Autobiographies of the Other Sister

Condo

They were talking about their diseases.

Dating in the twenty-first century, one of them said.

I’m never sleeping with anybody ever again, said the other, and the first one didn’t disagree. They were sisters. They never touched each other but they could talk openly now, after a decade of not talking openly because they had each expected the other to be better than themselves. For a long time, they were disappointed.

One of them helped the other clean her condo. The one who lived in the condo showed the other one how dirty certain things were, like her pillowcase. This is what my life is, she was saying. They hung clothes until the couch was visible; they Swiffered and scrubbed. Then they went out to lunch, to a sports bar with plans of getting drunk. One of them smoked and looked out the window while the other watched the tall, probably gay bartender and sang along to muzak.

Finally, their eyes settled on each other.

It’s so good to see you, one of them said.

You say that every time, said the other. Then they went back to what they were doing. It was the end of February and there weren’t any sports to speak of, only coaches imagining seasons that had not yet begun.

Pretty

She hadn’t known anyone in her building until the night of a terrible storm when a bunch of them ended up in the stairwell, drinking. Now she knew the man who lived below her.

She was doing her kickboxing video, the same one she always did. The man who lived below her sent a text message: Impressive jump rope. She texted him back and he texted her and then the discourse, and her workout, was over. Later, her sister brought groceries, bread and milk and bananas. They looked at Victoria’s Secret catalogues, picking out swimsuits. One of them liked the busy ones and the other liked the plain ones, solid colors with no cut-outs to leave stars or hearts or phalluses on her body.

I weigh a hundred and fourteen pounds now, one of them said.

That’s awesome, said the other, flicking the skin on her upper arm.

The one who only weighed a hundred and fourteen pounds used to weigh much more. At night she’d lie in bed and feel her bones and hate herself, remembering the times she had hit on men when she hadn’t known she was fat.

They were dark-haired and equally pretty. They had moles on opposite sides of their faces like looking in a mirror.

Business

She called her sister to ask whether she had kept her appointment to have her computer fixed. She hadn’t. But she had done other things on her list: called people who were going to call her back, scheduled other appointments to miss. Neither of them had a husband to take care of such things. One of them couldn’t keep a man and the other couldn’t stay kept.

What happened was I got drunk, said the one who hadn’t kept her appointment.

It’s just now dark, said the other.

Usually I lay in bed and wait for whatever I was supposed to be doing to be over but Cat called.
The other dropped her phone on the pavement and the conversation got cut off and then they were calling each other at the same time so they kept getting sent to voicemail.

Finally, they reconnected.

I dropped my phone, said the first one.

I thought it was me, said the second. My phone never works at Cat’s house.

The first one didn’t know who Cat was, but she could hear her in the background, cackling.

Different

They were at a coffee shop near the college. It was Monday and Fido’s was full of notebooks and laptops. They were past all that. They ordered coffee and muffins, and sat at the only empty table. One sister took the good seat and the other had a view of the wall.

It’s good people watching, the one with the good seat said.

Not so much for me, said the other.

The one with the good seat turned around and looked at the red slab of wall, the ugly paintings for sale. One of them was the oldest and the other was the baby and they held the same opinion of each other: spoiled; everything she ever wanted.

They took pinches off each other’s muffins and sipped each other’s coffee to determine whose was better, the winner obvious. One of them had her elbows on the table, fingers dusting off bits of muffin. They weren’t like other girls, they didn’t think.

Misled

When you tell Paul you love him, he gives you a sad look and says he doesn’t feel the same way. Then he says, “This hurts me more than it hurts you,” and he sits up and slips his jeans on. You watch while he collects the wad of bills and coins from your nightstand. You watch him walk out the door and get in his car, hoping to feel something.

You want to take a bath but your roommate is asleep and there’s a boy with her: uncircumcised. His name is Timmy. She tells you about penises because you’ve only seen a handful and they were all the same size and shape and she wants you to know that you’ve been misled.
Paul calls a few days later and says he’s been thinking about you.

“Me too,” you say, though you only thought about thinking about him but then found yourself thinking about something else, like this boy you met at Rick’s Cafe who showed you how to throw darts and stuck his tongue in your ear. This boy is with you now. He stands behind you with a pair of scissors and a comb because the world you live in has a high turnover rate, like the chain restaurants along the highway where you wait tables for extra money. People just stop showing up. New people are hired on the spot.

Paul hears your new boyfriend ask a question and he says, “Who’s that?” and you tell him your new boyfriend. He asks what he’s doing and you tell him he is cutting your hair.

“You just let some guy you don’t know cut your hair?”

“Yes,” you say, and he calls you a whore and hangs up, with his decision not to love you confirmed.

Your new boyfriend has never cut hair before.

“How much do you want me to take off again?” he asks, and he shows you some of your hair, still attached, between his index and middle fingers. You tell him a little more than that.

“What if I mess it up?”

“It’s wavy so it’s hard to mess up,” you say. You tell him he doesn’t know you well enough to harbor the kind of resentment it would take to fuck it up on purpose.

Your roommate stands in the bathroom door with her backpack over her shoulder. She calls you chica, tells you she wants to go to Mexico Tipico for lunch.

“Ask me again in ten minutes,” you say.

Your new boyfriend has already told you he doesn’t like her. Your roommate has already asked about the size of his penis.

You don’t go to Mexico Tipico because you’re in bed with your new boyfriend. You start at one side of his wiry unibrow and make your way to the other like you’re reading a book. You’ve missed your Architecture Appreciation class, which is harder than it sounds. You should have taken Music Appreciation or Art Appreciation but you heard Architecture Appreciation was easier. Regardless, you have missed it and you will have to borrow the notes from someone you don’t know, someone who won’t want to lend them to you.

Your new boyfriend is proud of the haircut he gave you. He combs your hair back from your face with his fingers and you close your eyes and think about Paul, how he is probably still holding his phone, how you could call him up and maybe he would come over and do the exact same thing this boy is doing to you now.