Emancipated

by M. G. Reyes

  Paolo didn’t answer. For all his calm demeanor, he seemed totally thrown.

  “None of your ladies ever did this to you, I bet?”

  “They didn’t, no.” His reply seemed wrought with concealed regret.

  Lucy pulled away, sat up on the edge of his bed. She ran a hand through her hair and sighed. “I’m embarrassed.”

  “You’re not into it,” he replied softly. “It’s okay, I get it.”

  “Don’t say that. It’s more complicated.”

  Paolo stood up and held out a hand to her. “Don’t sweat it. Life is long, Lucy Long. Let’s call this deuce.”

  She tried to return his smile but it probably looked just as awkward as his.

  After a few minutes, they got dressed and went back down to the living room together. The moment they stepped through the door, Grace’s eyes were on them. She seemed faintly relieved, if anything. Candace turned away from the TV and threw a balled-up napkin in Paolo’s direction.

  “Check it: Mr. Bedroom Eyes.”

  Paolo picked up the mustard-stained napkin from where it had fallen at his feet and tossed it into the wastepaper basket behind the lime-green futon.

  “You’re such a slob, Deering. And you’re cranky as hell when you’re tired. Good luck persuading any guy to live with you.”

  “Drop dead,” she returned lazily, not even bothering to look up.

  But Paolo wouldn’t let it go. “How come when it’s my turn to cook and yours to clean, you never really clean up the kitchen? Maya, Lucy, and I are the only ones who use the bleach spray. And John-Michael and I are the only ones who ever clean out the fridge.”

  “Are you seriously going to whine about this right now?” Candace said. “My mom owns this house, okay? Why wouldn’t I do my fair share? It’s me she’ll come after if we don’t keep it clean.”

  “You don’t need to keep it clean,” he fired back. “Not when the rest of us are doing it for you.”

  “Could we please just chill?” Lucy said. Maybe she should take Paolo aside and confront him directly. What had happened in the bedroom had been a blow to their relationship for sure. But she couldn’t let it ruin the atmosphere in the whole house.

  “Why don’t you just go call Mommy, then?” Paolo spat at Candace. His eyes were damp now. Lucy wished he’d just leave the room.

  “Me call Mommy? What about you? You’re never off the phone to her. Are you sure you like being emancipated? Maybe you should head over to Mexico, too.”

  He shouted back, “Never off the phone? I called her once: one time you just happened to hear it. My mom is lonely, okay? You have any idea how boring her life is now, stuck in some lousy mining town in Sonora?”

  Lucy shook her head helplessly. She crossed the room to sit next to Grace on the large gray sofa that faced the wall-mounted TV. “What a crock,” she said. “I feel like I’ve aged a bunch of years just in the few months we’ve been living here.”

  Grace nodded in agreement. “I know. This is not what I signed up for. Sometimes I feel more like twenty-six than sixteen.”

  Lucy stretched her legs out until her knees bent over the cushions at the far end of the sofa and leaned back against the pillows. “Maybe so. But it still beats the pants off living with my folks.”

  Grace shrugged, ambivalent, and turned back to the TV. Lucy couldn’t help but notice that she seemed much happier than when Lucy had first walked in with Paolo.

  Some kinds of disharmony, it seemed, weren’t all bad.

  MAYA

  VENICE BEACH, SATURDAY, MAY 23

  Maya had tried really, really hard to keep things together. But the day after John-Michael’s arrest, it all began to unravel.

  She’d begun the day doing errands with Marilu and making plans to hang out at the Amnesty International benefit at Hearst Academy, the school attended by Grace and Candace. It was late morning and Maya was on her way back to the house, riding in the white Cadillac with Marilu.

  “Don’t eat that burrito in the car, mija. The inglesa will smell the salsa. She’ll freak.”

  Maya rolled her eyes. Carefully, she wrapped her breakfast back into its napkin. “How is Lady Macbeth anyhow?” she growled.

  “Still the boss of me,” was the terse reply. “And show some respect to Dana Alexander!”

  “I am showing respect,” Maya said innocently. “Isn’t Lady Macbeth her most famous role?”

  Marilu Soto tapped smooth pink fingernails against the steering wheel to the beat of Selena Quintanilla singing “Baila esta cumbia.” “I don’t want you to miss anything today, baby. Lady Macbeth, as you call her, is going to want the full report. Things are going to happen—you’ll see. John-Michael getting arrested is quite a thing. When emotions are running high, people can get to unburdening themselves. Cuídate bien, mija. Take care you don’t get bitten by the truth bug. Might feel good at the time, like pulling a scab. But bad things can happen when you tell some truths.”

  “‘Truth bug’?” Maya replied miserably. She shifted in her seat. “Mamá, how’s that gonna happen? “I’m lying to everyone, every minute. Telling them that you’re my aunt. Pretending my mother is in Mexico. I even made up a story that you were coming over, that we were going to Disneyland.”

  Despite herself, Marilu smiled. “Ay, baby. You wanna go to Disneyland? I’ll take you. But take care with calling me ‘Mamá.’ Stick to ‘Ma’—it’s safer that way. They’ll assume you’re using a nickname.”

  “Will we ever be able to tell the truth?”

  Her mother sighed. “The minute you decide you want to go back to Mexico, you can say whatever you like. But while the inglesa is my boss, we gotta do what she says.”

  “But . . .” Maya held back for a second, then said, “Don’t you ever wonder why Dana’s watching the house? I mean—have you figured out her deal?” It almost felt like an accusation to ask.

  Her mother seemed to take it that way, too. “Not in a million years,” she replied testily. “Who knows what her deal is? Like I always say, Hollywood people are crazy. I’m just focusing on keeping us both in this country, mija.”

  Back at the house, everyone had drifted down to the ground floor. The housemates greeted Maya with a measure of relief. It seemed there’d been some tension the night before. “Shenanigans,” Lucy called it. Maya guessed that Grace was anxious about all the preparations for the Amnesty International benefit at their school that afternoon. Everyone in the house had promised to help.

  Candace was preparing to go out for a shoot, only to get a call at the last minute saying that they’d rescheduled her scenes for the following week. As a consequence, she was still complaining about having dragged herself out of bed for nothing, after a night of hardly any sleep. Lucy had paused for a second, as if checking herself, and then went on to say, “That’s one of the things I hated about doing TV. Weekend-morning shoots. Didn’t take long for the novelty to wear off.”

  It was the first time Lucy had volunteered any information about her former life as a TV actor. Maya wondered how many times Lucy had been forced to bite her tongue.

  Maya realized she should probably make more of an effort to act as though Lucy being a former TV star was news. Had any housemate gone to bed that night wondering why Maya hadn’t seemed surprised? Had one of them somehow discovered evidence of Maya’s spying? The paranoia was like a cold steel claw raking at the base of her spine.

  No. Maya cradled her hot chamomile tea, thinking. If any housemate were clued in on the secret reports, it would have erupted in an almighty argument. She was being cautious, password-protecting her reports and her computer. It wasn’t like her housemates were FBI agents or anything.

  No one knew about Maya’s situation—she felt pretty certain of that. At least she did when she forced herself to be rational.

  Maybe it wasn’t too late to make a big deal of Lucy’s TV role? Maya remembered that down on Venice Beach every Saturday a street vendor sold secondhand CDs and DVDs. Perhaps she could find an old DVD
of Jelly and Pie?

  “Hey, anyone wanna go get a latte down on the boardwalk?”

  Candace glanced over from where she was perched at the kitchen table, apparently deep in thought, eating a piece of toast. Her eyes strayed to Lucy and Paolo, who were sitting on the sofa. They were watching a cartoon show together, making cute little comments to each other. Maya noticed that they were trying not to sit too close. Not quite the picture of coupledom, but barely one degree removed.

  “Yeah, let’s go,” Candace said. There was a definite edge to her voice. She didn’t even bother to dress. Plaid pajama bottoms, strappy tops, and flip-flops were ideal wear for Saturday morning on the Venice boardwalk.

  They weren’t out of the house for more than five seconds before Candace turned to Maya and asked, “You think those two hooked up last night?”

  From her tone, it was pretty clear that Candace thought they had. Maya lowered her sunglasses and stared out at the thick line of gunmetal gray where the ocean met the horizon. It was going to be another blazing day. Eventually she replied, “Why, did they say something?”

  “They were in his room for a while last night,” Candace said. “Afterward, there was a vibe.”

  Maya shrugged. “What if they did?”

  “I’m just concerned.”

  “You’re worried about the country club Casanova? Good luck with that.”

  “I’m concerned about Grace,” Candace said.

  “Oh,” Maya said. “Yeah. Good point. I mean, you can see why it happened. But still.”

  Candace frowned. “Why it happened? Because he’s into Lucy.”

  “I can see why it happened last night,” Maya corrected herself. “It’s obvious that Lucy is pretty shaken about John-Michael.”

  “We’re all upset.”

  Maya pursed her lips briefly. “Really?”

  Candace eyed her sharply. “You think we’re not?”

  “It’s just . . . I’m not sure that Grace is upset about John-Michael.” Maya chose her words carefully. “She seemed to think that assisted suicide was something he should do time for.”

  “What?! She was arguing that we shouldn’t assume he did it!”

  Maya was silent for a few seconds. “But maybe he did, Candace. And if he did, I think we should show some understanding.”

  “You know Grace. She thinks all killing is bad.”

  Maya raised an eyebrow but said nothing.

  Candace came to a halt. “Hey, we passed the coffee shop already.”

  Maya pointed to a wide spread of tables where the street vendor’s display began. “I actually wanted to stop there. Help me find a DVD of Jelly and Pie.”

  They spent about ten minutes perusing the solid collection of DVDs, VHS tapes, CDs, and audio cassettes until finally Candace unearthed one at the bottom of a box labeled TV. She showed it to Maya. The cover photograph was a group shot of the cast, goofing around just as they had in the few episodes of Jelly and Pie that Maya had seen. Lucy was almost unrecognizable. A pint-sized little nine-year-old, slightly chubby, cinnamon-colored skin, and a wide, toothy grin.

  “Lucasta Jordan-Long,” Maya said. “Lucasta. That’s why you couldn’t find her online.”

  “Jeez. Lucasta! Yeah, that sounds like a stage-brat name. Dear God,” Candace continued, “check out these cast photos. It’s a cheese factory. Now this we have to watch.”

  They hurried to the house, brandishing the DVD and some cans of Diet Sprite and Mountain Dew.

  “You think that’s appropriate?” Lucy fumed. “John-Michael spent last night in jail. Now we’re supposed to reminisce about our childhoods?”

  But Paolo seemed genuinely taken by the DVD cover photo. Despite Maya and Paolo cooing about how cute she’d been, Lucy stormed upstairs in a black mood. Paolo seemed torn as to whether he should follow, but the show’s theme song was already running.

  “I’ll just take a look at the first five minutes,” he conceded.

  Maya watched Grace enter the living room just as Lucy was leaving. Grace stared at the TV for a second, confused and not a little annoyed.

  “Guys—the benefit begins in almost four hours,” she said. “Seriously. I need you to start helping me fix things up down at school. You promised.”

  Candace yawned. “Will you chill? It’s not even noon. There’s plenty of time. Didn’t you already fill the freezer with all the turnovers?”

  Grace visibly recoiled. She seemed on the verge of another outburst but apparently thought better of it.

  Candace continued. “You’re not going to believe what Maya and I found for sale on the street today. At the secondhand stall. Maya, tell her.”

  Maya opened three sodas and handed them out. “So guess what—Charlie from Jelly and Pie has been living right under our roof.”

  There was the briefest of hesitations. “You found a DVD of her show?”

  “Yeah, that’s why she left just now,” Maya said.

  “She doesn’t want us to watch,” Candace explained. “But c’mon, it’s a hoot.”

  “Little Lucy,” Maya said. “She was such a doll!”

  A little suspiciously Grace said, “I thought you never saw the show before.”

  “I didn’t say that,” Maya replied a little too fast. She’d completely tripped up—again. “What I said was that I don’t watch much TV. How did I know what show you were talking about? I saw Jelly and Pie once or twice. I just didn’t pay that much attention. Hey, you’ve got to admit it, Lucy doesn’t look anything like Charlie now.”

  Candace lifted the Mountain Dew to her lips. She glanced at the TV screen. The show had begun. “Sweet fancy Moses! Is that the legendary Jelly and Pie?”

  LUCY

  KITCHEN, SATURDAY, MAY 23

  “My lawyer got me out of jail.”

  Lucy’s relief was instant. She stood in the kitchen, one hand clutching the phone to her ear. She waved frantically with the other, trying to get her housemates’ attention without interrupting John-Michael. They were still in the living room, gripped by the image of Lucy’s younger self on the TV.

  “The cops don’t have enough to charge me,” John-Michael was saying. “And it’s not like they didn’t try. They kept me up half the night.”

  “John-Michael—that’s awesome!”

  “That detective woman, Ellen Winter, finally signed off on my release. But I kinda got a sense that she’s expecting to see me again.”

  “You’re being too negative.”

  “You didn’t see the look she gave me.”

  Moments later, Lucy planted herself on the checkered rug in front of the three-seater gray sofa. Sometimes the only way to get her friends’ attention was to block the TV.

  “I just spoke to John-Michael. He’s doing some paperwork, then he’ll start back from Carlsbad, but it’s going to be a few hours. He’s taking the bus. Bad news is, he’s not sure he’ll make it in time for the start of the benefit. And he was supposed to be arranging the ride for his buddy who was gonna play drums. With all the drama, I forgot to find someone else. Looks like it’ll just be me playing guitar.”

  The sympathy was universal.

  Lucy nodded, hiding her disappointment. She’d have to play alone until John-Michael turned up. She wanted to blame Paolo, but he’d only promised to arrange the band’s transportation and electricity supply. They hadn’t planned for the possibility of the rest of the band ditching Lucy at the last minute.

  She could tell Paolo didn’t like disappointing her. He clearly still wanted to impress her with a sweet setup at the benefit: a drummer, a bass player, a great sound system. Now they had the setup and no other musicians.

  “You’re pretty calm about this,” Paolo observed.

  Lucy paced over to the sound system, which stood beneath the wall-mounted HDTV screen. Her acoustic guitar was on a stand next to the wall, inside a hard case. She popped the case open and removed the instrument. “Learned a long time ago, a good entertainer plans for every contingency. I could walk into a kid
’s birthday party right now if I had to.”

  “Really?” Maya perked up from her spot on the sofa. She sounded impressed. “What would you sing?”

  Everyone in the living room stared at Lucy, waiting. It was a good feeling, all that hopeful expectation. Especially when she knew she could deliver. Lucy strummed a couple of chords and sang:

  With a few good friends and a stick or two,

  A house is built at a corner called Pooh.

  The housemates burst into laughter.

  “Carly Simon,” Lucy said with a grin. “I got it covered.”

  Paolo said, “You should sing that today.”

  “JM and I were thinking more along the lines of Green Day, Rancid, Operation Ivy.”

  “Even better,” Candace noted. “All the songs from our childhood. Plus Winnie-the-Pooh.”

  Paolo continued to stare at her, smiling. He looked as though he was about to say something else, but whatever it was, he kept it buried. Lucy liked the way he looked at her. It was impossible not to think back to how surprisingly sweet he’d been with her in his room. She’d told herself that the experience wouldn’t be repeated, that it wasn’t fair to let him think that they had a chance of a relationship together.

  But maybe all the changes that were needed to make him more irresistible were superficial. She imagined his chest and arms covered in tattoos, maybe a piercing in his ear. Clothes that were a little less J. Crew. Yeah. She could see that working.

  They left for the benefit an hour later, Paolo as Lucy’s roadie. Candace, Grace, and Maya followed with a trunk loaded with food.

  Candace and Grace’s school, Hearst Academy in Malibu, was based around a sunny campus of green lawns and mission revival-style buildings of white stucco and terra-cotta-tiled roofs. The flower beds were tight with brightly colored hibiscus; the walls crawled with violet and pink bougainvillea.

  Grace had managed to persuade the school’s administration to let them use the central quad for the Amnesty International benefit. Lucy reflected that it didn’t hurt that Candace’s quasi-stepfather, the Dope Fiend, was a generous benefactor of the school. They’d probably have let the Deering girls organize an acid-fueled rave on the school grounds, so long as their coffers kept bulging. Lucy would certainly have enjoyed a rave a lot more.