Umberto, stepping politely between us the way he had done so many times before, ‘but may I suggest we move this riveting exchange to the library?’
Once we caught up with Janice, she had already draped herself over Aunt Rose’s favourite armchair, a gin and tonic nestling on the foxhuntmotif cushion I had cross-stitched as a senior in high school while my sister had been out on the prowl for upright prey.
‘What?’ She looked at us with ill-concealed loathing. ‘You don’t think she left half the booze for me?’
It was vintage Janice to be angling for a fight over someone’s dead body, and I turned my back to her and walked over to the French doors. On the terrace outside, Aunt Rose’s beloved terra-cotta pots sat like a row of mourners, flower heads hanging beyond consolation. It was an unusual sight. Umberto always kept the garden in perfect order, but perhaps he found no pleasure in his work now that his employer was no longer around to appreciate it.
‘I am surprised,’ said Janice, swirling her drink, ‘that you are still here, Birdie. If I were you I would have been in Vegas by now. With the silver.’
Umberto did not reply. He had stopped talking directly to Janice years ago. Instead, he looked at me. ‘The funeral is tomorrow.’
‘I can’t believe,’ said Janice, one leg dangling from the armrest, ‘you planned all that without asking us.’
‘It was what she wanted.’
‘Anything else we should know?’ Janice freed herself from the embrace of the chair and straightened out her dress. ‘I assume we’re all getting our share? She didn’t fall in love with some weird pet foundation or something, did she?’
‘Do you mind?’ I croaked, and for a second or two, Janice actually looked chastened. Then she shrugged it off as she always did, and reached once more for the gin bottle.
I didn’t even bother to look at her as she feigned clumsiness, raising her perfectly groomed eyebrows in astonishment to let us know that she certainly had not intended to pour quite so much. As the sun slowly melted into the horizon, so would Janice soon melt into a chaise longue, leaving the great questions of life for others to answer as long as they kept the alcohol coming.
She had been like that for as long as I remembered: insatiable. When we were children, Aunt Rose used to laugh delightedly and exclaim, ‘That girl, she could eat her way out of a gingerbread prison,’ as if Janice’s greediness was something to be proud of. But then, Aunt Rose was at the top of the food chain and had, unlike me, nothing to fear. For as long as I could remember, Janice had been able to sniff out my secret candy no matter where I hid it, and Easter mornings in our family were nasty, brutish, and short. They would inevitably climax with Umberto chastising her for stealing my share of the Easter eggs, and Janice – teeth dripping with chocolate – hissing from underneath her bed that he wasn’t her daddy and couldn’t tell her what to do.
The frustrating thing was that she didn’t look her part. Her skin stubbornly refused to give away its secrets; it was as smooth as the satin icing on a wedding cake, her features as delicately crafted as the little marzipan fruits and flowers in the hands of a master confectioner. Neither gin nor coffee nor shame nor remorse had been able to crack that glazed façade; it was as if she had a perennial spring of life inside her, as if she rose every morning rejuvenated from the well of eternity, not a day older, not an ounce heavier, and still ravenously hungry for the world.
Unfortunately, we were not identical twins. Once, in the schoolyard, I had overheard someone referring to me as Bambi-on-stilts, and although Umberto laughed and said it was a compliment, it didn’t feel that way. Even when I was past my most clumsy age, I knew I still looked lanky and anemic next to Janice; no matter where we went or what we did, she was as dark and effusive as I was pale and reserved.
Whenever we entered a room together, all the spotlights would immediately turn to her, and although I was standing there right beside her, I became just another head in the audience. As time went on, however, I grew comfortable with my role. I never had to worry about finishing my sentences, for Janice would inevitably do that for me. And on the rare occasions when someone asked about my hopes and dreams – usually over a polite cup of tea with one of Aunt Rose’s neighbours – Janice would pull me away to the piano, where she would attempt to play while I turned the sheets for her. Even now, at twenty-five, I would still squirm and grind to a halt in conversations with strangers, hoping desperately to be interrupted before I had to commit my verb to an object.
We buried Aunt Rose in the pouring rain. As I stood there by her grave, heavy drops of water fell from my hair to blend with the tears running down my cheeks; the paper tissues I had brought from home had long since turned to mush in my pockets.
Although I had been crying all night, I was hardly prepared for the sense of sad finality I felt as the coffin was lowered crookedly into the earth. Such a big coffin for Aunt Rose’s spindly frame…now I suddenly regretted not having asked to see the body, even if it would have made no difference to her. Or maybe it would? Perhaps she was watching us from somewhere far away, wishing she could let us know that she had arrived safely. It was a consoling idea, a welcome distraction from reality, and I wished I could believe it.
The only one who did not look like a drowned rodent by the end of the funeral was Janice, who wore plastic boots with five-inch heels and a black hat that signalled anything but mourning. In contrast, I was wearing what Umberto had once labelled my Attila-the-Nun outfit; if Janice’s boots and neckline said come hither, my clunky shoes and buttoned-up dress most certainly said get lost.
A handful of people showed up at the grave, but only Mr Gallagher, our family lawyer, stayed to talk. Neither Janice nor I had ever met him before, but Aunt Rose had mentioned him so often and so fondly that the man himself could only be a disappointment.
‘I understand you are a pacifist?’ he said to me, as we walked away from the cemetery together.
‘Jules loves to fight,’ observed Janice, walking happily in the middle, oblivious to the fact that the brim of her hat was funnelling water onto both of us, ‘and throw stuff at people. Did you hear what she did to the Little Mermaid?’
‘That’s enough,’ I said, trying to find a dry spot on my sleeve to wipe my eyes one last time.
‘Oh, don’t be so modest! You were on the front page!’
‘And I hear your business is going very well?’ Mr Gallagher looked at Janice, attempting a smile. ‘It must be a challenge to make everyone happy?’
‘Happy? Eek!’ Janice narrowly avoided stepping in a puddle. ‘Happiness is the worst threat to my business. Dreams are what it’s all about. Frustrations. Fantasies that never come true. Men that don’t exist. Women you can never have. That’s where the money is, date after date after date…’
Janice kept talking, but I stopped listening. It was one of the world’s great ironies that my sister was into professional matchmaking, for she was probably the least romantic person I had ever known. Notwithstanding her urge to flirt with every one of them, she saw men as little more than noisy power tools that you plugged in when you needed them and unplugged as soon as the job was done.
Oddly enough, when we were children, Janice had had an obsession with arranging everything in pairs, two teddy bears, two cushions, two hairbrushes…even on days when we had been fighting, she would put both our dolls next to each other on the shelf overnight, sometimes even with their arms around each other. In that respect it was perhaps not so strange that she would choose to make a career out of matchmaking, seeing that she was a genuine Noah at putting people in pairs. The only problem was that, unlike the old patriarch, she had long since forgotten why she did it.
It was hard to say when things had changed. At some point in high school she had made it her mission to burst every dream I might ever have had about love. Running through boyfriends like cheap nylon tights, Janice had taken a peculiar pleasure in disgusting me by describing everybody and everything in such a dismissive way that it made me wonder why women bothered with men at all.