“Wait. Hold on. Let me get this closed,” Remy said as she fumbled with the red umbrella.
“Let me. And you get a sip of tea,” Jared said, taking the umbrella and nodding toward the table by the sofa. “You need to keep that throat lubricated.”
“I know,” Remy said, scooting over to grab her tea dosed with honey and lemon to soothe her throat. “I can’t fall apart now.” She had a handful of numbers to perform in for the showcase and state finals, not to mention her other classes. It was a lot of pressure for a young person, but Ariel had confidence in her daughter.
“No one will be falling apart,” Ariel said firmly. “Keep breathing with your diaphragm; no more of that head voice. It’s too nasal anyway.”
“Right. Got it.” Remy put the cup down and scurried over to take her place beside Jared. “Okay. Hit it, Mom.”
Ariel launched into the song’s intro, tapping the piano keys as she watched Jared start the number. He danced past a frozen Remy, bringing her to life to join in. They used the closed umbrellas as canes, moving in unison. Some of the jaunty dance steps were inspired by the movie; others were innovated by the kids. They traded off verses and shared the chorus, building to the finish, in which they popped open the umbrellas, and then tossed them aside to dance in the rain.
The burst of energy and delight between them was awesome. Fantastic! So dynamic that Ariel longed to push away from the piano and dance along with them. She missed being in the limelight, on stage or on camera. Suburban life was good for her family but toxic for her creative soul.
“Just singin’!” Jared sang in a jazzy echo to Remy’s melody. The kid was holding his own, really shining next to Remy, and that was the greatest surprise here. The chipmunk of a boy who had been bullied off and on since junior high now exuded charm and talent. Despite his odd walking gait he was literally dancing circles around Remy, moving with a spring in his step.
“Very nice,” Ariel announced when the song ended.
“I think we nailed it, J-dawg.” Remy snapped selfies with Jared as Ariel rose from the piano and mulled over the best way to refine their routine. She leaned in to smell the sweet scent of her coral roses in the crystal vase. The blooms would only last another day or two, but these cup-shaped blossoms were among her favorites. The crystal vase was always filled with flowers; it was one of the few accents in the studio. Sometimes when she was struggling through a tedious lesson she needed to focus on the flowers to remember that beauty and art still existed in the world.
“So whaddaya think, Mom?” Remy asked, sneaking a photo of Ariel leaning into the flowers.
“You guys have come a long way in a week. Really. The number has great energy, and the choreography is totes adorbs.”
“Yay!” A smile lit Remy’s face as she did a little happy dance.
“But . . .” Jared held up one finger. “There’s always a but, right, Ariel?” He pushed the hair back from his dark eyes, challenging her. “A few more changes?”
“Umm-hmm. In the biz, we call them notes. You guys are ninety-five percent there. I’m here to help you with the last five percent.”
“Fair enough.” Jared put his hands on his hips. “Let ’er rip.”
Ariel gave them a few notes on timing and pitch. Jared was rushing the intro, Remy was belting too much, and they needed to modulate their volume. “Don’t belt until the finale.”
Jared cast a disapproving look at Remy. “I told you we were singing too loud.”
“So we’ll scale it back. Calm down.”
“You’re the one who’s got all the answers.”
“I know you are, but what am I?” Remy taunted him.
“Cut it out, you two.” Ariel pressed the butt of one hand to her forehead. “Stop acting like real siblings. You were getting along so well.”
“She’s got a stubborn streak,” Jared said.
“And you’re not the boss of me,” Remy replied, then took a deep sip of tea to seal the conversation.
“Figure it out, brats.” Ariel walked away, rolling her eyes. These two really did belong together.
As the kids dropped their beef and swung back into their dance routine, Ariel went to the water dispenser and opened a tea bag. As the orange pekoe steeped, she went to the window and gazed at the green leaves of the laurel, glimmering with rain. They had endured a cold, rainy May, with hardly a whiff of summer in the air. Could she take another year of this rain? Wishing herself out of this place, she cupped her hands around the mug and stared out at the dripping buds on the trees.
She had come to Oregon for her girls, knowing that their lives would be too difficult and expensive in Southern California. How many years ago was it that she landed here and met Rachel and her boys? It would be fifteen years this summer. She flashed back to their first meeting at the swim park, two young moms trying to coax their kids into the water. Ariel had moved here after she’d dumped Paul Alexander, her tattooed road worker who’d given her a place to sleep when she first arrived in Hollywood. How she’d loved his gruff, hard demeanor; inside he’d had a good heart. When they had first met, Ariel possessed the skills to melt the mean off Paul, but as her attention was drawn away by the sitcom role and their babies, the hearty handyman had lost his luster. Paul wasn’t a bad person, but he’d had no patience for babies and he was the kind of guy who felt threatened by his woman’s success. Although he’d given up drinking for her, his addictive personality had not changed. When Ariel caught him using the money she’d set aside for the nanny on meth, she gave him the boot. Her own zero tolerance policy. Damn him.
When she kicked him out, he said he was going up to Alaska. She tossed him a wool cap from the closet and wished him good luck. After that he’d sent a few messages, which she’d passed on to the girls with a little sugarcoating, but she had never seen him again, and she wasn’t sorry about that. She wasn’t going to play a part in an addiction melodrama.
Ariel had suffered through enough of that shit with her father. Yas had been a smooth talker with big dreams and an endless appetite for alcohol. As a kid she had loved his stories. She had loved him, a lot more than she cared for her mother, who was coldhearted and unhappy, her lips always pinched tight, as if she had just swallowed vinegar. That sour heart had seized a few years back. Ariel had gotten word from an aunt in Oklahoma, but she hadn’t cared to attend the funeral. She had missed her father’s funeral, too, but with him she had stayed long enough to say her good-byes.
The last time she saw her dad, she was only a teenager and he was so reduced and shriveled that she could hold him in her arms like a pet. Once a strong, solid Navajo man, he had been reduced to skin and bones . . . and then dust. Yas Dehiya was his name. Their surname, Dehiya, was Navajo for “one who went upward,” but, unless you counted that ecclesiastical rise to heaven, that had not been true of her dad. He never went far from the bottle.
When she left home, Ariel vowed that she would manifest the family name through her success. Onward and upward. The day after she graduated from high school she got on a bus headed west. It took her three days of riding buses with armrests tacky from dirty hands and upholstery smelling of human soil. But she made it to Hollywood and scrambled to make “friends” and get auditions. Producers, nearly all of them male, were attracted to her exotic dark looks, and she was happy to be arm candy in exchange for a few parts. Her experience with her father had taught her how to work people to give her what she wanted. She bartered with sex, but she never gave away her soul. Sex was a game, an animal instinct that was miles apart from the delicate web of true love.
Success had happened fast for her. A series of solid roles had helped her land a show of her own, a singing witch, a role that optimized her vocal talents and sexuality. Not even twenty, and she’d been a star. Ariel had embraced the process of starring in a sitcom. She had loved the weekly routine that began with a table reading and wound up with a high-energy show performed in front of an enthusiastic audience. The cast of Wicked Voice had become her fa
mily for those fabulous years, during which she’d gotten pregnant with both her girls. They had shot around her belly both times, and Ariel had barely had to work to get her body back after childbirth. She’d maintained her iconic role as America’s sexy singing witch . . . until reality programming slammed into their time slot and killed the show.
By necessity, she had brought her girls to the Northwest for a brief hiatus . . . which had lasted fifteen years. Some of those years had been good ones, especially after Oliver came along and pulled Ariel and the girls into a sweet little family. Dear Oliver. She still couldn’t allow herself to think of him without getting weepy.
Turning away from the window of the studio, she sipped her tea and observed Remy and Jared working on some dance steps. Once upon a time, Ariel and Rachel had hoped that one set of their kids might get together. “Wouldn’t that be the bomb?” Rachel used to say. “Then we could be in-laws together.” With two sets of kids the same age, they thought it might happen. But then KJ, Rachel’s oldest, had hooked up with a girl in junior high, and Cassie was cold and leery of men. With Ariel’s luck, that girl would join some sort of severe religious order. And now Remy and Jared looked cute together, but Remy had a boyfriend and, with his newfound confidence, Jared was going to be breaking hearts soon.
“You guys are looking great,” Ariel told them, “but I need to get ready for my next tutoring session. Let’s pick a time for tomorrow.” She went over to the table by her window and checked her appointment book for Friday. “Ooh. Tomorrow is a little tight.”
Gripping Ariel’s arm, Remy leaned in for a look. “Wow, Mom. Your schedule is jam-packed.”
“That’s typical before the spring show,” Ariel admitted.
“But you’ve got Graham Oyama every day! That’s a little extreme when he’s already perfect.” Remy cocked her head, her dark curls tumbling to one side. “Perfect at singing. Perfect at baseball, academics, and debate.”
“He’ll probably end up being President,” Jared agreed, though the comment was laced with criticism, as if that would be the worst occupation in the world.
“Let’s retract the claws.” Ariel reserved comment on gorgeous Graham and scheduled them in for later in the evening and closed her book.
Jared grabbed his backpack and headed out, but Remy remained hunched over the piano keyboard, playing “Heart and Soul” while Ariel threw open a window and pulled out a quick mop. She had noticed a few dust particles flying in the light as the kids danced, and the only thing she hated more than cleaning was living in dust.
Remy stopped playing long enough to snap a photo of herself at the piano, then continued. “Mom, can I ask you a question?” Remy said, staring off into the distance like a philosopher. “Did you ever break up with someone and you regretted it afterward?”
Grabbing a clump of dirt under the piano with the Swiffer, Ariel considered the question. Certainly not your father, she thought, though it would be cruel to share that with Remy.
“I did break it off with a guy once, when I lived in California. And afterward I worried that I’d let a really good one get away.” Back in the Hollywood days when a convertible, a house in the hills, and a studio job made a man a catch. “So I went back to him and told him I was wrong.”
“Really? What happened?”
Ariel laughed. “We got back together. But then I dumped him again two months later. The guy had a lot of perks, but he was too full of himself.” It amused Ariel to think back on that story. “What was that guy’s name? Ray? Or maybe Gray.”
Remy played a sharp chord. “I may have made a mistake breaking up with Cooper.”
“What? You broke up with Cooper? When?” It was the first Ariel had heard of this, and her initial reaction was to tell her daughter to get that guy back. Cooper’s family was loaded, and although money did not buy happiness, it could pay for a lot of nice things, including financial security. And that trip to Europe this summer.
“I told him this week, and he’s not taking it well.”
“And you’re thinking of getting back together?” Ariel leaned the sweeper against the wall.
“Sort of. I didn’t mean to hurt him; that makes me feel awful. And I miss being Cooper’s girlfriend. It’s like a titled position, like prom queen or something.”
Remy turned worried eyes to Ariel, then hunched over the keys again. “Which is all so stupid, because one of the things that annoyed me when we were together was the way he acted like he owned me. Like I was arm candy. And now, I miss that.”
“It’s nice to belong,” Ariel agreed, trying to stay unbiased though she couldn’t deny feeling a pinch of regret. Ariel had been able to relax, knowing her daughter was with Cooper. “Breaking up isn’t always a clear-cut thing. Sometimes you know he’s bad for you, but still, you miss him.”
“I don’t miss Cooper,” Remy said quickly. “He’s not a bad guy, but he’s not for me. No chemistry. Or maybe I expect too much.”
Ariel slid onto the bench beside her daughter and slung an arm over her shoulders. “Welcome to the big-girl world. When it comes to relationships, there are a lot of gray areas.” Ariel wanted to encourage Remy to stick with Cooper for a while. Through prom and graduation . . . and that trip to Europe. Not to pimp her daughter out, but that guy had some nice benefits. “Do you think you’ll stay with Coop for a bit?”
“I can’t be his girlfriend.” Remy was sure of this. “It would be like tricking him, when I know our relationship won’t last.”
Somehow, my daughter has her own strong sense of morality. Ariel knew it did not come from her.
When Remy shifted, Ariel had to turn away to hide her disappointment. Her eyes went to the yellow sofa, where she had ridden him relentlessly last night. Entangled in a relationship that was wrong, a relationship that wouldn’t last, Ariel knew what she should do about it. But she wasn’t ready to take the moral high ground like her daughter. At least not today. Not tonight.
“Checking the clock?” Remy asked. “I’m sorry to lay this on you. Here, do you want me to help you finish cleaning up?”
“Sure. Grab the duster and hit the piano.”
They made quick work of finishing off the studio.
“I’m proud of you, Remy.” Ariel coiled up the cord on the small vacuum and wheeled it into the closet as her daughter carried over the caddy of cleaning supplies. “You’re a good person.”
“Not really. A person doesn’t deserve credit for doing the right thing.” Remy stashed the bucket in the closet. “It’s what we do.”
Ariel patted her shoulder. “It’s what you do.”
They hugged, and then Ariel held Remy close for a mother-daughter-moment selfie.
“The post-cleaning selfie,” Ariel teased. “And by the way, Cooper will be here for his lesson in an hour. In case you want to avoid him.”
“Totes.” Remy raked her hair back as she headed toward the door connecting to the family room. “Last time I saw him, he was really mad. I hope he’s not mean to you.”
“He wouldn’t dare.”
Watching her daughter go, Ariel was a little bit in awe of Remy’s composure and maturity. “Don’t know where she got that,” Ariel muttered under her breath as the door opened out in the mudroom, and Rosie Delfatti appeared in the doorway.
Next.
When Cooper Dover plodded his sad ass in for his lesson later that afternoon, he was definitely out of sorts. His blond hair was dark, still wet from his shower, and instead of his usual sporty attire he wore an old gray T-shirt that drooped on one side and baggy cargo shorts. Not a great look for him, though Cooper was handsome enough to pull off distressed clothes, but the pout of romantic distress made him resemble a big baby.
Ariel ignored his sullen mood and pushed on with the lesson. Damn it, she wasn’t Dr. Phil or Dear Sugar. And right now, she didn’t want to be the mother of the girl who’d just broken up with him. She was his vocal coach, end of story.
“The song is deceptive,” Ariel told him, motioni
ng Cooper closer to the piano so that he could look at the sheet music.
One corner of his mouth curled in a surly frown as he came around the piano.
“The melody is simple, yes, but the lyric of the song provides the rhythm of the piece. Use your hands to tap out the lyrics.”
His jaw set firmly, he began to knock on the piano as she spoke the words: “You gotta have heart, all you really need is heart. . . . ”
Suddenly, he stepped back from the piano and waved his arms. “Stop. Just cut it, all right? We both know the song will work itself out. That’s not what matters here. I’m here because of Remy. You need to talk to her.”
She folded her arms across her chest. “About what?”
“About me . . . and her. About us getting back together. She made a mistake, breaking up with me.” He stubbed a thumb at his chest. “I’m the best thing that ever happened to her.”
His arrogance knew no bounds. “Apparently she doesn’t agree. And that’s her choice.”
He cocked his head to one side, that ragtag look that probably turned girls’ knees to jelly. “Talk to her. Do me a solid. She’ll listen to you.”
“Remy makes her own decisions. I don’t interfere in my kids’ lives; you know that.”
He held up a finger like a TV preacher. “But you could.”
“Remy is her own person, and the truth is, if she were my puppet, you wouldn’t be interested in her.” She turned her gaze to the sheet music and stretched her hands. “Can we get back to the lesson?”
“Screw the lesson.” He turned away, shoved his hands into the pockets of his shorts, and strode toward the door.
Was he leaving? She’d never had anyone walk out on a lesson before. She would have counseled a discouraged student, but in this case Cooper wanted something she could not give.
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