“Ace gets him the drugs,” Caroline said. “That’s what Renee says.”
In the past few years, Joe and Ace had become friends once again. During college they’d drifted, but now both lived in New York, both worked long hours inside towering office buildings. Joe had described Ace to me as a different person since our summers at the pond. No longer aggressive and lost, no longer trying to impress with bravado and risk taking. I had believed my brother.
In the space of this past hour with Caroline, a gaping hole had opened. Joe and Renee and Caroline stood on one side, me on the other, the youngest, the baby, alone.
A surge of feline whimpers came from the bedroom, and Caroline and I looked toward the door.
“We need to deal with the cat,” said Caroline.
“Okay, I’ll wait out here,” I replied, not looking at her.
Caroline sighed and closed her eyes and then immediately opened them again. “I know! I’ve got some oxy,” she said.
I raised my eyebrows.
“Chronic back pain,” Caroline said. “You try carrying two babies in your uterus for thirty-nine weeks. Let’s go find some tuna.”
Caroline and I left the house and drove to the Hamden main street in search of cat food. In the cramped, dusty aisles of a corner grocer, we found two tins of tuna fish. Caroline also bought a pack of Marlboros.
Inside the parked car, Caroline lit up.
“I didn’t know you smoked,” I said.
“In high school,” Caroline replied. “I still think about it. I’ve been thinking about it a lot recently. Just don’t tell Nathan. He’d probably divorce me. Too unwifely.” Caroline inhaled deeply and exhaled out the window in a long, forceful column of smoke. “Oh,” she said, and closed her eyes.
With her eyes closed, head back, my sister looked different. Surrendered, I thought. Abandoned, adrift, lost. She’d given in to the pull of the nicotine, the problem of the cats, the stress of the new house. Caroline was always so cheerful and in control, secure in the way of life’s major acquisitions—love, children, home—that her good mood seemed to me a given. What reason could Caroline possibly have to doubt anything, to spend even one night staring at a dark ceiling? But of course she had her breaking point. We all did.
I considered Joe’s job at Morgan Capital: his dazzling office, the boat parties and bonuses. And Sandrine. A yearlong courtship capped with that engagement ring, an acorn-size solitaire that sat high on her finger and seemed to suck all the light from any room. Next week Joe’s boss, Kyle Morgan, was hosting the engagement party. One hundred guests had been invited, a jazz quartet hired, caterers and waiters, bartenders and florists, and a color scheme of green, pink, and white. It was an event almost as grand as the wedding itself. That’s what Sandrine had wanted. Sandrine and her ponytail, her pale pink nails. At that brunch last month, she’d absently pushed the diamond in circles around her finger. With each pass I’d wondered what it felt like to play with a ring that beautiful, to understand its promise and possess it so completely.
“We don’t need to worry about Joe,” I said now to Caroline. “I’m not Sandrine’s biggest fan, but he loves her. He’s getting married! His job is demanding, but it’s what he does. And he’s got tons of friends. Renee is overreacting. Maybe he smokes some pot or drinks too much on the weekends, but give him a break. He works a lot of hours. He’s an adult. We all have our vices.”
Caroline sat up, raised the cigarette with a wry twist of her mouth.
“See?” I said.
“But Renee thinks he’s spending too much money.”
“He’s got so much money.”
“He bought a car and a parking space. Did he tell you? And they’re looking at four-bed apartments on the Upper West Side. Central Park West. Do you have any idea what those cost?”
“He works in banking. It’s a different world. Renee spends all her time around sick people. Of course she’ll think he’s sick. Joe is not sick.”
I saw Caroline hesitate. We had always followed Renee on questions of significance. It wasn’t that we saw her as infallible, only less fallible than we were.
“I know Joe better than Renee does,” I continued. “If something bad were happening, he would have told me.” Even as I said these words, I knew they weren’t true, not anymore. When had Joe and I last seen each other alone, without Sandrine? Or Noni? When had we talked about something other than his job, my job, how much money I needed to borrow?
Caroline sighed. “Oh, I don’t know,” she said, and rubbed her eyes. And in that moment my sister Caroline, who wanted always to assume the best of a house or a person, began to believe me. Joe was okay. An intervention was completely unnecessary.
“Well, you’ll have to convince Renee,” she said. “You’ll never reach her on the phone. Talk to her at the engagement party. She promised Joe she’d be there.”
As Caroline weakened, I felt a sort of relief, that I had saved Joe and he would in time be grateful. It was also a reprieve from an understanding that had begun to sink in: That what I thought was true about Joe was not true. That I was a little sister who worshipped her big brother and would never see him clearly. I could barely admit this to myself; I would never admit it to Caroline.
We sat in silence for three minutes, five, ten, as Caroline smoked another cigarette.
“Caroline, the cat?” I said at last. I inclined my head toward the house.
“Oh. Right.” She flicked a butt out the window. “Let’s go deal with the fucking cat.”
In the kitchen Caroline pounded three oxycodone tablets with her shoe and sprinkled them over a plate of tuna.
At first the cat ignored the plate.
“Come on, it’s tuna. When have you eaten this well?” Caroline said.
Some of the kittens were asleep, translucent lids covering eyeballs the color of sky, their bodies downy and plump. Others kneaded the cat’s belly as they nursed. Caroline waved the plate beneath the cat’s nose, and at last it lifted its head and sniffed the tuna. Delicately it nibbled, and then, with a handful of bites, the plate was clean.
“Now we wait,” said Caroline.
“How long?”
“Well, with me maybe fifteen minutes. But that’s just one pill.” Caroline paused, considering the three. “I hope we didn’t kill it,” she said.
It took five minutes. The cat’s eyes wavered, then closed. Its head tilted back.
I found a cardboard box, and together we picked up the cat, its body heavy and difficult to grip, liquid concrete in a sack of fur, and dropped it inside. We loaded up the kittens, and then Caroline carried the box downstairs and slid it into the back of the car. Clouds had moved in. Across the lawn fallen leaves jumped and spun with the wind. One lodged in my hair, which was longer than it had been at Christmas, dyed a deep brownish red that was richer and darker than my natural color. Caroline plucked the leaf from my hair.
“So are you dating?” she asked.
“Um, yeah, you could say I’m dating,” I answered. Maybe Caroline would have understood about the blog, but I wasn’t ready to tell her. Not yet. I needed some unmistakable, tangible sign of success to put before my family. I had never played a sport or excelled academically or been popular in school; I had only ever written words into secret books, and now this, The Last Romantic.