Mom’s face softens, for just a moment. “I know it must be hard to—”
“No. You don’t know. You don’t know what it’s like because you want this. I don’t want this. I want a life, I want … I…” Want. So much. No. So little.
I hear a shuffling noise behind me, and when I turn around, I see myself reflected in the glassy eye of a camera.
“What?” is all I can say. Confused, like a polar bear is sitting at the table drinking tea. I hear my mom sigh, and I whirl around, flinging my words at her. “Has this thing been here the whole time?”
“Bonnie™…”
Notice that she doesn’t deny it.
I stand there for a minute, dazed. I want to scream and shout at the camera, rip it out of this stranger’s hands and take a baseball bat to it. But I don’t. I can already feel the mask I’ve learned how to wear since I was finger-painting settle over my face. I become plastic, expressionless Bonnie™. Then I turn on my heel and brush past the camera.
* * *
“If we refuse to participate, Meta will go the whole troubled teen angle.”
I nod. I know Benny’s right, but the thought of going out there, getting back in front of those cameras after the fight I had with my mom this morning … ugh. I prefer to stay here, on my bed, with my bedroom door locked. Forever.
“What if we go live with Dad?” I ask. I’m not really sure how I want him to answer that.
“Okay … One: you haven’t spoken to him since the show ended. Can you imagine living alone with him in some douchey bachelor pad?” (I couldn’t.) “Two: That fucker ditched us for a nineteen-year-old receptionist. Three: I’m not leaving Matt, and you’re not leaving without me.”
“Benny, I can’t do this. I mean, I feel like I literally can’t. And after this fight with Mom, there’s just no way I can homeschool again. Which means I’d have to go to Taft. Which sucks great big fat balls.”
Benny laughs—one loud, sharp guffaw. “You did not just use the phrase great big fat balls.”
I put a pillow over my face. “I want to die.”
He grabs it and hugs it to his chest, his eyes darkening a bit. “No you don’t. You want to have sex with Patrick Sheldon.”
I smile to let him know I’m kidding around—it’s tricky using the D-word around my family. “Okay. And then I want to die.”
“If you do it in that order, you’d be the first human in the known universe to go to heaven before they die.” Benny licks his lips in the kind of lascivious way that is totally inappropriate around one’s sister.
“Boo … Hiss … Don’t quit your day job,” I snark.
“Okay, but, seriously, that first kiss sounded…” Here Benny shivers from head to toe.
“Benny, did you take an extra gay pill this morning?”
He throws the pillow at my face. “Did you take an extra bitch pill this morning?”
“My subconscious sabotaged my first and only date slash kiss. I think I am allowed an extra bitch ration for the day.”
“Okay, but that doesn’t solve our problem.”
We sit in silence for a few minutes, the house waking up all around us.
“We have to do the show, don’t we?” I ask miserably.
He frowns. “Yeah.”
“After we graduate, I’m immediately moving out. Even if I have to hook to scrape together the money.”
“Or you can write a tell-all. There’s just as much whoring, but you can work from home.”
“But I wouldn’t get to wear pleather stilettos and get beaten up by my pimp.”
Benny sighs. “Decisions, decisions.”
These are the kinds of pep talks reality TV kids have when the cameras aren’t rolling.
SEASON 17, EPISODE 11
(The One with the Photo Shoot)
Benny puts his arm around me as we make our way down the stairs. Good Life magazine is waiting. DeShaun™ and Deston™ (both fated to be professional wrestlers someday) career past us, whooping and shouting.
“Yo! Walk!” I yell.
Deston™ flips me off, and I stare at him, aghast.
Benny just shakes his head. “Chuck should never have given those fools Killer Kombat Five,” he says. I’m imagining what will happen to these boys, with their crazy reality TV life and dumbass video games.
“Don’t you think people should have to create, I don’t know, a mission statement or something when they start a family?” I ask.
Benny trips, cursing as he nearly breaks an ankle on a Barbie doll left on the stairs. He picks it up and hurls it down the hall, and there’s a satisfying thunk as it hits a door.
“Something like, We at Baker, Inc., think that a child should be raised in the most stressful environment imaginable. That’s why we firmly believe in having so many children that you can’t remember all of their names blahblahblah?” he asks.
“Yep. Sounds about right to me.”
When we step into the kitchen, all hell has broken loose. The triplets are sitting at the table arguing over the pros and cons of using OJ instead of milk in one’s cereal. The tween boys are shoving one another around (natch), and the tween girls are flitting in and out, casting shy glances toward the cameras. Farrow™ has spilled a bottle of nail polish on the new rug, and Tristan™ looks like he’s about to cry as he holds a crushed Lego superhero thing in his hands.
“Tristan™, it’s okay,” I say, wrapping an arm around him.
He just looks at the mangled body, shaking his head like he’s the only kid who’s not going to get adopted. He’s sensitive, and Mom worries he’s falling behind developmentally. Which is, of course, why she’s now agreed to have him filmed 24/7. I wonder if he wishes a different American family had adopted him.
“We’ll fix it later, I promise,” I say. He leans into me, and after a minute or so, I feel his thin body shudder against my side. I kiss the top of his head—it smells like Play-Doh.
Mom gives us a frazzled wave as I pass her, apparently deciding to forget the whole argument for now, and then turns back to Sandra, who goes back to plucking at Mom’s eyebrows with a medieval torture device. Puma Guy starts to shadow me as I struggle to get to the refrigerator, like he’s a shark following the scent of blood.
“Where should we set up wardrobe?” asks an arty-looking woman.
“Uh, let’s do it in the family room,” says Sandra.
“Great,” the woman says. She opens the front door and shouts, “Family room!”
Two seconds later, racks of clothing wheel by, followed by a couple of carts with boxes labeled SHOES and ACCESSORIES.
“Props in the dining room!” calls a lanky man of utter fabulosity.
I can see that over his shoulder our dining room is being transformed into the kind of chic, glossy space you see in magazines. A girl pushes past me, holding bags from Whole Foods.
“Sorry!” she calls over her shoulder.
“No problem,” I mumble.
“So, like I was saying, we don’t have anything you’d call a ‘quiet day,’” my mom is saying to a thin, fashionable woman with a mini tape recorder in her hand.
“How do you manage it all?” she asks.
“Well, I’m pretty organized. Kirk and I have synchronized calendars on our phones, which we update constantly. I have a whiteboard over near the kitchen table where I write announcements. I have to admit, I have literally e-mailed some of my older kids before!”
I pull open the fridge and pretend to have trouble choosing the kind of yogurt I want so that I can hear what Mom’s telling her.
The reporter laughs and looks down at the list in her hand. “So why have you decided to do the show again?”
This should be good.
“I want to reach out to other women like me. Women who are having trouble creating families of their own or struggling to move on after a divorce.” Her voice grows soft. “I want to encourage them not to give up. At the end of the day, there’s nothing better than being surrounded by your kids. Nothin
g.”
It’s weird thinking about us Bakers influencing people, considering we’re probably America’s most dysfunctional family. I almost feel bad for anyone who watches us and can feel inspired. That’s ten kinds of messed up.
I grab a yogurt, then fish around in a nearby drawer for a spoon. Mom calls Daisy™ over so that she can braid her hair while she interviews.
“Last question,” the reporter says to Mom. “As I’m sure you know, the New York Times recently reported that since your adoption of Deston™ and DeShaun™ through the foster care system, there has been a forty percent increase in foster parent applications. How does it feel to know you’ve touched so many lives?”
Mom’s lip trembles a little. “You know, when Andrew and I decided to work with foster kids after so many international adoptions, it was a scary step. But it was so rewarding. I love my sons, and I’m incredibly thankful that they’re a part of our family. I’m so happy that our experiences have encouraged people to open up their homes. There are so many kids in need.”
“And it wouldn’t have happened unless you’d done Baker’s Dozen. No regrets?”
Mom gives a firm shake of her head. “None. I wouldn’t have any of my children without MetaReel’s help, and that’s the truth. This show gave me my family. I’ll be forever grateful.”
I’m guessing she means MetaReel footed the bill for all the expensive adoptions and procedures, but it’s crappy to know we wouldn’t exist as a family without a major corporate sponsor.
“Excuse me, Bonnie™?”
I turn around, prepared to scowl, but the guy with the fancy camera around his neck is kinda hot. Like rugged, foreign correspondent hot.
“Yeah?” I say, wishing I had at least run a brush through my hair.
“I’m Eric. I’ll be doing some candid shots throughout the weekend. I just wanted to say hi and see if it’s okay if I get you in some of them.”
“Um, sure. Yeah, that’d be fine.” I can see Benny snickering out of the corner of my eye, so I tilt my head so I can’t see him.
“Great,” Eric with baby blue eyes and sexy tattoos says. “I just figured you probably get sick of people shoving these in your face all the time.”
I grin. “You have no idea. I appreciate you asking.”
He smiles and walks over to where Tristan™, DeShaun™, and Deston™ are arm wrestling.
“I appreciate you asking,” Benny says in a falsetto, batting his eyelashes.
“Oh, shut up.”
“Do you think you should play Two Minutes in the Closet with him before or after we break for lunch?”
“How,” I ask, “are you always so horny? My God, doesn’t Matt do enough for you?”
“A gentleman never tells,” he says.
Lacey Production Assistant walks in, a clipboard pressed against her chest and a walkie-talkie strapped to the waist of her skinny cords. She and Lex are doing the girl compliment game, where you go back and forth and say “Oh, I like your (fill in the blank); where did you get it?” until one of you runs out of things to point and squeal at.
Chuck waddles into the room, all three hundred pounds of him, and claps his hands to get our attention. “Okay, folks, let’s get started!”
The room goes as silent as it can when there are thirty, no, wait, here are six more, and I haven’t even counted the camera dudes—
“There are forty goddamn people in this house right now,” I whisper to Benny.
He rolls his eyes.
Chuck is still talking. “Today and tomorrow are going to be pretty hectic around here. Let’s not forget that this is a home, so please clean up after yourselves. A quick reminder that the second floor is totally off-limits to the magazine crew. Now, I’m going to turn it over to Melissa Shapiro from Good Life.”
The woman with the tape recorder smiles and waves. “Hey, everyone. We are so excited to have you on our January cover! I promise we’re going to have a lot of fun this weekend.”
Benny coughs, but I know I’m the only one who hears him say bullshit.
“Now,” she continues, “we’re going to do a big family shot outside and then after lunch we’ll do a dinner scene in the dining room. No eating the props until after we’re done!” The room fills with polite chuckles. “Tomorrow we’ll be at Harvest Studios for the actual cover shoot. I need all the ladies to hair and makeup, which is in the kids’ classroom for today, and, guys, we need you in wardrobe. Let’s have a great shoot!”
Everyone claps, but I just busy myself with a scone in between texting Tessa and Mer. No, I tell them, I can’t go to a movie or the mall.
Chuck: “Bonnie™, can I have a quick word?”
I sigh and put my phone in my back pocket, following him to the front porch. He stops a few feet away from the tent that MetaReel has already put up at the side of the house. This is where the monitors are—one for each camera. Crew I rarely see sit in front of them in director’s chairs, their headsets on, oblivious to the world around them as they focus on the filming inside.
“What’s up?” I say.
Little beads of sweat line his upper lip, and his eyes flit over me like he’s an appraiser who finds I’ve come up short.
“Well, sweetheart, I feel like we got off on the wrong foot. I can see this is hard for you, but I hope you know I’m on your team.”
I want to say, No, Chuck, you are not on my team, but I just stand there and shrug. I’m gutless like that.
He sighs, like I gave him the wrong answer to a test question. “Look, hon. I hope you’re thinking about the big picture here. Because the show is a great opportunity for you to set the record straight about all that nonsense back in season thirteen. It’s your chance to show the world you’re not still that little girl who overdosed.”
The sucky part is that, in his twisted universe, he’s kind of right. I could morph into the Bonnie™ everyone used to love or a new Bonnie™, who’s clever and witty and explains away the most painful night of her life with a roll of her eyes and a self-deprecating joke or two. It’d be that easy. But I don’t want to play by Chuck’s rules. In his world, you have to sell your soul to gain your dignity. I don’t think that’s a fair trade.
“Chuck, I don’t care about setting the record straight. I just want it to go away. I was a kid, and I made a mistake. It’s over.”
But it’s not. It won’t ever be.
He cocks his head to the side, trying to catch my eye. “I hope your mother wasn’t mistaken when she said all you kids would be happy to do the show. It’d be a shame to have to cancel the series because one person out of fifteen doesn’t want us here.”
“Two,” I say. Chuck raises his eyebrows. “Benny doesn’t want to do it, either.”
He sighs and his hands jangle whatever’s in the pockets of his massive cargo shorts.
“This is what I’m talking about, Bonnie™. This attitude. We’ve done this before, Bon-Bon, haven’t we?”
His eyes stray to the big front window, full of laughing, smiling kids. And, once again, I’m the piece that doesn’t fit. The one on the outside, looking in. Why can’t I just let all my angst over this go? Mom and Kirk are beaming, and cameras snap snap snap. I catch Benny being his usual affable self, and I know that if it weren’t for me, he’d be making the best of the show, doing whatever anyone wanted him to.
“There’s a lot of good that can come out of this for you,” Chuck says. “For all of you. But we need you to cooperate, okay?”
“I am,” I say. “I’m here. I’m doing the shoot.”
Chuck shakes his head. “You know what I mean. We need to see the Bonnie™ America fell in love with.”
“Or what?” I ask.
His voice grows hard, and I remember he’s not the highest paid, most sought after television producer in the world for nothing. “Or we cancel the show and sue your parents for signing the contract under false pretenses. I’m not sure how they’d be able to afford a lawyer with thirteen kids—three going off to college—but
that’s not really my concern.” He smiles. “But I know you’ll make the right choice, hon. The camera just loves you.”
He’s doing it again, I realize. What he did over and over when I was a kid.
“Is this like when I was a little girl and you told me that I had to stop saying I didn’t want to do the show if I wanted my parents to stay together?”
He holds his hands up, palms out, and tries a sad little frown on for size. “And what happened to them, Bonnie™?”
My breath rushes out and my insides cave in, like they’ve been bulldozed. He stares me down as I slowly disintegrate. I need to say something, but the words won’t come.
A Good Life woman opens the door and starts beckoning to me.
“There you are!” she says. “Let’s get you into hair and makeup.”
“Just a second,” I say, turning back to Chuck.
But he’s already walking toward one of the MetaReel trucks in our driveway. “Have a good shoot, Bonnie™,” he calls over his shoulder.
Translation: If I don’t shut up and be a good little monkey and make love to the camera today and every day, then it’ll be my fault that my family gets sued by one of the largest corporations in America.
Just like it was my fault when Dad left.
* * *
“You’ve got beautiful bone structure, you know that?” says the girl putting on my makeup.
“Is that industry for You’re Not Pretty But You Have Nice Qualities?” I ask.
She laughs. “You always were funny, weren’t you?”
Okay, that creeps me out. I’d forgotten how people talk to us; they watch you every week for thirteen years, and they feel like they know you. It’s weird.
“No,” she continues, “I’m not bullshitting you. You look stunning. This eye shadow really brings out the green in your eyes. And your hair…” She sighs and tries to fluff up her limp locks. “Did you know that women in India cut off hair just like yours and sell it to American salons?”
I wrinkle my nose. “That’s sad. Like ‘The Gift of the Magi’ but without the warm fuzzies.”
She laughs again.
Soon we’re in the backyard, perched on this brand-new fancy jungle-gym thing that some company donated to the show. On Wednesday they’d done all this filming with Kirk and the delivery dudes and my brothers trying to build it. I’m sure it will be one of our episodes, something like Kirk and the boys try to build a Kidz Zone™ playground, but will they finish before it starts raining?
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