by Claire Cook
And then my cell phone rang.
At the end of the day, love is all that’s real, and all that matters is that you really loved.
My cell was on the kitchen counter, so Tag was closer.
He reached for it.
“I got it,” I said. I took the three steps to my phone in one long leap.
Tag was faster. He scooped it up and flipped it over so he could see the display screen.
“Don’t you dare,” I said.
Tag grinned. I thought he might hesitate for a second just to tease me. I mean, old habits die hard and all that. But then he’d toss it to me, maybe a little bit higher than necessary so I’d have to dive for it, but at least he’d give it to me.
“Hello,” he said.
I opened my mouth and drew in a sharp breath. The sound it made was like a gust of wind.
“Deirdre Griffin’s Hollywood residence,” Tag said in Madonna’s fake British accent.
“Give it to me,” I yelled as I tried to grab the phone out of his hand.
Tag put his hand on my head and straightened out his arm so I couldn’t reach it.
I circled my arms like a windmill, but I couldn’t get any closer. Tag had perfected this hold during our childhood. It was no less humiliating now.
“Give it to me right now,” I screamed.
Tag took my phone away from his ear. “Well, what do you know?” he said. “It’s our old pal, Steve Moretti.”
I lost it. I totally lost it. If his golf cart had been around I would have run him over, then put it into reverse and done it again. And again. And again. And again.
But the only weapon I had was my knee.
So I used it. And for once in my life, my aim was dead on.
I kneed my brother as hard as I could, right in the family jewels.
Tag let out a moan like a wild animal, like the howl of a coyote crossed with the moo of a cow. He shoved me with one hand at the same time I twisted away from him and tried to lunge for my phone.
He threw it with his other hand, then doubled over with pain.
I jumped for the phone. My heel hit the dining room chair.
I heard a splash as the cell phone landed in the fishbowl.
The chair tipped over and I landed on the cheap little dining room table.
The table went over and I went with it.
My T-shirt absorbed the fishbowl’s water like a wick, and as soon as I felt the dampness I knew.
I rolled over and pushed myself to an upright position as fast as I could.
The fishbowl had turned completely over. My phone was still inside it, but Fred and Ginger had been thrown free and were flopping around in a puddle on the floor.
I screamed. I grabbed the fishbowl and ran to the sink. I turned on the water full blast. I reached my hand into the bowl as it was filling and pulled out my phone.
I grabbed a soupspoon from a kitchen drawer and ran back to Fred and Ginger. Water sloshed over the lip of the fishbowl and drenched my yoga pants.
Ginger looked worse so I scooped her up first. I slid the spoon under her gently like a stretcher, then nudged her all the way on with my finger. I lowered her into the bowl as quickly as I could, then I went for Fred.
Neither one of them was moving much, but they weren’t floating on the surface either. The water probably wasn’t the right temperature, but at least it was wet. Their little gills were working hard as if they were gasping for air. My hands shook as I poured in a capful of Nutrafin Goldfish Bowl Conditioner.
I hugged the fishbowl to my chest and prayed.
Tag pushed himself slowly to his feet. “What the fu—”
I hugged the fishbowl tighter. “Get out,” I whispered. “Now. And if you killed my fish, I’ll never speak to you again for the rest of my life.”
I carried Ginger and Fred into my bedroom and shut the door.
I slid down to the floor with my back resting against the bed. I held Fred and Ginger in my lap.
“You’re going to be fine,” I whispered. “I’m right here. Just try to relax and swim through it.”
Surprisingly, I heard Tag leave.
Ginger was barely moving. Fred was still swimming, but he was on his side and only seemed to be able to circle in one direction.
Tears streamed down my face. “Don’t leave me,” I whispered. “Please don’t leave me.”
Easy for Tag to say that I should have been more available, more open. Huge risks or tiny ones, boyfriends or goldfish, this is what open got you: pain and suffering and a chance to get your heart ripped right out of your chest.
I started to sing. The first song that popped into my head was “Row, Row, Row Your Boat,” so I went with it. I sang it over and over and over again. After a while I almost convinced myself that as long as I kept singing, I could keep them alive.
My voice started to go, so I reached for the water bottle on my tiny bedside table and took a quick sip. I lit the little candle and placed it on the floor in front of us. I said another prayer.
Then I went back to singing. This time I sang “Smooth” over and over again. I didn’t even think about the dance steps, but whenever I got to the line about being just like the ocean under the moon I pictured Fred and Ginger back to normal and swimming away happily in their miniature sea, waiting to see me again.
If anybody ever tells you fish don’t have feelings, don’t believe them for a second. Ginger wiggled back and forth slowly as one eye held mine. Fred circled as close to Ginger as he could on every pass. At one point, their fins brushed and they stayed almost touching for a while, their gills opening and closing in time to each other.
I don’t think I consciously decided to start singing “We Are Family,” I just gradually became aware that I was singing it and that, as stupid as it might sound, it fit.
I thought it would be Ginger, but Fred was the first one to go. His one-way circles started getting smaller and slower and closer to the surface. I wanted to look away or to close my eyes, but I made myself keep watching, keep singing, be there for him. His gills struggled. Then they stopped moving. His round eyes fixed and he floated to the surface, still on his side.
“I am so, so sorry,” I whispered to Ginger. “This just sucks.”
Ginger didn’t last much longer. I guess she didn’t see the point. She let go and drifted to the surface, and before I knew it they were both floating on top of the water, their little orange bodies bumping into each other and drifting away, then bumping into each other again.
I cried until I couldn’t cry anymore, until I couldn’t even remember what I was crying about. Then I closed my eyes and drifted off, the fishbowl still in my lap.
I hadn’t closed the blind in my little bedroom window, so the first shreds of daylight woke me up. I brought the fishbowl into the bathroom with me. I took a quick shower and brushed my teeth.
I threw on some yoga pants and a T-shirt. I checked my phone to see if it would turn on, not that I expected it to. Its screen stayed dark, but I didn’t even care. I didn’t think I’d ever feel like talking to anyone again anyway.
I carried Ginger and Fred out to the Land Rover. I guess it didn’t really matter, but I was afraid their fishbowl would tip over on the floor, so I poured out some of the water carefully and buckled them into the passenger seat.
I turned on the GPS and screen-tapped BEACH. Then I sang “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” the whole way there. My voice was raspy and my throat hurt and my head pounded from lack of caffeine, but it seemed like the least I could do.
Even in Los Angeles, there wasn’t much traffic at the crack of dawn, so I followed Highland Avenue till I got on the I-10 heading west, and we were at Santa Monica Beach before I knew it. I pulled into one of the empty lots and carried Fred and Ginger across a ramp that led to the pier. We descended the steps to the beach. We passed some volleyball courts and kept walking until I found the most beautiful part of the beach.
I sat down on the sand and crossed my legs. I held Ginger and Fre
d in my lap.
“At the end of the day, love is all that’s real,” I whispered, “and all that matters is that you really loved.”
I dug them a hole in the wet sand close to the water, as deep as I could make it using my hands. Then I poured them in carefully and filled the hole with sand, one slow scoop at a time.
I marked their grave with a single heart made of tiny beach stones, even though I knew that as soon as the next tide came in it would wash them all away.
A spirited dance is fueled by your spirit.
Dance is about feeling, not thinking. To dance well, you have to check your brain at the door along with your street shoes.
In the early stages, of course, you have to learn the individual steps just like the words of a new language. You have to analyze each one and figure out how best to give each step its due.
After that you have to learn to string the words of your steps into phrases, and then into sentences, to determine where to break them up and how to punctuate them. And then you have to figure out how to group your dance sentences to make paragraphs that pull you through and lead you by the hand into the next one.
But by the time you’re ready to tell the whole story, you transcend all the building blocks that got you there. You get out of your head, and you dance with your body. And you have to dig deep, then open up and let go. A spirited dance is fueled by your spirit.
After I left the beach, I forced myself to go to rehearsal. I stopped fighting myself. I got out of my own way. I did what my dance partner told me to do. I ate and drank what my body needed. I closed my eyes and held my hands high while Anthony pulled my costume over my head for a final fitting.
When our five hours were up, I went back to my little temporary apartment. I carried the empty fishbowl in with me. Someday I’d use it for a vase and fill it with flowers, and it would have a lot more meaning than Afterwife’s empty soy milk bottle.
But first I needed sleep. Tag’s bedroom door was open and both he and his stuff were long gone. Maybe he’d already been moved out when I woke up this morning. I hadn’t even noticed. The dining area table and the chair I’d knocked over were upright again. I knew I didn’t do it, so it must have been Tag. The floor was dry and even the empty beer bottle and the paper plate that had held my hummus and tabbouleh roll-up had been thrown away.
The apartment seemed eerily quiet, as if I’d gotten used to coming home to the sound of an apartment full of cats meowing or birds chattering, not two tiny goldfish named Ginger and Fred.
I ate the single-serving Healthy Choice lemon chicken I’d brought home from the craft services refrigerator so I didn’t have to stop at the store, and then I went to bed. I fell asleep right away, a deep, dreamless sleep.
I got up the next day, rinsed and repeated. Ilya and I had a scheduled hour to practice dancing on the actual ballroom stage. I tried to take it in, to imagine what the huge empty room would be like with the orchestra playing and cheering people filling every seat, but I was numb.
“Don’t think about it,” Ilya said. “Just dance.” And of course he’d choreographed our number so well that our steps filled the stage and we finished directly in front of the now empty judges’ table.
“Look right at them and smile,” Ilya said.
I smiled carefully at the three empty seats.
“Bigger.”
I smiled bigger.
When we were finished for the day, I drove back to my apartment, then took off on foot to track down a temporary phone with prepaid minutes, just enough for an emergency phone call.
I pushed open the door to the little corner store. The woman behind the counter was the same one who’d been there my first night in L.A.
“Hi,” I said. “How did it go with Two and a Half Men?”
“Don’t ask,” she said. “But I’ve got three auditions this week. One of them is practically a shoo-in.”
I wished her luck and she helped me pick out a temporary cell phone.
As she rang up my purchase, I glanced over at a stand filled with newspapers, the cheap supermarket tabloid kind. A familiar face on the front page caught my eye, so I picked it up. It took me a moment to realize the face was mine.
“I’ll take this, too,” I said. I folded the paper in half and tucked it under my arm.
As soon as I was outside, I opened it up again. In the photo, a coral scarf was looped around my neck and I was seated in a row of people on a leather couch. Ashleyjanedobbs was sitting next to me looking like a tiny porcelain doll.
“TAG’S SISTER SCARED ITLESS,” the headline screamed.
I took another look at the picture. My eyebrows were up and my mouth was open like I was about to scream, so wide open that even on newsprint I could almost count the old silver fillings in my back molars. My hands were holding on to each other in my lap, as if for dear life. My knees were flopped over to one side at such a strange angle that it looked like I might be Dancing With the Stars’ first wheelchair contestant. The silver skyscraper heels attached to my feet looked like they belonged to a completely different person, like someone had built me with a Mrs. Potato Head game and thought it would be really funny to put those shoes with those legs.
I looked at it some more. Then I started to laugh. I laughed and I laughed, and as soon as I began to settle down, I’d look at the picture again and start laughing some more. I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand. A couple of tourists wearing fanny packs crossed the street so they wouldn’t have to walk past a crazy person.
Standing on the sidewalk between two souvenir shops, I read the whole thing, about the odds-on favorites for winning and who would probably be the first ones kicked off, about who had talent and who didn’t, about who had great chemistry, and who was probably sleeping with whom. There was a whole paragraph about Tag, and I was referred to once simply as his sister and once as his Itless sister.
Okay, so I was Itless. Big freakin’ deal.
I tore the article out of the newspaper. Maybe I’d add it to my mother’s scrapbook, and one day I’d flip through to this clipping again. And I’d look it right in the eye, and I’d laugh and I’d laugh and I’d laugh about how crazy I’d been to take this on. Rash. Impulsive. Foolhardy.
But brave, too, really, really brave.
The truth was I’d been scared Itless my whole life. I’d kept everything I did safe and small. I’d hidden behind not just Tag, but my whole family, and even Mitchell, so I wouldn’t get hurt.
But living a little life hadn’t kept the hurt away. Life hurt sometimes. It just did. Maybe it seemed silly to be so heartbroken about losing a couple of goldfish, but you know what, I was. Fred and Ginger were mine, and mine alone, and it hurt like hell that they were gone. But the sadness didn’t take away from the joy they’d brought me when they were alive.
So maybe it made sense to go for the biggest life you could handle, the one that had the highest highs to balance the lowest lows. Jump on. Buckle up. And when it was over, at least you’d be able to say, Oh, well, that was fun.
I was climbing aboard the roller coaster. I was putting myself out there. I’d take my dancing as far as it would go. I’d build my social-networking empire. I’d become a truly amazing social media maven. A genius. A freakin’ guru.
Sure, I was scared. Shaking in my go-go boots scared. There were big risks, huge risks, but there was also the potential for some pretty huge personal satisfaction.
I was going to be on Dancing With the Stars on Monday night. This Monday night. As in the day after tomorrow. And I was going big or going home. Or maybe going big and going home. It didn’t really matter what the rest of the world thought or did or how soon they kicked me off the show. What mattered was that for the first time in my life I was open. Available. I’d had the guts to reach out and grab that proverbial brass ring when it circled by. And I was going to do my best to enjoy the ride.
As soon as I got back to my apartment, I phoned home.
My father answered on the first ring. “
Hey, Dad,” I said.
“Honey,” he said.
I heard a click and then my mother said, “Deirdre?”
“Hi, Mom.”
“Your mother and I have been worried about you,” my father said.
I took a deep breath. “For how long? I mean, did you guys ever worry about me when I was a kid, or was I just, you know, the family wallflower?”
“Where did that come from?” my mother said.
“Of course we worried about you, Dee-Dee,” my father said. “We worried about all four of you kiddos. We still do.”
“See,” I said. “You always lump me in with everybody else. I’ve spent my whole life feeling like I didn’t measure up.”
“Deirdre,” my mother said, “your father and I may not have been perfect parents, but we love you very much. And if it makes you feel any better, we’ve had similar conversations with each of your sisters as well as with your brother.”
“Seriously?” I said. “Even Tag?” I mean, how dare any of my siblings think they didn’t get enough attention, but Tag?
My mother laughed. “Sweetie, you’ve got the power to be as special as you choose to be.”
“And your mother’s got the scrapbook to prove it,” my father said. “But you’ve only got one family, honey, so sort things out with your brother, okay?”
After we hung up, I headed into the bathroom to do my homework. Lila had given me a whole kit. I started with the loofah mitt and some exfoliating cream. I slathered on the cream and scrubbed my entire body until I’d taken off a layer of skin, maybe even two. Then I lathered gobs of rich foam shaving gel on my legs and underarms and bikini line, shaved, then rinsed off and did it again. Finally, I covered my entire body with a rich moisturizer.
I walked around the little apartment naked while my skin absorbed the moisturizer. I never walked around without clothes, but maybe I’d start. I mean, there was no one here but me, so who was I actually hiding from? And maybe it was only my imagination, but things felt a lot less jiggly than they had a week ago.
When all that was left of the moisturizer was a soft glow to my skin, I put clean sheets on the bed. I found my laptop. I plugged it in, climbed into bed, pulled the sheets over my legs, and fired it up.