Two Sisters: A Novel by Mary Hogan Page A

the bus window. After a lifetime of memorizing her sister, Muriel knew it was useless pushing Pia to talk before she was ready. It was the frustrating trait of a person who’d never known the loneliness of not being listened to.
    “I can’t wait to see the grand spot you’ve chosen for lunch,” Pia said, at last. By then, the bus was almost at Fifth Avenue. Lurching into traffic, they turned the corner and stopped across the street from FAO Schwartz. Muriel stood up. “This is us.”
    Pia looked out the window. “Bergdorf’s?”
    “Follow me.”
    Tugging the white shirtdress over her hips and adjusting the suffocating scarf, Muriel led her sister down the bus steps and back up Fifth Avenue a few yards before turning to walk across a cobblestone square past the Pulitzer Fountain of the naked goddess Pomona.
    “Ah, Muriel,” Pia said, stopping. “It’s perfect.”
    Muriel beamed. It felt good to please someone who was so hard to please. Thank God she’d read the New York Times review.
    “You can’t smell the horses inside.”
    Together the two sisters walked toward the regal red carpet leading to the fabulous entrance of the Plaza Hotel.
    I T WAS IMPOSSIBLE not to feel grand or magnificent or glorious or splendid at the pitch-perfect blending of old and new known to all New Yorkers as “The Plaza.” The front steps are so alluring they practically suck you through the shiny brass revolving door. Overhead, a black lacquered molding is filigreed in gold. It probably isn’t real gold, but it might as well be.
    “Ladies.” As if welcoming Cinderella to the ball, a gloved doorman bowed his head slightly when Pia flitted up the red-carpeted stairs. Not far behind, Muriel attempted her own light-footed flit. In his top hat with its gold-braided trim, the doorman looked like an actor onstage. The “Be My Guest” scene in Beauty and the Beast , or, more accurately, Grand Hotel . Muriel felt the same fluttery anticipation she felt right before the curtain rose on Broadway. For a moment she forgot about the tugging buttons of her dress.
    “Glorious day,” she said to the doorman, sounding not one bit ridiculous. Gallantly, he swept his arm across his chest and replied, “Indeed.”
    The Sullivant sisters leaned into the heavy rotating door and pushed themselves through time. In the central lobby, Pia stopped cold and gasped. Muriel nearly toppled into her.
    “Oh, my,” Pia said. “I haven’t been here in ages.”
    Overhead, a crystal chandelier as large and shiny as a new car sent snowflakes of pearly light dancing about the square lobby. Milky bellflowers in a huge center vase infused the air with the aroma of harvested hay. Their soft petals were an explosion of violet. Pia’s heels sank into the thick floral rug. Tourists and guests entered through the revolving door and sidestepped her. The rubber strip along the edge of the circulating entrance flap, flapped with each revolution.
    “It’s this way,” Muriel said, but her sister didn’t budge. As if standing alone, Pia dropped her shoulders and tilted her head back to see the ornate white ceiling. Her handbag dropped down to her fingertips; her lips went slack. The dappled light powdered the length of her satiny neck. She let her eyelids fall shut as if imagining a Downton Abbey sort of world where women wore silk shoes and teardrop earrings and diamond-studded hair clips to dinner. Their men retired to the study after dining to smoke cigars and sip cognacs and furrow their foreheads over the sorry state of England.
    Next to her sister, Muriel studied the mosaic tiles along the edge of the lobby’s red floral rug. “I never did stay here,” Pia finally said in a whisper.
    “You still can. Only part of it was made into condos.”
    “Yes. Well.” Pia opened her eyes.
    Together, the sisters made their way to the rear of the hotel, past a jaw-dropping side lobby, its marble floor so polished you could apply lipstick in its reflection. They circled