Three Girls and their Brother

“That’s how things are done in New York.”

“You’ve gone insane.”

“You just said I was good. I’m good on the piano. Ben thinks I’m really good.”

“Ben wants to—”

“Could you not say that again, huh? I mean I found it really offensive the first time.”

“I don’t care if it’s offensive or not, it’s true.”

“Since when do you know everything?”

“Yeah, okay, maybe I don’t know everything, but I do know something about guys who want to bone your sister, and I also know you can’t suddenly decide you’re going to be a concert pianist just because you played the first movement of the Pathétique Sonata pretty good one day in high school.”

“I’m going to LaGuardia.”

“You’re full of shit.”

I don’t know why I got so mad all of a sudden. I just did. And all the feeling just swell about what a good time we had at that stupid recital got rained right out of us. By the time we got home, we were both soaking wet and mad as hell and of course no one even bothered to ask Amelia how it went.

So the next morning I’m feeling rather hopelessly lousy, and I am in no mood to hear about fingernail polish and agents and modeling careers and lipstick shades at the breakfast table. I particularly am in no mood to hear about my idiot father who has of course run off to Brazil for who knows what reason. My head hurts and I’m tired and no one will look at me or even acknowledge that I’m sitting there eating a two-year-old lemon Zone bar, which just isn’t enough—there’s never enough food around our house because, in spite of the fact that all my sisters plus my mother are pretty much rail-thin, they’re always afraid they’re getting fat—and I am frankly just starving to death. So I’m thinking about how hungry I am, and why isn’t there ever more food in our house, and I’m feeling a little light-headed and not fully paying attention, and then breakfast proceeds to go south, at approximately eighty miles per hour.

“My piano recital went great last night, in case anyone is interested,” Amelia announces. It all seems innocuous enough to start; of course it does, it always does.

“That’s terrific, sweetheart,” says Mom, while she whips up some kind of inedible shake full of flax and ice cubes.

“Good for you, honey.” Polly is all warm and fuzzy, in a completely self-absorbed way. “That’s sensational.”

“Great,” says Daria, pouring herself a glass of water. Apparently she has decided to see if she can live on water; I don’t think I’ve seen her eat any actual food since their big-deal photo shoot.

“I mean, I never played that good in my life. Or at least, that’s what I thought, but then Ben said I’ve been playing really well for a while and that if I just keep practicing the way I have been, I could really be good.” This is an approximation, obviously, of the conversation, but the tone is what I’m going for here. I mean, the whole thing sounded completely surreal to me, kind of way too bright and people kept saying things like “great” and “terrific” and “really really good,” but it was hard to keep straight what was so good, like the thing everyone was talking about was just somewhere else, or maybe didn’t even exist at all.

“Philip said I was great,” Amelia continues. I roll my eyes at this, as it is strictly true but nowhere near the whole truth, but no one is actually all that interested in having me leap into this noteworthy conversation. Least of all Amelia, who is rolling along now, in her great and fantastic and really really good universe. Which leaves me sitting there, waiting like a dolt for the punch line. “Ben thinks I should maybe even be training.”

“Training?” Mom says, her voice going up a little too high. My mother is not necessarily bright, but she is not necessarily stupid, either. She’s starting to get wind that this little story about what a swell time everyone had at the piano recital isn’t going to end well, as far as she’s concerned.

Daria pours herself another glass of water. “What do you mean, training?” she asks. She is very cool. Polly is listening, also cool, while she scrapes the thinnest layer of tofutti imaginable along the inside of a hollowed-out bagel. No kidding, I would eat the bagels, except our housekeeper Lucinda has orders to scrape the insides out of them before I can even get a shot at one. Then she freezes them, these little skins of bagels, so that any time someone wants a damn bagel that’s all that’s available to you, frozen bagel skins.

So everybody’s sitting around, hovering around the word “training,” instinctively knowing that there’s another shoe going to drop around whatever the word “training” is actually going to mean.

“Yeah,” says Amelia. “Like for now I think he’s just talking about maybe doing another lesson a week, but more practicing, you know, and then maybe in six months or something I’d be ready to audition for someplace really good.”

The train wreck is picking up speed.

“Is that what you want to do, sweetheart?” says Mom. Her voice is so phony now you could put her on television.

“Yeah, I do. I really, I do.” Amelia is getting good and firm.I think this plan of hers is a total crock but I also admire its strange daring. “I don’t have to practice at home all the time, ’cause I know that probably could get really annoying—”

“Not at all,” says Mom, tilting her head, poised.

“… Ben says I can use one of the rehearsal pianos at school, he’ll help me with that—”

“I think maybe I should have a talk with Ben before we let this plan get finalized, sweetie,” Mom coos.

“It’s just that if I’m really going to take this seriously, because he seriously thinks—”

“I’ll call Ben and find out what he thinks, honey,” says Mom. Polly and Daria are just watching now.

“Yeah, but—”

“I’m so excited for you, sweetheart! The recital must’ve really gone well. I’m so sorry I missed it.”

“You got to talk to Ben.”

“I will. Oh, and I’ve left a message with Mrs Virtudes about picking you up at two today. The appointment with Collette isn’t until four, but I don’t know what traffic is going to be like, the bridges are always such a mess, and I think she’s enough of a pain, we don’t want to start off on the wrong foot.”

Amelia looks at the table. Polly licks her fingers, as if there’s a shred of spare tofutti somewhere to be found. Daria sips her water. My stupid Zone bar tastes like straw.

“I can’t go,” says Amelia. “Ben and I have to talk about my rehearsal schedule.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. You just had a recital last night. You can take one day off from practicing, darling. You’ve been practicing so much lately the rest of us can hardly think without hearing da, da, daaaah …” Mom does her little musical bells laugh as a finish to this clever speech.

“I can’t go, Mom. I can’t go,” Amelia says.

“She has to go,” Daria tells Mom. She is not happy with any of this.

“Why do I have to go?”

“Collette wants to meet all three of you.”

“I don’t want to be a model. I’m a little kid,” Amelia points out.

“I think you should leave that to her to decide,” Mom smiles.

“Ben wants to meet with me. How am I going to—”

“Jesus.” Daria is really disgusted now, and making no attempt to hide it. Which pisses Amelia off.

“What do you care?” she asks. “I’m not saying you can’t go off and be some kind of idiot model. I’m just saying, I don’t want to do it, and I especially don’t want to do it today. I have something else to do today.”

“What, be a pianist?” Polly is laughing at this, and she always has that attitude thing going, which doesn’t help, when she laughs. It makes her look like she’s sneering, which isn’t necessarily what she means. Sometimes it is what she means, it’s just hard to tell, all the time. And now she’s got the spiky hair thing going too, from the shoot, so she’s really got attitude now. Which means Amelia is starting to bristle.

“Fuck you,” she says. “I’m not doing it.”

Mom jumps up, shocked, shocked to hear such language come out of the mouth of her youngest daughter.

“That is quite enough, young lady,” she says. “I won’t have that kind of language in this house.”