Sisterland

  In the instant of seeing her, I’d decided she was a local NBC liaison, and I had to correct my misimpression even as I was saying aloud how nice it was to meet her. She appeared to be about five years older than Vi and me, with gray threaded through her otherwise brown bob, and she was attractive and (perhaps this was unfair to note) not at all overweight. She said, “Not sure how you take yours, but I’m trusting Vi’s got some milk and sugar.”

  What I thought then—besides that if I used up my one allotted coffee so early in the morning, which of course I was about to, it was going to be an awfully long day—was that instead of being wary of Stephanie on my sister’s behalf, I was wondering precisely what Stephanie saw in Vi. Stephanie seemed like someone who had her act together; she seemed like a grown-up. The coffee smelled warmly nutty as I lifted off the plastic lid and took a sip. “Black is perfect,” I said. “Thanks.”

  Stephanie followed me into the living room, where Vi was sitting with atypically erect posture on the folding chair and the sound guy was inserting an earpiece into her left ear. I could feel Vi and Stephanie’s confusion over how to greet each other, which surely had as much to do with the newness of their relationship as with the presence of the television crew. Then, decisively, Stephanie leaned in, kissed the top of Vi’s head—much as I had kissed Jeremy before leaving the house that morning, and the right choice given Vi’s makeup, I thought—and stepped back. “I got you a coffee,” Stephanie said. “Don’t worry, it’s not cinnamon-flavored. But I’ll just hold on to it for now.”

  “Vi, you don’t want to smudge your lipstick,” I said.

  “Smudged lipstick is the least of it,” Vi said. “I’m about to have a heart attack.” She gave me an accusatory look and said, “Matt Lauer is interviewing me, but did you know I won’t be able to see him? I’m supposed to be looking at that thing”—she gestured toward the video camera, set on a tripod—“and I’ll just hear his voice.”

  “Take deep breaths,” Stephanie said. “In through the nose, out through the mouth. You’re going to do awesome.”

  “Violet, you’re on in thirty seconds,” Bill said, and my own heart began hammering.

  Then Bill was saying, “Five, four, three, two”—so they really did that—and even though I was standing still, next to Stephanie in the doorway of the living room, I was breathless. Without a doubt, Vi looked the prettiest she had in years. Was it too much to hope this wouldn’t be a trainwreck? And soon I heard Matt Lauer, his voice weirdly familiar, saying, “We turn now to St. Louis, Missouri, where a local psychic has made a prediction that has, no pun intended, unsettled many residents. Last week, Violet Shramm went public with her belief that a major earthquake will rock the region in the near future. Critics say she’s a fearmonger, but Shramm claims she just wants to save lives. Violet Shramm, welcome to the program.”

  There was a slight delay, and Vi said, “Thanks for having me.”

  “You’ve put a lot of people on edge with your prediction,” Matt Lauer said, and the first thing I thought was That’s not a question. The second thing was Why didn’t I offer to practice with Vi? I could have acted like the interviewer.

  But in a tone of chummy assurance, Vi said, “Matt, it absolutely wasn’t my intention to scare people,” and I knew then that she’d be okay. Using his name like that—I loved her presumptuousness. “But a piece of information was available to me,” she said, “and I thought it was important to make it available to other people.”

  “What’s your response to the scientists who say that predicting an earthquake is impossible?”

  “We’re all entitled to our opinion.” There was still the delay after Matt Lauer’s questions, but it was obviously due to something technological and not hesitation on Vi’s part, because she was smiling warmly. Good for her for not being defensive, I thought. “I received a message, though, and frankly, it was an urgent message. Now, Matt, your viewers might not know that one of the biggest earthquakes ever in this country happened in Missouri back in the nineteenth century.”

  “Right, the New Madrid earthquake. Still, some might argue that what you’ve done is a bit like yelling fire in a crowded theater.”

  “I’m yelling fire because I think there’s about to be one.”

  “When you said a quake would happen soon, can you be more specific?”

  The expression on Vi’s face was still calm and open as she said, nodding, “The date I’m getting is October sixteenth.”

  “Wow, that is specific,” Matt Lauer said. “And just a little more than two weeks away. Now, when you say you received a message, can you explain what you mean? Do you hear voices? Do you commune with the dead?”

  “Those are all good questions, Matt. It’s different for different people in my line of work, and for me it’s always been a combination of things—sometimes dreams, sometimes a conscious visualization, other times just a gut feeling. I’m privileged to have a spiritual guide I call Guardian, and in this case, he’s the one who warned me.”

  “Interesting.” Though of course I couldn’t see Matt Lauer’s face, his voice was both disbelieving and respectful—not an easy feat but perhaps the explanation for why he’d succeeded in his field. “And how are you personally preparing for an earthquake? Where will you be on October sixteenth?”

  “I’m not fleeing the state, if that’s what you’re asking. I’ll probably pick up some bottled water and that kind of thing.” Vi would never pick up emergency supplies; the only way she’d acquire them was if I carried them into her house, which I made a mental note to do. She said, “You know how if you live in Florida, there’s hurricane season, or here in the Midwest, the spring is tornado season? Well, the advice I’m giving people is to consider this earthquake season. Just be smart about it. But the biggest point I want to convey to your viewers is that I don’t stand to benefit from this. I don’t sell earthquake insurance. What I always say to my clients is, okay, here’s what I’m getting from Guardian. Make of this information what you will. I’m just the vessel.”

  “All food for thought,” Matt Lauer said. “Very provocative food for thought. That’s Violet Shramm, a St. Louis psychic warning people in the area that a major earthquake is going to hit just over two weeks from now. Thanks for being on the program, Violet.”

  “Thank you, Matt.”

  Then I heard Matt Lauer say, “Coming up: A mouse who lives up to the name of ‘mighty,’ and a controversial new trend in tattoos. That’s after the break,” and then there was music, and Bill was walking out from behind the camera, and Vi was saying, “Oh my God, I completely just sweated through my shirt. My pits are literally waterfalls right now.”

  “She’s off-mike, right?” I said.

  “You’re still miked, but you’re not being broadcast.”

  “Vi, you were cool as a cucumber,” Stephanie said. “You were fabulous.”

  “You were great,” I said. “You really were.”

  “I wish we could have heard the questions,” Stephanie said. “I can’t wait to watch the whole thing online.”

  I squinted at her in confusion. She wished we could have heard the questions? And then I had the queasy realization that Matt Lauer’s part of the interview had, presumably, not been audible except in Vi’s earpiece. Which meant—I didn’t even want to think about it—that I had somehow been in her head. If I’d done so on purpose, it would have been a violation of the pact I’d made with myself, but given that it had been involuntary, was I responsible? It was like breaking a diet while sleepwalking.

  As the sound guy unhooked Vi’s mike, he said, “You really believe we’re gonna get a big one?” He sounded skeptical but affably so.

  “Sorry,” Vi said. “But yes.”

  The three men packed up their equipment and moved the furniture back to how it had been before, and by the time they left, it still wasn’t yet six-thirty. Vi gestured toward her face. “I’m going to scrub off my makeup. If I’m not out in an hour, send reinforcements.”

&nbsp
; When she was gone, Stephanie chuckled. “I have to say that your sister might be the most fascinating person I’ve ever met.”

  “I take it you haven’t spent a lot of time around New Age types?” I didn’t know if she’d be able to tell that I considered this a point in her favor.

  She laughed again. “I guess it doesn’t take much to seem interesting compared to us folks in IT. Speaking of which, I have a meeting in the Central West End at nine, but I thought we could take Violet out to breakfast. Are you free awhile longer?”

  The way she seemed to see Vi’s profession—it was as low-key, as unfraught, as if Vi conducted research in Antarctica or was the personal assistant to a movie star. Vi’s psychicness was intriguing to Stephanie but not repellent, not laughable.

  I felt an impulse to decline the breakfast invitation—away from both children, I was always on borrowed time—but surely Vi’s appearance on national television granted me an exemption from our household’s morning routine. “Where were you thinking?” I asked.

  “The restaurant at the Four Seasons has quite a view. Or if you know somewhere else Violet would prefer—”

  “That sounds great.” I’d envisioned a place like Denny’s, and a chance to go to the Four Seasons, child-free, sounded like a delightful novelty. The hotel had opened next to the river a few years earlier, and I’d never set foot in it; in fact, I couldn’t remember when I’d last been downtown. I said, “I won’t be a third wheel, will I?”

  “Kate, if anyone’s a third wheel, it’s not you. But how can I really get to know Violet unless I know her twin?”

  No man I’d dated, including Jeremy, had ever expressed a comparable sentiment.

  Then she said, as if catching herself, “Not that you’re the same person, I realize. But that’s why I want to get to know you, too.”

  “Just to warn you, compared to Vi, I’m very boring.”

  “Ah, but Kate,” Stephanie said, “aren’t we all?”

  A moment of logistical indecision occurred just before we departed for downtown, when we were standing on the sidewalk outside Vi’s house and it became apparent that Stephanie thought we should take three separate cars, which was a sensible enough idea if we were each headed in a different direction after breakfast and if we were each in the habit of driving. But Vi was looking at me beseechingly, and I said, “Stephanie, if you want to take Vi, I can drop her off back here, and that way, we both get to ride with the celebrity.” If Stephanie had no problem with Vi being a professional psychic, I doubted Vi’s not driving would be a deterrent, either, but the announcement wasn’t mine to make.

  And of course, if I dropped Vi back at her house after breakfast, I’d be even later getting home, but as she climbed into the passenger seat of Stephanie’s Volvo, Vi widened her eyes and raised her eyebrows; she was thanking me.

  As I arrived downtown, Jeremy called my cellphone, and when I answered I said, “Is it airing here?”

  “It just finished. She was good.”

  I could hear a withholding in his voice. “What did you really think?”

  “She looked great. You may have missed your calling as a makeup artist. Rosie said, ‘That lady looks like Aunt Vi.’ ” I wasn’t thrilled to hear that he’d let Rosie see the segment, which Jeremy must have guessed, because a second later he said, “Don’t worry—she didn’t understand it. She was barely paying attention.” Then he said, “Vi set herself up for even more of a media storm by saying it’ll be on the sixteenth. Now it’s like an end-of-the-world prediction.”

  “You think?” I needed to tell him, didn’t I, about my complicity in this date?

  He continued, “But maybe it’s for the best, because then the sixteenth comes and goes, and it’s over instead of the prediction lingering indefinitely.” Then he said, “We can talk more about this when you get home, but you remember that October sixteenth is the weekend of my conference in Denver, right? It’s that Friday.”

  “Is it really?” Now I couldn’t tell him; if I did, it would look like I’d picked the sixteenth on purpose.

  “Don’t answer this now, but what if you guys come with me?” Jeremy said. “I checked, and the hotel has an indoor pool. We could have a little Colorado vacation.”

  It was, in some ways, a tempting idea. But the one plane trip we’d taken so far with both Rosie and Owen, to visit Jeremy’s family in Virginia, hadn’t gone smoothly, and the prospect of getting through the flight to Denver, convincing the children to sleep in unfamiliar cribs, all of us in the same hotel room, and looking out for them by myself for three days while Jeremy attended panels—it actually would be the opposite of a vacation. In fact, I wouldn’t even be able to take Rosie swimming without Jeremy because I couldn’t watch her and Owen in the water at the same time. Plus, I’d be worried about leaving my father and Vi behind in St. Louis; I was sure that neither of them would consider leaving town.

  “Just think on it,” Jeremy said. “So I’ve already gotten emails from people who saw Vi.”

  “Who?”

  “Let’s see—from Sally, from Cockroach’s wife, and from Xiaojian Marcus.” These people were, respectively, the wife of Jeremy’s cousin, the wife of his best friend from college, and the wife of Jeremy’s department head, a professor herself at Wash U’s medical school, who had no children and who had told me when Jeremy and I were engaged that being a good mother and a good employee were mutually exclusive. That Xiaojian had emailed Jeremy meant, presumably, that she’d told her husband—that Jeremy’s boss now knew for sure that the earthquake psychic was his sister-in-law. But if Jeremy wasn’t going to point out this fact, neither was I. “Do only women watch the Today show?” he was asking. “By the way, Owen had a blowout.”

  “Which pants?”

  “The gray ones.”

  “Put them in a plastic bag and leave it at the top of the basement stairs.”

  “Done and done.”

  “I’m actually not on my way home yet,” I said. “Stephanie—Vi’s girlfriend—or whatever—she also came for the taping and she wants us to take Vi out for breakfast at the Four Seasons. Is that okay? You don’t teach until eleven today, right?”

  “The Four Seasons? This woman must really like your sister.”

  “So what did the email say from Xiaojian? Something snotty?”

  “It was one line. I think all it said was ‘I just saw your sister-in-law on television.’ ”

  I said, “ ‘And P.S. I’m still gloating that I turned out to be right about your wife not being able to handle motherhood and a job.’ ”

  “I guarantee you’ve spent more time thinking about that conversation than she has.” I could tell Jeremy had turned his mouth away from the phone receiver as he said, “Let him play with it, too, Rosie.” To me, he said, “Go have fun at your fancy lesbian breakfast.”

  The silverware was big and heavy and the tablecloths were thick and white and there were fresh roses in a vase. The person who approached us as we were finishing our food was someone I had never seen before: a woman in her fifties wearing running shorts and a red mesh T-shirt that seemed so inappropriate for the restaurant that she had to be someone who found herself in elegant settings frequently enough to have become indifferent to them. Looking right at Vi, she said in a scolding tone, “Didn’t I just see you on TV?”

  “Oh—” This was probably the last time being recognized surprised Vi. “Yeah, I guess you did.”

  “I don’t usually watch those morning programs, but I was on the treadmill upstairs.” The woman pointed vaguely above her head, then said, “I’m so glad I don’t live in St. Louis! I’m here for a meeting, and thank God I’m flying out this afternoon.”

  Stephanie said to the woman, “Do you want Vi’s autograph?” Was Stephanie being sarcastic? It appeared not.

  The woman made an expression of distaste. “No,” she said. “I need to go shower.” She looked again at Vi and said with self-satisfaction, “I knew I recognized you.”

  After she was gone, Vi
said, “That was kind of weird.” She didn’t seem entirely displeased, but I could feel the way she didn’t yet have a framework for thinking about such encounters.

  “Get used to it, sweetie,” Stephanie said, and the surprise wasn’t the “sweetie”; it was that Stephanie sounded proud. At what point had Vi revealed her occupation—at the same time as or prior to mentioning her upcoming appearance on the Today show? How did a conversation like that unfold? I recalled telling Jeremy about having senses in the car on a drive back from an overnight trip we’d taken to see a concert in Kansas City, but we’d been together for six weeks at that point, not a few days, and even that amount of time had later seemed to me inadequate to have supported the weight of the disclosure. And besides, when I’d told Jeremy, I’d presented the senses as involuntary and private—not as my calling or vocation, certainly not as anything I’d be chatting about on TV.

  When the bill came, Stephanie picked it up immediately, and I said to her, “Let’s split it.”

  Stephanie was sticking her credit card in the leather folder. She shook her head. “Definitely my treat. It’s not every day I get to have breakfast with a gorgeous set of twins.”

  “Although you did once date the winner of a beauty pageant,” Vi said. Nodding toward me, she said to Stephanie, “Tell her.”

  Stephanie laughed. “This was in another lifetime, and I’m not sure dating is the right word. I grew up in the sticks, in a tiny town in Arkansas called Cave City, and back in high school, I had a fling with our town’s Miss Watermelon.”

  “Whose official title was Queen Melon.” Vi was beaming.

  “She now has three children,” Stephanie said. “And a plumber husband.”

  “She’s become Mrs. Melon,” Vi said.

  “I guess we all have our claim to fame,” Stephanie said.