Rise and Shine Read Free Page B

on a strapless gown, and she had the kind of cleavage about which Irving likes to say, “You could park a bicycle in there.”
    She held on to my hands insistently. “No demands,” Ann continued. “Do you know how rare that is? No demands. We had someone several years ago—I can’t even tell you. A certain size car, a helicopter from the country house. And then they wouldn’t even come for dinner. In at nine-oh-five for the award, out by nine-thirty. Your sister is not only coming for the meal, she is coming for cocktails.”
    “And staying for dessert and dancing,” I said.
    “What did I say? No demands.” It’s an odd thing about irony in New York; either you find yourself in situations where it is the only language spoken or those in which it falls on utterly deaf ears. Ann probably spoke French for shopping in Paris and pidgin Spanish to give instructions to the housekeeper. She did not speak ironic. “My hero,” she said as she was led away by a woman with a clipboard and I began my aimless circulating again.
    My sister came in at seven. Usually I can tell because the cameras start to go off with a sound like a swarm of insects. It was easier this time because she was wearing a white dress. Meghan never wears underwear under her evening wear. I suppose Evan and I are the only ones who know that. Or maybe everyone knows it. The dress she was wearing that night followed the lines of her body perfectly. It looked like a very simple white halter dress until you realized that it was covered with tiny round shiny things. “Those things,” she’d said that morning at breakfast. “You know. They’re not sequins. Damn. You know.”
    “I have no clue.” I still had no clue, but they looked wonderful. The dress looked like water, which seemed apt. Meghan has the body of a swimmer, long strong muscles, broad shoulders, slim hips. Every day after the show she takes off the makeup, calls me, has a cup of coffee, goes to the gym, and swims for thirty minutes. She says it’s the only time she can really be alone.
    “She’s much better looking in person,” someone behind me said.
    “She has to have had work done,” said another.
    She hasn’t.
    Evan was next to her, his hand at the small of her back. Evan and Meghan met when they were children, he eight, she six. We lived in the nicest section of Montrose then, and so did he. They were at a birthday party together. Legend has it that he said she had spots on her face. “I have freckles,” she said with the dignity she had even as a kid. “They look like spots,” he replied. She pushed him in the pool. I have heard the story so many times that I can see it all in my mind’s eye. Evan is wearing a polo shirt that’s buttoned too high on his thin stalk of a neck. Meghan’s knees are knobs, her legs skinny, her hem drooping because our mother was so careless with our clothes, insisting they be so expensive that they needed dry cleaning or ironing, then ignoring whether they were cleaned or ironed. He is speaking out of self-protection because she is so sure of herself; she responds out of outrage at being made to look foolish. Of course I have no way of recalling any of this; I was two years old at the time and was probably at home in a playpen watching the housekeeper wash dishes, which apparently was one of the ways I whiled away my toddler days. I’ve been told too many times to count that Meghan called Evan “Stupid Head” as he flailed in the deep end, and that he was led away, dripping and dazzled.
    I’m sure Evan had never encountered anyone like Meghan before. Evan’s parents are the quietest people on earth. When she’s feeling froggy, his mother will say, “Oh, you,” to her husband, and he’ll squeeze her forearm. That’s the equivalent of all hell breaking loose in the Grater household. I sat with Evan’s mother at their wedding lunch, and I remember how her eyes filled and shone as she watched the two of them move around the dance