Three Girls and their Brother. Theresa Rebeck
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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.
When Mom took it out of the FedEx envelope, it was pretty wild. We were all sitting around the kitchen—I don’t know why we always hang out in the kitchen, there’s never any food there—but anyway we were hanging out in the kitchen, collectively on pins and needles, while Mom took her own damn time opening that FedEx.
“Just a minute, just a minute, would you please?” she laughed, turning away from Polly and Daria, both of whom were actively trying to rip it from her hands.
“Mom, it doesn’t take normal people sixteen minutes to open a FedEx!” Polly screeched, still grabbing.
“Well, then I’m not normal,” Mom informed her, elegantly cheerful. “I just want to savor this, is that all right with you?” What an act. I thought Daria was going to brain her with the blender. Amelia was sitting next to me, trying not to care, but even she couldn’t stand the tension finally, and she practically knocked her chair over, bolting to the other side of the table so she could get a good look as soon as the thing was out of the envelope. It was kind of goofy and sweet, honestly; all of them were laughing and nervous and happy and shoving at each other to get the best look. And then they all saw it, at once, and I’m not kidding, they all just shut up. That picture shut them all up. Because it was impossible to look at it and not know that something was going to happen. You just couldn’t not know.
This was like two days before the magazine hit the stands, that’s when they finally sent us a so-called “advance” copy. I thought for sure they’d give us more preparation than that, but that old Collette apparently really had to pull strings just to get that much special treatment. Anyway, things had gotten pretty hot by then. In those six weeks while we were waiting for the magazine to come out, Collette set up a whole mess of meetings all over town with different ad agencies and magazines and stylists and publicists, TV execs, talk-show producers, it went on and on. Amelia spent the entire time kicking and screaming and saying “fuck you,” and then getting dragged to all the meetings anyway. Which meant that she missed quite a bit of school, which meant that several of her teachers started calling to give Mom a hard time about it. No one particularly cared about Polly virtually dropping out; that was sort of understood as the sort of thing that was just going to happen, and Polly was always a little bit of a hell-raiser anyway, so truth be told I think the school was finally glad that she was taking off of her own accord. But Amelia was a freshman and known to be a fairly responsible little student, so the school got bent out of shape about her not showing up for algebra tests, and Amelia was bent out of shape, and Mom was bent out of shape. And then Ben the piano teacher got way bent out of shape, probably because, as I think I’ve mentioned, he had a completely illicit and illegal crush on her, which he had to pretend was, like, a more legal kind of concern about her development as an artist. So Ben called Amelia at home about six times, about missed lessons, and then he called Mom, who told him off, and then Amelia called Dad, who was back from Brazil, and he called Mom and expressed his supreme disapproval, and he reamed her out for yanking Amelia out of school, and Mom reamed him back, which just bent Polly completely out of shape, and sent Daria into a complete shrieking rage. So that’s what life was like, up until the day we got that picture in the mail and realized that, as weird as it all was getting? It was about to get worse.
The next day, it did. The phone rang. Mom picked it up, listened for no more than fifteen seconds, hung it up, turned around and informed everyone that they were going into Union Square to have drinks with a movie star whose name I cannot mention because he’d definitely sue me. This is a true story. One of the things that happen in New York, that people don’t always put together is, there are plenty of famous people out there who would like to meet pretty girls who are about to become famous themselves. PR people and agents do this sort of thing all the time; it’s their job to arrange these meetings between the famous and the nearly famous at a time when photographers might be around to snap some so-called candid shots of these exceptional encounters. So our friend Collette is somewhat on the ball, it seems, because Mom suddenly announced that Amelia, Daria and Polly had to go doll themselves up fast, because this major movie star was going to be holding court at W in an hour, and he wanted to meet them.
Which frankly floored all of us, even Amelia. She said, “Who?” And Mom said the name of this movie star again, we’ll just call him “Rex Wentworth” for now, although we could just as easily call him Bruce or Arnold or George. So Mom said, “Rex Wentworth,” and everybody just sat there. If that’s the sort of thing that impresses you, you had to be impressed.
Although I have to admit that even now I’m not a hundred percent clear even on why movie stars actually are such hot shit. I have spent a good deal of time thinking about this and it continues to perplex me. As far as I can tell, they don’t really do anything except parade around with machine guns or pistols shouting things like “Get in the truck!” Plus, when you check out their shenanigans when they’re not on screen, you really start to wonder. You read Rush & Molloy, or Page Six, about movie stars shoplifting and trashing hotel rooms and smacking around their girlfriends or getting blow jobs from transvestite hookers, I mean, it’s not like I’m saying there’s anything wrong with things like that, but it’s also not particularly something you have to admire. And then in the same issue you can read about how some studio handed over thirty million dollars or something, to one of these lunatics, so they can make some crazy movie that is just going to be so bad that your brain just starts to fry while you’re watching it. And these are the people we’re supposed to get all excited about, in America. I realize that I’m not saying anything particularly fresh here. But you have to wonder, over time, what the continued fascination is, you really just do.
Except that on the evening in question, all three of my sisters and my mother thought that meeting one of these guys was about the most mind-numbingly fantastic thing that had ever happened to them. They ran around like gorgeous birds, half-plumed, tossing shoes everywhere; even Amelia, who I would have sworn couldn’t give a shit about shoes. But there she was, hungrily swiping a pair of strappy taupe heels off the floor of Polly’s closet, and then acting all guilty when Polly walked in on her, having just ripped off a gold-sequined halter top from some reject pile in Daria’s room.
“Do you need these?” says Amelia, as if it’s actually possible to “need” strappy shoes with three-inch heels.
“Well, no, but you might try asking,” Polly snips. “I am asking,” snips back Amelia, to which Polly replies with the age-old witticism, “Whatever.” So Amelia shrugs, pissed about something, but who knows what, since she was the one who actually got caught stealing red-handed, and she trips away haughtily, carrying off those noteworthy spikes. On the way back to her room she passes me, as I’m sitting on the floor of the hallway and have witnessed the whole ridiculous exchange.
“What are you looking at?” she asks, in the same snippy tone. Which I’m not sure why, if you’re off to meet a movie star, and you’re stealing shoes on top of it, you have to snap at people.
“Nothing,” I said. I suppose I could have waxed poetic about how dumb it all seemed, but suddenly I just got real depressed. Not that I wanted to go with them, but not that I particularly wanted to spend another night alone channel surfing either. I was also wondering if I was going to be able to find anything to eat, as an actual dinner for me didn’t seem to be on my so-called mother’s agenda. The possibility that I might spend the evening doing schoolwork vaguely crossed my mind, as being too pathetic to be believed, while the rest of my family was off carousing