Two Sisters by Mary Hogan

Author:Mary Hogan
Language: eng
Format: azw3
ISBN: 9780062279941
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2014-02-03T11:00:00+00:00

Chapter 23

THAT DAY AT Columbus Circle, Muriel had watched her sister depart in a cab the way it would be filmed in a movie or staged on Broadway. The forlorn wave in the rear window, her lingering look of good-bye. On-screen there would be misty rain, a hosed-down street to make the asphalt reflective; onstage a yellow spill from an old lamppost would encircle the actress in a lonely spot. The scene would be underscored with chords from a single violin.

Long after Pia’s cab merged into the belching miasma of midtown traffic, Muriel stood on the sidewalk staring at the site where Pia had been, sensing the imprint of her kiss on her check. Smelling her clean scent. Feeling the corded handle of the dress bag resting in the nest of her curled fingers. She left Columbus Circle in a daze, crossing diagonally against all lights, wondering why drivers kept honking at her. At the bus stop, she had intended to wait for the M5, but climbed aboard the M104 instead, not even aware of it until the bus continued straight at Seventy-second Street instead of turning left. “Hey,” she shouted. “He missed the turn.”

As if speaking to a mental patient off her meds, an elderly passenger asked, “Where are you trying to go, dear?”

For days afterward, Muriel felt befuddled. Twice, at the Vaclav casting session, Joanie had to prod her.

“Miss Sullivant? Care to join us?”

With her script hanging limply in her hands, Muriel would jerk her head up and blush. The actor standing on his mark across from her would look all put out.

The strangest sensation settled into either side of her forehead. Static, almost, as if her brain was between channels. By the end of the week, however, she felt tuned in. Muriel became convinced that she’d misheard what Pia had told her. It wouldn’t be the first time her nerves interfered with her hearing. On her first date with Kent Bond, she thought he said, “I went to Northwestern,” but he was really talking about his desire to visit Seattle.

In the hundreds of times Muriel had rerun the scene in the dressing room she was certain that “cancer” was never uttered. When you have cancer doesn’t the actual word come up? It’s not like there were synonyms for it. (Organistic erosion? Cellular chaos?) Besides, who died of breast cancer anymore? Why, the science section of the Times recently labeled it a “chronic disease”! Soon those pink-ribbon walks would fade in the same silent manner as the rainbow-hued AIDS walks had. On to the next trendy disease. Asperger’s, perhaps? What color would its ribbon be?

Yes, that whole messy business with Pia was a huge misunderstanding. Perhaps Pia had really been confessing her plan to get implants. Maybe Will had said something hurtful to her regarding her boyish frame. Which wouldn’t surprise Muriel in the least. On the class ladder, Will had always been a rung below his wife.

On her lunch break, in the dappled sunlight beneath a Siberian elm in Union Square Park, Muriel sat on a bench and called her sister.

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