Linda Lee - The Glass Kitchen - A Novel of Sisters

ARIEL KANE WAS ALMOST entirely certain she was disappearing.

Using every millimeter of her massively smart brain, she was trying to figure out if it was even possible for a person to disappear. So far she hadn’t come up with any sort of quantifiable answer despite the fact that she wrote everything she could down in her journal. Anything that seemed important, she took notes on. The only thing that was definite, however, was that she was definitely starving, even though barely an hour ago the ladies downstairs had shoveled heaping piles of really good food onto her plate. But not even the roast or cake made her feel less hungry.

Hungry or not, Ariel had liked sitting there while they gabbed away. Portia, the one who seemed to live there, with her sandy blond hair and giant blue eyes, was pretty but tired looking, like a favorite doll who had been played with too much. Then there was Olivia, the middle sister, Ariel had learned, the same kind of pretty as Portia, those blue-blue eyes and long curly hair, only wilder, alive, like if you touched her you’d feel a zap. And last, Cordelia, the only one who seemed like an adult, again with the blue-blue eyes and really blond hair, only hers was straight, perfect, not one thing about her out of place. Ariel had seen tons of women like that, mothers of other girls, both in New Jersey and now here in New York.

Whatever. There had been something nice about the way the sisters yakked away, like everything in the world was normal, a world where people didn’t disappear. Ariel liked that best. Then they started dancing, which was really embarrassing because they were so bad.

At first she had felt bad seeing the three sisters dancing together, leaving her out. Then they had turned to her, pulling her into their circle. They didn’t even notice that her dancing was as bad as theirs. Even worse, maybe. Her throat swelled like a big baby’s just thinking about it. Only then her dad had shown up and ruined it.

He was pretty good at that, given that he had pretty much ruined her life. If things were different, she’d be back in her old room in New Jersey instead of sitting on the fourth floor of this town house. Her dad just up and moved them here six months ago, never bothering to ask if she wanted a new room, or a new bed, or even a new life.

The only good news was that she knew for a fact that her dad hadn’t sold their old house. It still had all their old furniture in it. With any luck, he’d give up this New York City nonsense and move them back where they belonged.

She pulled out her journal and started to write, this time because she was supposed to. More specifically, the Shrink her dad had hired said she had to write out her feelings about her mom.

Ariel hated this kind of journal writing. It made her think about Mom, which made her feel like a bee buzzing in a jar, banging around trying to get out. Sure, her mom had died. And sure, she could hardly breathe whenever she thought about it. But Ariel was not some below-average preteen who needed help, which was exactly what she had told her dad. He had carted her and her sister, Miranda, off to an idiot therapist anyway. So she mainly used her journal to write down her observations about the world.

During her first visit with the Shrink, Ariel had sat in the guy’s office on a creepy black leather sofa. When he started by asking her how she was feeling, she refused to give in to the tears that burned in her throat, and responded by asking him what self-respecting medical professional had black leather anything, especially in his office. He had looked at her, didn’t bother to answer, and scribbled something on his notepad.

After that, she had simply said “No Comment” to everything else he asked, interjecting observations about the weather every once in a while to shake things up, until finally the guy realized she wasn’t going to start talking away all of a sudden. He said fine. Since she wouldn’t talk to him, she should write down her feelings in a journal.

Next thing she knew, her dad had gone out and bought her a pink diary with a miniature key. Hello, she was almost thirteen, not eight. When she mentioned this, directly after asking her dad if he’d like to join her for a cocktail before dinner—which he either didn’t hear or intentionally ignored—he brought home a fancy journal with a leather cover. Like she was some sort of self-help freak. Again, nearly thirteen. Not thirty.

On the bright side, it did give her an idea for a title for her journal. Musings of a Freak. Intelligent, a little off-center. In a word, her. Ariel Kane.

So, anyway, she was supposed to write down her feelings. Truthfully, if she managed to get beyond the sick feeling that she constantly had about her mom, what she felt was cramped. Her dad, who never used to be at home when her mom was alive, suddenly went all I’m going to be the perfect father on them, pulling up stakes in Montclair, New Jersey, moving Ariel and her sister to the Upper West Side, into a town house that was like a hundred years old.

Since they’d moved here, all her dad did was work on the place (or should she say, boss other people around while they worked on the place), sit at the big desk in the downstairs office, reading The Financial Times, studying computer screens—basically making sure his empire stayed, well, empirick—and meddle in her life. Correction: ruin her life.

But the fact was, there was something about her dad that made people do what he told them. When he walked into a room, people quieted. When he asked a question, people embarrassed themselves trying to come up with the answer. He wasn’t handsome, not like her uncle Anthony, whom everyone said was totally beautiful. But still, her dad didn’t have to say much to have people jumping through hoops to do his bidding. At least that was the case with everyone but her older sister, Miranda.

Miranda was sixteen and had been forced to leave her boyfriend behind when they moved into the city. Ariel had seen the guy once only even back in New Jersey, since Miranda did a really great job of keeping him out of their dad’s sight. Dad would combust if he found out Miranda had a boyfriend. While Ariel couldn’t say the guy was anything to write home about, clearly Miranda thought he was, since now she spent most of her time slamming doors and throwing herself across her bed, going on and on about how unfair life was.

No question Dad needed more to do with his time.

For a while after Mom died, all three of them had walked around like zombies in a movie. For six months they had barely put one foot in front of the other. Then, out of nowhere, just as the school year ended and summer was starting, Dad came home and told them it was time to move on.

Move on?

Like people could do that?

Though really, moving to New York had made it possible to turn the whole dead-mom thing into a secret. Ariel had learned the hard way that people completely freaked if they heard.

So, in June they had moved into the city. In July, she and her sister had started with the Shrink. In September, she and Miranda had started new schools. Now it was nearly October and there was no sign that her dad was going to stop being in charge of all of their day-to-day stuff. She had pretty much given up on him going back to his old ways of distractedly asking them how their day was while reading the newspaper.

Previous scenario before everything went to hell in a handbasket went something like this.…

Father Reading The Wall Street Journal : “How was your day, Ariel?”

Extremely Intelligent and Witty Daughter: “Great, just finished watching a bunch of porn online and I need ten dollars for lunch.”