Simone

 

As a twin, Cecilia’s voice has never sounded like my own, even when people tell me it does. There’s a slight crack in her voice when I listen carefully, especially when she raises it. My voice rarely cracks like that, but maybe that’s just because I’m never passionate enough to raise it.

 

“You don’t tell me what to do or who to love!” she screams, her voice cracking familiarly.

 

I linger at the door of my parents’ mansion, the house I grew up in on the outskirts of Las Vegas, the sort of house that should be on some farm instead of within driving distance of Sin City. It’s a massive thing, and very intimidating for people who haven’t lived here most of their lives. At least, that’s what my middle class college friends told me when they visited back before graduation. I let my fingers caress the lion’s head knocker, wondering if I should just turn around and walk away. Sometimes being the mediator can be too tiring to contemplate.

 

But then Mom raises her voice, and I know it’s serious. “I’ll tell you any darn thing I want, young lady!”

 

I use my key and open the door, and then walk down the wide corridor, past Dad’s expensive paintings and over Mom’s expensive rugs, round the corner which presents an expensive bust of an expensive-looking woman, and into the living room which is, I was told time and time again in college, decorated expensively. But to me it just looks like my living room, except that now Cecilia is standing on one side of it brandishing her handbag and Mom and Dad are on the other, brandishing their erect forefingers.

 

Andrew and Josephine Ericson are hard-faced people, with flat noses and cold eyes, but Dad’s mouth often twitches involuntarily into a smile. Even today, stuffed into a tight red dress ready for the theater, Mom looks slightly cruel. Dad smiles more easily, and is usually more forgiving, but right now he doesn’t look ready to forgive. Cecilia has the same fine features as me, but her hair is jagged and dyed bleached blonde, instead of our natural blonde, and a nose ring glints in the light of the chandelier. Her shorts are so tiny, I’m surprised Dad let her in the house.

 

She scoffs, waving her handbag frantically, sending makeup flying across the room. “You won’t even say damn!” Cecilia snaps, disbelief making her voice wobbly. “You won’t even say that simple word, will you, my sweet mother? You’re so tight-assed you can’t even do me the courtesy of giving me a proper argument.”

 

“Don’t talk to your mother like that, young lady!” Dad snaps.

 

“Young lady!” Cecilia turns our bright blue eyes to me, noticing my entrance. “Twenty-five years old, Mona, and he still calls us young lady!”

 

Cecilia is the only person who calls me Mona, another middle finger to Mom and Dad, who adore the name Simone. She started calling me Mona when we were five, proclaiming that Simone was too difficult to say. This made no sense but it didn’t stop her. Nothing much stops Cecilia.

 

“What’s going on?” I say, looking between them. I wonder if they’d really be at each other’s throats if it wasn’t for the white leather couch.

 

Mom turns to me, pouting. “Oh, hello, sweetheart,” she says. “We were just discussing the idea of your sister—our daughter—an Ericson, mind you—marrying that horrible brute of a man, that forty-year-old disgusting animal. That biker, that . . . Oh, Andrew, it doesn’t bear thinking about.”

 

“He’s thirty-nine, actually!” Cecilia hisses.

 

“Why don’t we all just sit down?” I say, gesturing at two separate couches. I don’t think sitting them on the same couch is a good idea.

 

“What’s the point?” Cecilia sighs, kneeling down and collecting her makeup. “I came here to invite them to the wedding, Mona, and they treat me like I’m some sort of monster. Apparently, falling in love is a personal insult.”

 

“Falling in love,” Dad echoes. “That’s an interesting way to put it.”

 

“But I have fallen in love!” she breaks out. “His name is Shotgun and he’s a lovely man and—”

 

“Shotgun.” Mom brings her hand to her chest like she might faint. “Lord help us, Shotgun.” She turns to me. “Please, talk your sister out of this. Appeal to her, Simone. You have to talk some sense into her. We can’t have our daughter gallivanting about the place with some lowlife motorcycle man.”

 

I take a step back. I hate when they put me in this position, especially since they’ve been doing it my whole life. But then, that’s the only reason I agreed to be any part of Cecilia’s wedding. I’m her maid of honor. That’s the reason I’m here today, to tell them. I didn’t expect this show, though. “I . . .” Words fail me. I have no idea what words can fix this. But I’ll need to find some eventually.

 

“You can’t think this is the right thing for her,” Dad says. “We know you, Simone. You’ve always been a sensible girl.”

 

“Just look at her business degree!” Mom cries, staring at Cecilia out of the corner of her eye. Cecilia never went to college.

 

“I’m proud of her for that, too,” Cecilia mutters, throwing me a look I can read in less than a second. I love you, sister. I’m sorry, sister. My throat swells. “Hard place” should be written across her forehead and “rock” across Mom and Dad’s.

 

“The truth is your sister has always been a little simple,” Mom says, a hint of malice in her voice.

 

Bad idea. Cecilia’s anger can override everything. I’ve seen it happen before. Once in school she got so angry she threw a chair out of a second-floor window. “If I’m so simple, why is Mona my maid of honor? If Mona doesn’t think it’s a bad idea, then how simple am I, then!”

 

Their mouths fall open at the same time, their gazes moving over me like they’re seeing me for the first time.

 

“Is this true?” Dad asks after a long pause.

 

I swallow, my throat burning. I feel Cecilia shooting me apologetic looks from across the room, but I only see them out of the corner of my eye. My eyes are locked on Mom and Dad.

 

“You father asked if this was true,” Mom says. “You’re a smart girl, Simone, a sensible girl, with a college degree. You interned at MGM, for God’s sake! You don’t need to associate yourself with this motorcycle scum. I’m sorry for being so aggressive, I am, I really am, but what am I to refer to these men as? They’re scum, Simone. You must know that.”

 

While I wouldn’t go so far as calling them scum—I don’t like to think of anybody in that way—I can’t disagree with Mom about associating with them. I find bikers off-putting, dirty, and grimy, and I wouldn’t be associating with them if it wasn’t for Cecilia. I’m not associating with them, anyway. I haven’t even met one. I find Cecilia crazy, too. But she’s my sister. We were in the womb together. We grew up together. Even when she cut and dyed her hair, wore shorter skirts, tighter tops, even when she went wild with boys and I stayed in studying, we never stopped being sisters.

 

“I can’t abandon her,” I say quietly, looking at the floor.

 

“Pardon, young lady?” Dad says. “Look at us when you talk to us, please. Give us that courtesy, at least.”

 

“She’s Cecilia,” I say, meeting his eye briefly. “What do you expect me to do? I can’t just abandon her. But it doesn’t have to be this way. It doesn’t have to be ugly and mean. You love Cecilia. She’s still your daughter. Things don’t have to be so nasty all the time.”

 

“Nasty, she says,” Mom whispers, “as if she isn’t the one contributing to the nastiness. Why are you participating in this nonsense, Simone, when you should be over here with us trying to talk her out of it?”

 

“Because otherwise you’d never talk to each other again!” I scream, emotion making my voice similar to Cecilia’s. I point at each of them in turn. They all stare back, surprised to see sweet Simone so irate. “I know you have your differences, but we’re family. Surely we can see past this.”

 

“I’m not paying for this wedding,” Dad says, ignoring my words. “There’s absolute no way I’m paying for this wedding, tradition or no tradition. How long until the farce? Two months? Fine, then you have two months to find someone who’ll cough up the funds for this joke of a ceremony.”

 

“I don’t need your money!” Cecilia gives up on collecting her makeup and instead tosses her handbag across the room, scattering it everywhere. “Shotgun has money, anyway! And even if he didn’t, we’d get married at one of those fake churches with a photo of Elvis on the wall! Just you see if we wouldn’t!”

 

She marches from the room, fists at her side. The slamming of the door reverberates throughout the house. I notice her driver’s license and some keys amidst the makeup on the floor, so I kneel down and start collecting her things. Dad kneels next to me, placing his hand atop mine. “Don’t take that out to her,” he says. “Leave it at the window and send her a text. You know what she’s like. She’s always pulling you down. You’ve always been the smart one. It’s not fair to you, always having to clean up after her.”

 

I don’t like the way he’s talking to me, like I can’t think for myself. Part of me wants to snap at him. Instead I stand up and hold the handbag to my chest. “If I abandon her, she has no family. How is that fair?”

 

“How is it fair for us to treat us like this? That’s the question you should be asking.” Mom’s words are bitter.

 

I make for the door. “I love you both,” I say. “I’ll see you soon?”

 

Mom tuts, but Dad hugs me. “I love you.”

 

When I get outside, Cecilia is leaning against my car. “Let’s go shopping,” she says. “My maid of honor needs a smoking hot dress.”

 

Despite myself, I smile.