The Smart One (7 page)

From the corner of my eye I spotted some movement outside the sidelight window next to the front door. It was Kenny, getting out of his car. I hesitated for a moment, deciding what to do. I knew that if he walked in the door the spell would be broken, the performance interrupted. Joey was in such a special place that I thought it would be a shame if she didn’t get to finish out the song. So I quietly slipped out the front door and waylaid Kenny.

“You can’t go in yet,” I said, pushing my hand against his chest for emphasis.

“Why? What’s going on?” He stepped back and took in my appearance. “And what the hell happened to you? You look like a sewer rat.”

That stung, but I couldn’t argue. My muddy hair was plastered to my head and my wet, filthy clothes hung down from my body like they were trying to get away.

“I know,” I said. “It’s a long story. Just try to hang out here for a minute. Joey is performing for the Goodwins.”

Kenny smirked. “The Goodwins?” he said. “Joey must be thrilled.”

“Why?” I asked, knowing full well I was stepping into one of his jokes.

“Because all she ever needed was a little audience.” Kenny approached the window and looked in. “God, she’s practically naked!”

I looked through the window at my rock star sister, pushing her soul up from her pelvis to her throat and past the makeshift mike toward her rapt audience, and tried to shake some mud off my pants.

Deal with it,
I thought. He’s going to choose Joey over you, like he did last time. Why wouldn’t he? She was talented, charismatic, wild.

And anyway, my feelings for Kenny were probably just
physical. He was, after all, gorgeous. Maybe not Roman statue gorgeous, but close enough. So what if I was attracted to him? I was a normal, healthy woman who hadn’t been laid since I dated Bart Flaum, the mattress salesman whose mustache dripped food when he ate.

I still can’t figure out why I dated that guy. Was I so filled with self-loathing, or was I simply looking for someone completely opposite from my ex? Jonathan was an artist, with no appreciation for jokes. Bart was a joke, with no appreciation for art. Sure he was sweet and thought I was a goddess, but the guy framed bumper stickers and hung them on his walls.

And I let this man go down on me.

For some reason, this thought made me acutely aware of how dirty I was, and I couldn’t imagine what crazy explanations Kenny must have been imagining. I told him the whole story about moving the industrial drum out from under the house, and how my sisters ganged up to force me into the mud.

“And I thought they loved me,” I joked.

“They do love you,” he said seriously. “But they’re jealous of you.”

Of me? Had someone kicked him in the head?

“Hardly,” I said. “I’m the loser of the family, remember?”

He moved a lock of hair from my forehead and I thought he was going to kiss me. His lips parted the tiniest bit, and I imagined the warmth inside his mouth, the slickness of his tongue, the heavenly feeling of his broad chest pressed against mine. My panties were getting even wetter than my clothes.

“The loser of the family?” Kenny said, his face inches from mine. “Oh, Bev, for a smart girl you are such a dope.”

“Clearly you’re an expert on family relations.”

Me and my sarcasm. He took a step back and set his jaw. “Don’t bring my father into this, okay?”

So I sabotaged the moment. Likely my subconscious was
just smarter than I was and knew what a terrible mistake I’d be making. Our history was too complicated to attempt a meaningless sexual encounter before he jetted back to Los Angeles. Though, admittedly, the thought that he wanted me lit my libido like a Grucci fireworks show at Jones Beach.

In an attempt to shake off the hormonal launch sequence activated by my sex-starved imagination, I changed the subject, telling Kenny the Goodwins’ visit had taken me by surprise. “I didn’t know they were coming for another look today until they got here,” I said.

Kenny sighed, as if he were physically releasing the anger he just felt. “Me neither.”

“I thought that’s why you came.”

“No, I came because I’m going to be staying here in this house for a while. My things are in the car.”

“Don’t you have to get back to L.A.?”

He shook his head. “Actually, no. I’ve been meaning to tell you—the reason I’m in town is because I’m talking to some folks who may be crazy enough to hire me to write for them. I could be in New York to stay.”

Whoa.
Kenny was moving to New York? That cast his interest in a whole different light. I’d been thinking he saw me as a quick lap around the block, but since I hadn’t told him I was hoping to move to Las Vegas, he had every reason to think I’d be around. Did this mean he was really interested? And did it matter?

“I didn’t know,” I said. “Is it a TV show? Something I’ve heard of?”

He smirked and nodded.
“Letterman.”

I gasped.
“Letterman!
That must be your dream job.”

“Nothing’s definite yet,” he said. “We could be in negotiations for weeks. That’s why I gave up my expensive hotel room in the city today.”

“You’re moving into your parents’ house?”

“Just temporarily.” He touched my shoulder with the back of his hand. “We’ll be next-door neighbors again.”

I didn’t know how to react to that. It left the possibility of some kind of relationship wide open—at least for the summer—and I needed time to take that in. I changed the subject by asking him how he got his foot in the door with Letterman’s people, and he explained that he had worked on a couple of episodes of
Everybody Loves Raymond
, one of Letterman’s projects, so they knew him. I feigned surprise; I didn’t want him to know I had kept track of any part of his career. But the truth was I knew more about the trajectory of his resume than I wanted to admit, even to myself.

“We should go inside,” I said. “Sounds like Joey is coming to the end of her song.”

We opened the door just in time to join in the applause. Joey started to take a bow, but when she spotted Kenny she leaped from the table.

“Kenny!” she squealed, throwing her arms around him.

Oh yeah. It was a good thing I didn’t kiss him. These two could be going at it again within hours. She released her embrace and stepped back so he could get a good look. Clearly, she was offering herself to him. I shivered, the chill from my damp clothes soaking through to my bones.

“I would say that I don’t get to see enough of you,” Kenny said as he surveyed Joey’s half-naked body, “but under the circumstances…”

Joey laughed. “How have you
been
, K? I hear you’re a big man in Burbank.”

“Oh yeah, a giant among—” he stopped and looked at the Goodwins and then at me. “I mean, I can’t complain. Not that I don’t want to, but there’s a clause in my contract. How are you? I heard you were in rehab.”

Joey beamed. “I’m clean!” she said seriously.

Silence hung for a palpable second and then everyone burst into laughter, which seemed to warm the room. It also had the
effect of severing Joey’s stranglehold on Kenny’s attention. He greeted Clare warmly and said hello to the Goodwins.

Teddy raved about Joey’s singing, then he turned to her and asked if she had ever thought about trying to make a solo career for herself.

She made a face and shook her head. “Not into it.”

“Another band, then?” he asked.

Joey stuck out her tongue to suggest the idea was sickening.

“Well, if you change your mind,” he said, “I wrote this song I think would be perfect for you. If you ever want to hear it, let me know.”

“Perfect for you,” his wife echoed. “You’ll fall in love with it.”

“I’ll keep it in mind,” Joey said, and folded her arms, indicating that the subject was closed.

I looked hard at Joey to try to determine if she was being truthful or not. She was always so driven I had assumed she wanted to get her singing career back on track. I chided myself for not having discussed this with her. She could have been dealing with some significant fears about exposing herself to drugs. I hoped she could get past that. I hated to think of her talents going to waste. But of course, she was with Tyrone when he OD’d and had watched him die. It drove her to rehab, and I supposed it could have also driven her to reevaluate what she wanted out of life.

One thing I knew for sure—if she still wanted a career in rock and roll, she’d go after it.

Once, as a kid, she announced her intention to go to church with some of her Catholic friends. She said she wanted to know if the God in their church was the same God who was at our temple. My parents didn’t buy Joey’s spiritual curiosity and forbade it. They fought and fought, Joey insisting she just
wanted to know about God, my parents yelling that she just wanted to go church because she thought that’s where the cool kids went.

“You don’t want to be Jewish anymore?” my mother asked, wringing her hands. Clearly she took Joey’s request as a personal affront.

“I just want to know if God’s in
St. Paul’s.
”

My father interrupted, “And how will you know, eh? You think God is going to
speak
to you?”

“I’ll just know.”

“Bah! You want to impress your friends!” my father said, in one of the rare occasions when he raised his voice.

My parents wouldn’t budge, and Joey stomped around the house, furious, for days. I didn’t get involved in the argument because I wasn’t sure who was right. Now I can see that they both were. Joey did indeed have an insatiable curiosity. She was the kind of kid who had to look under every stone (and in every tampon box) and try everything at least once. If she got a question in her head, she wouldn’t relent until she got an answer. On the other hand, the reason she had such a burning curiosity about St. Paul’s in particular was that her hard-edged friends went to Mass there. She probably wanted to see if they knew something she didn’t.

Then, early Sunday morning, she climbed out her second-floor bedroom window and jumped to the ground, breaking her ankle. She got up and limped to St. Paul’s to attend Mass, the area above her shoe swelling to the size of a bowling ball. It had to have been agonizingly painful.

I don’t know if Joey discovered anything about God in a Catholic church, but I know the rest of us learned that nothing would ever get in the way of Joey going after what she wants.

I put my hand on her back and announced to the group that
I hated to break up the party, but my sisters and I needed to get back to my house to shower and change. She returned the gesture by putting her arm around me.

Teddy asked how we planned to dispose of the industrial drum at the curb. When I told him that we intended to leave it there for the garbage truck to pick up, he clucked in disapproval. “They won’t pick that up. Not without knowing what’s in it.”

“Why not?” Clare asked.

“Because it could be toxic chemicals. If you want the sanitation department to take it, you have to open it yourselves.”

Joey clapped her hands. “Cool! Let’s do it now.”

The thought of doing anything other than taking a hot shower and getting into dry clothes made me shudder. “We have to get cleaned up,” I said.

“But look,” Joey said, pointing to the window. “It stopped raining.”

“That doesn’t make me any less cold and wet and filthy.”

“Bev’s right,” Clare said. “We should get showered and changed.”

Joey tsked. “You two are such old ladies.”

And you’re such a two-year-old
, I wanted to say, but instead I reminded her that it would still be there in an hour. Then I asked Kenny if he could get something from his mother’s closet for Joey to wear so we could run next door. Joey folded her arms and pouted.

Teddy said he and his wife would be gone by the time we got back, and told Joey and Clare it was lovely meeting them.

“Don’t you want to see what’s in the drum?” Joey asked.

“We just don’t have the time, dear,” Mrs. Goodwin explained.

“Then let’s do it now!” Joey demanded. She looked at the rest of us. “Please.”

Kenny looked at me and shrugged, as if to say he had no choice, and I shrugged back, agreeing. After all, how long could it take? He announced that he’d go upstairs to get something for Joey to wear, and asked if someone could go into the mudroom and find a screwdriver to pry off the lid.

“I’ll do it!” Joey said, and dashed to the back of the house.

Moments later, when she returned, she was indeed carrying a screwdriver. She was also wearing the pink ball gown.

“For heaven’s sake, Joey,” Clare chided.

Kenny, descending the stairs just as Joey entered, spotted her. “I was going to offer you these old tennis shorts,” he said, holding up some clothes, “but I guess a gown’s appropriate too. You can’t
be
overdressed for these gala industrial drum openings.”

I looked at Clare, who simply threw up her arms in defeat. Joey clapped her hands, delighted, and together we all went outside and watched as Kenny wedged the screwdriver under the lip of the lid and tried to pry it off.

“It’s like opening Al Capone’s vault,” Joey said.

“That was empty,” I said. “Remember?”

“I mean the suspense.”

“Doubt there’ll be anything very dramatic inside,” Kenny grunted as he pushed on the screwdriver. He used both hands and forced his weight into it. Was anything happening? He stopped and pulled out the screwdriver, holding it up for everyone to see. It was bent. The lid held fast.

“Well?” he asked. “Any suggestions?”

The sun peeked through the clouds and I was glad for the warmth. My hair was drying and I felt like my body was absorbing some healthful vitamin D. And Kenny. Kenny was starting to glisten, with dots of sweat seeping through the front of his thin T-shirt, highlighting his sculpted pectorals. Goodness. It really
was
starting to heat up. I shook my hair
out to try to distract myself from what I was feeling, but when I looked up he was staring straight at me, as if he knew what I was thinking and refused to let the moment pass. I held his gaze and something happened. It was as if his look penetrated so deeply that my boundaries vanished and my very cells were becoming unglued. I felt my body opening to the forces of nature, letting the heat of the sun enter through the top of my head and move downward, while the coolness of the earth rose up through my feet. The two fronts were about to meet and explode in a storm somewhere south of my equator when someone spoke.

“You can’t just do one spot,” Joey said.

Kenny looked at her. “Huh?”

“You can’t just do one spot with the screwdriver,” she explained. “You have to go all the way around the lid.”

“Oh,” Kenny said as he glanced back at me quickly. “I don’t think that’ll make a difference.” As proof, he stuck the screwdriver in another spot and pushed down, to no avail.

“Do you have a claw bar?” Teddy asked.

“A what?” Kenny asked.

“A claw bar,” he repeated.

Kenny scratched his head. “A claw bar? What do they serve there? And do they have karaoke?”

“Yes, but you can only sing
Eagles
songs.” Teddy winked.

Kenny smirked. “Is that in case there’s a
talon
scout?”

Teddy laughed. “A claw bar is like a crowbar, with a special kind of tip.”

Kenny shook his head. “Nope, I don’t have one. But wouldn’t an ordinary crowbar do just as well?”

“It might.” Teddy nodded hopefully.

“I don’t have one of those either.”

We all laughed, and Kenny admitted he was teasing and that there probably was a crowbar in the basement. He said
he’d go look and asked if anybody else wanted to give the screwdriver a try while he was gone.

“I’ll give it a shot,” Teddy said.

Kenny handed him the screwdriver and headed back into the house. Teddy wedged the tool into another spot and pushed down so hard his face turned bright red from the exertion. Alicia’s hand went up to her chest in alarm. I thought she was going to tell him to stop before he hurt himself, but she didn’t and I was glad. I could imagine how emasculating that would be for him.

He stopped to rest, which he clearly needed, then tried again. Standing on his toes, he pushed his weight onto the screwdriver, and his face flushed even redder and started to sweat. I was beginning to get genuinely concerned for his health and considered whether I should speak up. Would he get insulted? Possibly, but wasn’t that better than risking a collapse?

But he paused on his own before I had to say anything. “Getting warm out here.”

“Let’s get you a cold drink,” Alicia said.

He nodded and handed the screwdriver to Joey before going back into the house with his wife. Then it was just us sisters.

“What they were doing wrong,” Joey said, as she stooped to pick up a large rock, “was not getting the tip of the screwdriver wedged in enough.”

She held the screwdriver under the lip of the lid, and banged on the other end with the rock.

She tsked. “It’s not going in.”

“Try angling the handle upward,” Clare offered.

Joey did that and gave the handle a hard knock with the stone. There was a tiny sound, like a whisper of air.

“Did you hear that?” she asked. “It sounded like some air escaped.” She made a face. “Oh, man! I
smell
it.”

I moved closer and caught wind. “Ooh,” I said, “chemicals! Goodwin was right.”

“Don’t even bother opening it,” Clare said. “What’s the point?”

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Joey said, as she pushed her weight down on the screwdriver handle. “We’ve gotten this far.” The lid budged upward the tiniest bit. Joey removed the screwdriver and inserted it in another spot a few inches away. She banged it in with the rock again and pressed down hard.

“Somebody help me,” she said.

I went behind her and put my hands over hers.

“Push,” she said. “Push!”

“I don’t want to crush your hands.”

“Never mind. Just push.”

Clare moved in next to me and put her hands over mine. Together, the three of us pushed down as hard as we could until we could see the lid actually rising. The chemical smell was almost more than my empty stomach could bear. I wanted to stop but I could see that my sisters were intent on finishing the job.

“Okay,” Joey finally said. “Stand back. I’m going to lift the lid off now.”

“Be careful,” I said. “It smells toxic.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t touch it with your bare hands,” Clare offered.

“No worries,” Joey said, grasping the lid with both hands. She gave a hard yank and pulled it off, tossing it onto the grass.

The odor made my eyes tear, the nausea swelling in a ghastly wave. Still, I couldn’t help but glance inside at the brackish liquid that filled the drum, as it did indeed look like there was something inside.

I noticed a filmy coating on top. Holding my nose, I brought
my face a little closer for a better look. It wasn’t a film, but a mass of floating fibers.

“That looks like
hair,
” Joey said.

I tsked. “It’s not hair, for heaven’s sake.”

“And what’s
that
?” She pointed to something whitish beneath the surface.

Clare and I moved in for a closer look.

Joey knelt down and picked up a twig. She stuck it into the liquid and poked the white shape. The hair-like fibers on the surface swayed as the thing she disturbed bobbed up from the fluid.

I was certain it wouldn’t be anything more interesting than a piece of old wood or some other building materials. After all, Kenny had said it was probably the contractor who built the extension that left the barrel there.

But I stared intently, hoping we could identify it in short order so that I could get back home to shower and change. I’d had enough of this nonsense.

Then the thing broke the surface of the liquid and came into full view. There was a moment of silence followed by a collective gasp. The reality of what I saw hit me just as the emptiness of my stomach, the weakness of my knees, the power of the odor, and the force of my nausea overtook me. My world started to spin like that scene in
The Wizard of Oz
where Dorothy’s house turns and turns in the force of the twister. As my world darkened, colorless images went flying by my field of vision: Clare slipping in the mud…Joey clambering into that tight crawl space…the distinctive handwriting of that hidden letter. And then, just before the screen went black, one final vision I didn’t have to imagine because it was right in front of me, bobbing up from the dark liquid like a signal for help.