Theresa Rebeck - Three Girls and their Brother

The elevator ride is grim. Amelia hates losing more than any person I’ve ever met.

“You were a big help,” she tells me.

“I tried to help you last night,” I tell her back. “It’s a dumb idea.”

“Why? Why is wanting to play the piano any dumber than being a model?”

“Because you actually have a shot at being a model,” I tell her.

“Fuck you,” she sends back. This use of the word “fuck” is a new thing with her. She does pretty well with it. I mean, she’s not one of those people who doesn’t know how to land it. It sounds pretty authoritative, coming out of her perfect little rosy pink mouth.

Obviously I was not involved in the first big agent powwow. While Amelia was being dragged away from the Garfield Lincoln School and her stunning career as a glamour-babe pianist, I was finishing a physics lab which had something to do with creating alternative energy sources out of teeny-tiny waterwheels. It was sort of relaxing, truth be told, sort of like building a Lego castle and then seeing what happens when you pour water all over it. So I built my waterwheel, which was boring but fun, and then I went to soccer practice, which was just boring, and then I stopped for pizza on the way home, had four slices, and then I went home. No one showed up until nine-thirty, so it was a pretty good thing that I stopped for the pizza.

By the time they showed up, I have to confess I was dead curious about how it went. Although by then it’s not exactly a big mystery, is it; if the stupid agent didn’t want them, it’s doubtful it would have taken her until nine-thirty to drop the boom. So I’m zoning in front of the television set, zipping the clicker coolly, as if I have no interest in anything whatsoever, when the four of them waft into the apartment. Mom leads the way, opening the door and turning to usher them in, cooing over all three of them like they were precious baby chicklings, or a hot piece of real estate.

“It’s been a big night. All three of you should probably head straight to bed,” she announces.

“It’s nine-thirty, Mother,” says Daria. Daria is all flushed and haughty; she’s standing so tall she looks like someone cast a spell over her and she grew into a pope or something, like the woman in that fairy tale where the fish gives the fisherman too many wishes. Polly, on the other hand, looks short. This is the only thing I can think about for a minute—why does Daria look so tall and Polly look so short? Did they do something to them at the modeling agency, to make the threesome more marketable?—and then I realize, duh, that Polly took her shoes off because her feet had started to hurt.

“I think we should celebrate,” she announces. She goes to the mini-fridge where Mom keeps the alcohol, and grabs herself a beer. Which all of us have done many times, just not in front of Mom.

But Mom doesn’t notice, or at least she doesn’t care to notice; she’s still floating around the room like a dazed and happy flower, bobbing in a cool breeze on somebody’s deck or something.Amelia tosses herself on the couch, next to me, rolling over the back and landing like a ton of bricks. Before I can give her a hard time about it, she is laughing at pretty much nothing.

“What a dweeb. What a dweeboid you are. What are you watching? I’m not watching Star Trek , how many times can you watch that stupid show? Give me the clicker.” She grabs it off me and immediately concentrates on channel flipping even faster than I do.

“You know how many calories there are in a beer?” asks Daria. Polly laughs.

“I know exactly how many calories there are in a beer, and tonight I don’t care,” she says, waving the bottle in Daria’s face.

“So it went good, huh?” I ask.

Amelia shrugs. “It was about what you’d think,” she says. She doesn’t seem too bothered by it, though, and then she starts to laugh again, all flushed and happy and transfixed by the surreal shenanigans of some pink cartoon dog with a hole in its tooth. She’s all flushed and happy, Polly’s all flushed and happy, Mom’s all flushed and happy, and Daria’s just flushed—who can ever tell if she’s happy? So it doesn’t take a brain surgeon to figure out that all four of them are pretty well tanked.

Which makes me mad, frankly, although it’s not like I don’t believe in people getting tanked, or like I’ve never seen it or anything. It’s not like I’ve never done shots of tequila in the laundry room of Jack Metzger’s sister’s apartment on Sterling. Amelia is tanked, and I’ve never seen her tanked and, the fact is, the last time I saw her she said she didn’t want to be a model because she was just a little kid. I mean, you can’t say you’re a little kid one minute and then go and get tanked with your mother that afternoon. You can’t watch cartoons, and be tanked. You can’t do both.

This logic seems pretty irrefutable to me but, such a surprise, I seem to have no clear idea how to be the cool, rational, not-tanked person in a room full of tanked women. So instead I act like a big baby and grab the clicker from Amelia. “What are you watching?” I mumble, and I start to zip through all the channels again.

“Hey!” she says. She shoves me. “I was watching that.”

“You’re drunk,” I say, quiet, like an insult. Which is relatively stupid, as Amelia is the one who snuck me up in the elevator and got me to my room, and later to the bathroom, without anyone knowing, after the tequila episode.

“I’m not drunk,” she says, and then she starts to laugh like an idiot, like “I’m not drunk” is the most hilarious thing she’s ever said in her life. I swear, she thinks this whole situation is just hilarious.

“What did you say?” asks Mom, all fake-startled and guilty as hell.

“Philip thinks I’m drunk .“

“Don’t be ridiculous, Philip.”

“ Mom ,” I say back. Like there’s nothing else to say, really; sometimes, there just isn’t, and this is one of those times. Not that she’s going to give an inch.

“Today was a big day for everyone, and if you can’t be happy for your sisters, then I think you might want to think about that.”

“Yeah, sure, I’ll do that, Mom,” I tell her. And that’s all I say about it. Amelia keeps giggling, and Mom goes into the study, probably to sneak another drink, because she’s got liquor stashed in there too, and Polly and Daria drift back into their bedrooms to consult with the stars, and I find a Star Trek rerun, the one where Captain Kirk falls in love with an android and then she dies at the end of the episode because she learned that feelings hurt too much to live with. I swear, that show was really brilliant, it really just was, and I’m not embarrassed to mention it. I mean, I’m not one of those idiots who goes to conventions and dresses up like Mr Spock. I’m just saying. That show was not near as stupid as everything that’s been on television since.

CHAPTER THREE

No one ever said Herb Lang was overrated, and the fact is, he isn’t overrated. He’s a very good photographer, even if he is a bit spooky in person. So the picture, when it comes out, is very hot. Daria the Ice Queen has a big smile on her face, her head is tipped back and she looks like joy, she just does. Polly looks like she’s grabbing Daria and trying to push her out of the frame, which maybe could be a little too accurate, in terms of the reality of their relationship, but it doesn’t look mean or competitive. It just looks nice, like a nice sisterly sort of thing to do. The spiky hair is great, the little green dress with the black beads, also great. She has a killer pair of heels on, also great. And then there’s old Amelia, all the way on the other side of the frame, with her blue jeans and T-shirt, and those nutty little bare feet and little green toenails. She’s sort of half in profile, head down, but looking up, right at the camera. And she just looks smart, and a little bit devilish and like someone you just want to know, who also happens to be so pretty you need to fall over. The whole thing is killer, there’s no question.