The Smart One (23 page)

She shrugged, ready to move on. “I know.”

I wanted to give her a hug, but just then a giant T. rex ran toward us, its ferocious mouth wide open. All three of us shot at it, but it was Joey who blasted a hole in the beast.

“Good work,” I said.

“Of course. While Clare is busy getting attention for being gorgeous, and you’re busy getting attention for knowing the difference between a brontosaurus and a whateverasaurus rex, I’m left singing for my supper.”

“What does that mean?” I asked.

“It means that you two can weep all you want about how hard it is being pretty or smart. But I had to become a freaking
rock star
to get any attention in our family.”

“That’s not true,” Clare said.

“It’s not? Would you like to know the
one
time Mom and Dad ever told me they were proud of me? It was after the MTV awards. And I think they were more impressed that I met Michael Jackson backstage than they were that my group’s video won best direction.”

I let go of my dinosaur blaster. It had never before occurred to me that Joey’s drive to be a star was powered by the same fuel that compelled me to go to art school. It was the most basic sibling rivalry. We were all simply competing for our parents’ attention. How utterly childish.

I put my hand on her shoulder. “I didn’t know,” I said.

“Fuck it,” she said. “In the scheme of things, it’s nothing. People are starving, sick, and homeless. Besides, my French fries are getting cold. We should get back to our table.”

After dinner, we headed over to the karaoke bar, which had an orange neon sign above the entrance that said “Betty’s.” Inside, it was more crowded than I had expected and, as I discovered once my eyes adjusted to the dim lighting, it was where the girls were. No wonder Jackman, et al. had headed in this direction.

When we entered, a middle-aged man resembling Stanley Tucci was onstage, doing a fairly decent Elvis Presley impression. He seemed to be trying to move his hips, but they remained immobile. Instead, his shoulders twitched right and left in a way I found somehow endearing. He was trying so hard. A woman I presumed to be his wife was cheering from a table off to the right, her eyes bright with affection. There were a few empty seats in that area, and I wanted to steer my sisters in that direction. Besides the fact that they were some of the only other people in the place old enough to remember a time when
American Idol
wasn’t the name of a television show, they seemed like a fun couple.

Joey put her arms around Clare and me and announced that we should do a song together. “Something extra corny.”

“Count me out,” Clare said.

“But you have to,” Joey said. “You don’t want to disappoint
your adoring public, do you?” She pointed to a table where the three boys from the restaurant were sitting. They waved, signaling us over. There were three empty chairs at their table—one between each of them.

“Just what we need,” I said.

Joey tsked. “Don’t be such a wet blanket.”

Clare just shrugged and I decided to try another tactic.

“If we sit with them,” I said, “it’ll ruin their chances of meeting girls their own age.”

“Big deal,” Joey said. “They’ll get laid another night.”

I sighed, resigned, and we approached the table. We made our introductions, and learned that Jackman was the tall one’s
last
name, but he didn’t mind if we called him that. Corey, the one I assumed had recently been dumped, still looked pretty blue. The other boy was Anthony, though his friends kept calling him
Dawg
. He was quiet, which I had mistaken for arrogance in the restaurant. Up close, it seemed more like insecurity.

We sat down, and I found myself between Dawg and Jackman, who pushed a loose-leaf binder toward me.

“Here’s the song list,” he said.

I nudged it over to Joey, who sat on the other side of Dawg. She opened it and started scanning the plastic-sleeved pages. “Aren’t you going to sing with me?” she said.

“I’ll make you a deal,” I said. “You don’t ask me to sing and I won’t ask you to draw.”

Joey shrugged and turned to Jackman. “You guys going to sing?”

“Dawg’s the one with the voice. Ask him.”

We all looked at Dawg, who seemed pained.

“Did you look at the song book?” she asked.

He waved it away. “I’m not that good.”

“It’s a karaoke bar,” she said, laughing. “How good do you have to be?”

Dawg nearly flinched, and I wondered why he was so uncomfortable. Was he just painfully shy, or was there more to it? He glanced away, his coal-dark eyelashes shielding him from being understood. But when he looked up, I got a straight gaze into his scared hazel eyes and saw something there I recognized. It was the same terrified look I saw in the eyes of a first-grade boy from my student-teacher days. The children had been assigned to draw their favorite animal character from a picture book the teacher had read, and this boy, whose name was Harrison, had said he couldn’t.

“Just do your best, Harrison,” the teacher had said, but his eyes got moist and he folded his arms, resolute.

I sat down next to him and drew a bird’s head. I told him I couldn’t figure out where to put the beak and he pointed. I gave him the pencil.

“Can you do it for me?”

He drew a beak with the same gentle slope as the one in the book, which was so sophisticated for a child that age I thought it might have been a fluke. Then he put in a single dot for the nostril just where it belonged in that profile view, which surprised me. Children that age never applied such detail. He handed the pencil back to me and I prodded him further, asking what kind of body we should give the bird. When we were done, it was a picture no one would have believed a six-year-old had drawn. The boy was gifted. I understood that it embarrassed him to be so different from his classmates. He wanted to hide his gift so he wouldn’t stand out.

Dawg, I guessed, was a lot like Harrison. He wasn’t ashamed that he couldn’t sing. He was ashamed that he
could
. This was a boy who had a beautiful voice and was afraid to show it.

“You should sing with Joey,” I said to him. “A duet. I don’t think she wants to be up there all alone.”

“I don’t know,” he said.

Going with my hunch, I leaned over and whispered in his ear, “Her voice touches everyone who hears it.” If I was right, Dawg would respond well to the idea that he wouldn’t be the only one up there with talent to spare.

He looked at me and blinked. Did he think I was exaggerating?

I leaned in closer to be sure no one would hear. “Remember the song ‘Tiger Attack’?”

He nodded and I pointed to my sister. “That’s Joey Bloom, the singer.”

His eyes widened. I put my finger over my lips to indicate that he shouldn’t tell anyone.

I leaned back in my chair. “Sing with her.”

“Yeah, sing with me,” Joey said, and scraped her chair closer to his so he could see the song book with her.

The two of them put their heads together and I could see him warming up to her, even getting excited about the idea of performing with another real singer. They went through page after page, finding songs that were
maybes
until they were almost at the very end and Joey smacked the book.

“That one!” she said, tapping at a spot on the page. “Do you know it?”

Dawg smiled, and Joey ran up to the emcee at the front of the room to put their name and selection on the list.

“Stanley Tucci” finished his Elvis impersonation, and someone named Amanda was introduced. She was about twenty years old and absolutely adorable. I glanced over at Jackman and he looked like his eyes would bug out of his head. Corey’s expression didn’t seem to change much, and Dawg was busy yakking with Joey about who would sing what part of whatever secret song they had chosen.

Amanda sang something awful by one of those girl pop
singers I can’t keep straight, and did a decent enough job of it. Jackman hooted and howled as if the girl could sell out Madison Square Garden. She left the stage and went to sit with some girlfriends. The announcer introduced the next act.

“You should go talk to her,” I said to Jackman.

“She’s just a kid,” he said.

I rolled my eyes. “She’s about the same age as
you
.”

“I like mature women,” he said, and put his hand on my knee.

“Don’t even think about it.” I took his hand off my knee and wondered if he had already tried the same thing with Clare.

He leaned in toward me. “Do you have any idea how hot you are?”

“Do you have any idea how
old
I am?”

“Age is just a number,” he said, grinning.

“So is temperature. Doesn’t mean you can melt ice cubes in a freezer.”

“But you’re single, right?”

Jeez. This guy was relentless. I thought about lying, saying I was married to a comedy writer. Then I had an odd moment as I wondered why that particular lie popped into my head. Why wasn’t my first thought about pretending I was still married to an artist?

“Divorced,” I said, just to drive home the point that I was over-the-hill.

Jackman’s eyes practically rolled back in his head. “Divorced! That is
so
sexy.” He put his arm around me. I took it off. Since the term
cougar
had found its way into the vernacular, young men assumed whole new vistas of opportunities were open to them. I wanted to convince this kid I didn’t belong to any species of warm-blooded mammal.

“Trust me, you’re wasting your time. Why don’t you go talk
to that cute Amanda? She’s got a pierced…belly button.” It took me a second to find the right word, but I got it. My dysphasia was definitely abating.

Jackman glanced toward the girl. I could tell he was thinking about it.

“Go on,” I said.

“What would I say?”

Was this guy kidding? He was hitting on a thirty-five-year-old woman and he didn’t know how to approach a girl his own age?

“Tell her you think she has a good voice.” I couldn’t believe I was actually giving someone advice on how to flirt.

Jackman stood, glanced over the girl.

“Be brave,” I said. “What have you got to lose?”

Jackman took a deep breath. “Okay.” He turned and walked toward Amanda’s table. I saw him put his hand on the back of her chair and lean in to say something. She glanced up and smiled, and said what looked like “Thank you.” They chatted a bit more, and he took a seat at her table.

A few minutes later a group of girls singing together did their big finish, and the emcee introduced the next act. “A big round of applause now for Joey and Anthony singing ‘Unforgettable’!”

Joey and Dawg got up and approached the stage, while Clare, Corey, and I cheered. I glanced up and saw that Jackman, Amanda, and friends were cheering too.

The duo started their performance and the place went dead quiet. Joey sang first, her voice so clear and pure I got chills that started with goose bumps and ended with a sensation so deep inside I teared up.

I looked around, embarrassed that a song could that do to me. I glanced over at Clare and she looked about as pummeled as I felt. I hoped she wasn’t thinking about Leo.

Dawg joined in the song and their two voices blended together like liquid. I wanted the sound to keep washing over me, but it ended too soon. I glanced around to see if everyone had been as moved as I, and the reaction was wild. The crowd howled and cheered. Everyone had loved the performance.

Everyone except Corey, that is. He sat stone still and pale, a distant look on his face. Then he got up and left the room.

“What’s with him?” I shouted to Clare over the applause.

“I don’t know. He was crying, then he just stopped and left.”

Someone in the karaoke bar shouted. “Jo-eee! That’s Joey Bloom from Phantom Pain!”

“Sing ‘Tiger Attack’!” someone else yelled.

Joey shook her head and got off the stage with Dawg.

The crowd started chanting. “‘Tiger Attack!’ ‘Tiger Attack!’”

“How about it, Joey?” the emcee said into the mike. “We’ve got the song.”

The crowd went berserk, hooting and whistling. Joey looked at me and shrugged in a way that suggested she had no choice. I nodded my approval. Dawg sat back down at our table and Joey went onto the little stage.

“I promised myself I wasn’t going to do this,” she said into the mike.

“I love you, Joey!” shouted a guy in the back.

“I love you too, baby.” She purred, giving him that sexy little grin that made guys crazy. “You people appreciate how utterly dorky it is to sing your own song in a karaoke bar?”

“Do it for Tyrone!” someone yelled.

Joey’s expression changed as she thought about her dead friend. For a moment, she went silent.

“Okay, then. For Tyrone.”

The music started and Joey let herself go, wailing through
the song, moving like she did in the video but reaching a more profound place with her voice than she had been capable of back when it was recorded. Clare and I, the two proud sisters, grinned like idiots.

Joey hit her final, famous note, and the crowd screamed like it was a rock concert, and even opened their cell phones to cast Joey in their appreciative light. When she got off the stage she was swarmed, and it took her more than a few minutes to make her way back to the table. She clearly enjoyed the adulation and I smiled, wondering if this was what she needed to remind her of how much she loved being a rock star.

When she got back to the table, Jackman had joined us again and had Amanda with him.

“Awesome!” Jackman said to Joey.

“You’re the best,” Amanda said. “My friends and me used to dance to your video at sleepovers.”

“Thanks, guys,” Joey said. “I’m still in shock from your friend Dawg, here. What a voice!”

Dawg beamed, his face metamorphosing as a new emotion took hold. “Call me Anthony,” he said.

“Where’s Corey?” Jackman asked.

Clare told him that he had walked out, clearly upset.

Jackman looked alarmed. “Not good,” he said. “His mother just died like a week ago. We dragged him out tonight to try to cheer him up.”

We all agreed to go look for him, and left the karaoke bar. Anthony, Jackman, and Amanda set off to check the restaurants, the bowling alley, and the restroom, while my sisters and I walked up and down the aisles of the arcade.

“We should check outside,” Joey said, when it became clear he wasn’t playing any of the video games.

We went out the front door into the muggy night air and
saw a lone boy sitting on the sidewalk out front, his back pressed against the building.

“I’m going to go talk to him,” Joey said. “Go tell his friends we found him.”

“Since when did Joey become a grief counselor?” Clare said to me as we walked away.

We found the others and took them back outside to where we had left Joey and Corey. They were deep in conversation and Joey held up her hand to wave us away. “We’ll meet you guys back inside when we’re done talking, okay?”

I was tired and eager to get home, but figured it would only be a few more minutes. After all, how long could Joey spend talking to a total stranger about the death of his mother?

I dragged Clare back to that dinosaur booth and challenged her to a two-player game, pulverizing her. For the next half hour we wandered halfheartedly from game to game, waiting for Joey to return. When we finally went back outside, she was still deep in conversation with the boy. It was another twenty minutes or so before she and Corey rose. She gave him a hug and he left.

“What were you talking about all that time?” I asked her.

“He was having a spiritual crisis.”