Untitled Nov 2004

My sister had never showed up on time in her life, and I was not under the illusion that she would start doing so for me, so the note I sent her said three o’clock, and I set the reservation for three-thirty. Tea at The Plaza. God, what a cliché. I had loathed coming there as a child. I wondered if she would even show up. Probably not.

But Olivia arrived, like clockwork, at three forty five, her heels clicking rhythmically and impatiently on the pavement. She was in a rush, through what she was hurrying to or from I couldn’t imagine. She had what seemed like unlimited free time, and yet had always had the most impressive way of making you feel like no matter what you were doing, you were wasting her time. She was dressed impeccably in a cream colored suit, and huge sunglasses covered two-thirds of her face. I guessed her outfit was worth more than my car. I could still tell these things.

She offered no greeting as she stepped into the hotel. I was absurdly reminded of when we were little. When our Nanny wanted to shut us up, which was often, she would tell us to play “the quiet game” where the first person to make a sound was the loser. We would sit there, pinching and making faces at each other to extract a yelp of pain or laughter that would make someone else lose. I lost this time, because I spoke first.

“Such a nice day. So warm for October.”

Just brilliant Sophie, I thought, the first time you see her in seven years and that’s the best you can come up with? The weather?

She merely raised one shoulder in what might have been meant as a shrug, but she couldn’t be bothered to put her full effort into it. I took it as agreement and the host led us to one of the small tables among the tourists and hotel guests. Though we were inside, and it was not particularly bright, she did not take off her sunglasses.

A woman sitting at the next table glanced over, casting an admiring gaze at Olivia, and I only barely kept from smirking. People often do this, not because she’s beautiful, though she is, but because she has an indefinable elegance and poise to everything she does. Would they be so impressed, I wondered, if they knew how practiced it all was?

I could see in my mind Olivia in her bedroom before the mirror, all of ten or eleven years old, practicing that gracious smile, the elegant walk, the exact way to drape herself carelessly yet elegantly over a chair, then hopping up and consulting her fashion magazine to make sure she was doing it correctly. Julia and I would be in the hallway, peeking through the crack in the door and shaking with silent laughter. The realization swept over me that we would never get that back. I no longer had the right to laugh at Olivia. I couldn’t cling to Julia as we doubled over with laughter.

Now I laughed at my daughter’s toothless smile. Now it was my husband who put his arms around me.

I looked up now and found Olivia studying me as well. Or I thought she was, it was impossible to tell with those damned sunglasses.

“So, how are things?” was my first brave stab at conversation.

Again, the slight, one-shouldered shrug. Well, this was going wonderfully. I glanced up and found Olivia staring down at her hands. It was impossible to tell from her expression if she was thinking or uncomfortable or just bored.

“How was the wedding?” I pressed on.

Her mouth twitched, I thought she was going to shrug again, then she murmured vaguely, “Nice.”

Well, I’d heard the estimates of what it cost Mom and Dad, so it had better have been nice. I bit back that comment because I had actually gotten a word out of her. She laid her perfectly manicured hand on the table, idly picking up the knife as if she had never seen flatware before.

“How is Hyatt?”

“You know. The usual.” This was accompanied by almost a full shrug.

I did know, too well. I struggled for something nice to say about her husband, but I’d always thought the only thing Hyatt Parker Grey III had going for him was his money. He was a walking warning about the dangers of inbreeding.

I was saved from having to say anything by the arrival of our waiter asking if we’d like anything to drink. When he withdrew again, we were left to silence. Olivia pointedly avoided looking at me and lazily tucked a lock of blond hair behind her ear. Always the prettiest one of the three of us, but fragile. While Julia, not so much pretty as striking, was daring, brash, outrageous. No one ever suspected I’d be the one to cause all the drama. No one would have guessed I’d cause the family scandal.

The idea of star-crossed lovers, of the world (or at least my family) being so against us, had seemed so romantic to my angst-loving eighteen-year-old mind. In the years since then, I’d begun to realize why storytellers always gave the young lovers a tragic end. Who really wants to read about Romeo and Juliet arguing over balancing the checkbook or unloading the dishwasher?

This is not to say I wished that Jim and I had met an untimely death seven years ago. There was more to life than checkbooks and dishes, and if we had our ups and downs, there were more good days than bad. He had asked me once if I would do the same if I had my life to live over again. I knew I would, but it would have been harder if I had known Julia and Olivia would abandon me as well.

“I miss you.” The words slipped out of me without my willing them to, my voice sounding young and thin and pleading, entirely unlike me.

Her head snapped back, and for a moment she was unnaturally still. “Maybe you should have thought of that before.” Her voice was low, a fine edge of anger laced through it.

“I did. It was the hardest thing I ever had to do.”

“You didn’t have to,” she snapped back.

I sighed, and leaned back, taking a moment to watch the people passing by us through the lobby. I had no idea how to talk to this Olivia, who was so cold and aloof. In all my careful planning, I had never actually thought she would come, and so had never considered what I would say when she did.

“Not everything is about you Livie. You do understand that, don’t you? And this, it wasn’t about you,” I said when I decided I was capable of talking normally, reasonably. “It wasn’t about you or about Julia. I didn’t choose him over you. It was about not letting Mum and Dad live my life for me, because no matter what they want for me, I’m the one who’s going to have to live with it…and if you think I can…well, I thought you at least would understand. I really did. I thought you knew me that well.”

A muscle in her jaw twitched, and then she pulled off her sunglasses and threw them on the table like a child having a tantrum. The anger that flashed in her narrowed eyes was at least better than the cool unaffected façade.

“They wanted what was best for you! We all did, we didn’t want you to throw your life away on him. You had everything Sophie, you could have been someone!”

“That’s what you don’t understand. That’s what none of you ever understood. He doesn’t think I could be someone. He thinks I am someone. Maybe to you I threw away my life, but don’t you see, it is my life. My choices, and if I made mistakes, they’re my mistakes.”

“I don’t understand.”

I knew she didn’t. Everything she had ever done, from what she wore to who she married, was done according to the family’s idea of what was appropriate. She had never embarrassed them.

“Clearly.”

“Don’t you know what people said? You’re like a cautionary tale now. I couldn’t even tell Hyatt I was coming here, I told him I was going shopping.”

“I’ve always thought there’s no better way to start off a marriage than with lies and deception.” I hated the way my voice sounded, cruel, sarcastic, and deliberate.

“At least he didn’t marry me just to make a point.” She spoke to the table.

I wasn’t sure which I wanted more, to pinch her cheeks in appreciation of her adorable naïveté, or to give her a good hard shake to make her come to her senses. Of course, I did neither. I had made my own mistakes, and Olivia would have hers.

“Fine.” I laid my napkin on the table, feeling strangely calm, without any of the bubbling anger I would have expected to a comment like that. I didn’t notice her shocked stare; I only thought that Jim was going to say “I told you so.” I heard only the authoritative tap of my heels on the marble floor now. I didn’t notice the eyes of tourists following my abrupt exit, or hear the waiter ask if everything was all right. It was not until the doorman in his smart gray uniform was opening the door of a taxi for me that a slim, pink-tipped hand fell on me shoulder.

“Sophie… wait.”