October 23 - These are the lies that I told you

It had been years since they’d last seen one another. The one walked into the restaurant wearing black high heels, the kind that screamed sex, a cord tied about an ankle, the kind that made a distinctive clicking on the floor like an impatient woman’s fingernails against a desktop. Her legs were sheathed in nylons, her body encased in a tight black ensemble that left little room for breathing and none at all for eating. The hair was coiffed, the makeup applied by a pro at a salon – she didn’t leave these things to chance – the fingernails lacquered. No doubt – had they been visible – the toes would be painted to, the pubic hair trimmed and stenciled into a design, nothing out of place. You didn’t notice that the nose was slightly too bold, a bit crooked on one end, wouldn’t have noticed if you didn’t see these things mirrored in the face of the woman she came to meet.

The other looked ordinary under normal circumstances, but next to the new comer she looked a bumpkin, a yokel brought in from pumpkin picking on the farm who now happened to have wandered, lost, into this New York restaurant. She wore jeans, and a solid colored boat neck shirt that she had been sure was appropriate when she left her apartment, but now wasn’t of as firm an opinion. She reached up in dismay, because she had forgotten earrings, and her lobes felt naked. She wanted to swing her head back and forth and have flittering chandeliers tickle her neck, too. Don’t get things wrong; it was not that she was unattractive, or unkempt. She had showered that morning, but she air-dried her hair – always; she had been a college co-ed the last time she lifted a heating device to her head – so it was always a little frizzy about the edges. She never used perfume, nor makeup, beyond a swipe of all-natural lip gloss that didn’t contain any earth-heating cancer-breeding chemicals. She was very proud of these facts, on a day to day basis, but they felt very small and unimportant when the new comer breezed into the room.

“Hello,” said the one to the other, crisp and purposeful. “Hi,” said the other back with a sigh of relief that she hadn’t been stood up. She reached in for a hug, then found herself awkwardly bumping noses as her twin sister went for the European kiss-kiss on the cheek instead. “I wasn’t sure you would come.” She meant it as chastisement, waited for Michaela to look in guilt at the hands of her silver Rolex, but Michaela did nothing of the sort. She laughed.

Michaela’s laugh was like a wind chime. Men’s heads turned, but then, they had been turned since before the chimes began to tinkle in the breeze. “You, my dear, always did show up early. Nothing’s changed, I see.”

Kelly sat back down and replaced the napkin that had been on her lap. As if her jeans needed protection from sauces and wine. She watched Michaela arrange herself – arrange was truly the only word for it, the purse tucked at the foot her chair, her hair swept back over one shoulder, her arms held out at a ninety degree angle with her wrists resting on the white linen tablecloth.

She looked around at the restaurant. “I appreciate you coming all the way to my neighborhood. It wasn’t too far for you?”

“Michaela, it’s Manhattan,” Kelly said. “Nothing is more than half an hour from me. I took the subway.” Michaela’s eyes popped.

“The subway? Kelly, you’re joking. It’s filthy down there.” She shuddered as if she truly believed this.

“It’s…” Kelly let it slide. She wasn’t about to tell her sister what a slice of life she saw when she rode the subway, how she told herself this was the ideal place to gather inspiration for her artwork. Instead, she picked at the bread in the bread basket, noticing that Michaela didn’t reach to do the same, and broke off a bit of the fleshy part to deposit in her mouth. “I was surprised you wanted to see me.”

“You were?” Michaela sounded genuinely confused.

“It’s been five years,” Kelly reminded her. Michaela laughed as if she truly didn’t remember. Her expression changed, her eyebrows drew down. She leaned in across the table.

“I felt like I needed to see you. I wanted to tell you how things are with… With Rick.”

Kelly cringed. Rick. It was a storybook marriage that Michaela had, with the broker husband and the Upper East Side apartment, the dinner parties out and the galas thrown at home. There was the requisite summer house in the Hamptons, cruises taken in the Mediterranean at least once a year. Kelly had watched the glamour of her sister’s relationship for the first three years – before Michaela abruptly announced she was “taking time off” from her family members – and had told herself she wasn’t jealous. That wasn’t the kind of man she wanted, after all. She wanted an artist, a free spirit. Only Kelly had never been lucky in love. She told herself she was an independent woman, and enjoyed having her weekends to herself to tour the vineyards on Long Island, or ponder art at the Met. The lie had a way of sneaking up on her when she lay in bed at night and watched the Late Show and laughed to her friends the next morning that Dave was the only love in her life.

She always hummed along to the opening theme when the show came on.

Kelly coughed around her bread, now. “How so?” she asked, fearful of accounts of torridly lusty nights or some new $20,000 jewel he might have bought her.

“They’re bad,” Michaela hissed, looking around as if fearful someone had heard. She needn’t have worried; the few men who did seem to have caught her words were not looking at her with pity, but rather had shifted their chairs an imperceptible inch closer, sensing opportunity. That was how it looked to Kelly. A waiter hovered a foot from their table, two menus tucked under his arm, but Michaela waved him away. Kelly sighed; she was hungry. She ate another chunk of bread.

“How so?” Kelly stammered around her mouthful. “Things look so wonderful with you two. Looked,” she amended after a moment. It had been five years since she’d last seen his fingers snake through hers at a restaurant dinner table.

“Wonderful.” Michaela tasted the word. She leaned back against her chair and her face changed. Oh the burgundy lipstick was still there, the blusher that made her cheekbones even sharper than reality, the severe liner replacing the eyebrows that had been plucked of every hair. But something changed in that face, so that Kelly saw her own features mirrored back at her, the flesh naked, for a moment.

“It looked wonderful, didn’t it?” she mused finally. “Let me tell you a story.” Cue the lights and podium, Kelly thought. Michaela loved being the center of attention. “Six months after we started dating, I wanted to go see a film with a friend. Rick got jealous. Not even a male friend! Just an old girlfriend from college, but he said he didn’t want anyone else sharing my time. I tried to leave and he grabbed my wine glass right from my hand and upended it on the carpet of my apartment, to ‘show me how angry’ he was, he said.” There were no wind chimes in this laugh. “Started kicking everything in the apartment – the walls, the door, everything. Then the pipe under the kitchen sink. And then bam!” Michaela didn’t notice the heads that swiveled around as she clapped her hands together in one, staccato note. “It burst, just like that, a geyser exploding everywhere, and it ran through the floor and caused water damage in the ceiling of the apartment below, and the landlord was furious, and the neighbors called the police to report a domestic disturbance, and… all that.”

“I would never have known,” Kelly interjected. “Rick doesn’t seem the type to have a temper.”

Michaela waggled a finger back and forth in the air. “That was only the first time, Kelly. You see?” She lifted back the sleeve of her dress to show the fat bruise on her upper arm. Only then did Kelly make out the smaller one by her eye, cleverly hidden by the layers of face paint.

“But Michaela, why didn’t you tell us? You always told us all you were so happy. You always looked so happy!” Exasperation. “You cut off the rest of your family!”

“Because Rick didn’t like the rest of you. He made me cut you off. Or he promised more of… this.” She tapped the bruise, then smiled thinly. “Which he did anyway.” She sighed. “I can’t take it anymore; that’s what I said to him the other day. Enough, enough. But then I get scared. So I thought… I thought maybe I could call you. I always envied how happy you looked.”

Kelly gaped, not trusting herself to speak. Michaela was jealous of her? Michaela must have seen something in the blank stare, because her words tumbled out. “So free, always. Loving your art, loving your single lifestyle, you always projected such strength and happiness to the world. And I thought… I want that. Peace and quiet and bohemia.” Her eyes fell on the bread basket. “Is that food?” she asked. “I’m famished.”

She ate a piece of crust.

“But why didn’t you tell us before?” Kelly asked again. “Why did you lie and tell us you were happy?”

Michaela nodded as if her sister’s words were statement, not question. “Yes. These are the lies that I told you. They’re easier sometimes, you must understand that.” Her eyes seemed to take in Kelly’s appearance for the first time. “You do understand that,” she amended. “God, are you really hungry? What are we doing in this restaurant? I’m not. I think… Oh gosh!”

The chirping of a bird began from somewhere down hear Michaela’s ankle, and became louder as she extracted her cell phone from her purse. “Oh gosh,” she groaned again. “It’s Rick. Look, he doesn’t know I’ve been to see you. Look, I wanted to tell you, but maybe it’s too soon. I really should…” Whatever it was she should do, Michaela didn’t say. She gathered up the purse, pushed back from the table, and bent to deposit a kiss on Kelly’s cheek, leaving a perfect rosebud of lipstick behind. She clipped from the restaurant as poised as when she entered. Kelly stared after the retreating figure, unsure which version to believe.