Page 5 of The Better Sister

Ding, ding, ding. I had found the winner. I hit retweet and typedThis kind of comment is how we know we’re winning the war. #Runningscared #snowflake

I knew that my 320,000-odd followers would go to town on the guy (at least, I assumed it was a guy) until he deleted his account, but I went ahead and reported his tweet as abuse anyway.

Adam had warned me to ignore the threatening comments that came with being a woman on the internet. I had the option, for example, of ignoring all my mentions or filtering out people I didn’t know personally. But that would defeat the purpose of engaging directly withEve’s readers.

Besides, I wasn’t going to let a handful of cowards hiding behind the anonymity of a website silence me. As my Twitter bio said, “Nobody puts baby in a corner.”

Having scratched the itch, I found that I couldn’t stop. I closed Twitter and opened Poppit, an anything-goes message board that allowed users to post anonymously without even a registration process. A quick search of my name filled my screen with hateful rants. When they weren’t calling me a dried-up, bitter old hag, they were labeling me a skank and a whore who had slept her way to her position—even though I had gotten married at the age of thirty-one, when I was already a features editor atCity Womanand months away from becoming editor in chief of a downtown cultural paper. Plus, my husband was a lawyer who had nothing whatsoever to do with the publishing industry. If anything, I had been the one to help his career. But of course none of these strangers who hated me for trying to make the world a little more fair to women knew anything about that.

I was about to close my browser when I saw a new post appear at the top of the thread, under the user name KurtLoMein.She’s a hypocrite. Full of tough talk about the world needing to change the way it treats women, but she’s a coward in her own life. Cares more about her picture-perfect image than actual reality.

My fingers lingered over the keyboard, knowing I shouldn’t respond, and not knowing what to write if I did. Thepingof an incoming email pulled me out of the social-media sinkhole. It was Maggie, getting back to me about the photo shoot.

Hi Chloe. You don’t like the pictures? Oh no! It was Sienna’s idea to blow up the traditional, ridiculous glamour shoot. She was totally psyched about it, but I can ask her for some images from the campaign if you really hate it. Let me know? Maggie

A second message quickly followed.

I just called your office so we could chat directly, but Tom says you’re out today. I feel terrible now. I should have asked the photog for some other looks as well, but got infected by Sienna’s enthusiasm for irony. How can I make this better? Maggie

P.S. Congrats again on the P for the P Award! Hope the gala is amazing!

I clicked back to the photographs and saw them in a completely different light. I felt like one of those people who gets outraged about an email, only to be told that it should have been written in a nonexistent sarcasm font. I was that nerd who didn’t get the joke. I was barely into my forties, and I felt... old.

No worries,I typed.Just wanted to make sure Sienna was 100% okay with the look. CAT

I reread my original email, making sure I hadn’t said anything inconsistent with this one. As I hit send, I found myself thinking about that final, scathing Poppit message. Did I really care more about my image than reality?

A few minutes later, our landline rang. It was Les, the afternoon doorman, letting me know that Valerie was here. She was the woman I had hired to do my hair and makeup for the gala. Two hours and $500 from now, I’d look like an older version of the woman in the ironic photo shoot my magazine would be running next month. I tried not to wonder what Maggie Hart would say about that.

“What do you think?” Valerie asked. I’d been perched on the foot of the bed so long that my legs hurt when I stood.

Looking in the mirror, I barely recognized myself. My normally straight shoulder-length dark brown hair had been shaped into a perfect wave of spiral curls tumbling from a deep side part. My skin looked natural, but dewy and flawless. She had used light blush and a nude gloss, and given me dark, smoky eyes. My heart-shaped face had previously unknown contours.

“You’re a miracle worker, Valerie.” We had first met when one of our usual makeup artists was hit with a stomach flu and sent a friend to replace her. When I set eyes on Valerie’s hot-pink Mohawk and array of facial piercings, I wasn’t sure she was the right person for the job. But she was proof that some people simply choose to march to their own beat, even if they can keep perfect time with the rest of the band.

“Do you want to get dressed before I do one final blast of hairspray?”

“My gown feels like a sausage casing. I want to wait until the very last minute.”

“All right. Just be careful. The makeup will rub off. And your lips are so perfect right now. Try not to mess with them, but if you need a touch-up, I’m leaving you both the liner and the gloss. And use this brush for the gloss, not the applicator that comes with the tube.”

“Message received, Michelangelo. I won’t destroy the artwork.”

“You sure you don’t need help with a zipper or anything? I can wait if you want.”

I declined the offer, saying that Adam would be back in time if I needed a hand, even though I hadn’t heard anything from him since the previous night. He’d left early in the morning, before I woke up.

Valerie was shellacking my carefully positioned waves with spray when I heard the creak of the apartment door. We’d had a Post-it note on the refrigerator to remind one of us either to call the handyman or pick up some WD-40 for at least three weeks. I longed for the days when a to-do sticker never lingered for more than forty-eight hours in our home. We had both gotten so busy.

“See?” I said, feeling my own smile. “That’s probably him now.”

We followed the sounds into the kitchen. Instead of Adam, Ethan stood in front of the open refrigerator, his eyes searching for something that obviously wasn’t there.

“Oh. Hey, Valerie.” His voice had probably dropped an octave since he’d seen Valerie last winter during the holiday party season. He immediately straightened up, pushing the refrigerator door shut behind him.

I watched with profound discomfort as Valerie offered him a generous hug and a kiss on the cheek, seemingly oblivious to the effect she had on my teenage son. Ethan had never expressed an interest in dating, but I had seen the change in him over the last year and had spoken to a couple of the better teachers at his school. The good news (in my view) was that he had been late to shift his interests from video games and don’t-try-this-nonsense-at-home YouTube videos to actual human girls. The bad news was that he hadn’t quite figured out how to be comfortable around members of the opposite sex.

“Okay, Valerie,” I said, tapping her shoulder to pull her attention from Ethan. “Thanks again for dolling me up. You really are an artist.”

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