Theresa Rebeck - Three Girls and their Brother

She’s snipping away at Amelia’s hair while she’s telling us all this. And we’re just listening, I swear, this woman was riveting. It turns out she hugged people for five hours, hugging and listening and telling them they were fine was like her thing she did to help; she went down and hugged people who needed hugs. She was really lively and very interesting and I did think, if I was in a catastrophe, I would want a hug from this person, I really would.

Anyway, she’s telling us this stuff and clipping away a little bit at a time, really, it didn’t look like anything, what La Aura was doing to Amelia’s hair, it just looked like she was picking up a strand here or there and then cutting a tiny piece of it off then tossing the whole thing around again. But all of a sudden I look at Amelia, and she’s just listening, and I just felt my chest do something—it squeezed and hurt for a second, because that’s how beautiful she looked. And then a second later I wanted to cry, I swear, because part of what made her so pretty was her good heart and how much she cared about this haircutting person being nice to sad firemen. A lot of fourteen-year-old girls, really what they care about is who’s going to some idiot’s party this weekend, or what movie star they saw in front of Lincoln Center last week. I guess in that way fourteen-year-old girls are not that different from most people out there. But Amelia still had that thing that really little kids have, where they want to throw their arms around total strangers on the street. You don’t always see it because she’s also kind of annoying a lot of the time, but when it does show up it’s quite staggering, and there it was, in the middle of what turned out to be a really great haircut. No huge surprise there, that La Aura could really cut hair. Amelia looked unbelievable.

This is when another minion in black showed up and announced, “We need her, Laura.” None of the minions seemed to understand that the woman’s name wasn’t Laura, it was La Aura . But La Aura didn’t seem to mind, “Yea, okay, I’m about done, just let me see …” And then she scrunched all those curls around a little, just scrunching in her hand here and there, and Amelia’s hair looked even better, and so La Aura signed off and they took Amelia across the room so she could try on different kinds of blue jeans and snaky little green tops. Daria and Polly were already over there, being transformed, respectively, into Audrey Hepburn and the supermodel of the century.

So then La Aura looks at me, and shrugs. “Those are great-looking girls,” she informs me, as if it’s news.

“Yea,” I say.

“This is exciting, huh?” She doesn’t seem to really think so.

It’s not that she thinks it’s unexciting, it’s just that she’s seen it all before and everyone else thinks it’s exciting.

“I guess,” I say. Sometimes I really do sound like an idiot teenager. I can’t seem to help it; my brain freezes up.

“You could use a haircut. How ’bout I do you, while we’re waiting for Herb?” She says this so friendly there’s no sense of boy, this kid with the glamorous sisters could really use some help. I mean, she’s just kind of studying me, looking over the top of those glasses, businesslike, but, as I said, friendly too. I have to confess it took me by surprise. You live with a lot of beautiful women, you get used to the fact that no one is actually looking at you very much. So it’s startling when it happens.

So La Aura starts in on my hair, and at first it was pretty nice. As I said, when she’s cutting hair, La Aura sort of chatters on, about all sorts of things. Once she got off the World Trade Center she started yakking about movie stars and did I know any?, and then she kind of segued into numerology and astrology, and her dogs—she had somebody do a couple of charts on her dogs, which was surprisingly interesting to hear about—so I was more or less losing track of time when, all of a sudden, Herb arrives. Such a surprise, he’s dressed completely in black, but he’s old, he’s considerably older than I would have thought. Even so, everyone immediately acts like he’s god. They’re all too cool to get excited, so no one flutters or gushes or anything like that, but they all start to circle in a very unimpressed but attentive way.

Herb basically seems all right, but honestly, it’s hard to tell. He’s real distant and doesn’t seem to care about much. Stu waves Polly and Daria and Amelia into the front of the crowd, and introduces them, or actually it’s more like he displays them, waving his arms around like a bad magician, showing off today’s most impressive trick. Everyone fans out behind them, waiting, like frightened and expectant little kids. I don’t know what they thought Herb was going to do, but he didn’t really do much. He sort of nodded and seemed to mumble something to Stu, I’m not even sure he said hello to Polly or Daria, not to mention Amelia, who had been elbowed to the back fairly quickly in this crucial moment. Mostly it seemed like what Herb wanted to do was talk to some guy who had been running around screwing enormous klieg lights into place with umbrellas bouncing the light back into the room and then out the windows again. So Herb found the lighting fanatic and they settled into a corner and mumbled to each other. And then they started laughing their heads off at some private joke; they couldn’t give a shit about anybody else in the room. Stu put on a brave front, but you could see that he was all for killing Herb. Herb is an ungrateful asshole. This picture isn’t about the light; it’s about three pretty girls with pretty hair. What the hell is Herb’s problem? Stu carries his disappointment and his rage around the room like a big fur coat. So everybody sees it, but they’re all still too cool to comment on it. So Stu stews, Herb mutters, Daria and Polly are subtly posing around, La Aura’s cutting my hair, and the next thing I know, Herb is looking at me and saying, “Who is this?”

Obviously, no one knows how to answer this question, as not one of them has bothered to ask me who I am, other than La Aura. So everyone sort of stares, stupefied for a moment, and then Mom takes the opportunity to insert herself into the spotlight.

“This is my son, Philip,” she coos. She steps forward and poses and coos, I kid you not. The slightest bit of stress, and all the beauty queen training pops out of her subconscious like a bad dream. “The girls’ brother. I’m their mother, Julia. We’re so pleased to be here, really, this is such a thrill for all of us.” And she holds out her hand gracefully and smiles that beauty queen smile.

Anyway, Herb glances at Mom, and to my wild relief he actually does shake her hand; Herb seems to have had some sort of marginal training in niceties at some point in his life. And then he glances at the girls—really, he’s barely interested in any of this—and then he looks back at me, and says, “So, all of them? I’m doing all of them?”

Stu just about has a heart attack. “No no no no no, no no,” he says, casually desperate at the thought. “Just the girls. Philip’s just here for moral support, aren’t you, Philip?” I was staggered that he actually knew my name. Which just goes to show you, you should never underestimate a screaming queen who is completely self-absorbed: They pay attention more than you think.

La Aura shoves me a little bit, reminding me that I’m supposed to actually say something when someone asks me a question. “Sure,” I mumble. Really, I’m useless in a crunch, I completely even forget how to talk. So I’m sort of nodding like a fool, and mumbling, and Herb is just descending on me and La Aura, looking at the two of us.

“No, this is good,” he announces, studying me. “Three sisters and their brother, you see them, the unit, the inherent contradictions, yes? Yes, Philip?” He’s staring at me, with his photographer’s eyes, I have no idea what he’s seeing, but it does not seem to be me. La Aura shoves me again. “Sure,” I say.