Seventeen
“Vronsky, you’ve got moon pie on your teeth.”
It’s the last full-cast filming day, and despite starting on time and maintaining levels of utmost professionalism, we are running behind schedule. I’m beginning to think maybe it was a bad idea to break for lunch. If the cast were starving, they’d be more motivated to finish their scenes. As things stand, everyone is either in a food coma or high on caffeine or, in the case of Tony Davis, covered in chocolate.
“Whoops,” says Tony, vigorously brushing his index finger against his teeth. “Sorry. Got it?”
“No, there’s still some there, to your left. No, your left.”
“Gotcha. Good now?”
Serena, who is posed next to Tony on my living room couch, has been watching this entire scene with unreserved horror.
“Tony, that’s disgusting.” She turns to me and says, “I am not kissing him after that. He should brush his teeth. And wash his hands.”
“You’re pissed at me in this scene, anyway,” says Tony. “It’ll play into that.”
Serena glares. “I am an excellent actor. I don’t need your poor hygiene to help me along.”
“You guys, come on ,” I plead from behind the camera. “We’re running late. Pull it together.”
“Do I really have to wash my hands?” Tony asks.
Serena throws me an “I mean business” look.
“Yes,” I tell Tony. “And check the rest of your mouth while you’re at it. I don’t want us to discover another chocolate-covered tooth in post.”
Tony sighs his displeasure, but he leaves for the hall bathroom.
I feel a tap on my back, and turn to see Eva toeing the carpet.
“Um, Tash?” she half-whispers. “I was wondering, since I’m only in one more scene, could we go ahead and film that next? My sister’s got a swim meet at two, and I’d like to make it if I can.”
I want to say that no, Jack and I have drawn up a shooting schedule for a reason. No, not everyone in this damn cast can get special treatment. And anyway, if Eva needed to attend that swim meet so badly, she should’ve put it on her conflict calendar back in the spring. But I bite my tongue. Everyone else here may be falling apart, but I need to hold it together. That’s what directors do: Call the shots, and hold it together.
“We’ll see,” I say. “This was supposed to be a quick take, but maybe I can ask Serena and Tony to stay a little later.”
“What?” yelps Serena. “No way, Tash. I’ve got plans with Ben.”
I want to say that it is Serena and Tony’s own fault for producing a series of mediocre performances these last five takes. I want to say that a convincing climax of Unhappy Families is way more important than a date. I bite my tongue so hard I wonder why my mouth hasn’t turned into a reservoir of blood.
Hold it together.
“Fine,” I say. “Believe me, we’re trying to go as fast as we can.”
Jack walks in just then from the kitchen, where the rest of the cast are gorging themselves on pizza and Cokes and moon pies.
She looks around. “Where’s Tony?”
“Flossing, I hope,” says Serena, who is checking her eye makeup in a compact mirror.
I give Jack a sad-dog face. Jack pats my shoulder.
“You want me to take over?” she whispers, just for me to hear.
I shake my head. What kind of question is that? I’ve directed this entire series to date. I direct, Jack edits; that’s the deal. I’m not about to show weakness now. I am the one who holds it together, even on crappy filming days.
“I’ve been checking the weather,” says Jack, “and there’s a high chance of thunderstorms in the next couple hours. So if we want those shots in the backyard, we’d better get hopping.”
“Okay.”
“But . . . we can do my scene before that?” Eva squeaks.
“Okay.” My vocal cords have missed the memo to keep it together and are heaving toward screech territory. “I’m doing the best I can here. Where the hell is Tony?”
Days like this, I wish I could fast-forward to the time when I’ll have made it in the film industry. I wish I had an entire crew on hand to help out. Someone to dress the set and check on makeup. A director of photography to ensure everything is where it ought to be. Most importantly, a production assistant to yell at people like Tony.
But I am not a renowned director, and I don’t have a budget to pay for decent lighting, much less a PA. Jack and I handle all the work, and while we do an admirable job of it, thanks to my careful planning and Jack’s unshakable composure and Paul’s occasional help on set, sometimes I’d like to lock myself in a closet and cry.
Jack must see this desire written all over my face, because she says, “Hey, no pressure on the outside shots. That’s what makeup dates are for.”
She’s right, we did build a makeup date into every month of the schedule with hectic days like this in mind. But we already have lots of footage to make up, thanks to the day Jack and I slept in, and if I have to add yet another filming day to our schedule, I seriously might break down.
“Take ten,” I tell the room, shutting off the camera and dismounting from my adjustable stool.
I head straight to my bedroom and close the door. Mom would tell me this is the perfect time to do a mindfulness meditation. Dad might tell me to shoot up a quick prayer for patience. But I do neither. I sit on the edge of my bed and stare at my poster of Leo.
“It’s just a bad day, right?” I ask. “You must’ve had bad writing days too, huh? Long nights where you ended up swigging a ton of vodka?”
Leo’s reply is a scowl.
“I thought so.”
• • •
The day improves. When I return to the living room, Serena and Tony are waiting and ready to film. They both look chastised, which means Jack must have given them a talking-to in my absence. At last, their delivery finally convinces me that Anna is jealous of Vronsky, while Vronsky is torn between his affection for Anna and the stifled feeling of being locked into a highly publicized relationship. I fit in Eva’s scene afterward, and we manage to wrap up the last of the outdoor scenes just as rain begins to spatter on the camera. It would seem Leo has scowled down benevolently upon us.
Only when the cast and the equipment are safely inside do the heavens open up. Thunder crawls closer and closer, until it sounds like someone is wrapping our house in aluminum foil. We gather in the living room, where all the lamps are switched on and it feels like it’s midnight and not five o’clock in the afternoon. Jack is lying on the carpet, eyes closed, face reld. Thunderstorms are her favorite thing.
“It’s darkness and unpredictable fireworks,” she explained to me once. “What’s better than that?”
Tony has commandeered our upright piano and is showing off with a minor progression of seconds against thirds. Brooks and Jay sit on the couch, where Brooks is cracking a joke that involves the word “balls.” George has claimed the cushiest armchair and is busily tip-tapping away at his phone on business that’s far more important than any of us.
Tony abruptly stops a run of arpeggios, cracks his knuckles, and begins to pound out chords that are tantalizingly familiar. It’s a song by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. More than that—it’s one of the songs he and Jack covered for their YouTube channel.
I stare dumbfounded at the back of his Mohawk. Is he trying to hurt Jack? Or is this some attempt at restoring normalcy amid the weird tension that’s existed between them since February? Whatever the case, it’s not comfortable.
I still don’t know all the reasons behind Tony and Jack’s breakup, but it was pretty ugly. They were always what you’d call a tempestuous couple. In the six months they were dating, they didn’t go a single week without fighting. And I don’t mean the cutesy “No, you hang up first,” “No, you take the last M&M” fights either. I mean fights . Altercations. Battles. In hindsight, their entire relationship was a series of battles, so I guess it’d be more accurate to call it a war rather than a relationship. The Six-Month War of Jack and Tony. Their battles were waged with smirks and jabs and cruel winks and, most commonly, earsplitting screams. They could start with something as simple as Jack not wrapping one of Tony’s amp cords right and end up with Jack bellowing that Tony was the most narcissistic musician to come along since Liam Gallagher.
According to Jack, though, fighting requires a ton of passion, and when she and Tony weren’t busy expending their passion on fighting, they were using it for more . . . enjoyable activities. Tony was the first guy Jack had sex with. The only guy, as far as I know. When she told me about it, she didn’t go into detail, for which I was quietly grateful, and she only brought up the topic one more time, a few weeks later, when she confided in me that she was worried she and Tony did it too much, and that even though they were always safe, the laws of pregnancy probability were less and less in Jack’s favor the more they did it. She looked guilty the whole time she talked about it, and I knew it wasn’t because Jack felt guilty about the sex but because she was talking to me about it. So I told her she was fine, it didn’t bother me much, and that even though I was no expert on sex or statistics, I didn’t think that was how the laws of probability worked.
Two months later, she and Tony broke up. The only explanation Jack gave was that they were driving each other crazy, and since that alone was obvious and comprehensive, I let it rest. All the details were left to my imagination. I didn’t know if Jack or Tony had been the one to call it off, or if it was mutual. During the frosty, awkward period that followed, I asked no questions, did nothing to rock the boat.
But now, here, out of the blue, Tony seems intent on not just rocking the boat but capsizing it altogether. Though maybe he doesn’t realize that. Maybe he’s totally oblivious. In matters of affection, Tony does have a track record of being dense.
He’s still pounding out the melody, but I swear, it’s its own kind of silence. The others have picked up on the weird vibe; even George has pocketed his phone and is glancing apprehensively between Tony and Jack.
Then Jay speaks up. “Want some accompaniment?”
I think he meant it to sound lighthearted, just a teensy bit teasing. It comes out kind of scared.
Tony stops playing. “No, it’s not in your range, man. Anyway, only Jack can do a mean Karen O impression.”
I shoot Tony a look. Is he trying to hurt Jack and Jay? Maybe he’s got gigantic blinders when it comes to Jay’s crush on him, but what he’s said is super rude, crush or no crush. I’d like to inform him that Jay is a crazy talented singer and he had to choose between music and drama when he was accepted into Governor’s School for the Arts, because he’d participated in a rare double audition and both departments clawed each other to get at him.
Tony’s too quick for me. He swivels toward Brooks and asks, “You’re still cool with driving, yeah?”
Brooks’s eyebrows bounce sky-high. “To Nashville, you mean?” He’s looking at me of all people, as though I can grant him confirmation that it’s not wrong for him to have this conversation with Tony after what’s just gone down. “Yeah, of course. It’s still seven of us, right? ’Cause I can’t do more. It’s a big SUV , but there’s a legal limit, and considering most of you are, like, underage, I think they’d lock me up for decades.”
“You talk like you’re planning on getting pulled over,” says Jay, who has recovered from Tony’s lack of decency with infinite grace.
Brooks shrugs. “I speed. It happens.”
I’m grateful my parents are not in the room to hear this conversation. They aren’t too happy about me heading to Nashville with a carload of other young people, most of them males, for a big, bad alternative concert—especially when I casually mentioned we planned on driving back straight afterward, in the dead of night, to save on hotel fare. I finally managed to set their minds at ease by telling them Brooks was driving, and he was a mature and responsible college student with an extremely safe SUV .
“He’s basically Mister Rogers,” I told them. “Mister Rogers driving an armored tank down I-65. Nothing bad will happen.”
Good thing I didn’t mention our Mister Rogers has a need for speed.
I might be more interested in the current conversation if I weren’t trying to assess Jack’s emotional state. Her eyes have remained shut this whole time, and she is motionless. I have this theory that Jack moves less than most humans. Not in a slothful way. It’s just, once she hunkers into a position, she keeps it. No fidgeting. No adjusting. She simply exists in that allotted space. And that makes it so hard to figure out how she’s feeling. I can’t tell if she’s upset or livid or not even bothered at all.
Meantime, I feel more jittery than usual, and it’s not until later, after the rain has let up and everyone’s left the house, that I realize why. Back in early spring, when we bought tickets for the Chvrches concert and planned our mini road trip to Nashville, I was daydreaming about Vandy. Back then, I thought the trip would be a great second look at the campus. (I’ve already visited once, with Klaudie my sophomore year.) I thought our trip to Nashville would be a preview of my life to come.
Now I’m wondering where I found all that boundless, stupid optimism. Klaudie’s right: I’m not smart enough to cut it at Vanderbilt. My grades are more high Bs than As, and my standardized test scores are only slightly above average. Mom’s right too: It’s a gamble, paying full price for a private education to earn a degree I might never be able to pay off. UK would be way cheaper, almost free. And that’s an opportunity not everyone gets. Just like Klaudie has an opportunity I can’t get.
I want to leave Lexington, but maybe that feeling is more about finding my own space to breathe. About leaving my house more than my city. I could live in a dorm with Jack. I could start fresh there. On all fronts, that looks like the best decision. It’s the smart decision, and I guess making it means I’m a responsible adult. Still, I can’t help mourning the dream of life on a picture-perfect campus. I can’t help that our upcoming trip to Nashville makes me more glum than excited.
Later, I’m in the living room watching Mrs. Doubtfire with Mom and Dad when Klaudie gets in from another night out with Ally and Jenna.
Dad says, “Hey, sweetie, want to join?”
Even though we all know she won’t, and she doesn’t. She says nothing, and we say nothing back. I watch her stride down the hallway at a cool, measured pace. She doesn’t know how lucky she is. She doesn’t know the damage she’s causing. My anger toward her runs through me like boiling blood, and I don’t think that’s something even a dozen loving-kindness meditations or chats with Leo can completely purge from my system.