“So you told them last night,” Bambi said.
“They happened to guess,” Rachel said. “When they saw the ring.”
“But they knew first.”
“We had to reschedule our Sunday night dinner with them because of the blizzard, just in case.” She had known this would be a sensitive point, but there was no way to tell Joshua that Bambi must be first. She would sulk for days now.
“We could have had a wedding party in conjunction with my birthday,” her mother said. “That’s only three weeks away.”
“But that wouldn’t have been fair to you, stealing your thunder that way.”
“I don’t care about my birthday,” her mother said. “I’m going to be fifty-six. It’s a nothing age.”
“We’ll have a huge blowout when you’re sixty,” Linda said.
“Please-I’ll want to celebrate that even less.” A pause. “I got pregnant on my twentieth birthday. January 30, 1960.”
The sisters looked at one another.
“Mother,” Linda said. “Don’t be silly. I was born September first, and I weighed nine pounds. That would make me the world’s largest preemie.”
Rachel assumed-and assumed her sisters were assuming-that her mother had tripped up on the oft-told lie about Linda being conceived on her parents’ wedding night. December 31, 1959. The girls had long ago figured out that their parents had sex before their wedding night. They rather liked them for it. They also liked their mother for her polite fictions about it, her old-fashioned decorum. But now she was taking it too far, telling such an obvious lie. Even Noah could see through it, if his attention weren’t consumed by the weird soup he was making from his ice cream and cookies.
Her mother stood. “Michelle, we really should go. I have to get home before the blizzard.”
“It won’t even start snowing until Sunday,” Linda said.
“I want to make sure I have what I need. Maybe I’ll drive to the Giant and buy all the clichéd things. Milk, toilet paper, bread. You know our driveway: If it’s as bad as they say it’s going to be, I won’t get out for days.”
“I’m not ready to go,” Michelle protested.
“I’ll take her home,” Rachel promised. “It’s not that far out of my way.”
“Or I could spend the night at your apartment,” Michelle said. Rachel could see the wheels turning. Michelle would get to her place-now hers and Joshua’s-in Fells Point and propose going out. She assumed Rachel would beg off-she always did-and Michelle could then head out on her own. She would show up late the next morning, clutching a huge coffee from the Daily Grind. It would never occur to her to bring one to Rachel or to divulge anything about how she had spent the evening. She might not even come back for days, blithely lying to her mother via phone that she was stranded at Rachel’s because of the blizzard. Michelle, ma belle, their father had sung to her when she was a baby. I love you, I love you, I love you. Had any other man told Michelle that he loved her? Admired her, wanted her, made love to her, yes. But had she been loved?
Bambi left, clearly affronted. Rachel wanted to believe it was because Michelle was staying behind, or even that all three daughters had ganged up on her over the lie about Linda’s conception.
But Rachel knew the real slight was her secret marriage to Joshua. Bambi had to know things first. Rachel had disappointed her mother. It was unfair. She could-she had-gone to such lengths to protect her mother, and now she would get the Frigidaire treatment, as her father had called it, Bambi’s patented deep freeze, all because Joshua’s parents knew first.
“She didn’t even say ‘mazel tov,’” she said to Linda later, cleaning up, trying to make a joke of it.
“Why did you get married in such a rush?” Michelle asked. “Are you knocked up?”
“Michelle!” Spoken in unison, as Linda and Rachel often did.
“Are you knocked up?”
“Michelle!” the terrible twosome gasped, always in each other’s pockets.
Michelle was curled into an armchair, watching her sisters clean up. It wouldn’t be accurate to say it didn’t occur to her to help. It occurred to her and she decided not to. Even in Linda’s big kitchen, there was only so much counter space. A third person would just get in the way.
Henry had decided, after Bambi’s departure, to make a late-night run to the Giant as well, and the kids had clamored to go with him. Rachel had sent Joshua with them and now it was just the three sisters. Three Sisters. Michelle was supposed to have read that for some course at College Park, but she got by with the CliffsNotes. She doubted Chekhov could tell her anything about three sisters that she didn’t already know. She sat in the chair, remote in hand, flicking, flicking, flicking through the channels. She hated Linda’s decor, the whole Martha Stewart, country-cozy thing. Michelle liked modern things, sleek and minimalist.
“That was weird,” Linda said.
“What?” Rachel sounded guilty to Michelle’s ears. Oh, this was rich, Rachel being in the doghouse for once. Michelle must remember to stoke her mother’s hurt, try to keep this going for a while. Plus, it would take Bambi’s mind off the fact that Michelle didn’t have a job.
“Mom trying to persuade us I was conceived on her birthday. We’ve all lived quite happily with the falsehood of the wedding-night conception all these years. Do you think she’s getting addled?”
“Fifty-five is young for that,” Rachel said, but she sounded worried. Rachel already had a dent between her eyes from her incessant worrying.
“Trust me, she’s fine,” Michelle said, settling on MTV. It was a rerun of The Real World, which she wouldn’t mind auditioning for, although she couldn’t imagine a Real World: Baltimore. Baltimore was way too real for the Real World. Still, with her looks and her story, she would easily make it through the preliminary selection rounds.
The problem was, she found the people on the show a little pathetic. She wanted the free rent in a gorgeous apartment, but not if the price was a bunch of petty squabbles and, worse, those terribly earnest conversations. Could be good exposure for an actress, but did she really want to be an actress anyway? It seemed like a monstrous amount of work, and there was seldom any money in it.
“Mom’s just upset that you didn’t tell her about your wedding before Joshua’s folks knew,” Linda said.
“She likes Joshua-”
“We all like Joshua,” Michelle said. “Although I always thought he was gay. Are you sure he’s not gay?”
She thought she’d get another double Michelle! But they held their tongues.
“Okay, okay, he’s not gay. But I’m sorry, he seems like such a lightweight compared to-”
“You were thirteen,” Rachel said, cutting her off. Man, she couldn’t even bear to hear Marc’s name. Weird. “You don’t know anything.”
“I know he was rich. And you let him screw you over. Not a penny.” She put on an English accent. “Not a penny farthing for you, Rachel.” She thought it would make her sister laugh. She was wrong.
“We were married for only two years. It was a mistake. A very young, foolish mistake.”
“It will be sixteen years next fall that I met Henry,” Linda said, obviously trying to steer them away from a fight. “Together for fifteen years, married for thirteen. Four kids.”
“And Mom was nineteen when she met Dad,” Rachel put in.
“So stop acting like I’m a baby at twenty-two. The way I see it, I’m not the one in this room with the blemished record.”
That hurt Rachel, and Michelle instantly regretted it. She didn’t want to hurt Rachel. She looked up to her, truly. Looked up to both her sisters. But she resented them, too. Those photos in their oh-so-proper riding outfits. The years, however brief, of having their father and money. But she resented their closeness, most of all. They told each other things that they didn’t tell her. So it was only right that she didn’t tell them everything. Not that she had any significant secrets. But she was working on a few.