Envy

           A sound like the beating of a thousand bird wings startled me from sleep. It was late July, 1993, the year I turned twenty-five. Back then, I didn’t overthink things. Taking life at face value and people at their word, I worked at being as light and breezy as the pink camisole on my mother’s backyard clothesline. Believing good things would happen, I tended to discount the times they didn’t.

I shaded my eyes and looked out toward the ocean as my mind focused on the source of the beating sound. A prop plane, passing low, advertised Sweeney’s Rock Palace. “Live Music,” its billowing banner informed. “Fri. Sat. 9 PM-Midnite.”

           I sat up on my beach towel. Beads of perspiration ran down my forehead and followed the creases around my mouth. My eyes were blurred by heat and sleep, stinging from sun and sweat. I wiped them with the back of my hand and looked around for Maggie, my best friend and weekend partner in this tiny New Jersey beach town.

Maggie had appeared in my life—in my family’s backyard, really—when a mutual acquaintance brought her to my college graduation party three years earlier. She was four years older than my friends and I, and we barraged her with questions about what life after college was like. Maggie laughed, saying she was no expert and still figuring things out. It didn’t take long for us to become close, and we frequently remarked that we felt we’d known one another for much longer than we actually had. Like soul sisters, we would say.

But now, Maggie was gone. Gone also was the badminton court we’d drawn in the sand with the edge of a seashell, erased by the encroaching tide. The rackets were in sight but the birdies, it seemed, had been swept away.

           The kitchen clock in our rented cottage buzzed like a dying fly in summer, circling down. 2:15. I saw the note pinned under an opened Campbell’s Tomato Soup can on the knotty pine table. Maggie often ate soup for lunch. The note read:

Went for a drive. Please apologize to your mom for me

about dinner. Don’t worry. I may be meeting the man of

my dreams at this very moment!              —M.

Her words were not surprising; neither was the disappearance of my car keys from the nail near our wall phone. Maggie had taken off like this once before. Don’t think twice about it, my inner voice advised. Only something was strange. Was it the soup can, its partial contents left out to spoil? Or was it the red felt-tipped marker Maggie had used, lying uncapped at the far end of the table? Half-completed actions were not her style.

           I reread the note. “I may be meeting the man of my dreams…!” A standing joke of ours, whenever we went someplace new. Only I wasn’t saying the joke anymore—not since the Saturday night in May when I first met Johnny.

           The seashore had been unseasonably hot that Memorial Day weekend and was swarming with kids out looking for a good time to kick off their summer. Maggie and I, still counting ourselves among the young night crawlers, ended up at the old Knights of Columbus hall a few towns away. The hall had been turned into a disco with live bands performing, and the band that played Saturdays—the Back Bay Party Boys—was more than a cut above the usual fare. The lead singer was charismatic. Something about the way he connected with the audience felt like a big, warm embrace, and his reputation was spreading. We arrived early, briefly savoring the cool air, the empty dance floor, the tight sounds played just for us. By 10 pm, the Boys had packed the place.

           When the band took their second break, Maggie and I caught each other’s eye. Neither of us was big on crowds. As we made our way toward the exit, I felt someone grab my arm. It was Johnny, the lead singer. I let him steer us to a table far from the dance floor, where we agreed to sit while he brought us club sodas with twists of lime. Right away, I heard myself telling him how sweet a voice Maggie had; she shook her head in disbelief at my boldness. Suddenly, every motion, every facial expression came into sharp focus, as though it were the most important motion or expression in the world that I needed to remember for the rest of my life. Before he returned to the stage, Johnny asked if he could call me sometime. I nodded, wondering how he could possibly ask that question when I was already in love with him. Wasn’t it just so completely, overwhelmingly obvious?

           “You lead a charmed existence,” Maggie remarked when we finally reached the parking lot a half-hour later. She said this because, of all the glittering girls with their shimmering hair and their shimmying bodies on the dance floor that night, Johnny had noticed me.

           Sitting at the kitchen table, I remembered Maggie’s good-natured smile from that May night eight weeks earlier. “You lead a charmed existence, girl.” Then I started imagining Maggie as she might be now. I pictured her bumping over the rougher stretches of Ocean Drive, car windows rolled down, music turned up, heading somewhere.

No matter what her destination, this would not be her quickest route. Maggie was well aware that taking the Garden State Parkway was best for speed and directness. She knew all about the big green Parkway signs that neatly marked every shore exit. But they weren’t her style, or mine for that matter; we preferred the weathered old white-post signs on Ocean Drive. Signs that Maggie would nod to as she passed by, as though they were old friends who understood when a gal just didn’t have time to stop and say hello. They read ‘Follow the Gull’ and told you how many miles to the next two towns, up or down. Ocean City 6, Atlantic City 18, if Maggie were traveling north.

           I tried guessing what she would be wearing. Maybe her khaki shorts that buckled up the sides and her cowgirl shirt, the one she picked up on her visit to Graceland, with fringe over the breast pockets. And Maggie would be singing. She was always singing. If the radio weren’t playing a suitable song, which for Maggie was almost exclusively R&B or anything by Patsy Cline, she would switch it off and sing a cappella, her lovely voice holding strong against the wind whipping past on both sides, her free hand tapping on the car door or steering wheel, keeping time to the rhythm. Maggie was a much better singer than I.

           Gradually, it dawned on me to call and tell my mother, who was renting a nearby bungalow, that Maggie wouldn’t be joining us for dinner. I looked at the handwritten note a third time and imagined seeing something new—something shaky and desperate. Concern was followed by twinges of resentment as a sudden shaft of light illuminated the unwashed pot and bowl in the kitchen sink. I ran hot water over them, watching the smallest squirt of soap quickly transform into a mound of bubbles. I let my thoughts transform, too, although I didn’t fully trust the shape they were taking. They were going in the direction of—if you believe that people will rise to be their best selves, in most cases they will. Shrugging, I was determined not to give Maggie’s absence another thought.

           The jarring clang of the old wall phone behind me made me lose my grip on the slick bowl. No harm. I lifted the receiver with a soapy hand. “Hello?”

           “Hey, beautiful!”

           “Johnny! Guess what? My housemate has disappeared again.” So much for determination.

           “Hmm. Second time, huh?”

           “Mm-hm.”

           “Maybe she’s being held captive by the Rhash Man,” he joked. Rhashan was the drummer in Johnny’s band. “I suspect he might be up to no good, of the kidnapping kind.”

           “Poor Maggie.” I was almost starting to believe the possibility. “But Rhash is a nice guy, right?”

           “Sure, Kim—hey, you’re really worried. Did she take your car again?”

           “Yep.”

           “Well, I'm sure she’ll be back before dinnertime,” Johnny said with uncharacteristic restraint. He didn’t like the fact that Maggie borrowed my car without asking.

* * *

           My mother finally settled into the wooden captain’s chair after insisting that Johnny and I begin eating without her. She appeared beautiful, a maternal vision in her peach cotton kaftan with the macramé trim around the neck, her jet black hair pinned in a soft bun at the back of her head.

           “So, about your friend Maggie—why couldn’t she have dinner with us?”

           “No clue, Mah.”

           “The way I see it, it’s more for me,” Johnny calculated with a gourmand’s delight, inviting my mother to heap another saucy portion of stuffed shells onto his plate.

           “Mom, do you know that tonight, Johnny’s band is the featured act at the most happening place in Atlantic City?”

           “Of course I do. The Oasis, right?” Mom was paying attention to my new boyfriend’s career. “And Kim tells me you’re also building a recording studio? I want to hear all about it,” she said in her warm, inviting way, as though Johnny’s dreams were all that mattered to her at that moment.

           Just then, Mom’s house phone rang. “Hello? Oh hello, Maggie. It’s good to hear—fine thanks. Where are —?...I see. Okay. Well here, let me put Kim on the line.” She wagged the receiver in my direction, nearly dropping it. I put it up to my ear just in time to hear a click. The line went dead.

           “She hung up on me.”

For the rest of dinner, Johnny made charming small talk, trying to keep my mind off Maggie’s rudeness. Mom seemed uncharacteristically distracted. Once Johnny left for The Oasis, I drew a long breath and said to my mother, “Why don’t you help me choose an outfit for tonight?”

           With a series of flourishes, I unpacked the bag I had brought along, holding up each piece of clothing for her to view, then spreading it over the kitchen table in the form of a body: my black-fringed Spanish shawl, with its orange and pink flowers in perpetual bloom, my tangerine DayGlo tube top, and the black silk pants I practically lived in that summer. The pants stretched all the way to mom’s magazine pile, upon which I placed my white patent heels, the ones that teetered just above practicality.

It was a stunning sight, this alter ego I’d created. The activity seemed to draw Mom out of her distraction, and she stood back to admire the person I would become.

           An arm around my shoulder. “You’ll be smashing!”

* * *

This time when the phone rang, I beat my mother to it. Johnny was calling from The Oasis, sounding tense.

           “Guess who was waiting for me when I got here?”

           My throat felt suddenly stung, parched. “Maggie? Is everything okay?”

           “I guess you could say that. She was sitting in our rehearsal room talking to Rhash when I showed up.”

           “Ah, so it was Rhashan after all, that kidnapper!”

           “No. If anything, he was the one who looked trapped. As soon as I came in, he bowed out.”

           “Okay. Now I’m officially confused. What did she have to say for herself?”

           “She started by saying how stupid she felt, hanging up on you like that. And I said, ‘Yeah, and how’s Kim’s car?’”

           “Johnny.”

           “Well, I had to ask. So she said everything was fine and she owed you one, big time. She sounded like she meant it.”

            “Go on.”

           “So then she finally got to the point, and it all boils down to this: She wants to sing with the band tonight.”

           Wham. The news came whirling toward me like a birdie slammed from the other side of an invisible net. Maggie’s desire didn’t seem to connect to any of the thoughts I’d had about her all day. “What? Wow. I mean, I figured she just needed some space. But singing with the band?” I was rambling, dodging the moment when I would feel the full sting.

           And then I remembered my daydream of Maggie tooling along Ocean Drive in my car. She was driving north, toward Atlantic City, and she was singing. So that was it! My subconscious had seen what my conscious mind wouldn’t: That my best friend had been on her way to The Oasis, and to Johnny.

           The swift, sharp sting of impact. The inevitable questions flooding the room inside my brain, like chants from a concert crowd that won’t be quelled until the band reemerges from backstage. Why! Why! Why! Why had Maggie never said anything to me about wanting to sing with the Back Bay Party Boys, knowing that I could arrange it? Why had she waited until the day of their biggest summer performance and then stripped me of my means of getting there? And why had she taken this, her most private of dreams, to Johnny? The daydream of Maggie driving in my car drowned in a sea of Why’s.

           Johnny was talking again. “I know it’s last minute and everything, but Kim? Are you listening? If you could’ve seen the look on Maggie’s face—how much she really wants to try this tonight.”

           “Well, she sure won you over quick!” My eyes burned, and the phone felt heavy in my hand.

           “Look, she’s your friend.”

           “Right. Of course. And I want the best for her!”

           “She gave herself a deadline, to do this before turning 30,” Johnny revealed. “Oh, and you should know, she wants to talk to you. She said so more than once. She didn’t elaborate. Said it was private and she needs to wait until after the show is over.”

           “I understand. At least, I’m trying to.” A feeling of tenderness, like ice melting, rushed through me and down my face in the form of tears.

* * *

           Onstage, Maggie looked funky and beautiful, the fringe of her cowgirl shirt catching the light as she swayed and dipped to “Sugar Mama” and poured her heart into “Love Has No Pride.” Johnny had introduced her as a special guest, and that she was. She performed as she did when her only audience was the crickets lurking below our beach house. Natural and free, she sang with a sweetness this crowd of summer rockers wasn’t accustomed to. They were captivated; and at times I felt myself holding my breath so pride wouldn’t burst the seams of my tube top.

           Even my mother, whom I had cajoled into coming along, sat mesmerized, her ginger ale bubbling away and her rare cigarette burning to ash. When Maggie finished her set, Mom left abruptly. Johnny announced a break and he and Maggie jumped off the platform stage together, making a beeline for me in the crowd.

Somewhere between 2 a.m. and the break of dawn, Maggie and I confessed all the reasons we envied one another and then burst out laughing when one of us complained that so much honesty still didn’t make the envy go away! It was then, when the sun was coming up on a new day and I craved just a few hours’ sleep, that Maggie finally had the courage to tell me what Mom couldn’t: the news that had burdened Maggie for the past few weeks so much that she occasionally had to escape from me, her best friend…the fact that explained why, right from our first encounter, we had an uncanny amount in common.

Maggie revealed that I wasn’t, in fact, just her soul sister; I was—I AM—her half-sister.

* * *

Even after this earth-shaking news made me sick to my stomach, followed by an inhuman wail that came out of me, turning into a “WHY? Why didn’t Mom ever tell me?”...after my world turned upside down, over and over, rolling away like a big ball of shock and excitement and betrayal and joy and anger that my bleary brain needed to catch hold of…after all of it, what remained was love.

           The next day, my mother tried through tears to explain everything. How she had figured out only recently that the guest who had shown up at our backyard party three years before was, amazingly, her first-born daughter. The product of a teenage pregnancy, adopted by an unknown but loving family. This was just two years before Mom met my dad; but how could she have known such a wonderful, caring man would come into her life? She disclosed how the adoption agency provided information about the baby’s wellbeing, thanks to the willingness of the family to let them do so. How Dad had thought she should tell me when I got a little older, but the time never felt right, and then losing him when I was still young had changed my world enough. She explained that she spoke to Maggie first because she needed to know if her intuition was accurate. If it was, she wanted to give Maggie the chance to understand why—Why had that teenage mom not kept her baby?--and to walk away from us if she chose to.

           But Maggie had chosen to stay.

           When I think back to that evening in July of 1993, one moment rises above the rest. Not the dizzying moment when I first learned I had a half-sister. The moment several hours before, when she walked on stage at The Oasis, and I turned to our mother and whispered “Here she goes,” and Mom glanced up at Johnny and winked, and Johnny handed the microphone to Maggie, who stared straight out into the audience at me and mouthed the words ‘I love you.’

           I love you too, soul sister.