Seven
We film until eleven o’clock at night. It’s an hour past what we originally scheduled, but no one has Sunday night plans that begin at ten, and there’s a dogged excitement hanging around the house. My parents obligingly retired to their bedroom with Chinese takeout boxes, so we’ve had free range of the place. Today was a rare all-cast day, when we shoot scenes with either every or nearly every character in the series. Thanks to today’s shoot, we have four important episodes’ worth of footage.
In the coming weeks, we’ll resume our regular schedule, which usually only calls for Levin and Kitty or Anna and Vronsky, the four primary roles. Jack and I film roughly two weeks in advance, which means Jack is now uploading episodes this week that we filmed mid-May. It’s a packed schedule that must take into account actors’ vacations and school plays and other commitments, but I’ve planned it all out on an Excel sheet in what Jack calls “a display of unadulterated dorkdom.” According to this schedule, now finalized to its very end, filming will wrap up the first weekend of August.
I wake up at one in the morning with an acidic monster in my stomach. I fix myself a bowl of leftover coconut rice I find in the fridge and watch some Netflix, hoping the bright light will tire my eyes. It doesn’t. I can’t shut off my brain for another hour, and when I wake up Monday morning I am slightly nauseated, head aching, my skin tight and itchy.
Of course, this would be my first morning at work. With great effort, I drag myself out of bed, stare at myself in the bathroom mirror, and decide my hair isn’t that greasy and therefore can go into a bun and therefore I can sleep a little longer. I fling myself back into bed for ten minutes. Eleven. Twelve. Then I come to the grim conclusion that if I plan on shelling out money for a private college education, work is a thing that needs to happen.
This is my third summer working at the Old Navy in the mall. It’s boring, but the employee discount is nice, and I like most of my coworkers.
“Hey, Ethan,” I say, walking in and casting a wave at Ethan Short, a UK student who’s been working here since last August. He’s generally pretty quiet, but we get along.
I head to the back room to store my knapsack in a cubby. I check my phone one last time before I must enter a seven-hour blackout of absolutely no contact with the outside world. There’s a text from Thom. No, two texts from Thom.
The remains of the Pop-Tart I ate for breakfast sprout wings and take flight in my large intestine.
Even though Thom and I exchanged our numbers over a week ago, neither of us has texted. I guess we’ve both been playing it cool, attempting to prove that we aren’t annoying texters who need to talk about every blasé thing ever. But it really began to bother me over the weekend. Had Thom changed his mind? Maybe we weren’t taking this thing to the next level—whatever level that was. Maybe we’d just made things irreparably awkward. Maybe we were going to go on sending e-mails like this phone number thing never happened.
But no. In two simple texts, Thom has set my anxious mind at ease.
Testing, testing, one two three.
(It’s Thom. In case you haven’t added me yet.)
In case I haven’t added him yet. Ha. Not that Thom needs to know I added his contact info the moment I got his number. I stare at his messages, trying to formulate a response.
I text, HEY ! Tash, reading you loud and clear.
I frown, nix the exclamation mark. An exclamation after all caps is too enthusiastic. Then I start reconsidering the second sentence. It’s too obvious. Duh, of course it’s me and I can read him loud and clear. So maybe I should keep it brief. Just the “hey.” In all caps. No exclamation point. I try tapping the text box to make my edits, but I accidentally end up hitting the send button.
Damn.
I hope there are a lot of shirts to fold today. I need all the mindless distraction I can get.
• • •
When I arrive back home, Klaudie is in the den watching Dancing with the Stars on DVD . She pauses the show and cranes her neck toward the kitchen.
“Hey,” she says.
“What’s up?” I ask, bringing in a bag of wasabi-flavored snap peas. I sink into the couch beside her and tilt the open bag in her direction.
Klaudie shakes her head. She’s wearing this funny expression, like she’s on the verge of a sneeze.
“Why do you look like that?” I ask.
“Like what?”
Klaudie sounds annoyed, which annoys me into saying, “Like you’re constipated.”
Klaudie’s look turns from funny to full-on ugly. “I want to talk to you.”
“Okay.” I chomp into a snap pea. “So talk.”
“Oh my God, Tash, can you not eat for a second. That crunching is disgusting.”
I narrow my eyes. I place the remaining half of the snap pea in my mouth and chomp as disgustingly as possible. I’m not exactly proud of myself, but these are the rules of sisterhood. Once Sister One says something obnoxious, Sister Two must launch back a more obnoxious rejoinder, and so on and so forth until both parties feel pretty shitty about themselves and remain so until the next day, when they pretend the tiff didn’t happen.
But because I don’t want this to turn into a full-blown argument, I roll up the bag of snap peas and set it aside. Crossing my arms, I say, “Happy?”
“You’re so immature,” Klaudie replies.
“Is that what you wanted to tell me?”
“No. Um. Well, there’s not really a good way to say it.”
“Just say it. What?”
So Klaudie says it, all in a rush: “I can’t be in Unhappy Families .”
I stare at her. My face is blank. Actually, I’m not sure I can feel my face anymore. From the floor, the bag of snap peas begins to unroll itself—a loud, crinkling sound.
“What?” I ask.
“I’ve been wanting to tell you for a while now. Way before Taylor Mears. I’ve been thinking it through, and . . . I don’t have time for all the filming dates. I’m volunteering with the engineering camp at UK , and that takes up a lot of time, and if I’m doing filming too . . . I want enough time to just hang with my friends. It’s my last summer in Lexington. I think I need to spend more time enjoying it.”
I shake my head slowly. “But you enjoy filming.”
Klaudie blows out a long breath. “That’s not what I’m saying. Yeah, I enjoy it. But there’s other stuff I enjoy . . . more.”
“Oh. Right. Like Ally and Jenna.”
“Yes , like Ally and Jenna. They’re my best friends, and we’re all about to go in different directions, and I want to have a summer where I’m not stressed or overbooked, and I’m sorry , I know this project means a lot to you, but I don’t have that big a role, anyway, so—”
“Exactly,” I snap in. “You don’t have a big role. It’s not that many filming dates. Only, like, nine total. That’s basically nothing.”
“It’s three whole weekends. That’s, like, a third of my summer. And it’s been hard for me to decide this, but I need to quit now. I need to do what’s best for me.”
I can’t look at her. I cannot look at my sister right now. Instead, I stare at the television. The screen is frozen on a blond actress in a shimmery pink dress cha-cha-cha-ing with a man wearing a matching pink bow tie. I angrily realize there are tears in my eyes.
“So all that’s more important to you,” I say. “Your stupid engineering camp and freakin’ Ally and Jenna. Not me.”
“This is about the show, not you, Tash.” Klaudie’s voice is surprisingly gentle. “I know you think I’m a total bitch right now, but I really am sorry. I’ve looked over all the scenes I have left to film. It won’t be that hard to cut me out.”
I whip back toward Klaudie. “You have no idea , do you? How much work goes into scheduling. How much work we put into the script. It’s not that easy. We can’t just cut you out. Plenty of stuff still hinges on Dolly. Lots of lines. Character development. And what about Brooks? Did you think about him? Most of his scenes are with you. What are we supposed to do about those scenes now, throw them out? So that means Brooks gets, like, half the screen time he’s supposed to.”
“You don’t have to shout at me.” Klaudie hugs her knees to her chest, and I am so pissed at her for acting like she’s the wounded one. “I told you, I’m sorry . I just can’t be in a web series right now.”
“No, you won’t . You’re so freaking selfish, you know that? You don’t even have a good reason for quitting.”
“I have a—”
“Oh right, sorry. You have a great reason. You want to ‘enjoy the summer.’ ” I throw up disdainful air quotes. “Like filming with us is total hell.”
“Well, sometimes it is.”
“Excuse me?”
Klaudie’s distant eyes turn sharp. “I said, ‘Sometimes it is.’ Sometimes you make it hell. You get so high-strung and start focusing on the ‘aesthetic’ and all the technical details and getting a shot just right , and you forget that some of us are your friends. You forget I’m your sister .”
“Is this about when I corrected your lines on Sunday? Because I correct everybody.”
“No, it’s not that. It’s . . .” Klaudie shakes her head, lets out a frustrated groan. “I’ve already told you. I’m obviously never going to give you a good enough reason, so you’re going to have to accept it, okay? I’m quitting.”
I shake my head. I shake and shake and shake my head. “You are. So. Unbelievable.”
But Klaudie is right about one thing: She won’t ever give me a good enough reason for this betrayal. I can’t stand to be in the same room with her for another second. I grab my snap peas and storm out.
• • •
“If she wants to go, there’s nothing we can do about it.”
Jack sounds calm, teetering toward bored, on the phone. I try not to be annoyed. Jack always sounds bored, even when she’s talking about her crushes and favorite bands.
“She made a commitment,” I say. “She made a promise .”
“Yeah, and she broke it. That’s life. Happens all the time. We’ll have to figure out a way to write her out of the script and still give Brooks some decent lines.”
I glare at the twinkle lights wound around my bed frame, until my vision grows wet and blurred.
“I’m so pissed,” I say.
“Well, you’re allowed to be. But it’s Klaudie. She isn’t going to change her mind, so we need to deal.”
“You don’t think . . . ,” I begin, but don’t finish.
“What?”
“That it’ll have a bad effect on everyone else? Like, once she leaves, do you think they might peace out too?”
“Hell no. Were you watching them yesterday? They’re as pumped as we are. This is great exposure, something solid they can put on their résumés. Klaudie’s not an actor, so she doesn’t get that. But no one else is going to leave, I guarantee it. They’d be idiots.”
I recall what Serena said to me yesterday: We’re doing something that’s once-in-a-lifetime.
“Yeah,” I say. “I guess.”
“So, how’re things in your corner of the Internet?”
Jack is referring to my list of duties. It’s been more than a week now since Taylor Mears’s vlog posted, and while our subscriptions and view counts are ever growing, they’ve slowed to a far less alarming rate. Same with the social media situation. Mentions and fan content crop up daily, but it’s more manageable now. I spend about an hour each day getting caught up on my end of things.
“It’s fine,” I say. “A lot of nice comments. I retweeted some stuff tonight.”
I don’t mention the five-paragraph e-mail I sent Taylor Mears, thanking her for the shout-out. In retrospect, it might have been too much. I think I overused the word “amazing.”
“I seriously wish we could afford a personal assistant,” Jack says. “I went into this line of work because it meant I wouldn’t have to interact with people. This is interacting. With people. Not a fan.”
I smile against the phone. Jack often feels the need to remind me she is a misanthrope.
“While we’re near the subject of quitting,” I say, “I have something to tell you.”
“Tash. If you bail on me now, I will effing—”
“Shut up and listen, okay? I’ve decided to put my vlog on hiatus for a bit. I don’t think I can do the web series and all this social media stuff and my summer job and the vlog. Something’s got to go.”
“Huh. Yeah, makes sense. You can always pick it back up when things settle down.”
“That’s what I was thinking,” I say, though I feel a pang beneath my ribs. I was hoping Jack might try to dissuade me at least a little. Say something like “Oh, but everyone loves Teatime with Tash !”
But then, putting the vlog on hiatus is the only solution, and it’s not like I would change my mind even if Jack did fight it.
“Okay,” she says. “I’ve got to get back to Sally’s face.”
Which sounds weird but is the norm coming from Jack. A few years ago, she started making these Tim Burton–inspired clay figurines and selling them online. She’s gotten really good at it and ships out about a dozen a week. Now that she’s no longer singing with Tony on their Echo Boomers channel, she’s been especially devoted to her Etsy shop.
As is the norm for me upon hearing Jack mention her business, I launch into a magnificently flat rendition of “Sally’s Song” from The Nightmare Before Christmas :
“I sense there’s something in the wiiiiind—”
“God, Tash.”
“—that feels like tragedy’s at haaaaand—”
“I’m gonna hang up now.”
And she does.
• • •
I don’t want a repeat of my last restless night, so I go downstairs to brew a cup of chamomile tea—a special loose-leaf Grandmum Young sent from Auckland last Christmas. The television is on in the den, a rarity after ten o’clock. After switching on the electric kettle, I peek inside. The lights are off, and a black-and-white Bette Davis movie is playing at low volume. In the shifting flashes of light, I see my mom curled into the corner of the couch. She isn’t watching the television, but some space of wall to the left of it. She’s crying.
My throat goes dry. I’m used to these tears one day out of the year—January 14, the day my mother left New Zealand for the States. But finding her like this on such a run-of-the-mill night is unexpected and . . . kind of embarrassing.
The kettle water begins to boil. Mom looks up at the sound and sees me in the doorway. I smile weakly and try to think of something to say.
“Tasha,” she says, wiping a hand beneath her eyes and tipping up a smile. “I didn’t see you.”
“I was making tea.”
“Mmm. Mmm-hmm.”
“Would you like some?” I offer, the first sensible thing to come out of my mouth.
A long moment passes, during which Mom recovers steady speech, then says, “That would be lovely, yes.”
I nod and slip back into the kitchen as the kettle clicks off. I measure the tea into two strainers, then fill the mugs with piping hot water and return to the den. I hand one mug to Mom and snuggle beside her on the couch.
There’s nothing I can say, so I just keep close, and we sip our tea as Bette Davis fills each frame with wide-eyed assuredness. It’s only many minutes later, when I’ve drained my chamomile to its dregs, that Mom says, softly, “I miss them.”
I know this isn’t a simple stating of fact, but a confession. Even now, after twenty years, Mom feels the pain as badly as she did the day she left her home in another hemisphere. I know Mom’s angry at herself for feeling this way. She thinks it’s some kind of failing on her part. But I don’t think she feels like this because she doesn’t meditate enough or because she is too attached to the physical world. My mother is also a daughter. She is human, and she feels deeply, and some deep wounds don’t ever heal.
Mom was—is —very close to her parents. She’s their only child, and they were as close-knit as a family can get. Then, when she was at college, she won a scholarship to study abroad for a semester. She was writing her linguistics thesis on dialects of the southern United States, and it was the perfect opportunity. So she left, and then she met my dad, and suddenly she was staying and staying and staying abroad. To study. To earn her doctorate. To marry Jan Zelenka. To start a family. The way she tells it, it’s not like she regrets coming here. She loves my dad and our life in Lexington. But she loved her life in Auckland, too. And she didn’t know when she left that she wouldn’t be going back for a full eight years. It was hard on her parents, and it was hard on her, and even though she Skypes with Grandmum and PopPop every week, it isn’t the same.
I get that. It’d be hard for me if I left all this—Mom and Dad and Jack and Paul and all my favorite places—behind. It will be hard, when I go to Vanderbilt.
Mom rests her head on mine. We’re less mother and daughter now, and more one nameless entity. Mom confided in me once, nearly a year ago, that she knows she won’t reach enlightenment in this life. It wasn’t a possibility after she left Auckland, because parting from her family was a pain she could never remove herself from, never rise above. I disagree. I think that because Mom has suffered in this life she deserves a better existence in the next one. I know this perspective isn’t strictly in keeping with what I’ve heard at our local Zen center, but I refuse to believe my mom gets a spiritual setback just because she moved a few thousand miles from her childhood home.
I remain still. My fingers are warm from the mug of tea. I feel a drip of hot liquid trickle down through my hair and touch my scalp. My mom’s tears are utterly silent.
I say, “I love you, Mom.”
On-screen, Bette Davis descends a staircase, dressed in diamonds and a stunning satin dress.
More hot tears water my hair. I fall asleep like that, and wake only much later, curled on the couch, just as Mom is covering my legs with a quilt. I pretend I’m sleeping, and soon I really am.
• • •
In the morning, I climb upstairs and lock myself in my bedroom. I open my laptop and click the Final Draft document labeled “UF 15.2.” Calmly and efficiently, I cut every single one of Klaudie’s lines.