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checkout, I grabbed a thirty-dollar bottle of wine and a coffee cake in a box. We’d need something to stick the candles on later. Then I decided I should start the new year with a new toothbrush, toothpaste, and floss and walked over to the dental hygiene section.
    I picked up two packages and said,“Do you know the difference between unwaxed and waxed floss?”
    “I read that dental tape is better,” said Ruffles.
    “Is it?”
    “Is what?” I turned and saw an A & P clerk standing next to me.
    I shook my head and threw both packages into the cart.
     
    By the time I arrived home, Betty Jane lay sprawled on her bed in a drunken stupor inside my head. Her incapacitation made the Committee unable to speak and participate. I knew the rest of the
Committee would give me a pass on this one, especially since the solution to the “how to keep Betty Jane out of Sarah’s face” problem came from Ruffles. Hopefully, nasty remarks and a hangover would be the extent of Betty Jane’s retribution.
    The upside of Betty Jane’s drinking was that her hangover should keep her in bed for at least a day after Sarah’s departure, which would give me time to apologize to Peter, grovel if necessary, and then initiate a passionate reunion. Milton had warned me once about the consequences of using this method to restore harmony in a relationship. He said, “Do this and you become more enmeshed in the fantasy, when the reality is that the relationship wouldn’t exist if you ever thought about what made you stay.” This time, I ignored him.
    I checked my watch, two o’clock. I had four hours to kill before Sarah arrived.
     
    It was just past ten o’clock. Sarah and I sat under the covers in my bed. We’d had all our conversations like this while growing up—me against my pillow and Sarah with her back against the wall and legs hooked over mine.“Holly,” said Sarah,“Mom asked me to ask you when are you going to get a real job and support yourself like most people your age do? She thinks you wait tables to spite her.”
    My working as a waitress bothered my mother almost as much as it did Betty Jane—especially when she compared me to Sarah, who went from high school, to college, to marriage, and to a career in accounting, hitting all the success milestones at just the right time. By age thirty, Sarah had embarked on motherhood, and four years and two perfectly timed children later she was now hitting all the right child-rearing achievements on schedule. From my mother’s perspective, by now I should have a successful career and a husband trying fervently to impregnate me.

    I said to Sarah, “Ask Mom if she’d prefer to tell the bridge club that her NYU honor student can’t seem to find career success outside of the food industry because she has a little problem of five people inhabiting her head.” I smirked.
    My sister sat silent. A few years ago she had decided it was best to remain neutral on the topic of my employment. She could not see the causal link between the fact that my jobs required me to interact with so many people and how often I changed employers. The missing piece I never shared was that I waited tables, and subsequently, it was Betty Jane’s behavior that always got me fired within six to eight months. When Sarah suggested I try to stay put, build stability in my life, I asked her to trust me that this was the best I could do.
    “At least I have a boyfriend,” I said, hoping to direct the conversation to accomplishments my mother did care about.
    “Well, yes,” said Sarah, “she was thrilled until I told her your boyfriend is a graduate student on scholarship. She figured out where the excess charges were coming from pretty quickly after that, Holly.”
    “Is that why you wanted to meet him?” I asked.“Did she tell you to?”
    “She didn’t have to. I see the credit card bill. And—”
    “You’re always going to protect me,” I said. Sarah had told me this so many times over the years, I