by Claire Cook
My mother put an arm around Riley and started walking him into the living room. “So,” she said. “Sit right down and tell us everything. Don’t leave out a single detail.”
I leaned back against the kitchen counter. “I think one of the movie guys likes me,” I whispered to Geri. “The gaffer.”
“Hel-lo?” my sister said. “Today is not about you. My son is going to Hollywood.” She leaned forward. “What is a gaffer anyway? Is that like a gopher?”
“No,” I said. “It’s like an electrician. Everybody knows that.”
“Well, pardon me, but I didn’t. So, are you going to dump Noah and start dating the gopher? I have to say, it’s about time.”
I started heading for the living room. “Gaffer,” I said. “And don’t be ridiculous.”
“We got to start the screaming part today,” Riley was saying as I sat down next to him on the couch. “Do you want to hear mine?”
“Let’s save it for outside, okay, honey?” Geri sat down on his other side. She had a legal pad with her, and it actually looked like she might be about to make a list that didn’t involve her birthday.
Seth looked up from his laptop. “Okay, the casting director referred me to an agent, and the agent says they’ll pay first-class travel, put up Riley and whoever goes with him, and pay a per diem.”
“Seth,” Geri said. “Aren’t you getting a little ahead of yourself? We’re not even sure yet we’re going to let him go.”
Rachel crossed her arms over her chest. “You can’t let him go. We still have school left.”
Becca twirled some hair around her finger. “If Riley goes, we should all get to go. We’re a family.”
“Oh, honey,” Geri said. She tapped her pen against her lip a few times, then added a few words to her list. Geri put her pen down and looked up. “I think you girls should stay with your father, and I’ll go with Riley. If he’s going to go, he should have his mother with him.”
“I was thinking I should be the one to go,” Seth said. “A boy needs his father.”
“His grandfather and I could go,” my mother said.
“Yes, indeedy,” my father said, nodding over at my mother. “We’re retired.”
Rachel pushed back her chair and stood up. “I hate you all,” she said.
“Me, too,” Becca said. She stood up.
“Excuse me?” I said.
Everybody turned to look at me.
“Excuse me?” I repeated, just to be sure I had their full attention. I cleared my throat. “You should all be ashamed of yourselves,” I said. “If anyone deserves to go with Riley, we all know who that is. We’re a team. I put the time in. I know the ropes.” I was running out of tired expressions, so I looked from Geri to Seth, then back again. “Besides, neither of you could stand to be away from work for more than five minutes. And, if you did go, you’d still have to hire me to help out with the girls, and I’ll tell you right now the answer is no.”
I took a deep breath. Wow, standing up for myself felt great. Maybe I should do it more often. “So there,” I finished.
“Good girl,” my mother said.
My father winked at me. “Way to go, Dollface.”
“You’re right,” my sister actually said.
Since I appeared to be on a roll, I figured I might as well see what else I could accomplish. “Of course, I’ll need somebody to take care of Boyfriend.”
Geri let out a puff of air.
“Ix-nay on the Oyfriend-bay,” Riley said.
“My hamster and I could take care of Kareshi,” Becca said.
“Didn’t you say he was Neko in Japanese?” I asked. “I kind of liked that.”
“Neko is cat,” Becca whispered. “Kareshi is Oyfriend-bay.”
“Just for future reference,” Geri said. “I happen to be fluent in pig latin.”
“I can take care of Champ,” my father said. “I’m right next door.”
“Thanks, Dad,” I said.
“Sure, I could,” my father said. “And I could even stay over there with him so he won’t be lonely.”
“Excuse me?” my mother said. “You’re sleeping in your bed where you belong.”
I peeked over at my father, then looked back at my mother. “I was also kind of hoping that putting the house on the market could wait until I got back.”
My father put his arm around my mother’s shoulders and said, “We can always sell the house when she gets back. What’s a couple of weeks amongst friends, right, Toots?”
“Don’t call me ‘Toots,’” my mother said. “All right, let me think about that. Maybe we can wait a week or two on the house, but don’t forget we’ve still got piles of junk to take to the dump, which is your department.”
My father wiggled his bushy white eyebrows. “Yes, sirree, Bob,” he said.
“Okay,” Geri said, “there’s one big thing left. Riley, do you want to go?”
Riley looked up from the joke book he was reading. “Yeah, sure. As long as they have those gumball machines there.”
After we worked out a few of the details, my sister walked me outside while she checked her BlackBerry for messages. She was still in her work clothes, a perfectly coordinated pinstripe suit and white blouse affair that I’d never be able to put together. “Guess what?” she asked, once her thumbs had stopped dancing.
I opened my car door. “What?”
“You’re not going to believe this, but I went online at work today and looked up the statue I gave you.”
“Why wouldn’t I believe that? It’s not like you ever seem to do any actual work there.”
My sister ignored me. “Guess who he is?”
I sat down in my car and put the key in the ignition. Geri held my door open. “I give up,” I said.
Geri opened her eyes wide, and made a little ooh-ooh, ooh-ooh sound. “St. Christopher.”
“So?”
“He’s the patron saint of travelers. Get it? You buried him, and now you’re going on a trip?”
My sister needed to get out more. Or maybe stay home more. “You don’t really believe that, do you?” I asked.
“Who knows? But to be on the safe side, I think you should dig him up and take him with Riley and you. Just to keep an eye on things.”
WORD SPREADS FAST in Marshbury. I stopped by Harborside Drugs on the way home to pick up a few odds and ends just in case I couldn’t find a drugstore when we got to Hollywood. I put an assortment of tampons, teeth-whitening toothpaste, breath-freshening gum, Altoids, Dramamine, travel-size deodorant, Twizzlers, plus a copy of Shape magazine to make up for the Twizzlers, on the counter.
The woman behind the register was about my age and looked vaguely familiar. She folded down the corner of the page she was on in her People magazine and placed it on a shelf behind her. “So, Hollywood, huh?” she said. “Need a secretary?”
I laughed politely and looked at her more closely. “Did we go to high school together?” I asked.
She pointed my package of Twizzlers at me like a gun. “How quickly they forget.”
I tried to get a look at her name tag but her hair was covering it. “Polly?”
“Penny Cabozzi.” She scanned the Twizzlers without looking. “Everybody’s moving back, you know. Deb and Linda Shea, Mary Carroll, Donna Duffey, David Ogden, Nan Fitzpatrick, George Newman. Oh, and Austine Frawley.”
“Great,” I said. I wondered if they all lived over their parents’ garages, too. Maybe we’d go down in history as the FROG generation.
Penny Cabozzi leaned toward me over the counter. “Listen,” she said loudly. “I think you should know that bitch Allison Flagg is going around town telling everyone that the only reason they’re taking your nephew to Hollywood is because you slept with someone from the movie.”
“You’re kidding,” I said. “She’s not also saying that I want to have kids, is she?”
She scanned my tampons and lowered her voice. “No, but I know a great doctor if you’re having problems. They c
all him the fertility god.”
I looked over my shoulder, hoping I could say, Wow, will you look at that line but, of course, there wasn’t anybody behind me. “Actually, I’m child-free. By choice.”
She scanned the Dramamine and picked up the deodorant. “Sure you are. Anyway, don’t worry, I’ve been sticking up for you. I’ve been saying that if Ginger Walsh slept with anyone, you can bet she’d have the part and not her nephew.”
“That’s so sweet,” I said as I grabbed my bag. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. Let me know when you need a manager.”
Chapter 13
WHEN I GOT HOME, BOYFRIEND LEANED INTO MY LEG and meowed. I was feeling guilty about leaving him already, so I grabbed one of the books, a big fat one on the history of jewelry, and pulled him onto my lap for a nice long cuddle. He started rubbing his chin back and forth along the edge of the book.
“Hmm,” I said. “Did you know the Imperial Romans had a major toy dog thing? It says here they were perfumed, coiffed, dressed in jewelry, and carried around on plush cushions. Julius Caesar even asked if Roman women had begun giving birth to lapdogs instead of children.”
I thought it might be an interesting alternative to human babies, and possibly less of a commitment, but my cat only yawned and stretched. I reached around until I found one of the Chinese checkers marbles, which were pretty much everywhere, I noticed. I rolled it across the floor like a tiny bowling ball, and Boyfriend vaulted off my lap after it.
I turned a few more pages. Apparently we owed the invention of the diamond engagement ring to the Archduke Maximillian of Austria, who presented a rough diamond set in elaborate gold to his fiancée at the end of the fifteenth century. “Jerk,” I said out loud.
The oldest recorded exchange of wedding rings happened in Egypt about 4,800 years ago and was considered a supernatural link with eternal love. I shivered. I mean, were there any other creations in history that had made more women who didn’t happen to be wearing one or the other or both feel bad? I mean, you might as well brand us on the forehead.
It wasn’t that I didn’t want to be married or engaged, or even engaged and then actually married. I didn’t need a man to complete me or any of that old stuff, but I really liked the idea of having a partner in crime. I even liked rings. I’d come close a couple times. Once, right out of college, I’d gotten as far as wearing the world’s tiniest graduate-school-budget diamond for several months. He studied and worked. I worked and went to the library with him when he studied. I flipped through the travel magazines I couldn’t afford to buy and dreamed of trips we couldn’t afford to take. I waited until I was just about to die of boredom, and then I gave him back the ring and got the hell out of Dodge.
I closed the book and put it down. Maybe I should forget about the whole of jewelry history and just rely on my own imagination. I walked around the room, collecting the supplies my cat wasn’t using, and sat down cross-legged on the floor with them. I closed my eyes and tried to clear my mind of all but pure creative thoughts. I made a quick attempt to chant like a Gregorian monk, but when Boyfriend gave me a worried look, I decided to go with profound silence.
I opened a square, cellophane-wrapped packet of polymer clay the color of green tea. Maybe I could roll little balls and thread them onto the bamboo skewers I’d bought when I was feeling ambitious and thought I might attempt shish kebabs someday. If all went well, I’d slide them off the skewers after I baked them, and I’d have beads that I could paint and combine somehow with my sea glass. Or I’d even take it up a notch and mix them with recycled rosary beads, and maybe make something memorable to give Geri for her birthday. I mean, what were sisters for? If things went less well, of course, I’d have blazing bamboo skewers in my oven.
What I really needed was something that was unique and original, a new beachy jewelry twist that was mine alone. Something teenagers would wear. Rachel and Becca were always spending money on trendy jewelry. What about alternating little flip-flop charms with sea glass and beads? Or why not decorate real flip-flops with sea glass, the way I’d seen them embellished with puka and cowrie shells? I could make up some samples and show them around Hollywood while I was there.
For some reason, the familiar sound of a pebble against my window really hit me the wrong way tonight. I mean, did I interrupt Noah when he was working? I decided to ignore it. I ignored the next one, too. And the next. Then my phone rang. It was all getting to be too much to ignore, so I picked up the receiver and directed the obligatory hello into it.
“Do you think you might consider opening the door and letting Noah in?” my mother’s voice asked. “Your father and I have enough to do without buying all new windows.”
“I think you must have the wrong number,” I said courteously before I hung up. No wonder I couldn’t seem to stick with anything for long. It was clearly environmental.
My bad mood was giving me a headache, and the sound of another pebble hitting glass was definitely not helping. “Can you get that?” I asked my cat.
Boyfriend was busy puffing himself up to twice his normal size. His fur stood on end, as if somebody had rubbed a balloon back and forth over it, and his eyes glittered like emeralds. “I’ll take that as a no,” I said.
“Hey,” Noah said when I opened the door. Sage looked past me at Boyfriend and gave a short, tentative bark. Boyfriend hissed and dove under the sofa bed.
“I think they’re starting to get used to each other,” Noah said. When I didn’t say anything, he took a step past me and added, “The Sage-ster and I have stopped by a few times this week. Long days in the movie biz, huh? How’s it going? Riley having a good time?”
I made a noncommittal sound, and Sage stopped wagging her tail and went over and sat by the door. For a minute, Noah looked like he might follow her, but then he sat down on the couch and picked up the book I had been reading. “How about those jewels,” he said as he opened it. “Real fascinating stuff.” He glanced up at me, then back down again. “Coral, for instance. According to ancient lore, the way it was created was that Perseus placed the severed head of Medusa in a bag on a heap of seaweed.”
“Men,” I said. Sage made a few digging motions with her paws right where the floor met my door. Then she circled around and flopped down.
“Excuse me?” Noah said.
At this moment, I could totally relate to Medusa. I could feel snakes sprouting in my hair and tusks growing between my teeth, but I couldn’t seem to help myself. “Never mind” was the best I could do.
Noah put the book down. “Anyway, the head’s power passed into the seaweed, which turned rigid and shriveled up like stone, and became coral.” He rubbed his chin and watched me. “Why so glum, chum? Is something wrong?”
I walked around to the back of the couch, and got down on my hands and knees and looked underneath to make sure Boyfriend was okay. His eyes sparkled at me in the dark. “Chum?” I mouthed to him.
“Wow,” Noah said. “Did you do this?”
I pushed myself up to a vertical position. Noah was standing over my kitchen table. I noticed Boyfriend had added the metal ring and the seashell-studded rock I’d brought home from the set to the messy sculpture he’d made with my earring supplies. I looked more closely and saw that he’d also wrapped some of Rachel’s beads in wire, and they jutted out in perfect counterpoint to several pieces of jade green sea glass. There were a couple of wadded pieces of paper in there, too, but other than that, the effect was pretty remarkable.
Noah leaned forward to get a better look. “This is amazing,” he said. “So free, yet balanced. It’s organic, but also completely new and fresh. I had no idea you were this talented, Ginger.”
My headache had taken on a rhythm of its own. I tried closing one eye to ease the pounding. Then I closed both of them. “Not as talented as Boyfriend,” I managed to mumble.
“Thanks,” Noah said. “But I mean it. And you should allow yourself to accept the compliment. Just say ‘thank you.’ ”
I opened both eyes. “What kind of jerky thing was that to say? I didn’t mean you. I meant my cat did it.”
Noah raised one eyebrow. “What kind of jerky name is Boyfriend for a cat?”
“What did you say?”
“You heard me. I hate that name.”
“Oh, right, and Sage is just so perfect. You’d probably name your cat something stuck-up, like Buddha. Or Enlightenment.”
“For your information, Sage is named after an herb. And, also for your information, I wouldn’t even get a cat.”
“What?”
Noah slid his hands into the pockets of his jeans, and then pulled them out and crossed his arms over his chest. “Cats,” he said slowly and clearly, “are for people who don’t really want to go out of their way. They’re as close as you can get to not having a pet.”
“Oh, please, what about goldfish?” Some little-used part of my brain, way in the back somewhere, signaled me to quit while I was ahead. I ignored it. “And, anyway, Mr. I-Can’t-Have-a-Relationship-Because-I’m-an-Ahhtist, you know what dogs are? Dogs are as close as you can get to having a person in your life without really having one.”
“I thought you liked the way things were. How come you never told me?”
“I did. Repeatedly. At least I think I did. How come you never told me you didn’t like cats?”
Noah ran both hands back through his hair. “You always do that.”
“What?”
“Whenever I try to talk about us, you always change the subject.”
“Oh, right, and you’re so emotionally available.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing. Anyway, I really want to know. What do you have against cats?”
Noah put his hands back in his pockets and took them out again. He walked over to Boyfriend’s sculpture and looked at it some more. “Okay, dogs give you more, that’s all. They come when you call them. They play Frisbee. They’ll sit in your car with the windows open and wait for you forever, and no matter how long it takes you to get going, they’re still excited beyond belief to go anywhere with you.”
