“Your business, sure,” she says. “Yourlife.”
“What about my life?”
She closes her eyes briefly, shakes her head, and I think she might be retreating, readying herself to cut this conversation off.
But then she opens them again.
“New York wasmydream, Meg,” she says, her voice hard, but tinged with sadness. “My whole life, I planned to come here. I love you, and I’m glad you’re successful. But . . .” She trails off, and for one miserable, horrible second, I see her chin quiver. I step forward, on instinct, but she holds a hand up.
“But after all this time, I’m still nannying. I spent years in dance classes, in vocal lessons. The most I use them now is to entertain two kids who’ll probably have forgotten about me by next summer, because they’ll have some new version of Miss Michelucci.”
This part, it’s not new. Sibby and I have spent hours talking through her dashed hopes, her disappointments, her frustrations. We’ve cried over shitty auditions and lost parts together, ranted about her nannying job and its various annoyances. But the way it’s directed at me now, the way it’s anindictmentof me, somehow—thatisnew. New and awful.
“I worked so hard to get here, Meg. You didn’t even like the city. You . . .fellinto it.”
Something must pass over my face, some trace of the devastation I feel at being told that this is what Sibby thinks of me, and of my work. She raises a hand to her forehead, rubs her hand across it in exhaustion.
“I know you work hard, okay? I know you do. But you came here, and within ayearyou had people lining up for you. We move to Brooklyn and it’s hardly any time at all before you’re practically famous here. You start a whole new business.” She gives a breathy, exhausted laugh, looks toward the couch where Lark and I sat. “You’re friends with amoviestar.”
“I’m sorry,” I say, but even as I’m saying it, I know it’s not right, or at least it’s not all the way right. I’m sorry for the way Sibby feels, but I don’t know if I should be sorry for why she feels that way, for how my work has made her feel. I’m speechless. I have no idea what to say, where to evenstart, to confront this.
“So,” she says. “You’re happy to know it? The entire, petty truth of it? It makes the friendship so much better to have that out in the open?”
“It’s not petty,” I stumble out. “And it is better. It’s better if we don’t . . . if we don’t hide things from each other. I’m really trying not to do that.”
“That’s great for you, Meg. But you know, some things are better to hide. I didn’twantto tell you this. I wanted to work on moving past it, on my own, because Iknowit’s not fair to you, and I know it’s small of me. It’shumiliating,” she says, her voice cracking, her chin crinkling again. But immediately she tightens it, takes a breath through her nose.
“I’m happy with Elijah, and I’m happy I’ll have some new opportunities in the city.Thatis what is going to help. Not . . . notthis.”
“I’m sorry,” I say again, flustered now. I’d thought I was being so brave, pushing this. Now I’m confused, unsure, worried I’ve hurt her worse. “I didn’t know. I didn’t know it was this.”
Part of me is saying,Stop, don’t push her.But another part of me is so worried about losing her. I’m so deep into this confrontation that I don’t knowhowto stop it now.
“Sib, if we could only—”
But I break off when I see the look on her face. She is . . .exasperated. With me, with this apartment, with this entire conversation. “Ofcourseit’s this,” she says, as if she can’t believe I wouldn’t have realized. As if I was selfish not to have.
I almost apologize again, because maybe Iwasselfish. Maybe this was my fault. The not knowing, but also the not . . . the not leaving it alone. When I open my mouth again, hoping to say this in some halfway coherent way, Sibby speaks before I can, her voice hard, harsh.
“Not everything is some big ‘I’m not your real mom’ scandal, okay?”
All of the air is sucked out of the apartment, out of both of us. Sibby looks absolutely shocked that she’s said it, that she’s brought up the worst possible thing.
The family secret that brought me here.
The secret, I guess, that led to me encroaching on her New York City dream.
I don’t know if I look shocked. I don’t even know if I feel shocked. After all, I’ve been here before, and recently, too. This is where pushing, where fighting can lead. I’ve known it all along.
It can hurt.
It can hurt so, so bad.
“That’s beneath you,” I say, my voice cracking.
The tears filling her eyes spill over, tracking in gray-black tears down her cheeks. “I know. I’m sorry.”
I know she is, and it’s more than the tears that tells me so. It’s in the set of her shoulders; it’s in the way she’s rubbing her thumb up and down along her index finger, a nervous habit. It’s in the way she looks at me, full of regret.
