And besides, the only vision of her on file in his memory — if it was she — was more than 10 years old. He needed to update. He went to the library and took out all the albums that he’d missed while he was in college or only knew from the radio hits. Made copies of newspaper and magazine articles he found indexed in the Readers’ Guide to Periodical Literature. He had a routine for when he’d examine the material. It would be on his day off; he’d shower, brew some coffee and slip into his soccer shorts and a fresh NYPD T-shirt, vacuum the clean floor and reorganize the kitchen cupboards and bedroom closet and medicine cabinet and linen shelf. He needed the coffee smell and his body smell to be fresh, the clothes clean and soft against his skin, the house to be in undistracting order, unlike days when he was going out on duty on the street and needed to carry the stink with him. The surrounding space needed to be as tidy as the duo’s music. He would then spread the album covers and articles out on his kitchen table chronologically like evidence in one of the precinct rooms, looking for some clue the totality might yield that each would not individually. He did notice that in later pictures and clips she had become thinner and thinner — to the point where, by the time of the group’s TV specials in the late ’70s, she was a frame denuded of its flesh, that she seemed to have aged 20 years instead of 10, that chunks of her seemed to have fallen off like snowcaps during a sudden spike in the temperature, or the marble of an overzealous sculptor. And yet the face was always so made up and airbrushed that he still couldn’t tell if that was the face he’d looked into a few weeks earlier. He’d heard a word in the hospitals where, when he was still in the squad car, he and his partner had to bring some accident victims, some cut-up perps: “anorexia.” The starvation disease.
But Andy was more interested in the sound of her. After the “Tan Album,” there had been seven albums altogether, and while they were all solid musically, the woman’s voice seemed to become less present with each one, seemed to leach away a little more, which Andy found odd, because at the end of the ’70s, she was still only in her late 20s; her voice should have been getting stronger, riper. At first it wasn’t that noticeable; her phrasing was still confident and deliciously low and fluid. But by the time the group’s Christmas album came out, late in the decade, the transition was complete. Her voice had hollowed out; she’d become an impersonator of her former self. Not that she was ever a belter, but on those later albums, she’d often bail on her phrases at the big moment, the ones she used to knock out of the park. The voice essentially had all the fat trimmed out of it, which is to say, it could still be nourishing — even in its diminished state. But it was decidedly less tasty. And on the Christmas album (and the one before it, with the silly songs about the South American kingpin and the extraterrestrials), there wasn’t even a picture of her. The Christmas album did have an artist’s sketch in which of course she looked perfectly chipmunk-cheeked and healthy.
Andy came upon a series of articles from 1979 that said the singer was making a solo album with a hotshot New York producer. There would be mentions of it through the year in the “trades”: “Seen in ____ studio, ____ with _____.” Or “laying down overdubs at _____, ____ with the producer _____.” But exactly a year after the news was first reported, a short piece in Billboard said that the solo album had been shelved, and that she would return to the duo. Then a couple of months after that, a boldface item in the gossip columns said that she’d become engaged. The woman he saw a few months back wasn’t wearing a wedding ring. And if she was making music in New York in 1979, no surprise that it wasn’t deemed worthy of release. The city was such a wreck then; how could she have possibly been inspired?
So Andy still wasn’t sure. And now there were more questions: Why had this singer, who was at the top of her game in her early and middle 20s, who seemed to be set up for a career for life, become intent on throwing it away? She was no flash in the pan; her kind of voice was ageless, and she seemed to have more talent and career sense than the various geniuses whose careers and lives were curtailed by some addiction or other. If he ever did track down that woman from the street, and verified she was the singer, that might be the first thing he asked her. His second question might be, what were she and the brother thinking when they cut that song about the extraterrestrials?
13. Queens, N.Y., Late 1960s
Sib asked her father to take her to Rose’s every Saturday, and over the years Sib’s and Rose’s roles were almost reversed: Sib became Rose’s own circus or freak-show attraction, the little girl who “from the time she was 2 years old could read all the labels and knew every song on the charts.” Well, Sib knew that she was 4 when she started going to Rose’s shop, and she didn’t know everything on the charts, just the songs that she or Kieran liked. That made Rose almost childlike in Sib’s eyes, and she didn’t try to punch any holes in Rose’s fantasy. And Rose’s counter became a kind of pedestal for her; she spent almost all her allowance and birthday money there, except for the weeks when she was getting a new Spalding ball or box of crayons, and Rose always made sure to give her an extra 45 on her birthday or at Christmas. On Sib’s First Communion day, when she tugged and straightened and fussed and squirmed in her dress over and over, almost tripped on it when she ascended the step of the altar at Immaculate Conception and received the Host for the first time, the only thing that got her through the ceremony was knowing that after they all went to breakfast, Sib would be in Rose’s shop, where Rose told her to pick any album off the wall. She chose Aretha Franklin’s I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You, mostly because she loved “Respect.” “Now that’s a pretty smart pick, Chipper,” Rose said. “You’re going to run this place someday.”
By this time, in the later ’60s, Rose’s shop was diversifying into posters, candles, incense, rolling papers, and was suddenly being frequented not just by listeners of big radio stations like WABC and WMCA but by all kinds of what her mother called “colorful characters” and the rest of the world called hippies. They flocked to the store because Rose had become both everyone’s Jewish mother and the oldest teenager in town — some of the Kellys’ neighbors called her “an overaged beatnik running a head shop.” When she was about 7 and in the store, Sib heard one young woman, with straight red hair almost to the floor and sunglasses and a mole on her ghost-white face that, rather than trying to cover up with makeup, she’d drawn a starburst around, to call attention to it, ask Rose if she could get her “penicillin.” Sib asked her dad what that was, and he said it was a kind of medicine. Sib wanted to know why the girl was asking Rose for it and what it was for — did she have a bad cold? Why didn’t she go to the drugstore? Roy said he didn’t know and then changed the subject to Sib’s new record, Friend & Lover’s “Reach Out of the Darkness,” and Sib was off on how it sounded just like the Mamas and the Papas but wasn’t, and soon the snappy bass line was putting all thoughts of hippie chicks asking for medicine out of her mind.
And so Sib’s and Kieran’s record collections grew week by week, month by month, year by year, his stack always a little higher, so neat and sleeved and cared for, with the carefully stenciled KK on every one, and Sib’s, acquired with precocious ears, left otherwise to the mercy of a preadolescent — sometimes in their covers, sometimes not; sometimes left on the hi-fi; carefully removed from its cover on the first play but by the 10th fingerprinted and scratched, her name in a wobbly scrawl on the back, in competition, as Sib grew, with her nascent athletic pursuits. On that linoleum floor in their paneled basement, with their dad’s baseball and their mom’s basketball and bowling trophies and the extra bathroom and refrigerator, the bar where their parents sometimes entertained on Saturday nights or holidays, it was where not much of anything in life went wrong.
** *
July 1970
In the front of the house, the breakfast-time sun was still only just breaking through the fleshy maple leaves in small apertures and keyholes, but in the back, it was splattering through the kitchen window, blurring the colors of Sib’
s Trix. Sib was enrolled in a morning rec program at the local public school that summer, while Kieran, just past his 14th birthday, had already finished his paper route and would be off soon to P.A.L. baseball practice. But what was really putting the spring in their cereal spoons was that it was new-survey day on WABC, and they knew that at 2 p.m., the crazy D.J. Dan Ingram would unveil the new Top 14. Sib was hoping that her current favorite, Freda Payne’s “Band of Gold,” would hold down the No. 1 position for a fourth week. Sib loved everything about the song — the insistent beat, the tradeoffs between the bass and the electric guitar, alternating twin musical lassos that pulled you in tighter with each wraparound; the shimmering tambourine; and that piercing, pleading lead vocal. It was almost as good as any Supremes record. And of course Sib loved the Supremes, even their new incarnation without Diana Ross. It was hard to go wrong with a girl group, even a second or third version of it. Sib was planning to get the record that weekend at Rose’s.
Just then the song came on the radio, stationed next to the toaster on the counter. Kieran started tapping out the beat with his spoon, then his knuckles, and then the side of his hands, balled into percussive fists, were hammering out the 4/4 beat as he wiggled in rhythm in his seat. Sib started to sing. Her 9-year-old voice was mostly in tune, but all plaint and wail, still a child’s voice. Sib didn’t understand the lines about something that went wrong on a wedding night, but it didn’t matter. The record was just so exciting. And it was going to be No. 1 again, she was sure of it. “Lovely Freda Payne,” said the WABC morning man, Harry Harrison, “will she still be No. 1 on the new survey today?” Sib whooped a “Yes” that lifted her off the padded chair and back down so hard that the vibration caused Kieran’s orange juice to slosh around in its glass and spill over. Harry Harrison then said, “Or will it be this fast riser?”
Sib heard the tinkly opening piano riff and almost spit out the last of her cereal. In her five-plus years of being a music fan and record buyer, she had amassed a collection of big hits and cool misses (all those Reparata and the Delrons singles that no one outside New York ever seemed to hear). She either liked a song or just ignored it. But this new song just made her gag. It was so soft, so . . . old-sounding. Sib didn’t know too much about the group, who had seemingly come from nowhere. A girl sang lead; Sib loved girl singers, but this girl sounded too light, too grown-up. She didn’t sound fun or thrilling like Aretha Franklin or the girls in the Supremes or the Shangri-Las. And the song itself was like something they’d sing in chorus class. No way this stupid song was going to knock “Band of Gold” out of the No. 1 spot.
Sib got up from her chair to change the radio station, but just then their mother came into the kitchen and said, “Wait, I like that song.”
Sib sat back down and shot Kieran a conspiratorial look, the us-against-them code shared by sister and brother, but though Kieran looked right back at her, his eyes didn’t return the ridicule. He seemed to be staring through her to the radio, as their mother started to sing along. The aural thrill that their mother’s voice usually provided was diluted for Sib by her distaste for the song. But why was Kieran ignoring Sib’s contempt?
She got her answer when the bridge of the song arrived and Kieran started to sing with their mother the line, “Sprinkled moon dust in your hair.” The same words anyway, but not the same notes. They were doing what Sib had just learned about in music class — harmonizing — singing different notes to blend in a chord. In her head Sib tried to latch onto one of the parts, but every time she thought she had one down, she’d teeter onto the edge of the other and soon get caught somewhere in between, while Kieran and her mother held onto theirs solidly. Boy, did Sib ever hate this song.
Sib looked up at the clock above the sink. 8:40. She bolted up. Time to go, time to be released from that icky tune. Before she could get down the side stairs, though, her mother said, “Aunt Maddy is coming for lunch, so don’t dawdle on the way home.”
Aunt Maddy! The favorite aunt. The nice aunt. The rich aunt. Sib wouldn’t have to wait for the weekend and her allowance after all. She might have “Band of Gold” before the end of the day. Soon all memory of that other, stupid song had flown from her ears.
14. New York City, August 1982
She sat at the Queen Anne desk in her dressing gown, going over her checkbook and the latest royalty statement. Even though there had been business managers and lawyers to handle their finances for more than a decade, she kept an eye on her money, almost as closely as she watched the scale. There was still some of it dribbling in from their catalog, especially overseas. Their Christmas album sold every year. While they were recording it, she went to the brother and said she wanted to recut her vocal on their famous Christmas song, which they’d put out as a single the first year of their success. She wanted to tone down the huskiness. “I used to oversing on the earlier albums,” she told a writer from Billboard.
But the money was nothing like it was only a few years ago. She thought about when the royalties started getting really ridiculous, in 1974. Their Hits album had reached No. 1 in the States; that had always been the plan. But it also broke sales records in Britain, in Japan, in Australia. When those checks started to come in, she had to keep staring at the zeroes and counting them, to make sure she was seeing right. Not that they had much time to spend all this money. Between the world tour they did that summer and the fact that they still lived at home, it just got salted away. The brother had a big car collection, one that filled up a few garages — he got that from the father, the cars, the collecting, the tidy curating gene. You could eat off the floor of the father’s garage. But in those days she had only one, a sweet ’72 Mercedes that she just kept upgrading. The touring kept them out of the studio for much of that year, but she figured the Hits LP and the concerts would sustain them until the brother found enough good songs for a new album. “Every minute of every hour,” somebody on their team said around then, “somebody somewhere in the world is playing one of your records. Listening to you.” There was something invincible-feeling about it all. They even talked about confronting the mother when they got back to the States and telling her that they were moving out.
But there was one number she couldn’t abide in those heady days of success: the one the scale kept reporting. She would have traded a few of those royalty zeroes to once, just once, see the first two digits of her weight be 1-0. She’d tried all kinds of diets and work- out regimes. There was one that had her doing bicycle pedaling before bed. It made her butt firmer but no smaller. And there was another, recommended by Cass Elliot, who’d become their friend (and dropped the “Mama” from her name). They first had dinner with her in the early ’70s in L.A., and back at Cass’s place, she tried to get them high. She’d taken a few tokes of a joint over the years, but it never did much for her. And she swore it off altogether when she realized it just made her hungry. They ended up having coffee. Cass had lately found what she said was a foolproof diet, with one simple rule: Avoid all white foods. She tried it. What a kick, she thought. The critics call me white bread, and I’m not even eating it now. But when she saw some footage of them on a Bob Hope special, she thought she still looked heavy, and asked the brother what he thought. Maybe you have put on a few pounds, he said.
She was whisked back to the present by the breakfast tray. These days she always ordered big. There were pancakes smeared with mascarpone, scrambled eggs, bacon, oatmeal. She had her usual revulsion when she lifted the silver domes on the room-service trays, but she could always hope. And anyway she wanted to make sure there was plenty for her friend, I., who sometimes stayed with her at the hotel. I. was a glamorous singer and the wife of P., who produced her solo album. During those sessions three years ago, I. was the sister she never had and the one who had basically navigated New York for her. I. made the dinner reservations, told her what to wear when they went out to clubs, even tried to set her up with one of P.’s superstar acts, a recent Grammy winner. Didn’t work out, but then she neve
r had much luck with guys in the music business. Nowadays when I. stayed with her, they’d have breakfast together in the suite, and she’d try to get it down, she really would, even though the food in front of her still always seemed like a mirror that spit back the same assessment: “chubby,” “pudgy,” “tomboy,” “Mack truck.” She would have a forkful of eggs, a sliver of banana, sips of tea, a bite of pancakes. And then try to stay at the table long enough for it to take. Then record the numbers in the other ledger she kept, her calorie journal. For every 50 calories or so from half a piece of toast, she’d make sure to walk enough to burn, say, 45 of them. As long as she was in the calorie black, she figured she was making progress.
She was essentially trying to reverse the process that began during that long world tour in 1974, when she finally figured out that the only way to lose weight was to gradually just eat less and less of everything, until she was essentially not eating anything at all. Cass died in London that summer, everyone said from choking on a ham sandwich, though it was really a heart attack. Their Hits album had recently finished its long run at No. 1 on the British album charts. And the fact that they were away from the mother for so long helped, because she wasn’t being force-fed fat on a daily basis.
They returned to the States late that summer, and everyone marveled at her new look. She was around 110 pounds then. That was enough, for them anyway, even though she kept thinking, just five more. The publicists and art directors at the record company, who’d always struggled with how to package their look, thought they finally had something to work with now. Something almost glamorous. The photo for the ad in the trades for their next single, a remake of a Motown oldie, showed her head thrown back in a musical rapture. She’s almost sexy, one of the publicity assistants wrote in an office memo. Of course when the ad ran in the trades, it was cut in with a picture of the brother.
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