Tig shut the car door and the Town Car sped off.
Twenty-four
I love George Clooney as much as anybody but I was like, “Mom! Turn off the TV already, would you?”
I was lying on the futon on the floor, a scarf over my eyes to drown out the flashing light coming from the television, trying to sleep. Did Mom care? No, she already knew that Dr. Doug Ross dawgs Nurse Hathaway through how many seasons, but God forbid Mom shouldn’t relive the agony and the ecstasy again and again on the ER reruns all morning.
She said, “Well, I didn’t expect you home this morning! I thought you were recording. Why does your hair smell like smoke? You look terrible! Were you smoking?”
I had arrived home and immediately flipped the futon mattress down and tried to slip under the covers for a nap, but no, she had to slam in my face with rapid fire interrogation: What happened last night? Why do you look so awful? Was there a party at Kayla’s? Don’t ignore me, Wonder Anna Blake!
I ignored her and was dead asleep within five minutes. Not two hours later—I know because the time was flashing on the cable box—she had an ER rerun blaring from the TV and my head was pounding pounding pounding. I just lost it: “Mom, turn that shit OFF!”
Sharing a studio apartment with Mom was not my favorite part of the almost-pop princess arrangement. I love Mom almost as much as I love George Clooney but we needed more space BAD. I needed to have a hit single just so we could afford separate bedrooms! I thought of Kayla’s four levels of luxurious space and reminded myself to sing my heart out in the remaining recording sessions if I wanted to be liberated from a small cramped one-room apartment with Mom. I wouldn’t wish on Mom the heart condition that kept Kayla’s grandmother confined to the first floor of the brownstone—and allowed Kayla to party on the third floor to her heart’s content—but a few floors of distance between myself and my mother would be highly welcome.
Mom turned the television off. She looked down at me from her perch on the couch, an open box of Frosted Flakes on her lap. “Don’t you ever speak to me like that again, young lady!” Tony the Tiger stared at me in reprimand as Mom ate some dry flakes from the cereal box.
And I wanted to say, Then why don’t you go out and get a job or do something instead of lazing around this apartment all day when the family breadwinner is trying to take a friggin’ nap to recover from her hangover.
Instead I said, “Sorry,” because I kinda was, but when I saw tears in her eyes, I am such a mean girl that I put the scarf over my head again so I could go back to sleep instead of making nice with Mom. I added, “Can you get me some Advil, Mom?”
I heard her turn on the portable phone and hit speed dial. She spoke into the phone like I wasn’t even there. “Your daughter is being horrible to me. . . . Where were you last night, I was calling until eleven P.M. . . . You left Charles alone in the house to go do that? . . . Your daughter stayed at Kayla’s last night—I think she was smoking!”
And I couldn’t help but almost laugh underneath the covers. I wanted to say, I wasn’t smoking but I did down a few drinks and I did consider having sex with Liam being I just discovered yesterday who’s a GR-R-EAT kisser! Now, don’t you wish I’d been smoking, Ma?
The scarf was snatched from my head. “Your father wants to have a few words with you.”
I felt bad indeed but also glad—since I had dropped out of school to pursue this career, Dad had been giving me the silent treatment, not one e-mail or letter, just polite “How are you doing” chatter when he called to check in every week, and he hadn’t come to visit us once.
“Hi, Daddy,” I said into the phone. Are you going to talk to me for real?
“Were you smoking?” he said.
“No.”
“What was going on at Kayla’s? Was there a party?”
“Yeah, but no biggie. Just a couple people, some of her dancers—they were showing me new moves and stuff.” That wasn’t a lie, right?
“I thought you promised me that on your nights off you would be studying for the G.E.D. I’m not letting you off on your promise to take that exam. You’re registered to take it in June. That leaves you two more months.”
“Okay, Daddy,” I said, but I’m like, Reality check, Pops! What am I going to do with a G.E.D. anyway? Clearly I am not college material! But this seemed to be the one issue where I could make him feel good about my future so I just lied every time and said that yes, I was studying. I hadn’t cracked a single book since escaping Devonport High after the Christmas break.
“Try to sound more convincing next time, Wonder. And be nicer to Mommy. Here, someone wants to speak with you.”
Dad passed the phone and I heard Charles go, “I don’t need to talk,” but he got on the phone anyway: “What’s up, butthole?” His voice squeaked a little. My baby brother’s voice was changing! What else had I missed?
“Same ole, frog face,” I said. “Why aren’t you in school today?”
“Spring break.”
“Oh. Then why don’t you come visit us. New York is really cool, you’ll like it.”
“What’s so cool about it?”
Honestly, I had no idea. Its original main attraction to me had been that it wasn’t Devonport. The coolest thing I had seen so far had been a private dressing room at Bergdorf Goodman and the inside of Liam’s room at Kayla’s house.
I answered, “Well, I’m here, and I can try to be cool?”
“Good luck with that, pop princess sellout,” Charles said. He was kidding—he said it in a cute way—but also he was kinda not and the comment stung. Maybe he knew, too, because he added, “Henry came by, asking for you. I don’t know why he even bothers with you, you don’t even notice him. Like, are you so busy and important now that you can’t even remember to stay in touch with your old buddy Science Project? Anyway, are you going to come home and visit us soon?”
“Doubt I’ll have time.” I almost hung up the phone on my baby brother. Like I needed him lecturing me about Science Project. I had a full-time career going on now—I barely had time to check e-mails, much less make chatty phone calls back home.
“Well, stop being mean to Mom and put her back on the phone so I can talk to her.”
I handed the phone back to Mom. She started crying again. “I miss you so much, honey,” and “A girl asked you to a dance?” and then “Of course I’m coming to see you soon.” I knew she was thinking what I had been thinking—Charles’s life was going on without us, and we weren’t there to see it.
I swallowed the two Advils that Mom had placed on my pillow while I was talking to Dad, and dozed back to sleep. When I woke up, Mom was gone. She’d left a note on the coffee table—Went out for a walk, back soon, Mom. Not “Love, Mom,” just “Mom.”
My head was feeling better. It was three in the afternoon already; I’d lost almost the whole day. Except for the hangover part, it had been nice not to work all day! I took a shower, then flopped down on the couch to watch TV. I was home to watch South Coast! How long had it been since I’d had that simple pleasure?
But then Mom barged back in. “Turn the TV off, Wonder.” Mom said to turn the TV off? Either she’d just had a lobotomy, or something was very wrong. I clicked the TV off and Mom sat down next to me. She took a container out of a paper bag and handed it to me—hot soup.
She said, “Kayla’s grandmother and I had a talk last night. They have offered for you to stay with them at Kayla’s if you’d like. This apartment is obviously getting too small for the two of us, and I feel kind of useless here anyway—you’re working round the clock, I barely see you, you don’t seem to even want me around—”
“That’s not true, Mom!” I said. I wondered why I was defending our situation—because I really did want her around, or because I felt guilty that if I was honest with myself, I knew I didn’t need her here any longer?
Mom played with a strand of my wet hair in that Mom kind of way. She said, “Thank you for saying that, sweetie. But let’s face facts—Tig take
s care of making sure you get to dance or voice class or the studio, you’ll be leaving to go on tour in less than two months, and you’ll be gone all summer. I’m just dead weight here.” Mom tugged at the elastic on her pants. “And I think I’ve gained ten more pounds just sitting around waiting for you during your classes or waiting for you to come home from the studio.”
I said, “But you could get a job here or take classes or something! You don’t need to wait around on me. You’re in New York City! Rumor is there’s lots of exciting things to do here. You should do something for you.”
“Wonder, I will stay here if you want me to, if you feel like you want me here with you. But I can see that for all intents and purposes, you’re a working adult now. You’ll thrive with or without me.” Mom was crying now, her words came out in bursts between sobs and deep breaths. “I made a mistake—I wanted you to have this career for yourself and for Lucky, but what that’s meant is that I’ve now lost two daughters. And I have a husband and another child back home—and if I’m not careful, pretty soon they’re not going to need me either.”
I nuzzled Mom’s head onto my shoulder for a good cuddle. She was shaking. I said, “Then go home. I’ll be fine. I’m sorry about earlier.” Suddenly I felt extremely old.
Her tears were getting my T-shirt wet but we held on tight. She said, “I can come back in the fall when you return from the tour—hopefully by then we can afford a bigger place. We can reassess as a family what we should do then.”
I said, “Right.” Sure we will, Mom.
And maybe my heart had just kinda broken. I did want her gone, I did want my freedom, and I did want Charles and Dad to have Mom at home.
But the feeling of emptiness in my stomach now was not from the hangover. I was truly on my own.
Twenty-five
Camp Kayla now in session. Floor one had Mrs. C’s bedroom and a large kitchen and dining area; floor two had a guest room where Kayla’s parents stayed when they visited, an office for Kayla’s assistant Jules, and a rec room with a PlayStation and a giant TV with lounge chairs that were like something for a captain on any given Enterprise; the third floor was Kayla’s master bedroom suite and the living area; and floor four held Karl’s large bedroom and two small guest bedrooms—one for Liam, one for me. Totally the Barbie Dream House for the Brooklyn Heights pop princess set.
Tig wasn’t thrilled about the new arrangement, but it did make his life easier. Kayla and I would be spending more time together rehearsing for the tour and promoting my upcoming record, so it was easier for Tig to have the two of us at the same starting point every day, and bonus, he no longer had to hear Mom’s input about whether my skirt was too short or my shirt cut too low or whether I could stay at the studio round the clock instead of having to be returned home by ten each evening.
“Very clever,” he said to Kayla when she announced our new living arrangements. We were on speaker-phone. He said, “And Wonder, I trust you to learn how to play with the big girls now?” I said, “You betcha.” My drinking days—so over. One day’s worth of hangover was enough for me.
Just two days after Kayla’s party, I had accompanied Mom to the train station. She held on to me tight as we waited for the train in the giant waiting area at Penn Station. As we stood under the big board that flipped arrival and departure times, Mom wouldn’t let go of my hand. I asked, “Are you sure you want to go?” She said, “I don’t want to go. I need to go.” She squeezed my hand wicked hard; with her free hand, she reached into her bag and gave me a bank envelope with my name on it. I could feel a credit card inside. I knew I was supposed to feel sadder than I did.
I moved into the small bedroom next to Liam’s on the top floor of the brownstone. When I say small, I mean small—there was only space for a twin bed, a nightstand, and a dresser—but I didn’t care. I only had one large suitcase worth of clothes, shoes, and a couple CDs anyway. When I’d left Devonport, I’d really left it; no mementos or yearbooks or pictures came along with me. It was Kayla who took care of making the room feel like a home for me. The nightstand had a silver-framed picture of Lucky and me on it; I was a flat-chested Speedo-wearing Buster Brown-haircut tomboy and Lucky looked like a teen angel in her modest baby blue tank top bikini that set off her wide blue eyes and long blond curls. In the picture, we were hugging each other as we stood on the beach in Devonport two summers before Lucky died. Kayla had taken the picture. Kayla had also placed a set of books on the nightstand, the Anne of Green Gables series, which Kayla and Lucky used to act out when we were kids and Kayla lived a few houses from ours.
Thankfully the new arrangement did not include me having to worry about being tortured over Liam in the next room. He was gone when I moved into Kayla’s, visiting his mom for the rest of his spring break. I was relieved; I figured by the time he came back to Kayla’s to visit his dad, I would just as likely be gone, and we would never, ever have to discuss our little incident.
I finished recording the last track for the album during a late night Saturday session. After a celebratory meal at an all-night diner with Tig and the recording engineers, I’d crawled into bed at five in the morning, grateful that it was a Sunday, which meant no voice or dance classes and, with no recording sessions left, just sleep, glorious sleep for me! Wrong. The clock radio glared 7:07 A.M. when I was awoken by this mad punk guitar and pounding drums blasting from the room next to mine, followed by Billie Joe Armstrong wailing about if his dear mother could hear him whining. D’oh, d’oh, double d’oh! Was “Welcome to Paradise” by Green Day so necessary so early on a Sunday morning, SO LOUD? I threw off my covers, got out of bed, and stomped to the bedroom next door.
Excuse me, but who does yoga poses while listening to Green Day? Apparently Liam Murphy, who apparently was not still at his mom’s, does.
He had a yoga mat laid out next to his bed and he was in Warrior I pose. He looked up at me. “Nice outfit, pop princess,” he said.
I looked down. Aw man, I had jumped out of bed so quickly and angrily I hadn’t put on a robe, so there I was standing before Liam, wearing—braless—a white form-fitting cut off T-shirt that said “SKATER BITCH” in big black letters, a joke Christmas present from Charles that had become my fave pajama top. The charming shirt was complemented by a baggy pair of green flannel boxer shorts with yellow and red Santa elves pictured on them, a rejected Christmas present from Mom to Charles. Thanks, Charles, thanks a lot.
“Ha ha,” I said. “I thought you were at your mom’s.”
“Ha ha,” he said. “I thought the same of you. I came down to see Dad for the weekend before I go back up to school tomorrow.”
“Well, would you mind keeping the music down?” I bowed, my hands in prayer pose. “Namaste, dingleberry,” I said as I walked back to my room.
“Be up in time for dinner, snookums!” Liam said as I slammed my bedroom door shut. He turned the music down, but as revenge played Celine Dion in repeat mode in Green Day’s place, so I had to suffer through Celine’s heart going on and on, and on and on, for a good fifteen minutes till I fell back asleep.
So a nice advantage of staying on the top floor of a large brownstone, with no parental units present and an overseer who was a workaholic, spending her Sunday off in a marathon of dance classes, was that I could sleep until three in the afternoon and not have one trace of guilt or Dad coming in to say, “It’s noon! Get up, lazybones!” I felt so good when I awoke late that afternoon. My recording time was finished—I could finally relax! Only one day of Liam till he went back to New Hampshire—surely I could deal.
I went into the bathroom and saw a shaving bag that must have belonged to Liam on the counter. I locked the door and unzipped the bag. Let’s see, he had shaving cream, a razor, a worn-out Kurt Vonnegut paperback novel, the mandatory freshman-at-granola-university Tom’s of Maine toothpaste, two condom packages—a-ha!—four crumpled dollar bills, a bottle of Flintstones vitamins (I tasted a Barney—very yum), a comb, and underneath all these treasures the major a-
HA—a magazine cutout picture of Kayla, LAMINATED. I knew it: He was into her.
When I went downstairs after taking a shower and getting dressed, Kayla’s parents were sitting in the living room with Liam, having an upstanding conversation about Anna Karenina and Liam’s Russian lit class in the very place where Kayla and a bevy of hot bodies had been dirty dancing at my coming-out party little more than a week earlier. I had on normal girl clothes—blue jeans and a plain white T-shirt; no slutty pop princess getup, no makeup. Liam gave me a look like, Who knew?
Kayla’s parents got up to give me a hug and we ran through the “Look who’s all grown up” routine. They didn’t ask anything about my beckoning singing career. “How nice that you’re staying with Kayla for a while” was all Kayla’s mom said. “She always wanted a little sister.”
Kayla had total Birkenparents. They wanted nothing to do with the Mercedes convertible Kayla had given them as a gift—they had donated it to Planned Parenthood. Parked in front of Kayla’s brownstone was her parents’ prehistoric fuel-efficient Honda Civic with the Ralph Nader and UC-Berkeley bumper stickers. They had driven all the way from Boston to Manhattan to attend a symposium on Eastern religion where all kinds of gurus with multisyllabic names had been speaking over the weekend.
Liam said, “I can’t believe you got to hear the rimpoche give a teaching. That is so cool.”
Rimpo-what?
Kayla’s mom said, “Oh Liam, next time you’ll have to come. He was so empowering.” She grabbed Liam’s hand in a soul brother shake.
Kayla’s dad wanted to know, how had Liam’s class on religion and human rights gone last semester?