Pale as china, Janine endured their check-in at LaGuardia, wearing a spectral, otherworldly expression, then sat near the gate while Whitney found a pay phone to call their mother.
“Janine’s pretty much broken down,” she said tersely. “I’m bringing her home. Lock up the liquor cabinet and any pills in her bathroom . . .”
“What happened?” Anne broke in. “Is she all right?”
“She probably won’t die, Mom. But, no, she’s not all right and hasn’t been for years. It’s time for you and Dad to face the truth.”
She hung up without permitting her mother to answer. As she returned to the gate area, her sister regarded her with fatalistic blankness. “What did she say?”
“Not much. I didn’t give her a chance.”
Janine slumped back, eyelids half-closed, for once oblivious to how she looked. Whitney sat beside her, trying to imagine their homecoming.
Mercifully, no one they knew was on the plane. Once it took off, Janine curled up and fell asleep. Staring out the window as dusk enveloped the fading light, Whitney thought of how she had spoken to her mother. Perhaps this was her act of revenge, dragging her damaged sister home the way a cat deposits a dead bird at the front door.
See this?
The last few hours came crashing down on her—the falsity of those she had loved, the loss of her own identity as their masks slipped away. Who was she if not solid and sensible Whitney Dane, daughter of a loving couple—the wise, masterful father and poised, contented mother; the fiancée of Peter Brooks, her honorable and open partner for life; the best friend of Clarice Barkley, her loyal confidante since childhood; the younger sister to a stunning model who, whatever her flaws, was far too good at pretending to have become the listless, defeated woman who slept beside her now. A life built on deceptions and delusions, the life she was to emulate with Peter and now saw as a charade. Though she despised her father, Clarice had betrayed her almost as cruelly—sleeping with Charles, spurring him to ruin Ben by revealing Whitney’s secrets. As Clarice’s friend, she had thought she was in on the joke. But the most heartless joke was on her: she had never anticipated that Clarice’s elusive nature, the protective coloring she deployed against men and adults, could be turned on her as well.
She had no one to believe in. How could she even believe in herself when she no longer knew who she was, or what she wanted? With a mix of empathy and dispassion she regarded her sister anew.
Janine was still asleep, her streaked blond hair falling across her face. “If I have only one life,” the ad proclaimed, “let me live it as a blonde.” Janine had certainly done that, Whitney thought—she was exhausted by the effort to look like something, rather than be someone. If only by comparison, Whitney supposed, she was the fortunate daughter. But she and Janine had more in common than either had known—both were their parents’ inventions.
Interrupting her thoughts, the plane swooped in a vertiginous descent. As they landed, Whitney found herself in a familiar place she no longer knew.
Startled awake, Janine blinked, the remembrance of reality clouding her eyes. She walked haltingly down the stairs to the tarmac, waiting for Whitney as if she were a girl waiting for her mother. They did not speak on the cab ride home, punctuated by oncoming headlights that illuminated Janine’s waxen profile.
The cabbie stopped at the house and carried their suitcases to the door. Anne opened it before Whitney could finish paying him, shooing Janine inside with an impatient glance at her second daughter, as though preparing to seal the family from the outside world. When Whitney followed them into the alcove, her mother was addressing Janine in an anxious, peremptory tone. “What happened to you, Janine?”
Janine glanced at her sister. “Alcohol and pills,” Whitney told their mother flatly. “We’re lucky they didn’t kill her, and right now she needs rest.”
Her tone induced in Anne a stung, confused expression. Reasserting herself, Anne told Janine, “I’ll take you to your room.”
“No,” Whitney snapped. “I will.”
Stunned, Anne looked from Whitney to Janine. “It’s all right, Mom,” Janine said tiredly. “I’m too wiped out to talk.”
Without awaiting Anne’s response, Whitney picked up Janine’s suitcase and, lightly touching her arm, led her up the stairs. Turning on the bedroom lights, she went to the bathroom for a glass of water and placed it on the nightstand. Watching her sister undress, she was appalled by the thinness of her body. In a feeble voice, Janine asked, “What will you tell her?”
Everything, Whitney wanted to say, imagining the savage pleasure of shredding her mother’s fantasies before recoiling from her own thoughts. “I don’t know,” she answered tiredly. “All I’m sure of is you can’t go on like this.” Quiet for a moment, she regarded this new creature who was still her sister. “I love you,” she added gently. “I just want you to be all right.”
Kissing Janine on the forehead, she went to confront their mother, softly closing the door behind her.
Anne waited in the living room, her expression in the thin electric light composed in a semblance of calm. But her tone was brittle and demanding. “Tell me what happened, Whitney. I need to know.”
Still standing, Whitney regarded her in silence, angry yet irresolute.
“I’m her mother, dammit.”
Whitney felt the desperation in Anne’s voice cut through her own desire to lash out, replacing it with a strange, sad resolve. Anger had no place now; what she had to say felt cruel enough. “You certainly are, Mom. That’s a big part of Janine’s problem.”
“Just what do you mean by that?”
“I went to see her without calling ahead. It took awhile for her to answer, and she looked like walking death. Her apartment was like the inside of a madwoman’s brain. She’d drunk nearly a fifth of vodka and had taken pills on top of that. If I hadn’t showed up, she might have kept on going.”
Anne stiffened in protest. “What would make a girl so vibrant . . .”
“Kill herself? Because no one in this family knows her, you least of all. Do you know why she didn’t want me to tell you what she’d done? Because it would hurt you too much.” Whitney’s tone hardened. “You’ve built a myth of beauty and drama with Janine as your surrogate, filling the empty spaces in your own life . . .”
Her mother sprang up, face contracted, hand raised to slap her daughter—less out of rage, Whitney sensed, than the visceral need to silence her. Whitney grasped her wrist in midair, their faces close. “Do you think shutting me up will erase all the damage to Janine? Then go ahead—hit me.”
Whitney released her mother’s wrist. Slowly, the fury in Anne’s eyes was replaced by shame; as though by its own volition, her hand fell to her side. Heart racing, Whitney told her, “She’s become a walking Barbie doll, with no one home inside, who lives to be who you imagine because she’s got nothing else but her looks and your approval and the desperate need for a man to complete her. But it hasn’t quite worked for you, Mother, and Janine isn’t half as strong as you are. She’s not ‘too strong’ for men; she’s pathetically needy and insecure, and once they see past that electric first impression they use her for awhile and then run from her like the plague . . .”
“How can you know this?”
“How can you not? Anyone could read the pattern who wasn’t invested in a fantasy of their own creation.” Whitney paused, considering her next words. “The human wreckage I found was the result of an affair with a man who treated her like garbage. You don’t need to know the details—for once, please don’t pump Janine. She can tell you what she wants, and it’s not important now.
“What matters is that you and Dad accept the truth: she’s not your society-page ingénue, but a fragile, damaged woman who depends on alcohol, drugs, and falsehoods to keep her going. You need to send her somewhere where she can get help, away from this family and the world she’s been drowning in. Then you can start trying to love whoever you get back.”
Listening, Anne recovered a semblance of poise. “So suddenly our twenty-one-year-old daughter is the head of our family, the great authority on all our faults.”
Having said so much, Whitney felt too exhausted to defend herself. “I just want you to be a real family for Janine. All I’ve got left is to tell you what I see. Whether Janine destroys herself is up to you.”
All at once, her mother seemed deflated. “Your father is flying in tomorrow morning with Peter. He’ll know what to do.”
The thought of seeing Charles, or Peter, was more than Whitney could bear—she had already passed the moment, with her mother, which had been as far ahead as she could see. Then she remembered Ben and wondered if the light was on in his guesthouse. But she could not run to him, let alone imagine what she would say if she did.
“Get some sleep,” she told her mother. “I’ll stay with Janine.” She paused, then added in a reflex of politeness, “Good night, Mom.”
Janine slept in the darkened bedroom, her breathing shallow but even. Whitney settled in an overstuffed chair, uncertain of whose needs she was serving, her sister’s or her own. Like Janine, part of her wished to fall asleep and never wake up or, if she must, to awaken to the life she had before, still innocent.