Spirit Level (5 page)

“Like what?”

“So…” She stops and blows her nose on the napkin. “So sensible.”

For the first time all day, I laugh. I’m not sure why. It’s not exactly a compliment to be called sensible, but it’s hardly an insult either.

“Yeah,” I say. “I guess I am. But you know what? Maybe it’s time I stopped.” I pick up my mocha and drain it in one gulp. I can almost feel the sugar rushing through my veins. “Maybe I should ask Nate out.”

“Seriously?”

I shake my head. “Not really. Too soon. But he is cute.”

Lucy nods. “He’s only working here until he gets his big break as an actor. A while ago he was Stanley in
Streetcar
.
He was all broody and gross for weeks. One review called him ‘promising’ but another said he was ‘a limp hipster imitation of Brando.’ ”

“So he’ll be here a while,” I say. “If I decide I need a broody actor boyfriend.”

Lucy cracks up. “I’m sorry I called you sensible,” she says as we head out of the coffee shop. “And I’m sorry I sent your picture to Ben without asking first. And I’m sorry I have to go back to the studio for my pointe class.”

“It’s okay,” I say. “Really. I’m not upset. And I’m glad you sent Adam and Ben my picture. Maybe you could send me theirs too—so we’re even.”

She nods vigorously and hugs me again before we go our separate ways. “Promise we’ll get together soon? Maybe you could come and watch me dance. Or you could come to my house and meet Nori and Angela. We could Skype with Ben.”

“I promise,” I say. “Don’t worry. You haven’t scared me off. Not yet anyway.”

Her face starts to crumple—she looks like a toddler whose balloon has drifted away—and I add, “Just kidding.”

She slings her messenger bag across her body and says, “Gotta go. Bye, big sis. Call me.” She takes off down the street, the bag bumping against her hip, and I wonder if this is what being a big sister feels like: protective, annoyed, amused and confused.

LUCY TEXTS ME
an average of four times a day for the next couple of days until I agree to meet her on Tuesday at the same coffee shop. Clearly she’s on “full steam ahead” while I’m on “proceed with caution,” but she doesn’t seem to notice. Eventually she wears me down with her emoticons and her general chirpiness. Today she is wearing cutoff jeans and an embroidered peasant blouse; her hair falls in a shiny black cloak to her waist. On one arm are about fifty sparkly metal bangles that chatter and clank as she waves her arms and talks. Her fingernails are bright orange. I feel drab and lumpy in my (now clean) dark denim skirt and green T-shirt, with my hair pulled back in a messy ponytail.

Over our drinks, Lucy tells me her favorite color (turquoise, but also tangerine, hence the nail polish), why she’s afraid of small dogs (bitten in the face by a
Chihuahua when she was a baby—see, she still has a tiny scar), how much her dance school costs per month (a lot!), what she thinks about gay marriage (totally for it, obviously; she wants to plan Nori and Angela’s wedding, but they want something simple, which is so boring), how many pairs of pointe shoes she has worn out (hundreds!), how strong ballet boys have to be and how they aren’t all gay (especially Paul, whom she has a crush on but he’s way too old for her). She loves rare steak, dill pickles and lemon meringue pie. She watches old Disney movies when she’s tired or sad.

I’m about to tell her about Verna and the Sunday ladies when she says, “Oh, I forgot. Nori and Angela want you to come for dinner soon. Your mom too.”

“My mom doesn’t know about you yet,” I say.

A tiny furrow forms between Lucy’s perfect eyebrows. I wonder whether she gets them done professionally or if they just grow that way. I run a finger over my own brows, which feel bushy and unkempt.

“Why not?” she asks. “Are you ashamed of me or something?”

“Ashamed? Of course not. I just haven’t told her about looking for my sibs. I was planning on telling her.”

“When?”

I shrug. “Soon, I guess.”

“You always this secretive?” Lucy licks her finger and picks up muffin crumbs from her plate.

I shrug again. “Not really. I’ve never really had anything to be secretive about. Mom’s big on communication, as long as she’s not the one doing it. She’s always saying,
You can tell me anything
. Usually I do. Just not this time.”

“Angela’s like that too, but Nori says that sometimes I overshare. Do you think that’s true?”

I think about some of the other stuff Lucy has told me. For example, Nori grew up in San Diego and married her high school sweetheart, a guy named Howard, who developed a serious Internet porn addiction. She divorced him and ended up living on a collective farm in northern California, where she met Angela. They fell in love and moved to Seattle, where Angela trained to be a midwife and Nori became a garden designer. Angela actually delivered Lucy, at home, while Adam watched. Adam and Angela don’t get along, which is why he moved away to go to college, where he is studying business. Maybe he never got over the trauma of watching his little sister’s birth.

“I don’t know,” I say. “I mean, we just met. It’s hard to know what to say, what to leave out.”

She frowns again. “Why is that so hard? We’re sisters. We should tell each other everything, right?”

She sounds so much like a bossy ten-year-old that I have to laugh. After all, what do I know about being a sister? Maybe she’s right. It’s just that my “everything” is so much duller than hers.

“Maybe not everything,” I say.

“But you will tell your mom?”

“Yeah. Soon.”

I get up to grab some hot water for my tea, and when I come back to the table, she’s having an intense FaceTime conversation with someone.

“She’s right here,” Lucy says to whoever’s on the phone. “Hang on a sec.” She holds the phone out to me. “It’s Ben. In Australia. Wanna say hi?”

I don’t see how I can say no, although I want to. I hate having things sprung on me—Verna calls it being “wrong-footed”—but Lucy doesn’t know that yet. I take the phone and smile at it and say, “Hi, Ben.” Ben smiles back. He doesn’t look at all like me or Lucy. He’s got short blond hair and bright blue eyes. He looks like a surf bum.

“Hi, Harriet.” He yawns, and I can almost see his tonsils. He has no fillings. Neither do I. Good genes, I guess. “Nice to meet you.”

“What time is it there?” I ask.

“Early. Lucy never gets the time difference right.”

“I do so,” Lucy yelps. “You’re just lazy. It’s morning there.”

“And I worked until two,” he says.

“Oops!” Lucy giggles. “Sorry, Ben.”

“What do you do?” I ask.

“Bartender. While I’m in school.” Ben yawns again. “Trying to keep the debt load down.”

“He’s gonna be a famous architect,” Lucy says.

“Cool,” I say. My conversational skills, such as they are, seem to have vanished. He must think I’m an idiot. “Look, I should run,” I say. “Late for work myself. Bye, Ben.” I hand the phone to Lucy, but not before I see the look of surprise on Ben’s face. I’m disappointing everyone today. Lucy says goodbye to Ben and puts her phone away.

“That was rude, Harry,” she says. “Super rude. Ben’s a good guy. And he’s your brother. I’m going to class.” She grabs her messenger bag and flounces out of the café. Really, that’s the only word for it. I consider going after her, but I don’t have the energy. So far, I’m not very good at the sister thing.

I don’t hear from Lucy for a few days, and I’m about to text her and apologize when I get an email from another half-sister.

My name is Meredith Leatherby, and I found you on
DSR
. I guess we’re sisters. Half-sisters. I’m from Montana originally. Moved to Seattle a while ago. Since our donor used a Seattle facility, I was hoping to find some of my siblings here. Are you available for coffee sometime?

No “Dear Harriet,” no “Cheers.” Not even a “Yours truly.” It’s not the warmest email I’ve ever received, and I wonder if she’s found Lucy through
DSR
too.
Instead of writing back to Meredith, I pick up my phone and text Lucy.

Sorry I was rude to Ben. I’d like to call him to apologize. I just got an email from a girl called Meredith. Another sister. She wants to meet. You up for that? If so, when? I miss you.

I send the text before I can delete the last sentence, then reread Meredith’s email. It still sounds cold. Or maybe she’s just really reserved. Compared to Lucy, everyone seems reserved. And dull. Including me.

I start working on another transcript for Mom while I wait to hear from Lucy. Unlike most of the girls Mom interviews, Sonia comes from a middle-class family that she calls
totally white bread. My parents are rich and boring as fuck. My dad’s a lawyer, my mom’s a doctor. How cliché is that?
She is their only child, raised in Ann Arbor, Michigan; she first ran away when she was thirteen. Why? She wasn’t abused—in fact, she was well loved. She admits that. But she was bored. Or, as she puts it,
supremely, mind-numbingly, soul-destroyingly bored
. Every time she got caught, she’d wait a while and then run again. Over and over and over. Thousands of dollars wasted on therapists, none of whom believed that she was simply bored out of her mind, even though she never stopped telling them. Special schools, acting classes, an expensive guitar, a trip to Paris. None of it interested her. The family cat (Pushkin) bored her. Food (especially pasta, for some reason) bored her. Music bored her. Her friends bored her. School really bored her. When her
parents told her they would no longer search for her if she ran again—
some tough-love bullshit
, she calls it—she left them a note that said,
It’s not your fault
and took off. Now she lives in Seattle, couch surfing and panhandling and meeting people she calls
fascinatingly weird
. She’s been beaten up a couple of times (
all that orthodontic work shot to shit
), and she has a chronic cough that she treats with stolen cough syrup. But she’s not bored. Not at all. She calls home (collect) on Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, her birthday and Christmas.
I’m not trying to hurt them
, she says.
I just don’t want their life
. Seems like a pretty extreme way to deal with boredom, but then, I’m not a risk taker. I can’t imagine running away from Mom and Verna. It makes me sick just to think about it. Sonia sounds really selfish. Maybe there’s something she’s not telling Mom, something horrific that would explain her behavior, but all I can do is transcribe what I hear.

I close Sonia’s file and reread Meredith’s email. Maybe
brusque
is the right word for it, as if she has no emotional stake in seeing me. My phone pings—Lucy’s text says,
I got an email from her too. So yeah, let’s go together. Not our café though. Downtown? I miss you too, sis.

Our café. I smile and text back:
Monday @ Starbucks in PP Mkt? 2 pm.
As an afterthought, I add,
She doesn’t sound very friendly
.

Maybe she’s shy. But I’m curious. You?

Curious enough to meet her. I’ll email her and get back to you
.

I shoot Meredith an email and get a three-word response: See you then
.

The rest of the week is predictable: hair salon and dog walking in the mornings, transcribing in the afternoons, dinner with Mom, watching movies or reading in the evenings, hanging out with the ladies on Sunday. This week’s playlist: old musicals. We did a rousing chorus of “I’m Gonna Wash That Man Right Outta My Hair,” which seemed deeply appropriate.

Shanti is there for a shampoo, and I ask her about Brad, the guy Annabeth thinks might be a pimp.

She shakes her head. “Not someone I know,” she says, “but I’ll ask around. In the meantime, tell her to be careful. Lots of weirdos out there. And lots of them look perfectly normal.”

I nod as if I know what she’s talking about.

Ben has accepted my emailed apology—his exact words were
No worries, mate
, and we’re going to Skype soon, when we can figure out a good time. One night when Mom and I are sitting on the couch—Mom’s reading and I’m watching old episodes of
Veronica Mars
on my computer—my phone pings. When I pick it up and read a text from Lucy that makes me laugh, Mom asks if I’m back in touch with Byron.