Three Girls and their Brother

Anyway, Herb glances at Mom, and to my wild relief he actually does shake her hand; Herb seems to have had some sort of marginal training in niceties at some point in his life. And then he glances at the girls—really, he’s barely interested in any of this—and then he looks back at me, and says, “So, all of them? I’m doing all of them?”

Stu just about has a heart attack. “No no no no no, no no,” he says, casually desperate at the thought. “Just the girls. Philip’s just here for moral support, aren’t you, Philip?” I was staggered that he actually knew my name. Which just goes to show you, you should never underestimate a screaming queen who is completely self-absorbed: They pay attention more than you think.

La Aura shoves me a little bit, reminding me that I’m supposed to actually say something when someone asks me a question. “Sure,” I mumble. Really, I’m useless in a crunch, I completely even forget how to talk. So I’m sort of nodding like a fool, and mumbling, and Herb is just descending on me and La Aura, looking at the two of us.

“No, this is good,” he announces, studying me. “Three sisters and their brother, you see them, the unit, the inherent contradictions, yes? Yes, Philip?” He’s staring at me, with his photographer’s eyes, I have no idea what he’s seeing, but it does not seem to be me. La Aura shoves me again. “Sure,” I say.

Okay. I’m just doing the best I can here. I didn’t ask this guy to look at me, and if you want my opinion, the only reason he noticed me at all was because La Aura had done a pretty good job cutting my hair and suddenly there was something to look at—mainly, a decent haircut. I didn’t go asking to be in that picture.

But the next thing I know, Herb has his arm around me—really, in a kindly way, Herb is one of those people who gets you to do things because he makes you feel important and charming, so you’re lost in this haze of warm fuzzy feelings and not really paying attention to what you’re doing, you’re just going along. His arm is around me, he’s chatting to me in this low voice and I’m just walking with him, across the room and toward the drapes and the windows and the klieg lights. I can’t really hear much. He turns me, stands me by a window. There’s a kind of rustling and hum going on now, but I can’t see anything, as all those lights are on me, and everything behind them disappears. You really can see the dust motes in these moments, that’s one thing I remember. And then the next thing I remember is Amelia, and Polly and Daria, moving around me like angels. Really, they all looked so pretty and I’m just a mess—the only thing any of those style dudes did to me was ignore me and let La Aura cut my hair, so I’m kind of standing there in blue jeans and a T-shirt and this big old sloppy other shirt on top of that. Daria meanwhile is glowing, practically, she’s in this shimmery sea-green snakeskin-like evening gown, and her hair is piled on her head—really she didn’t look like Audrey Hepburn, she looked more like Lady Macbeth, but a very glamorous version of Lady Macbeth, there was no question about that. And then Polly is in this incredible little number, the smallest dress I think I have ever seen in my life, pale green, strapless, with black beads all over the joint, Stu apparently having decided that green was the theme but there was no point being ruthless about it. Her hair is spiky, a look I don’t tend to respond to, but now that I know that the nice hairdresser La Aura is behind all this I decide it’s sheer genius. I mean, Polly looked great, no doubt about it. Sort of like a very tasteful punk rocker. Then there’s Amelia, hopping around like a little bird. Blue jeans, no shoes or socks, green toenails, which looked strangely beguiling, and some sort of tie-dyed green T-shirt. She really looked so simple, and so great, and so herself. So as it turns out, Stu isn’t so stupid after all.

Except there I am, in the middle of this meticulously designed land of green dresses and red hair and great-looking girls. There I am, a big boring teenage boy, nothing matches, poor Stu hasn’t had half a second to figure out how to fit me into his picture, when Herb starts snapping away, I mean that Herb got right to the point. Stu is dodging around behind him, trying to get a word in edgewise, you can hear him saying, “Herb, maybe if I had just a minute … Herb, listen, we had no idea you’d be interested in the brother … Herb, really … Herb …” But Herb is just clicking wildly, one camera then another, he had like six draped around his neck, he looked like some mythical beast with too many eyes growing out of his chest. I swear, after all that picking and changing minds, and nothing seeming to happen for hours, all of a sudden everything was happening at lightning speed and no one was thinking about anything at all. I don’t remember much of this part, to be frank, maybe that’s why it seems that way in retrospect. I was so surprised to be suddenly tossed into the middle of the action, I think I may have been in a bit of a daze. So that’s really what I remember. Stu, Herb, me feeling like a dweeb, Amelia laughing; she thought it was funny that I was suddenly part of the whole mess. Somebody put some music on, I guess, I don’t remember if it was on before and they just turned it up, but all of a sudden Elvis Presley was blasting, loud. Mom kept yelling something from the sidelines, who knows what. Daria and Polly sort of kept turning around, following Herb, I think, like flowers turning toward the sun anytime he moved. That’s really all I remember.

And then it was over. Not completely over, just over for me. Herb ran out of memory in half his cameras at the exact same moment he ran out of film in the other half, so he had to take a break and have some underling reload them. The music snaps off, people start to suck on water bottles, hair and makeup rush in to do a dust-up on the girls. So while this is going on, Stu takes Herb aside and whispers to him, respectful, but urgent and firm, and while Herb doesn’t really seem to say anything in response, he does turn and look at me, with those photographer eyes again, and then he turns back to listen, while Stu keeps talking. Stu is talking and talking and talking. And then, after a minute, Herb shrugs, nods, he doesn’t care, he sort of looks over, casual, and says, “Okay, the brother, we don’t need you, let’s do some with just the girls.” Just like that, like I was just a stupid prop all along anyway. Which in fact I was.

I didn’t care. Mostly I was relieved that it was over. The whole time it was going on—which was longer than I thought; afterwards I found out my part of the shoot went on for half an hour—I felt so self-conscious I just wanted to crawl into a hole and I couldn’t, obviously, as everybody was staring at me. Well, they weren’t looking at me, really; they were looking at Polly and Daria and Amelia, when they weren’t looking at Stu and wondering if he was going to have heart failure. So I mostly spent the whole time looking at the ground and stuff. It was just, near the end, I more or less got in the swing of things. Amelia had decided it was just a big joke anyway, and so she’s kind of doing this little dance with me, and I decide what the hell, and I start to dance back, so we’re starting to have some fun finally. We were doing these old corny dances from the fifties, not that we know what they even look like. But we’re just pretending to be big old hipsters. And then Polly I think was getting bored, or at least she got tired of competing with Daria for the front and center spot, so she started to dance with us, too. So the three of us were doing these ridiculous dances, and Daria was staring at us like we were just a bunch of juvenile delinquents, but also like some part of her actually finds us secretly amusing. So for maybe two minutes or something all of a sudden we were just ourselves again, not the selves we are when we’re torturing each other, but the ones who know how to have fun.

So of course that would be when old Herb has to stop and reload. That’s just the way of the universe, it seems like, sometimes. You take so long to figure things out and, just when you get there, when you really figure something out that’s maybe kind of good, they tell you you’re out of time. I don’t know why that is, but it does seem that way. Like most of your life, you sit around all tense, going, I know life is supposed to feel better than this, how do I figure out how to feel better? And everybody’s got opinions about how to feel better—get drunk, go to the movies, read a comic book or a porno magazine, watch TV, whatever. And so you do all that, and it doesn’t work, but you’re trying, you know, everybody gets points for trying. And then something happens and it just clicks; one day you’re lying under a tree or something and it suddenly feels like you almost know it, how to be yourself, and then you do know it, for a second, and then something else happens, a catastrophe, they blow up the World Trade Center or something. Someone dies. You lose everything. And then you think, why didn’t I know how to feel happy and content and at home in my life when I had everything I ever needed? How come as soon as I knew it, it all went away?

Look, I’m not trying to say that getting kicked out of the picture was the equivalent of a big catastrophe for me. I just mean, I wish I had figured out how to enjoy the whole thing a little sooner. Because when me and Amelia and Polly started dancing, at the end? That was fun, it really was.

CHAPTER TWO

In between the picture-taking event and the picture coming out in seven zillion magazines and ruining everyone’s lives event, there was a shred of time when our lives almost went back to normal. For the next six weeks we actually went back to school and took up familiar activities, such as homework and piano lessons and breakfast. But none of it was the same anymore, already. Somehow the word was out, that fast, that Polly and Daria and Amelia were the new It Girls. I wondered, a lot, at the time, how can you be the new It Girls, if nobody’s heard of you and you live in Brooklyn, and you’re not in magazines? I mean, none of it had happened, yet; the picture wasn’t out. But the news was already out, that this thing that hadn’t happened yet was happening.

It was like, Polly was still going to school all the time, but she didn’t even pretend to do the work anymore. Daria’s modeling career, which she had been vaguely pursuing, started to heat up, in a preparatory way. The big-shot agent who kept almost signing her actually sent contracts over to the house and called, for once, instead of just returning. Which was a total turnaround; for complete ages this agent, Collette Something, had been sitting on the fence because, while it is undeniable that Daria is a knockout, the fact is that she “started late,” because eighteen is like sixty, in modeling years. But now that the New Yorker was going to put Daria on the map, the concern about how ancient she was evaporated, and Collette called to say the FedEx guy was bringing the contracts by and oh, yes—would Polly and Amelia like to come in as well and take a meeting?

So then that made Daria completely insane and not want to sign with Collette, and then Collette kept calling, and faxing over information about bookings she might be able to get for Daria, if Daria were actually one of her clients. Which made Daria mad, as she suddenly decided she wanted to be an actress, and not just a model, and Collette’s bookings were beneath her. Mom meanwhile was fielding other offers from other agents who heard through the grapevine that the shoot was terrific, and could all three girls come in for a meeting, would that be possible? Polly and Mom and Daria got into huge arguments about the whole situation, as Polly, at the ripe old age of seventeen, didn’t want to find herself in Daria’s boat, being told she’s too old to start a modeling-slash-acting career because she waited until she was eighteen. So she was ready to move. Daria now wanted to wait, although this might have been because she resented the fact that Polly was suddenly part of her career picture. Mom was endlessly moaning to people on the phone about how she wanted to “protect” her girls, and although I think she believed it, it was also clearly an excuse to buy enough time to get Polly and Daria on the same page because they needed to be behaving as if they were best friends when they finally did take all these spectacular meetings. I watched a lot of Star Trek reruns during these endless debates. Amelia took up a sudden interest in the piano.

Now, this piano thing was not completely out of the blue. She’s taken lessons since she was five and had to stand up so she could reach the keyboard, and she’s always been one of those kids who have talent but so what? You’re impressed because they’re pretty good, considering how little they are and all, but other than that it’s sort of like a dog doing tricks on late-night television. Besides which, Amelia has a pretty reckless relationship with the whole idea of discipline so she doesn ‘t exactly practice with anything resembling regularity. But now that everyone in the house had become obsessed with the idea of agents, and I was drowning myself in Star Trek, Amelia couldn’t get enough of the piano. Which was vaguely annoying; you try watching Star Trek with someone pounding Beethoven in the room next door. But no one said anything, least of all me. We were all just generally unnerved as hell anyway, and Beethoven sort of articulates that in a very grand way, if you think about it. So she’s practicing like a demon, and then she has this piano recital, and nobody goes except me.

Nobody went, except me. Which is, I think, another sign of how odd things were already. When your fifteen-year-old brother is the only one in your family who goes to your stupid piano recital? Something is definitely off, in spite of the fact that I probably was the only one who ever enjoyed those things anyway. I couldn’t ever admit it, of course, but I always thought those recitals were sort of corny and great: All these little kids playing Bach or the Beatles just terribly—there’s only one or two of them who are ever any good, but the whole audience always cheers like lunatics, no matter how bad the kid is. And then afterwards everyone goes down into the basement of the school and the kids pig out on chocolate-chip cookies and cans of soda pop, then run around like maniacs and then after a while six or seven of the littlest kids crash and melt down and have to be taken home. It’s strangely pleasant. But I have to say, even though Mom and Polly and Daria never appreciated the whole thing the way I did, they always showed up. Now, in preparation for everything changing, apparently, I was the only one there. And Amelia was good; she had practiced that Beethoven within an inch of its life, and it was loud and fast, so she had to really attack the keyboard to get it out, and she walloped it. Everybody cheered like lunatics when she finished, and she was all flushed and laughing when she took her bow. She didn’t seem to care that nobody else in the family came; she mostly was just pleased that she had played so well. Her piano teacher, this skinny guy named Ben who had a huge crush on her, kept congratulating her and telling everybody how proud he was. And then I went up and gave her a big hug, even though I am her older brother, and she laughed some more.

So we walk home, and she’s sort of humming the middle part of the Beethoven thing, and it’s nice out, a little drizzly, but not cold at all, just springlike, so that the rain feels good instead of annoying.

“I never played that good in my life,” she told me.

“No, come on,” I said. “You play like that at home all the time. I’m about to blow my brains out, I hear Beethoven in my sleep.”

Amelia laughed at this, even though it was rather lame. She was really jazzed. “I was good, I was really good,” she said, mostly to herself. Then she kind of looked at me. “Dad says if I’m really good he’ll get me into LaGuardia.”

Okay. This piece of information just about knocked me out; I almost collapsed right there on the sidewalk. “Oh?” I say, completely casual. “When did you talk to Dad?”

She is oh-so-casual herself. “I don’t know. On the phone a couple times. He said he was going to try and make the recital but he might be in Brazil, so it’s no big deal he’s not here. I mean,’ cause he’s in Brazil.”

“Oh yeah, I think I remember hearing about that.” Ha ha, as if anyone ever knows where my father is.

“So he couldn’t make it, but you were there. Not that, you don’t have to tell him how good I’m getting or anything, I can have Ben do that.” She is still being oh-so-casual, but I’m starting to get the drift of her plan here. As if I don’t know when I’m being played by my own sister. “But will you, though? You will, right?”

“What, tell Dad you were good at the Garfield Lincoln piano recital? Sure. I’ll tell him whatever you want. If I can find him, when he comes back from Brazil.”

She pretends not to hear the utter disbelief and rampant sarcasm which has entered my tone here, and continues to blather on. “Thanks, Philip,’ cause you know it’s really important to me. Thanks.”

I’m still playing it cool with her, waiting to see how far she’s going to try and push this. “Well, because, like, I mean—since when did you decide you wanted to go to LaGuardia?”

“Well, Ben says I’m pretty good, and he said that LaGuardia, you know it’s not Julliard but it is the best high school for the performing arts and he thinks that my range is not just classical anyway, and I could keep up my other studies and still focus on the piano and I just started thinking about it and then I just wanted to play the piano all the time.”

This is starting to strike me as obvious and pathetic. For all her talents, Amelia is absolutely the worst liar on the planet. I mean, she simply stinks at it. You have to stop yourself from laughing, that’s how bad it is.

“So, since you’ve been talking to Dad so much, did you tell him about all this shit that’s been going on with Polly and Daria and the New Yorker? Did you tell him about that?”

“He knows about it.”

“So you told him.”

“Everybody knows about it, Philip.” She’s starting to sound annoyed with me, which is a relief, because at least she’s not putting on this weird I-Want-To-Be-A-Pianist Act anymore. “Where have you been?”

“Well, I guess I’ve been over here on the Planet of Total Morons; someplace you apparently own property,” I tell her.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Gee, I wonder.”

We walk on, in silence, getting rained on. The cool drippy rain is starting to get annoying, such a surprise.

“I don’t care what you think. I’m going to LaGuardia,” Amelia announces. “Ben thinks I’m really good, and Dad can get me in.”

“Dad would do anything to mess with Mom’s big plans to turn all three of you into beauty queens,” I announce. “And Ben has a boner for you. And you can’t decide you’re going to be a concert pianist when you’re fourteen. You have to have some lunatic parent decide you’re a genius when you’re six or something, and then they torture you to death making you practice eighteen hours a day until you’re Mozart, and then maybe you get into the most famous school for the performing arts in America. You’re going to LaGuardia. Give me a break.”

“That is not how it works.”

“You know it is.”

“Ben says—”

“And you called Dad? Are you insane?”

“I love the piano. I’m really good at it. I’m going to LaGuardia.”

“Aside from the fact that that’s impossible, Mom won’t let you. If she finds out that Dad had anything to do with it, she’ll put a stop to it before you’ve made it to the subway station.”

“She won’t be able to.”

“Dad can’t get you into LaGuardia.”

“Yes he can, he knows the chairman of the board or something.”

“So what?”