I like to think of myself as someone who puts family first, but when my older sisterâs name appears on my phone, I consider letting it go to voice mail. Until my fatherâs death last summer, Liddie was my closest friend. Now, however, it feels like the impasse between us is so wide it canât be breached, and the last thing I need after a long day at work is one of her inevitable lectures about Matt.
âEveryone makes mistakes,â she says each time we speak, because to her, Matt is familyâher husbandâs best friend, a fixture of our adolescence. She says it feels like somethingâs missing when weâre all together, minus Matt. I wonder if itâs ever occurred to her that it might feel like somethingâs missing for me too. That when I watch her and Alex together, playing happy family with their daughter, Iâm seeing where ten years with someone was supposed to wind up.
Iâve barely said hello before she launches into her latest ovulation/pregnancy update, yet another source of irritation for me. Not that I mind her trying to get pregnant, but her single-minded obsession with it irks me. Sometimes it seems like she didnât even mourn our fatherâthe funeral was barely over before she was flipping through a book of baby names, as if sheâd simply washed her hands of the whole thing.
âI thought I was ovulating but I did this test and it says Iâm not,â she tells me. I climb onto my bed with a cup of ramen noodles. Matt thought he was being generous, letting me keep all our shitty old furniture, but I had to downsize after he left. Our king-size bed takes up so much of the room there isnât space for anything else, and therefore serves as couch, desk, and dining room table all in one. âBut you know, they say when your cervical mucus gets thickââ
âLiddie, Iâm eating,â I say. âAnd you know how I feel about the words cervical mucus. Have you talked to Charlotte?â
Our youngest sister, now in her fourth month at a residential care facility, claims she isnât lonely there. Liddie tends to take her at her word, for reasons I canât begin to understand. Charlotte is the same kid who told us she was fine, again and again, before swallowing an entire bottle of aspirin.
âNot this week. Iâm so busy with Kaitlin during the day, and itâs hard to catch her at night. Howâs the new job?â
Because she insisted this job was a terrible idea, Iâve got no choice but to claim itâs going well, though that may be a bit of a stretchâHayes clearly didnât think todayâs stunt was quite as funny as I did. âIâm seriously being paid four grand a week to answer phones.â
âWith the mouth on you, I wouldnât count on it lasting,â she says. âI still donât see why you had to give Mom your entire advance.â
My eyes close tight. Liddie isnât able to help ease my familyâs financial woes in any way, but she sure doesnât mind criticizing me for trying. âI didnât realize I wasnât going to be able to write the book,â I reply, the words clipped. I gave my mother the advance to pay her mortgage. If Iâd known Iâd wind up putting all of Charlotteâs treatment on credit cards I canât pay off, I might have thought better of it.
âYouâd still have time to finish the book if you hadnât taken the stupid job,â she says. I hear the clink of flatware in the background. âAnd you wouldnât need to if youâd just ask Matt for the money. Talk to him. Heâs family.â
My teeth grind so hard she can probably hear it all the way in Minnesota. âNo. Heâs not.â
And even if I were poisoned and Matt was the only one with the antidote, I wouldnât take his help. If I were drowning and he threw me a flotation device, Iâd use the last of my energy to give him the finger. That half of what he said at the end appears to be true doesnât lessen my rage. I remember the fire that burned through me after we split upâIâll show him, I said a hundred times a day. That fire is still there, but whenever I see him in a magazine or being gossiped about online, it feels as if heâs already won.
âLet him try to fix things,â she begs.
âThe things he broke canât be fixed.â Not by him, anyway. Probably not by anyone. Iâll be damned if Iâm going to let him throw money at the rest of it to absolve himself of guilt.