by Sloane Tanen
“The apartment was supposed to be temporary,” Amanda said, registering Janine’s unspoken assessment. She led the way to the kitchen. “But I can’t afford anything better in the area. Totally depressing, right?” She pointed to the windows. “Fucking venetian blinds.”
“It’s not so bad. You could make it cute if you decorated a little.” Janine tried to say something about curtains but the words came out wonky, unintelligible. She held on to the kitchen island for support, wondering why her sister was dressed like a porno Pan Am stewardess.
“Are you on drugs?” Amanda snapped her fingers in front of Janine’s face. “Why are you staring at my tits and talking so slowly?”
“I took a Xanax,” Janine confessed. “After talking to Dad.”
Was she talking slowly? She was trying to act alert but the Xanax had made her loopy. She had noticed it in the car on the drive over. She hadn’t had a panic attack since the TMZ thing and she never, ever drove in New York. Did driving a car count as operating heavy machinery?
“What did Dad say?”
“He apologized about Bunny Small.”
“And?” Amanda asked, impatient.
“He launched into ‘the Will’ talk.”
Amanda visibly shrank in on herself. “Ugh.”
“I know. But he’s got a new twist,” Janine said. “I’m not totally sure what he was getting at…something about his being really worried because there wouldn’t be as much left as he’d thought. Then he said I should buy myself something. Like we’re going to be so poor I should buy something while there’s still a little cash left.”
“Buy yourself something?” Amanda said, squinting. “Like a sweater?”
“Maybe a really nice sweater.” Janine laughed. “Cashmere from Saks? Or possibly he meant a car? I don’t know. I had a panic attack.”
“I’m going to die in this shit-box rental apartment.” Amanda said, her voice shaky. Then, after exhaling slowly: “Okay, I cannot even begin to think about that on top of my kids and having to whip Jaycee’s middling understudy into shape by next week.” She paused, looking at Janine. “Assuming I can even go next week?”
“I’ll watch them,” Janine said. She’d help Amanda but she wouldn’t stay at her apartment. “They can stay with me at Dad’s.”
Amanda hesitated only briefly. “You’ll drive Jaycee to school?”
“Yeah.”
Amanda relaxed. “Thanks. That’s great. You’ll love getting to know them,” she gushed, as if she were doing Janine a favor rather than the other way around. She grabbed her purse, ready to go now that she’d secured a guardian for next week. “I gotta run. Jaycee won’t be back until three thirty. I’ll be home by six. Hailey won’t bother you. She spends all her time staring in the mirror. That surgeon went too far. I barely recognize her.” She waved and smiled. “Thanks! I owe you.”
Janine watched the front door close. Then she walked into the first room off the kitchen. A long rectangular window faced the apartment next door. The room had twin beds and one desk. Not a poster on the wall. Not even a bulletin board. Hailey was dressed in sweats and a T-shirt, lying on one of the beds, but awake—not surprising, given that it was eleven in the morning. The other bed, presumably Jaycee’s, looked as if it had never been slept in. Janine took a seat on it. Hailey smiled and sat up slowly, not taking her eyes off Janine. She’d clearly been eavesdropping on her conversation with Amanda. Her eyes were mischievous.
“Why didn’t you get up and come out to say hello?” Janine asked. “I thought you were excited to see me.”
“I wanted to give you and my mom alone time,” Hailey said. “To make up.”
“Ah, well. I suppose it was worth a shot.” Janine laughed. “Look at you! You don’t look like you need to be in bed at all.” Hailey was barely bruised. The color and texture of her smooth skin reminded Janine of flan. The girl was a knockout.
“I’m still in a lot of pain. It was a four-hour surgery.” Hailey turned to give Janine a better look at her profile.
“Well, you look great.”
“Thanks. Do you really think so?”
Janine nodded. “I like the short hair. You look like a young Mia Farrow.” A lot of pretty young girls with short hair resembled Mia Farrow, but Hailey actually could have been her. It was spooky. Amanda was right—her face was the work of an ambitious surgeon who had started with a nicely prepared canvas and had created something spectacular. Janine couldn’t take her eyes off Hailey.
Hailey started to cry.
“What’s the matter?” Janine asked. She moved to Hailey’s bed.
“Sorry.” She wiped her tears on the back of her sleeve. “That’s the best thing anybody’s ever said to me.”
“What is?”
“That I look like Mia Farrow. It’s what my dad and, like, everyone else told Jaycee after she got her hair cut short. Nobody ever says anything nice to me.”
“I’m sure that’s not true,” Janine said, feeling uncomfortable and wondering what they would do all day. Last time she’d been alone with her nieces, she’d pushed them on a swing set at the park and bought them ice cream cones.
“This is weird, right?” Hailey asked.
Janine smiled, relieved. “It’s totally weird! I’m sorry. I’m not great with kids or teenagers or whatever.”
“That’s okay. I’m just glad you came. I watched your show.”
“Your mom mentioned that.”
“Every single episode. You were really good. I mean, you were amazing.”
“Thanks, Hailey. It was a long time ago.”
Hailey reached under her bed and pulled out a cardboard box. She handed it to Janine.
“What’s this?”
Hailey was grinning. “Open it.”
Right on top was the Seventeen magazine with Janine on the cover. She hadn’t seen it in years. She didn’t want to look at it, but she didn’t want to hurt Hailey’s feelings either. Hailey seemed so pleased with herself, staring at Janine with an expression she couldn’t quite pin down but that made her anxious nonetheless. She busied herself flipping through the interior spread. It was like looking at a stranger. Janine was surprised at how pretty she’d been, despite the atrocious late-1980s styling. Under the magazine were years’ worth of newspaper clippings and yellowed copies of Sassy, Tiger Beat, and YM. Most of the covers she was on she shared with other teen idols of the day. A lot of them, with the exception of Johnny Depp, James Spader, and Michael J. Fox, were dead or forgotten. “Where did you get all this stuff?” Janine asked.
“I found it when we moved. My mom had it in the garage.”
“Your mom?” Janine couldn’t imagine Amanda going to the trouble of cutting all this stuff out, let alone keeping it for so long. “That’s weird.”
“I think it was your mom’s. My mom just didn’t throw it out.”
Janine smarted. Of course it would have been Pamela’s. Amanda would have been too young. Janine melted at the thought of her flighty, inattentive mother scrapbooking, of her having had a special place dedicated just to Janine. But she didn’t have time to sort out her feelings, not with Hailey staring at her like that.
Hailey’s voice, when she finally spoke, was soft, as though she was afraid that if she said the wrong thing, Janine would leave. “Being famous must have been the best thing ever.”
“I don’t know. It’s not as good as it looks. Lots of expectations and assumptions about who you are before you’ve figured it out yourself. I wouldn’t recommend it.”
“But all that attention. I mean, everybody asking you questions, wanting to hear your opinion on designers and world disasters, wondering about your latest projects or whatever. Nobody cares what I think. Nobody ever asks for my opinion.”
Where was Hailey going with this?
“That episode where Jenny’s brother broke his arm because Jenny left her backpack at the top of the stairs—I mean, you were genius.”
Janine was flattered. She’d completely forgotten
that episode. It was a good one but Hailey was definitely overdoing it. She decided she needed to choose her next words carefully. That’s probably what you had to do with teenagers.
“Thanks, Hailey. But I was just a kid reading a script. I was okay. Honestly, I’m not even totally sure I’d have been cast had my dad not been who he was.”
“That’s complete bullshit,” Hailey said, shaking her head. “I don’t believe that for a minute.”
“Well, I appreciate the support.” Janine put the lid on the box, hoping they could talk about something else now.
“Can I ask about your mental breakdown? Like, how did you go from all that to an insane asylum and then to living in a studio apartment?”
So much for a subject change. Janine tried not to laugh. Hailey had said insane asylum and studio apartment as if they were equally horrifying locations. She could only imagine the stories Amanda had spoon-fed her daughters. Or maybe Amanda hadn’t told them anything much, simply glossed over the horrors Kessler-style, dropping the occasional morsel but leaving Hailey to cook up her own story, however subjective.
“It wasn’t really a breakdown,” Janine said, bridling at Hailey’s word choice. “It wasn’t like some dramatic after-school special.”
In truth, it very much was. Janine had loved after-school specials when she was a girl. She often knew the kids in them. She’d wished she’d been old enough to audition for the daughter in the made-for-TV movie Something About Amelia, with Ted Danson playing the dad, the molester. Not that she would have been much good in the part. Shit, she couldn’t even watch Cheers after that. Roxana Zal had played Amelia and won an Emmy for it, becoming the youngest Primetime Emmy Award winner in history. She’d been such a talent, Janine thought, wondering what had happened to Roxana. Maybe she’d bump into her at Directions.
“It was more like I needed time away,” Janine explained. “Things were difficult after my mom died. I couldn’t manage much. And I felt guilty.”
“Guilty? Why?”
“I don’t know. Your grandpa and I were so close. I felt like I let him down. I’d promised him I would be okay and I wasn’t okay. It was hard for me.” Then, looking at Hailey: “It was hard for your mom too, but in a different way. She was really close to your grandma,” Janine said, tripping on the word grandma like it was a dust bunny on her tongue. It just didn’t apply to Pamela. It never would have.
“What was my grandma like? Why did she do that?”
What was her mother like? Time had smudged the details. Janine knew they’d had good times but she clung to the bad ones, perhaps as a buffer against the pain of the loss. Whatever her memories, they weren’t for sharing with Hailey, not now, anyway. And Janine couldn’t explain to Hailey why her mother had checked herself into a room at the Beverly Hills Hotel and slit her wrists in a bathtub on a sunny afternoon. That kind of unhappiness couldn’t be clarified. “I don’t remember her that well.” Janine hesitated, unsure how much honesty was appropriate. “I don’t really know. She was obviously depressed. Probably she’d been depressed a long time.”
“I see a therapist,” Hailey said. “We’ve been talking a lot about why my mom and Jay handle things better than I do. I guess I wondered if maybe it was genetic. Being crazy. Sometimes I just feel like I want to evaporate or die. Like I’m a burden on everyone.”
Janine’s throat went dry. Hailey had pulled her knees up to her chest and was looking past Janine and out the window.
“Hey,” Janine said. “You’re not crazy and there’s nothing wrong with seeing a therapist or taking medication if you need it. There’s no shame in needing help.” Janine was aware she sounded like she was trying to convince someone of something. She looked at Hailey, forcing her to make eye contact. “Antidepressants helped me a lot. Once I got the right ones. It takes a while. You’re taking something now too?”
Silence.
“Hailey?”
“Hmm?”
“Will you call me if you feel that way again?”
Hailey reached up to touch her nose and exhaled, clearly reassured by the contours of her new face.
“I don’t really feel that way anymore.”
“Oh,” Janine said, confused and a little embarrassed. “That’s good.”
“Yeah. I just feel like things are better now.”
Janine paused before she asked her question. “Because of how you look?”
“Maybe. Or maybe it’s the drugs. I don’t know. How I look doesn’t hurt.”
“No. But it’s not everything. You know that, right? It’s not a competition. You’ll never win if you look at life that way. There’s always someone prettier, someone more talented.”
“I don’t compete with everyone,” Hailey said. “Just Jaycee.”
Janine was shocked by Hailey’s honesty.
“I know it’s weird, but I’m kind of glad Jaycee whacked me in the face. She did me a favor. I’m not the ugly twin anymore. I think I might be the prettier one now.” Hailey gave Janine a cool stare. “What do you think?”
“I have a hard time believing people thought you were the ugly twin. Maybe you’re a little paranoid. Not that I can’t relate. I can.”
“Relate?” she asked. “I don’t think you can relate. I think you were to my mom what Jaycee is to me. I get that maybe you couldn’t handle it, but at least nobody told you you weren’t good enough or that you couldn’t even try. Your mom helped you. The only person standing in your way was yourself. I have my mom always reminding me I’m not good enough.”
“Mm.” Janine was afraid to say anything. She knew her voice would break. Her version of the story had always been that Amanda had been Pam’s favorite and that Janine had been the pariah. But Janine had gotten the TV role, something Amanda dearly wanted. And it was true that her inability to handle it after Pam died meant that Amanda would never have a chance at acting, not while Marty was in charge. It made sense that Amanda would have felt cheated out of something. The epiphany, if that’s what it was, made Janine feel a little sick.
“I think that’s what my mom resents,” Hailey said. “You had something she wanted and you just let it go. So now she’s taking it out on me.”
Janine thought Hailey might be right.
Hailey took a deep breath. “I don’t want to talk about this anymore, okay? I’m finally at a good place. I don’t want to think about bad stuff. It hurts my face when I cry.”
Janine smiled at her. She felt so sad and tired she could barely hold her head up.
“I’ll get us some celery,” Hailey said, as if Janine had asked for a snack. Janine watched Hailey walk quickly to the kitchen and return with a Tupperware bowl full of celery in one hand and a squeeze bottle of red sauce in the other. “It’s really good with sriracha sauce.”
“Are you on a diet or something?”
“I have to be.”
“Why?”
“Do you promise not to tell my mom?”
“No.”
“There’s an audition next week. I’m going on it.” Hailey squeezed a straight line of sriracha onto the stalk and took a noisy bite. “I’m perfect for it. It’s an adaptation of this book I love.”
“You’re pursuing acting now? It’s no way to grow up. Did you hear anything I just said?”
Hailey swallowed. “Now I stand a chance. You said so yourself.”
“I did?”
“You said I looked like Mia Farrow.”
“You do, but that doesn’t mean you should be an actress. And what do you mean, you’re going on the audition? Do you have an agent? Do you have headshots?” Is that what this was all about? Hailey wanted to be an actress? Janine felt an inexplicable urge to bash the movie business, to disillusion Hailey just like her father had tried to do to her and Amanda so many years ago. “Look at me. My life is pretty screwed up. I’m a little bit of a mess, more than a little unstable.”
Hailey laughed as if Janine were being funny. “I’m going to a workshop at One on One to meet the casting dir
ector for a new movie.”
“Jesus, Hailey. One on One has been around since I was a kid. You won’t be meeting the casting agent, you’ll be meeting some low-ranking assistant. And paying for it, right?”
“Just a hundred bucks,” she said, chewing on a fresh piece of celery. “There’s also an open audition. I’m going. Don’t even bother trying to talk me out of it. The part is made for me.”
Janine sighed. “What’s the part?”
Hailey swallowed the last bit of stalk. “Undine Spragg. From Edith Wharton.”
“From Custom of the Country?” Janine couldn’t help but smile. It was one of her favorite books. It wasn’t a well-known novel and Janine was impressed that Hailey had read it. It was true that Hailey would be perfect for it. It was about a beautiful Midwestern social climber trying to enter New York society. Hailey had the looks to play Undine. She also had the longing in her face that made her oddly more attractive, less ordinary. “I know the book,” Janine said, and she registered Hailey’s surprise.
“Then can’t you see me as Undine?”
“What do you like about her?”
Hailey rolled her eyes. “I don’t know how to explain it.” She stared at the back of her hands for a few seconds. “I just want the chance. You had yours. I just want to try.”
Janine helped herself to a piece of celery. Maybe Hailey was right. What harm could it do to help her? It’s not as if Hailey would get the part. Maybe she just needed to feel supported. “Okay.”
Hailey looked up, surprised. “Okay what?”
“Find out who’s directing the movie. Send him or her a letter,” Janine said, not knowing if this was a good idea but feeling inspired. The business might have changed, but anything seemed better than going to One on One or a cattle call. She dressed the celery with sriracha and took a bite, thinking as she chewed. “Overnight it, so it gets there before they hold auditions. Say why you want the part. Make it personal. But figure out why you love Undine and the book.”