Suffice it to say that the adventures of the fictional Grant teenagers didn’t go unnoticed by people in real-world Stanwich. Suddenly, the police were on the doorstep and reporters were calling—first, just from the Sentinel, but then it started to gain national traction. It was a ready-made human-interest story—a comic strip leading to a real-life break in a possible case over, of all things, stolen street signs. My mother defended herself to us by saying she put it in the strip to teach my siblings a lesson, but I always thought it was more than that—I think part of her must have seen what an opportunity this was for publicity.
The whole thing ended up going to court, with a judge ruling that a comic strip about a fictional family didn’t provide sufficient grounds for a search warrant. My parents, alarmed that it was going this far—and by this point, I think they’d discovered just how high the penalty for stealing town property could be—got it settled quietly. My siblings never had to admit guilt, but, coincidentally, all of them spent a month doing community service that summer. My parents made a large donation to the Stanwich Public Works Department, a new Grant Avenue sign was installed, much higher than street signs normally were. And that seemed to be the end of it—at least for the Grants in the real world.
On the comic side of things, though, the sign strips were a kind of a turning point. Maybe it was because of the extra publicity, or, more likely, it had just been building for years, but the comic collection that featured these strips—Give Me a Sign—was my mother’s first bestseller, and the beginning of what would end up being the height of the strip’s popularity, though we didn’t know that at the time.
I crossed over to the wall of signs to look closer just as the door swung open with gusto, and I jumped out of the way to avoid being hit by it as my middle brother barreled through, blinking when he saw me. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m staying here, remember?”
“Oh, right. Well, we need to go downstairs. Mom wants everyone in the family room in five.”
“Why?”
“Because,” he said, widening his eyes at me. “Good Morning America’s here.”
CHAPTER 9
Or, Edibles & Arrangements
* * *
WELCOME TO ‘THE FAMILY BEHIND Grant Central Station.’ I’m Jackson Goodman,” said Kevin the Lighting Guy, as he sat in an armchair facing the two couches in the family room.
I sat up straight and looked at Kevin, who was standing in for Jackson during this rehearsal. Danny was perched on the arm of the couch next to me, J.J. was on the other end, and the pillow representing Mike was in the middle. Linnie and Rodney were sitting on the other couch with our parents, and everyone had slightly fixed smiles on their faces. I glanced toward the back of the family room, where the GMA crew was, then looked away quickly. I’d already been admonished once for looking at the tape marks on the ground where the cameras would be and not at the fake Jackson who was preparing us for this interview.
Because even though this wasn’t real—even though it was Kevin the Lighting Guy reading off cue cards, and there were no cameras rolling—I was having to work hard not to stare at everything that was happening around us and fight to contain the excitement I was feeling. Even though I wasn’t a devoted watcher like Siobhan was, this was still Good Morning America. In our house, coming to talk to us about our family and our mom’s strip. If it hadn’t been Linnie’s wedding this weekend—and if Jesse Foster hadn’t unexpectedly reappeared in my life—it would have easily been the most exciting thing that had happened in a long, long time.
It was still a little surreal to see them there at all. There were five crew members—Kevin, Jill the segment producer, her assistant Lauren, and two guys who hadn’t been introduced but who kept holding up light meters and looking into viewfinders and shaking their heads at each other.
They’d swept in, decided the interview would take place here, and commenced marking down where the cameras would go, moving plants and tables around, and arranging us on the couches. They’d even carefully moved the model Linnie and Rodney had been fussing with for weeks—the one of the guests’ tables and chairs, the way they would be set up tomorrow, with little pieces of paper tied to each chair, indicating who was supposed to sit where. Apparently, nothing in planning the wedding had taken as much time and energy as figuring out the seating arrangements.
The crew from GMA was here so that we could go through the questions Jackson would be asking and make sure everything was in place so that the full crew could come in on Sunday morning with minimal setup time. Jill had told us, with a great deal of confidence, that it wouldn’t take more than twenty minutes, but that had been forty minutes ago.
Kevin cleared his throat and then read from an index card, “I’m here in the Connecticut home of the cartoonist Eleanor Grant, where she and her family have lived for more than two decades. We’re here to talk about her wildly popular comic strip Grant Central Station, which came to an end this morning—and to meet the people behind your favorite cartoon family.”
We all turned to look at my mother, who realized this after a moment, and jumped. “Oh, right, me.” She cleared her throat. “Welcome to our home,” she said, sounding incredibly stilted. “We’re so happy to have you here.”
“Eleanor, you’ve been drawing a version of your family for twenty-five years,” Kevin-as-Jackson read from his card. “What has been your favorite part of this journey?”
My mother took a breath to answer, then turned to Jill. “I’m sorry,” she said, as the rest of the crew audibly groaned. “I don’t mean to keep going over this, but can’t this be more organic? Not so scripted like this?”
“Eleanor,” Jill said with a tight smile as she crossed over to us. We’d been through this at least twice already—my mother hadn’t realized that any of the questions would be set in advance, but it hadn’t surprised me that Jackson Goodman wasn’t the best at improvising. While very handsome, he’d never seemed to me like the sharpest tool in the drawer. “This isn’t a hard-hitting interview. It’s three minutes with Jackson Goodman in your home to mark the end of the strip. I’m sure you can . . . Jeff, where are you going?”
I turned around to see my dad was halfway across the family room, heading for the back door. The tent guys were working, and my father seemed convinced that rather than just hammering in pegs and putting up the wedding tent, they were secretly out to damage all his plantings. He’d been trying to escape the family room and supervise them ever since we’d all gathered here. “Me?” he asked, looking around. “Um . . . I just thought I’d check to make sure those maniacs aren’t damaging my flowers. You know, since we’ve stopped.”
“We haven’t stopped,” Jill said, her voice rising slightly.
“Actually,” one of the other guys said as they stepped forward, “we do need to stop. We’re getting some shadow at the end of that couch.” He nodded toward the couch Linnie was sitting on. “I think we’re going to have to move it.”
“While you do that, I’ll just take a look outside,” my dad said, making a beeline for the backyard.
“Jeff, let them do their work,” my mother called after him. When she didn’t get a response, she shook her head and followed behind him.
The rest of us were shooed in the direction of the doorway as the crew members started moving our furniture around yet again.
“Can we switch seats?” J.J. asked me. “I think they’re getting my bad side.”
“You have a good side?” Rodney asked.
“My left side,” J.J. said, like it should have been obvious. He turned his face one way and then the other. “Can’t you see it?”
I exchanged a look with Danny and took a breath to respond just as I heard heels clicking on our hardwood floors and turned to see Brooke walking through the doorway, an apologetic smile on her face.
“Sorry about that!” She came over to stand next to Danny, who gave her a quick smile. “Work. I reassigned my patients and told my office I needed to be off the grid this weekend, but . . .” She looked around at the crew arguing over couch placement. “Are you guys still rehearsing? I thought you would have been done by now.”