This Is Not the Jess Show

by Anna Carey

  I sat up, trying to seem moved, but it was all so exhausting. I just nodded and tried to stay focused on him.

  “She’s going to be okay,” my mom said, to no one in particular.

  “Why did it take me so long to realize it?” he sputtered. “Why did it take this to know? I’ve just been pulling back, trying to protect myself. Trying not…to feel anything. And now it’s too late. Sara might never know how much I love her. I didn’t say it enough, I never…”

  My mom rested her forehead against his. She let herself cry, the tears coming so fast she didn’t bother to wipe them away.

  “It’s okay,” I said, giving him two small pats on the back. “It’s going to be okay.”

  I was trying so hard to stay present, to seem engaged, that I didn’t see Lydia coming across the parking lot until the automatic doors slid back with a whoosh. She held her hair away from her face with one hand, gripping her head like she was in pain.

  “I just listened to my messages,” she said. “I got here as fast as I could.”

  My mom stood and hugged her, and I let Lydia kiss my forehead and pull me tight to her chest. We’d sometimes joked that she looked like Sara’s cousin (her sophisticated, supermodel cousin, Lydia had specified) but now it was all I could see. They had the same thick, dark brows and the same nose. Sara had someone else’s eyes and mouth, but they were related. It was so obvious now that they were related.

  “What did they say?” she asked. “What happened?”

  “Jess was in the room with her and the machines started going off,” my mom said.

  “And then the doctors and nurses came in and told me I had to leave,” I explained.

  Lydia pulled off her scarf and set it down on the chair. She yanked her arms out of her coat and balled it up, tossing that down too, her striped sweater and jeans a stark contrast to the scrubs she normally wore. Then she went straight to the nurses’ station and peered over the counter. She rapped her knuckles against it as she looked down the hall.

  “Does anyone want to tell us what the hell is going on?” she called out. “Hello?”

  I wondered what would happen once Sara was officially off the show. If Lydia—or whatever her real name was—was Sara’s mother, it was only a matter of time before she left, too. How long would it take before they were both out of our lives forever?

  It was harder to be angry with Lydia. I’d always liked her. Maybe I even loved her—at least I’d told her I did. She’d always been easier to talk to than my mom, and she didn’t seem personally offended by my inability to style my hair or pull together dynamic outfits. She’d brought Sara into the show when she was just a baby, and I didn’t understand why, but part of me wanted to. There was no way to talk to her now, though, not with my parents around. It all felt too risky.

  My dad stood, and when I looked at his profile, I remembered being ten and him coming home one night with two black eyes and a splint over his nose. They said he’d gotten clocked in the face at his baseball game. Four weeks later his nose was smaller, straighter, and missing the bump that had always been on the bridge. I’d told myself that was normal.

  “She’s so sick,” he said, his voice low, breaking.

  “But she was stable,” Lydia said, turning toward him. “Just this morning she was stable.”

  “I wasn’t there for her,” my dad repeated. “I haven’t been there and I should have. Now it’s too late.”

  He stepped forward and they hugged, and he began weeping, his back heaving with each choked breath. My mom clutched my hands and watched like it was an Oprah-level breakthrough. It occurred to me that this had probably been orchestrated for the show, that this was a big scene for my dad, who barely spoke more than three sentences at a time. I scanned the hall, wondering if the lines had been written by someone, or if he was just making it up as he went. Who were the producers Tyler had talked about? Was it one of the nurses? Carol Pembroke, our next-door neighbor?

  I tried to fix my expression into something normal. I don’t know how much time had passed before the doctor appeared at the end of the hallway and pulled down her mask. DR. CHUNG was embroidered in loopy script on the pocket of her white coat. She wore a paper operating cap, even though it didn’t make sense that they’d operate on Sara. I knew what she was about to say before she even said it.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said. “We did everything we could, but it wasn’t enough. She’s gone.”

  * * *

  When we finally left the hospital the sun was coming up. The streets were empty, and as my dad took each turn, passing rows and rows of dark windows, I’d never felt more alone. Sara hadn’t died, but it didn’t matter—she was gone. Either way, I’d lost her.

  “It must be protocol,” my mom said, staring straight ahead. “We have to trust the doctors.”

  “But I wanted to see her.” I’d said it so many times in the hours that had passed between then and now. If I could’ve had just a few more minutes with her, we might’ve been able to communicate those last important details. She might’ve been able to tell me just a little more.

  I was stuck here, trapped inside the set, and I didn’t even know her real name. I had no idea if she was sad to leave the show, or if she’d hated it these past few years, pretending to be someone she wasn’t. Was she as angry at Lydia as I was with my mom? Where was she going now that she was leaving? What was beyond the set?

  She’d lied to me about her sickness. She’d lied about the show. They piled up, a thousand daily betrayals, and still…some things were impossible to fake. When Sara was little, right after Lydia had stopped living with us, she’d wake up in the middle of the night. It was my bed she’d crawl into. She’d tell me about whatever nightmare she’d had (usually involving Freddy Krueger) and I would rub her back until she fell asleep again. I’d been the one who’d taught her how to ride her bike. I’d run behind her, gripping the seat, and hadn’t let go until she screamed for me to. Then she’d circled me, laughing. She’d been so proud of herself.

  “I still can’t believe she’s gone,” my dad said.

  He’d sat and meticulously filled out all the paperwork. Then he’d called the one funeral home in town and started planning the service.

  “You can talk to us,” my mom said. “I don’t want you bottling it all up.”

  It took me a minute to realize she was speaking to me—I hadn’t said much since the doctor told us what had happened. An infection, she’d said. It was resistant to the antibiotics. It felt safer to stay silent, to act like the last two days had sent me somewhere else, that I was numb. But if I didn’t give them some kind of reaction soon, they’d suspect something was off.

  “It’s so surreal,” I said. “It all happened so quickly.”

  My dad pulled into the driveway and we sat there for a long while, listening to the birds waking up. My mom let her chin fall and the tears came faster. I tried to think of sad things—Fuller in some stranger’s house, without me to help him get up on the bed. Sara leaving the set and never coming back. Losing any chance at a carefree, normal life. There’d be no more lazy beach days at the lake, no sticking my head out of Kristen’s sunroof as she did donuts in the Blockbuster parking lot. No crushing on anyone, ever, because it couldn’t be trusted. No Spring Formal. No prom.

  I thought through all of it, willing myself to cry, but I couldn’t. Maybe I’d gotten too good at Not Crying. Or maybe I was just too angry.

  What I really wanted was to rage at them, to tell them what liars and hypocrites they were, how when I tried to feel anything for them I couldn’t. No sympathy, no love. It was physically uncomfortable when my mom touched me, her hands like fire against my skin. I hated my dad for sleepwalking through the past five years, as though there weren’t any repercussions to what was happening. I wanted to be free of both of them.

  I just needed to get away, as far away as I could.

/>   “We’re going to get through this.” My dad rested a meaty palm on my mom’s shoulder, then turned back to look at me. “We’re still a family. We’re a strong family.”

  “My Sara,” my mom said softly. “My baby.”

  We sat there listening to each of her choked breaths.

  Next door, Carol Pembroke stood in her kitchen making eggs. She was in her bathrobe and foam curlers. Sara always said Carol looked like Weird Al Yankovic’s stunt double, and once I saw it I was never able to unsee it.

  “I miss her already,” I finally said.

  That was the sentence that broke me, because it was the truth of the truth. The only real thing. The back of my throat tightened and then my eyes were full and for the first time in a long time I thought I might actually cry, exposed for every camera to see. I pushed my way out of the car and ran inside.

  “Jessica! Jessica, wait!” my dad called up the stairs after me. My mom trailed in behind him, her face swollen and red. She barely looked up.

  “I just need some privacy,” I said, before locking myself in my room. But there were cameras everywhere, anywhere. I knew that now. They could be hidden in the mirror above my dresser or in the back of my TV, in the light above my bed or behind the Romeo + Juliet poster on my wall.

  I threw myself down on the bed and pulled the covers over my face. The exhaustion of the past twelve hours made my head swim, and now I couldn’t stop crying, even if I wanted to. I needed to get out of this place, no matter how impossible it seemed.

  I had to at least try.

  20

  I woke up in my outfit from the night before. At some point I must’ve tugged off my shoes and socks and kicked the blankets into a ball by my feet. The sun streamed in through the curtains, bright and blinding. It had to be past noon.

  When I went out into the hall Sara’s bedroom door was closed. I heard my parents’ voices beyond it. It wasn’t until I pushed inside that I realized what was happening.

  Lydia and my mom were sorting Sara’s clothes into piles, and Lydia had a duffel bag where she occasionally tucked a sweater or a pair of jeans. My dad knelt over a drawer filled with Sara’s junk—old diaries, half-full bottles of GAP perfume, and a bunch of Baby-Sitters Club dolls she’d never given away, though she’d promised them to her friend Alison’s little sister. He had the whole thing out, on the floor, leaving a gaping hole in the top of the dresser.

  My mom’s fingers moved methodically through a pair of Sara’s jeans. They dipped into the front pockets before going to the back, then pinched the bottom hems as if something might be sewn inside them. She only stopped when she noticed me standing in the doorway, watching her. She quickly grabbed one of Sara’s favorite sweatshirts, a blue hoodie from her friend Laurie’s bat mitzvah, and pressed it to her face.

  “It still smells like her,” she said, taking a deep, lingering breath. “I think I’ll keep this one.”

  “Why are you going through her things?” I asked.

  Because you have to make sure Sara hasn’t left anything behind, I thought. That she hasn’t accidentally written something in one of those diaries that reveals the show or brought something into the set that she shouldn’t have.

  “I feel closer to her here,” my dad said, holding up one of her diaries. “I don’t know what to do with half this stuff, though. Part of me wants to read these, just to see her handwriting again. See what she was thinking. Part of me knows I shouldn’t.”

  “Here, let me help…” I reached for the second drawer in the dresser, about to pull it out, when my dad covered my hand with his.

  “No, Jess, you rest,” he said. He was still in his pajama pants, a red plaid pair we gave him for his birthday last year. “We’ll do this alone.”

  Alone. Without you. The word stung, even if he hadn’t meant it to.

  “I’m going to run some of this back to the hospital. Maybe drop that bag at Goodwill,” Lydia said, unplugging one of the machines from the wall. It had this accordion-like contraption inside it, and I’d always thought it looked a little cartoonish, the plastic a bright blue and yellow. She grabbed the blood pressure cuff and the thermometer off the dresser. “The agency wants to place me again, but I’m not ready for that. I’m going to take some time off after the funeral. I could use some space to wrap my head around everything…” She trailed off, her gaze meeting mine. She crossed her arms tight across her chest and there was something in her expression that I couldn’t quite place. Did she feel sorry for me? Did she regret it, even a little, that they were putting me through this?

  “You took such good care of her,” my mom said. “Such good care. We’ll never be able to repay you, Lydia.”

  I walked over to Sara’s stereo. My giant CD case was sitting beside it. Sara had loved flipping through the heavy sleeves, sometimes stopping to pull out a lyric book and read it, other times switching whatever music she was listening to. Jagged Little Pill was still in the stereo.

  “Can I at least take my CDs back?” I asked. “We used to listen to them together.”

  My dad turned to my mom, waiting for her to answer. She took a deep breath before she spoke. “I guess that’s okay, sure. You keep those.”

  I pulled the Alanis CD out of the stereo and flipped through the giant binder, looking for the lyric book that matched it. I’d organized everything in alphabetical order, according to the band or musician’s name, and I always put the CD right beside the lyric book. But when I got to the place where the Jagged Little Pill book should have been, it wasn’t there. In its spot was one of Sara’s Lisa Frank stickers—a purple kitten sitting on a rainbow heart.

  “Everything all right?” my dad asked.

  My sister died but she’s not actually dead, I wanted to say. And instead of giving a shit that you’ve been lying to me for my whole life, and it’s all culminated in this most despicable lie, which would’ve been enough to warrant twenty years of therapy, you’re still acting out this narrative of the grieving father. You’re still worried I’m going to notice something’s off. That I might discover what a complete and utter monster you are.

  “Yeah.” I shoved the CD in and closed the binder. “Just had to find the right spot.”

  “I keep thinking she’s going to be back any minute,” my mom said. “That she’s going to walk in that door and be annoyed. Why are you going through my stuff?”

  Her Sara impression was spot-on.

  “She loved watching the birds,” my dad said, pointing to the window facing the Pembrokes’ house. “She was my sweet bird, she was my—”

  He lowered his head, hiding his face from view. His back shook and he kept muttering “sweet bird, sweet bird.” He was probably wondering if it seemed believable, if he was angled right to give the cameras a good shot.

  Neither one of them cared what I was thinking or feeling, or the fact that to me, Sara wasn’t just another actor on the show. She was never coming back. This wasn’t just another plot twist, her death was real. This was my life.

  Lydia tucked one of Sara’s nicer sweaters into the duffel bag. I wondered if they’d discussed it before, what Sara wanted to take with her and what she would leave, or if Lydia was just choosing the best items out of her wardrobe. Goodwill? I wanted to say. You sure about that?

  “The next week is going to be impossible.” Lydia folded up another sweater.

  “Impossible,” my mom repeated.

  They both turned to me, like they were hoping I’d add something meaningful to the conversation, but I just stood there, hugging the CD book to my chest.

  “Impossible,” I added, hoping that would suffice.

  “You can talk to us, Jess,” my mom said. “Really.”

  She put her hand over her heart as she said it. Her chin did this weird puckered thing, like she was dangerously close to breaking into sobs. It was still all about the manipulation, about getting me to s
ay and do something for the cameras. She started crying and I felt nothing for her, not even the slightest pull of empathy.

  “I know,” I said. “It’s just a lot. I think I’m going to go lie down.”

  Lydia gave a small nod. My dad was still staring out the window, presumably at the birds, while my mom turned back to the closet and pulled out another pile of clothes.

  When I got to my room I set the CDs on my dresser and curled up beneath the floral comforter, pulling the edge of it up so it covered my entire head. Sunlight streamed through the fabric and I could see everything inside. The way the stuffing clumped together in places, or how some stitching was coming loose in one square.

  Sara knew I’d be pissed if she lost one of my lyric books—and besides, she hardly ever left her room. There was no place for her to lose it. She had to have put the sticker there on purpose.

  But why? What had she been trying to tell me?

  21

  I turned over in bed, making sure every inch of my body was still covered. The cameras had seen me throw tantrums and scream. They’d heard every ungenerous thing I’d ever said about anyone. They’d captured me lip-syncing to Backstreet Boys songs with a hairbrush microphone and trying on bathing suits—it didn’t matter if some editor had blacked out the footage so no one saw me naked. The last thing they deserved was more.

  If this was a set, then there was everything outside of it. Towns I’d never heard of. New York City, which had always been so close and so far away, then completely off-limits after Patrick Kramer and the shooting at the Empire State Building, when my mom had declared it “unsafe.” Niagara Falls. California. Thailand, which I’d seen pictures of in a book and always wanted to go to. It would never be an option as long as I stayed here, pretending I didn’t know. As the years passed there would only be more reasons and excuses for me to remain in Swickley. I was trapped.