So of course that would be when old Herb has to stop and reload. That’s just the way of the universe, it seems like, sometimes. You take so long to figure things out and, just when you get there, when you really figure something out that’s maybe kind of good, they tell you you’re out of time. I don’t know why that is, but it does seem that way. Like most of your life, you sit around all tense, going, I know life is supposed to feel better than this, how do I figure out how to feel better? And everybody’s got opinions about how to feel better—get drunk, go to the movies, read a comic book or a porno magazine, watch TV, whatever. And so you do all that, and it doesn’t work, but you’re trying, you know, everybody gets points for trying. And then something happens and it just clicks; one day you’re lying under a tree or something and it suddenly feels like you almost know it, how to be yourself, and then you do know it, for a second, and then something else happens, a catastrophe, they blow up the World Trade Center or something. Someone dies. You lose everything. And then you think, why didn’t I know how to feel happy and content and at home in my life when I had everything I ever needed? How come as soon as I knew it, it all went away?
Look, I’m not trying to say that getting kicked out of the picture was the equivalent of a big catastrophe for me. I just mean, I wish I had figured out how to enjoy the whole thing a little sooner. Because when me and Amelia and Polly started dancing, at the end? That was fun, it really was.
CHAPTER TWO
In between the picture-taking event and the picture coming out in seven zillion magazines and ruining everyone’s lives event, there was a shred of time when our lives almost went back to normal. For the next six weeks we actually went back to school and took up familiar activities, such as homework and piano lessons and breakfast. But none of it was the same anymore, already. Somehow the word was out, that fast, that Polly and Daria and Amelia were the new It Girls. I wondered, a lot, at the time, how can you be the new It Girls, if nobody’s heard of you and you live in Brooklyn, and you’re not in magazines? I mean, none of it had happened, yet; the picture wasn’t out. But the news was already out, that this thing that hadn’t happened yet was happening.
It was like, Polly was still going to school all the time, but she didn’t even pretend to do the work anymore. Daria’s modeling career, which she had been vaguely pursuing, started to heat up, in a preparatory way. The big-shot agent who kept almost signing her actually sent contracts over to the house and called, for once, instead of just returning. Which was a total turnaround; for complete ages this agent, Collette Something, had been sitting on the fence because, while it is undeniable that Daria is a knockout, the fact is that she “started late,” because eighteen is like sixty, in modeling years. But now that the New Yorker was going to put Daria on the map, the concern about how ancient she was evaporated, and Collette called to say the FedEx guy was bringing the contracts by and oh, yes—would Polly and Amelia like to come in as well and take a meeting?
So then that made Daria completely insane and not want to sign with Collette, and then Collette kept calling, and faxing over information about bookings she might be able to get for Daria, if Daria were actually one of her clients. Which made Daria mad, as she suddenly decided she wanted to be an actress, and not just a model, and Collette’s bookings were beneath her. Mom meanwhile was fielding other offers from other agents who heard through the grapevine that the shoot was terrific, and could all three girls come in for a meeting, would that be possible? Polly and Mom and Daria got into huge arguments about the whole situation, as Polly, at the ripe old age of seventeen, didn’t want to find herself in Daria’s boat, being told she’s too old to start a modeling-slash-acting career because she waited until she was eighteen. So she was ready to move. Daria now wanted to wait, although this might have been because she resented the fact that Polly was suddenly part of her career picture. Mom was endlessly moaning to people on the phone about how she wanted to “protect” her girls, and although I think she believed it, it was also clearly an excuse to buy enough time to get Polly and Daria on the same page because they needed to be behaving as if they were best friends when they finally did take all these spectacular meetings. I watched a lot of Star Trek reruns during these endless debates. Amelia took up a sudden interest in the piano.
Now, this piano thing was not completely out of the blue. She’s taken lessons since she was five and had to stand up so she could reach the keyboard, and she’s always been one of those kids who have talent but so what? You’re impressed because they’re pretty good, considering how little they are and all, but other than that it’s sort of like a dog doing tricks on late-night television. Besides which, Amelia has a pretty reckless relationship with the whole idea of discipline so she doesn ‘t exactly practice with anything resembling regularity. But now that everyone in the house had become obsessed with the idea of agents, and I was drowning myself in Star Trek, Amelia couldn’t get enough of the piano. Which was vaguely annoying; you try watching Star Trek with someone pounding Beethoven in the room next door. But no one said anything, least of all me. We were all just generally unnerved as hell anyway, and Beethoven sort of articulates that in a very grand way, if you think about it. So she’s practicing like a demon, and then she has this piano recital, and nobody goes except me.
Nobody went, except me. Which is, I think, another sign of how odd things were already. When your fifteen-year-old brother is the only one in your family who goes to your stupid piano recital? Something is definitely off, in spite of the fact that I probably was the only one who ever enjoyed those things anyway. I couldn’t ever admit it, of course, but I always thought those recitals were sort of corny and great: All these little kids playing Bach or the Beatles just terribly—there’s only one or two of them who are ever any good, but the whole audience always cheers like lunatics, no matter how bad the kid is. And then afterwards everyone goes down into the basement of the school and the kids pig out on chocolate-chip cookies and cans of soda pop, then run around like maniacs and then after a while six or seven of the littlest kids crash and melt down and have to be taken home. It’s strangely pleasant. But I have to say, even though Mom and Polly and Daria never appreciated the whole thing the way I did, they always showed up. Now, in preparation for everything changing, apparently, I was the only one there. And Amelia was good; she had practiced that Beethoven within an inch of its life, and it was loud and fast, so she had to really attack the keyboard to get it out, and she walloped it. Everybody cheered like lunatics when she finished, and she was all flushed and laughing when she took her bow. She didn’t seem to care that nobody else in the family came; she mostly was just pleased that she had played so well. Her piano teacher, this skinny guy named Ben who had a huge crush on her, kept congratulating her and telling everybody how proud he was. And then I went up and gave her a big hug, even though I am her older brother, and she laughed some more.
So we walk home, and she’s sort of humming the middle part of the Beethoven thing, and it’s nice out, a little drizzly, but not cold at all, just springlike, so that the rain feels good instead of annoying.
“I never played that good in my life,” she told me.
“No, come on,” I said. “You play like that at home all the time. I’m about to blow my brains out, I hear Beethoven in my sleep.”
Amelia laughed at this, even though it was rather lame. She was really jazzed. “I was good, I was really good,” she said, mostly to herself. Then she kind of looked at me. “Dad says if I’m really good he’ll get me into LaGuardia.”
Okay. This piece of information just about knocked me out; I almost collapsed right there on the sidewalk. “Oh?” I say, completely casual. “When did you talk to Dad?”
She is oh-so-casual herself.