What Curiosity Kills (2 page)

  My sister leans into me and whispers without covering her mouth, "Shaniqua…"

  (My real name is Mary, which I hate. What's worse is that when I took my adoptive parents' last name, Richards, I was branded with the 1970s TV alter ego of Mary Tyler Moore—a grinning, mousy-haired, perpetually single brunette. My parents say I can legally change my first name when I find one I like better—which I never do—but Octavia's always offering suggestions).

  She whispers, "It was weird. I've slept in the same room with you for years and never seen you do this. Or heard you, is more like it. And to tell you the truth—no offense—I don't want to ever hear you do it again. It's not a sound I want to wake up to, trapped in a dark room with you, in the middle of the night. Now, get a hold of yourself. Chill. With the three of us around, Ling Ling wasn't close enough to pick up on it. But we did."

  The twins nod. Then, their bobbleheads stop. They pick up their ginkgo frappuccinos, made exclusively by Purser-Lilley's Starbucks, and each take a sip. The drinks stop halfway up their straws as they anticipate what my sister says next.

  "Girl, you was purring!"

At home, my family sits down to dinner. House rule is that we eat together five nights a week. If somebody has something to do at seven thirty, we eat at six. If my dad stays late at the office, we eat when he comes home. No TV trays, no restaurants. Sometimes, we order in, but then we eat at the table off proper plates, not off paper or out of cool, origami-looking Chinese cartons (which in Manhattan exist only on TV).

  Tonight's topic: no more cell phones and no computers in our room.

  Mom says, "You girls are wired. In all senses of the word. It's like a constant feed of M&M's. Your every thought, every mundane action, has to be communicated like it's life or death.
I'm on the bus. I'm at the movies. Y
ou can't think for yourselves.
What time does the movie start? Where's the nearest Starbucks? Should
I get a tall latte or an
iced
tall latte?
You check your messages every ten seconds to see if your friends need answers. What'
s
up? Nothing, what's up with you? You
, mind you, spelled with one letter, U. It used to be there was one idiot box. Now they come in all shapes and sizes. You're over stimulated. That's why you're falling asleep in school."

"I fell asleep once," I protest.

Dad says, "Once is enough."

  It's hard to argue with them about cell phones. My parents don't use them. They're Luddites. Well, they're Luddites in the way that Marjorie and Mags are albinos. To Mom and Dad, old phones are art. The one in their bedroom is a five-pound, black-metal rotary. The kitchen phone is a wall-mounted, yellow, push-button number straight out of Freaky Friday—the original with Jodie Foster, field hockey, and orthodontia that could be from Saw.

  BlackBerries, iPhones, and all the rest were banned from Purser-Lilley last year because it was electronic note-passing bedlam; our collective grade average dropped, and the requisite five percent of seniors did not get into Harvard. Teachers thought we had brain cancer. Tumors were the new Uggs. Now you're allowed to use cell phones on the street outside the school, but once you pass through the front gates, you might as well carry a grenade in your uniform blazer. Per an official addendum to the Purser-Lilley Code of Conduct: you don't snooze it, you lose it.

  Confiscated cells have been passed around the teachers' lounge for laughs, I'm sure of it. Ling Ling's sweet sixteen was canceled because of phone calls made to her Park Avenue apartment from Scared Straight, Planned Parenthood, and the U.S. Army recruitment office, which her mom refused to believe were phony. I'm almost positive the callers were Ms. Lawrence and Mr. Marks (feminist literature and trig). When we were freshmen, Ling Ling got the whole school to nickname them Fatty Cakes and McLovin.

  Octavia tries arguing about cells with Mom anyway. My sister is the youngest-ever captain of the Purser-Lilley debate team, which has been undefeated two years running. I once asked her, just to get a rise out of her: "Do you feel you have to work twice as hard to do as well as you do because you're a minority?"

  She said, "No, Eudora, I'm just smart."

  Now she says, "Mom, it's unsafe not having a cell. What if something bad happens?"

  "Then, something bad happens. We'll find out eventually."

  "Like we did with your sister's narcolepsy," jokes Dad.

  Octavia groans. "But I didn't fall asleep. It was Enya—"

  "Mary," Mom corrects her.

  "Mary, not me. Why should I be punished?"

  "Believe it or not, your mother and I don't think that we're punishing you. You'll sleep better and go to sleep sooner. Worst-case scenario, you'll do what we did at your age and read in bed with a flashlight."

  "Did you really do that?" I ask. Octavia smirks.

  "No," Dad confesses. "I had a TV in my room."

  Mom says, "And that's why his grades were so bad."

  "Hey, are you forgetting I skipped the fourth grade?" Dad asks.

  "After the fourth grade, your grades were terrible." Mom rolls her eyes. "Have you forgotten that your shrink attributes all your issues to skipping?"

"What issues? I don't have any issues." Dad often plays dumb.

  Octavia says, "What does this have to do with anything? We don't have a TV in our room."

  Our family has one TV. (Luddites, remember?) It's in the living room. If you're watching, everyone else is watching with you, or they know what's on. And—wait for it—we don't own a DVD player. It's not because my parents are seriously anti-technology or that my sister and I are overprotected. My parents just hate extra stuff. Mom's mantra is: We are no
t
hoarders.
Every year, we give away clothes we've outgrown (or we're too old for), books we've read (or are never going to get to), and extras ("Tell me," says Mom, "do we really need two garlic presses?"). Dad can't be convinced Netflix is necessary when we get all the movie channels. Having never had more than one TV, this isn't a hardship. Octavia and I don't miss out on much—unless you call much vegging out on the sofa and watching Twilight eight times in a row.

  Our folks DVR their old favorites for us. With my dad, it's
The Warriors
and The Taking of
Pelham 123
—1970s movies that represent the New York he grew up in; where subways were graffitied, everybody had a switchblade, and after eleven, you could get yourself killed. Mom goes for all things teenageangst. She got weepy when John Hughes passed away and then nearly keeled over herself when she found out Marjorie and Mags hadn't seen the Molly Ringwald trifecta (Sixteen Candles,
The Breakfast Club
, and Pretty in Pink). Mom wanted to watch them with us, but Dad dragged her out for Ben & Jerry's because she was reciting every line.

  "'I can't believe this. They fucking forgot my birthday.'"

  "Yes, dear," said Dad. "John Hughes was your George Lucas."

  Octavia and I tried to get into the original Star Wars trilogy for Dad but couldn't.
Luke, I am your father!
Well, duh. Who didn't see that coming? Dad and every other
Dungeons &
Dragons
fanatic apparently. Dad shrugged off how jaded we were, but he still keeps a lightsaber on the top shelf of his closet, and on Halloween, he makes Mom wear earmuffs that look like hair cinnamon rolls.

  Mom says to Octavia, "You may not have a TV in your room, but you have YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and all that other garbage on your computer that keeps—"

  "my mind on my money and my money on my mind!"

  "—that keeps you quoting Snoop Dogg instead of Shakespeare."

  Dad grins at Mom. "Since when do you quote Shakespeare?"

  "'Tis a nobler…'tis a far, far better…" She laughs. "Oh, you know what I mean! From now on, girls, your laptops stay out in the open and go off at eight o'clock. Mary, you'll work in the kitchen. Octavia, you'll work on the dining room table."

  The dining room table is in the living room because we don't have a room especially for eating. Yes, this is the Upper East Side, but Anderson Cooper's mom is not our mom. My parents have plenty of money in the grand scheme of things—they can pay our tuition, send us to college, take us on vacation, buy us nice clothes—but they don't have the kind of New York City wealth that takes three or four generations to squander. If we swapped moms with Marjorie and Mags, we'd have our own Vanderbilt-like bedrooms and adjoining bathroom, plus a library and a study. I've never understood the difference between those—except that one has leather couches, which the twins' cats have scratched up and which Octavia refuses to sit on because the claw marks give her the creeps. But I digress. Life isn't a Disney movie where you wake up in somebody else's body and realize you were happy just the way you were. Besides, Octavia and I would never swap moms with anyone.

* * *

  I hate the show, but Octavia loves it. She's always trying to convince me to give it another shot. It's the debater in her. She tries to convince me I should change my mind about everything. The situation in Afghanistan is worse than the situation in Iraq. September 11 was an inside job. Health care should never be free. A woman's right to choose is wiggida wiggida wiggida whack. Arguing is a game to her. She picks pro or con and runs with it until her opponent is too exhausted to catch up. I'm not sure she loves American Idol as much as she says she does, but she puts up a heck of a fight.

  Sample debate:

  Octavia: "It's all about second chances for girls like Kelly."

  Me: "Clarkson or Pickler?"

  Octavia: "Either. Those girls are one in the same."

  Me: "One's rock, one's country."

  Octavia: "My point is that those girls come from Podunk, U.S.A. Humble beginnings. Without
American
Idol
, they'd never be more than cashiers who can carry a tune. Not one overprivileged kid ever makes it to the finals. American Idol loves oil-rig workers and teenage moms and ROTC kids back from the war. Girls like Kelly are taken out of hopeless situations and given a future with financial security. Like us. How can you turn your nose up at a genie-in-a-bottle show when our parents are the real-life Simon and Paula!"

  Me: "You mean Simon and Ellen."

  My sister rolls her eyes at my nitpicking. She knows how to go for the jugular and she got me. She was right, but what I said at the time was: "Could be."

  I open the paperback with the guillotine on the cover and read, It was the best of
times, it was the worst of times.

  Simon's English accent interrupts from the TV. "You have a voice that would make an angel's ears bleed."

  "Turn it down please!" I holler.

  Simon Cowell is the rest of the world's Ling Ling Lebowitz.

  I reach for a cookie. Take a bite. The chocolate melts on my tongue while the cookie part sticks to the roof of my mouth. It is perfect. But I can't bring myself to chew. There is nothing wrong with the cookie. It's delicious. The warm, half-moon remainder smells sweet, but all I want to do—as Octavia would so eloquently put it—is drop it like it's hot.

  The severed edge of the cookie crumbles when it lands on the table. The crumbs glisten because they are wet.

  I am salivating. The bite in my mouth dissolves with no help from my teeth. I am desperately thirsty. My mind gets a picture in it; an ad from a grocery-store circular. Not for Coke, not for seltzer, not for Snapple. For milk.

  I have to have it, and I have to have it right now.

  I push back the metal-framed chair, and it scrapes like bad brakes.

  "Turn it down yourself!" yells Octavia.

  Simon Cowell says, "That wasn't singing, sweetheart."

  With two steps, I am at the fridge. My hand is on the handle. I swing it open with so much force, it swings back. The door smacks the rubber sealant and makes a sound that Jim Carrey makes in most of his movies. I steady myself. My thirst is so overpowering, my hands shake. I reach out and take the handle gingerly this time.

  
Open…

  With both hands, I grip a two-liter carton of whole milk. The carton slips from my hands. The milk spurts onto the floor.

  I cry over it. Yes, I am crying over spilled milk. This realization doesn't make me laugh; it makes me sob harder. Crying is another thing I hate to do where other people might see me. When I cry, I turn ugly and get loud. But I can't stop myself. I'm so thirsty! All I wanted was some milk! I kneel to see if any of it is salvageable.

  "Mary!" Mom shouts like I'm not right in front of her. She shouts my name over and over like I'm deaf and miles away.

  I don't respond. Cast in the light of the open refrigerator, I know what I'm doing is wrong. It is vile. But the milk is so creamy. I've never tasted such cold creaminess before. Suddenly, I'm dirt poor again, and the milk is liquid gold. I'm on America
n
Idol
, and the milk will turn me into Carrie Underwood. Jesus
,
take the wheel!
With a lick, I'm addicted. But I convulse at the competing flavor of a terra-cotta floor tile, which hasn't been mopped in a week, against my tongue.