The Favorite Sister

by Jessica Knoll

  I have, of course, met Layla Courtney on a few occasions. A quiet, tall girl with wet hair in a high bun who unimpressed me greatly. What did Lisa see in her? What did Jesse? There were no Layla Courtneys on Instagram, and so I tried the mother. I turned up a scroll of Kelly Courtney variations, but only one with SPOKE in the handle and a light-skinned black girl in the profile picture. I felt like I was breathing fire ants as I thumbed her feed. Kelly and Layla at the Jersey Shore, Kelly and Layla at sixth-grade graduation last year, Kelly’s big “announcement” with all of ninety-six likes that you should follow Layla over @souk_SPOKE, where she would be hawking the gimcrack rugs and pottery and clothing handcrafted by Imazighen women, who now have the opportunity to learn a skill and earn a living thanks to SPOKE. A quick Google of the word “souk” told me that it is Berber for market. A terrible name for an Instagram handle, nothing catchy about it, but still I felt light-headed when I clicked on Kelly’s tag and saw that Layla’s account already had 11K followers, and that nearly every picture of Layla, modeling the goods with her baby afro, was riddled with comments like gorgeous girl, natural beauty, @ICManagement she on your radar??? I glanced at myself in the mirror, never one more honest than a hairdresser’s. My hair was smooth and straight, a little bit of movement at the ends, the way I’ve worn it for twenty years. Even with the straightening treatments, no one ever called me gorgeous when I was the same age as this mouseburger, and I was.

  So why am I up in arms? How could I possibly feel threatened by a twelve-year-old black girl with natural curls? Diversity is one of the pillars of our show. But Jesse, the empress regnant of reality television, never would have opened that door if there wasn’t any green behind it. Advertisers desperately want to capture young viewers, and diversity (Or are we calling it inclusivity now? Better question: Which expression is more lucrative?) is of paramount importance to millennials. To us, I guess I could say. I did make the millennial cutoff by the skin of my teeth, and that was also part of the reason I didn’t think I was coming back after the last reunion. No one survives the show past thirty-four.

  I’ve managed to delay the inevitable for another year, and now I can’t help but feel my replacement is being groomed. Because Jesse didn’t open the door for underrepresented women in the media as much as she did crack it. Just enough to allow Brett and me through for a short window of time. On a show with four to five players, any more than one gay woman and it becomes a lesbian show, any more than one woman of color and it becomes an ethnic show, and then advertisers start to worry about alienating the audience. That’s not diversity; it’s token-ism, and that’s why it felt like a kick in the stomach when I found out that not only was my choice out of the running for Hayley’s spot (we all hustle hard to replace outgoing Diggers with our friends), but that the new Digger satisfied a requirement that up until now only I could fulfill. Think of each of us as a pendant on a charm bracelet. I am the lock and Brett is the heart and Jen is the ballet slipper and Lauren is the ladybug. What we needed was a transgendered woman, not another lock.

  “Aren’t you pissed?” Lauren hisses, reaching for her wine and realizing it’s empty. She pretends like she was really going for the bread, tearing off a small piece and docking it on her plate. “I would be so pissed if I were you.”

  I experience a flicker of appreciation for the woman I’d written off as a boy-crazy boozehound. I’ve never spoken to any of the Diggers about feeling like a box Jesse had to check to escape an evisceration from Jezebel, because Brett, the one who should get it, is utterly beguiled by Jesse, and Lauren and Jen could never even begin to empathize. Jen came to the attention of the producers by way of her mother and Lauren shouldn’t be on the show at all. She’s one of those Hitchcock blondes, from a family with its own crest. But she has mastered hi-lo style and drinks too much and talks about sex too loudly and you’d be hard pressed to find a single woman in the city who doesn’t have her dating app hanging in the gallery of her mobile screen. Her name is Lauren Bunn and viewers call her Lauren Fun, and that has kept her safe, as has her willingness to go in for the kill when Lisa blows the whistle. She’s the show’s lovable hatchet man; indispensable, really.

  But then Lauren clucks, “Your friend must be so disappointed,” and I realize she meant I’m probably pissed that my hire was passed over, and that a small part of her is pleased by that.

  There are precisely two seasons in a Goal Digger’s life: shooting season and killing season. Not even a week after we wrap, months before we film the reunion, it’s customary for producers to approach each Digger and ask if we have any friends we would like to nominate for the next season of the show. We have no idea who is coming back and who is on the chopping block, though the position on the couch at the reunion some weeks later is normally a clue. The closer you are seated to Jesse, the better your odds. At this most recent reunion, filmed a month before my memoir came out and put me back in the game, I was on the end of the couch for the first time ever. The last book in my fiction series had flopped and I was growing long in the tooth. I nearly accepted my fate. The only Digger who has ever been where I was at and asked to return is Lauren, and I’m not willing to have my vagina steamed on camera or pose naked in a valiant effort to save the minks, high jinks Lauren has gotten up to in a single episode.

  But. There is another option besides humiliating yourself for laughs. The producers are always looking to shake up the troupe, which is why the casting process starts anew the moment the mic packs come off. It’s an unwritten rule that if you bring a woman to prod’s attention and they like her and they cast her, you can buy yourself a stay of execution. The producers are not going to introduce a new Digger unless she has some sort of connection to the group. This isn’t Big Brother, throw a bunch of strangers together and hope for pregnancy scares and cold-cocks. The show runs best when the group has history, allegiances, grudges. The moment filming ends, a Digger is campaigning for her hire for the next season, nary a modicum of concern that it may be at a current castmate’s expense. If you’re lucky enough to see your person cast, you enjoy one more benefit, which is that she provides you with her eternal loyalty. You never betray the Digger who brought you in.

  Lauren was Jen’s hire, in season two, and so for as long as she and Jen are on the show together, she will have to like who Jen likes and feud with who she doesn’t. She’s tiring of it, and I know she was pushing for her fellow Yalie, inventress of period-proof underwear, to replace Hayley so that she could boss someone around for a change. Better luck next season, Lauren.

  The server reappears to ask us if we are ready to order.

  Lauren and I sit in supportive silence as Jen explains to him that she’s a friend of the chef’s and she’s called ahead about some dairy-free butternut squash soup.

  “God, no.” Lauren laughs, when the server asks us if we also have any dietary restrictions. “Let’s do the fluke, the hamachi, the mushrooms, and the bucatini.”

  “Two orders of mushrooms,” I say.

  The server smiles, pleased with us and with himself. “My all-time favorite dish on the menu.”

  “She’s married,” Lauren growls, saucily.

  “And you?” the server asks her.

  Lauren waves her naked finger at him.

  “Jesus God,” Jen mutters. However long it’s been since Jen has had sex, it’s in dog years.

  The waiter picks up the bottle to refill my glass and realizes it’s empty. “Did we want to stick to this bottle?” Lauren circles her finger in the air, pantomiming a mini tornado: another round. Jen pokes me under the table. Now, before she gets too drunk to remember.

  I reach for another piece of bread. “So, Laur, I’m not trying to blow your fuse here but there’s more.”

  “Don’t tell me,” she says, pushing her plate away. “Brett is skinnier than me now.”

  Jen endorses the bon mot with a guffaw. She’s always bristled at being grouped into the “wellness industry” with a woman who considers baked goods one o
f the major food groups. Likewise, Brett has taken Jen to task for her narrow and elitist definition of health, which contains but a single word—“thin.” There is nothing healthy about a woman weighing the same as she did in the fifth grade, about a woman who rarely eats solid foods and who is so malnourished she cannot grow her hair past her ears. These are Brett’s words, not mine, though I do wonder what she would say if she could see Jen now, with her shiny new lob and lusher-looking figure. There is nothing healthy about a woman who changes her appearance to please a man, probably.

  “It’s about the trip,” I say to Lauren.

  The Trip. Every season, the producers carve out a benchmark week to bring all the women together, no matter where we are in our cycle of loving and loathing each other. First season was quiet and cost effective: Jen’s Hamptons house, to celebrate the opening of her pop-up juice truck in the parking lot of Ditch Plains. Second season, we were a bona fide sleeper hit thanks to the network’s incessant Sunday afternoon marathons, and we could afford to go bigger: Paris, for the launch of the third book in my fiction series. (The Parisians have never called my books smut.) Last season, it was Los Angeles for the GLAAD awards. The show was up for Outstanding Reality Program—which we all understood to be Brett’s nomination—and there was also a nomination in the Outstanding Talk Show category, for the episode of 60 Minutes featuring Brett and all she was doing to help pave the way for other young, gay entrepreneurs.

  As it’s gone, the Digger who is at the heart of the trip is the Digger who gets the most flattering pass by the editor’s hand and the most screen time for her product. And as it’s gone, every woman gets her turn. Lauren isn’t an original like Jen, Brett, and me, she doesn’t wear the signet ring inscribed SS, but she’s been with us since season two. This season we all assumed it would be her turn.

  With as much compassion as I can muster, I say, “Lisa told me they want to calendar Morocco for some time in June.”

  “Morocco?” Lauren whispers in quiet defeat.

  “Apparently SPOKE is releasing a line of electric bikes,” Jen says. Her elfin face pinches in disgust. “Because what women like Brett need is a piece of exercise equipment to reduce the amount of movement in their day.”

  In all fairness, the e-bikes aren’t for women like Brett. They’re for women who have too much movement in their day to attend school and to earn a living. I hate that even a silent part of me is still sticking up for Brett, after what happened between us. “The good news is that they haven’t booked the travel yet,” I say, putting the devastating memory out of my mind. “If we make our concerns known, we can sway them. But we have to move fast and we have to show a united front. Lisa said Jesse feels very strongly that in the first season since the election we present women as magnanimously as possible.”

  “I see,” Lauren sniffs, “and reversing sexist dating roles isn’t magnanimous?”

  “Not as magnanimous as keeping twelve-year-old African girls from getting raped,” Jen replies.

  “Who are these twelve-year-old African girls Brett is keeping from getting raped?” Lauren wants to know. “Honestly, does she have any hard data to prove this? Have we even talked to a single one of them? How do we even know it’s true?”

  I nod, animatedly. I want her riled up before I get to the point.

  “So the show is now The Brett Show,” Lauren says, her aggrieved voice crowd-surfing the din of the restaurant. “Or the SPOKE show or whatever it is. It’s her whole fucking family and her business and she gets the trip two years in a row.”

  “It pays to play on the same team as your boss,” Jen says, which was a claim I used to defend Brett against before I realized that Brett has absolutely benefited from being the same kind of different as Jesse. In our ecosystem, Brett is undoubtedly the most privileged of the bunch, and her advantages extend beyond the good edit. Jesse has made it abundantly clear that the show functions as a by-product of our already existing success. It is wonderful if it can enhance what we have already built for ourselves, but it is not there to lay the groundwork. In other words, we attract the show; the show does not attract us. For that reason, Diggers take home the same paltry salary of five thousand dollars a year for roughly one hundred twenty days of labor—and that’s before taxes. We are not meant to need the money, and most of us don’t, but ever since Jesse banished me to the end of the couch, I can no longer stomach the hypocrisy of my boss lambasting the wage gap in the New York Times while paying her own less than minimum wage. Jesse moves up the corporate ladder at the network as the show grows in popularity, getting richer off our backs while we are expected to just be grateful for the continued exposure. Hayley finally had enough of it, especially once one of the production coordinators suggested that Brett took Jesse’s advice, asked for more money, and got it. I admired Hayley for going to bat for herself, but I also knew it was a suicide mission. Jesse would only see the attempt at a salary negotiation as ungrateful, and it would only end in her dismissal, which, of course, it did. Unless you are Brett Courtney, the show does not reward difficult women.

  Brett is the teacher’s pet, and funnily enough, one of her top complaints about Jen was that she received preferential treatment because of her mother. Introducing two people who are so much alike that they ultimately repel one another. Both are exhaustively preachy when it comes to their brand of health. Both are smug know-it-alls, believing their approach is the right one and if you don’t do it their way then you are a moron who will probably get cancer soon. Something else they have in common, something I didn’t discover until recently, is that they are both totally different people off camera than they are when we are rolling, though this could be said of all of us. It’s not easy to maintain the dividing line between who we are on the show and who we actually are, to do the dirty, daily work of pulling up the weeds and clipping the undergrowth. But not all of us go around insisting Who I am in real life is who I am on camera, which Brett has said so often it should be her next hideous tattoo. The truth is that who Brett is on camera is who she has become in real life. TV-Brett metastasized. Brett-Brett is in there, somewhere—I’ve had a brush with her—but she is like the last, smallest Russian nesting doll of the set.

  Lauren groans. “What are we going to do about her?”

  I glance at Jen again. She nods: Go for it. “I sent Lisa my schedule for the next few months,” I say. “I have my book tour and Vince’s birthday and a few other things on the calendar, and I just made it clear I would invite you two, and perhaps whoever the new cast member is—not if it’s Kelly, obviously—but that was it.”

  “You think we shouldn’t film with the darling one,” Lauren deduces with a snort. “That’ll go over well.”

  “I just think we do our own thing and we let her do hers,” I say, trying to keep it light. This isn’t a blood pact. We don’t need to draw knives and weapons. The most effective way to destroy someone on the show is to disengage, to deprive her of the drama, of the meaningful connections, of the great and powerful storyline. In our world, your sharpest weapon is a polite smile.

  I can tell Lauren is still not sold.

  I’m contemplative for a moment. “I’ve debated whether or not to tell you this,” I say, and I have. I was hoping my case was solid without this.

  Lauren says, at two martinis and two glasses of wine volume, “Just fucking tell me.”

  I avoid her eyes. I am sure she will be able to tell I am lying if I don’t. “That thing in Page Six? The one about the—”

  “I know which one you’re referring to,” Lauren says, and I look up to see that she’s reddened. There have been several items in the Post about Lauren’s drinking, but only one that cost her so much.

  “Brett called that in,” I practically whisper.

  Lauren blinks, stunned.

  “I only found out after the reunion,” I rush to say. “I didn’t know what to do. Brett and I were still friends and I felt a sense of loyalty—”

  Lauren holds up her hand. “Why
are you telling me this now?”

  I check in with Jen. Are we that obvious? “This affects your business, Laur. This affects your money.”

  “Why are you telling me this now?” Lauren repeats, her voice softer this time.

  Jen and I check in with each other across the table, telepathically negotiating who should be the one to answer her. Jen didn’t think it was necessary to tell Lauren that Brett was the one who sent the editors the video of a drunken Lauren fellating a baguette at Balthazar. I know Brett has a line into the editor of Page Six and I know I didn’t do it, and Jen and Lauren are in lockstep. Who else could it have been? Lauren had been next to hysterical at the reunion, demanding to know who shared the video that resulted in a lifetime ban from her favorite brunch place and her father bringing in a seasoned CEO, effectively rendering Lauren’s role at the company impotent.

  Jen thinks telling Lauren not to film with Brett is enough to get Lauren not to film with Brett. She brought Lauren into the group and that buys unconditional servitude. But Lauren likes Brett, even though she is not supposed to, and I can’t pretend that I don’t understand. For a time, I didn’t just like Brett, I loved her.

  I decide to be the one to say it.

  “What if you didn’t drink this season?” I suggest to Lauren. “Make your sobriety a storyline. I think Jen and I, we could really support that. In a way Brett would never.” This is me, sweetening the pot for Lauren, because I need her to commit to the mutiny. I need Brett gone. We all do.

  “Rehab my image,” Lauren says, her tone petulant.