by Claire Cook
“When I was growing up, my older sister had me completely convinced that I was adopted.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. ‘Why aren’t there any baby pictures of you?’ she kept asking. My parents denied it, but my sister had planted that seed. And she was right, there weren’t many baby pictures of me, and believe me, I counted. Repeatedly. It turned out to be part second-child photo syndrome and part the fact that my sister had hidden most of the ones we did have. Anyway, I finally smartened up and tracked down my birth certificate.”
“That’s awful,” I said. “Although I used to fantasize I was adopted. Or that they’d given my mother the wrong baby at the hospital. Or that I’d been dropped from an alien spaceship in the middle of the night because my real people’s planet was being invaded. It just seemed like there had to be another set of siblings I’d fit in with better.”
“To this day, my sister and I can spend about two hours together before we revert to our childhood selves and start going at each other again. It’s not pretty.”
“Oh, that’s so good to hear.”
Steve laughed again.
“Sorry,” I said. “I meant that it’s good to be reminded that my siblings and I aren’t the only ones who do that.”
Steve took a sip of something before he spoke. “Maybe siblings were created to make the rest of the cold, cruel world seem manageable.”
I tried to picture him. Sitting in a leather recliner with a glass of wine in his hand. Or curled up in bed with a mug of chamomile tea.
“Where do you live?” I asked.
“Good question. I have a place way out on Cape Cod, in Truro. It’s pretty rustic, really just a shack, but it’s a beautiful spot. And I have a small condo in Boston. I’m traveling all the time, so it works out since they’re both pretty much lock and leave. And I have a son in western Mass so I spend as much time as I can out that way.”
“How old is he?” I asked. It came out like a whisper.
“Twenty-three. His name is Ben. He’s in grad school. Political science of all things.”
“Wow,” I said. It was the best I could do. I switched my phone to the other ear and watched my hand reach for the sandwich as if it was connected to someone else’s body. I stood up and walked over to the refrigerator to put the Styrofoam container away.
“His mother and I were high school sweethearts. We broke up freshman year in college. Then my parents died the week before I graduated and, well, we shouldn’t have ended up together again, but I guess it was just one of those things. We tried to make it work for Ben’s sake, but it never really did.”
“What happened to your parents?”
“Drunk driver. Middle of a Saturday afternoon, a mile and a half from home. They were on their way back from grocery shopping.”
“I am so, so sorry.”
“Thank you. It’s a long time ago now, but not a day goes by that something doesn’t remind me of them. They were good people. They never got to meet Ben.”
I wiped my eyes with the sleeve of my T-shirt, vowing to call my parents back.
“So where do you live?” Steve asked.
“I have a little place on Tag’s property. Pretty much my whole family does.”
I listened to Steve take another sip.
“How’s that working out for you?” he finally said.
“Ha. Not too well, I don’t think. But give me another decade or two to make sure.”
He laughed again. I could get used to that laugh.
“Well, it’s actually a converted sheep shed, so I have to admit it’s a pretty cool place. And I don’t pay anything to live there, so that’s a plus. But Tag won’t let me buy it. And living there means that basically I’m on call around the clock. And the guy I lived with off and on for ten years who didn’t want kids decided to marry someone else because she was pregnant. And he asked Tag to marry them.”
I stood up, took two steps toward the refrigerator, then sat back down again.
“So that’s my life,” I said. “Or lack thereof.”
“Sounds like that must have been pretty painful.”
“Which part?” I said. “Oh, Mitchell. I don’t know. Yes and no, I guess. I mean, we weren’t together at the time or anything. And I think we’d probably been over each other for years. We just kept sliding into it again because it was the easiest thing to do.” It felt good to talk about Mitchell in the past tense. “Anyway, I hit him with Tag’s golf cart the last time I saw him. And that’s the end of that story.”
“Do me a favor and remind me of that right before our first fight.”
I could feel myself grinning. “Deal. And just so you know, I didn’t hit him that hard. He’s kind of a whiner.”
Steve cleared his throat. “You know, at first I didn’t get the whole Dancing With the Stars thing, but now I sort of do, or at least I think I do.”
“Wait. You know about Dancing With the Stars?”
Steve let out another laugh. “Uh, I think I’d have to be living under a rock to miss it. It’s all over the news. And the Internet. You’ve become the celebrity alternative—an Everywoman hero.”
I closed my eyes. “Please tell me they’re not using my high school yearbook picture. No, don’t tell me. I can’t even think about it. It’s enough trying to survive the dancing part.”
“Well, I have to hand it to you. It’s a really creative way to put some space between you and your family.”
I started to tell Steve about Tag showing up, that in my family the concept of space was nonexistent. But then I just didn’t. Maybe I thought it might sound too strange. Maybe I was still hoping Tag would go away. But I think mostly I was afraid it might scare Steve off.
Ginger and Fred were watching me. I ran my finger around the lip of the fishbowl. “Yeah, well, now I just have to survive embarrassing myself in front of twenty-three million people.”
“I have to admit I haven’t actually watched it, but it’s like a dance contest, right?”
“Yeah, pretty much.”
“I’m sure you’ll take the whole thing.”
“That’s very sweet, but that’s like me telling you I’m sure they’re going to let you redesign the gardens at Buckingham Palace.”
“Got it. So what’s the best-case scenario?”
“I don’t know. That once I get voted off, the rest of the cold, cruel world will seem more manageable? I mean, I’m hanging in there and learning a lot, but it’s the toughest thing I’ve ever done in my life. And winning is simply not an option.”
“Learn to fail or fail to learn,” Steve said.
“Did you really just say that?”
“I most certainly did. I’ve been trying to find a way to fit it into the conversation since we got on the phone. I want you to know it took a lot of Googling to come up with that baby. I also found a good one by Kermit the Frog about how time’s fun when you’re having flies.”
“You have the heart of a landscaper.”
“This is true. Anyway, it was a close runner-up, but I was pretty sure it didn’t qualify as a chiasmus.”
“Impressive,” I said. “Really impressive.”
“Why, thank you, ma’am. For the record, I think what you’re doing is pretty impressive, too. However it goes, it’ll make a great story one day.”
I yawned. “And with luck I’ll live to tell it.”
He yawned back. “I’m sure you will. Listen, you sound like you’re falling asleep, and I should get going, too. I have an early morning.”
I stood up to get a look at the little clock on the little stove. “Oh, I’m so sorry. I completely forgot how late it is for you.”
“That’s okay. I enjoyed it. Is there a good time for me to call you again?”
Fred and Ginger were watching my every move. I made a fish face at them.
Relationships were so much work. You had to say all the right things and put yourself out there. And even then it still probably wouldn’t work out. By the time I left Holly
wood and got back to the real world, Steve Moretti would probably have met someone else. Or he’d make the mistake of tuning in to watch me on DWTS and be completely horrified. Maybe he’d go to a pitch meeting the next day and his client would say, “Oh, did you see that awful woman on Dancing With the Stars last night? What was she thinking?”
I took a quick breath and scrunched my eyes shut.
“Anytime you call will be a good time,” I said.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but we are never more beholden than to the person who enhances our beauty.
Seven days is a lifetime. Seven days is the blink of an eye. I went back and forth between the two. One minute I’d be thinking, Will today ever be over? And the next minute my heart would start racing as it hit me that today was Thursday already. Long before I was even close to being ready for it, Monday at 8 p.m. Eastern and Pacific time (7 p.m. Central and Mountain) would be here.
It didn’t help that I was sleep deprived. Tag hadn’t come back to my apartment last night. He was a big boy so it’s not like I’d been worried about him or anything. I’d been pretty sure he’d gone home with Ashleyjanedobbs and at that very moment was oohing and aahing over how flexible she was. I just didn’t know whether to lock the door and risk having him wake me up in the middle of the night, or to leave the door unlocked and risk being woken up in the middle of the night by an axe murderer.
Eventually I decided that if my brother could get the building super to let him into my apartment once, he could do it again. So I locked the door and carried Ginger and Fred into my bedroom.
But a part of me kept expecting Tag to wake me up from a sound sleep. And I’d finally let him have it, about trying to hog my fifteen minutes of DWTS fame, about how he’d acted with Steve at Lake Austin Spa Resort. So I kept going over what I’d say when I told him off, and as a result I couldn’t seem to fall into that sound sleep. After I got bored with my imaginary yelling at Tag, I replayed every line of my conversation with Steve at least twice. After that, I went over the steps of my cha-cha a few times.
Just when I’d finally drifted into a deep, exhausted sleep, my alarm went off.
“Focus,” Ilya said, bringing me back to the practice studio.
“Sorry,” I said. “I don’t seem to have it in me today.”
We finished yet another run-through of our dance. Ilya ran his hand through his hair. “You’re tired, that’s all. You need a rest day, but we don’t have one. So we’ll do the best we can and not sweat it. If we hang in there today, tomorrow will be better.”
“Can I call you every day for the rest of my life so you can tell me that?”
Ilya reached for the remote. “I’ll make you a video. I’ll even sell it to you wholesale.”
“Gee, thanks.”
We did our cha-cha again. And again. And again. I knew the words to “Smooth” forward and backward, upside down and inside out. I was practically ready to go on tour with Santana. If only I could sing or play an instrument. Or dance, for that matter.
We took a break. I counted out almonds and piled my plate with fruit and baby carrots. I sipped my bottled water. Ilya opened his laptop and I wrote a message from Tag asking his Facebook fans to “like” our TAG TEAM Facebook page. I wrote a shorter version asking his Twitter followers to follow both Ilya and me. Then we posted our own messages, telling everyone how hard we were working and thanking them for their support and asking them to spread the word.
“Wow,” Ilya said as he reached for another strawberry. “You need a road map to keep up with all this stuff.”
“Now you know how I feel about your choreography,” I said.
The next session went a little bit better, but not much. Ilya singled out a few of the steps and had me do them over and over again, and then I worked on my spotting some more.
When our five hours were up, I went right to a hair appointment with Gina. She did what she called a three-step process: warm medium brown to brighten up my overall hair, plus the addition of highlights and lowlights. I didn’t quite follow her, but whatever it was she was doing, it took a lot of time. I was hoping I could doze in the chair while my color cooked, but Lila came over and experimented on me with some makeup.
I tried to avoid looking at the mirror in front of me, but at one point I glanced up. I had vampire eyes and ruby lips, and my head was covered with folded-over strips of aluminum foil. Maybe an alien spaceship really had dropped me off in my parents’ backyard. After all this time, I could finally call my real people and ask them to beam me back up. Fast.
Lila wiped one of my eyes clean and started again. “That spray tan is going to make all the difference on you, hon. Just you wait and see. Once we get that on, we’ll add primer and layer on a mixture of liquid and cream foundations, and then I’ll press it all in with loose powder.”
Lila kept experimenting until she got a makeup look she liked. Teal shadow made my brown eyes sparkle, big and bright, and the false eyelashes actually changed the shape of my eyes like a mini–eye lift. Lila had brushed a pearlescent shimmer over my brow bones and over the dark spots between the bridge of my nose and my eyes. And she’d contoured my face with darker shades to make my cheekbones stand out and the peaks and valleys of my face more pronounced.
Once Gina had finished blowing it out, I had to admit my hair was amazing, too. The changes were subtle, but the effect was dramatic. My boring brown medium-length hair suddenly had volume, shine, dimension, drama.
If I were sitting around the dinner table with my family I might have said, Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but we are never more beholden than to the person who enhances our beauty.
My glam squad stood behind my chair looking proudly at their handiwork.
“Thank you so much,” I said. “I don’t know how you did it, but even I think I look good.”
Gina lifted up a handful of hair and pinned it into place with bobby pins. My neck looked longer instantly.
Lila made me smile so she could check my teeth for lipstick smudges. “We’ll do a camera check to make sure it reads well on television, but I think this is it.”
“Thank you again,” I said. “You’re both incredibly talented. It must be amazing to be this good at something. Do you have your own Facebook business pages?”
Less than half an hour later they did.
Next up was my first media event for the show. I’d been trying to avoid thinking about it, but when Ilya showed up, I knew it was time. I used the wardrobe changing room to upgrade my yoga pants and baggy T-shirt to black pants and a black jacket over a black tank.
Anthony shook his head. “What is this, casual funeral?”
“Sorry,” I said. “I didn’t bring much with me.”
He knotted a long coral scarf around my neck and handed me a pair of big silver hoop earrings. My face brightened instantly.
“Thank you.”
“My pleasure, treasure.” He scanned the racks of shoes until he found a pair of shiny silver pumps with what had to be five-inch heels.
My feet cramped just looking at them. “Do you think I can carry those and put them on when I get there?”
“We’ll stop right outside the door,” Ilya said. “Hurry.”
I looked at Anthony. “Maybe I can just make you a quick Facebook page first? I mean, it’s not really fair—”
“Go,” Gina said.
“I’ll take a rain check, sugar plum,” Anthony said. “Break a leg.”
“I know this isn’t very original,” I said. “But that’s what I’m afraid of.”
We stopped right outside the open door to one of the dance studios so I could put on my shoes. I’d been to plenty of media junkets with Tag, but being on the other side of the cameras made it a completely new experience. A large curved leather sectional sofa had been placed at one end of the long room. The rest of the room was absolutely packed with cameras and microphones and reporters.
The celebrities were seated and the professionals stood behind their
dance partners. Karen and a couple of other producers were milling around, getting everything organized. The judges weren’t there, but the two DWTS hosts were standing behind a podium going over some notes.
I looked at Ilya. “I don’t think I can do this.”
“You can and you will.” He reached for my hand, which was a good thing since I was tottering on those heels. I managed to sit down without humiliating myself. Ilya walked around behind the sectional and put his hands on my shoulders. Ashleyjanedobbs came running in and squeezed in between me and the wrestler. I would have looked a lot better next to the wrestler, I thought, but I wiggled over to make room for her. Then I sat up straight, crossed my legs at the ankles, and turned my knees sideways to create what I hoped was a more flattering angle.
I took a deep breath in through my nose and let it out through my mouth. I tried to act relaxed and casual, like this was no big deal, like I did this all the time.
All eleven dancing couples were present and accounted for. With luck I wouldn’t have to answer a single question.
To dance is to live, if you live through the dance.
The impending season premiere of DWTS must have qualified as news, since the whole thing was set up like a news conference. Reporters were seated on folding chairs going over their notes.
“Welcome,” the male host said. “We’ve got a truly electrifying season lined up for you, perhaps the most thrilling season in the illustrious history of Dancing With the Stars.”
The female host introduced us couple by couple, checking her notes as she went. Then she opened it up for questions.
“If you both weighed in and suited up, which of the other celebrity dancers do you think would have the best chance of taking you in a fight?” one of the reporters asked the former wrestler.
He laughed nervously. “Uh, none of them?”
He got a big laugh and I relaxed a little.
“What’s the biggest difference between performing a song and performing a dance?” another reporter asked the singer.
The singer cleared her throat. “You use your mouth for one—”
