The Smart One (26 page)

“He saw it, Clare.”

“I don’t how to fix this. How can I fix this?”

“Talk to him.”

“Can you help me?”

I stood, furious. How dare she act so recklessly and expect my help! “Clean up your own damned mess.”

I went out the front door wanting to get away as fast as I could, but Sophie and two other girls came tearing around from the backyard, squealing.

“Everybody has to come into the backyard now, Aunt Bev. We’re going to sing ‘Happy Birthday.’”

“
Aw,
sweetie, I can’t. I have to be someplace.” I saw that her sneaker was untied and knelt down to double knot it for her.

“It has a big chocolate bar on top and blue flowers. And you know what else?”

“What?”

She leaned in and whispered, her breath as sweet as marshmallows. “Dad put on magic candles. The kind you can’t blow out.”

I stood and she looked up, her eyes beseeching me to change my mind. My anger melted into something like gooey chocolate. I put out my hand and she took it.

When we got to the backyard, Sophie made a dash for the table where the cake was set up. Leo approached me and put a drink in my hand.

“Everything okay?” he said.

“Not really.”

As the crowd sang “Happy Birthday,” Sophie and Clare stood on one side of Dylan and Marc on the other. They
looked like the perfect family, but I caught Clare’s eye and saw a Shakespearean tragedy’s worth of toil and trouble there. I heard a splash, then, and turned around to see what it was. One of the boys had jumped into the pool, even though it wasn’t a swim party. While everyone laughed at Dylan’s futile attempts to blow out the candles, I walked toward the water. It was Jade’s son, and he was doing the back float.

“I don’t think you’re supposed to be in the pool, buddy,” I said.

I heard a melodramatic gasp from behind me and saw Jade running toward us in her high heels. “Max! Get out of the pool this minute!” she shouted.

He spit water straight in the air. “Why?”

“For one thing, you’re not even wearing a bathing suit. For another, this is
not
a pool party. Where are your manners?”

“Come closer, Mom. I want to tell you something.”

“Why? So you can pull me in? I wasn’t born yesterday, young man. And I am
not
getting this outfit wet. It’s couture.” She adjusted the fabric over her designer buns.

Someone tapped me on the shoulder and I turned to see Joey.

“We need to talk,” she said, trying edging me away from Jade and Max so that no one could hear us.

I didn’t budge. “There’s nothing to talk about.”

Joey rolled her eyes. “You’re pissed. Let’s get it out in the open.”

I clenched my teeth. “I am
not
pissed.”

I started to walk away hoping to end the conversation, but Joey called out after me, “So it didn’t bother you that I arrived with Kenny?”

I stopped and turned around, taking a step closer to my sister so no one could hear. “That depends. Are you fucking him?”

“Why? Are you in love with him?”

“No,” I lied.

“So then what difference does it make?”

“None,” I said. “It makes no difference.”

“Fine,” Joey said. “Then I’m fucking him.”

“Good for you,” I said, and tried to believe it. But the next thing I knew my hands were pushing Joey backwards into the pool. Stunned, she grabbed onto the only thing she could, which just happened to be Jade’s hand, and as they went airborne toward the water, their four legs kicking at the air, I realized these two had something in common. Neither of them wore underpants.

Joey’s confession put me in a funk that wouldn’t lift. And on Monday morning, following through on a promise I had made to myself as I drove home from the party, I called the principal in Queens who was holding a placement for me and told him to give it to someone else. It no longer mattered whether I was offered the position in Las Vegas. With or without a job, I was leaving New York.

After that, I called my old friend Holli Williamson, who had moved to North Carolina with her husband five years ago, thinking it would save their marriage to live someplace with less financial strain. Turned out their marital problems went beyond fighting over the price per pound for boneless chicken, and just a few months after they’d settled into their new home he left her for a twenty-four-year-old hair stylist and hadn’t stopped spending since. Holli, meanwhile, resumed her teaching career and had been trying to convince me to move down there.

I filled Holli in on the job situation, leaving out the part about Joey and Kenny, and she was quick to repeat the offer she’d made in the past.

“I’ll put you up for as long as you need, cookie. And if you
want to work as a sub in my school until you find something full-time, you’re as good as in. They’re taking anyone with a pulse. I bring someone as cute and smart as you to the office and they’ll name a building after me.”

I heard a call-waiting click but I didn’t take it. Joey had been trying to reach me since the party, but I was making myself unavailable. According to her messages, she had something important she wanted to tell Clare and me, and was hoping she could get us all together.

After finishing my call with Holli, I considered taking the phone off the hook so I wouldn’t have to deal with more messages from my relentless younger sister. No doubt she’d keep at it until she got what she wanted, or died trying.

One summer, when we were both home from college, Joey got it into her head that she wanted to get high with me. I resisted because I had smoked pot a few times to disastrous results. But she wouldn’t take no for an answer.

“I can’t handle it, Joey,” I had insisted. “I get paranoid.”

“You won’t get paranoid with this stuff,” she promised. “It’s giggle pot. I swear. Every time I smoke this I laugh my ass off. You’ll love it.”

Still, I said no. But she kept at it, day after day, week after week. The two of us were home a lot that summer, and pretty bored. Clare had already graduated and taken an apartment in the city. She worked in sales for a glossy women’s magazine and was making decent enough money to spend her weekends in the Hamptons. I was working as a camp counselor and was home every day by four thirty. Joey and her band—an early incarnation of Phantom Pain that went by the name Meringue—were working only sporadically. One night, when our parents were out, I was particularly vulnerable. My date had stood me up and I couldn’t think of a thing to do.

“You’ll love this,” Joey said. “I swear. For once, trust me.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I’ll hate it.”

“You won’t.”

“I will.”

“It’s giggle pot. What do you have against giggling?”

After about an hour of that, she finally wore me down, convincing me there was no possible way I’d get paranoid from this pot. Joey lit the joint, and we lay side by side on lounges in the backyard, passing it back and forth. By the time she snuffed out the burning paper of the spent roach, I realized that I’d been lost in the stars for some time, and it made me nervous. Who was I? Where was I?
You’re right here on this lounge on Earth,
I reminded myself, as I balled and unballed my fists, testing for tingles.

“Shit,” I said, sitting up and swinging my legs over the side of the lounge. I rested my head in my hands, praying to come down fast and trying to get my bearings.

“What’s the matter?” Joey asked.

“I’m so stoned.”

“Stoned is good.”

“Not this stoned. We have to get out of here.”

“Why?”

“Because Mom and Dad will be home soon and they’ll know it. I can’t act straight. I just can’t.” The very thought of it made me panic.

She tsked and pulled open a bag of Doritos. “You’ll be fine. Mom and Dad know shit.” She stuck her hand in and grabbed a few.

“They’ll know!” I stood, my fear escalating.

“Would you chill, for fuck’s sake?” She was chewing her chips and I thought she looked so utterly absurd that a child would be able to tell she was high.

“Let’s go someplace,” I said.

“I’m too stoned to drive. Have some Doritos.” She shook the bag at me. “They’re
awesome
.”

I grabbed one and chewed it, the crunch reverberating through my skull. How did people not lose their minds from the noise of chewing? I wondered if some people in mental institutions had been driven there by crackly foods messing with their brains. I swallowed and pushed the salty taste around my mouth with my tongue. I licked my lips and grimaced.

“What’s the matter?” she said.

“My tongue is too big.”

Joey laughed.

“That sounded really stoned, didn’t it? See? I can’t hide it. I need to get out before Mom and Dad come home. I can’t face them. Let’s go for a walk.” The need to leave felt as urgent as life and death.

“Did you hear something?” she said.

“Are you trying to make me more nervous?”

“Shh,”
she said, and rose from her lounge chair. “I thought I heard something.” She walked along the perimeter of the yard as I watched in a panic. Was someone out there? It was a black night and I couldn’t see a thing.

“Let’s go inside,” she said.

“No! Mom and Dad will be back
any minute
. I need to
leave
.”

“I can’t,” she said.

“Why not?”

“Someone might be out there.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know,” Joey said. “It’s too dark. But I heard something.”

“We’ll take a flashlight,” I said.

“What if they’re hiding in the bushes?”

“Why would they be hiding in the bushes?”

“So we don’t see them.”

“You’re being ridiculous!” I said, pulling on her arm. “Let’s go.”

“I’m not going
anywhere
.”

“Now who’s being paranoid?”

We went on and on like that, our respective fears escalating the fight. I was too nervous to stay. Joey was too nervous to go. We didn’t stop shouting until we heard a noise from outside, which I knew was my parents’ car, but Joey assumed was someone who wanted to kill us.

“Where are you going?” she said.

“To bed! I can’t face them like this.”

Joey ran up after me and joined me in my room, as she was too scared to stay alone. And so it happened that Bernadette and Harold Bloomrosen came home one summer evening at nine o’clock to find their two college-age daughters asleep in bed.

The next morning, when I rolled over to see Joey still huddled next to me, black mascara smudged down her cheeks, I had two words for her.

“Giggle pot?”

Of course, from there it became shorthand for any of her claims I didn’t believe.

The phone rang again, fraying my nerves. I assumed it was Joey, but when the answering machine picked up, I recognized Kenny’s voice. He was calling from his apartment in Los Angeles. He had gone home to tie up some loose ends, and had just heard from Linda Klein, his parents’ realtor. The engineer hired by the Goodwins could only come this afternoon, and Kenny wanted to know if I could go over there and let him in. He’d be there any minute.

I picked up the phone.

“Okay,” I said.

“Okay?”

“I’ll go over there and let him in.”

Kenny paused, trying, I assume, to assess the clipped tone of my voice. “You all right?” he asked.

“Perfect,” I said, and got off the phone as fast I could. I grabbed my sketch pad and went to the Waxmans’ house to await the engineer. I sat down at the kitchen table and opened the pad, doodling abstractly as I thought about what to draw. When the doorbell rang I rushed to it, expecting some nerdy-looking guy with a clipboard, but it was Clare and Joey.

“What are you doing here?” I asked.

“Good to see you too,” Joey said.

I rolled my eyes. “What do you
want
?”

“Did you get my messages? I have some news to share.”

“It’s not a good time. I’m waiting for the Goodwins’ engineer.”

“Please. This is important.”

“Is it about you and Kenny?”

“No, it’s about me.”

I paused, still blocking the doorway, not quite understanding why I was so furiously opposed to hearing what it was Joey had to say. Her expression was earnest, and that angered me even more. I
wanted
to be mad at her, to have a goddamned good reason to shout and slam the door in her face. Finally, I just stepped aside.

“How did you know I would be here?” I said as she walked past me into the living room.

Joey lowered herself into the gold-toned wing chair facing the sofa. “I’ll get into that,” she said.

Clare sat on the couch and patted the spot next to her. We were to be Joey’s audience. I remained standing, my arms folded.

“You’re not going to sit?” Joey said.

I shook my head.

“Suit yourself,” she said. “I wanted to explain why I was so cagey at the party when Teddy made his announcement.”

I guessed this was going to take a while and compromised by resting my butt on the arm of the sofa.

Joey leaned forward and laced her fingers. I got the sense that she was launching into a rehearsed speech. Her curls looked especially shiny, and I resented the hell out of it. I imagined her shopping for a new styling product, which struck me as particularly competitive, as if spectacular talent, rock star status, and having Kenny wasn’t enough. I felt lank and dull. Outshined. I stared down at my feet and listened.

“You know that Tyrone’s death was like a tidal force in my life,” Joey began. “It changed everything. It didn’t just send me to rehab, but made me examine the big issues. And I mean
big
.” She paused here as if to make sure we were as rapt as she needed us to be, but I didn’t look up.

“Go on,” Clare said.

Joey took a breath and continued. “Rehab didn’t just get me sober, it helped me focus on something I’d been trying to ignore for so long: God.”

“God?” Clare said.

“I always knew there was a higher power at work,” Joey said, “but it’s easy to forget when your ego is riding a coke buzz or your id is swimming in malt liquor.”

Clare made a gagging noise and I glanced up. “You drank
malt liquor
?” she said.

Joey shrugged. “I drank whatever anyone passed to me, so who knows. Point is, it’s amazing that I was able to stray so far because I can feel God everywhere. Especially when I sing. Rehab helped me reconnect with that. Not that it gave me any real answers. In fact, it was more helpful in providing ques
tions—lots of questions. So I started meeting with Rabbi Ornstein once a week.” She was referring to the clergyman who had led the congregation we’d attended most of our lives. “It was…illuminating. The more we talked, the more I felt like I wanted a holier life, but didn’t know quite what that meant. I only knew that I wanted to find a way to use my talents to help people.”

“I understand,” Clare said.

“And then we found poor Lydia in that drum. It shook me in about a million ways, stirring a lot of the same feelings I had when Tyrone died, but there was more. I won’t bore you with the whole story, but the crux is that I thought a lot about Sam and the path he chose, and it made me realize I was being pulled in the opposite direction—toward a life of service and goodness. I mean, why not, right? Why not help fill people’s hearts with love if you can?”

She waited for a reaction from us—from me, really, as I hadn’t said a word—but I just looked up at her and then at my shoes again, eager for her to get to the point. I didn’t know exactly where she was going with this, but as the minutes ticked by without the engineer showing up, the bad feeling in my stomach grew.

“So the rabbi put me in touch with Jacob,
Cantor
Jacob. He’s a wonderful man and we’ve become close friends. He’s also become my teacher.”

Clare smacked my knee to get my attention. “I bet that’s the guy with the red beard.”

Joey looked confused. “How did you know he has a red beard?”

“We’ll tell you later,” Clare said. “Finish what you were saying.”

“Okay,” Joey said, “so here’s my big announcement: I’m going to sing in temple. I’m studying to be a cantor.”

“A cantor?” Clare said.

Joey beamed. Clare jumped from her seat and hugged our little sister. “I’m so proud of you!” she said. “In a million years…” She let the thought trail off as the two of them waited for a reaction from me. This was the big moment where I was supposed to let go of my anger and rush into my sister’s arms. It was Joey’s happy ending. She had beat her demons and was embracing God for real. But there was something about the scene that was all wrong to me. I rose from my perch and walked to the front door, as my sisters stared. I opened it and looked up and down the street.

“Where is he?” I asked.

“Where’s who?” Clare asked.

“The engineer.” I looked at Joey. “He’s not coming, is he?”

Joey took a step toward me. “No.”

I put my hand up to stop her. “You got Kenny to lie to me?”

“You wouldn’t take my calls, so I asked him to intercede. It was the only way I could get you to hear my news. I didn’t think you would mind once you heard my announcement.”

Just when I thought the betrayal had reached an impossible peak, Mr. Honesty had agreed to trick me. I imagined Joey phoning Kenny for sympathy when she couldn’t get me to answer her calls. He may have been angry enough with me to suggest the deception. Or perhaps Joey had been able to talk him into it. Either way, by the time they got off the phone they were probably laughing about how easy it would be to deceive me by appealing to my sense of responsibility.

“I really want you to be proud of me, Bev,” Joey said. “Maybe I don’t deserve it. Maybe I spent so many years screwing up that it’ll take another few years to earn back your respect. But if you’re just a little bit proud of me, it would mean so much.”