CHAPTER 3
Brett
My father thinks it’s a phase. My lesbianism.
He met one of my girlfriends once. Thanksgiving, two years ago, in San Diego, where he moved after Mom died. He’s remarried now, to a vegetarian named Susan. Susan and my father treated my ex like a best gal pal from college who didn’t have anywhere to go for the holiday because her parents were going through an ugly divorce. They stuck all of us—Layla, Kelly, Sarah, and me—in the second bedroom, mother and daughter in the bed, lezzies on the air mattress. There is a third bedroom in the San Diego house, but it’s Dad’s “office” and he had emails to send “very early in the morning.”
It’s not hard for me to imagine Mom’s reaction. She was dead when I came out of the closet at twenty-two, but had she been alive, I doubt she would have so much as frowned, abiding as she did by the parenting rule that the best way to discipline your children when they “act out” is to ignore them. Between my maroon hair and my green hair and my purple hair, my tattoos and piercings, and a brief Wiccan stint after renting and keeping Blockbuster’s copy of The Craft, I got ignored a lot growing up. But you better believe she would have been marching in the pussy parade as my star started to rise, as she saw that my gayness was intrinsic to my celebrity. And she would have adored Arch. A lawyer for the A-C-L-U? She could have been a purple Communist with a sexual attraction to mangoes, and Mom would have set out the fancy Clinique lotion every time I brought her home.
Mom didn’t go to college and while she occasionally flitted around in various retail capacities whenever we needed a little extra cash or she needed something to do, she never had a career. She came of age in a time when it was just as socially acceptable for a woman to get married at twenty-one and have her first child by twenty-three as it was to go to college and earn a paycheck. I don’t think she had the confidence to continue her education, the path that was really in her blood. And so she was always a little bit defensive about being a young mother, getting it into her head that if she could raise a Mensa candidate it would somehow elevate her status in the eyes of second-wave feminists.
She chased accolades for Kelly before she could even walk, submitting her photo to Gerber baby contests and entering her into child beauty pageants. By the time I was born, four years later, she had so much time and money and hope vested in Kelly that it came down to another decision: Split the effort and risk turning out two mildly accomplished daughters, or go full throttle on the one who was already showing so much promise. Kelly was an honorable mention in the 1986 Gerber contest, so go full throttle on her she did.
My phone trembles in my hand as the R pulls into the Twenty-eighth Street station and catches a few bars of service. I look down. Kelly. Asking me how far away I am. The production meeting started eighteen minutes ago, but our booking system went down twenty minutes into the Rise and Resist class and I was on the phone with tech support for an hour and a half. I didn’t even get a chance to shower and I’m still in my smelly spandex. Ten minutes, I tell her. Is there food there?
It’s harder for me to imagine how Mom would have reacted to Kelly’s about-face. And Layla. What kind of grandmother would she have been to Layla? My gut tells me not the kind who baked cookies and read bedtime stories, at least during those early years. Now that Layla’s older and has expressed an interest in SPOKE, she would have warmed. But I don’t know if she would ever forgive Kelly for making her feel like she bet on the wrong horse.
Kelly was a sophomore at Dartmouth, studying abroad in Morocco, when Mom had her second stroke. I was fifteen, downstairs in the finished basement pretending to be researching a class project, actually in a sex chat room. Kelly was the one who turned me on to them. She once forgot to sign out of her account and when I opened up the browser, I discovered her screen name, PrttynPink85, and that her ambitions did not end outside of the classroom! I was floored, mostly because despite the fact that there were never any rules in place in our household, Kelly didn’t date. It was assumed Kelly was more interested in microbial genetics or whatever the fuck they studied in AP chemistry than she was boys. My sister went to prom with her best friend, Mags, and came home early with a greasy-assed McDonald’s bag. Looking back, I can see that Kelly was just taking her cues. Our mother made it very clear that high school was for getting into a top college, not for football games and fun. And so my sister went off to her Ivy a sexually frustrated virgin with a banging bod and an encyclopedia of knowledge thanks to her digital dalliances. None of us should have been surprised when she went on a fuck-crawl of Marrakesh two years later.
My mother’s second stroke was minor, same as the first. She insisted Kelly stay abroad. Two days later she got up to use the bathroom and a pulmonary embolism took her down as she was washing her hands. She would have been relieved that it happened after she had gotten her pants back on—Mom was obediently ashamed of her ass. In a way I’m grateful that she was, because my inclination was always to do and be the opposite of whatever she expected of me. Body confidence is hard. Teenage rebellion comes with reserves.
My father and I called Kelly with the terrible news, and then we called her again . . . and again . . . and again. She had become increasingly difficult to get ahold of in the weeks leading up to Mom’s death, even though my parents set her up with the priciest international plan AT&T had to offer. We left messages, telling her we needed to speak to her urgently. She must have heard the news in our voices, because she never called back. She never called back.
We got ahold of her professor, who told us that Kelly hadn’t been to class in two days. For most students, this was unremarkable, but for Kelly—BRING IN THE NATIONAL GUARD. Through her roommate, we were able to track her whereabouts to the flat of the DJ at the American watering hole, who went by the name Fad. Only Fad. My father and I had to put the funeral on hold and fly to Marrakesh to drag my goodie-two-shoes sister out of the arms of a thirty-two-year-old man who wore tiny yellow sunglasses and double puka shell necklaces. Fad wasn’t actually Moroccan, he’d emigrated from Nigeria as a kid, and that’s about as much as Kelly knows about his background. I have determined that in another life, a life where he didn’t dress like an aging MTV veejay on spring break, Fad-no-last-name-Fad must have invented the polio vaccine and maybe also cold-pressed coffee. Because how else do you end up with a Layla?
I should thank Fad not just for my niece but for dickmatizing my sister the way he did. Because if he hadn’t, I never would have had a reason to travel to Morocco, and the idea for SPOKE never would have been born. And so it seems a bit of a moot point, what my mother would think of our lives now. Because nothing would have turned out this way if she hadn’t died and Kelly hadn’t fallen out of first place.
The train shudders into the Twenty-third Street station. I check my phone. I’m already late—what’s five more to dash over to Third Ave and grab a bagel? The chance that there is any sort of substantial spread at the prod meeting is low. We’re a month out from filming—those bitches are in conservation mode.
Only half the seats in the conference room are occupied, and yet the team has made a complete ring around the table by skipping chairs. Kelly has two empties to her right and three to her left. She’s fighting to look like she doesn’t care that no one wants to sit next to the weird new girl, but I can smell how much it actually bothers her. Seriously, when my sister is stressed, she emits the odor of sauerkraut.
Lisa, our showrunner, is at her rightful place at the head of the table. When she sees me, she drops her phone and cuts off a speaking field producer. They say that in meetings, women are interrupted at five times the rate that men are. I wonder how that number increases with Lisa Griffin in the room. “There’s Miss My Time Is More Important Than Your Time. Twenty million in her bank account and she can’t afford a fucking Rolex.”
It’s 23.4 million and it’s in an LLC holding, but I don’t correct Lisa. Lisa could eat me for breakfast—that is, if she ate breakfast. Two years ago she started drinking Jen’s protein shakes and dancing with two-pound weights at Tracy Anderson. Now she wears mostly leather jeans and is smaller and meaner than ever. She resents my friendship with Jesse, and I’m sure she feels like I went around her to get Kelly on the show. If she only knew. “I am so, so sorry,” I say, lifting my cross-body bag over my head and crabwalking between the wall and the table to take a seat next to Kelly. “We had a major technical glitch at the studio this morning.”
“Thanks for being the one to deal with that,” Kelly says, like I’ve done her such a favor, tending to an issue within my own company. Something about her appearance makes me do a double take, and it’s not that she’s trying too hard in strappy ankle heels and an off-the-shoulder top while Lauren and Jen are across from her looking every bit like they woke up like this in weird jeans, drinking matching coconut La Croixs. Monsters. Who likes the coconut? I can’t decide if I’m embarrassed or vindicated by Kelly’s sexy third-date getup. (You’re out of your league. I told you.) If we should talk about hiring a stylist or if I should keep the float all to myself.
I’ll sort it out later, because more pressing is the realization that Stephanie is running even later than I am. I shouldn’t—I shouldn’t—but I bristle. Stephanie was notorious for holding up filming in the early seasons, whether it was because she didn’t like her hair or that the shoot started at ten and she just didn’t feel like getting there at ten. She shaped up last season, after acquiring the nickname “Sleptanie” from viewers who complained on Twitter and Instagram that she had gotten boring, that she felt too produced. Sleptanie employs a glam squad—hair, makeup, personal stylist—and together they actually generate a lookbook for her each season. It’s all in keeping with Sleptanie’s very manufactured image of a modern woman killing it on all fronts: life, love, and real estate. Meanwhile, Stephanie is contemptuous of the readers who enjoy her fluffy series, her marriage is riddled with infidelity, she’s been on and off antidepressants since she was a teenager, and her mother paid the down payment on the brownstone as a wedding gift. The audience wasn’t connecting with her because there’s not a hair out of place. You need a little bit of imperfection to make people feel like there’s a human being underneath it all, but she could never quite bring herself to expose her real warts. She even had her agent negotiate in her contract that production could not shoot the outside of her house—for “security” purposes. Really, she’s embarrassed she lives next to a dry cleaner’s. But that brownstone would have cost millions more if it wasn’t, millions more on top of that if it was even one more avenue west of First. Like I said, it’s hard to be rich in New York, even for Stephanie Simmons.
The fact that she’s back to her old ways means she’s feeling pretty confident about her contract. Did she get a two-season renewal? No one gets a two-season renewal, but you don’t show up late unless you can get away with being late, which is why I’m so mortified that I got held up this morning. I never want to look like I’m taking advantage of Jesse’s obvious favoritism. Yes, I know it’s there, but I will cut you if you suggest it’s because we’re both gay. How about Jesse and I are the only ones who can truly call ourselves self-made women? Jen may not come from the piles of money that Lauren and Steph do, but she was raised in Soho and has gotten by fine on her mother’s name.
Oh, and in case Stephanie sold you the rags-to-riches story about scraping by on minimum wage when she first moved to New York—because she loves that one—here’s the truth that she conveniently omits. Her mom was paying the rent on her one-bedroom on Seventy-sixth and Third and slipping her an allowance of two hundred and fifty a week. Stephanie may have run out of spending money from time to time, she may not have been able to go out to dinner as often as she would have liked or shopped on a whim, but she was far from fucking Fievel.
I take a seat and set my bag on the table, rummaging around for the everything bagel with vegetable cream cheese and tomato, my long-standing order at Pick A Bagel.
“Nice Chloé,” Lauren says, slyly. She turns to Jen with a triumphant smirk, as if I have proven something on her behalf.
Arch had been on me to “invest” in a “power bag,” and when I wouldn’t do it myself, she took matters into her own hands. What the fuck kind of messed-up financial advice do we instill in women that even my Harvard-educated girlfriend has internalized it? Invest means put your money into something that has a return. Unless the cost of this bag included some kind of pension plan, I’m pretty sure Arch didn’t invest in anything. She just bought something. “Thanks,” I say. “It was a gift from my girlfriend.”
“Nice girlfriend then.” Lauren gives me a naughty little wink.
“Sorry I’m late,” I say again, but specifically to Lauren and Jen this time. Clearly, they’re pissed. Though the Green Menace is usually pissed about something. “The entire booking system crashed just as I was heading out the door.”
“I know how that goes,” Lauren says, wearily, not to be generous but to reinforce the fiction that she is on the ground at SADIE too. Lauren had a great idea—a dating website where the woman is the one to establish contact—but she never would have gotten it off the ground if her father hadn’t provided her with a jumbo nest egg and a well-stocked corporate advisory board. Lauren has never been anything more than the face of SADIE. It’s a great face, but lately, it’s doing more harm than good.
I tip my head at Jen, who is going after my hairstyle now, I guess. “Liking the long hair, Greenberg.” It’s been three months since I’ve encountered the Green Menace in the wild, which isn’t unusual at all, and not because we “hate” each other. If anything, production prefers we keep our distance during the off-season. They want us fresh when we see each other; they don’t want alliances shifting when the cameras aren’t around to capture it. It helps streamline the narrative if we can pick up right where we left off in the previous season.
“And moi?” Lauren asks, pumping an upturned palm by her head, which is zipped up prettily with a crown braid. Did you know that every fourteen seconds a woman in New York City succumbs to a crown braid? It’s a braidemic. “I got carded at Gemma last night.”
“Adorable,” I tell her. “You look my age.” Lauren barks, Ha! Jen texts someone.
I generally like Lauren. She’s Lauren Fun! What’s not to like? We’ve always treated each other like friends of a mutual friend who get along exceptionally well whenever occasion brings us together, who have each other’s numbers but only so we can text logistics. What time is (enter mutual friend’s name) birthday dinner tonight again? I think it’s ridiculous that she’s been sentenced to indentured servitude just because Jen brought her on the show—they know each other from summers in Ohm-nah-gansett. Jerk me. But the truth is I’m not interested in taking on Lauren as a real friend. I get all itchy around people who aren’t honest with themselves, and Lauren crashes into that category headfirst double fisting tequila on the rocks and shouting Let’s do it again! You could argue Steph suffers from the same affliction, but Steph is honest with herself. It’s everyone else she’s lying to, which is not necessarily a criticism. I just think she could be more strategic about which lies she tells.
Jen turns her infamous squint on our showrunner. “Lisa, I have to be on the east side at one for another meeting.”
Jen has this expression about her, Ugh, people, do I really have to talk to them? There is something about her that is fundamentally unfuckable. I guess she’s pretty—we’re on TV, the network’s not evolved enough to cast uggos yet—but it’s an anemic kind of pretty. She’s a whey-faced canvas upon which she’s applied the “vegan boho” palette. Lots of tea-stained lace schmattas are involved. Maybe that’s where this unsexiness comes from, the fact that she has no idea who she is or what she stands for. Everything is an imitation, flower child cosplay, with the end goal being money and success, rather than fulfillment and pleasure.
Even this bougier Jen before me feels like a well-thought-out move on the chessboard. Word is that Jen has glossed up her appearance to reignite her relationship with the person who put her heart through the Vitamix just before the last reunion. The third button of her linen shirt is undone. Saucy minx. But there is no way to know for sure, primarily because Jen refuses to talk about her personal life. This sends me into orbit. We are on a reality TV show! We signed up to share all aspects of our lives, even the humiliating heartbreak. I had to endure Sarah dumping me twice—once in real life and once again when it aired, but Jen has managed to wiggle off the hook. She wants the promotion and adoration of being on TV without having to make any of the sacrifices.
“Now that we are all here,” Lisa tucks her chin and stares me down from the other end of the table, “let’s get started.”
Kelly picks up her production packet, her spine rod straight.
Now that we’re all here? I glance at the door. “Steph lost in one of her two hundred rooms?”
The field producers laugh.
“Steph’s not coming,” Jen seems very pleased to tell me. Since when does Jen refer to Stephanie as Steph?
“She’s not coming?” I survey the room, looking for anyone who is as gobsmacked as I am. We have never had a Digger skip the all-cast prod meeting before.
“She’s in Chicago with Marc,” Lauren volunteers, watching closely for my reaction, knowing I am well within my rights to bug out that Stephanie is in Chicago with our director of photography, alone. They don’t film you early and alone unless they think your storyline is pertinent to the season. No one wanted to film me, early and alone, presiding over the yoga auditions.
I refuse to show that I care, but damnit, I care. “Why wouldn’t we do it when she’s back then?” I ask Lisa.
“Because,” Lisa says, “you’re all busy bitches and four out of five of you ain’t bad.” She picks up the production packet and flips the page. “Headline events . . .”
Everyone turns their attention to the packet before them. I try to focus too, but all I see are numbers and words instead of dates and locations. I detect movement and glance up in time to see Lauren lean into Jen’s side and whisper something, holding a knuckle to her lips to contain a giggle. Jen manages to crack a smile without short-circuiting.
It’s hard to believe that the very first episode of Goal Diggers kicked off with Jen and me shopping for recycled dresses at Reformation, hours before the party for the grand opening of her second Green Theory location. We were something resembling friends back then, butting heads once we realized that our definitions of health inherently threatened the other’s business model, with hers being “skinny” and mine being “eat the doughnut.” Truly, that is the crux of our issues—that and Jen’s unmitigated disgust with my body—though Jen likes to make it out as though I “stole her mother.” It’s not my fault Yvette is disappointed in Jen for choosing a path in life that makes women smaller.
“We had talked about doing a ride to raise money for Lacey Rzeszowski’s campaign,” Kelly is suddenly saying, and I come to with her looking at me, encouragingly. We’ve been discussing ways for our businesses to acknowledge the results of the election.
I clear my throat. “Lacey . . . ?”
“Rzeszowski,” Kelly prods. “We talked about this, remember? She’s one of two hundred women who are running for political office for the first time this year? Making a bid for a seat in the New Jersey Assembly?”
I am drawing a blank. The Green Menace seizes the opportunity.
“One thing I’m in the process of doing is designing a limited line of juices called Clintonics,” Jen says, her eyes ever narrow.
Lisa taps her pen against her forehead for a few moments, trying to work out what Jen has just said. “Oh my God,” she says when it clicks. “Clintonics. Fucking hysterical.” Yeah, so hysterical she doesn’t even laugh.
Lauren nods. Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Her energy is manic, depending on what she’s on that day. “And they’re supposed to be good for your voice, right, J?”
“They’re concentrated with what we call ‘the warming spices’ in Ayurvedic culture,” Jen says in a tone that tells me to prepare for terminal boredom. “Cinnamon, cardamom, and clove are traditionally used together to provide a diverse supply of antioxidants that help boost immunity, but tulsi is the new super spice that the homeopathic community has discovered supports lung and throat health. To help our voices as women carry.”
There are mumbles around the room about how smart this is, how timely. I’m just thinking that of course that guy broke up with her. Jen’s farts must smell like death.
“We could sell them at the front of SPOKE,” Kelly suggests, tentatively, because she knows we have a strict policy about pushing food or drink on our customer. I feel strongly that SPOKE shouldn’t influence women’s dietary choices. They get enough of that everywhere else they go.
“You need a permit to sell outside of the restaurant and it’s a pain in the ass to get,” Jen says. “Plus, your girl doesn’t really do the juice thing.”
“I love them.” Kelly shrugs, and I put my finger on it. Kelly’s lost weight. It’s only a few pounds, and I didn’t notice in those duster cardigans she usually wears, but in that tight getup from Forever 21, her chest looks like a grill pan.
Jen raises her eyebrows, amused by this, and I can’t say I blame her. If Jen’s sister were here, sucking up to me, I’d be pretty fucking amused myself.
“Think on it,” Lisa says, licking her finger and turning the page. “Let’s talk Morocco.”
Now it’s my turn to sit up straighter. Let’s! “I had a conversation with one of my investors last night. About funding the trip. Whatever we need. Travel, lodging, transportation. We’re totally covered.”
“Is big daddy single?” Lauren bats her eyelashes.
“Back off,” Lisa says. “It’s Greenberg who’s in dire need of rebound D.”
Jen turns a livid red.
“Wow, Laur.” I fold my arms across my chest, glowering at her. “That’s really sexist that you would just assume my investor is a man.” An awkward hush falls over the room, and I let everyone stew in it a good long while. “Just kidding.” I stretch my arms over my head with a leisurely yawn. “He’s totally an old white dude from Texas.”
Everyone but Jen laughs.
“Can we focus, please?” Lisa squeaks. Lisa is pushing fifty but has the voice of an eleven-year-old choirboy and this manages to make her all the more terrifying. There is something deeply disturbing about being told that you’re about to become so irrelevant even your own grandchildren won’t remember your name by a woman who sounds like Pinocchio, which is something Lisa said to Hayley when we went to Anguilla to shoot her new control-top swimsuit line. You haven’t lived until Lisa has eviscerated you in an exotic location.
Lisa slaps the page of her production packet. “Morocco,” she says, impatiently. “We are thinking last week of June. We start filming June first so that’s enough time for everyone to get their feet wet, work through their shit”—she points her pen at me—“and come together for a big, bleeding-heart getaway. My rough understanding is that we start the trip in Marrakesh, and then head out to one of these villages in the mountains.”
Kelly raises her hand, as though she is in school. Lisa calls on her, playing along. “Yes, Miss Courtney?”
“Layla has become pen pals with a girl in the village of Aguergour. She’s one of our top sellers on the shop. I thought it would be a nice moment for the two of them to meet in person.”
There is silence all around, mine sharpest. This is the first I’ve heard of Layla’s pen pal. Kelly learns fast. She always has.
Jen, of all people, is the one to say, “That sounds like a really powerful moment.” But then she keeps talking. “The thing is, I don’t think I can go in good faith. The CDC recommends a hepatitis A vaccination for Morocco, the makers of which are on PETA’s list of companies that test on animals. They use baby bunny rabbits.” Her chin quivers.
Lisa holds her hand up to silence me, though I haven’t spoken. “Is that right?”
Jen dips her finger into a tub of lip balm free of parabens, sulfates, and phthalates and dots it on. That was a quick recovery—from almost crying over the baby bunny rabbits to an act of personal grooming. “But just because I can’t make it doesn’t mean it’s not a great idea.” She smiles at me, like she had to grease her lips just to get them to do that.
Now Lauren raises her hand. “I hate to pile on,” she says. “But we’re in app development for the new version of SADIE that’s tailored for the LGBTQ community. My CEO is worried about me going to a country that prosecutes gays and lesbians for their sexuality.”
Lisa works her pen between her thumb and index finger, index and middle, holding Lauren accountable in a thousand-yard stare. “Weren’t you in Dubai over the holidays?”
Lauren dips her finger into Jen’s tub of lip balm. “For one night.” She rubs her lips together. “You can’t fly direct to the Maldives.”
I snort. “And where do the Maldives stand on gay and lesbian rights?”
Lauren gapes, opening and closing her shiny mouth a few times before a few sober brain cells bump into each other. “I read that your investor had his daughter’s wedding at Trump Bedminster!” she cries, completely out of context. A field producer covers her mouth with the production packet in horror and I’m tempted to do the same. What she just said is true, but Lauren has never come for me before. A two-fingered chill walks my spine. What is happening here?
“People! People!” Lisa chirps in a way that makes Kelly bow her head and plug a finger in her ear. “Enough. Everyone is to mark June twenty-third to July second on their calendars. We will find a location that works for the group.”
“Lisa,” I sputter, “I have to go to Morocco this summer.”
Lisa curls her lip, disgusted by my desperation. “We’ll figure it out, Brett.” She waits for Jen and Lauren to turn their attention back to the production packet. What the fuck? she mouths, jerking her head in their direction. I exaggerate my shrug to show I’m just as baffled as she is. Lisa rolls her eyes and mouths Fuck my life, both because she is almost fifty and doesn’t realize that no one is saying that anymore and because what’s my problem is Jesse’s problem is Lisa’s problem. That’s always the way it’s been. So why does this time feel different?