Three Girls and their Brother. Theresa Rebeck
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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.
Okay. I’m just doing the best I can here. I didn’t ask this guy to look at me, and if you want my opinion, the only reason he noticed me at all was because La Aura had done a pretty good job cutting my hair and suddenly there was something to look at—mainly, a decent haircut. I didn’t go asking to be in that picture.
But the next thing I know, Herb has his arm around me—really, in a kindly way, Herb is one of those people who gets you to do things because he makes you feel important and charming, so you’re lost in this haze of warm fuzzy feelings and not really paying attention to what you’re doing, you’re just going along. His arm is around me, he’s chatting to me in this low voice and I’m just walking with him, across the room and toward the drapes and the windows and the klieg lights. I can’t really hear much. He turns me, stands me by a window. There’s a kind of rustling and hum going on now, but I can’t see anything, as all those lights are on me, and everything behind them disappears. You really can see the dust motes in these moments, that’s one thing I remember. And then the next thing I remember is Amelia, and Polly and Daria, moving around me like angels. Really, they all looked so pretty and I’m just a mess—the only thing any of those style dudes did to me was ignore me and let La Aura cut my hair, so I’m kind of standing there in blue jeans and a T-shirt and this big old sloppy other shirt on top of that. Daria meanwhile is glowing, practically, she’s in this shimmery sea-green snakeskin-like evening gown, and her hair is piled on her head—really she didn’t look like Audrey Hepburn, she looked more like Lady Macbeth, but a very glamorous version of Lady Macbeth, there was no question about that. And then Polly is in this incredible little number, the smallest dress I think I have ever seen in my life, pale green, strapless, with black beads all over the joint, Stu apparently having decided that green was the theme but there was no point being ruthless about it. Her hair is spiky, a look I don’t tend to respond to, but now that I know that the nice hairdresser La Aura is behind all this I decide it’s sheer genius. I mean, Polly looked great, no doubt about it. Sort of like a very tasteful punk rocker. Then there’s Amelia, hopping around like a little bird. Blue jeans, no shoes or socks, green toenails, which looked strangely beguiling, and some sort of tie-dyed green T-shirt. She really looked so simple, and so great, and so herself. So as it turns out, Stu isn’t so stupid after all.
Except there I am, in the middle of this meticulously designed land of green dresses and red hair and great-looking girls. There I am, a big boring teenage boy, nothing matches, poor Stu hasn’t had half a second to figure out how to fit me into his picture, when Herb starts snapping away, I mean that Herb got right to the point. Stu is dodging around behind him, trying to get a word in edgewise, you can hear him saying, “Herb, maybe if I had just a minute … Herb, listen, we had no idea you’d be interested in the brother … Herb, really … Herb …” But Herb is just clicking wildly, one camera then another, he had like six draped around his neck, he looked like some mythical beast with too many eyes growing out of his chest. I swear, after all that picking and changing minds, and nothing seeming to happen for hours, all of a sudden everything was happening at lightning speed and no one was thinking about anything at all. I don’t remember much of this part, to be frank, maybe that’s why it seems that way in retrospect. I was so surprised to be suddenly tossed into the middle of the action, I think I may have been in a bit of a daze. So that’s really what I remember. Stu, Herb, me feeling like a dweeb, Amelia laughing; she thought it was funny that I was suddenly part of the whole mess. Somebody put some music on, I guess, I don’t remember if it was on before and they just turned it up, but all of a sudden Elvis Presley was blasting, loud. Mom kept yelling something from the sidelines, who knows what. Daria and Polly sort of kept turning around, following Herb, I think, like flowers turning toward the sun anytime he moved. That’s really all I remember.
And then it was over. Not completely over, just over for me. Herb ran out of memory in half his cameras at the exact same moment he ran out of film in the other half, so he had to take a break and have some underling reload them. The music snaps off, people start to suck on water bottles, hair and makeup rush in to do a dust-up on the girls. So while this is going on, Stu takes Herb aside and whispers to him, respectful, but urgent and firm, and while Herb doesn’t really seem to say anything in response, he does turn and look at me, with those photographer eyes again, and then he turns back to listen, while Stu keeps talking. Stu is talking and talking and talking. And then, after a minute, Herb shrugs, nods, he doesn’t care, he sort of looks over, casual, and says, “Okay, the brother, we don’t need you, let’s do some with just the girls.” Just like that, like I was just a stupid prop all along anyway. Which in fact I was.
I didn’t care. Mostly I was relieved that it was over. The whole time it was going on—which was longer than I thought; afterwards I found out my part of the shoot went on for half an hour—I felt so self-conscious I just wanted to crawl into a hole and I couldn’t, obviously, as everybody was staring at me. Well, they weren’t looking at me, really; they were looking at Polly and Daria and Amelia, when they weren’t looking at Stu and wondering if he was going to have heart failure. So I mostly spent the whole time looking at the ground and stuff. It was just, near the end, I more or less got in the swing of things. Amelia had decided it was just a big joke anyway, and