“Mother. I highly doubt I’m important enough for someone to kidnap. Do you know how many accounts online havetensof millions of followers, let alonehundreds of millions?”
She looked stricken at the thought. “I don’t know,” she said, giving me a wobbly, disoriented look. “Maybe … five?”
It was also at this coffee date my mother told me Abigail was seeing someone. “A pastor, actually. He’s helping her study for herGED!”
“A pastor,” I said, and laughed. “What kind of pastor would date a single mother?”
“Well.” She sipped her coffee. “We’ve been going to a new church, actually.”
“A new church?” My mother had gone to the same church for my whole life. “What do you mean, a new church?”
“It’s very … hip. This pastor, his name is Ben—he doesn’t believe divorce is a sin. And he thinks—well.” She leaned forward and said quietly, “He feels very strongly that the gays should feel welcome, just like anyone else.”
I said nothing. Just looked at her, waiting for her to add herownopinion. Which was surely different than Pastor Ben’s opinion. This, after all, was the woman who had grabbed my hand and dragged me across the street in town whenever we passed the local bookshop, which was, in her words, owned by a man witha little too much spring in his step.
Instead, she shrugged and said innocently, “His arguments are compelling.”
Each person in my inner circle was responding to my sudden fame differently. Doug was obsessed with the newfound access I had to the minds of American women. My mother was worried about the children. My mother-in-law hadn’t offered her opinion yet; ever since she finished drying out in Wyoming, her conversational endeavors had been cut in half. In the handful of times I’d seen her since, she’d spoken only in short, raspy bursts and was constantly licking her lips, like she was dying of thirst.
And my sister?
I realized at coffee with my mother that I didn’t know what mysister thought of my virality. We barely spoke beyond occasional small talk on the family group chat. I logged onto Instagram to her account and let out a little gasp: Abigail wasn’t following me anymore.
I called her on the drive back from town. She answered on the eighth ring. “Natalie,” she said, “what a surprise.” She was outside; I could hear birds and children shouting and the distant, punctuated shriek of a referee whistle. “What can I do for you?”
“Do I need a specific reason to call my sister?”
“Youdo, yes.” They were the three sharpest words she’d ever said to me, and yet her voice was strangely cheery. I wondered if people were standing all around her right now, maybe even Pastor Ben. If so, then my mother’s voice was surely ringing in her head:Never cause a scene!
“Well,” I said. “That hardly seems fair.”
“Okay.” I could hear her shrug through the phone. “My mistake, then. What’s up? How are you?”
“I’m good.” I was caught, now. I didn’t want to prove her theory correct, and yet I needed to know, and the words came tumbling out of me before I could stop them. “Why don’t you follow me on Instagram?”
There was a pause on the line. “That’s why you’re calling?”
“It’s not a big deal. I’m just curious.”
“Oh, you know I don’t spend much time on Instagram.” This was true. Her own account had four pictures, all of staged family photos. She had less than a hundred followers. “I’m so busy right now, with the kids and nursing school and Ben—I don’t have time for allthat.”
“That’s not really an answer to the question, though, is it?”
“It’s just—” She sighed. I heard her say to someone, “One minute.” Then she was walking, and the sound of other voices was falling away as she said quietly into the receiver, “Look, I don’t want to fight. I know we’ve had arguments over the years, but I’m really just trying to … simplify my life. You know?”
“Of course I know.” I had no clue what she was talking about.
“But—it’s just confusing, okay? The way you act on that account, it makes me feel like I’m having a stroke. Like someone body-snatched my only sister.”
“That’s a little bit dramatic, Abigail.”
“Okay. Maybe it is. But it’s how I feel. I’ve been going to therapy, you know, and—”
“Therapy?”
“Yes. Therapy. I told Mama she should go too, and she said she would consider it.”
“Who’s paying for this therapy? Is it that man you’ve been seeing? Ben?”
