The Extra Series, #1, page 19
He flinches and steps back. I might as well have slapped him, judging by the hurt look in his eyes. He runs a hand through his honey-blond curls. “Yeah, okay.”
I want to take it back, all of it. And yet part of me wants to follow up with the confession, to tell him that even when I was kissing Sean, I was thinking of him. I want to ask him if I’m wrong about any of this, if there’s even a remote possibility that he’s done any of this because he actually has feelings for me that go beyond friendship.
But I’ve humiliated myself and suffered enough rejection for the day. I fold my arms and stare in the other direction as he walks away. I keep looking, watching the breeze tremble through the palm tree leaves at the end of the parking lot, long after I can no longer hear the scuff of his sneakers against the pavement. Long after I feel the tears trailing their way down my cheeks.
Anna-Marie brings out my purse and clothes eventually, without me needing to call her. I don’t know if Will spoke to her or if she just heard about the incident and how I walked off the set in stolen scrubs.
She doesn’t say anything, just sets my stuff on the hood and leans back against the car with me. It takes me a few minutes before I realize she’s back in her own clothes, despite her hair and makeup done up like she’s going to prom.
“Don’t you still have a few hours?” I ask.
“Nah. My only scenes were with Bridget, and she’s locked herself in her room. Sarah told the rest of us to go home.”
“I guess we both have a free day, then.”
Anna-Marie gives me a side glance. “You would’ve been great, you know. At saying the line.”
“Maybe. Probably not. But who knows. It’s Schroedinger’s line of dialogue now.”
Anna-Marie nods. “So you talked with Will? He looked pretty upset.”
“Talked is one way of saying it. Yelled at is another.”
She turns and studies me. She can appear vapid at times, but its all an act. Anna-Marie can see through people like she’s got a PhD in psychology. And x-ray vision.
I can guess the kind of questions she’s going to ask, and I don’t want to answer any of them, even in my own mind. Especially in my own mind. “Let’s not talk about it right now, okay? I just want to go home.”
“Okay. There’s just one place I need to stop at first.”
Without even saying the words, I know that she’s going to drive—despite her usual refusal to so much as touch a gas pedal in LA—and I’m going to sit silently in the passenger seat and turn up the radio to drown out my thoughts.
But my thoughts aren’t so easily drowned out. They are a swirling collage of Will and Sarah and Felix and Sean and Bernard and Mom and Bridget Messler and Peter Dryden and the CPR instructor, each resisting my attempts to push them down, back into the dark corners of my subconscious where they belong.
I am distracted enough that I don’t notice where we are until the car has already stopped and Anna-Marie says, “Come on, we’re doing this.”
I blink out of my daze and see that we are parked (illegally) in front of Fong’s All-American. Anna-Marie gets out and I follow, the numbness back.
We walk into Fong’s and Su-Lin’s smile drops the second she sees my face. “Uh-oh,” she says, setting down the hot pink marker she was using to draw geometric shapes on the back of her hand. “I’ll go get it.”
I slide into my usual booth, and Anna-Marie sits across from me as if she does this all the time instead of only having been here with me once, most of which she spent tallying up the calories of four bites of Breakup Tub on a fitness app on her phone.
“Are you sure you’re up for this?” I ask.
She cocks a saucy eyebrow at me. “I was the Blueberry Pie Eating Champion of Everett, Wyoming, two years straight. Trust me, I can handle this.”
I should be even more bitter that, in addition to everything else, it turns out Anna-Marie is better at eating obscene amounts of sugar than I am. But really, I’m just grateful she’s here. And grateful that she doesn’t push me to talk about anything.
Su-Lin brings out the Breakup Tub, with two spoons. We finish it all, though I barely even taste it.
Twenty
I have lost my job, been publicly shamed, and, possibly worse, I have blurted out my feelings to Will. Who is engaged. Who will probably now be uncomfortable even being friends with me. And if there’s anything that is not bound to make me feel better about my life situation, it’s spending more time with my family. But two days after I walk off the set of Passion Medical in utter dejection, I get a text from my mom. She needs help figuring out how to downsize. That’s what she called it: downsizing. Really it means giving in, though in my opinion without any of the negative connotation usually associated with that phrase.
She’s giving in to the fact that they are no longer rich, that keeping up a mansion in one of the most expensive areas of California is no longer feasible. That keeping up the lifestyle that home represented might have cost them their marriage. I don’t know if this is an effort to salvage things with Dad or just an effort to come to terms with reality.
Either way, I owe it her to support her. I guess Dana feels that way, too, because Dana’s Lexus is sitting in the driveway when I pull up to my parents’ house. I almost turn around and drive away.
Mom is bad enough. Dana is worse. And yet, I need something else to think about beyond Will’s shocked, hurt expression as I yelled at him. Beyond the emptiness of sitting at home eating my way through my feelings and wondering what the hell I’m going to do next with my life. And so I trudge up the steps and go inside.
Dana’s husband Paul isn’t here this time, nor Dad, nor Felix, but little Ephraim comes charging at me full-speed when I walk in, his dark curls bouncing.
“Aunt Gab-Gab!”
I throw my arms around him and squeeze so tight he giggles. The sound of it lightens my heart more than any amount of ice cream and evenings spent watching classic romantic comedies with Anna-Marie. I’m nowhere near ready, either relationship-wise or in life in general, to have children of my own, but my nephew is adorable enough to make the notion appealing. Some day. A long, long time from now.
I hate myself that the idea of my future children makes me think of Will. And hate myself even more for the guilt that floods in. Will didn’t deserve to be the recipient of my volcano of pent-up rage and humiliation. He’d only ever tried to help me.
But I don’t even know how to apologize without completely breaking down in front of him—and after having started down that path already, I know that is a humiliation I can’t see myself coming back from. It doesn’t stop me from missing him, though. From wishing I could go back to us joking at the craft services table.
Ephraim leads me into the kitchen, where Mom and Dana have made various piles of kitchen appliances and utensils. He drops my hand and grabs a large plastic bowl to put on his head, smiling at me from under the rim.
It’s good to know that even genius toddlers can still appreciate the classics.
“I don’t think I should get rid of that,” Mom is saying. “That melon baller was personally recommended to me by Emeril himself.”
“Have you ever used it?” Dana asks pointedly.
“No, not yet, but—”
Dana places the melon baller in a pile of what I’m guessing are discards and sees me. “Excellent! Gabby’s here to talk some sense into you, Mom.”
Mom turns to me and offers a tremulous smile. Her face is pinched, and she has the circles under her eyes of many sleepless nights. “Thank you for coming, honey.”
“Of course.” For a moment, I’m tempted to give her a hug, she looks so lost standing among piles of her life being taken away from her. But Mom never was a hugger.
“She wants to keep the Lladros. All of them.” Dana points to the ornately carved cherrywood china hutch in the dining room, filled with the lovely statues I used to stare at as a child, and wish I could play with. Wish I could become, really—all grace and smooth lines and delicate perfection. One in particular, a statue of a ballerina, always reminds me of my childhood—but in a good way. Some of my earliest memories are of that statue, drawing pictures of her and posing myself in the same pirouette (or the five-year-old Gabby approximation of that same pirouette). There’s not much in this house I’ll be sad to lose, personally, but that statue would be one of them.
Mom’s chin drops to her chest, as if she’s already mourning their loss like I am. She picks at a fleck of some kind of dried crust stuck to the countertop. Apparently, she hasn’t had the maid here recently.
“Let her keep them,” I say. “They don’t take up much space.”
Mom looks back at me, surprised, and I think I see genuine gratitude in her deep blue eyes. Dana, for all her brilliance, apparently hasn’t made the connection that Mom can’t get rid of the Lladros because Dad gave them to her, one each year on their anniversary. Or maybe Dana does see it, and just doesn’t understand.
Dana rolls her eyes, and gets back to picking through the stacks of orange peelers and melon ballers and miscellaneous utensils that in some cases look more like medieval torture devices than anything that could be used to prepare food. Once again, I notice that Dana looks more tired than I’m used to seeing her, and her tone is even more on edge.
“I saw you on TV,” Mom says, still picking at the crusty spot. “On Passion Medical. You told us Anna-Marie was on the show, but you didn’t mention that you were, too.”
Because the moment I tried, I got cut off and Dad announced that Felix had been in rehab, and no one wanted to hear about my work as an extra/fake receptionist at that point, is what I want to say. But no one wants to move on from that night more than I do.
“I’m just an extra. Anna-Marie’s the actual star.”
“Well, someone needs to tell your roommate’s hairdresser to hold back on the hair spray. That scene where she was sleeping with Diego on the cafeteria table after hours? I thought that ketchup bottle was going to get stuck in her hair and never come out.”
I wrinkle my nose at the image of Anna-Marie sexing it up on a dirty cafeteria table (a scene I wasn’t aware of) as well as any implications of what might happen with a ketchup bottle.
“I’ll let Anna-Marie know. I’m not working there anymore.”
Mom stops furiously picking at the counter top, and Dana looks up from the piles of utensils to share a significant glance with Mom.
“What?” Dana asks, her brows drawing together. “You lost another job? Are you actually trying to fail?”
“Dana,” Mom says, but as usual Dana just keeps going.
“Are you actually ever going to do something with your life, Gabby? Because it doesn’t seem like—”
“Dana!” Mom’s shout surprises Dana as much as it does me. My sister closes her mouth, and mine gapes in amazement. I’m not used to my mom defending me, especially against Dana.
Mom doesn’t look at me, though. She just clears her throat and picks up a whisk, frowning at it in disappointment. In reality, she probably considers the whisk a more valuable addition to the household than I ever was.
“It wasn’t my fault,” I say, quietly. “Losing this job. I was good at it, you know.”
Dana cocks an eyebrow at me, but I stare her down until she looks away. I’m not sure why I want them to believe me, but I was good at it. At being a nobody, a faceless body in the background, a bit of decoration meant not to draw attention.
“Of course, dear,” Mom says, and squeezes my arm. Her smile is strained, falsely chipper. She holds up a metal utensil that looks more like it belongs at the end of Captain Hook’s arm stub than in a kitchen drawer. “Butter curler. Keep? I’ve found it quite useful.”
Dana groans, and snags it from Mom’s hand to toss in the discard pile.
We work for another hour in the kitchen, and thankfully neither of them asks any more about my job or my love life. It’s a good thing, too, because in my current state I might very well burst out crying or see if Emeril’s personal melon baller guarantee extends to using it as projectile weapon. Either option is not likely to improve matters.
Likewise, neither Dana nor I ask Mom about Dad or about where she’s going to live. That will all need to come up eventually, but instead we move into the bedroom and buckle down to business there, sorting through designer clothes and purses and shoes, through artwork and a surprising number of rare signed vintage records I had no idea my mom collected. We look up prices on eBay and make piles of things that will be worth selling, things to donate, and things Mom’s too attached to get rid of. And though I’m not sure why she’d want to bring a ten-foot tall porcelain giraffe statue into what will most likely be an apartment or condo, I don’t fight her on what she isn’t ready to give up. After a few attempts to convince her otherwise, Dana gives up as well. Sooner than I’d expect from the sister who generally seems to regret that she has but one life to give for her ironclad opinions.
Keeping busy is good for all of us, it appears. Certainly better than speaking to each other has been lately. Or maybe ever.
Eventually Ephraim gets whiny, and Dana leaves to set him with some science DVD for genius kids in the family room. (“Ephy can’t get enough of Neil Degrasse Tyson,” Dana proudly announces.)
When she leaves, I look over at Mom. “What’s up with her? She seems . . . I don’t know. More Dana than usual.” By this I mean self-righteous and irritating, which is certainly true, but in some ways, she’s actually seeming less Dana than usual as well. Distracted. Exhausted.
Mom just shakes her head, her lips pursed tight. “It’s been a long few weeks for all of us.”
Well, I can sympathize there, I suppose. Except that other than having to be here prying scarves and whisks from Mom’s tight grip rather than spending the day shining her trophies or whatever Dana normally does, I can’t imagine what my sister could be so miserable about.
Then again, I hadn’t had the faintest clue what was going on with Felix, either, and he’s the one in the family I was supposed to be closest to.
“So how’s Felix doing?” I ask finally. “Does he get to call you?”
Mom runs her finger over the soft leather of a handbag in the “to sell” pile. “He’s called once since he went back. He sounds good.”
“Good good? Or, like, alive good?”
She flicks her gaze at me. “Good good.”
“Good. I mean, great. That’s great.”
Except my brother is still in rehab, and if it didn’t work for him before, it very well might not again. And even if it does, who knows what he’ll do next, what with his scholarship gone and, worst of all, his cello.
I think of the look he gave me when I asked if he wanted to stop using the drugs, the flash of pain that had crossed his face, as if I was reminding him of some deep-buried trauma. I glance back at the boxes holding all the material memories of Mom’s life—which for her were the average mom’s equivalent of photo albums and that curl of hair from their baby’s first haircut. I think of Dad in his library, desperately calculating any way to keep both his Mercedes and his dignity. I think of Bernard calling me ugly and Will’s face when I yelled at him and I can’t help but wonder if anything will be great again.
A toddler whine sounds from the living room and Dana pokes her head back in. “Mom, he’s missing his blue sock. Have you seen it?”
“A two-year old’s sock?” I can’t help but ask. “You think she’s seen anything that small in all this chaos?”
“I put it back in his room, in his sock drawer,” Mom says. “It’s getting full, you know. And here you want me to get rid of my belt collection. That child has more socks than—”
She cuts off at seeing Dana’s face, and it takes me a moment to make the connection to Dana’s now bloodless cheeks and wide eyes with what Mom said. And then it hits me like a slap by Bridget Messler.
“His room? Here?” I look back and forth between them. “Why does he have a room here?” Even though I can guess already by the way Dana’s eyes narrow in a glare at Mom, and the way Mom looks around like she wishes she had a whisk to frown at.
“Is Ephraim living here with Mom?” I blink at them, and then my jaw drops. “Wait, Dana, are you living here with Mom?”
Dana folds her arms across her chest and lifts her chin, giving her that extra half-inch of haughtiness. “It’s just been the last couple weeks, but yes. Until we find our own place.”
Mom shakes her head, her eyes locked on some place above my head, and for once I see the typical motherly disappointment directed (passive-aggressively, of course) at someone other than me. Or more recently, my father.
But I can barely take my eyes off of Dana. “Are you and Paul getting a divorce, too? What the hell is going on with all of you?”
“Really, Gabby, that’s not called for,” Mom says, though I get the feeling that her admonishment is more directed at me for grouping her problems with Dana’s than at actually bringing up her divorce.
“We’re separated,” Dana says with a sniff. “Paul and I have discussed it, and we don’t believe in divorce. Not until Ephraim is much older. The studies clearly have shown—”
“Why?” I couldn’t care less about studies. “Just this past Christmas Paul surprised you with that big Greek Isles cruise for the two of you.”
She stiffens even more, if that’s possible. “That was what started it, actually. Paul had been accusing me of working too much, and we started fighting about it all the time. That was his none-too-subtle dig at how I needed to take time off.”
I blink, waiting for more. Waiting, perhaps, for the shocking reveal that the travel agent he’d used to book the trip was also his mistress. Or that there’s a secret bank account she’d traced the cruise tickets back to. But she doesn’t say anything more, just stares at me as if daring me to speak.
