Things Jolie Needs to Do Before She Bites It

by Kerry Winfrey

  I’m the lead.

  Chapter Seven

  I whip around in a panic, looking for someone to explain this to me, but I just come face-to-face with a crowd of well-wishers. Their congratulations barely register with me, and I mumble my thanks as I try to make sense of this.

  That’s when I see Marla Martinez standing at the back of the crowd, her arms crossed as she casts a narrow-eyed stare at me. If looks could kill, I would be one of those homicide victims they find during the first few minutes of an episode of Law & Order.

  I try to walk past her without making eye contact, but she steps in front of me. “Congratulations,” she says, not sounding entirely sincere.

  “Thanks,” I say to my shoes. “I wasn’t trying for this, you know. I mean, I wasn’t trying to steal your part.”

  She sighs and I can practically hear her eyes rolling. I look up to see her bored expression.

  “At least own it, okay, Jolie? The ‘poor little me’ act gets old fast.”

  She spins around and walks away, the scent of her hair lingering as I fight the urge to rub my face like I just got slapped.

  I shake my head. There’s no time to worry about Marla right now; I just need someone to help me figure out what the hell is going on. Was there a mistake? Did Mrs. Mulaney mean to type Jordan Paterson and autocorrect filled in my name? Is Peter Turturro holding a grudge because he missed Dr. Phil’s opening credits and now he’s playing a practical joke?

  I pull out my phone and text Evie. I’m coming over.

  * * *

  Evelyn’s biggest obsession is The Golden Girls—you know, that old sitcom about four elderly women who live together in Florida. It’s super weird for a sixteen-year-old to be so into it, but Evelyn can relate pretty much any situation back to that show. “This is just like that time Rose got fired from the pet store for being too old,” she’ll say, shaking her head, even when I fail to see how my personal problems relate in any way to a fictional elderly woman’s.

  When I show up at her house she is, as usual, watching the show while drinking a mug of tea. “Come on in,” she says, answering the door. “Sophia’s just about to lay down another sick burn on Dorothy.”

  “I thought you were studying for history,” I say.

  “Perhaps you could say I’m studying the history of sitcom fashion,” she says as we nestle into the couch.

  “Perhaps I could say you’re procrastinating. You do know there are shows about people our age on TV, right?” I ask.

  She waves a hand. “Yeah, but I don’t relate to those.”

  She has a point. Evelyn is kind of like one of the brash, no-nonsense characters on The Golden Girls, and not just because she currently has dyed-gray hair. Evelyn just doesn’t care what people say, and she cares even less about what people think. Will anyone else like this outfit? is a sentence that has probably never even run through her head. Right now, she’s wearing a denim vest over a floral button-down with a suede skirt and black tights. It’s an outfit that would make me look like an overgrown toddler allowed to dress herself for the first time, but on Evelyn, it somehow makes sense. Life just isn’t fair. She was born knowing she’d look awesome in anything, whereas I wouldn’t even dare stray from my palette of neutrals.

  She reaches out and grabs my arm. “So what happened? Did you get your part in the chorus?!”

  I can’t even be mad that she’s changing the subject from her (lack of) studying because her enthusiasm is very sweet … even if I am internally freaking out right now.

  “I’m Prudie. I’m the lead.”

  She pauses the TV and stares at me, mouth open. “Seriously? This is fantastic! I told you that you could do it!”

  I scowl. “What happened? Did you put a curse on Mrs. Mulaney or something? How did I get the lead? And why aren’t you surprised?”

  Evelyn shakes her head. “Despite that time I tried to put a curse on Mr. Kader so he would get food poisoning and be unable to administer our algebra test, I don’t actually possess mystical powers. Even if I wanted to, there’s no way I could convince Mrs. Mulaney to cast anyone. She must’ve just liked you.”

  I pick at my cuticles. “I don’t know if I can do this, Ev.”

  She tilts her head, encouraging me to go on.

  “Like, I know excitement was riding high before my audition, but this isn’t what I thought would happen. I thought I’d be in the background if I got cast at all. But the lead? The one everyone’s looking at? The part with the most lines and, oh yeah, solos? I don’t think I can do this.”

  “Are you going to start talking about all your barf-related performance stories again?” she says, and takes a sip of her tea.

  “I get nervous! I just don’t like people looking at me,” I say, burrowing farther into the couch. “You know that. It makes my hands get sweaty and my face get red and my stomach feel like it’s staging a revolt against the rest of my organs.”

  Evelyn raises her eyebrows. “But you can’t just spend all your time hiding from things that are scary, even if you are trying to become one with my couch right now.”

  I don’t point out that she’s also kind of hiding from studying, but I don’t have to, because from behind her mug she says, “Patricia blew a gasket when she found out I failed last week’s history quiz.”

  “You failed it?” I wail, then try to rein in my despair when I see how upset Evelyn looks. “But we studied together! I thought you knew everything there was to know about the Revolutionary War.”

  She shrugs, but the gesture seems forced. “All of those dates. It’s like they go into my head and then shoot back out again to make room for something more practical. Anyway, now Patricia’s threatening to take away my sewing machine unless I get my grade up, and I was like, ‘Uh, do you expect me to sew denim by hand, lady?’”

  I wince. “Sorry. Are you sure you don’t want to study right now for this week’s quiz? I could help you—ooh! We could make flash cards!”

  She shakes her head. “I’m trying to drown my sorrows in tea and television.”

  “Okay.” I prop my feet up on the coffee table, all too eager to forget about my musical-related nerves.

  Evelyn presses play. “So, I’ll fill you in on what’s happening. Blanche is about to go on a date with this guy…”

  As she describes a plot that I don’t really care too much about, I let myself space out and think about the musical. The biggest part of me doesn’t think I can do this—memorize these lines, somehow learn to sing entire songs, act next to Noah Reed without freaking out or passing out. But I’ll admit it: Evelyn’s confidence in me has boosted mine a bit, and there’s another, smaller part of me that’s standing up straight and getting ready to go. The part of me that says, I did it. I tried out and I got the part. The part of me that actually wants people to look at me, that actually wants to be a star.

  Chapter Eight

  When I get home, Abbi greets me at the door. Well, “greets” might be too kind a word for it; she basically assaults me, grabbing me by the shoulders and pushing me right back out the door.

  “Where have you been?” she yells. “We’re going to be late!”

  “For what?” I ask as she directs me to the driver’s seat of my car.

  She gives me a look that’s equal parts pouting and frustration. “My first childbirth class!”

  She lowers herself into the passenger seat as I ask, “What are you talking about? Why am I coming to your class?”

  She shoots me a look. “Do you really not remember? We had an entire conversation about this. I need a support partner, none of my friends would take this seriously, and the thought of Mom or Dad coming along makes me break out in hives. So you have to come with me.”

  I back out of the driveway as I consider this. Did we have a conversation about this and I just blocked it out?

  “You’ve been too distracted by your musical thing to pay attention, but we talked about it,” Abbi says, rifling through her bag. She pulls out a lip balm and
swipes it on her lips.

  Oh. I guess that’s actually pretty plausible.

  “Well, what are sisters for?”

  She snorts. “Come on. I know you don’t want to come to this. You’re going to learn way more than you want to know about the miracle of birth.”

  When we arrive, we walk into what looks like a meeting room in the hospital, and I see that she’s right. There’s a giant diagram of a pregnant woman on the wall, and I can’t help noticing that the baby is pretty big. The place it’s coming out of? Not so much.

  A woman with cropped white hair stands in front of the room and gives us a smile as we walk in and sit down at a table. She has the air of a kindly grandma. There are only four other couples here, and they’re all just that … couples. As in, no one else conned their little sister into being their “support person.” It’s all women sitting next to the men who presumably impregnated them.

  “Okay!” The woman at the front of the class claps her hands as Abbi and I sit down. “I think everyone’s here, so let’s go ahead and get started. My name’s Kathy, and I’ve been a labor and delivery nurse for thirty-five years. I’ve seen it all, so you can ask me anything. No question’s too weird.”

  Kathy’s about to continue speaking when one of the guys raises his hand.

  Kathy points to him and gives an encouraging smile. “Yes?”

  “Is it true that women, you know…” He leans forward and stage-whispers, as if all of us can’t hear him. “Poop? While they’re giving birth?”

  Kathy smiles sympathetically at the guy’s partner, who looks mortified. “It happens. But the nurses have seen their share of poop. And when you’re focusing on getting that precious baby out, you won’t even notice a little poop. Trust me.”

  I turn to Abbi and widen my eyes. “A little poop!” I mouth. She gives me a threatening look.

  “But we’ll get to the rest of your questions later,” Kathy continues. “For now, let’s start by going through the stages of labor.”

  Poop talk aside, Kathy proves to be a pretty engaging speaker. In fact, I find out that most of what I thought I knew about giving birth is wrong. It turns out that it isn’t usually like in the movies, where a woman’s water breaks dramatically and then a frantic husband speeds down the highway to get to the hospital on time but she ends up having the baby in the car because of course she does. Kathy says that ninety percent of the time, a first-time mom’s water breaks when she’s been at the hospital laboring for hours.

  “Hollywood is full of lies,” I whisper to Abbi, but she’s staring at Kathy’s PowerPoint and scribbling down notes.

  I’ve just started to relax and think about how I’m going to share the particularly descriptive details with Derek and Evelyn later when Kathy says, “Are you guys ready to take a little break and hang out on the floor?”

  “Wait, do I have to do this part?” I lean toward Abbi as we watch all the women and their partners set up camp on the floor.

  Abbi looks at me like I was the one who asked the poop question. “Yes, you have to do this part. That’s why you’re here.”

  Kathy hands out pillows and blankets as we sit down cross-legged. “I’m not saying anything will take away the pain of childbirth completely—there’s a reason it’s called ‘labor,’” she says as she takes her place again at the front of the room. “But there are some tricks you can use if you want to alleviate the pain. Distractions like music, aromatherapy, massage. And of course, there are drugs.” She smiles widely. “But whether or not you go for the meds, the techniques we learn today will help you be more calm and present on one of the biggest days of your life.”

  I glance sideways at Abbi to see if she thinks this is as unbelievable as I do—I mean, aromatherapy? Is an air freshener really going to help dull the pain of pushing a human being out of your body? But she’s making eye contact with Kathy, nodding along to everything she says.

  “Support people, this is where you come in,” Kathy continues. “It’s your job to do everything you can to help Mom out in there. Does she need ice chips? Get them. Does she want a massage? Go for it. You can remind her to keep breathing…”

  Is Abbi actually going to forget to breathe? I wonder. But then, as Kathy starts demonstrating, I realize she means breathing in a certain way—that exaggerated “hee-hooooo” type of breathing you see on TV. I thought that was just another thing that TV lied to me about, but apparently I was wrong.

  “Support people, I want you to sit behind your partners and let them lean against you, okay?”

  Everyone scoots into position. “Um … this is … kind of difficult…,” I mutter as Abbi attempts to relax against me. All of these support-partner bros are significantly bigger than their wives or girlfriends, while Abbi is a couple inches taller than me.

  “Just … stop moving!” Abbi snaps as she leans against me.

  I sigh.

  “Now, what I want you to do is reach around your partner and place your hand on her thigh, right above her knee.”

  I do it. It’s kind of hard to reach, but I remember that I’m here for Abbi.

  “Now squeeze. As hard as you can.”

  “Is she serious?” I whisper to Abbi. “I don’t want to hurt you—”

  “Just squeeze!” Abbi hisses.

  “Okay, okay!” I squeeze with all the strength I can muster, my fingers pressing into her leg.

  “Not with your fingernails!” Abbi practically shouts.

  I notice that none of the other women are having this conversation with their support partners. In fact, they’re all staring at us. Maybe we could volunteer to come to their delivery rooms and the distraction we’d cause with our scene would be another effective pain reliever.

  “And now, ladies, I want you to try your breathing. ‘Heeeeee. Hooooooo. Heeeeeee. Hooooooo.’”

  The room is filled with the sounds of very loud breathing. It would be funny if it weren’t sort of creepy.

  “Support people, try squeezing again, okay?”

  This time I barely squeeze Abbi’s leg. I don’t want to get yelled at again.

  “Now,” Kathy says, “that was better, right? It hurt a lot less?”

  “Whoa,” Abbi says, her eyes wide as she turns around to look at me. “I barely felt that. The breathing really worked.”

  “Um,” I say, not eager to tell her that I was barely touching her. “Wow. Pretty cool.”

  The rest of the class requires much less participation from me, thank God. And it proves to be extremely entertaining when Kathy puts on a video that shows a real birth and one of the support-partner dudes faints. Kathy dismisses us with a homework assignment to “practice our breathing,” which I have zero intention of doing.

  Neither Abbi nor I say anything to each other until we’re in the car and buckling our seat belts.

  “Don’t even say it,” she groans finally.

  “What?” I ask as I start the car.

  “That this is all totally ridiculous and you’d rather be, like, hanging out with Derek and making fun of everyone or whatever it is that you guys do.”

  I snort. “Since when do you care if I’d rather be doing something else?”

  But when she doesn’t say anything, I start to feel a little bad. I steal a glance at her out of the corner of my eye (I mean, I’m driving a car so I can’t just, like, full-on stare at her) and see that she’s looking out the window, and she doesn’t look happy. I don’t know how a woman’s supposed to look after she gets out of a childbirth class, but probably not forlorn.

  “Hey,” I say when we stop at a red light. “I had a good time today. It was fun.”

  Abbi turns to me and gives me a smile that can only be described as sarcastic. “Right. Because your idea of a good time is getting an up-close look at a baby being born.”

  I shrug as the light turns green. “Remember how that one support-partner bro looked like he was going to cry?” I imitate his face.

  “Things could be worse, I guess,” Abbi says. �
��That guy could be my birth partner.”

  I know I’m not going to get any answers, but this seems like a window and I can’t help flinging myself toward it. “Did you … ask the father if he wanted to come with you?”

  “Nope,” Abbi says firmly, not offering me even the smallest bit of information.

  The window slams shut. Well, I had to try.

  Chapter Nine

  Every pair of best friends has their “thing,” the activity that holds them together and makes them remember why they’re still BFFs after all these years. For me and Derek, it’s watching bad movies.

  We used to invite Evie to our Terrible Movie Nights, but she pretty quickly realized they weren’t for her. “I just don’t get why you want to spend your time watching something bad when you could be watching something good,” she said, and I guess that explains the difference between Evie and me. Evie prefers something that’s perfectly art directed, with beautiful costumes and poetic dialogue. I find a satisfying sense of comfort in watching something that’s full of flaws, like any given Nicolas Cage movie. And Derek enjoys doing things like watching the entire Nicolas Cage oeuvre so he can talk about him on an episode of Deep Dive.

  The thing about Terrible Movie Night is that the movies can’t be intentionally terrible. We’re not watching Sharknado, a movie that is completely aware it’s awful and revels in that fact by including scenes like a man cutting his way out of a shark with a chain saw. We like to watch movies with zero self-awareness, where everyone involved is trying their best but still somehow failing. I mean, sometimes you can try your hardest to make a great work of art, and instead you end up making something that two people will make fun of thirty years later. It’s all oddly reassuring, in an existential way.

  The movies Derek and I like to watch have titles like The Satanic Rites of Dracula and Manos: The Hands of Fate. On Thursday evening after the twins go to sleep, we decide to watch Staying Alive, the not-at-all-loved sequel to the much-loved Saturday Night Fever. We’re halfway through an opening sequence that’s full of John Travolta wearing spandex and dancing when Derek finally says, “So, are we just not going to talk about you being the lead in the musical?”