by Carrie Mac
“Morning, kid,” Charlie muttered. “Excuse us. Coming through.”
“Morning, darling.” Kendra smiled at her. She was good at that. Actually seeing people, if only briefly.
“Good morning, Kendra.” It was the first time she’d addressed her by name, and it felt weird. Kind of like calling a teacher by their first name, when she didn’t actually even know the first names of most of her teachers.
“Marla, dear!” Kendra bent over Junie’s mother, placing her hands firmly and sympathetically on her shoulders and giving them a squeeze. “Tell us what’s going on.”
“I didn’t want to get rid of it!” she wailed. “I wanted to keep it. As a reminder of where I came from!”
“But you don’t need any reminders like that,” Kendra said. “You have your memories. Your story will always be yours.”
Junie’s mother looked up. “But I burnt it. I didn’t mean to burn it. It meant so much to me.”
“Here we go,” Junie whispered under her breath to no one in particular. She couldn’t watch. Not one more minute of it. Not one more second. She backed out of the room, called her father and asked him to pick her up at the end of the block.
Junie didn’t have to wait long, and she was relieved to see that her father was alone in the car.
“How’s the three ring circus?”
“As to be expected.”
“I’ve been seeing what the news crews can catch.” He turned the corner, going in the opposite direction from the fray. “Mostly just about The Kendra Show being in town. But some shots of the house.”
“Yeah?”
“Saw her dancing on the front lawn, watching that old chair burn. It looked like it was shot from a helicopter.”
Junie could not escape it. Wherever she went, her mother and her mountains of clutter followed her. Even here in her father’s car, where she had been hoping to find peace.
“Dad?”
“Junie?”
“Can we not talk about it?”
A pause. Then he looked at her and grinned. “Sure, sweetheart. Want me to take you to school?”
Junie shook her head. “Absolutely not.”
“You can’t keep missing days.”
“Dad. Please, please, please don’t make me go there. It’s Friday. Just let me have one more day off and then I promise I’ll go back on Monday. Okay?”
Another pause. “You go back on Monday. No questions asked.”
“Fine.”
But Junie wasn’t sure that she really would go back. She wondered if this whole Kendra experience had actually and seriously ruined her life to the point where she’d need to drop out, or transfer, or finish online. She wondered if the glorious gift of an intervention had, in fact, demolished her, while at the same time healing her mother. If that was what was happening at all.
“Do you have to go to work?”
“I can skip too, if you want to hang out.”
Junie winced at the way he said it, so eagerly and so casually that it was clearly forced. He wanted so badly to be her friend, her “bud.” And Junie just wanted somewhere else to be for the day, and it didn’t matter if it was with her father or holed up in the reading room at the public library.
“That’d be nice, Dad.” Junie heard the fakeness in her voice, but she couldn’t do anything about it. “Thanks.”
They went for coffee at the Buckled Star, where if anyone recognized her as the victim of Kendra’s attentions they didn’t say anything about it to her. Her dad sat across from her in one of two comfy chairs, eyes bright, waiting for the conversation to begin. Junie didn’t want to disappoint, but she was just not in the mood to struggle through an awkward conversation in which her father pretended to know a thing or two about her, and she pretended to care about his job and his life with That Woman, and both of them ignored the elephant down the street that dominated their thoughts. Instead of putting them both through the pain, Junie picked up a newspaper from a coffee table and offered him the business section.
“Want this?”
“Sure,” he said with a little audible relief. “I’ll check on my meagre stock portfolio.”
Junie picked up the front section. A seventeenyear-old boy had fallen or jumped to his death from the suspension bridge, a famous tourist attraction. He’d sailed from a dizzying height through the air to a sudden death on the jagged rocks below. Police were interviewing witnesses to see if they could figure out what had happened. Junie had been to the suspension bridge a handful of times. She’d stood at the same lookout, her hands on the railing, never feeling the urge to fling herself over. But she could understand it now. Once he was dead, nothing else would have mattered. It would be a blissful, silent void.
Not that she wanted to kill herself.
But she could understand craving the quiet. She could understand needing a final, lasting peace. She wondered if Royce was looking forward to that at all, or if he was worried about leaving Jeremy behind.
Junie glanced up at her father. He’d put his reading glasses on and was scrutinizing the stock pages, column after column of numbers about which Junie had no clue. Did he feel about That Woman what Jeremy and Royce felt for each other? Would he be sad if she died? Would he be lonely for her?
Her father looked up and met her gaze. “Want a muffin or something?”
“No thanks.”
“You ate at the hotel?”
Junie dropped her eyes to the paper and didn’t exactly answer. “I’m not really hungry.”
“Well, I’m going to get me a Danish. Live on the wild side.”
“Whoa, Dad. Better not let the yogurt-and-fruit police find out.”
And all of a sudden, the day wasn’t so bad. Junie could admit to herself that she actually liked sitting in a fairly companionable silence with her father, while her mother’s mess raged on without her, halfway across town.
Inevitably, though, Junie was drawn back in. They decided to catch a movie, for the complete playing-hooky experience. Halfway through a matinee showing of A Fistful of Dollars, Junie got a text from Charlie Falconetti. It read: Do I need to pull out the big guns in order to get your ass back here?
Junie glanced over at her father, who was intently watching the old spaghetti western unfold. Junie had been staring at the screen but hadn’t really been watching. She’d let her mind wander, and had no idea what was happening in the plot, other than that some dusty guy was about to shoot another dusty guy in the middle of a dusty street in a tiny, dusty town. It was funny that Charlie had mentioned guns. Almost as if she were omniscient. Junie eyed the mostly empty rows surrounding them, half expecting to see Charlie herself waving at her in the half-dark.
“They want me back at the house,” she whispered.
“They aren’t the bosses of you, Junie.” He offered her the bag of popcorn. “It’s totally your call.”
Junie texted Charlie back. Less than an hour. I’ll be there. She had no doubt that Charlie would blackmail her, if that’s what it took.
When the movie was over, Junie’s dad took her home but dropped her off in the alleyway, not wanting to be on camera for even a minute.
Junie found her mom and Kendra in the muchimproved basement, going through yet another box of stuffed animals. Of course Charlie wanted her back for this, what with the tantrum it had caused the other day. As Charlie liked to say, it made for great television.
“Come join us, sweetheart,” Kendra called when she came down the stairs. A camera swung in Junie’s direction. Even though the crew had been there for three days now, it still was weird that this was happening in her house, to her and her mother. Junie wasn’t sure that it ever should feel normal to have a celebrity talk show host hanging out with one’s mother in a filthy basement that still smelled like shit.
Junie reluctantly made her way over to where a large folding table had been set up, to help with the sorting. The same three boxes again: Keep, Toss, Donate. This time, though, the Toss and Donate boxes were more full, and
the Keep box was almost empty. This stirred a small pool of hope in Junie. Perhaps her mother was getting better. Perhaps all of this was actually going to end up making things better.
Junie picked up an old doll from the box. It was one her grandmother had made, and Junie had forgotten about it until now. The doll wore a gingham dress with a white apron overtop, and had thick yarn hair in two braids and black felt shoes on her feet. The facial features had all been embroidered by her grandmother, and the eyes were an eerie turquoise blue because her grandma had let her chose the colour.
“You want to keep that one, hon?”
Junie wished that Kendra would just vanish. Just for a few moments while Junie had a private moment all to herself. Holding the doll now, she remembered wondering where it had gone. The morning she’d thought she’d lost her came flooding back, and all of a sudden Junie was eight years old and rifling through her toy box, looking for the doll, which she’d called Laura, after Laura Ingalls Wilder.
“You told me I’d lost this,” Junie said to her mother, an accusatory edge to her voice. “But you’d packed it away.”
“I guess I had.” Her mother shrugged her shoulders, not realizing the seriousness of the moment.
“You were always doing that. Sorting and moving and packing. Even my stuff! Without asking!”
Nigel stepped in out of nowhere, as if manifesting out of the ether. “Sometimes, hoarders need to control their belongings, categorize them in a certain way that only they understand.”
“You were always getting rid of your toys,” her mother said, petulant. “I wanted to make sure that I set aside a few things so that you’d have them when you had children of your own.”
“You could’ve asked me.”
“Well, I didn’t. Clearly.” She reached out to pat the doll, and Junie pulled away, clutching the doll protectively. “But here it is, in good shape, years later, for you to enjoy.”
“Ah, yes,” Nigel intoned, “but don’t present this kind of preservation as a good thing, Marla. It isn’t healthy to steal from other people for their own good.”
“Steal?” She pulled her chin in, offended. “I did no such thing.”
“What else did you take that was mine?” Junie set the doll in the Keep box and opened a box that was sitting to one side, waiting to be sorted through. She reached in and pulled out the first thing she grabbed. It was a soft, knitted blanket, blue. Not anything she recognized. She pulled out the next thing. A blue teddy bear, with the name “Thomas” embroidered on its little white T-shirt.
Junie’s mother let out a strangled cry. “No! Put it away!” She shoved Junie aside, grabbing the blanket and the bear and shoving them back into the box. She lifted the box into her arms and ran up the stairs, crying. Junie heard a distant slam. Her mother had locked herself in the bathroom.
Behind them, from where she’d been watching the scene unfold, Charlie Falconetti whistled. “That right there, folks, is good television turning into great television!”
Kendra stood, her hands on her hips. “Zip it, Charlie.” She turned to the camera and spoke to it as if speaking to a real person. “Obviously, we’ve stumbled onto a very painful part of Marla’s past just now. Stay with us as we uncover the story behind it.” She waited a few seconds, all the while gazing at the camera with her trademark sympathetic smile on her face. “And cut. Thank you, folks. Let’s give this a moment to settle before we go back to it.” She turned to Junie. “Honey? You know what this is about?”
Junie shook her head. She was as confused as the rest of them, and that did not feel good at all. She ran up the stairs and pounded on the bathroom door, demanding that her mother open up. But all she could hear was her mother, weeping, the taps turned on full to mask the sound, but failing to.
TWENTY-FOUR
Two hours later and Junie’s mother was still locked in the bathroom. She’d stopped crying but would not come out. She wasn’t even refusing to, she was simply not responding at all. Tabitha and Wade had joined Junie outside the bathroom door, from where Junie had not budged since coming up the stairs. Wade pulled her so she sat against him, his arms wrapped around her. Tabitha sat in front of her, one hand on the door, as if that would coax Junie’s mother out.
“Have you called your dad?” Tabitha asked. “He’d know what this is about.”
Junie had called her dad, and he was on his way over, very reluctantly. He’d been short with her on the phone, telling her to leave her mother alone and let it go. But Junie had insisted that he come, or else she was going to call the police to come and break the door down and haul her mother away to the loony bin, where she clearly belonged. Junie had practically yelled all of this into the phone, so she could be sure that her mother heard every single word. But even the threat of being carried off to a mental institution hadn’t persuaded her mother to open the door and explain what was going on, and who Thomas was. When Junie had mentioned the name to her father, he’d fallen silent. After a long moment, and then an even longer, sad, sigh, he’d told her that he’d be over in ten minutes.
When he arrived, he headed straight for the bathroom door and knocked on it gently. “Open the door, Marla. It’s Ron.” When there was no response, he knocked again. “I know this is hard, but you’re right in the middle of it and you’ve dragged Junie into it now, and you’re going to have to come out eventually and tell, right?”
There was no response from Junie’s mother, just the sound of quiet whimpering. Her dad banged hard this time. “Open this goddamn door, Marla. I’m not going to explain this to Junie all by myself. That’s not fair, Marla. And you know it”
“Explain what?” Junie stayed on the floor, safe in Wade’s arms, not wanting to stand up but wishing instead for all of this to sort itself out without her for once.
The whole situation got worse, though, because Evelyn St. Claire came in next, a wide, pained grin on her face, proving that she knew what was going on while Junie did not. This got Junie up on her feet.
“What’s she doing here?”
“She came with me.”
“But why, Daddy?” Junie was surprised to hear herself call her father that. She hadn’t called him “Daddy” since she was a toddler, she was sure. This whole day was warped, and Junie was too. “What do you need her for?”
“Not your concern, young lady.”
“Kendra!” Evelyn chirped as Kendra and Nigel swept into the room, Charlie Falconetti at their heels, clipboard in hand. Kendra had gone to do a conference call in her trailer and was coming back, ready to make another try at getting Junie’s mother to open the door and talk. “And Nigel!” Junie hated that she was greeting the two of them like old friends. And they didn’t take too kindly to it either.
Nigel looked down his nose at her. “And you are?” Evelyn offered her hand.
“Evelyn St. Claire, certified personal life coach.”
“The one we hired to help my mom last year,” Junie added. “Who then had an affair with my father. He lives with her now.”
“Is that true?” Kendra fixed wide, horrified eyes on Evelyn.
“Well, their marriage had been in disrepair for some time, and so when I—”
“So it is true. I can smell your kind a mile away. No need to try to explain yourself. An affair. My, my, my.” Kendra shook her head. “Is that included on your list of services? Home wrecking?”
It was common knowledge that Kendra strongly disapproved of adultery. Her first husband had cheated on her, and she flayed him repeatedly, offering up his failings on any show that touched even remotely on the subject. Had Evelyn been thinking, she might have thought twice about showing her face, Junie thought. But then, the lure of fame was a pretty compelling thing.
Evelyn’s face flushed red. “There are two sides to every—”
“I’m sure there are.” Kendra cut her off. “And right now, I do not care to hear yours.”
“But I—”
“Come here a minute, honey.” Kendra ushered Evelyn ba
ck to the front door. She pointed to the crew trucks lining the driveway. “See what’s written on the side of those trucks? The Kendra Show . . . in big sparkly letters. Right? See that there?”
Evelyn nodded. “And I’m a big fan, I really am—”
“It’s my show. I decide whose story we’re telling, and when. This is not your moment, honey. Understand?”
Evelyn nodded again, but it was much tighter, and her lips were pinched into a bleached, flat line. She was about to erupt, Junie was sure.
“So why don’t you head on over to the catering truck and get yourself a nice Venti skinny latte. Okay?” And with a little shove, Evelyn was on the front porch, looking at them with blank anger as Kendra shut the door in her face.
“She goes,” Junie’s father growled, “I go. That was totally uncalled for, lady.”
“Do you honestly think that your ex-wife will come out at all with that woman here?” Kendra stared at him, unapologetic.
Junie wanted to cheer. Kendra had called Evelyn “That Woman” in the exact same tone that she herself used on a daily basis. She wanted to jump up and down and say, See, Dad? I’m not the only one who hates her! But at the same time she did feel a tug of sympathy for Evelyn, having just been told off by one of the world’s most famous women, and an idol of hers.
Junie’s father’s angry expression did not change, but he knew better than to demand that Evelyn be invited back.
“I want the cameras off.”
Charlie Falconetti wagged a finger at him. “Not happening.”
“Turn them off.”