Читать книгу Hand-Me-Down - Lee Nichols - Страница 7

Early evening. I sprawled across the bed and painted my fingernails with Charlotte’s blue polish.

“Not that,” Charlotte said, from her palatial walk-in closet. “It’s so last season.”

“It’s Hard Candy. I like it.”

She shook her head, but didn’t push me. Charlotte never did. “Well, on you, it still works.” She rummaged in the closet and held up a satin blouse and velvet jeans in a gorgeous powder blue. “Here, these’ll match.”

“I don’t think so, Charlotte….”

“They’re Gucci.”

My jaw tightened. I loved Gucci. She knew I loved Gucci. But I had my principles. Or at least I had my single solitary principle: not to wear my sisters’ hand-me-downs. “Why don’t you wear it?” I said, with a straight face.

She was eight months pregnant, and a honker. She was wearing a black tank top, a long knit skirt and a belly like an overinflated beach ball. “Because it’s not a size seventy-two.”

“Give it to Emily then.”

Charlotte snorted. “God knows what she’ll show up in. I wish she’d let me take her shopping.” She held up a cream linen dress. “How about this?”

I ignored her. I was sticking to the white blouse and jeans I’d bought with my discount at Banana. “Speaking of Emily.” I screwed the cap back on the polish. “Guess who we ran into today?”

“Ian Dunne. She said you invited him.”

“Well, it sort of popped out….”

“She also said you were putting on quite a show dressing the mannequins. You know, if you want to dress models I can introduce you to a stylist.”

I looked at Charlotte. “You don’t mind?”

“Of course not, Annie.” Her natural pregnancy-glow doubled in wattage. “And I know just the woman. She dressed me for my calendar.”

“I meant, you don’t mind that I invited Ian. And it’s exaggerating to say you were dressed for your calendar.” Charlotte was America’s favorite swimsuit model. She’d won the cover of Sports Illustrated’s swimsuit issue two years in a row. Her calendar sold a zillion copies and I’ve seen her naked looking more modest than she did in some of those swimsuits.

“Why would I mind about Ian?” Charlotte smiled. “Do you remember how you asked him—”

“I remember.”

“It’ll be fun to see him. I can’t wait for David to meet him.”

David was Charlotte’s husband. She’d always dated gorgeous men, because they were the only ones with the egos to think they deserved Charlotte Olsen. Then she’d met David. A shy, unassuming anesthesiologist who looked like a young Billy Crystal. It was love at first sight.

“When’s he get home?” I asked.

Charlotte glanced at the clock. “An hour. And InStyle should be here soon.”

“I still don’t know how you convinced them to shoot Emily’s book party.”

“It wasn’t that hard—The Nation did name Emily one of the ten most dangerous young minds in America.”

“Yeah, number seven,” I said dismissively, because having two famous older sisters was more than I could bear. I’d thought Emily was safely obscure, but as a new Ph.D. at twenty-seven, she’d rocked the feminist world with her dissonant thoughts on pornography. Wonderful. “Somehow I don’t see InStyle caring about dangerous minds.”

Charlotte became suddenly fascinated by the shoes she was holding. “I can’t even wear normal shoes. I have hippo feet.”

“What did you do?” I asked.

“Nothing.”

“Something with InStyle?”

She lowered her bulk into a velvet boudoir chair. “I had to promise People, which is owned by the same parent company, exclusive pictures of me and the baby after the birth.”

“Charlotte!” She always tried to keep her personal life out of the spotlight.

“Well, you know. For Emily. David said it would be okay.”

“For that, they should put her in the ‘50 Most Beautiful’ issue.”

She inspected the shoes more closely.

“You asked and they said no?” I said.

“Don’t tell Emily.”

“Believe me, I won’t.”

When a model breaks out like Charlotte had, agents start looking at her sisters—same genes, right? Her agency offered to test shoot me when I turned fourteen. I was tempted, despite them wanting me to lose fifteen pounds, but Charlotte and Dad said no. I sulked, but was secretly pleased. I do look vaguely—very vaguely—like Charlotte. Except in front of a camera, her light hair shines, her tawny skin glows, and her smile blinds unprepared passersby. In front of a camera, I just look like me. Plus, I like to eat.

Nobody ever offered to test shoot Emily.

Dad showed up before David or InStyle, and immediately headed for the buffet.

I knocked a taquito from his fingers. “Wait till the guests arrive.”

“I’m starving. I held off lunch for this.”

“And if Emily catches you?”

He stepped away from the buffet, almost knocking over a vase of flowers. Dad was always nervous at Charlotte’s. The reek of wealth was disconcerting—the mansion in Montecito, the garden, the pool. Actually I was a little nervous myself, as Billy would arrive in an hour and I had no idea what I was supposed to do with him. At least I looked all right. Charlotte hadn’t convinced me to wear her clothes, but she’d done my hair and makeup. She was a cosmetics genius—with me spackled and shellacked, it was obvious we were sisters.

Then she waddled into the living room on David’s arm, and I sighed. She’d made herself up, too, so we were back to looking like strangers. Even pregnant, she was gorgeous. It was rare for me to see her fully made-up, and I’d forgotten how stunning she was. Perfect bone structure, large blue eyes, and lustrous hair that was meant to be long.

“Dad’s hungry,” I said.

“I skipped lunch,” Dad explained.

David’s admiring gaze broke from Charlotte. “I’ll get a plate from the buffet.”

“Emily,” Charlotte and I said.

“Right,” David said. “There’s chips in the kitchen. Back in a second.”

“Get me a slice of cheese,” Charlotte said.

David headed off and I eyed Charlotte’s enormous stomach, realizing I hadn’t capitalized on her condition as much as I should have. She’d grown positively huge. “Sit by me,” I said, and patted the couch. If I were lucky, the InStyle photographer would get a shot of this. The caption: A grotesquely pregnant Charlotte Olsen, and her svelte, much younger sister, Anne.

Charlotte sat beside me and the cushions seesawed me into the air. “You two sick of each other yet?” she asked. Meaning me and Dad, living together.

Dad and I looked at each other. Why get sick? We got along great. Plus, I didn’t have to pay rent, so I could spend my little all on necessities like clothes, mochas, and alcohol.

“Because the guest house is empty,” Charlotte said. “With the baby coming, I thought it’d be nice to have Anne close.”

Sure. I’d already had a lifetime of Charlotte’s secondhand goods, the last thing I wanted was to take care of her second generation. Then reason lifted its shaggy head. The guest house was a cozy cottage with one bedroom, a kitchen with a Wolf stove and Sub-Zero fridge, and a living room out of Metropolitan Home.

“How much for rent?” Dad asked, a shade too eagerly.

“Well, if she’d baby-sit every now and then…”

“No.” Dad shook his head. “Anne needs to pay rent. It’ll be good for her.”

“Dad.”

“How about three hundred?” Charlotte said. “Including utilities.”

Three hundred I could swing.

“Not enough,” Dad said.

“But if she takes the baby a couple times a week.”

“Wait one infantile second,” I said. “I never said I’d help with the baby.”

“Of course not,” Charlotte said. “Only if you had time.” She and Dad looked a little nervous. There’s a bit of Emily in me.

“What do you think?” I asked Dad.

“I’d miss you…” he said, gloomily.

And I realized I couldn’t leave him. It wasn’t like he still had Mom to take care of him. Maybe it’s a youngest daughter thing, but I felt I had a responsibility. And he did like having me around, even if he grumbled about it occasionally.

“…but I’ll help you move next week,” he finished.

When Emily arrived, the photographers positioned her in front of a huge poster for a film called Spanking Schoolgirls. She’d been posed to hide the naughty bits, and hadn’t budged since. I guess she had a little of the model in her after all. Her publisher, Jamie Lombard—early thirties, an ink-stained cowboy, with rugged good looks and a receding hairline—stood proudly beside her. He was a local publisher, and few of his books had ever sold more than five hundred copies. The unexpected success of Emily’s book had left him slightly shell-shocked.

Emily, on the other hand, looked utterly comfortable chatting with a reporter about the dichotomizing of sub-textual prurience or something. As far as I could understand, her point was this: women like to fuck. Not exactly an earth-shattering insight, but apparently if you dress it up in postmodern theory, you get famous for your dangerous mind.

It did make me eye Emily speculatively. She’d been secretly dating someone all summer, and my bet was that he was someone in the “film” trade who she was too embarrassed to introduce to her family. A porn star like Johnny Deep, maybe, or Roger More.

I looked for Charlotte, to expand upon this theory—why had none of us met this mystery man?—and my Aunt Regina drifted into range. She eyed me and said, “I’m glad you’re finally out of mourning.”

This was her joke. Her only joke. My mom—her sister—had died when I was ten, and though I sometimes missed her, I hadn’t been in mourning for twelve years. But Aunt Regina had an arrested image of me from what she called my “Goth Phase” in high school. Every time she saw me since, she was amazed anew that I wasn’t wearing black lipstick.

I gave a courtesy laugh, and starting heaping food on my plate.

“Now you’ve stopped coloring your hair black,” she said, “you look much more like Charlotte.”

“We’re often taken for twins,” I lied.

“Surely not identical,” she said. “Now if only you were a success, like your sisters. How proud your mother would be.”

Before I could kill Aunt Regina and stuff her body in the crawlspace, Billy and Ian arrived—at the same time, like they’d shared a ride. This worried me for some reason, so I raced over to introduce them and be sure the introduction was necessary.

“Ian, this is Billy,” I said, taking Billy’s hand in a loverlike fashion. “Billy, Ian.”

They said hello.

“So this is your boyfriend,” Ian said.

“Yep,” I said—giving Billy’s hand a warning squeeze.

“What?” Billy said. “Me?”

I laughed and dragged him to a corner where I hissingly instructed him that, for the duration of the evening, he was my boyfriend. He claimed he wasn’t. I told him he was. He became stubborn. So I offered an introduction to Charlotte, and he said he’d be my boyfriend for a whole week if he could shake her hand. A month if he could lick it.

We threaded through the crowd as I internally debated the merits of allowing the lick, but Billy dug in his heels when he spotted Charlotte.

“That really is Charlotte Olsen!” he said.

“Yeah.”

“No way. She’s totally—”

“Pregnant,” I explained.

“—hot. She’s totally hot.”

“She’s a water buffalo.”

“She’s a fox.”

“But she’s five hundred pounds!” I pointed out.

“I need a cold shower just looking at her,” he said. “Oh, man.”

“Her feet are bloated.” I thought he should know. “She’s a bloated hippo with clown feet.”

“She’s even hotter than her calendar.”

“And bigger than her car.”

“You know,” he told me, man to man, “I jerked off to that calendar three times a day for like two months.”

Fifteen minutes later, I slipped onto the patio. There was a couple sitting on the Adirondacks overlooking the pool, and chatting in low tones. I was going to sneak past, but it was only Ian and Emily.

“Why aren’t you inside with your adoring fans?” I asked.

“I needed some air,” Emily said. “The photographers…”

Ian shot a longing glance back at the house. “A little peace and quiet.”

It was disgusting. Even in herd-of-buffalo form, Charlotte was breaking his heart. “She’s enormous,” I mumbled. “She’s a one-woman stampede.”

“What?” Ian gestured toward the party. “Is that what that crash was?”

“Oh. Um. That was me. I broke up with Billy.”

Ian opened his mouth like he was going to say something, then closed it again.

“A long way from par,” Emily said. “He didn’t even make it to the first hole.”

“Emily!” I said.

She blushed bright red. “I meant golf hole—like in golf.”

“You’ve been watching too much porn,” Ian told her.

“Porn is film,” I observed.

“Why’d you break up?” Ian asked me.

“We’d grown apart.” I turned to Emily. “So where’s your invisible boyfriend?”

“We broke up, too.”

“Really? When? Why?” The relationship may have been clandestine, but she’d seemed happy.

“It was only sex,” Emily said.

“Well, what did you expect from a porn star? Intellectual fulfillment? I don’t know what—”

“A porn star?” she said.

Ian laughed. “Hung like a moose, I bet.”

Emily shot him a stern look, then finally copped to her blue-movie adventure. “The sex was great,” she admitted, “although his idea of a good film was The Sperminator. He just wasn’t right for me. We didn’t have anything—” Her face lit up as Jamie Lombard stepped out of the house with two margaritas. “Jamie! Over here.”

He headed our way and she sprang at him like a hungry lioness and dragged him to the corner of the deck, where they could talk privately. Did she have her eye on Jamie? They’d make a perfect pair.

I looked at Ian. “Did I imagine that?”

“Maybe she had two secret boyfriends.”

“The porn star and the publisher. Sounds like a sitcom.”

“On the Spice Channel.”

I laughed more than that deserved, because I liked Ian. And he looked good. And apparently had forgotten what I did last time we met. “So…you saw Charlotte,” I said.

“More beautiful than ever.”

“She makes a very attractive Mack truck. Meet my sisters: dangerous mind and dangerous curves.”

“Not feeling dangerous, yourself?”

I held up the plate of food that hadn’t left my side all evening. “Only to the buffet.”

“Oh, I’m sure there’s a little wickedness in you.”

Okay, he was Charlotte’s ex, so this was marginally incestuous and repulsively secondhand. But he was handsome, single, funny, smart…and nobody had ever called me potentially wicked before. I gave him my lower-wattage version of Charlotte’s smile and said, “A lot of wickedness.”

He laughed. “Remember last time we met? You invited me to your school dance.”

My smile dimmed.

“You were what?” he said. “In seventh grade? I was a senior in high school. It was so sweet. What was the theme again?”

Hawaiian luau. “No idea.”

“Hula or something. You were cute in your little grass skirt.”

Actually, I was. I’d wanted to wear a coconut bra, too, but Dad wouldn’t let me.

Ian smiled at the memory. “You marched up to me with a flower necklace and asked if I wanted to get laid.”

“Lei-ed,” I said faintly, remembering the mortification. I was trying on my outfit and had gone to Charlotte’s room to show her. A half-dozen other kids had been there, Charlotte’s friends, and they’d howled with laughter. Not Ian, though. He’d said, very kindly, no, and on the night of the dance had actually sent me a corsage.

We were silent a moment, listening to the party sounds from the house. Then I turned to him and—God help me— I said, “The offer’s still good.”

Ian took my hand. He told me how flattered he was. He said I was beautiful, wonderful, perfect in every way—but he’d rather staple his earlobes to the deck than sleep with me. Well, I don’t know exactly what he said, because I was busy trying to transform my utter mortification into the ability to sink unnoticed into the ground, leaving behind only a thin film of humiliation.

Okay. So he hadn’t forgotten.

The next morning Dad and I met in the living room for coffee. We usually chatted for about twenty minutes before I left for Banana and he headed to his office at UCSB.

“You looked pretty last night,” he said.

“Nice that someone thought so,” I muttered into my coffee.

“Hmm?”

“Nothing.” I put my cup on the coffee table and held out my arms to show off my new red T-shirt and black mini. “And what do we think of today’s ensemble?”

“Not the book!” he said.

I grabbed my cup from the book I’d used as a coaster. It was Porn Is Film. Emily had placed it there, and we didn’t dare move it. She’d come on a surprise inspection last Tuesday and found it buried at the bottom of the bookcase. The echoes were still fading.

Dad inspected the cover for stains and declared us safe when he found none. He smiled at the book, from fondness for Emily. “Mom would be so proud. Little did she know when she named you after the Brontë sisters, one of you’d become an author.”

“Mom published stuff. So did you,” I said sulkily. “All professors get published.”

“In journals. Not like this.”

“Well, Charlotte helped.”

His smile wavered. “Your mom never would have expected her daughter to become a swimsuit model, though. I think she’d have supported it….” This was an old conflict with Dad.

“Dad, she’s still Charlotte. Fame, fortune, and public nudity haven’t done a single bad thing to her. Look what she’s made of herself.”

“Speaking of which…” he said, and I realized I’d been deftly maneuvered into this conversation.

“I like Banana.”

“Anne—”

“Yes, Anne,” I said. “The Brontë sister no one’s ever heard of. So lay off!”

“That doesn’t mean—”

“Dad.”

“I’m only saying—”

“Dad.”

“Okay, okay. I’m saying nothing.”

“And I’ve heard it all before.”

At the end of that summer, Emily and Jamie were married. Charlotte had a baby girl. And I got a job working for a dot-com. I was destined to make millions—in an artsy-businessy way, of course.

I heard Ian moved to New York.