Pop Princess (15 page)

I nuzzled Mom's head onto my shoulder for a good cuddle. She was shaking. I said, “Then go home. I'll be fine. I'm sorry about earlier.” Suddenly I felt extremely old.

Her tears were getting my T-shirt wet but we held on tight. She said, “I can come back in the fall when you return from the tour—hopefully by then we can afford a bigger place. We can reassess as a family what we should do then.”

I said, “Right.” Sure we will, Mom.

And maybe my heart had just kinda broken. I did want her gone, I did want my freedom, and I did want Charles and Dad to have Mom at home.

But the feeling of emptiness in my stomach now was not from the hangover. I was truly on my own.

Camp Kayla now in session.
Floor one had Mrs. C's bedroom and a large kitchen and dining area; floor two had a guest room where Kayla's parents stayed when they visited, an office for Kayla's assistant Jules, and a rec room with a PlayStation and a giant TV with lounge chairs that were like something for a captain on any given
Enterprise;
the third floor was Kayla's master bedroom suite and the living area; and floor four held Karl's large bedroom and two small guest bedrooms—one for Liam, one for me. Totally the Barbie Dream House for the Brooklyn Heights pop princess set.

Tig wasn't thrilled about the new arrangement, but it did make his life easier. Kayla and I would be spending more time together rehearsing for the tour and promoting my upcoming record, so it was easier for Tig to have the two of us at the same starting point every day, and bonus, he no longer had to hear Mom's input about whether my skirt was too short or my shirt cut too low or whether I could stay at the studio round the clock instead of having to be returned home by ten each evening.

“Very clever,” he said to Kayla when she announced our new living arrangements. We were on speaker-phone. He said, “And Wonder, I trust you to learn how to play with the big girls now?” I said, “You betcha.” My drinking days—so over. One day's worth of hangover was enough for me.

Just two days after Kayla's party, I had accompanied Mom to the train station. She held on to me tight as we waited for the train in the giant waiting area at Penn Station. As we stood under the big board that flipped arrival and departure times, Mom wouldn't let go of my hand. I asked, “Are you sure you want to go?” She said, “I don't
want
to go. I
need
to go.” She squeezed my hand wicked hard; with her free hand, she reached into her bag and gave me a bank envelope with my name on it. I could feel a credit card inside. I knew I was supposed to feel sadder than I did.

I moved into the small bedroom next to Liam's on the top floor of the brownstone. When I say small, I mean small—there was only space for a twin bed, a nightstand, and a dresser—but I didn't care. I only had one large suitcase worth of clothes, shoes, and a couple CDs anyway. When I'd left Devonport, I'd really left it; no mementos or yearbooks or pictures came along with me. It was Kayla who took care of making the room feel like a home for me. The nightstand had a silver-framed picture of Lucky and me on it; I was a flat-chested Speedo-wearing Buster Brown-haircut tomboy and Lucky looked like a teen angel in her modest baby blue tank top bikini that set off her wide blue eyes and long blond curls. In the picture, we were hugging each other as we stood on the beach in Devonport two summers before Lucky died. Kayla had taken the picture. Kayla had also placed a set of books on the nightstand, the
Anne of Green Gables
series, which Kayla and Lucky used to act out when we were kids and Kayla lived a few houses from ours.

Thankfully the new arrangement did not include me having to worry about being tortured over Liam in the next room. He was gone when I moved into Kayla's, visiting his mom for the rest of his spring break. I was relieved; I figured by the time he came back to Kayla's to visit his dad, I would just as likely be gone, and we would never, ever have to discuss our little incident.

I finished recording the last track for the album during a late night Saturday session. After a celebratory meal at an all-night diner with Tig and the recording engineers, I'd crawled into bed at five in the morning, grateful that it was a Sunday, which meant no voice or dance classes and, with no recording sessions left, just sleep, glorious sleep for me! Wrong. The clock radio glared 7:07 A.M. when I was awoken by this mad punk guitar and pounding drums blasting from the room next to mine, followed by Billie Joe Armstrong wailing about if his dear mother could hear him whining. D'oh, d'oh, double d'oh! Was “Welcome to Paradise” by Green Day so necessary so early on a Sunday morning, SO LOUD? I threw off my covers, got out of bed, and stomped to the bedroom next door.

Excuse me, but who does yoga poses while listening to Green Day? Apparently Liam Murphy, who apparently was not still at his mom's, does.

He had a yoga mat laid out next to his bed and he was in Warrior I pose. He looked up at me. “Nice outfit, pop princess,” he said.

I looked down. Aw man, I had jumped out of bed so quickly and angrily I hadn't put on a robe, so there I was standing before Liam, wearing—braless—a white form-fitting cut off T-shirt that said “SKATER BITCH” in big black letters, a joke Christmas present from Charles that had become my fave pajama top. The charming shirt was complemented by a baggy pair of green flannel boxer shorts with yellow and red Santa elves pictured on them, a rejected Christmas present from Mom to Charles. Thanks, Charles, thanks a lot.

“Ha ha,” I said. “I thought you were at your mom's.”

“Ha ha,” he said. “I thought the same of you. I came down to see Dad for the weekend before I go back up to school tomorrow.”

“Well, would you mind keeping the music down?” I bowed, my hands in prayer pose. “
Namaste,
dingleberry,” I said as I walked back to my room.

“Be up in time for dinner, snookums!” Liam said as I slammed my bedroom door shut. He turned the music down, but as revenge played Celine Dion in repeat mode in Green Day's place, so I had to suffer through Celine's heart going on and on, and on and on, for a good fifteen minutes till I fell back asleep.

So a nice advantage of staying on the top floor of a large brownstone, with no parental units present and an overseer who was a workaholic, spending her Sunday off in a marathon of dance classes, was that I could sleep until three in the afternoon and not have one trace of guilt or Dad coming in to say, “It's noon! Get up, lazybones!” I felt so good when I awoke late that afternoon. My recording time was finished—I could finally relax! Only one day of Liam till he went back to New Hampshire—surely I could deal.

I went into the bathroom and saw a shaving bag that must have belonged to Liam on the counter. I locked the door and unzipped the bag. Let's see, he had shaving cream, a razor, a worn-out Kurt Vonnegut paperback novel, the mandatory freshman-at-granola-university Tom's of Maine toothpaste, two condom packages—
a-ha!
—four crumpled dollar bills, a bottle of Flintstones vitamins (I tasted a Barney—very yum), a comb, and underneath all these treasures the major
a-HA
—a magazine cutout picture of Kayla, LAMINATED. I knew it: He was into her.

When I went downstairs after taking a shower and getting dressed, Kayla's parents were sitting in the living room with Liam, having an upstanding conversation about
Anna Karenina
and Liam's Russian lit class in the very place where Kayla and a bevy of hot bodies had been dirty dancing at my coming-out party little more than a week earlier. I had on normal girl clothes—blue jeans and a plain white T-shirt; no slutty pop princess getup, no makeup. Liam gave me a look like, Who knew?

Kayla's parents got up to give me a hug and we ran through the “Look who's all grown up” routine. They didn't ask anything about my beckoning singing career. “How nice that you're staying with Kayla for a while” was all Kayla's mom said. “She always wanted a little sister.”

Kayla had total Birkenparents. They wanted nothing to do with the Mercedes convertible Kayla had given them as a gift—they had donated it to Planned Parenthood. Parked in front of Kayla's brownstone was her parents' prehistoric fuel-efficient Honda Civic with the Ralph Nader and UC-Berkeley bumper stickers. They had driven all the way from Boston to Manhattan to attend a symposium on Eastern religion where all kinds of gurus with multisyllabic names had been speaking over the weekend.

Liam said, “I can't believe you got to hear the rimpoche give a teaching. That is so cool.”

Rimpo-what?

Kayla's mom said, “Oh Liam, next time you'll have to come. He was so empowering.” She grabbed Liam's hand in a soul brother shake.

Kayla's dad wanted to know, how had Liam's class on religion and human rights gone last semester?

Liam said, “A,” and Kayla's parents chimed in with the same word: “Outstanding.” Their heads were facing Liam, and I was standing behind them, so they couldn't see me. I frisked out my thumb and mouthed, “Aaayyy,” like I was the Fonz. Liam smirked at me. What a suck-up. Kayla's dad said, “Think you can pass on some of this enthusiasm for college to our daughter?” Her mom added, “Oh Jesus Christ, good luck.”

“Fat chance is right” came Kayla's voice as she bounded up the stairs and into the living room. She was wearing a pink leotard with armpit stains and pink tights and pink ballet slippers. Her face was a little sweaty as she entered the room, this pint-sized pink ballet fairy towing behind her lumberjack Karl the bodyguard, who was wheezing as he reached the third floor. Kayla gave each parent a peck on the cheek and then perched herself right in Liam's lap and wrapped her arms around his neck. She gave him a peck on his reddened cheeks. I knew it, I knew it, I knew it—there was something going on between them. Certainly Kayla's parents and Karl didn't seem surprised by the show of affection.

Kayla said, “I need a shower. Grandma said dinner will be ready in twenty.” She turned to me. “You're having Sunday dinner with us, right?”

“Sure, thanks,” I said. If Liam and Kayla were all PDA through dinner, I wouldn't have to worry about consuming too many cals—I'd surely spontaneously chuck them all before the meal was over.

“C'mon with me, talk to me while I'm in the shower, 'kay?” Kayla said to me. Maybe it was a relic of being an only child, but Kayla was one of those people who hated to be alone; she had to have someone with her at all times. Since Jules was tending to her own life and not her boss's that Sunday, I was the anointed company-keeper.

I followed Kayla to her bedroom, which was decked out in framed gold and platinum record displays, framed magazine covers of Kayla, and the largest king-sized bed I'd ever seen, draped in a rich gold-colored duvet. At her bedside were pictures of herself, Lucky, and Trina, plus pictures of herself with Karl and Liam, but not one of herself with her parents. She had a waist-high stack of books next to her bed.

Kayla blasted Eminem from the stereo, rapping about little boy and girl groups, how he'd been “sent here to destroy you”; Kayla giggled. She was dancing to the rhythm as she talked to me from the bathroom, throwing her dirty clothes from behind the partially closed door. She said, “Do interference with the parentals for me, wouldja? Just talk about . . . God, I don't know what, just do lots of talking, okay? Anything to keep them from going on the ‘You Need to Go to College' rant.”

I couldn't hold it back any longer; I said, “So are you and Liam a couple?”

Kayla popped her head from behind the door. “I don't think so! He's like a brother. He's like Charles to me. I love him to death, but no . . . NO!”

She turned on the shower, so I don't think she heard me say, “But he likes you.”

She said she didn't like him that way . . . and yet: She sat next to Liam at dinner, and she kept refilling his water glass without him asking. Her dad said, “Kayla darling, any boyfriend we should know about?” and Karl's bushy eyebrow raised under all those creases of forehead when Kayla said, “Daddy, you know I don't have time for that. And we all know I'm saving myself for Liam.” Everyone around the table except me laughed, like there was some big joke I wasn't in on.

Her mom said, “Don't you have some wine for this meal?” and Kayla said, “Oh no, Mommy, I don't keep alcohol in the house,” and I think Karl and Liam almost choked on their mashed potatoes right there.

Kayla's dad said, “What about that Dean Marconi? Isn't he at Yale now?”

Kayla rolled her eyes. “Yeah, he's a Yale man, but I do believe he hasn't determined whether he has a preference for the ladies.”

“Really!” everyone else at the table said.

Kayla's mom said, “You know, Kayla, there's a wonderful young man in my feminist theory class this semester. He's a world-class cello player, from India I believe. He probably wouldn't even know who you are! What do you think, a fix-up?”

Now I almost spit out my string beans. Something like the total male population in America fantasized about Kayla, and yet her mom thought she'd be doing her daughter a favor by fixing her up with a guy who wouldn't be prejudiced against Kayla, tragic sex symbol. Yeah, that poor chump.

Kayla's dad disagreed. “Bad idea, darling. It's already a miserable open secret at the university about Kayla—each semester I get at least two or three panting young men feigning interest in my modern Jewish history class who invariably end up dropping the course when they learn I don't intend to lecture on Kayla, Singing Superstar Who Could Have Gone to Harvard If She'd Wanted.”

Mrs. C said, “Oh enough of that, eat your roast beef.”

Kayla's dad snapped, “Mother, once again you've made a meal that chooses to ignore that we are vegetarians.” And I'd thought the parents were just trying to leave more beef for Karl when they heaped their plates strictly with steamed veggies and mashed potatoes.