My mother pulled me aside at my twin sister’s promotion party and told me to stand at the back and stop calling my desk job a career, because “nobody here needs to confuse you with Kendall.” So I stood by the coats. Then a general with three stars stepped to the microphone and asked about one signature.
Mom was on her feet with her wineglass up while the string quartet was still tuning.
“Here’s to OUR lieutenant colonel,” she said. “Kendall has given us all something to brag about.”
The room got to its feet for her.
Nearly three hundred people stood up under chandeliers the size of hot tubs, in the Linden Room at the Bayview in Norfolk.
There were colonels.
Federal judges.
A state senator.
Men from the shipyards who sell things to the Navy and want everybody to know it.
Every table had gold chargers and red roses piled so high you couldn’t see the person across from you.
Dad took the microphone next.
“Thirty-four years ago we got two for the price of one,” he said.
He waited for the laugh.
“And one of them turned out to be a lieutenant colonel.”
The laugh came.
Kendall stood in the middle of all of it.
She wore her blue mess dress like she’d been born in it.
At each shoulder, the silver oak leaves caught every light in the hall.
Her bun didn’t have a single hair out of place.
Her ribbons sat in tidy rows, except the third one, which was mounted upside down.
I’d caught it in two seconds.
Nobody else in that room would catch it in a year.
People lined up to shake her hand.
“Nobody makes O-5 this fast.”
“You’ll have stars by fifty, I’m telling you.”
“Your parents must be over the moon.”
Kendall touched her collar and lowered her eyes.
“I just got lucky with my supervisors,” she said.
I almost choked.
I drank my ice water instead.
I was standing by the coat check in a gray sweater dress and flats from the outlet mall.
No uniform.
Nothing pinned to me, right side up or otherwise.
Nobody looking my way.
That was how my parents liked me.
A woman in a red jacket came at me with her hand out.
“Colonel, congratulations, I almost didn’t recognize you out of uniform.”
Dad got there before I could open my mouth.
“Oh, no, no,” he said. “That’s Perla. The other one.”
He turned her toward the front by the elbow.
“She works in an office,” he said over his shoulder.
The woman laughed at that.
Then Mom saw me.
Her smile stayed on, but it went tight at the corners, the way it did when a waiter brought the wrong wine.
“Perla.”
She crossed the floor fast, before anybody else could get to me.
“Thank God you wore something quiet.”
I looked down at the sweater.
“It’s a sweater, Mom.”
“I can see that.”
She put her back to the room and dropped her voice.
“Now you listen to me.”
“Three generals came out for this.”
“A senator.”
“Half the shipyard board.”
“Do NOT get into your records job with anybody.”
“My records job?”
She smiled past my ear at somebody waving from a front table.
“You two have the SAME face, honey. People get mixed up. I don’t want a single person walking out of here thinking Kendall’s the one who pushes paper.”
I didn’t answer her.
I couldn’t think of one thing to say that wouldn’t end the night.
She leaned in closer.
“Stay by the coats.”
“Stay away from the front tables.”
“If somebody speaks up, just nod and say you’re proud of her.”
“PLEASE stay out of the frame when they take your sister’s pictures.”
Her perfume was the same one she’d worn to every school play we ever had.
Sweet at first.
Then it got in your throat.
A photographer was working the front of the room, crouching, moving chairs out of his way.
Mom had always cared more about how a thing looked in a frame than about what was in it.
I nodded once.
“Fine. Whatever you need, Mom.”
“Good.”
She squeezed my elbow the way you’d reward a dog for sitting.
“Tonight is Kendall’s. You understand.”
Then she went back up front, where the photographer was getting Kendall from her good side.
Nobody watched me walk back to the coats.
Nobody asked themselves why I looked so calm over there by myself.
And nobody looked twice at the canvas laptop bag leaning against my chair.
Inside it was a printout of the board’s final list.
I’d certified it at 6:40 that morning, before the coffee maker in my office finished dripping.
Every name on that printout had to clear my desk before the service could release it.
Kendall’s too.
The last signature on her file was MINE.
Four people in that building knew it.
None of them were family.
Up front, Kendall raised her glass while some colonel toasted her bright future.
Dad stood next to her with his chest pushed out.
Mom took the compliments as if they’d been mailed to her.
Then the side doors swung open.
The quartet trailed off in the middle of a bar.
A gray-haired man in Air Force blue came in with nobody announcing him.
THREE stars on each shoulder.
General Whitcomb.
He shook maybe four hands.
Then he walked up to the lectern and looked out over the tables.
Slowly.
Table by table.
He passed over the senator.
He passed over my parents.
He passed over Kendall, who had already straightened up and set her glass down for him.
He didn’t raise his voice.
He didn’t have to.
“Before anybody toasts anything else,” he said.
“I want to shake the hand of whoever certified Lieutenant Colonel Stanek’s packet AT 6:40 THIS MORNING.”
The room went quiet down to the forks.
Mom’s hand stopped halfway to her pearls.
Kendall’s smile stayed on a beat too long.
Then heads started turning.
The front tables first.
Then the middle.
Then the back row, by the coats.
The general’s eyes went right over the uniform wearing my face.
And stopped on me.
The walk from the coats
“Ms. Stanek,” he said. “Would you come forward?”
I put my water down and lifted the bag. Its strap caught under the chair leg. Nearly three hundred people got to see me wrestle furniture before meeting a general.
There. Something else for Dad’s next toast.
Whitcomb came down from the lectern before I reached him.
“Thank you for staying with that list this morning.”
He held out his hand. I shook it.
“You’re welcome, sir.”
That was the signature he meant. Mine. The civilian’s. The woman who apparently needed supervision around a camera.
He hadn’t come to announce a secret rank. I didn’t have one.
“And congratulations to your sister,” he said.
“She earned it.”
Kendall came toward us. Mom came faster.
“General, these are both our girls.”
Both. She found the word without even looking under a table.
Mom put a hand between my shoulders and tried to turn me toward the photographer. Her fingers pressed through the sweater.
“Get this, please,” she said. “The general with our daughters.”
Whitcomb held up a hand.
“Let’s let Lieutenant Colonel Stanek have her evening.”
He congratulated Kendall, then accepted a seat at the front table. No lecture. No thunder from the ceiling. He went to dinner.
I stood where he’d left me.
Mom kept her hand on my back.
“Why didn’t you tell us?”
“You told me not to discuss my job.”
“Oh, Perla. Not like that.”
The photographer raised his camera, then lowered it when I stepped away from Mom.
His name was Dana. I’d hired him. Mom had been giving him directions all evening with the confidence of a woman who’d never seen the invoice.
Kendall touched my wrist.
“Can we talk for a second?”
Behind her, Dad pulled out a chair at the family table.
The chair had a place setting. It didn’t have a name.
“Here,” he said. “We saved your seat.”
Mom’s purse sat open beside it.
My place card stuck out of the top.
The card in Mom’s purse
I took the card out.
PERLA STANEK.
Black letters. No rank. Apparently insufficient decoration for a piece of folded paper.
“That got moved,” Mom said.
“Into your purse?”
“We were adjusting the seating.”
Dad held the chair as though its legs might carry him out of the conversation.
“Sit down, sweetheart.”
I stayed standing.
Kendall looked at the card, then at Mom.
“You said she wanted to stay in the back.”
“She had her work bag. She seemed comfortable.”
The bag contained the released copy of the list, the one I could take home. The working papers stayed at work. My sister knew the distinction. My mother knew it had handles.
Dana came over with the evening’s photo order.
“Before we start the posed pictures, can I check something with you?”
Mom reached for the sheet.
Dana kept it facing me.
I’d booked him three weeks earlier, sitting at my kitchen counter with Kendall across from me. Kendall had pushed her phone over and shown me the price.
“Don’t do this if it’s too much.”
“It’s your present.”
“Then make sure there’s one of us.”
“Which one gets the good face?”
She’d kicked my foot under the counter.
That was the whole arrangement. A gift for my sister. One photograph together that didn’t require either of us to be holding a graduation program.
Now Dana put a finger beside a crossed-out line.
“The sisters’ portrait. Your mother said to remove it.”
Kendall’s hand dropped from my wrist.
Mom gave a small laugh.
“Just until we got the important combinations.”
“There’s time for it,” Dana said. “You booked the full evening.”
Mom looked at me.
I could have said the price then. I could have made the whole room learn that the daughter by the coats had spent $1,284.60 on the photographs.
I wanted Kendall to have the gift without an audience checking the receipt.
“Leave it in,” I said.
Dana marked the line.
“And the family portrait?”
“Leave that for now.”
Mom’s mouth opened. Dad shook his head at her.
Kendall pulled the empty chair out farther.
“Please sit.”
I set my place card down but kept the bag over my shoulder.
At our house, “afterward” could last years. After the guests left. After Dad calmed down. After Mom had a chance to explain what she’d meant.
Kendall used it now.
“We’ll sort this out afterward.”
“I want to talk to you before the pictures.”
“We will.”
Dana waited.
“I need changes from Perla or Kendall,” he said. “Otherwise I’ll keep getting different instructions.”
“Of course,” Mom said. “We’re all on the same page.”
She put a hand over the crossed-out line.
Kendall took the sheet from under it.
Then Dad turned toward the general.
“You won’t believe this,” he said. “Our quiet one helped get her sister promoted.”
One little favor
“That’s not what happened,” I said.
Dad kept smiling at Whitcomb.
“She’s modest. She’s always been modest.”
I used to think that was a compliment. It usually meant I hadn’t objected where anybody could hear.
“My work checks the final record,” I said. “I don’t choose who gets promoted.”
Whitcomb nodded.
“Separate responsibilities.”
That should have finished it.
Mom sat down beside him.
“But such a lovely thing. One sister helping the other.”
“She didn’t help me get selected,” Kendall said.
I put my bag under the chair. For a second, I thought we might get through dinner with only the usual dents.
Then Dad reached across the place setting and tapped my card.
“Well, your sister certainly didn’t hurt your chances.”
He laughed.
Nobody else did.
I looked directly at him.
“Don’t say that.”
“Oh, come on. We’re family.”
Whitcomb put down his water.
“The selection was completed before certification.”
Dad held up both hands.
“I understand. I’m teasing.”
The woman in the red jacket sat two chairs away. She looked at me now with the face people make when they hope you won’t remember them laughing.
I remembered.
Mom leaned toward Kendall.
“You could mention it in your remarks. Something about your sister looking after you.”
“No,” I said.
Mom turned.
“Why must everything be so difficult?”
“Because people can hear you.”
“Then lower your voice.”
My voice wasn’t the one that needed lowering.
Kendall shifted her chair toward me.
“Can you just let Dad have his joke?”
There were bread rolls in front of us. I tore one open without wanting it. I needed something to do with my hands that wouldn’t require an apology.
“No.”
“Perla.”
“No.”
The bread was hollow enough inside to qualify as banquet management.
Whitcomb turned to answer a guest beside him. He’d corrected the work question. He wasn’t going to referee my family over dinner, and I didn’t want him to.
I wanted Dad to stop using me as a prop in whatever story made him sound best.
Five minutes earlier, his story had been that one daughter amounted to something.
Now I apparently operated the Air Force from a chair near the coats.
Kendall leaned closer.
“Mom’s been working on this party for months.”
“I know.”
“She’s nervous.”
“So am I.”
That stopped her for a moment.
I put the torn bread down.
“Please tell them to stop.”
Kendall looked toward Mom, who was explaining to the woman in red that she’d always encouraged both daughters to find their own paths.
“I will.”
“Now.”
Kendall pushed her chair back.
“Come with me.”
I followed her to the edge of the room, near the chairs Dana had arranged for the portraits.
Mom came after us.
Dad stayed at the table. He was laughing again before we’d crossed the carpet.
Kendall turned so her back faced the guests.
“Could we please get through tonight?”
Mom folded her arms.
“Exactly.”
I kept my eyes on my sister.
“You heard what he said.”
“He explained it was a joke.”
“He explained it after the general corrected him.”
Mom touched Kendall’s sleeve.
“Your sister is tired. She’s been up since heaven knows when.”
“Before six,” I said.
“There you are.”
Kendall rubbed her forehead.
“I don’t want people talking about this instead of the promotion.”
“Then tell them what actually happened.”
Mom looked past me toward the tables.
“Oh, they won’t remember the details.”
The woman in red was approaching with two other guests.
Kendall saw them coming.
Her face changed into the one she’d been using for congratulations.
“Everything all right?” the woman said.
“Of course,” Kendall said. “Perla just did me one little favor.”
Eleven minutes
“What favor?” I said.
Kendall’s smile stayed in place.
“You know what I mean.”
“No. Say it.”
Mom stepped between us enough to block part of me from the guests.
“Girls.”
I moved to the side.
The woman in red looked from Kendall’s uniform to my sweater. For once, nobody needed help telling us apart.
Kendall gave a laugh that didn’t reach the end.
“She made sure all the paperwork was right.”
“For the whole list,” I said.
“That’s what I meant.”
“You said you.”
One of the guests took half a step away.
Mom caught his sleeve with two fingers.
“They’re twins. They’ve been doing this since they could talk.”
There it was. Thirty-four years reduced to a sibling squabble. Eleven minutes between our births, and somehow I’d been appointed the one who should know better.
Kendall looked at the floor.
I waited for her to correct it.
She could have used one sentence. She’d delivered briefings to rooms full of officers. She could get through eight words beside a rose-covered chair.
Instead she said, “Can we talk privately?”
The guests moved away before I could answer.
Mom followed them.
“Honestly,” she said, loud enough for us to hear. “They love each other to pieces.”
I looked at Kendall.
“Did you hear what she told me by the coats?”
“Some of it.”
“Which part?”
“About the pictures.”
The room kept moving behind her. A server squeezed past with plates. Dana turned a chair a few inches to the left.
“You heard her tell me to stay out?”
“She was trying to keep the evening focused.”
I put a hand on the chair back.
Kendall’s eyes filled.
“Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Look at me like that.”
I wanted to ask what expression she’d ordered for me. Proud sister? Pleasant civilian? Woman happy to purchase evidence that she hadn’t been invited into the frame?
Instead I said, “You asked for a picture of us.”
“I still want one.”
“After the important combinations?”
“That was Mom.”
“You let her.”
Kendall looked toward the table where our parents sat.
“I thought we’d do it later. Without all this.”
Her promotion was real. The work she’d put in was real. I knew the nights she’d called me from far away because she couldn’t sleep, and the times she’d missed things she wanted to attend.
I hadn’t come hoping to find a loose thread.
I’d come proud enough to spend money I usually argued with myself about spending on tires.
“Tell me the favor,” I said.
“What?”
“The one you told those people I did.”
She put her hands on her hips.
“Do you really want to do this here?”
“You started it here.”
“I was trying to make it sound nice.”
“Then fix it.”
She pressed her lips together.
A server approached with our dinners.
“Should I put these at your places?”
Kendall pointed to the family table.
“Yes, thank you.”
Mine went there too. For a minute I had a place card, a meal and no idea whether I could bear sitting down.
Kendall reached toward me.
I stepped back.
That hurt her. Good. Then it hurt me, which was less convenient.
“Your ribbon’s upside down,” I said.
She looked down.
“The third one.”
Her hand covered it.
“You could have told me earlier.”
“I tried to get near you.”
She turned away to fix it.
I’d spent the whole evening wanting her to turn toward me. When she did, I no longer had the sister I’d been waiting for.
Mom came back carrying my place card.
“We need that chair for the photograph,” she said.
She folded my name flat.
The space beside Dad
Half an hour later, Dana called for the family portraits.
I’d spent most of that half hour beside my untouched dinner. Kendall sat across from me. Mom answered questions about my job as if she’d done the interview that hired me.
“She’s very important to the whole process,” she told someone.
I put down my fork.
“You don’t know what I do.”
Mom patted my arm.
“Well, you’re going to have to tell us properly.”
Dad leaned over.
“Smile a little, Perla. People are looking.”
They’d been looking when he made his joke. He hadn’t minded then.
At the portrait chairs, Mom directed Dad to the center.
“Kendall beside your father. General Whitcomb, would you mind standing on her other side?”
Whitcomb had come over to congratulate Kendall again before leaving. Dana had agreed to take a photograph of them.
He stood where she indicated.
Mom stepped into the space beside Dad.
I stayed next to Dana.
“Perla,” Mom said. “Come here.”
It was the invitation I’d wanted when I’d arrived. That made it worse.
“What changed?”
Mom’s smile stiffened.
“Don’t start.”
Dana lowered the camera.
“Are we doing the family group or the individual congratulations first?”
“The family,” Mom said.
“The general and Kendall first,” I said.
Mom stared at me.
Whitcomb looked toward Dana.
“That works.”
Mom and Dad stepped out. Kendall stood beside the general. Dana took the photograph.
He shook her hand.
Then he turned to me.
“Have a good evening, Ms. Stanek.”
“You too, sir.”
Mom lifted one finger.
“Just one more, General. With all of us.”
He glanced at Dana.
He looked at me.
I’d paid for this evening. I could feel that fact sitting there between us, ugly because I hadn’t wanted it to matter.
“Not yet,” I said.
Dad came close enough that only I could hear him.
“Don’t embarrass your mother.”
I looked at him.
His smile disappeared.
“She made me stand by the coats,” I said.
“She didn’t mean all night.”
“What time was I allowed out?”
“Stop being clever.”
That was another family rule. Dad’s cruelty counted as humor. My questions counted as a mouth.
Mom moved toward me.
“All right. I’m sorry you felt left out. Come stand by your father.”
“No.”
She pulled back.
Kendall stood beside the empty portrait chair. Her hand rested over the corrected ribbon.
Mom spoke through her smile.
“We have people waiting.”
“You told me not to talk about my job.”
“And now I’m proud of it. What more do you want?”
There were guests close enough to hear. Mom’s eyes went to them, then back to me.
“An apology for what you said.”
“I just gave you one.”
“For what you said.”
Dad put his hands on the chair back.
“You know, some people would be grateful to have a family that throws an evening like this.”
“I bought the photographs.”
“I didn’t ask who bought what.”
Mom’s head turned toward Dana.
“Could you give us a minute?”
Dana stepped away, but he didn’t lift his camera.
Kendall came to my side.
“Perla. Please.”
I almost gave in then.
There was a space beside Dad. My sister’s hand was on my arm. Mom had moved far enough over to let me fit.
All I had to do was stand there and let the camera make a different evening.
One without the coats. One without Dad’s laugh.
One that would hang in their house while they told visitors how proud they’d always been.
“Tell them you didn’t get a favor,” I said to Kendall.
She looked toward the guests.
“After the pictures.”
“No.”
Mom dropped the smile.
“Then go.”
Kendall’s hand slipped off my arm.
“Mom,” she said.
“She’s determined to spoil it. Let her go.”
Dad turned the chair toward Dana.
For a few seconds nobody moved.
I picked up my bag. My sister stayed beside our mother.
Dana stood between me and the exit, holding the photo order.
Beside “family portrait,” someone had written: Parents and Kendall.
Dana’s pencil
I took the sheet.
Below the family group were the sisters’ portrait and one final photograph: Perla, alone.
I’d asked for that when I booked. A proper photograph for work, after the party pictures. My old one had been cropped out of a cousin’s barbecue, and the edge of a paper plate still showed beside my ear.
Mom had crossed out that line too.
Dana held his pencil out.
“Do you still want yours?”
“Yes.”
“Then we’ll take it.”
Mom came up behind me.
“You can do that any time.”
I turned the sheet so she could see it.
“You changed my order.”
“I was organizing the evening.”
“You removed me from it.”
“Don’t make everything sound sinister.”
Dana took a breath to speak.
I shook my head. He’d been hired to take pictures, not testify in a family trial.
I handed back the sheet.
“Keep Kendall’s portraits. Keep mine. No family group.”
Mom reached for it.
Dana moved it out of reach.
“You can’t do that,” Mom said.
“It’s my gift.”
“To your sister.”
I looked at Kendall.
“The portraits are still yours.”
She nodded once.
Mom pointed toward Whitcomb, who was speaking to Dad a few feet away.
“We have a general here. Do you understand what an opportunity this is?”
There. Out loud.
She’d wanted me invisible until somebody important knew my name. Now she wanted me in the photograph because he did.
I didn’t need the list in my bag. I didn’t need Whitcomb to tell her how useful I was.
I put my hand on the strap and left the printout inside.
“Kendall,” I said. “Before anybody takes another picture, you’re correcting what you said.”
Mom stepped toward her.
“No. We’re done discussing it.”
My sister looked at the pencil marks. At her name beside our parents’ names. At mine underneath a line.
Then she looked toward the microphone.
“Get Dad,” she said.
Mom grabbed her arm.
“Kendall, don’t be ridiculous.”
Kendall removed Mom’s hand.
Dana erased the line through my name.
The microphone in Mom’s hand
Dad came over with Whitcomb.
“We’re all ready now?” Dad said.
Kendall held out her hand for the microphone he’d left on the portrait chair.
Mom picked it up first.
“Let’s put this behind us,” she said.
Her words came through the room’s speakers.
Heads turned.
She looked down at the microphone as though it had betrayed a confidence.
Kendall kept her hand out.
“I need to correct something.”
Mom pulled it toward her chest.
“Nobody needs correcting. Your sister’s upset, and we’ve apologized.”
“No,” I said.
It carried enough without a microphone.
Mom stared at me.
“What do you want me to say, Perla?”
“What you told me.”
She looked toward Whitcomb.
He stayed beside Dad. He wasn’t reaching for the microphone. He wasn’t rescuing anybody.
Mom gave a laugh.
“We were talking about photographs. Honestly, General, you know how these occasions are.”
“To me,” I said.
She turned back.
“I wanted your sister to have her night.”
“What did you tell me?”
Mom’s fingers moved over the microphone.
Dad stepped forward.
“This is enough.”
“Then you say it.”
He stopped.
Kendall reached for the microphone again.
Mom kept it.
“Fine. I said to stay back while the important pictures were taken.”
“By the coats,” I said.
“By the coats. Because people were confusing you.”
“With what?”
“With your sister.”
“What was wrong with that?”
Mom’s face changed.
“Nothing was wrong with it. You’re twisting this.”
Kendall stood beside me.
“Mom. Say the part about her job.”
My mother looked at her as if she’d changed teams in the middle of a game we’d all agreed not to call a game.
“You heard?”
“Yes.”
“And you let me carry on all evening?”
Kendall swallowed.
“Yes.”
Mom turned toward the tables.
Nearly three hundred people were discovering how much could happen while a photographer waited.
“I said I didn’t want anyone thinking Kendall was the one who pushed paper,” Mom said.
The microphone caught every word.
She pulled it away from her mouth.
“I didn’t know.”
I said nothing.
Dad took a step toward her.
“None of us knew she had that kind of responsibility.”
Kendall took the microphone from Mom.
“You knew she had a job.”
Dad looked down.
Kendall faced the room.
“I told some people tonight that Perla did me a favor. She didn’t.”
Her hand shook enough that the microphone touched her chin.
She moved it away.
“She didn’t get me selected. She didn’t move my name. My sister’s role in the final records was disclosed and checked. I earned my promotion, and she did her job.”
She looked at me.
“I made it sound different because I wanted everybody to like the story.”
Mom reached for her.
Kendall moved back.
“And I heard my mother tell her to stay out of the photographs. I let that happen.”
Her eyes filled again. This time she didn’t ask me to stop looking.
“I’m sorry, Perla.”
I nodded.
It was all I could give her without falling apart in front of the red roses.
Dad rubbed both hands over his face.
“This has gotten completely out of hand.”
Kendall passed him the microphone.
He didn’t take it.
“Your toast,” she said.
“It was a joke.”
She kept holding it out.
Dad looked at the tables. Men who’d laughed with him were sitting with their hands in their laps.
He took the microphone.
“I made a joke about getting two daughters for the price of one.”
His eyes came to me.
“I said one of them gave us something to brag about.”
“Mom said that,” I said.
He closed his eyes briefly.
“I said one became a lieutenant colonel.”
Nobody helped him with a laugh.
“I made my other daughter sound like a disappointment.”
My mouth hurt from holding it shut.
Dad stepped toward me.
“Perla, I shouldn’t have said it.”
“No.”
“I’m sorry.”
Mom stood beside the portrait chair, crying.
I wanted to go to her. My feet actually shifted.
Then she said, “Look at what’s happened to Kendall’s party.”
My feet stopped.
Kendall took the microphone from Dad.
“The party’s fine.”
“Everyone’s staring.”
“Then they’ll hear me.”
She faced the room.
“The people who came to celebrate with me, thank you. We’ll keep taking pictures after dinner.”
Mom wiped beneath one eye.
“And the family photograph?”
Kendall looked at me.
I shook my head.
Mom’s mouth opened.
Dad put a hand on her arm.
“No,” he said.
She pulled away from him.
Kendall gave Dana the microphone to set aside.
“The next picture is my sister’s.”
Perla Stanek
Dana put one chair in front of the camera.
No roses. I’d spent enough time peering around flowers to last through spring.
“Bag down,” he said.
I put it beside the chair.
Mom stood near Dad. Neither of them approached.
Whitcomb came over before he left.
“Ms. Stanek.”
I stood again.
He held out his hand.
There was no announcement this time. No room waiting for him to explain me.
I shook his hand.
“Thank you for your work,” he said.
“You’re welcome.”
Then he congratulated Kendall once more and left.
Mom followed him two steps before Dad caught her hand.
“Let him go,” he said.
Dana waited until I sat.
“Look here.”
I looked at the camera.
My face wouldn’t cooperate.
I’d kept it arranged for so long that now everything seemed to be happening around my mouth at once.
“Give me a second.”
“Take it.”
Kendall crouched beside the chair.
“Do you want me to go?”
“No.”
“Do you want me to stop talking?”
“Probably.”
She sat back on her heels.
That did it. One laugh, completely unsuitable for a dignified work photograph.
Dana took it.
“Oh, don’t use that.”
“I’m taking more than one.”
“Good. I’d like people to trust me with records.”
He took another.
The woman in the red jacket approached when Dana lowered the camera.
“Perla.”
She had to come around the chair to face me.
“I laughed when your father introduced you.”
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry.”
I let her stand through the second after that.
Then I said, “Thank you.”
She held out her hand.
I shook it.
Nobody asked where I’d gone to school. Nobody needed my salary. My job didn’t get bigger between the coats and that chair.
Dana turned the camera screen toward me.
There I was in the sweater Mom had called quiet.
No paper plate beside my ear.
No elbow from somebody else’s celebration.
I pointed at the second photograph.
“That one.”
Dana marked it.
Kendall stood beside us.
“Can I still have ours?”
I looked up at her.
“You can ask.”
She wiped her face with the heel of her hand.
“Will you take a picture with me?”
I stood.
“Move over.”
The two chairs
Dana put the second chair beside mine.
Kendall sat down without arranging her shoulders for the room.
“You fixed the ribbon,” I said.
“Yes.”
“Good.”
She looked at me.
“Thank you for telling me.”
“You’re welcome.”
Mom moved toward us.
Dana held up a hand.
“Just the sisters.”
“I was only going to straighten her dress.”
“It’s straight,” I said.
Mom stopped.
Kendall took my hand where the camera could see it.
I let her.
I was still angry. She could feel that in the way I sat beside her. She didn’t squeeze my fingers and ask me to make it easier.
Dana took the picture.
Then another.
Dad stood behind him, away from the camera.
“Can we get one of all four?” he said.
“No,” Kendall said.
He nodded.
Mom turned on him.
“You’re just accepting this?”
He looked at me, then back at her.
“Yes.”
Dana checked the screen.
“Perla, do you want to see?”
Kendall stood with me.
We bent over the camera, the same face on either side of Dana’s shoulder. Nobody confused us.
In the picture, Kendall’s uniform sat properly. My sweater was bunched a little at the waist. Our hands were between us.
I didn’t ask Dana to fix the sweater.
“That’s the one,” I said.
Kendall nodded.
Dana drew a line beside it on the order sheet.
Mom tried once more.
“We could still do the family group. Nobody needs to know any of this when they look at the photographs.”
Kendall moved away from the camera.
“Mom.”
“One picture. That’s all I’m asking.”
“You have pictures of the evening,” I said.
“Not the one I want.”
There were the portraits of Kendall, which I’d bought because I loved her. There was the photograph of us she’d asked for at my kitchen counter.
And there was one of me.
The package still cost $1,284.60. I didn’t ask for a refund. Every photograph I’d ordered was taken.
Mom got none of the posed family pictures she’d tried to arrange with me removed. She got none with the general added. Dad couldn’t crop his toast out of what the room had heard.
Dana handed me the marked order to approve.
I checked the names.
Kendall Stanek.
Perla Stanek.
No “other one.”
I signed at the bottom and gave it back.
Kendall stood close enough that our sleeves touched.
“I’m sorry about the favor.”
“You corrected it.”
“I should’ve done it before you asked.”
“Yes.”
She nodded. No excuse followed.
That was enough for me to put my arms around her.
She held on hard.
I cried into the shoulder that didn’t have the ribbon on it. I hadn’t survived this whole evening just to rearrange her decorations with my nose.
When we separated, Dad stood a few feet away.
He didn’t reach for me.
“Will you call when you get home?”
“Not tonight.”
His face fell, but he nodded.
I picked up my bag.
Dana promised to send the proofs to me and Kendall. Mom started to give him an email address.
“To us,” Kendall said.
Mom stopped halfway through it.
I put the strap over my shoulder and walked toward the door.
Mom caught up beside the coats.
“Perla, wait.”
I stopped.
She touched my sleeve.
“Can’t we at least tell people we’re proud of both of you?”
“You can tell them you apologized.”
She drew her hand back.
“You’re really going to leave without giving me one good family picture?”
“You have two daughters,” I said.
“I know that.”
“Count them next time.”
I walked out carrying my bag.
If this one got to you, send it to someone who’s tired of being called “the other one.”
Family members making you feel like a stranger in your own life show up in the mother-in-law who locked her future daughter-in-law out of her wedding room and the brother-in-law who called someone a visitor on her own unit. And for another painful family slight, read about the son who asked his mother to use the service stairs.
