How Could She Read online

  Sunny tensed. She was becoming more and more certain that Geraldine did not need to know about those twenty-minute sessions, ten whole years ago. How many times? Half a dozen? Not more than that. Too many to be incidental. Too few to mean anything. Peter had been after her, like a hunter on a chase. She’d acquiesced and frankly kind of enjoyed the friskiness of it, and before things had a chance to settle into anything more permanent, she’d been let go, sent on her way. It was pretty clean, all told.

  Sunny took a deep inhale. The kitchen smelled of sage and butter and the maple and blueberry pies that she’d made earlier in the day. The nice thing about people thinking you had no emotions was that when you did have them, nobody tended to search your face for signs.

  “Besides,” Rachel said, “how could I leave now that I’ve finally made it onto your list? Do you know how many years I’ve been hearing about Canadian Thanksgiving?”

  “I think this is going to be the last one,” Sunny said softly. “Nick and I are separating. I’ve been staying in a studio apartment, trying to figure out what comes next.”

  Rachel appeared to be having difficulty processing. “Is there somebody else?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know anything.” Sunny might have said something about Jesse, but she was starting to cry. It was too much to deal with. “I’ve been avoiding everybody and everything. I need to sort things out with Nick, but I have to wait till he’s not so angry. I’ve been trying to stay busy finishing this stupid project, as if I can distract myself.” She curled her knees into her chest and told Rachel about her show of paintings based on plaques outside doctors’ buildings. It was going to be in San Francisco, at the flagship of an online company that was trying to be the Warby Parker of holistic health and beauty. As Sunny spoke of her plans, she could feel her soul drifting out of her body. She was seated on the exact same bench cushion as the one she’d been on when she’d told Nick she was taking a time-out. The wording was juvenile but accurate. “I’m not leaving you. I just need to sort through my thoughts.”

  She’d been prepared for him to plead for her to reconsider, to offer to give her all the space she needed at home. Instead he’d stared at her stonily. “You hung in for several years, I’ll give you that,” he’d said. “That’s not bad for one of your projects.” He’d stood up and lowered his voice. “By the way, real artists don’t do projects. And even the most humorless ones know that the kinds of projects you embark on are the stuff of exquisite satire. Everyone sees through you, Sunny, being hired by commercial enterprises to give them the veneer of class.” His voice had stooped to a growl. “I mean, I should know, shouldn’t I? Isn’t that what I did?”

  His words had cut off her breath. She’d always thought their relationship pivoted on mutual respect. How had she been so wrong? It wasn’t until later that night, as she lay alone in her makeshift bed replaying the conversation, that she wondered if Nick had somebody else, too.

  * * *

  • • •

  Sunny believed that the secret to a lively dinner party was an equal distribution of old friends and guests who’d never met before, and she’d planned this list accordingly. It was a funny little group—a few people from the Province days and a selection of Sunny’s newer friends with a connection to Canada, however tenuous. Pam, the adorable assistant to the director of the Canadian consulate, had been so excited to receive an invite she’d offered to stay and help clean up afterward. Pam and a man she’d introduced as her boyfriend, Derek, arrived first and helped Sunny unwrap cheeses and turn on the stereo. The others slowly trickled in, and by the time Sunny and Rachel had grated just the right amount of Comté into the soup bowls, all the appetizers were gone.

  Geraldine was the last to arrive. She was wearing a button-down dress with a faint polka-dot pattern and was holding a bouquet of calla lilies wrapped in brown paper. “I’m so sorry I’m late,” she said when Sunny opened the door for her.

  “We just sat down. Those are beautiful.” Sunny reached for the flowers, but Geraldine twisted away.

  “I remember where the vases are,” she said. “Go eat.” Sunny inhaled the fresh October air and watched Geraldine head into the kitchen. She radiated a flushed, purposeful energy that Sunny still wasn’t used to. At the table Geraldine took the one empty seat, next to Vera Dulcie, a Montreal-born screenwriter. Vera could be spiky, but she appeared to be riveted by Geraldine, and soon the two were carrying on as if they were the only people at the table. Everyone else chatted inclusively, and the conversation moved from whether there were Canadian pilgrims to a technology that photographed your gut bacteria in order to identify missing compounds. “Mark my words,” Matt said, bouncing Cleo on his knee. “In ten years everybody is going to be posting selfies of the insides of their bodies.”

  “Some of us are eating,” Rachel told her husband.

  “It’s no worse than the selfies most people already blast out,” Sunny said.

  “To each her own narcissism,” Rachel replied.

  Sunny couldn’t help interpreting Rachel’s remark as a personal judgment, but she refused to engage about it. “Has anyone seen my phone?” she asked. She should take a picture of the last supper. She’d want to have it.

  “No, I got it,” said a familiar voice. “You get in the picture, Sun.”

  Sunny froze. Nick was standing in the doorway with Jeremy. Her husband—she could still call him that—looked taller than usual in his combat-style boots and navy mackintosh. Jeremy’s cheeks were flushed, and he was smiling oddly. The pair had clearly been out drinking. Jeremy headed over to Geraldine, who rose up for a hug befitting long-lost siblings. Sunny had already explained Nick’s absence to the group and felt her neck go hot as her mind tripped around for an excuse for his sudden appearance.

  “Niko Suave,” Matt said cluelessly. “I thought you couldn’t make it.”

  “Wouldn’t dream of missing Sunny’s party. The lengths people go to for an invite.” Nick looked around the table, inhaled deeply through his nose. “Is that tarragon? Smells delicious.” Sunny wondered how many of her guests detected the curl of sarcasm in his voice.

  Matt brought a chair from the kitchen and placed it between Rachel and himself. Derek offered Jeremy his seat. “Pam and I will share.” Sunny felt light-headed, a little woozy. She’d decided to proceed with tradition to prove to herself that she hadn’t entirely lost purchase on the world she’d gone to pains to create. The party was having the reverse effect. This had been a terrible idea. Now she was sitting directly across from the husband who loathed her and the woman who had the same enormous, soulful eyes as the guy who’d inspired her to leave said husband. She gripped the edges of her seat and tried to force an expression of serenity.

  “So what have you been up to, Sunny?” Jeremy was staring at her in a strange way. Nick must have told him everything. At least he didn’t know about Jesse. Nobody did, as far as she was aware.

  “I have a show in San Francisco coming up,” Sunny said airily.

  “I saw some of the pieces,” Rachel said, and Sunny loved her for it. “Very cool stuff. And you have that project with my brother.”

  “That’s right,” Sunny said, trying to sound dull. The sex was still mind-altering. The problem was the moments surrounding it. On their most recent date, they’d gone to a Steve Carell movie, and when they walked out of the theater, Jesse had asked her why she didn’t like to laugh out loud.

  Sunny looked down the table. “Geraldine! Vera!” she shouted. “What are you two conspiring about?”

  Vera jerked her head upright. “My fault—I’ve been interrogating Geraldine about her life odyssey. Sorry to monopolize her.”

  “I understand why you’d be fascinated with Geraldine,” Sunny said. “She’s one of my oldest and dearest friends,” she added, as if kind words could cushion the blow that she was meant to hand to Geraldine after dessert. Maybe, Sunny suddenly thought with
a flash of hopefulness, Nick’s arrival would ruin things to such a degree that she and Rachel would have to postpone their plan.

  It was as if Nick could tell that Sunny wished he would kick up a scene. He made amiable, if loud, conversation with his fellow diners. It emerged that Derek wasn’t Pam’s boyfriend so much as a guy she’d met at a party two weeks ago, and so that made it all the more intense between them. By pie course they were making out, and in a complete reversal of Pam’s promise they were the first guests to disappear. A few others followed quickly, including Matt and Cleo, who’d been rubbing her eyes in that way children did when they were about to melt down. Nick and Jeremy went into the garden to get even drunker. It fell to Rachel, Geraldine, and Sunny to clear the table.

  Rachel claimed the sink. “Why don’t you two just sit down in the den and catch up?” she said as she adjusted the water temperature. “I can get a lot more done if you guys move out of the way.”

  The other two looked slightly stunned and made motions relevant to appearing useful, picking up dishes and setting them down closer to the sink.

  “We can all go sit down?” Rachel said, eyeing Sunny. “Or not, if you really don’t want to,” she added, in a tone that was not entirely sympathetic.

  “I’ve got it under control,” Sunny said.

  Geraldine came to a stool on the other side of the kitchen island and smiled unsurely as she took her seat. “You have what under control?”

  Sunny backed against the refrigerator and laced her fingers together, avoiding eye contact. “Rachel wants me to tell you something that I’m not sure you need to hear, but I’m not going to hear the end of it if I don’t.” Sunny pressed her lips together. “I did something very stupid a very long time ago.”

  “What’s that?” asked Geraldine.

  “I messed around with Peter.”

  “I see,” Geraldine said, and Sunny nodded slowly, as if her head were weighted down with a thousand stones. “When?”

  Sunny drew in air through her teeth. “When I was still at Province.”

  “So when Peter and I were a couple, you and Peter were also a couple.” Geraldine took a seat at the kitchen’s round table.

  “No, no, we weren’t a couple—not at all! He was just acting reckless, and I guess I thought I could calm him down.”

  “By sleeping with him?” Geraldine sounded befuddled.

  Sunny glared at Rachel, who was just standing there. “He was persuasive, you know that,” she told Geraldine.

  “He was also her boss,” Rachel chimed in.

  “I was your boss, too,” Geraldine reminded Sunny. “And your friend.”

  “You were my best friend,” Sunny allowed.

  Geraldine let off a bark of laughter. “Sorry, this is just . . . Wow . . . When you two were having your little phone calls and dinners, I wasn’t crazy to think I wanted to kill you both.”

  “Only a few times,” Sunny said.

  “Times.” Geraldine bowed her head. “Plural.”

  “Just a couple,” Sunny said. “A few. The last time was right before I moved to New York. I was barely twenty-seven.”

  “I know how old you were. I threw a party for your birthday.” Geraldine shook her head, dumbfounded. “And why are you telling me this now?”

  “It seemed like something you should know,” Rachel butted in. “I didn’t tell you before because I thought it might kill you. But when you started seeing Peter again, it just seemed like you should—”

  Geraldine turned to Rachel. “Wait, you knew about this?”

  “Nobody told me, per se. I just put the pieces together,” Rachel said.

  “And you stood by. Even when Peter and I got engaged?”

  “I was happy for you two.” The pitch of Rachel’s voice went up. “It wasn’t like it all happened on the same day. Years passed before you got engaged.”

  “Yes,” Geraldine croaked. “Years of my fucking life.”

  “Hey, don’t be mad at me,” Rachel said. “I’m not the one who . . . And let’s be honest, it’s not like you didn’t know.”

  “Excuse me?” Geraldine said.

  “Why did you put Sunny on Ed’s list?” Rachel said. “I saw you and Ed on your walks around Harbourfront, right before the layoffs. You advised him on who to cut, right?”

  Geraldine’s face went splotchy in parts, like an heirloom tomato. “I didn’t have the final say.”

  “You had some say,” Rachel said. “A say. You made sure Sunny went on the pink-slip list, and we all know it wasn’t for anything to do with her work.”

  “You’re the one who had me fired, Geraldine?” Sunny couldn’t help feeling a bit impressed. “I didn’t know you had it in you.”

  “It wasn’t my choice,” Geraldine said. “We had to lower the head count.”

  “But you gave Ed advice. And then Ed ejected Sunny,” Rachel said. “I always suspected that’s what went down.”

  “Yup.” Geraldine gave a frustrated laugh. “After all these years, you’re still a little girl detective, Rachel. Well done. I’ll have to find a star sticker for you in my bag.”

  Sunny laughed. “Sorry! I know this isn’t remotely funny. But she’s right, Rachel—you have an epic Harriet the Spy complex.”

  “Not so fast,” Geraldine said to Sunny. “Peter was obsessed with you, and I hated both of you for it. But that’s not why you were let go. We had to weigh all sorts of factors. You were the one person who could afford to start over.” She gestured around the apartment. “You kept telling me—you kept telling everyone—how much you wanted to move to New York, and about all the interest in your work.”

  “When Ed told me he was letting me go, I came straight to your office,” Sunny said, the memory growing brighter and clearer. “And you pretended to be shocked. But you knew. Is that why you had those cookies ready for me?”

  “I didn’t know anything for sure,” Geraldine insisted, and turned to Rachel. “Are you happy? You did your job. She told me. You can put your notebook away.”

  “We just don’t want Peter to hurt you again,” Rachel said.

  Geraldine paused to gather her thoughts. “Peter and I are not seeing each other. I met somebody else who’s really . . . good.” Geraldine’s eyes darted between Sunny and Rachel. “This is the part where you’re supposed to tell me that you’re happy for me.”

  “Of course I am,” Sunny said, filling with shame. “I didn’t want to say anything in the first place.”

  Geraldine’s eyes were glazing over. “You don’t want to do anything that will affect other people’s feelings.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Sunny said.

  “It means we’re just props for you.” Geraldine came off her stool. “You don’t actually like people, which is inconvenient, since you need to keep some of us on hand to make you look better.”

  “Okay,” Rachel said in a breathy exhalation. “Maybe we should all take a break.”

  “Will you stop telling us what to do?” Geraldine said. “You mess other people up just as badly. The only difference is, you pretend to be warm and uncalculating. But you’re totally calculating, creeping about and taking mental notes and trying to shock people with your so-called observations. Sadly, you’re just too consumed with yourself to actually see anything for what it is.”

  “What the fuck?” Rachel cried.

  Geraldine fixed her gaze on Rachel. “You’re mad at the world for not giving you the recognition you crave, and you’re mad at me for working hard and starting to get some myself. You’ve been mad at Sunny for being the center of the universe since the beginning of time, and I don’t even know what you’ll do when you learn she’s fucking your little brother.”

  Sunny felt herself drain of color. A crashing sound trilled through the air, and she realized she’d dropped a nut bowl. Rachel leaped to sweep up the
shards. Geraldine didn’t offer to help.

  “I already knew about that,” Rachel said from below. “He’s slept with half my friends. It doesn’t matter.”

  Sunny’s body relaxed when she saw that Nick and Jeremy were still outside, bent in toward each other. They hadn’t heard anything.

  Geraldine was watching Rachel in a way that made Sunny nervous. “Do you remember how you used to write about me in your columns?” Geraldine asked at last. “I always think about how after we’d gone out together one night, you handed in a story about how socially awkward people were actually cool. You described your friend ‘D’ as ‘a shy and earnest sort,’” Geraldine paused. “I remember the wording after all these years. Do you know what it feels like to see yourself reduced to an ‘earnest sort’ in print? I was so crushed.”

  “I honestly don’t remember the piece,” Rachel said. “I’m sorry if it hurt you.”

  “Not if.” Geraldine clenched her jaw.

  “It’s horrible to read about yourself,” Sunny said. “I absolutely refuse to do it.”

  “The only thing anyone could possibly feel when they read the stuff that’s been written about Sunny MacLeod is the urge to . . . forget it.” Geraldine waved her arms in the air. “You two are something. You don’t know what to do with me when I’m not the pitiful spectacle. You both wanted to break Peter and me apart tonight, to hurt me under the guise of helping me. As if you’ve ever known how to be helpful!”

  “That’s not fair,” Sunny said. “I was always there for you when you needed me.”

  “You were available to witness me try to make sense of the senseless, to watch me come undone,” Geraldine said. “While you were seducing my fiancé.”

  “He was your boyfriend,” Rachel interjected.

  Geraldine raised her hand to silence Rachel. “Sunny,” she said. “What I don’t get is what was in it for you?”

  “Nothing, he meant absol—”

  “I’m not talking about Peter,” Geraldine told her. “You and me, why did you bother? Did you need my jilted ass around for all these years in order to feel better about yourself? Did you just want me to take over your lease? You certainly didn’t need me because you liked me.”