Jules glared at her baby sister and then looked back at Brooke. “Seriously, Brooke, you should get a pedometer,” Jules said. “I think that could be motivating.”
“Maybe when I get paid next week,” Brooke said, hoping they’d forget about it by then.
“Mom, can we borrow twenty bucks so we can buy sissy a fancy device to tell her how many inches she ran today?” Lexi asked Jules, batting her eyelashes. Sticks and stones, Brooke reminded herself, just as she told her kids all day long. Brooke thought a sharp stick in the eye would hurt less than some of Lexi’s barbs.
“Knock it off, Alexis,” Jules scolded.
“Isn’t it going to be so great not to have to wait for the next paycheck to have and do whatever we want?” Brooke said wistfully, desperate to change the subject. “Have you guys thought about that? I mean, I seriously can’t even imagine. You walk into a store and see something—some boots, a watch, a flipping pair of diamond earrings—and bam! They’re yours. Right then and there, no waiting, no wondering, no questions asked. No worries at all. Are you kidding me? Hey, can we rest for a second? I’m dying over here.” Brooke stopped in a shady spot and leaned against a tree. Jules and Lexi joined her.
“Why do you guys think she did it?” Brooke asked. “Why did she keep that money a secret? Why didn’t she help us when she was alive, when she could have? Why did she have to make all of these stupid conditions?”
“Because she’s Mom,” Lexi said simply. “It’s what she does. Or what she did. She controlled. And I bet she thought we’d fall flat on our asses. So I say we suck it up and get this shit done so that we can get the last laugh. I’m serious. Who’s in?”
“I’m in,” said Jules.
“In,” said Brooke.
“In,” said Lexi.
They walked in silence for a while before Jules started blabbing about how nice it was having company when she walked the dogs and something about fresh air and exercise. Brooke wasn’t really listening. She was too busy imagining how amazing it was going to feel to take off her sweaty sneakers and sit on her butt for the rest of the afternoon.
Lexi
“I told you, I’m going to a movie with a friend,” Lexi said with a dramatic sigh. She turned her back to Jules and eyed her reflection in the hall mirror: microscopic pleather skirt clinging low to her hip bones; skintight, belly-baring tank top; knee-high boots with six-inch heels. Not bad, she thought to herself as she wrapped a gold cuff bracelet that looked like a snake around her upper arm.
“A movie, huh? Dressed like that? Won’t you freeze to death? You know how cold it gets in movie theaters,” Jules said.
“I’ll bring a sweater,” Lexi said. She fought the urge to stick her tongue out at Jules’s reflection behind her in the mirror.
“Do you even own a sweater?” Brooke asked.
“Stay out of it,” Lexi spat at Brooke, spinning around to glare at her, then stalked past both of them into the kitchen area.
“Nice ink,” Jules said, referring to the tattoo on Lexi’s lower back. It was three rounded triangles joined by a circle and surrounded by an intricate tangle of thorns. Lexi was pretty sure that Jules wouldn’t be a big fan of permanent body art, so she’d been keeping it hidden to avoid yet another lecture. Tonight she’d decided she didn’t care anymore. If not the tattoo, Jules would just find something else to rag on her about.
“Thanks, I drew it,” Lexi told her.
“How did you draw a tattoo on your own back?” Brooke asked.
“You actually get paid to teach kids?” Lexi snorted. “I drew it on a piece of paper and the tattoo guy copied it.” She shook her head. Could Brooke really be that dense? Juliana had insisted she’d regret not getting a college education, but a fat lot of good it had done her sister.
“How are you planning to pay for your movie?” Jules asked. Lexi’s first reaction was to tell Jules to go fuck herself, but she realized her big sister was just doing what she always did—trying to play peacekeeper between her and Brooke. Jules was nothing if not predictable.
“My friend is paying.” Lexi decided to just keep the peace herself. She was standing in front of the fridge now with both doors swung wide open, not exactly sure what she was looking for and definitely not finding it.
“Is your friend picking you up or are you planning to walk to the theater in those ridiculous shoes?” Jules asked.
Lexi slammed the refrigerator doors and shot her nagging sister the bird. “I’m meeting him on the corner. There’s no fucking way I’m letting him come in here and get grilled by Sergeant Bossypants and Deputy Shit-for-Brains.” Brooke looked away, but not before Lexi saw the kicked-puppy look on her face. Lexi felt bad for a split second, then thought better of it. The world was a hard, mean place. People were cruel. Brooke needed to toughen up, grow some skin. Lexi was actually helping her, although she knew there would be no thank-you card for her efforts.
“Well, that’s a perfect outfit for standing around on a corner, that’s for sure,” Jules said to Lexi.
“Why don’t you go have a baby or something so you have someone else to boss around and you can get off my ass?”
Jules bit her tongue and Lexi knew exactly what she wanted to say: As long as you live under my roof, you will abide by my rules. Lexi raised her eyebrows at her sister, silently daring her to say it.
“What time can we expect you back?” Jules said instead.
“You can expect me any fucking time you’d like, but I’ll be back when I’m back. See ya.” Lexi could feel her sisters’ eyes on her back as she sashayed out the door, letting it slam behind her.
I’m twenty-fucking-six years old, Lexi seethed as she stumbled on a root poking up out of the sidewalk. She felt guilty for barking at Jules, and she did not like that feeling one bit. Instead, she channeled her discomfort into the much more comfortable, more familiar emotion: angry defensiveness. Jules isn’t my fucking mother. Hell, my mother wasn’t even my goddamned mother. I don’t have to answer to anybody. I’m an orphan. Orphans can do whatever the hell they want. And right now, what I want is to go out and get totally fucked up.
Lexi had texted Brad and Ryan and begged them to pick her up and take her to Rusty’s. It was the seediest bar in town, smack in the middle of Crack Alley, but it had an outdoor patio where they could smoke and nobody would bother them. She prayed the boys would have some dope.
“Hey, hot stuff! Need a ride?” Brad shouted out the window. He was in the passenger seat of Ryan’s rusty Dodge Ram, and he pushed the door open for her. She hiked her tiny skirt up even higher and pulled herself into the truck.
“Hey, Slexis,” Brad said, sliding his arm around her shoulder and giving her a friendly squeeze. “How’re things?”
“Other than the fact that I’m living on my sister’s floor and I’m still broke as shit and I have like eight months to get an actual job and my psycho sisters are driving me batshit crazy, things are practically perfect,” Lexi said, reaching for the open beer between Brad’s legs and taking a huge sip. Then she belched.
“Sorry, but I haven’t had a beer in two weeks,” she told her friends. “They buy one six-pack for the whole week and they fucking share a can a night. And they don’t drink real booze or take any pills so there’s nothing else. I took one of those beers once—I didn’t know they had a fucking beer-drinking schedule—and Jules about had a conniption. She’s a total nightmare. No, she’s worse than that. She’s my mother. You should have seen her flip her shit when I left some hair in the shower drain. Big fucking deal. It’s hair. Pick it up and get over it.”
“What do they do the other day?” Ryan wanted to know. He took a drag on his fake-cigarette pipe and offered it to Lexi. She inhaled deeply.
“What?” she finally asked. She’d forgotten what they were talking about already.
“They buy a six-pack a week, and there are seven days,” Ryan e
xplained.
“I don’t know,” Lexi laughed, loving the buzz she was building. “Maybe they take Sunday off for God, or maybe they make one last two days. They probably have a special beer Tupperware for it. It wouldn’t surprise me. Oh, and, you guys, just so you know, I don’t have a dime.”
“We got you tonight,” Brad said.
“God, I’ve missed you guys,” Lexi said, downing the last of Brad’s beer and thinking how lucky she was to have friends like Brad and Ry, friends who loved her and didn’t lecture her and looked out for her because they wanted to—not because they had to.
Jules
Jules was still smarting from Lexi’s words. Why don’t you go have a baby or something so you have someone else to boss around and you can get off my ass? Damn Lexi and her brutally offhand blows. Did her self-absorbed sister even know that Jules’s greatest fear in life—ten times greater than her fear of writing a novel or not writing a novel or writing a novel that was awful or even being eaten alive by alligators—was that she would be a bad mother someday? Of course she didn’t. She didn’t know a thing about Jules. She had never wanted to and she probably never would. She was a narcissistic little user who only thought about herself and how she could get what she wanted. And since that was partially Jules’s fault—for moving out the second the opportunity had presented itself and leaving Lexi in Juliana’s care (or lack of it)—she felt obligated to endure the abuse.
Jules was going to be a great mother, she was almost positive. She knew that unhealthy cycles like alcoholism and abuse tended to repeat themselves in families, but she also knew that plenty of people managed to stop those cycles by going in the polar opposite direction. Kids of alcoholics became teetotalers; adults who were abused when they were younger refused to even raise their voices at their own children. Jules looked at her relationship with Juliana after her dad’s death and considered it a guidebook on how not to parent. If she just approached every parenting quandary and conundrum by asking herself, “What Would Juliana Do” and then doing the exact opposite, she was pretty sure she couldn’t go wrong.
“Brooke, would you please take out the trash?” she asked now. Jules had pulled the overflowing bag out of the can, tied it up, placed it by the door and replaced it with a clean bag. All Brooke had to do was walk the thing out to the curb. And Jules would insist that she do it, too, because you didn’t get to live room-and-board-free without at least contributing to some of the upkeep. But at the moment, Brooke was very busy sitting on her butt, watching TV and painting her fingernails a hideous bright pink color. Jules was dying to suggest maybe she go for a walk or do a few lunges, maybe pop in an exercise video, anything to start building up some strength and stamina.
“I’ll take it out as soon as my nails dry,” Brooke said, not looking up.
Jules sighed. How had she wound up here again, she wondered, playing mom to her two irresponsible, troubled sisters? Would this be happening if Juliana hadn’t died? Jules had barely had any contact with either Brooke or Lexi in years, and now she could remember why: They had nothing at all in common. But they were family, the only family any of them had until they created new ones of their own. Did their shared genes even matter anymore? Jules genuinely wasn’t sure.
“I’m going to jump in the shower,” she told Brooke. Brooke was now far too absorbed in the taxing double task of blowing on her awful manicure and watching America’s Funniest Home Videos to respond.
Jules lathered up her body as quickly as she could and then turned off the water while she shaved her legs. She was shivering, and the goose bumps made the job miserable, but she was conscientious by both nature and nurture. Besides, water was expensive and now there were four of them. Brooke was pretty good about getting in and out, but Jules had to bang on the door every time Lexi showered and ask her to wrap it up. And Jules couldn’t prove it, but she was convinced Lexi’s shower schedule revolved around the laundry—the laundry she made copious amounts of but never helped with—because she invariably managed to get herself a clean, dry towel. Jules knew she should let Lexi do her own laundry, but the problem was that when Lexi ran out of clothes she’d either wear them filthy, not wear underwear or take something from Jules’s closet. It just wasn’t worth it.
She got out of the shower and put on a sundress and some makeup. This was Shawn’s one night a week that he’d be home for dinner and she wanted to look nice for him. He’d been so patient and understanding and hadn’t grumbled once when he had to wait for the bathroom or tiptoe through his own house, stepping around sleeping bodies when he got up at the crack of dawn.
She’d splurged on some steaks—the more expensive lean kind, for Brooke—and was going to make a big, nutritious, high-protein salad. She’d seen the nutrient-void junk Brooke inhaled when left to her own devices, and Jules was worried her sister would never be able to get in half-marathon shape if she didn’t change her eating habits. She just hoped her not-so-subtle efforts wouldn’t backfire and send Brooke screaming down to Jack in the Box as soon as her back was turned.
She wondered if Lexi would even eat dinner at all.
Jules hated the fact that she couldn’t stop wondering and worrying about Lexi. What would she do if Lexi didn’t come home? Call the police? File a missing-person’s report? She didn’t know any of Lexi’s so-called friends, nor did she want to. She was positive her sister wasn’t heading off to any movie, but it wasn’t like she was going to follow her or anything. If she didn’t come home, she didn’t come home. Jules would deal with it then. Is this what being a parent is like? she mused. If so, maybe she and Shawn should just get a dog. A nice, well-behaved, cuddly, predictable, hairless dog.
Brooke
Brooke could smell the steak broiling in the kitchen and her mouth was watering. She wondered if Jules would dole out a tiny portion for her and then watch her eat it. It was fine if she did; Brooke had her secret stash of chocolate-covered almonds and peanut-butter-filled pretzels hidden in the single drawer Jules had cleared out for her. She hoped Jules and Shawn would go to bed early, and prayed Lexi wouldn’t be home when they did. It was next to impossible to sneak any food in this tiny house, and Brooke really needed a treat without anyone giving her a guilt trip.
More than four months had passed since their meeting with Mr. Wiley, and Brooke could barely jog a single mile. In part, she blamed the extra weight, and she cursed the catch-22 of it all. The other problem was finding the right time. She’d tried running in the morning, but she had no energy before she ate and felt sick if she tried to exercise on a full stomach. She’d tried running after work, but she was exhausted by then and even lacing up her sneakers had seemed too great of an effort. She’d done some research, and full marathon training plans ranged anywhere from fourteen to thirty weeks—and she only needed to complete a half-marathon. She still had plenty of time. It said on the Internet that you could get ready for a half-marathon in as little as eight weeks. Not overweight, totally sedentary people who hadn’t run in over a decade, her subconscious reminded her. Brooke politely asked her subconscious to stay out of it.
“Hey, Brooke, do you think you could set the table?” Jules called from the kitchen. Brooke put down the two-year-old Redbook magazine she’d been flipping through and shuffled into the kitchen. She watched as her sister moved skillfully about the small space, adding spices to this pot and adjusting the flame on the burner under that one. She was beyond impressed. Their mother had stopped cooking completely when their father died, although Brooke had a few fuzzy memories of her doing it earlier. Jules didn’t even seem to use or need recipes, a fact Brooke found staggering. Even when she followed a recipe to the letter, half of the time what she made was inedible.
“How did you learn to cook?” she asked Jules now. She placed three matching plates on the small kitchen table and tucked a neatly folded napkin under the edge of each.
“I don’t really know,” Jules said. “I guess I just sort of
figured it out. Trial and error, you know? I’m no Julia Child now, but I used to be god awful. You probably don’t even remember this, but once, right after Dad died, I tried to make a baked pasta dish I’d had at a friend’s house, and I just threw everything in a big casserole pan. Uncooked pasta, a few whole tomatoes I’d crushed with my hands, some cheese and carrots . . . then I cracked a few eggs on top of it—I’d seen Julia Child do that on TV—and threw it in the oven.”
“You did?” Brooke asked. She had so few memories of that time in her life, probably because she’d been in shock and had blocked everything out. She thought now how awful that must have been for Jules, having to be so mature and industrious and responsible.
Jules nodded, lost in the memory.
“Did Mom freak out?” Brooke asked. Juliana had lived by the motto “waste not, want not,” and she’d been particularly fanatical about food.
“Nah, this was early on, when she was in zombie mode. She didn’t even seem to notice. She actually ate it. You and Alexis just looked at me with these huge eyes and then we all watched while Mom crunched her way through that disgusting mess without saying a word. After she went to bed I threw the rest of it away—I buried it in the backyard so she wouldn’t know—and then I made us peanut butter and banana sandwiches.”
“That was nice of you,” Brooke said. She pulled out a chair and sat down heavily. Her heart hurt for Jules; for all three of them, actually. She thought of her sweet, innocent preschool students and realized she hadn’t been all that much older than them when she’d lost her dad. She was glad she couldn’t remember most of it.
“I started checking cookbooks out of the library after the pasta disaster,” Jules told her. “I looked for ones with titles like Five-Ingredient Dishes and One-Pot Dinners and Eat on the Cheap. I guess we got by. None of us has scurvy or got really— Oh, sorry.” She obviously had been about to say fat.
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