“I heard you. I was in the next room, remember?”
“We thought you were asleep.”
“Do you have any idea how noisy you were? Crashing around, moaning, talking about condoms . . . Good for you, by the way—making sure he wore one. Made me proud of my little sister.”
“Why didn’t you tell me you heard us?”
“Well, you were trying to be discreet. It’s not your fault the walls are thin. I figured you were entitled to your privacy.”
“I don’t think it counts as privacy if you just pretend not to hear.” She slid back down so their heads were near each other. “Anyway, no, I didn’t sleep with him again.” She told Ava how Daniel was already living with someone back in New York but had waited to tell her that until after they’d had sex.
“Jesus,” Ava said. “What a jerk.”
“Yeah,” Lauren said. “I hated him when he first told me. But today I actually felt kind of sorry for him. His mother’s dying, Ava. She has probably less than a month to live.”
“That doesn’t excuse what he did.”
“I know,” Lauren said. “But to be fair, it wasn’t like he ever claimed to be serious about me. The only thing we had in common was that our moms were sick. And, in the end, we didn’t really have that in common because his was so much sicker.”
“Thank God for that,” Ava said. “Better his than ours.”
“That’s an awful thing to say.”
“I know. I don’t care. I want Mom to be okay.”
Lauren remembered the look on Daniel’s face when he first walked in, the blindness there, and the pain behind the blindness. She said, “Me too.”
They sat quietly for a few minutes and then Lauren stirred and said, “By the way, I talked to her today. Mom, I mean. She wanted to know what’s going on with you and Russell.”
She could feel Ava stiffen into a more upright position next to her. “I hope you told her nothing’s going on with us. Nothing at all.”
“I told her he really likes you.”
“He doesn’t really like me,” Ava said. “If he really liked me, he wouldn’t always be working so hard to try to change me.”
“He bought you a pair of shoes,” Lauren said. “Any way you look at it, that’s just nice.”
But Ava’s face remained stony. “I’m sick of him—and you, for that matter—telling me there’s something wrong with me because I don’t want to spend hours every day fussing over my outfit and worrying about whether my hair is ultra-thick and shiny or just hair. I’m happy with the way I look, and I think I’m the one making the right choices about this stuff, not you or the ten thousand women Russell’s gone out with before me and the ten thousand women he’ll go out with after me.” Then she added hastily, “Not that there’s a ‘me’ in his life in the first place. Just . . . Well, you know what I mean.”
“Not really,” Lauren said. “What’s your point?”
“My point,” Ava said, her voice going up higher than normal, “is that I don’t want some stupid Prada shoes forced on me when I’m perfectly happy with the shoes I already have.”
Lauren rolled her eyes. “You’re not seriously mad at him about that, are you? You can’t be.”
“You don’t get it,” Ava said. She stood up. “You’re incapable of getting it. You’re just as bad as he is. Just leave me alone about Russell, okay? Every time I see him, I end up feeling worse about myself. It doesn’t work.”
“You’re blaming him for something that’s your fault. If you’d just—”
“What about ‘leave me alone’ don’t you understand?” Ava turned on her heel. “I’m going to sleep. Don’t make a lot of noise when you use the bathroom.” She stomped off.
Lauren sighed and watched her go. For all of Ava’s intelligence and professional success, she could be awfully stupid about some things. The girl needed help.
Chapter 16
Lauren was usually still asleep when Ava left for work, but on Thursday morning she came into the bedroom as soon as Ava’s alarm went off.
“I planned an outfit for you,” she said. “It’s all laid out in the bathroom.”
“Huh?” said Ava, who was sleepily fingering the snooze button. “You did what?”
“I want you to put on the clothes I picked out for you,” Lauren said. “It’s easier than not doing it, right? It’ll take you two seconds to throw them on.”
Ava was apparently too weary to argue because she just nodded, threw back the covers, and stumbled toward the bathroom.
Fifteen minutes later, she emerged with damp hair, wearing the black pants Russell had given her and a dark green top of Lauren’s that had three-quarter-length sleeves and a scoop neck that dipped lower than anything Ava usually wore but which, even so, didn’t reveal anything but the elegant hollow of her neck and a few inches of pale, smooth skin below and around that. “Perfect,” Lauren said, with real delight. “Now give me your hand.”
“Why?” Ava said, but Lauren had already taken her by the wrist and shoved four different silver bracelets up and over her fingers. “I never wear bracelets,” Ava said, shaking them into place and studying them dubiously.
“I know. They look great. Come here.”
“Why are we doing this?” Ava asked as Lauren pulled her into the bathroom.
“I’m proving a point.” She put the toilet cover down. “Sit.”
“I don’t have a lot of time.”
“This won’t take long.”
Ava sat and Lauren quickly and expertly brushed on some blush, eye shadow, and mascara—all belonging to her, of course—occasionally and indifferently swatting away her sister’s protesting upraised hand. “I’d do more, but I know this is all you’ll sit for,” she said as she dabbed on some light lip stain. She put her head back and studied her sister’s face. She nodded. “It works. Now put your head down.”
“Huh?” Ava said again, and Lauren wished she had thought to brew her sister a cup of coffee before starting all this.
“Like this.” She pulled Ava’s head forward and thrust it down so she was staring at the floor between her knees, then grabbed the blow dryer and started working on her hair, using her fingers to flip it forward and down. A minute later, she said, “Okay, now sit up and twist toward the sink so I can get at your back.”
“I’m hating this,” Ava said, turning, her eyes shut against the dryer’s blast. “I’ll give you two more minutes. If you’re not done by then . . .”
Lauren was using a brush now. “Okay, okay.” She finished within the allotted time. It wasn’t perfect, but at least Ava’s hair looked sleeker and more stylishly groomed than it normally did.
Ava stood up and looked in the mirror. “Nice,” she admitted. She peered more closely. “Too much eye shadow, though.”
“I hardly used any. You’re just so used to seeing yourself without anything, the smallest amount looks strange to you.”
Ava turned to her. “And why do I need to be all done up today? Are you planning something I should know about?”
“Nope—I’m just proving a point.” Lauren unplugged her hair dryer and wrapped the cord around the handle. “It took all of ten extra minutes—not even—to get you ready this morning and you look a thousand times better than usual.”
“It’s still ten wasted minutes. And I think ‘a thousand times’ is an exaggeration.”
“How wasted?” Lauren asked. “What would you have done with those ten minutes otherwise?”
“I could have worked,” Ava said. “I bill at three hundred dollars an hour.”
“You spend enough time writing up contracts,” Lauren said. “This is a better use of your time. Wait until the compliments come rolling in.”
“No one will even notice.” Ava walked out of the bathroom. She reached up to touch her hair, and the bracelets clinked gently against one another. “These are going to drive me nuts.”
“Oh, please. Here, put these on.” Lauren retrieved a pair of shoes from the top of the d
resser where she had left them earlier that morning after discovering them stuffed way in the back of the closet.
Ava groaned. “Russell’s shoes.”
“Shut up and wear them and be grateful.”
“I’ll shut up and I’ll wear them, but I won’t be grateful,” Ava said. She slipped her feet into them. “They’re too high. I’ll never be able to walk in them.”
“Oh, stop whining. You’ll get used to them. They make your legs look like they’re a mile long. See?” Lauren closed the bathroom door so Ava could view herself in the full-length mirror. “A tiny bit of effort and you look fantastic.”
“Don’t be an idiot,” Ava said and turned her back on the reflection. But she glanced at it again over her shoulder as she left.
People did notice. Ava wasn’t sure she liked that. When Jeremy said, “Wow! Look at you!” she wondered whether all that enthusiasm meant he usually thought she looked awful. When a senior partner passed her in the corridor and then stopped and turned around and said, “I almost didn’t recognize you, Ava. You look lovely today,” she worried that his flattery came at the cost of some professional respect, that there was something dismissive in his tone. And when a wealthy client she had never met before came in to talk about the prenuptial contract she had drawn up for him and his soon-to-be fourth wife, she didn’t like the way he gave her a real once-over look when she stood up (bracelets tinkling annoyingly) to greet him.
She knew that there were plenty of professional women—including quite a few in her own office—who were attractive and stylish and perfectly successful, that her experience and ability were what counted and that being plain had no more street value than being beautiful, and possibly even less. But the glances and comments still made her uneasy. She removed the bracelets midmorning—they just didn’t feel like they belonged in a law office to her—and she considered washing the makeup off in the bathroom. Only her fear that it would come off unevenly and leave her skin patchy and her eyes raccoony kept her from scrubbing at it.
Well, that and the fact that when she caught sight of herself in the mirror, she liked what she saw there. Every glimpse gave her an equally quick jolt of pleasure. It was like spotting an especially good photo of herself in one of her parents’ albums.
And when at lunchtime a random guy at the food court stopped to pick up the napkin that a gust of wind had blown off of her plastic container and returned it to her with a grin and a flourish, she raised her chin and smiled back at him with more confidence than she would have had on any other day.
All of which meant—
Ava had no idea what it all meant. No clear message was coming through to her, and since she liked things to be clear, she found that unsettling.
“Hey, Jeremy?” she said that afternoon after he had dropped some papers on her desk and picked up her outgoing mail. “What’s this on my calendar?” She pointed at the screen. “It says I have a family dinner at seven-thirty tonight.”
“Lauren was worried you’d forget,” Jeremy said with a slightly patronizing smile. “She called yesterday to make sure it was on your schedule. Which it wasn’t. But I put it on there for you.”
“I don’t remember anyone even telling me about it,” Ava said, a little glumly: she had felt out of the family loop lately, since she couldn’t spend her days chatting on the phone or running over to their parents’ house the way Lauren could. When Lauren was living in New York, Ava didn’t have to do much to be the better daughter—just show up for dinner now and then and remember her parents’ anniversary and birthdays—but with Lauren back in town escorting their mother to the hospital on a regular basis, Ava’s role as number-one daughter was slipping through her fingers. “Did Lauren say if it was the whole family?” If her mother was feeling up to going out on a Thursday—just two days after chemo—that would certainly be something worth celebrating. “What’s the occasion?”
“I have no idea,” Jeremy said. “Want me to get Lauren on the phone for you?”
“No, that’s okay. Whatever.” She had a lot of work to get through if she was going out that night, and Lauren had trouble keeping phone conversations brief.
A partner unexpectedly called her into a meeting at six-thirty and kept her in his office for over an hour, and there was an urgent phone message from a client waiting for her when she emerged, which she returned in the car on her way to the restaurant, blessing the invention of Bluetooth as she did so. She talked fast and wrapped up the conversation as she was pulling up to the restaurant, then snatched the valet ticket right out of the guy’s hand and dashed inside. Her family had made comments in the past about her putting work ahead of them, and while she thought the accusations were unwarranted, she had to admit that at times like this—when she was half an hour late for a family dinner and hadn’t had a chance to call ahead and apologize—circumstances conspired to make them appear well-founded.
As she entered the dark restaurant, the first thing she saw was Lauren walking toward her. She must have been waiting right by the door for Ava to arrive. An apology already forming on her lips, Ava raised her hand in guilty greeting at the exact same moment that Lauren saluted her.
And that was when Ava realized she was waving at herself—at her reflection in the mirror behind the bar. In the dim light, wearing the clothes Lauren had picked out for her, her face made up the way Lauren made up her face, she had fooled herself into thinking she was her own little sister.
She dropped her hand, embarrassed, and looked around quickly, hoping no one else had noticed.
But had she always looked so much like Lauren? And why did she think Lauren was so much prettier and thinner and sexier than she was, when her own quick glance couldn’t tell them apart?
She postponed the question for later analysis, since the hostess was approaching her. She gave her last name and the hostess said, “I’ll take you to your table,” and led her toward the back of the restaurant. She looked for her parents and Lauren but didn’t see them, thought maybe she was the first to get there—but that didn’t make sense since she was late—and anyway the tables they were heading toward seemed too small for a big group—was turning to the hostess to question her—but the woman was already gesturing toward a table for two with an empty seat—and someone there was rising to his feet in recognition and greeting.
“There you are,” Russell Markowitz said. “I almost gave up.” He stepped forward and kissed her on both cheeks. He was wearing another well-tailored suit with his usual crisply ironed white cotton dress shirt and a dark blue paisley tie.
Confused, Ava accepted his kiss as she tried to figure out what was going on. Lauren must have invited Russell to join them. But where was the rest of the family? Had they been seated somewhere else? Or was it just a coincidence that Russell was at the restaurant, and the hostess was still going to lead her to her actual table? Except, no, that couldn’t be it, because he seemed to have been expecting her. She turned to the hostess for elucidation. “Is this my table?”
“Is that all right?” the hostess said. “People usually like to sit back here, but if you prefer to be up front—”
“No, it’s fine. It’s just—”
The hostess pulled out the chair. “Let me know if you want to change,” she said with a slightly impatient shake of the chair, and, obedient as always to authority, Ava sank into it.
Russell also settled back into his seat. “I don’t get an apology?” He cocked his head at her. “You’re almost half an hour late. I was ready to give up. I tried your cell but no answer.”
“Sorry,” she said. “Work went late and then I got stuck on a phone call with a client.” She looked around. “Where is everybody?”
“It’s a weeknight,” he said with a shrug.
“What?” She realized he, like the waitress, had misunderstood her. “I mean my family. Where are they?”
“Did you invite your family to come?” Now he seemed confused. “We’ll need a bigger table.”
“It’s
a family dinner, isn’t it?”
He gave her a funny look. “That’s not how it was described to me.”
It felt like the two of them were speaking different languages. “How was it described to you?” she said. “And by whom?”
Russell continued to stare at her for a moment. Then he put his hands flat on the table. “Okay,” he said carefully. “Did you or did you not call me two nights ago and ask if you could take me out to dinner as a thank-you for the shoes I gave you?”
“I never called you.”
He processed that. “You’re serious, aren’t you?” She nodded, and he said, “I got a call from someone—on your cell phone—who claimed to be you and who sounded like you, so either you were so drunk you don’t remember making the call or—” He stopped.
Ava said grimly, “People used to confuse our voices all the time when we were teenagers.”
“It was a quick conversation, too,” he said. “Even so, I can’t believe I fell for it. So you had nothing to do with any of this?” He gestured around them, at the restaurant’s dining room.
“My assistant told me Lauren had planned a family dinner for tonight. That’s all I knew.”
“She said it was a family dinner?” He sat back and folded his arms, sinking his chin into his chest like a petulant child. “She must have thought you wouldn’t have come just to see me.”
Ava said irritably, “I don’t know how her mind works. Don’t read too much into it.”
There was a pause. Then Russell said, “I was worried. At brunch the other day. You seemed kind of annoyed with me, but I couldn’t figure out why. So when you called and sounded so happy about the shoes and wanted to get together—”
“That wasn’t me.”
“I know that now,” he said icily. “I’m well aware of that.” He fingered the martini glass in front of him. “I feel like an idiot.”
“It’s not your fault,” Ava said. “Lauren and I have really similar voices, and if she was trying to sound like me—”
“Not just about that.” He ran his fingers through his hair, made it stand up. “Everything I do with or for you seems to go wrong. You didn’t actually like the shoes, did you?”