The Spinster Sisters Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  The End of an Era

  Guess Who’s Coming to Visit?

  We Are Family

  The Holy Trinity

  Which Way the Wind Blows

  The Gambler

  Gotta Getta Get

  Good Tidings We Bring

  Silly Rabbi, Trix Are for Kids!

  Six Geese A-Laying

  Don’t Let the Door Hit the Old Year in the Ass

  Auld Lang Syne

  The Holy Ghost

  Paying the Piper

  Valentine’s Day Massacre

  V-Day Redux

  The Ides of March Madness

  Inconvenient Truths

  Taking Care of Business

  The Dynamic Duo

  Two Steps Back

  The Harder They Fall

  EPILOGUE

  “Stacey Ballis manages to be irreverent, unflinching, sexy, and somehow very sweet. She is truly a writer to watch.”

  —Laura Caldwell, author of The Night I Got Lucky and Look Closely

  PRAISE FOR Room for Improvement

  “I adored everything about it—best of all, the humor is pervasive throughout the book. For those who say chick lit is played out, all I can say is, think again. Stacey Ballis proves the genre can be funny, honest, clever, real, and most importantly, totally fresh.”

  —Jennifer Lancaster, author of Bitter is the New Black

  “More fun than a Trading Spaces marathon. One of the season’s best.” —The Washington Post Book World

  “Rife with humor—always earthy, often bawdy, unwaveringly forthright humor.” —Chicago Sun-Times

  “Self-proclaimed home-improvement junkie and author Ballis has written a laugh-out-loud novel that will appeal to HGTV devotees as well as those who like their chick lit on the sexy side. One of the summer’s hot reads for the beach.” —Library Journal

  “In her third outing, Ballis offers up a frothy, fun send-up of reality TV. Readers will have a blast watching Lily and her friends try to figure out what their priorities are in this lighthearted tale.”

  —Booklist

  Sleeping Over

  “Ballis presents a refreshingly realistic approach to relationships and the things that test (and often break) them. Ballis’s sophomore effort will please readers who want something more than fairy-tale romance.” —Booklist

  “Sleeping Over will have you laughing, crying, and planning your next girl’s night out. This is the first novel I have read by Stacey Ballis, but I guarantee it won’t be the last!”

  —Romance Reader at Heart

  “This engaging story delivers everything you ask from a great read: it makes you laugh, it makes you cry, it makes you feel. Sleeping Over gets my highest recommendation.”

  —Romance Divas

  Inappropriate Men

  “An insightful and hilarious journey into the life and mind of Chicagoan Sidney Stein.” —Today’s Chicago Woman

  “Ballis’s debut is a witty tale of a thirtysomething who unexpectedly has to start the search for love all over again.” —Booklist

  “Stacey Ballis’s debut novel is a funny, smart book about love, heartbreak, and all the experiences in between.”

  —Chatelaine (also named Inappropriate Men one of their Seven Sizzling Summer Reads for 2004)

  “Without a doubt, Inappropriate Men is one of the best books of 2004. Stacey Ballis has a way with words. Effortlessly, she makes them exciting and pulls the reader into the life of one of the most engaging characters ever created, Sidney Stein.”

  —A Romance Review

  THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

  Published by the Penguin Group

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  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  This book is an original publication of The Berkley Publishing Group.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  Copyright © 2007 by Stacey Ballis.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without

  permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation

  of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  BERKLEY is a registered trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  The “B” design is a trademark belonging to Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  PRINTING HISTORY Berkley trade paperback edition / March 2007

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Ballis, Stacey.

  The spinster sisters / Stacey Ballis.—Berkley trade paperback ed.

  p. cm.

  eISBN : 978-0-425-21356-8

  3. Dating services—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3602.A624S65 2007

  813’.6—dc22 2006031997

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  This book is dedicated with much love to my parents, Stephen and Elizabeth Ballis.

  You have always embodied the best in what it means to be a family, including the addition of friends who feel like family. You gave me the best gift anyone ever has, you made me a sister. Everything there is, there is because of you. Everything I do, I do because you empower me. The heart and soul of all my words begins with you both. LAS

  For Deborah, Who has always been my best friend, my strongest supporter, my most challenging opponent, and my conscience. Whatever else I do, my favorite job is being your older, shorter, sister.

  For Peggy, Sister by Choice since 1973. Thanks for over thirty years of love and encouragement, for scratching all those damn mosquito bites and teaching me double solitaire and a couple of adventures at Northern we probably shouldn’t talk about. This particular adventure began with your title, and I hope I did you proud.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Is anyone still reading these? Really? I thought not. I could thank just about anyone here, including Archduke Ferdinand, and I doubt it would cause a ripple.

  But, for those of you who I do know actually stop here . . . a couple of heartfelt thanks.

  To my amazing family, Mom and Dad, Deborah and Jonnie, you all know how much I love you. Ditto friends.

  Scott Mendel, the world’s best agent and dear friend and partner . . . what a delight to have you with me on this journey.

  Christine Zi
ka, über-patient editor, for making the ladies real as well as lovely.

  Jennifer Novak, for working miracles.

  And for all my “sisters,” and you know who you are, thank you for everything!

  The Spinster Sisters The New Face of Single

  by Bethany Jacobs

  Jodi and Jill Spingold know a lot about being single. In fact, these siblings have made a career out of it. Jodi (thirty-four, with a degree in journalism), and Jill (thirty-two, with a degree in marketing and business), are riding the very lucrative self-help wave, and their mission is to empower single women everywhere. Their four-year-old corporation, Spinster Inc., is in fact made up of several different smaller business ventures. Their noon-to-two satellite radio show, Lunch with the Spinster Sisters , keeps women all over the country glued to their XM radios every Thursday. Their lines of T-shirts, office accessories, and gift items are sold nationwide. The Spinster Sisters Seal of Approval stickers on everything from pajamas to wine in a box have become a coveted marketing tool, and companies vie for their products to be one of the select few. (They choose just one item per month, and the products are always items that the sisters themselves use and enjoy.) And last, but certainly not least, their books are bestsellers in eight languages.

  In the new conservatism era, when the average age of newly-weds is on the decrease and three children have supplanted two as the ever-increasing norm in the middle class, the self-proclaimed Spinster Sisters are touting empowered singlehood, and women all over the world are listening. I’ve been invited to meet with the moguls in their offices in Chicago. Their director of PR sends me an extensive press kit before my visit, which includes everything from copies of their coverage in Chicago magazine’s Most Eligible issue, to a joint bio, which reads almost like a Grimm’s fairy tale.

  Nothing in my independent research deviates at all from what is iterated for me in the press materials. And the story is a compelling one. In a spectacular understatement, it hasn’t always been easy for the Spingold girls. At the tender ages of six and four, they lost both of their parents in a tragic car crash. Their mother had no family to speak of, but their father had two older sisters, neither married, who lived together in a ramshackle house in Palmer Square, a quiet residential neighborhood on the near northwest side of Chicago. These women, in their early forties at the time, took in their nieces and raised them well, if unconventionally. Ruth and Shirley Spingold, referred to as the “Original Spinster Sisters” by Jodi and Jill, are a throwback to another age. Never married, the two lived with their elderly parents until their deaths six months apart, and then assumed joint care of the house they had grown up in. Neither had ever moved out of her childhood bedroom. After the tragedy, the master bedroom was converted into a little girls’ paradise, with canopy beds, pink carpeting, and clouds painted on a blue ceiling. Jodi and Jill would remain together in this room, altering the decor as they aged, until Jodi left for college. Their parents had left a small amount of life insurance and savings, and their deceased maternal grandparents had established education trusts for them both, but the girls were mostly supported by income generated by Ruth and Shirley.

  Ruth earns her unconventional, but by no means negligible, salary by serving as a self-proclaimed “curator of Chicago.” She can tell you the place to get the best Chicago-style hot dogs and the finest five-star meals. She knows the urban legends and the proven history and is hired by wealthy visitors to guide them around the city, helping them explore the less touristy attractions and serving as a sort of private concierge. Her services are entirely based on word of mouth and apparently have no set rate. According to Jodi, “Oh, whatever you feel appropriate . . .” is her only acknowledgment that she is supposed to be paid. And apparently this tactic works very well, with the flustered clients desperate to not appear cheap by offering too little. She takes the month of July off every year to travel, noting that her type of clientele tend to be at their own beach houses and cabin getaways that month anyway, and admitting to not completely adoring the weekly festivals that Chicago celebrates in the summer.

  Shirley serves as a cookbook recipe tester for several publishing houses, who send her galleys of new cookbooks and have her try out the recipes to see if they are suitable for a home kitchen. She is quoted as saying, “There was much less joy in the Joy of Cooking before I fixed it.” The elder pair of Spingold sisters hold a monthly salon of local artists, writers, intellectuals, and a smattering of paying guests, who gather to eat and talk and participate in everything from traditional Native American drum circles to lessons in self-defense, and one misbegotten snake charming experiment. (About that incident, all that the elder and younger Spingolds will say is that both an ambulance and Animal Rescue had to be called in but that neither humans nor reptiles were seriously injured.)

  Sitting in the large office Jodi and Jill share in the West Loop area of Chicago, I ask them about their upbringing. Aunt Ruth and Aunt Shirley are, according to the girls, the perfect pair of surrogates.

  “Aunt Ruth has always been full of adventures and wild ideas and grand plans,” Jodi reminisces. “And Aunt Shirley is calmer, more logical, with excellent organization skills and a mean hand in the kitchen. Aunt Shirley was like having a stay-at-home mom—she was always there when we got home from school—and Aunt Ruth breezed in and out a little more haphazardly.” Apparently Ruth took them to strange, exotic restaurants, introducing them to the cuisines of Vietnam and Ecuador, and Shirley taught the girls how to make delicious and nutritious meals at home and trained them in the recipes of Bubbe Spingold, their great-grandmother. Ruth planned outings to tea ceremonies at the Midwest Buddhist Temple, and Shirley took them to high tea at the Drake Hotel.

  “It was like being raised by Auntie Mame and Mrs. Piggle Wiggle!” Jill says. “But it was also a place of security and great love. They were both amazing about keeping our parents alive for us; we celebrated their birthdays and kept loads of photos around, and they would tell us as many stories as they could remember. Aunt Shirley even made each of us a small quilt with scraps from their clothes.”

  “And they showed us how to rely on each other and ourselves,” Jodi offers.

  “True.” Jill nods in agreement. “They made it very clear that they liked their independence and were self-reliant, but they also allowed themselves to depend on each other. Clearly, we took that lesson to heart.”

  I ask about their aunts’ attitudes about relationships, wondering if it might have influenced their own ideas regarding matrimony.

  “Aunt Shirley was engaged to be married when she was in her early twenties,” Jodi says, twirling a piece of hair around her forefinger. “But she called it off because she didn’t feel deeply in love with him. I think she dated here and there, but never anyone that seriously.”

  “And Aunt Ruth is a total player!” Jill jumps in. “She has always had a small stable of regular beaus and seems to manage her time with each of them with Swiss precision.”

  “But they were always very conscious of being honest with us about their opinions while encouraging us to have our own. And they have always been very supportive of our relationships,” Jodi says, presumably to dispel the myth that the aunts might have encouraged the girls to stay single.

  “That’s very true.” Jill nods emphatically. “It didn’t matter if it was about politics or personal choice; they always told us to follow the path that made the most sense for us.”

  It is clear from the way these women interact that the bond between them is extraordinary. The energy that comes from them is unified and clear, and while one starts to get the idea that Jodi is more of a creative, big-picture idea gal and Jill a savvy and organized businesswoman, without a doubt, this is a partnership of loving equals.

  Growing up, to hear them tell it, they were just as devoted. Jodi was offered a double promotion from the fourth grade to sixth, which she declined, telling Ruth and Shirley that she didn’t want to be more than two grades ahead of Jill. Jill dropped out of
the high school yearbook committee when Jodi was passed over for editor. More than sisters, best friends, and helpmates, the girls stayed together through thick and thin. Jodi chose the University of Chicago so that she could be close to home for college, and Jill joined her there two years later, passing up a scholarship to the University of Pennsylvania.

  Their entrepreneurial spirit became apparent when they were still in college. Surprised at the girls in her classes, who all seemed bound and determined to find one steady boyfriend, Jodi started writing a weekly anonymous column called “The Spin” for the Maroon, the campus paper, a fun series of essays on the joys of dating lots of different people, including, shockingly, university staff, assistant professors, and visiting dignitaries. Jill, meanwhile, studying marketing, recognized a potential business opportunity among the young women of the campus and began selling notepads, T-shirts, and other paraphernalia with tongue-in-cheek “girl power/boys are stupid” phrases. Jodi shocked everyone, including herself, when she fell for the quiet guy that computer services sent to fix her system when it crashed in the beginning of her senior year. They moved in together right after her graduation and were married within the year.

  “Jill never really liked Brant much,” Jodi says. “But she supported me in all things, even if that included suffering an irritating brother-in-law.”

  “I wanted her to be happy, and while Brant was making her happy, I had to support that.” Jill shrugs.

  “And when he stopped making me happy, she supported me in my decision to divorce,” Jodi admits.