Vicky dropped her pocketbook onto the floor and then sat down on the couch as far away from Lucy as she could. But Vicky was big and she couldn’t get that far away, the couch was not very large. Vicky sat, her almost-all-white hair cut short, with a fringe around it, as though it had been cut with a bowl on her head; she tried to hoist a knee up over the other, but she was too big, and so she sat on the end of the couch, and to Pete she looked like someone in a wheelchair he had seen in Carlisle when he went to get his hair cut, an older woman, huge, who was sitting in a motorized wheelchair that she drove around.
But then he saw: Vicky had on lipstick.
Across her mouth, curving on her upper lip and across her plump bottom lip, was an orangey-red coating of lipstick. Pete could not remember seeing Vicky wear any lipstick before. When Pete looked at Lucy, he saw that she had no lipstick on, and he felt a tiny shudder go through him, as though his soul had a toothache.
“So, like, we’re going to die soon and you thought you should come say goodbye?” Vicky asked this, looking directly at her sister. “You look dressed for a funeral, by the way.”
Lucy crossed her legs and put her hands, splayed together, over her knee. “I wouldn’t put it that way. That we’re going to die soon, I mean.”
“How would you put it?” asked Vicky.
Lucy’s face seemed to grow pink. She said, “I would put it the way I just put it. That we’re old. And we’re getting older.” She gave a tiny nod. “And I wanted to see you guys.”
“Are you in trouble?” Vicky asked.
“No,” said Lucy.
“Are you sick?”
“No.” Lucy added, “Not that I know of.”
And then there was a silence that went on for a long time. In Pete’s mind the silence became very long. He was used to silence, but this was not a good silence. He moved back to the armchair in the corner and sat down slowly, carefully.
“How are you, Vicky?” Lucy asked this, looking over at her sister.
“I’m fine. How are you?”
“Oh God,” Lucy said, and she put her elbows on her knees, covering her face for a moment with her hands. “Vicky, please—”
Vicky said, “？‘Vicky, please’？ ‘Vicky, please’？ Lucy, you left here and you have never once come back since Daddy died. And you say to me, ‘Vicky, please’—as though I’m the one who’s done something wrong.”
Pete wiped his finger across the wall again, and again his finger became streaked with dust. He did it twice more before he spread his hands over his knees.
Lucy said, looking upward, “I’ve been very busy.”
“Busy? Who isn’t busy?” Vicky pushed her glasses up her nose. In a moment she added, “Hey, Lucy, is that what’s called a truthful sentence? Didn’t I just see you on the computer giving a talk about truthful sentences? ‘A writer should write only what is true.’ Some crap like that you were saying. And you sit there and say to me, ‘I’ve been very busy.’ Well. I don’t believe you. You didn’t come here because you didn’t want to.”
Pete was surprised to see Lucy’s face relax. She nodded at her sister. “You’re right,” she said.
But Vicky wasn’t done. She leaned forward and said, “You know why I came over here today? To tell you—and I know you give me money, and you never have to give me another cent, I wouldn’t take another cent, but I came over here to see you today to tell you: You make me sick.” She sat back and wagged a finger toward her sister; on her wrist was a watch whose small leather band seemed squished into her flesh. “You do, Lucy. Every time I see you online, every time I see you, you are acting so nice, and it makes me sick.”
Pete looked at the rug. The rug seemed to holler at him, You are such a dope for buying me.
After a long time, Lucy said quietly, “Well, it makes me sick too. What I’d really like to say on whatever you’re watching—and why are you watching me?—what I’d really like to say, sometimes, is just: Fuck you.”
Pete looked up. He said, “Wow. Who do you want to say that to?”
“Oh,” Lucy said, running a hand through her hair, “usually it’s some woman who doesn’t like my work and stands up and says so. Or some reporter who wants to know about my personal life.”
Pete asked, “A person really stands up and says they don’t like your work?”
“Sometimes.”