celebrate it now that the cameras are off. “I’m proud to provide young women with a platform so that they too can findthemselves where I find myself today. You should move into the next bracket with grace and pride. You should pass the torchgenerously.”
“I’m not passing anyone anything from where I stand today. I’m a fucking leper. No one would take anything that’s been touched by me.”
“I’m sorry,” Jesse says, and it only sounds like she means it. “But those are the consequences of your actions. Woman-up and deal with it.”
Oh, she wants me towoman-upand deal with it, does she? I spear a shrimp and jam the whole thing into my mouth, tail and all, feeling like Daryl Hannah inSplash. My fly friend does not scare off, only does a two-footed hop onto a lower tier of shrimp and rubs his fly-paws faster. I take this for anticipatory support: He can’t wait for me towoman-up. “And what about the consequences ofyouractions?” I snarl, spewing a pink shard of shrimp shell onto the table. Jen covers her mouth with a silent gag. “You sold us on a show about sisterhood, and then you flipped the script, butonly on us. Everywhere else, you continue to pat yourself on the back for lifting women up. I cannot read one more breathless fucking profile about you and your commitment to empowering women in theNew York Times. I cannot listen to one more viral fucking Ivy League commencement speech where you implore twenty-two-year-olds to negotiate their salary like a man, to wear the labelDifficultwith pride.To get that money, girl.” I snap my fingers in the way we’ve come to expect sassy black women to do. “Everyone sitting at this table knows the truth. You are manning the fucking Zamboni so that we can body slam one another on clean ice. Girl fight! Reconcile. Girl fight! Reconcile. Those are our marching orders, and you get richer and more self-righteous while we get bloodier and older. And then, when we have theaudacityto follow your own Pollyanna advice and ask to be paid more than forty-one dollars and sixty-six cents a day, you cut us loose and blacklist us from the Cool Feminists Club. This show is not a platform. It’s a mass gravesite for thirty-four-year-olddifficultwomen.”
I get up and head for Jen’s car with gamey underarms and cleareyes. I wish the cameras had captured my speech—I’ve been working on it for weeks—but I did the best I could do with what I had to work with, and for once, my best will have to be good enough.
I practiced this next part in my head, hundreds of times since I hatched my exit plan. Only I didn’t control for another factor, which was the jughead I married. I didn’t control for him being there, chasing after me, probably thinking I am about to drive straight to theNew York Timesoffices and shove the video under Gary the Photographer’s nose myself. He grabs my arm, spinning me around, pinning me to his chest and trying to shove his hands into my pockets, grabbing for my phone. People are shouting behind us, screaming at Vince tolet me go. Stupid gashes. They should be begging Vince to restrain me. I sink my teeth into his wrist and keep sinking until I feel the skin give way with a satisfying snap. Vince yowls like a cat with his tail caught in the door, his grip on me loosening enough that I am able to worm out of his grasp.
I throw myself behind the wheel of Jen’s Tesla. Did it lock? I didn’t hear it lock. In the second and a half it takes for me to wonder this, Vince has the passenger-side door open. Goddamn you, Elon Musk. I try to accelerate before Vince can dive inside, but he manages to throw his body lengthwise across the front seats, his elbows in my lap, his head between my chest and the steering wheel. The passenger-side door flaps like one good wing as I gun it for the picnic table, for the whole vomitous, infected girl squad, though it’s Jesse Barnes, patient zero, I’d most like to leave a pink smear on her eroding lawn.
“You’re fucking crazy!” Vince shrieks, and he seizes the wheel, his hands over mine, forcing me to turn, turn, turn—fuck, fuck, fuck—away from my squealing, scattering targets. He can control our direction but not our speed, so time for Plan D, E, F...? I’ve lost count at this point. I pulverize the gas pedal, Vince unwittingly aiming us for the edge, for the peacocking sea. It wasn’t how I wanted it—I wanted an unholy slaughter—but as the wheels run out of ground I remind myselfdone is better than perfect Done is better than perfect. Done is better than...
