Accidental It Girl

by Libby Street

  Luke turns the page of my sophomore portfolio and stares at a photograph of the chefs in the old restaurant my dad worked in. “Hating your job is, like, the last thing parents are allowed to fight with us about. It’s the one thing left that won’t get them dragged onto Dr. Phil for being bad parents. I promise you, fear of Dr. Phil is a major motivation in my mom’s life.”

  “Please. Paige would chew up Dr. Phil like a stick of gum,” I grumble. “I wish I could just crawl inside her head and figure out what her damage is.” Actually, on second thought, it’d probably be pretty scary in there—all sequins, and Botox, and dog show statistics.

  “Wow, this one’s nice,” Luke says, opening up my senior portfolio and pointing at a portrait I did of an old roommate.

  “You just like it ’cause she’s hot,” I reply, looking over his shoulder.

  “Maybe…” he replies sheepishly.

  I inspect the portrait. God, I’d forgotten how piercing her eyes were. Staring at her in real life, you always had the sense you were being measured, judged. In the black and white of her photo, her eyes are even more penetrating, and yet, somehow, betray just the tiniest hint of vulnerability.

  It’s exciting to take a photograph of someone you know—someone whose face is so incredibly familiar to you—and capture that tiny fraction of a moment when they are being utterly themselves. We’re used to seeing our friends in color, used to the distraction of their day-to-day armor—jewelry, makeup, fashion. We rely on intonation and hand gestures to tell us what we need to know about their state of mind. Essentially, we rely on them to tell us who they are. The beauty of black and white is that it erases all that; all the extraneous clues about emotion and convention are stripped away. It’s pure. The pictures I always wanted to take, the ones I tried to take before I got into the paparazzi stuff, were about seeing beyond what people want us to think they are, and somehow capturing a flicker of the truth. I sometimes miss that.

  “You know what really pisses me off?” I ask Luke.

  “What?” he replies.

  “She made it sound like I consciously gave up on the portraits. I mean, what does she think? That I just sat down one day and said, ‘I’m not going to do this anymore’?”

  Luke says, “I—”

  “…Because I didn’t. It just…drifted away. It happens. The portraits were eventually this thing that I’m always meaning to do but can never seem to find the time for…like clearing old clothes from the closet, or dusting the crown molding in the living room. It happened naturally….”

  Luke tries, “Sadie, I—”

  But I’m on a roll. “…And then, I got comfortable with my life without it. Big deal. Is being comfortable that bad? I like my life. It works. You know? Seriously,…”

  Luke interjects, “Hey, I just—”

  “…why is my life now any less noble or important because I’m not poor and artistic? Why is following your dream so much more—”

  “Sadie!” Luke shouts. “Slow your roll there, Killer.” He ogles me with an uneasy sort of grimace. “Who are you trying to convince here? Me…or you?”

  “Uh…” I stutter. “I’m not trying to convince anyone.” I don’t think. “I don’t know.”

  I stare down at the portfolios splayed out on the floor—lying on a small area rug that I bought with my first check from Todd.

  Luke blurts, “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have—”

  “No, you were right to stop me,” I say.

  “Are you gonna be all right?” Luke asks, suddenly looking concerned.

  “Sure,” I reply.

  “Are you?” he prods, a little crinkle appearing between his eyes. “You’ve got that weird, sad, faraway look you get sometimes.”

  I gawk at him, confused. “I get a weird, sad, faraway look sometimes?”

  Luke reaches over to a pile of magazines and newspapers—a chronological stack of my meteoric rise to phony fame. He leafs through the top five or six issues and pulls out a copy of Celeb from last week.

  He flips through the sheets, finding the page with my picture. With a bit of a sad, faraway look of his own, he hands it over.

  It’s a picture of me in the subway station after the autograph and the investment banker. I’m walking toward the exit, but my head is turned back—looking over my shoulder toward Ethan and his camera.

  Huh. I do look sort of sad.

  I didn’t know I did that.

  “I do that a lot, you say?” I ask Luke, feeling a bit like this picture should be hidden somewhere very dark and dusty.

  Luke replies softly, “Yeah.”

  Luke has left for work, and I’ve renewed the giant Brown Box inspection process. It’s pointless, of course, but I can’t help myself.

  A knock comes at my bedroom door.

  Maybe it’s Brooke. Maybe she has food.

  I roll off the bed and open the door.

  Not Brooke.

  “What do you want now?” I ask Paige.

  “May I come in?” she asks while maneuvering her slender body past me and entering the room.

  “Sure,” I say sarcastically, throwing my hands up in defeat.

  Paige delicately arranges her hair behind her ears and turns to face me. I watch as her eyes land on the giant box and then self-consciously look to me. “Oh,” she says. “You still haven’t opened it.”

  “No, I haven’t,” I spit—hoping to hurt her.

  “Sadie,” she begins prodigiously, “I realize that what I did this evening may be perceived as unorthodox, and that it might have been unpalatable to you. But to be frank, this mess you’ve gotten yourself into isn’t exactly the kind of thing Emily Post can prepare you for.”

  Unable to control myself, I roll my eyes.

  She watches my face contort, then continues, “I realize that you’re angry with me—”

  “I have every right to be. You completely humiliated me tonight—”

  As usual, Paige interrupts. “I realize that since you were a little girl, you have been angry with me.”

  Her reference to the past stuns me into absolute silence. She never talks about the past—ever. Paige is not the kind of person who looks back with regret on the things she’s done in her life. No, forget regret, she doesn’t look back at all.

  Paige takes a seat on the end of my bed and places her hands on her knees. “I’m trying.”

  “Trying what, exactly?” I ask, straining to maintain composure.

  “I realize that I haven’t been the best mother to you. Things between us have never been quite…right. I see now that, in large part, it’s been my doing.”

  I have no idea what to say to that. I have never heard her admit to anything so unflattering.

  She continues, “I know that I can’t make up for the way I treated you. I was so very selfish and insensitive. I also know that it may not be possible for you to forgive me. But I would like—if it’s possible—to know you.”

  “Know me?” I ask, genuinely confused.

  “Thanks to your father, you are a wonderful person. I would like to know you better. And I was wondering if, perhaps, you might be willing to get to know me a little, too.”

  I don’t know what to say to that. Had this speech come at age eleven or twelve I probably would have leaped into her arms joyously. But at twenty-eight? I mean, is she looking to have someone absolve her guilt?

  Apparently sensing my apprehension, she adds, “You don’t have to love me. That’s not what I’m asking. I want to try and be a better person to you…for you. In short, I’m trying.”

  I don’t feel like I can stand any more.

  I slump down into the chair by my dresser, nearly knocking over the brown monolith. The room falls silent, with me feeling dizzy and my mother staring at her shoes.

  There’s a hint of sadness in her eyes that I don’t think I’ve ever seen before. Despite all my better judgment, and all the lessons I learned growing up, it makes me really want to believe her.

  “Why now?” I
ask.

  Paige takes a deep, cleansing breath. “For whatever reason, Sadie, things become clearer as you get older. And I’ve realized some things over the last few years.” She pauses, turns her attention back to the unopened gift she gave me. “You know that old saying about how it’s never too late to turn over a new leaf, to start over? Well, it hit me one day—that’s a complete load of crap.” My mother just said “crap.” This is serious. “I always said to myself, ‘Someday things will get better between Sadie and me,’ ‘Someday we’ll have a proper relationship,’ and then I turned fifty and thought…when?” Her eyes meet mine. “I am not getting any younger, Sadie. And our time here is finite. It can be too late. Sometimes you have to take risks, leap into the unknown. Otherwise questions and regrets will hang over you—like a cloud.”

  Doesn’t she know she’s talking to the queen of dark little clouds? The very definition of “When it rains, it pours”?

  No. I guess she doesn’t. That’s sort of her point, isn’t it?

  My mother raises her head and her eyes lock on the Brown Box. More specifically, they bore into the patch of sticky, fuzzy brown paper left from removing her note. Paige says, “You know, I do worry about you. Doing this job. Not taking the portraits anymore. It’s not that I think you’ve lost your talent, darling. I just think you’re not using it to its full potential. I hate it when people aren’t giving everything to achieve their full potential—”

  My glare hardens and aims somewhere between the bridge of her nose and her left eye. “I love my job!”

  “I know you do. I know. But what has it done to you, Sadie? How is it affecting you? What is it, do you think, that Ethan Wyatt is trying to show you?”

  “You’re on his side now?” I yell. “I thought you—”

  “I’m on your side!” she roars. She clasps her hands together and grits her teeth, as though forcing herself to be calm. She takes a deep breath. Her tone softens. “I wasn’t the best example to you. I was…” She looks out the window at my little patch of sky, to the place where the stars should be. “I have made mistakes, regretted the choices I’ve made. I don’t want to see you do the same.” Her pale blue eyes lock onto mine. Their characteristic iciness melts away before me. “I get the feeling that you’re running away from something instead of toward something better.”

  “You’ve always hated what I do,” I spit.

  “The reasons, Sadie…the reasons have changed.”

  I shake my head. “But it’s still all about you, isn’t it?”

  “Sadie Anne Price,” Paige says, in that staccato way that mothers do when they’re preparing to administer a stern scolding, “this may be hard for you to hear, but I did not make the decision for you to enter this career. It is not my fault that you are in this mess right now. I take responsibility for what I’ve done—my part in your…your…way of looking at the world. But I won’t sit back and watch you founder. I’m here for you. My methods may occasionally annoy you, and you may disagree with me and my ideas. But I love you. Truly. Do you understand? I worry that what you’re doing with your life you may one day look back on with regret. You have so many things to offer the world. So, so many…”

  A tear falls from my mother’s eye and down her cheek. She doesn’t touch it. Her makeup is running, her skin is pale and imperfect, and she isn’t raising a hand to fix it.

  She looks at me again, with her eyes full, and adds, “I wish you would stop hating me. Not because I need you to forgive me, but because it’s hurting you!”

  Paige gets up from her perch on my bed and walks through the door. Moments later, I hear the front door open and close.

  I stare at the unopened gift teetering precariously against my rickety old dresser.

  My mother wants to know me.

  I really didn’t see that coming.

  Chapter 23

  All right, I know this is going to sound stupid, I know it sounds a bit immature and irrational, but I feel like I have to even the playing field with Ethan. I want to know something deep and dark and personal about him so that we’re back on an equal footing. All that crap from my mother about the portraits, and lost talent, and “a few trials” in my life…and he’s seen that sad, faraway look I apparently get sometimes. I feel so…exposed.

  Okay, and there might be something else. A teeny-tiny, barely perceptible…almost invisible part of me might want to know a little more about him. Just for me.

  I lie on my bed staring at the ceiling, with the phone to my ear. “You didn’t find anything?” I say to Donna.

  “Sadie, I’m not jerking you around here. He pays his taxes. He’s a big tipper. He gives to charity and takes his mom to award shows.” Donna heaves a frustrated sigh. “I can’t even find a speeding ticket, and the guy used to own an Aston Martin, for God’s sake. About the only thing I did find out is that his agent wanted to set up a reality show for him and he turned it down.”

  Okay, that might be something. “What was the angle?” I ask.

  “The agent was a crackpot, if you ask me…wanted to call it Wyatt Riot and follow Ethan barhopping or something. Ethan got rid of the guy—switched agencies because of it.”

  A little smile perks at the corners of my mouth. Yeah, he would have hated that idea. I clear my throat in an attempt to shake off the sudden rush of warm and fuzzy Ethan Wyatt feelings. “So, what you’re telling me, then, is that he actually is a saint?” I ask Donna.

  “Honey, I’m gay and I want to sleep with the guy.”

  Part of me is disappointed by the dearth of juicy gossip. Another part of me sort of wants to turn on Jason Mraz and sing into a toothbrush.

  “How many times has she done that so far this morning?” I ask Luke.

  “Four,” he answers with a hint of concern in his voice.

  “Yeah, she was doing it yesterday, too,” I say.

  Brooke has recently become obsessed with our voice mail. She checks it about once an hour. Checking it when she gets home from work, I understand. After returning from the bodega, I get. But she’s at home—if the phone rings she’ll hear it.

  “Brooke?” I ask, approaching her. “Who are you expecting a call from?”

  “No one,” she says, doing a bad job of acting casual. I hear the voice on the line say, “Press two for saved messages…” before Brooke hangs up.

  She grabs a magazine, sinks Indian style into a nearby chair, and begins reading an article on Ashlee Simpson with the same intensity a normal person would read, say, a road map to the Holy Grail.

  I look to Luke, questioning him with my eyes. He just shrugs his shoulders at me—clueless.

  “Where’s your mom?” he asks, patting the seat next to him on the couch, inviting me to sit.

  “Broomstick repairs…. Having her pointy hats polished…. Challenging Glenda the Good Witch to a duel…. How should I know?” I slump into the corner of the couch.

  “Have you opened the box yet?” he asks.

  “No! What does that have to do with anything?” Oops. Snapped a little bit there.

  Luke gives me his classic “women are insane” expression—eyes wide and confused, one hand moving defensively to his crotch. “It was just a question—”

  “I’m sorry,” I say sincerely. “Last night she said she wants to know me. It threw me a little.”

  “Really? She said that?” asks Brooke, looking up from Ashlee.

  “What does that mean?” asks Luke.

  “It means that she’s changing,” replies Brooke.

  “No, it means that she’s had a midlife crisis, and I’m going to pay for it,” I correct.

  “You might want to consider the possibility that she’s not after anything, Sadie,” Brooke says in a matter-of-fact sort of tone that makes my hands clench into fists.

  “Let me set you straight there,” I say, desperately trying to keep my emotions in check. “My mother has never done anything that didn’t benefit her in some way. Shit, she doesn’t even give to charities that don’t reward
her with swag. Even if she is changing, as you call it, it’s only because it’ll get her something. She only does things that make her feel good. The thing that’s important to remember is that someone is always—and I do mean always—hurt in the process.”

  It’s like Paige’s life is inextricably linked to the universe’s system of checks and balances. To keep the world from spinning off its axis, Paige’s pleasure must be counteracted, in equal proportion, by someone else’s displeasure. If Paige were to win the lottery, somewhere in the world a small, innocent village of happy people would have to be smited.

  I turn back to Brooke, only to see her shifting uncomfortably in the chair, adjusting her shirt and pants in an odd way. As she yanks her pants up, I spot a black…thing attached to her left hip. Oh, my God. It couldn’t be…

  “What was that?” I ask, pointing at her waist.

  “What was what?” she replies guiltily.

  “That black thing on your waistband.”

  “What black thing?” she asks, her green eyes scrunching up in mock confusion. Feigning innocence, she inspects the right side of her pants—ignores the left.

  “Brooke,” I begin seriously—trying not to laugh. “Is that a cell phone belt clip that you have attached to your pajamas?”

  “No,” she says, watching me, as her left hand twitches closer to her waist.

  Luke locks eyes with me and barely—just barely—tips his head up and down. Good, he knows what has to be done.

  I try, with all my might, to keep a smile from spreading across my face. “It’s not?” I ask Brooke, taking one tiny step toward her.

  “Noooo,” she says slowly, while pressing her back farther into the chair.

  Brooke’s eyes flit between Luke and me—each of us creeping ever closer.

  “What is it, then?” I ask.

  “I don’t even know what you’re talking about,” she says, matching my tone.

  Brooke drops her feet to the floor suddenly. They smack down on the hardwood with a splat.

  Luke yells, “Now!”

  We both pounce on her.

  Brooke screams and falls into a fit of laughter. She wiggles and squirms, screams, “You guys!”