Two Sisters: A Novel (25 page)

“Not until you see what I have in my hands.”

Muriel clucked her tongue. “You are such a pill.”

“Shut up, Muriel.”

“You shut up.”

“It’s Mama’s
diary
. And I don’t think I’ll show you after all.”

A wave of electricity shot through Muriel’s body. Her arms got hot. “Don’t read that,” she said, wheeling around to face her sister. “It’s private.”

“I already read plenty. Plen
-tee
.”

Fear flushed Muriel’s cheeks. Her heart pounded.

There are things you need to know, sweetie, and things you don’t.

“Gimme that,” she said, holding out her hand. The strap on the heavy dress fell off her shoulders. She lifted it back on, but it fell off again. Pia stood there grinning. Muriel said, “Mama is going to be mad.”

“Not if she never knows.”

“You won’t be able to keep her secrets!”

“Oh, I think I can.”

Pia blocked the exit to the closet.

What Muriel knew well was that Lidia would be mad at
her
. If her mother’s sinful secrets took flight, like a cloud of angry bats swooping forth from a cave, she would grab her youngest daughter and shake her by the arm and freeze her with that icy stare. “Why didn’t you stop her, Muriel? Why!?” If Owen came home first, and Pia told him before Lidia had the chance to make her
swear
that she wouldn’t, she would be enraged. It would be all Muriel’s fault. Instead of looking away, Lidia would never look at her at all.

“Hand it over,” Muriel said, rushing her sister.

Pia laughed out loud. “Why should I?” Easily, she held the journal high enough over her head to be well beyond Muriel’s reach. The sparkly dress suddenly felt unbearably heavy. Muriel wanted to surrender to its weight and crumple to the ground in a billow of shiny fabric. She wanted to hide beneath it and sleep with the bats in her own secret cave, nestled safely in their shared darkness.

“There are some things you need to know and some things you don’t,” she said to her sister.

Scoffing, Pia replied, “Muriel, you are as odd as odd can be.”

Surprising herself, Muriel coughed up a laugh. Suddenly, she saw the pointlessness of it all. There she was, standing in her mother’s dress, in her mother’s closet, protecting her mother from the sin she’d committed. What did she care if Lidia’s secrets took flight? She didn’t let them loose!

“Go ahead and read Mama’s diary. See if I give a whoop.”

Muriel jutted her chin forward. She turned and walked to the back of Lidia’s closet to return the heavy dress to its plastic shroud. Honestly, if Pia knew the truth, it would be a
relief
. She wouldn’t feel so alone. A shared secret was a bond instead of a burden. A
connection
with her sister. Pia would sneak into her room after dinner, shut the door without a sound, flop down on her bed, and whisper, “I still can’t believe it. A priest? Can you believe it?”

“I know!” Muriel would say, and Pia would press her index finger up to her sister’s lips. “Keep your voice down. Mama can’t know that we both know.” Bellies down, knees bent, feet crisscrossing in midair, Muriel would bump shoulders with Pia. Even though she didn’t fully understand what she’d seen that day, she would pretend that she did. She’d sidle up to her older sister and whisper the one question she’d been dying to ask
someone
since that late afternoon on Broadway:
when Mama kissed Father Camilo like that, did it mean they were
both
going to hell?

“I
can
keep a secret, you know,” Muriel proudly called out from the depths of the closet. “Remember the day you buried me at the beach?”

Pia ignored her and opened their mother’s journal. Muriel hung up the black beaded dress. “Besides,” she said, “I already know what’s in Mama’s diary and I’ve never told a single solitary soul.”

Pia read: “ ‘My darling first daughter is as perfect a child as a mother could want.’ ”

“That’s not what it says.”

“ ‘From the moment I saw her face, I knew God gave me a miracle.’ ” Holding up the diary, she showed her sister the very paragraph.

“
That’s
what it says?” Muriel rolled her eyes. In a bossy tone, Pia continued, “ ‘As a young woman, my Pia is smart, beautiful, slender, athletic, and independent. In life, she will achieve anything she wants.’ ”

Groaning, Muriel flipped through Lidia’s other gowns to choose her next selection. Pia droned on, but Muriel ignored her. What a stupid thing to write! How utterly perfect Pia was? Like anyone needed to document
that.
Like the whole world didn’t witness it every day of their lives. Muriel rifled through the rack to find another shimmering dress to try on. Maybe something silver?

“ ‘Logan has the temperament of an artist. Years ago, I ceased trying to understand him.’ ”

“Blah, blah, blah,” said Muriel.

“Then I guess you’re not interested in this
long
paragraph about you.”

Muriel’s eyebrows shot up. In her shorts and tank top, she trotted to the Pia end of their mother’s closet. “She wrote about me?”

“ ‘Muriel,’ ” Pia began primly, as if reading the heading in an encyclopedia. “ ‘My second daughter is a huge disappointment.’ ”

“It doesn’t say that.”

Pia held up her mother’s journal. Her finger tapped the first sentence four times. “Dis-ap-point-ment.”

Standing motionless, Muriel felt the soft carpet beneath her bare feet. She commanded her face to look blank as Pia continued reading. “ ‘Muriel is everything Pia is not. Clumsy, chubby, loud. Her teeth will need braces.’ ”

Muriel closed her mouth.

“ ‘Often I wonder how she could be a part of me.’ ”

The sting of tears hurt Muriel’s whole face. In an effort to keep them from escaping, she clamped down her crooked teeth. “I don’t want to hear any more.”

“Too chicken?
Bak, bak, bak
.”

“Too mature. Unlike you, who still lives at home.” Muriel spun around and marched back into the depths of Lidia’s closet, running her tongue along her gums to keep the tears at bay.

“ ‘My biggest concern,’ ” read Pia loudly, “ ‘is Muriel’s habit of lying. It’s sad to say a child can’t be trusted, but Muriel cannot. I suspect something serious. Pathological? Will have her tested before high school.’ ”

Muriel’s mouth fell open. “No way does it say that.”

Pia brandished the diary entry. “Right here in black and white.”

Though Pia kept reading, Muriel only heard snippets. A strange buzzing sound filled her ears.

“ ‘ . . . disturbing fantasy life . . . antisocial . . .’ ”

Pia stood between her and the narrow closet exit. Muriel’s chest burned, as if the oxygen inside that closet had turned to carbon monoxide. Could clothes soak up air itself? Was she now breathing in her own exhalations? Muriel made a move for the door, but Pia stepped forward to block her. “ ‘I have caught Muriel lying so often I must concede that she is
unable
to tell the truth.’ ” Pia looked up. ‘Concede’ means it’s true whether you like it or not.”

“I know what ‘concede’ means,” Muriel lied, sniffing back tears. Whether she liked it or not, tears ran down her cheeks in two thick lines. She quickly wiped them away with the edge of her tank top.

“Why are you so mean?” she asked, her chin quivering.

“It’s not mean if it’s the truth,” Pia replied with the haughtiness of a girl who had always gotten what she wanted. One whose place in the world was as solid as a slurry wall. Muriel shoved past her. Pia spun around and followed her out of the closet. “You don’t have to
cry
about it, baby Muriel.” Snapping the diary shut, she announced, “Dress up is over. I have to study.”

“Fine,” said Muriel, glaring. Then Pia returned Lidia’s diary to exactly where she’d found it: sandwiched neatly between the remote control and the new DVD cover of
Legally Blonde
. Directly in front of the television set. Where Pia couldn’t help but find it, open it, and read it.

Pia, being Pia, would have been unable to keep it to herself.

“Do this for me,” Lidia had said.

Muriel’s mouth fell open. Pia said, “You tell, you die,” before striding out like a supermodel, leaving Muriel alone in her mother’s room.

Never had young Muriel felt so awfully, horribly, terribly grown up. As if she’d been both stretched to her limit and weighted down at the same time. She stepped toward Lidia’s diary slowly. Before lifting the remote control off the top of it, she memorized its position. She left nothing to chance. Ever so gently she set the remote aside. She reached for the journal, though, of course, she knew exactly what she was about to see inside it. Opening its stiff, new binding, she inhaled the doughy scent of fresh paper. Inside, she saw the writing just as her sister had read it.

. . .
Pia is smart, beautiful, slender . . .

Logan has the temperament of an artist . . .

. . . Muriel . . . unable to tell the truth . . .

Then she turned the page to confirm what she suspected. Lidia had made
one
entry at the beginning of the book. Period. One entry that marked her three children for life: Pia was perfect in every way, Logan was a troubled artist, and Muriel was a liar. There, in black ink on white paper, was precisely what Lidia wanted her—and Pia—to see. Lidia’s insurance policy.

It’s sad to say a child cannot be trusted, but Muriel cannot.

Her mother had set the whole thing up. Now, it wouldn’t matter what Muriel said. If she ever told anyone about that day beneath the awning when Father Camilo bent Lidia’s head back in a Broadway kiss—baring the very artery of her life—no one would believe her anyway. Lidia had documented Muriel’s fantasy life. Her inability to tell the truth. Pia, her responsible eldest daughter, would now back her up. She was safe. Who would believe the word of a prepubescent child?

At that exact moment, Muriel felt the very last bits of her childhood slither away. She didn’t try to stop them, corral them somehow. It would have been useless. How could she remain a child when she knew so many ugly truths about adults? About her own mother? Lidia would lie to keep her child from telling the truth. Instead of shielding her daughter, she protected herself. Never had Muriel felt so very alone in her very own family.

You tell, you die.

Didn’t Pia know by now what Lidia should have known as well? Muriel would never
ever
tell. Keeping secrets was her specialty!

Muriel returned Lidia’s diary to its original position on top of the DVD, as if it had never been read at all. She put the remote back, too, and made sure her mother’s bedspread was perfectly smooth before she left the room. Down the hall, she heard music blaring from behind Pia’s closed bedroom door. She heard her sister singing. Still barefoot, she tiptoed to her own room where she shut the door behind her and dragged her desk chair over to the open closet. There she climbed up to reach the top shelf where her
Playbill
collection was stored in its special notebook. The notebook was heavy, each pristine
Playbill
protected in its own plasticine cover—like Lidia’s fancy dresses. Hugging the notebook to her chest, Muriel climbed off the desk chair and sat on her bed. Page by page she slowly looked through her treasures. Merely gazing at the covers made her remember how happy she’d once been. On matinee Saturdays. Before everything went awry.

Chapter 25

H
AD THERE BEEN
a window in that tiny office restroom Muriel might have attempted to squeeze through it. Outside she would have sidled along the sills, tuning out the city traffic below, calming the thudding of her heart, until she reached the corner where she’d shimmy to the ground like a monkey. For one more day, she would have forgotten.

Instead, she dried her face and hands and returned to the inner office where Joanie sat smoking a fresh cigarette.

“It’s my sister,” she blurted out.

“What about Barbie?”

Without warning, Muriel opened her mouth and let loose an ungodly noise that shocked both of them. Her shoulders curled forward and her arms dangled like wet towels on a bathroom hook. Water spilled over her bottom eyelids like from a forgotten bathtub.

“Good Christ,” Joanie said. Grunting in her fussy way, she stood and smashed her cigarette into the overflowing ashtray with a screwdriverish twist. She made her way to Muriel and enveloped her in folds of fabric. “No good can come from holding that shit inside,” she said quietly into the top of Muriel’s head.

After a few moments of silence, she added, “Let it all go, baby girl. I’m here to catch it.”

Not at all meaning to, that’s exactly what Muriel did. She released the energy it took to keep her head up and let her forehead burrow into Joanie’s cushioned shoulder. She made no effort to stop the waterlogged story from sluicing forth in a flood of words and weeping. The warmth of Joanie’s round body was as comforting as a chenille robe. Her smoky smell, along with a powdery sweetness, stirred something deep within her friend. The gentle pat of Joanie’s fleshy hand on her back made Muriel miss the mother she’d never had. A mother who would light up when she walked into a room, feel an ache when she left. One who would sneak up behind her as she stood at the mirror, hug her with her whole body, then nestle her chin into the divot of her collarbone, press her face against her cheek and say, “My nose is wider than yours. Your jawline is more defined.” She would compare features, freckle by freckle, searching for her contribution, delighting each time she found a genetic link. “I gave you that cleft in your chin.” A mother who would use the tight space between them to recall how they were once one person. “Feel my heart beating? That used to be your heart, too,
moje kochanie
.”