Too Good to Be True

Nat was a blend. Softly brilliant, quietly gifted, she chose architecture, a perfect mix of art, beauty and science. I talked to her at least a couple of times a week, e-mailed her daily and visited her when she opted to stay in California for the summer. How she loved hearing about Andrew! How delighted she was that her big sister had met The One!

“What does it feel like?” she asked one night during one of our phone calls.

“How does what feel?” I said.

“Being with the love of your life, silly.” I could hear the smile in her voice and grinned back.

“Oh, it’s great. It’s so…perfect. And easy, too, you know? We never fight, not like Mom and Dad.” Being different from my parents was a clear sign that Andrew and I were on the right track.

Nat laughed. “Easy, huh? But passionate, too, right? Does your heart beat faster when he comes into the room?

Do you blush when you hear his voice on the phone? Does your skin tingle when he touches you?”

I paused. “Sure.” Did I feel those things? Sure, I did. Of course I did. Or I had, those dizzying new feelings having matured to something more…well, comfortable.

Seven months into the relationship, I moved into Andrew’s apartment in West Hartford. Three weeks later, we were watching Oz on HBO—okay, not the most romantic show, but still, we were cuddled together on the couch, and that was nice. Andrew turned to me and said, “I think we should probably get married, don’t you?”

He bought me a lovely ring. We told our families and chose Valentine’s Day, six months away, as our wedding day. My parents were pleased—Andrew seemed so solid and reliable, so trustworthy. He was a corporate lawyer, very steady work, very well paid, which put to ease my father’s worries that my teacher’s salary would render me eventually homeless. Andrew, an only child, was doted on by his parents, and while they weren’t quite as ecstatic as my parents, they were friendly enough. Margaret and he talked law, Stuart seemed to enjoy his company. Even Mémé liked him as much as she liked any human.

Only Natalie hadn’t met him, stranded out there at Stanford as she was. She spoke to Andrew on the phone when I called to tell her we were engaged, but that was it.

Finally, she came home. It was Thanksgiving, and when Andrew and I arrived at the family domicile, Mom greeted us at the door in her usual flurry of complaints about how early she’d had to get up to put the “damn bird”

in the oven, how she’d dry-heaved stuffing it, how useless my father was. Dad was watching a football game and ignoring Mom, Stuart was playing the piano in the living room while Margaret read.

And then Natalie came flying down the stairs, arms outstretched, and grabbed me in a huge hug. “Gissy!” she cried.

“Hey, Nattie Bumppo!” I exclaimed, squeezing her hard.

“Don’t kiss me, I have a cold,” she said, pulling back. Her nose was red, her skin a little dry, she was clad in sweatpants and an old cardigan belonging to our father, and yet she still managed to look more beautiful than Cinderella at the ball, her silken blond hair tied up in a high ponytail, her clear blue eyes unaccented by makeup.

Andrew took one look at her and literally dropped the pie he was holding.

Of course, the pie plate was slippery. Pyrex, you know? And Nat’s face flushed that way because…well, because she had a cold, and isn’t flushing and blushing part of a cold? Of course it was. Later, of course, I admitted it wasn’t any slippery Pyrex. I knew the kablammy when I saw it.

Natalie and Andrew sat at opposite ends of the Thanksgiving table. When Stuart broke out the Scrabble board and asked them if they wanted to play after dinner, Andrew accepted and Natalie instantly declined. The next day, we all went bowling, and they didn’t speak. Later, we went to the movies, and they sat as far away from each other as possible. They avoided going into a room if the other was there.

“So what do you think?” I asked Natalie, pretending that all was normal.

“He’s great,” she said, her face going nuclear once more. “Very nice.”

That was good enough for me. I didn’t need to hear more. Why talk about Andrew, after all? I asked her about school, congratulated her on winning an internship with Cesar Pelli and once again marveled at her perfection, her brains, her kind heart. After all, I’d always been my sister’s biggest fan.

Andrew and Natalie saw each other again at Christmas, where they leaped away from the mistletoe like it was a glowing rod of uranium, and I pretended not to be disturbed. There couldn’t be anything between them, because he was my fiancé and she was my baby sister. When Dad told Nat to take Andrew down the back hill on our old toboggan and neither of them could find a way to get out of it, I laughed when they crashed and rolled, becoming entangled in each other. No, no, nothing there.

Nothing, my ass.

I wasn’t about to say anything. Each time the irritating little voice in my soul brought it up, usually at 3:00 a.m., I told her she was wrong. Andrew was right here with me. He loved me. I’d reach out and touch his knobby elbow, that sweet neck of his. We had something real. If Nat had a crush on him…well. Who could blame her?

My wedding was in ten weeks, then eight, then five. Invitations went out. Menu finalized. Dress altered.

And then, twenty days before our wedding, Andrew came home from work. I had a pile of tests beside me on the kitchen table, and he’d very thoughtfully brought home some Indian food. He even dished it out, spooning the fragrant sauce over the rice, just as I liked it. And then came the awful words.

“Grace…there’s something we need to talk about,” he said, staring at the onion kulcha. His voice was shaking.

“You know I care about you very much.”

I froze, not looking up from the exams, the words as ominous as Sherman’s in Georgia. The moment I’d successfully avoided thinking about was upon me. Knowing I would never look at Andrew the same way, I couldn’t take a normal breath. My heart thundered sickly.

He cared about me. I don’t know about you, girls, but when a guy says I care about you very much, it seems to me that the shit is about to rain down. “Grace,” he whispered, and I managed to look at him. As our untouched garlic naan cooled, he told me that he didn’t quite know how to say this, but he couldn’t marry me.

“I see,” I said distantly. “I see.”

“I’m so sorry, Grace,” he whispered, and to his credit, his eyes filled with tears.

“Is it Natalie?” I asked, my voice quiet and unrecognizable.

His gaze dropped to the floor, his face burned red, and his hand shook as he ran it through his soft hair. “Of course not,” he lied.

And that was that.

We’d just bought the house on Maple Street, though we weren’t living there yet. As part of our divorce settlement or whatever you want to call it—blood money, guilt, emotional damages—he let me keep his portion of the down payment. Dad reworked my finances to tap into a few mutual funds that my grandfather had left me, reduced the size of my mortgage so I could swing it alone, and I moved in. Alone.

Natalie was wrecked when she found out. Obviously, I didn’t tell her the reason for our breakup. She listened to me lie as I detailed the reasons for our breakup…just wasn’t right…not really ready…figured we should be sure.

She asked only one quiet little question when I was done. “Did he say anything else?”

Because she must have known it wasn’t me doing the breaking up. She knew me better than anyone. “No,” I answered briskly. “It just…wasn’t meant to be. Whatever.”

Natalie had no part of this, I assured myself. It was just that I hadn’t really found The One, no matter how deceptively perfect Andrew had looked, felt, seemed. Nope, I thought as I sat in my newly painted living room in my newly purchased house, power-eating brownies and watching Ken Burns’s documentary on the Civil War till I just about had it memorized. Andrew just wasn’t The One. Fine. I’d find The One, wherever he was, and, hey.

Then the world would know what love was, goddamn it.

Natalie finished her degree and moved back East. She got a nice little apartment in New Haven and started work. We saw each other often, and I was glad. It wasn’t like she was the other woman…she was my sister. The person I loved best in the world. My birthday present.

CHAPTER FIVE

ON SUNDAY, I had the misfortune of attending my mother’s opening at Chimera’s, a painfully progressive art gallery in West Hartford.

“What do you think, Grace? Where have you been? The show started a half hour ago. Did you bring your young man?” my mother asked, bustling up as I tried not to look directly at the artwork. Dad lurked in the back of the gallery, nursing a glass of wine, looking noticeably pained.

“Very…very, uh, detailed,” I answered. “Just…lovely, Mom.”

“Thank you, honey!” she cried. “Oh, someone is looking at a price tag on Essence Number Two. Be back in a flash.”

When Natalie went off to college, my mother decided it was time to indulge her artistic side. For some reason unbeknownst to us, she decided on glassblowing. Glassblowing and the female anatomy.

The family domicile, once the artistic home only for two Audubon bird prints, a few oil paintings of the sea and a collection of porcelain cats, was now littered with girl-parts. Vulvae, uteruses, ovaries, br**sts and more perched on mantels and bookshelves, end tables and the back of the toilet. Varied in color, heavy and very anatomically correct, my mother’s sculptures were fuel for gossip in the Garden Club and the source of a new ulcer for Dad.

However, no one could argue with success, and to the astonishment of the rest of us, Mom’s sculptures brought in a small fortune. When Andrew dumped me, Mom took me on a four-day spa cruise, courtesy of The Unfolding and Milk #4. The Seeds of Fertility series had paid for a little greenhouse on the side of the barn last spring, as well as a new Prius in October.

“Hey,” said Margaret, joining us. “How’s it going?”

“Oh, just great,” I answered. “How are you?” I glanced around the gallery. “Where’s Stuart?”

Margaret closed one eye and gritted her teeth, looking somewhat like Anne Bonny, she-pirate. “Stuart…Stuart’s not here.”

“Got that,” I said. “Everything okay with you guys? I noticed you barely spoke at Kitty’s wedding.”

“Who knows?” Margaret answered. “I mean, really. Who the hell knows? You think you know someone …whatever.”

I blinked. “What’s going on, Margs?”

Margaret looked around at the voyeurs who flocked to Mom’s shows and sighed. “I don’t know. Marriage isn’t always easy, Grace. How’s that for a fortune cookie? Is there any wine here? Mom’s shows are always better with a little buzz, if you know what I mean.”

“Over there,” I said, nodding to the refreshments table in the back of the gallery.

“Okay. Be right back.”

Ahahaha. Ahahaha. Ooooh. Ahahaha. My mother’s society laugh, heard only at art shows or when she was trying to impress someone, rang through the gallery. She caught my eye and winked, then shook the hand of an older man, who was cradling a glass…oh, let’s see now…ew. A sculpture, let’s put it that way. Another sale.

Good for Mom.

“Are we still on for Bull Run?” Dad asked, coming up behind me and putting his arm around my shoulder.

“Oh, definitely, Dad.” The Battle of Bull Run was one of my favorites. “Did you get your assignment?” I asked.

“I did. I’m Stonewall Jackson.” Dad beamed.

“Dad! That’s great! Congratulations! Where is it?”

“Litchfield,” he answered. “Who are you?”