by Claire Cook
I followed her inside. “What were you thinking?” she said again.
I started to walk by her in the direction of the refrigerator. “What?” I said. “Tag’s fine. Mom and Dad are with him.”
She grabbed me by the arm. “You look like shit. And it’s all over the news.”
I aimed my breath away from her. “That I look like shit?”
“I can’t believe you took advantage of Tag like that.”
“Like what?” I said. “By quitting?” Fuzziness surrounded my head like a helmet, but just beyond that something was lurking. And it wasn’t a good thing.
Joanie tilted her head. “Uh, Tag beseeches fans to vote his favorite sister onto Dancing With the Stars?”
“What are you talking about?” I said.
“Nice try, Dee,” my little sister said.
I closed my eyes as it all came back. I kept them closed as I tried to come up with a believable story, but my pickled brain cells just didn’t have it in them.
“Of course I didn’t take advantage of Tag,” I said, fighting to concoct a good story as the dread enveloped me. “I just thought it would be great publicity. And, come on, you’ve seen him dance. It’s not like we could send him.”
Joanie looked at me. We were a family built on the scaffolding of meetings. A family held together by the glue of conversation. A family of rules. And I’d just broken pretty much every single one of them.
My eyes teared up. “Mitchell’s getting married.” My lower lip started to quiver. “She’s pregnant.”
“I know,” Joanie said. “He stopped by to ask Jack to be one of his groomsmen.”
I couldn’t believe it. “That little shit. What did Jack say?”
“That he’d have to ask me first?”
“Good answer. Do you think we could clone Jack for me?”
“Don’t try to change the subject,” Joanie said. “Listen, Tag is going ballistic. Mom and Dad are trying to keep him under control. The way I look at it, you’ve got two choices.”
I couldn’t even think of one.
Joanie dug her fingers into my arm, as if I might try to make a run for it.
“What are they?” I asked eventually.
“Okay, one, you can check yourself into rehab.”
“Right,” I said. “Maybe Kelly Genelavive needs a roommate.”
“I’m not kidding. Rehab gets you out of practically everything these days. You can write a statement from Tag before I drop you off. He’ll look great when he pretends to forgive you.” Joanie let go of my arm and took a step back. “I have to tell you, the way you look right now, a month in rehab couldn’t hurt.”
“Oh, puh-lease. I got drunk one night. And it wasn’t even my vodka.”
“You’re a mess,” Joanie said. “You really need to get your act together.”
“That’s my other choice?” I said.
“No. Your other choice is to do it. To get on a plane and get the hell out of here before Mom and Dad and Tag get home. Have an adventure. Make the most of it. Enjoy your fifteen minutes of fame.”
I tried to imagine waltzing into a dance studio in Los Angeles, razzling and dazzling everyone with my charming personality, putting on my nonexistent dance shoes and actually dancing. I mean, it’s not like I had to win or anything. I just had to not be the first dancer voted off. Okay, maybe not the second either. But the third would be respectable. I mean, how hard could that be?
I snapped out of the fantasy and my eyes teared up again. “The truth is I can’t even make myself check my messages.”
Joanie put her arm around me. “You’re pathetic. I don’t know how Tag puts up with you. Come on, we’ll do it together.”
We started with the voice mails. Actually, Joanie did. She sat at my desk, and I found her a piece of paper and a pen in case there was anything important to write down. Then I crawled back into bed and pulled the covers over my head again.
Joanie came over and pulled the covers off. “Shower. Now.”
Since I didn’t seem to have much of a choice, I took my baby sister’s advice. Once I brushed my teeth and peeled off my grungy clothes and let the hot water wash over me for a while, I started to feel almost human again. I mean, any movement felt better than no movement at all, right? Maybe that was my signal, the universe sending me its version of the Nike slogan: Just. Do. It.
But wait. She who hesitates is lost, but she who doesn’t hesitate might end up even loster.
I really needed to think things through, but my brain felt like it had been exchanged with the Tin Man’s in The Wizard of Oz. Maybe “If I Only Had a Brain” could be my first dance. The costume designers could create a silver metallic ballroom gown for me, which would give the illusion of being some kind of glamorous twist on tin cans. It would be long and flowing, and if I didn’t eat between now and the first show, maybe I’d even look reasonably okay in it. Wait, it wasn’t the Tin Man who didn’t have a brain. The Scarecrow was the brainless one. And right now, I could totally relate.
The knocking started up again, this time on my bathroom door.
“Hurry up,” Joanie yelled. I flashed back to the little three-bedroom ranch we’d grown up in, all three girls sharing one bedroom, Colleen with her own twin bed, and Joanie making the springs creak on the top bunk over my head every time she rolled over. Tag in his tiny solo kingdom across the hall, and my parents sharing the shoe box of a room next to his.
But it was the single bathroom that presented our biggest family challenge, especially once all four kids hit our teenage years one after another like dominoes. My mother attacked it as she did everything, with a family meeting followed by a big paper chart that she attached with magnets to the refrigerator in what my father referred to as our one-bum kitchen. Our scheduled showers were each ten minutes long, with a ten-minute break between each one to let the cranky old water heater fire up again. An egg timer sat on the ledge of the chipped salmon-colored porcelain sink, and we were supposed to set it before we stepped into the tepid water.
Every so often, in my 6:20 a.m. school day grogginess, I’d forget and before I knew it, Joanie, whose turn always came after mine, would be pounding away on the bathroom door.
All these years later, on a hungover Saturday afternoon, her pounding had the same distinctive style. Tap. Tap-tap-tap. Tap-tap-tap-tap. Bang. Bang. BANG.
My reaction hadn’t changed either.
“Hold your horses!” I yelled.
Beware of wolves in sheep’s clothing, especially in a sheep shed with your sister.
I wrapped a towel around my head like a turban and pulled on my old terry cloth robe. The white, or at least whitish, robe made me think of Lake Austin Spa Resort, which made me think of Steve Moretti. Why was it again that I’d run away instead of just telling Tag to buzz off and leave us alone?
Joanie was waiting right outside the bathroom door, ready to huff and puff and blow it down if she had to.
“Geez Loo-eez,” I said. “You’re so impatient. Hey, you didn’t think to start the coffeemaker, did you?”
Joanie looked as if she’d like to start knocking on my head.
I shrugged. “That’s a no, huh? Okay, I’ll be right back. Can I get you anything? Chocolate soy milk? Russian vodka?” I was trying to be funny, but at the mention of last night’s poison my stomach turned over.
“Stop.” Joanie held up one hand, palm out like a crossing guard. “You have three e-mails and four voice mails from a Dancing With the Stars producer named Karen. She said she’s talked to you a couple of times about Tag.”
“Ha,” I said. “Who hasn’t?” I mean, really, everyone from American Idol to Desperate Housewives had tried to get Tag to participate in some capacity, any capacity.
“Just say no, Dee,” Tag would always say. “It’s like dating in high school—the more the girl says no, the more the guy wants her.”
“So what do I do?” I asked Joanie.
“Uh, call her back?”
I flipped my head
forward and started towel-drying my hair, just for something to do. When I flipped my head back up again, I hadn’t solved a thing, and now I was dizzy.
“Listen,” I said. “I really need some caffeine. And a snack.”
“Listen,” Joanie said, “I’m trying to be a good sister, but I haven’t got all day.”
“Got it. Okay, what do you think I should do?”
Joanie shrugged. “I think you should do what your gut is telling you.”
“My gut is telling me to eat.”
Joanie let out a puff of air.
“Sorry,” I said. “Okay, let’s just assume that being on Dancing With the Stars would be less painful than facing Tag. What do I say to this producer?”
“You pretend you’re negotiating for Tag and get everything you can out of her.”
“Wow,” I said. “You’re right. I completely forgot that I know how to do this.”
Joanie scrolled through the call log and handed me my phone. I tapped Call and counted the rings until it went to voice mail. “Hi,” I said. “This is Tag’s sister Deirdre.” I almost gave her my last name, but then I thought, if Tag didn’t have to use a last name, why should I? Maybe it would even be cooler if I shortened my name from Deirdre to D. The phenomenon known as Tag’s even more phenomenal sister, who goes only by the letter D, the headlines would read.
I remembered I was on the phone. I cleared my throat. “So, well, how exciting is this? I’m sure Tag’s agent can handle the deal, but if you’d like to move this along, I’d be just delighted to have a first-class ticket leaving from Logan Airport as early as possible tomorrow morning, and if I could pick up a rental car at LAX, that would be fabulous. I’m assuming you put the out-of-town dancers in temporary executive apartments. I’d like a two-bedroom, please, so I have room for guests. Would that work from your end? Let me know. Thanks so much, and have a nice day, Karen.”
I tapped the screen to end the call and handed my phone to Joanie. “Now can I go make coffee? Oh, and can you delete all the messages from Tag and Mom and Dad, so I don’t have to deal with them?”
Joanie smiled and nodded as if I were one of her kids and she had everything under control. “I already did. Boyohboy, is Tag ready to kill you. Anyway, I just left some business stuff.” She handed me a piece of paper with a phone number. “Oh, and some guy named Steve something or other wants you to have breakfast.”
“Breakfast,” I repeated, as if breakfast with Steve Moretti were a planet, in another universe so far away I couldn’t even picture it. What day was this breakfast? What time zone was it in? What would my life be like now if I’d gone to this breakfast place instead of running home to crash and burn?
Joanie was still smiling. “Okay, and now I think we should take you shopping for some new clothes. Unless you want to borrow some of mine?”
I looked at her little purple cotton dress. Everything about it screamed: Even though I am an adult woman, I’m going to keep wearing junior sizes for the rest of my life just to prove I can. I mean, I might be a mess, but Joanie had her own case of arrested development. Being the youngest had clearly screwed her up. If she wasn’t adorable, she didn’t know who she was.
My heart swelled with compassion. It’s amazing that any of us made it through our childhoods. My parents were loving, intelligent people, and yet none of us had survived unscathed. Tag had somehow received the message that the whole world revolved around him, and even though it fueled his rise to fame, it also made him so needy for attention that he eventually exhausted even the most diligent wife. Colleen always had to one-up Tag, and even though she’d become successful in her own right, I knew it probably killed her that the most lucrative art pieces she created starred none other than her nemesis, Tag.
And Joanie, the sweet, adorable little family pet, had carved a career out of cuteness, first for herself, and now for her all-dressed-alike family. Imagine spending the week trudging through stores to locate clothes that came in the same color and were also available in men’s large and boys’ extrasmall, girls’ small, and junior way-too-small. Then to have to do not only your own grocery shopping and cleaning but your big brother’s, too, because even though you were still cute as a button, you needed his money to make ends meet?
I mean, in some ways I was the most normal one in the family. Of all four kids, I’d turned out the best. I might work for Tag, too, but at least I could put it on my résumé. If Tag couldn’t get past the whole Dancing With the Stars thing, I realized I could just walk down the street in L.A. and probably get a zillion job offers. Everyone knew that personal assistants basically ran Hollywood. Even though I was over-qualified, I had no problem with the PA title as long as it paid enough. But I could also present myself as a social media strategist, a public relations maven, a manager. The world beyond Tag was my oyster.
“You’re not hearing a single word I’m saying to you, are you?” Joanie said.
“Of course I am.” I paused. “What?”
Joanie rolled her eyes. “Shopping?”
“Oh. Right.” I took a breath while I considered. “You know, I think I’d rather just rest up. If the producer calls back, I can always shop when I get out there.”
Joanie’s chocolate eyes were wide open now, like little round Ring Dings. “So that means you’re going?”
Her eager look was unmistakable. “What, are you trying to get rid of me?” I said with a laugh.
“Of course not. But I think we need to sit down, so you can walk me through everything. What needs to happen, what’s the order of priority. Tour schedules and pending issues. Form letters for the fan mail. How often to post on Facebook and Twitter. And I want to make sure I have all the passwords, so I don’t have to bother you. Maybe you should just leave me your iPhone and take my Android.”
A chill ran across the back of my neck. When I looked down, goose bumps were prickling my forearms.
I’d almost forgotten why we called our youngest sibling Joanie Baloney. It wasn’t just that it rhymed. From the time she could walk, Joanie was full of it, full of baloney. Even though she was as cute as the day was long with those Shirley Temple curls and that dimply smile, you couldn’t trust her for a minute. She’d even scammed me on those Ring Dings she used to buy for me on allowance day.
“So,” I said during family meeting one night, “how much do Ring Dings cost, Joanie?”
I’d just come from the A&P with my mother, where I was stunned to find that Ring Dings had dropped in price from my walking-to–Marshbury Center days.
Joanie named the price she charged me every week.
“Liah, liah, pants on fiah,” I said, my Boston accent intensifying with my rage. “Mom and I saw the price stickers right on them today.”
Joanie smiled like a little angel. I mean, you could practically watch her wings sprout. “Well, that’s because the sticker doesn’t include the walking charge.”
Decades later, Joanie Baloney still had the same angelic smile.
“You little brat,” I said. “You want me to go to L.A. so you can steal my job.”
“I wouldn’t really be stealing it,” she said. “I’d just be babysitting it while you were too busy for it.”
I shook my head. “Right. And then when I came back I could clean Tag’s house and catch up on his grocery shopping.”
Joanie opened her eyes wide. “No, I think we’d hire out for that so it didn’t build up. When you finally came back we’d all sit down and work out the details. I mean, face it, Deirdre, this isn’t about you. It has to be about what’s best for Tag.”
Beware, I thought, of wolves in sheep’s clothing, especially in a sheep shed with your sister.
“Leave,” I said. “Now.”
“Just wait”—Joanie put her hands on her hips—“until Tag gets home.”
It knew it was immature, but I put my hands on my hips anyway. “Just wait,” I said, my voice all cute and adorable, “until Tag gets home.”
My baby sister stomped down the st
airs dramatically and slammed the sheep shed door on her way out. I watched her from the window just to make sure she was really gone and not planning to circle back and steal my passwords. It took every ounce of willpower I had not to go after her and mow her down with Tag’s golf cart, too.
It’s not what you’re telling your heart, but what your heart is telling you.
I brewed only enough coffee for one cup, because I figured it didn’t make sense to wake up completely if I just had to turn around and go back to sleep again in a few hours. Then I carried my mug out to Tag’s golf cart. Tag didn’t mind sharing most of his possessions, but his guitars and his golf cart were strictly off-limits, so returning the cart would give him one less thing to be pissed at me about. Unless, of course, that little tattletale Joanie Baloney ratted me out.
Or, maybe worse, Mitchell might start whining to Tag about me hitting him with the golf cart I wasn’t allowed to drive. I flashed on an image of Tag standing on a beach somewhere wearing one of his long white organic cotton tunics with jeans and bare feet, marrying a shaved-headed Mitchell and his seriously pregnant girlfriend. In a way, I’d have only myself to blame since I’d been the one to suggest Tag become a justice of the peace, because weddings made such good photo ops. And of course I also had to admit I’d been the one who was stupid enough to choose a sensitivity-impaired boyfriend in the first place.
I started up the golf cart. Apparently I’d missed most of a beautiful day. The air was cool, but the sun was warm, that perfect New England blend. I could smell just a hint of the ocean, and I could almost imagine wandering the path down to the water and dangling my bare feet from the dock as if I didn’t have a care in the world. Or picking a bouquet of black-eyed Susans and arranging them artfully in the emptied-out chocolate soy milk bottle.
At that, my stomach remembered last night and did a backflip.
“Okay,” I said. “Never mind. We’ll save the flower arranging for another time.”
I followed the path from my driveway through the woods and over to Tag’s house. Now that Joanie was gone, I could almost pretend that nothing had happened last night. As soon as I returned the golf cart, maybe I’d throw the dirty clothes from my last trip into the washing machine. Not because I was necessarily ever going anywhere again, but just because they’d eventually have to be washed anyway. I had this hazy dazy feeling that if I could keep everything in slow motion, maybe I could just drift along until my life somehow slipped back to normal again.
