Chapter Text
“You heard the banshee?” asks Kendall.
“The what?” Shiv and Kendall sit on the freshly manicured lawn outside the Summer Palace, watching the sun set over the distant water. She feels a grim pleasure: Mom would have a fit if she knew Shiv were sitting on the grass, would claim she’d ruined her clothes. Good. She doesn’t care about clothes. Or Mom.
Kendall smirks. “The banshee.” Shiv stares at him, waits for an elaboration. “Dad’s been fucking someone new for—months, I think. And she’s loud.”
“No he isn’t,” says Shiv. “No. He just finalized the divorce with Mom—what, three weeks ago?” Even as she speaks, Shiv knows it’s a futile question; Dad was hardly a paragon of fidelity while married.
“Hasn’t stopped him.” Kendall shrugs. “You know how Dad is. I hear them late at night. They think we’re asleep, but. Uh, I don’t—I don’t sleep much.” The circles under his eyes corroborate his story. Kendall looks sad, world-weary—far older than his eighteen years.
“Oh,” says Shiv. How had she missed this? “Okay.” She stands unsteadily and triple-checks her sundress for grass stains, forgetting her resolve not to care. “You coming in?”
“I’m okay,” says Kendall, and Shiv nods, turns and walks alone towards their Hamptons house as the setting sun casts shadows in front of her.
She resolves to stay up and hear the banshee for herself, but she always falls asleep too early. Every morning she checks in with Kendall, and every morning he grimly confirms her suspicions: Dad’s fucking another woman.
The next week, Roman returns from his second year of military school with a severe haircut, the tendency to flinch at any sudden movement, and a four-hundred-percent increase in “fuck” as a vocabulary word.
“Heard about the banshee yet?” asks Shiv once she’s pulled him to a secluded corner out of Dad’s earshot.
“The who?” Roman tilts his head to the side. He’d always been taller than her; Shiv realizes with glee they’re almost the same height now.
“Dad’s sleeping with a new woman.”
She’d expected an extreme response: Roman accusing her of lying, maybe even slapping her—in which case she’d slap him back. Shiv usually wins their fights now. What she hadn’t expected was Roman to take a step back, eyes widening.
“What?”
“You heard me, Rome.”
“That’s not—he won’t—”
“It’s true. Just ask Kendall.”
“Fine,” says Roman. “I will,” and he runs up the curved stairs two at a time, pulls open the door to Kendall’s room without knocking. Kendall, at his desk with headphones on, whirls to face them and pulls the headphones down around his neck.
“What the hell, Shiv, how many times do I have to—” begins Kendall, and then: “Roman. You’re—I didn’t, I didn’t know you’d be back today. Hey.”
“You didn’t tell me about the, the fuckin’—interloper,” says Roman, sitting down hard in a rolling chair right next to Kendall’s desk.
“Wow,” says Kendall. “Glad to see you, Roman. ‘You too, Kendall.’ How was school? ‘Oh, pretty good.’ Well, that’s great. Welcome back.”
“But you guys never told me,” says Roman, accusatory. “Shiv says Dad’s fucking someone and you, you never—”
“There was nothing to tell,” snaps Kendall. “I only figured it out a week ago.”
“Still,” says Roman, “you could have—”
“What? Written a letter? Like it’s, uh—what, 1812? Give me a break.”
Silence. Standing in the corner of the room, Shiv picks at the skin underneath her fingernails.
“It’s not serious, right?” says Roman. “Doesn’t actually—y’know, mean anything?”
Kendall runs a hand through his hair. His face is drained, skeletal; it’s apparent he’s barely sleeping.
“I guess we’ll see,” says Kendall. “Anyway. Uh…how was school, Rome?”
Roman shrugs. “Fine.” He draws his legs up, curls into a tiny ball the way he always had as a child. “Nothing to write home about.”
“Okay. Great,” says Kendall. “Now if you two could leave my room, I’m kinda busy—”
“Too busy for your little siblings?” asks Shiv in her faux-sweetest voice; she knows this voice annoys Kendall more than anything.
Roman grins, adopts the same voice. “Yeah, come on, big brother, I’ve been just dying to hang out—”
“Fuck off, guys,” says Kendall, swatting the air as though Roman and Shiv are bothersome horseflies. He pulls out a sheet of paper with writing all over it; Shiv can make out the words Harvard, Yale, and Stanford in Kendall’s cramped handwriting.
“College apps?” asks Shiv.
“Yeah,” says Kendall. “Hence why I said fuck off.”
Looking over his shoulder, Shiv can see Kendall’s made a detailed paper chart listing over twenty different colleges: everything they offer, the pros and cons of each one. He can probably go wherever he wants. All Dad has to do is donate a few thousand dollars and suddenly there’s an admissions spot open, a research library named after the Roys for good measure. But Kendall likes to feel he’s in control.
“Where you gonna go, college boy?” asks Roman, punching Kendall on the arm a little too hard.
Kendall winces a bit but doesn’t retaliate. “Harvard, I think. It’s my favorite.”
“Your favorite, or Dad’s favorite?” says Roman. He perches on the edge of Kendall’s rolling chair like some kind of malformed bird.
“Well, it, uh—yeah, it’s Dad’s favorite, too, for good reason. It’s fuckin’ Harvard.”
“God, Ken’s gonna be insufferable,” Roman says, glancing over at Shiv. “Get brainwashed by all the—the P.C. granola fucks in Boston— ”
Kendall interjects, “Harvard’s not in Boston, dipshit—”
“Oooh, Harvard’s not in Boston,” mocks Roman in a high-pitched voice. “Too smart for us already.” Kendall rolls his eyes as Roman continues. “Lucky for you he’ll be gone soon, Shiv.”
“Uh-huh,” says Shiv. The phrase he’ll be gone soon makes something in her throat involuntarily tighten. She doesn’t want Kendall to go away: doesn’t want to rattle around through Dad’s homes, ghostlike, no one her age for company. It’ll kill her.
Roman begins sifting through the mountain of debris on Kendall’s desk. “Oh, we got cigarettes,” he says, holding up a half-empty box of Marlboro Reds. “Marlboros? Really? Roleplaying as the peasant class, I see.” Roman tosses them to the side.
“Leave my shit alone—”
Ignoring him, Roman starts rifling through Kendall’s pile of CDs, picks up one titled The Slim Shady LP. “The fuck is this guy? Candy-ass bitch.”
Kendall inhales. “Okay, listen, Eminem is fucking—he’s, he’s, uh, transcending the limitations of the fuckin’ form. He’s shaking up the obscure inner-city rap scene. Going full supernova. Speaks to the underlying tensions of, uh, suburbia—reveals the monsters under the, the bullshit white-picket-fence ‘50s housewife façades. Changing the motherfuckin’ game!” Kendall claps his hands together for dramatic effect. “You’d probably like him, Rome.”
“Yeah, maybe if Mom dropped me on my head as a baby.” Roman spins around in the rolling chair, rotates so fast his face becomes a blur.
Dad officially introduces them to the banshee a week later. He doesn’t use any descriptors like we’re dating or we’re sleeping together or this is the woman I love now instead of your mother; at dinner one night it’s only this is Sally-Anne. Some lipsticked woman who wears too much floral print. Doesn’t take a world-class detective to connect the dots.
“Sally-Anne,” says Roman once they’ve retreated to Kendall’s room. “Sounds like a—a fuckin’ baked good gone wrong.”
“Fuck,” says Kendall, sitting down hard on the edge of his bed. “I guess it’s serious.”
“What?”
“I mean, just think about it,” says Kendall. “Dad—he, uh, he gets around. But he doesn’t introduce us. I, I didn’t think—he wouldn’t let her meet us unless they’re serious. Right?”
Roman and Shiv exchange a glance; Shiv sees her own worries reflected in Roman’s eyes.
“No—no, he probably just wants to show off,” says Roman, who’s taken over the rolling chair once again. “Show his kids he’s the number-one pussy destroyer. Great life lesson for us all.”
Kendall scoffs. Shiv sits down on the bed next to Kendall, crosses her arms tightly. She still hasn’t so much as kissed a boy yet. Maybe she needs to. Maybe that’ll make her normal.
“You think they’re fucking right now?” continues Roman. “You think she’s sucking Dad off? Or maybe Sally-Anne likes it up the ass, that’s why he still keeps her around—“
“Jesus, Rome,” interrupts Kendall, nodding indirectly towards Shiv, “she’s thirteen.”
“I’m not a fucking baby,” snaps Shiv. Despite knowing every curse word in the book and then some, she doesn’t swear much; the word fuck feels strange in her mouth.
“Still,” says Kendall.
A wave of anger. Kendall had no problem talking like this around Roman when Roman was her age—younger, even. He only cares because she’s a girl.
Two weeks pass. Sally-Anne's taken up permanent residence in their home, a constant floral-patterned irritation. Shiv’s awakened by a series of disjointed metallic twangs. She emerges from her room; Kendall’s awake, leaning on the iron railings by the nearest set of marble stairs.
“Jesus Christ.” Roman emerges from his room, rubbing tiredness from his eyes. “What the fuck is that noise?”
“Dad got Sally-Anne a harp,” says Kendall.
“Sounds like a bunch of cats getting waterboarded.”
They haven’t seen much of Dad this summer. Most years, the warm months are a cage match with the three siblings pitted against each other, vying for Dad’s limited attention. Shiv remembers one hot July day two years ago: Roman and Kendall on the tennis court for hours, Dad goading them on, Roman nearly fainting from exhaustion. But this summer’s different. Dad hardly notices they’re alive. They’re all out in the cold, iced out by Sally-Anne’s glorious sun.
“Have you talked to Dad?” asks Roman, gaze flitting from one sibling to the other.
“About what?” scoffs Shiv.
“About…I don’t know, just—like since I got back. Since Sally-Anne got here. Have you…seen him much?”
“Dad? Fuck no,” says Kendall. “He’s, uh, he’s—he’s on a voyage through the seven seas of fucking.”
“Why do you want Dad’s attention so much anyway, Ro?” says Shiv. Shiv’s always survived by being quiet, fading into the wallpaper when Dad yells. She’s never understood Roman’s urge to come crawling back time and time again, acting out only for Dad to crush him underfoot. You’d think he’d learn; maybe Dad’s right, maybe Roman is a moron.
“I do not ‘want his attention,’ Shiv, don’t be such a girl.”
“Well, you sure seemed—”
“Get over yourselves,” says Kendall. “Besides, if there’s a new baby around soon, you can kiss any attention from Dad goodbye.”
Silence. Not even the harp is playing anymore; there’s only the three Roy siblings, hands gripping the banister like a lifeline.
Roman stammers, “A, a—beg pardon, Kendall, I thought you said ‘new baby’—”
“Just thinking ahead,” says Kendall, drumming his fingers rapidly on the iron railing. “Little healthy catastrophizing. Fuckin’…fuckin’ worst-case-scenario Apocalypse Now-type planning here.”
The three exchange a glance. Shiv feels something in her stomach clench. What if Sally-Anne’s here forever? What if there is a new baby and Dad forgets all about them? She already doesn’t talk to Mom anymore; she can’t lose Dad too.
“Uh,” says Kendall, “it—uh—” and for a second Kendall stops being her accomplished older brother; he looks confused, helpless, at a total loss. “Guys, I don’t—don’t think he would, at least not now, but…” He sighs. “But—but I think we should call Connor. He’s been—I mean, he has a different mom, he knows how Dad gets.”
Roman just stares at him.
Shiv nods slightly. “Sure. Call Connor, I guess. But—like, I don’t care.”
“…Right,” says Kendall. He returns to his room; Roman and Shiv follow single-file, like ducklings. Kendall pulls out his mobile phone, adjusts the antenna, and calls Connor. It only rings once before Connor picks up.
“Kenny!” Connor sounds utterly delighted to hear from his younger brother.
“Hey, Con,” says Ken, strangely businesslike. “Yeah, uh—we’re all here, actually. Me and Shiv and Roman.”
“Golden trio, huh?” says Connor’s voice. “Well, hey guys! What’s goin’ on with you all?”
It only takes a little while to shed the pleasantries and get down to brass tacks. Clinically, Kendall explains their situation: Sally-Anne, the way she’s wormed her way into their father’s bed and subsequently their lives, that damn harp.
“Come on, you three,” says Connor’s voice, scratchy over the phone. “This Sally-Anne person’s not the end of the world. Maybe you’ll end up liking her!”
“If I hear that harp one more time, I’m killing myself,” says Roman.
A silence: it goes on so long Shiv thinks the phone’s disconnected. “Romey. Roman, you wouldn’t actually kill yourself, would—“
“Don’t be stupid, Connor, he—uh, he says that every fuckin’ day. ‘I’m killing myself’ is how Roman says hello,” deadpans Kendall. Roman and Shiv snicker; Connor took him seriously? Pathetic. This is why Dad thinks Connor’s weak.
“…Oh,” says Connor. “Okay.” Silence again. “Well…well, guys, speaking as someone who went through this when Dad met your mom, my advice is to just make the best of it.”
“Right,” says Kendall. “Thanks, Con. Listen, I’m busy, gotta head—” and he hangs up before Connor can even say Bye, Kenny.
“Well, he was no help,” says Kendall.
“We should call Mom,” says Roman. “It’s still—she always gets up early, she’s probably awake—”
“We should absolutely not do that,” says Kendall. “Are you insane?”
“Maybe she—maybe she’ll want—”
“Mom doesn’t want us, Roman,” says Shiv, swallowing hard. “Or did you forget?”
An insult like this would have shut Roman up a couple years ago, but these days he’s harder, colder. “She just doesn’t want you,” spits Roman. “She hates you ‘cause you’re a bad daughter.”
“Rome. Jesus,” says Kendall. But Mom had said as much, hadn’t she? Told Shiv how bratty she was, how hard she was to deal with. Thinking about Mom makes Shiv want to tear every single hair from her own head one by one. She’d rather deal with a thousand Sally-Annes than talk to Mom again.
“We’re not calling Mom, Roman,” Shiv says, cold. “Don’t be a baby.”
“You’re the one who’s a baby,” says Roman, but his voice is quiet, subdued.
The three stand still for a long time, silence broken only by Sally-Anne’s harp resuming its relentless twangs.