Everything's Relative

by Jenna McCarthy

  “Wait, remember she said she drew her own tattoo?” Brooke asked. She winced a little at the memory of Lexi’s dig: You actually get paid to teach kids?

  “She did say that.” Jules nodded.

  “Dang,” Brooke said. She stopped flipping pages when she got to the image of the eyeless woman and the three little girls. “Jules, I think this is us. That’s you with the broken wrist from the time you fell out of the avocado tree in the backyard, and that’s my scraped knee—remember when I wiped out on my bike riding home from school and Lexi had to carry all of my stuff home?—and that must be her.” She turned the pad around so it was facing Jules, and Brooke watched the pain register on her sister’s face.

  “With the broken heart,” Jules said.

  “Did you know she was so talented?” Brooke asked.

  “How would I?” Jules asked. “It’s not like she’s going around bragging about it or anything.”

  “How crazy is that?” Brooke demanded. “God, she pisses me off. She’s the prettiest one of all of us—no offense—and she’s got that ridiculous body; she could be a model for sure. And she’s smart as a whip—you can’t be funny if you’re not smart, and she’s downright hilarious—and she’s got an incredible singing voice and now we find out she’s practically Michelangelo! And she does nothing with any of her talent, not one stinking thing. I sort of want to punch her right now.”

  “Just not in the face,” Lexi said. “It could ruin my future modeling career.” She was standing in the doorway of the office, stunning as ever despite her oversized tie-dyed T-shirt and bedhead.

  “Alexis, these are amazing,” Brooke said, holding up the sketch pad. “Why didn’t you ever show them to us?”

  “What, so you could put a pretty gold star on them? Who cares? I like to draw. It’s a fun way to kill time. And it’s free, so that’s a bonus.” She shrugged and reached for the pad, but Brooke pulled it away.

  “You need to do something with these, Alexis, you really do,” Brooke said. “This could be your job.”

  “She’s right, Alexis, they’re incredible,” Jules added.

  “Have you guys ever heard the phrase ‘starving artist’?” Lexi asked. “There’s no shortage of talent in this world, but you need to have a business head to make a living at any kind of art, and I really don’t think that description fits me. Besides, I draw for fun. If it was my job, I’d probably start hating it.”

  “You’d hate any job you had,” Jules countered. “Might as well hate a job you’re already really good at, right?”

  “Everything is done on computers these days, and I don’t even have a computer,” Lexi said. “I don’t know any of the graphics programs or anything. Artsy jobs are for rich kids whose parents send them to fancy private colleges and basically pay their way into that world. Maybe when we get Mom’s money I’ll go to rich-kid art school. In the meantime, you find me an art gig that asks for a GED, no experience and a rap sheet three miles long, and I promise you I’ll take it.”

  Brooke started hopping up and down. “Oh! There’s a career fair at the convention center in a few weeks! I don’t know why I didn’t mention it sooner. My friend Pam from work told me about it. She’s the one who has to wipe all the butts in the Tadpole room? Anyway, she said it’s supposed to be really fun and that they give away a ton of free stuff. I wasn’t planning to go, but I could go with you if you want?”

  Brooke smiled hesitatingly and then braced herself, waiting for Lexi to shoot down the idea as being stupid or say something horrible to her. But for some reason, she didn’t.

  “Did somebody say free shit?” Lexi asked, giving her sister a thumbs-up. “I’m in.”

  Lexi’s response was unnerving. Did her rebellious baby sister have some crazy scheme up her sleeve, or was she actually changing? Brooke said a silent prayer that it was the latter.

  Lexi

  Lexi stretched out on the air mattress, wondering what a good way to kill a dog would be. The neighbor’s little shit-eater had to announce it to the entire block any time a car drove down the street. Usually it would pipe down once the suspicious vehicle in question was out of sight, but that little bastard had been barking for a solid fifteen minutes now. Shawn and Brooke were off at work and Jules had mercifully gone to walk her stupid dogs, and Lexi was kicking herself for not suggesting she take the asshole next door with her.

  “Would you SHUT THE FUCK UP ALREADY?” Lexi yelled, shoving off the covers and stomping to the front door. She wasn’t sure what she was going to do—throw a rock at it, maybe?—but she had to make it stop. She was cranky and exhausted; without booze and drugs to help her pass out, she’d had a stretch of sleepless nights under her belt and was not in the mood to relive the call of the wild. She flung open the door and gasped.

  “Hi, Alexis,” Rob said. He was holding a bouquet of orange Gerbera daisies. “I take it the doorbell doesn’t work?”

  Lexi crossed her legs self-consciously. She was wearing a ratty old wifebeater and the smiley-face boxer shorts she’d stolen from some guy’s dresser after a drunken one-night stand.

  “Oh, Rob, hey,” Lexi said, wrapping her arms around herself. Why did her damned nipples always feel the need to make their perky presence known whenever a guy was in the vicinity? And why did this suddenly bother her? “Yeah, it’s broken. Nobody around here is very handy.” She didn’t make a move or invite him in.

  “I hope it’s okay that I just stopped by,” Rob said nervously. “I didn’t get your number the other night and I just wanted to say hi and make sure you were okay . . . and that your sisters didn’t kill you.”

  “I don’t have a phone at the moment, so if I’d given you a number it would have been bullshit.” Lexi laughed and swept her hair off of her face.

  “Ouch, that’s a nice gash,” he said, noticing it for the first time. He reached out and traced the fresh pink scar on her forehead tenderly with one finger. Her nipples perked up even more. “Did Jules do that to you?”

  “Oh, no. I just . . . tripped,” she said. She took a step backward into the house. “Did you want to come in or anything? It’s sort of a mess. I was just about to pick up.” Lexi heard the words coming out of her mouth and wondered where on earth they’d come from. She’d never given a flying flip about how messy any place was, or thought twice about trying to impress a guy with her housekeeping skills, of all things. All she normally cared about was what she’d have to do to get a guy to buy her food, drinks or drugs—preferably all three.

  “Sure, if it’s okay and doesn’t mess up your vacuuming schedule,” Rob said. “These are for you.” He handed her the flowers.

  She didn’t know what to say. No man had ever given her flowers before, or looked at her with such concern and what she would dare to call affection. What did Rob see in her? she mused. She certainly couldn’t have made a great impression on him the night they’d met; she’d been totally hammered. She barely even remembered him driving her home; even the fall in Jules’s kitchen was nothing but a blur.

  The closest thing Lexi could find to a vase was a ceramic water pitcher. It was yellow with a giant red rooster on it, and Lexi thought it might be the ugliest thing she had ever seen. She filled it with water and stuck the flowers in it.

  “My mom has that same pitcher,” Rob said. “Actually, she has the whole matching set.” Lexi couldn’t tell by his voice whether he hated it or not, so she decided to say nothing.

  “Would you like some . . . water or something? Sorry, we don’t have much in the house right now. I was going to go shopping after I cleaned up.” Honestly, was this Invasion of the Body Snatchers or something? She was going to go shopping? To the store two miles away, on foot, and pay for a bunch of groceries with her charm and good looks?

  “I’m fine, thanks,” Rob said. “Like I said, I really just wanted to stop by and say hi . . . and also to tell you that I’d like to see you again.
You know, if you’re not dating anyone or anything.”

  Lexi sat on the corner of the couch and curled her legs under her. She pulled the itchy brown afghan off the back of it and wrapped it around herself. Rob sat next to her.

  “I’m definitely not dating anyone,” Lexi told him. “I’m sort of starting over, I guess. Let’s just say I’ve had a rough couple of years. Anyway, I’m staying with Jules and trying to get back on my feet.”

  “Well, I don’t want to pry or anything, so I’ll just focus on the part about you being free to go out with me.” He smiled at her sheepishly and a swarm of butterflies took flight in the pit of her stomach. “Are you working or going to school or anything?”

  “Actually, I’m looking for a job,” she admitted. She didn’t mention how halfhearted or unsuccessful her search had been to date.

  “What are you good at?” Rob asked. “Besides blow jobs, I mean. Not that I’d know firsthand or anything, but you did make a point of telling me how great you are at giving them.”

  Lexi winced, then shifted swiftly into self-protection mode. “So is that why you’re here, to find out for yourself? And then are you going to arrest me? Because I’m pretty sure that would be called entrapment.” Her face had turned angry and hard.

  “God, no,” Rob said. He reached for her hand in her lap and wrapped both of his around it. “Not at all. I’m so sorry. I meant that as a joke. I thought you’d think it was funny. Alexis, I like you, okay? You’re funny and tough and sexy as hell, and I can’t stop thinking about you. And I realize you’re probably a world of trouble, but I figure if a cop can’t handle you, who can?”

  A smile played at the edges of Lexi’s mouth. Every instinct in her body told her to fight it; showing emotion made you weak, and when you were weak you got hurt.

  “I can help you find a job if you want,” Rob said, squeezing her hand. “I know lots of people, and everybody wants to do a favor for a cop. It’s one of the perks of my job. You should take advantage of it.”

  “You’d do that for me, call in a favor?” She was being weak—and vulnerable—and she knew it. But for some reason, Rob made her feel safe. Maybe it was the gun.

  “I already have something in mind,” he said.

  “Let me guess. You’re going to have me pose as a hooker to try to get guys to pick me up so you can arrest them?”

  Rob laughed. “You have to be a cop to do that, otherwise it’s just prostitution.”

  “Oh, well, that’s good, I guess,” Lexi said. “So what is it?”

  “Let me make a few calls and I’ll let you know, okay? Is there any way I can get ahold of you without dropping by unannounced?”

  Lexi gave him Jules’s number and he promised he’d call her in the next day or two. Now Lexi really wanted a job. She’d need one to pay for the phone she suddenly didn’t want to live without.

  Jules

  Jules couldn’t stop thinking about what Brooke had said. The truth was, she hadn’t ever really thought about writing nonfiction. In Jules’s mind the assignment, the goal, was always to write a novel. Like her dad. That was what she wanted more than anything, the prestige of saying that she was a novelist and the confirmation that she was like him—and not Juliana. But she could write a memoir first, to satisfy her mother’s ridiculous demand, and write her novel later, couldn’t she?

  She sat down at her computer and opened a new document, which she titled “MEMOIR WORKING.” She’d checked out a half dozen books from the library on memoir writing and read them all cover to cover. Now tidbits of advice flashed across her mind. “When writing becomes painful, remember that the word memory is derived from the same root as the word mourn.” Well, that was a bit daunting. “What you leave out is often far more important than what you include.” Interesting approach. “Your stories are probably not as interesting as you think.” Isn’t that exactly what she’d told Brooke? “Thinking that memoir is the same thing as autobiography is a mistake. Memoir isn’t about you; it’s about universal, relatable truths and experiences.” Gulp.

  You have a story, she told herself. Just tell it.

  “I stood at the counter, trying to choose between bubblegum and rocky road,” Jules wrote. “Everyone else had their ice cream and I was holding up the line. Dad took his sunglasses off, wiped them on his T-shirt and laughed. ‘You’re not picking out your future husband, you know, Juju,’ he’d said, ruffling my hair. ‘Whichever one you don’t get today you can get next time.’ I’d gone with the bubblegum, blissfully unaware that there would never be a next time.”

  Was that what he’d said? Were those his exact words, Whichever one you don’t get today you can get next time? She was pretty sure they were.

  Just write, she scolded herself. You can critique later. This is about getting the words down.

  Jules went through half a box of Kleenex as she wrote and wrote. She thought starting with that awful day would be a powerful hook; then she went back and tried to paint a picture of her life, before, as best she could. She was careful to abide by the maxim Show, don’t tell. Her mom wasn’t just happy and easygoing; she whistled while she folded laundry and swatted her husband when he pulled a shirt from the bottom of his pile and toppled the thing. Lexi wasn’t simply a free spirit; she flounced around the house, naked save a tutu and too-big pink cowboy boots, a wizard’s hat perched on her head. She never said Brooke was thoughtful and selfless; instead she recounted the time when she’d threatened to run away from home when their mom said they couldn’t keep the puppy that had wandered into their yard, and Brooke had cracked open her piggy bank and spent her life’s savings on a stuffed dog for Jules that looked exactly like the stray.

  Writing about Juliana was the hardest, harder even than writing about her father. John Alexander had a distinct advantage, she knew. Because she was a child when he was taken from them, she still saw him through adoring, almost reverent eyes. The fact that he’d died full of so much promise and potential further immortalized him in her mind. Had he ever raised his voice, or been grumpy or distant or demanding or disappointing? He had to have done and been all of those things; he’d been human, after all. But Jules had no real memories of anything like that. In her recollections he might as well have been James Dean: devastatingly handsome, wildly talented and forever young.

  But Juliana was a different story. Jules could vividly recall her at both extremes, and she could draw a straight line from one to the other and plot out her mother’s entire heartbreaking life on it. She was careful not to rewrite the early history; her mom hadn’t been perfect, because no parent could be. Sometimes she was uptight, but when their dad pointed it out, she would laugh at herself and suggest they play a silly game. She lost her temper on occasion, but she always apologized. More than anything, she’d been present in both body and spirit, a gift her children hadn’t much noticed or thought to appreciate until it was taken away.

  Jules mentally walked the timeline of her mother’s life. Her earliest memories were a fuzzy blur of piggyback rides and picnics in the park; after that, countless hours of cuddling in bed reading books or hovering over the kitchen table tracing the alphabet on wide-ruled paper, with Juliana gently guiding her hand. There was her twelfth birthday, the last one BDD—before Dad died—when Juliana had baked dozens of cupcakes and let the girls decorate them to look like frogs, with green frosting faces and mini-marshmallow eyes and long red licorice tongues. That year her parents had created an elaborate scavenger hunt, hiding clues all over the house that eventually led to Jules’s present, hidden in the trunk of the car: the lava lamp she’d seen at the mall and wanted more than anything in the world. “You only live once!” Juliana had chirped when she saw the look of surprised joy on her daughter’s face. There had been no more birthday parties after that; no cupcakes or gifts, either. Occasionally Juliana would wait until that day to present her with a new package of socks or a pair of gym shorts or some other pract
ical thing she’d have gotten for her anyway. Brooke always had something small for her—a rainbow lollipop, a tiny pot of lip balm, a gently used book—wrapped neatly in newspaper because Juliana had long ago stopped buying wrapping paper. Had she gushed over her sister’s thoughtfulness at the time? Her heart ached to admit she probably hadn’t; surely not enough. It’s like pouring peroxide on a cut; it hurts because it’s healing, she told herself as she cried and typed and cried some more.

  Jules’s chest was heaving as she detailed a horrific knockdown between Brooke and Juliana. Brooke’s boyfriend Billy was heading off to the Coast Guard Training Center in Virginia and Brooke wanted to drive him to the airport. Juliana had refused to let her take her ancient, rusty Buick, so Brooke had called Jules begging to borrow the equally decrepit Ford truck she’d managed to buy for herself. Juliana had ripped the phone from Brooke’s hand mid-request, catching a lock of her hair in the process. Jules could still hear her sister’s piercing wails in her mind.

  “Damn it, Mom, why couldn’t you have just let her go?” Jules wondered aloud, and when she did, the answer hit her like a sucker punch. Juliana had been consumed by fear; the fear of losing everything she loved. Jules knew from personal experience that when people felt powerless, the natural reaction was to try to gain control of something, anything. She and her sisters had been the nearest, and most natural, targets. The fact that it all made perfect sense did little to ease the pain of this new insight.

  Jules grabbed a tissue and blew her nose hard into it just as Lexi swept into her office.

  “Holy crap, you look like shit,” Lexi said.

  “And you actually look presentable,” Jules said, dabbing at her nose. She wouldn’t have admitted it, but she was grateful for the intrusion; she’d had enough gut-wrenching epiphanies for one day. Now she eyed her sister approvingly. Lexi was wearing one of her pencil skirts—probably the shortest one she owned but it was still quite modest—and a crisp button-up top, also pinched from Jules’s closet. “By the way, yes, you can borrow my clothes. And obviously you’re free to do as you please, but the clothes have to be home by eleven. That’s their curfew.”