Wallflower In Bloom Read online

As soon as I got back to my bed, I was okay again. It was like my bed was this great big soft fluffy life raft, and I was just floating around in the middle of the ocean. The water could be teeming with sharks and stingrays and idiot boyfriends and guru brothers who could suck the life out of you, but as long as I stayed right here, nothing could touch me.

  I fired up my laptop and opened a news site. I clicked past a bunch of burglaries and shootings and wars and cheating politicians and rising this and shortages of that, looking for a ray of sunshine. I mean, what a world.

  A headline jumped out at me: “Celebrity Dancer-to-Be Checks Into Rehab, Dancing With the Stars Viewers to Choose Last-Minute Replacement.” A producer from DWTS had been trying to get Tag on the show for at least three seasons now. Tag was pretty athletic, but he danced a lot like Elaine on Seinfeld, so it had become kind of a family joke. Maybe I didn’t get the pick of the gene pool when it came to some things, but I’d been the best dancer in the family by a long shot.

  Oh, how I’d loved to dance when we were kids. And I was good. Everybody said so. Even in my crib, according to my parents, as soon as I’d hear music I’d pull myself up by the rails and start bouncing away in perfect time to it.

  I started dance classes at five. I was a fluffy ducky in my first recital. When it was over I refused to take off my scratchy yellow tutu. I even slept in it until it fell apart. By third grade I was so good I was ready for a double promotion. The teacher moved me into Colleen’s ballet, tap, and modern jazz combo class. I pointed, I tapped, I made jazz hands. I practiced all week on the linoleum floor in the kitchen so I could keep up with the big girls on Saturday mornings.

  And then my mother, my own mother, talked the teacher into letting Joanie into the same class. Just so she wouldn’t have to spend the whole morning chauffeuring us around to different activities.

  “Oh, she’s adorable,” everybody said. And then suddenly Joanie was the family dancer.

  The whole thing was so traumatic that after the session was over, I dropped out, never to dance again. At least in public. The truth was that I turned into a closet dancer. Instead of singing in the shower, I danced. Even now, when I checked into a hotel room on business and All That Jazz or Footloose or Dirty Dancing just happened to be playing, I’d pull the curtains closed and dance my ass off.

  I clicked on the link.

  Actress Kelly Genelavive checked into rehab this week after being arrested for allegedly stealing an Oscar belonging to her former boyfriend, actor Kent Lazer, and putting it up for sale on eBay.

  I liked her spirit. If she wasn’t in rehab, I’d call her up right now and tell her about Mitchell and the golf cart so we could commiserate. I took another sip, smaller this time, and went back to reading.

  The mandatory thirty-day inpatient internment resulted in the cancellation of Genelavive’s earlier commitment to this season’s Dancing With the Stars, slated to begin rehearsals next week. The show has left the choice of her replacement to its viewers, and a Facebook page has been set up for voting purposes. The female candidate with the most votes by midnight EST tonight will join this season’s DWTS celebrity and professional dancers in Los Angeles on Monday.

  The voting link followed, along with the proclamation, “IT COULD BE YOU.”

  Wow. It could be me. I mean, it really could be me. I was just one step away from Tag, who was guru to thousands upon thousands. He’d maxed out his Facebook friend list, and his Facebook fan list was enormous. His Twitter followers more than tripled his combined Facebook numbers. And his e-list, the one that we’d been building for the last ten years by collecting e-mails with event registrations and with every online order placed, was huge. I mean, staggeringly huge. I knew. I was the one who was in charge of them all. I was the one who wrote the newsletters and e-blasts, who posted on Tag’s behalf on Facebook, who tweeted his twinkling tweets on Twitter till my fingers practically bled. I mean, you could look at it that they were essentially my lists. Didn’t I deserve to benefit from my own hard work?

  He might not realize it right away, but Tag would even want this for me. He’d want me to be happy. He’d want me to spread my wings and soar. He’d want me to dance again. And it would be great PR for Tag, right? Plus this way no one would have to see how he danced. And by the time the next Steve Moretti walked in on me, I’d not only be fit and fabulous. I’d. Be. Famous.

  I emptied the blender into my glass. In the end, it wasn’t all that different from all the other messages I wrote for him:

  Galactic greetings and the sunniest of salutations, my friends.

  Allow me to introduce you to my dearest sister Deirdre. Almost from birth, we knew she was the family dancer. Such grace. Such talent. Such soul. But for years, far too many years, she put it all aside to support me in my dream. Our dream, my friends. And now an opportunity presents itself for all of us to join together and bestow our own gift on this most deserving recipient. Please use the link below to cast your vote for my sister Deirdre and make her lifelong Dancing With the Stars dream come true. And our message to her and to ourselves will be: Let go of the past and go let the future in.

  Peace in, peace out,

  Tag

  By the time I pushed Send I knew I was at the perfectly perfect beginning of the rosiest chapter of my life. I was so freakin’ happy I was practically floating. I closed one eye so I could pick up the remote on my bedside table. I clicked around on it until I managed to find the right button to turn on my iPod player.

  Bonnie Raitt broke into a bluesy “Let’s give them something to talk about.”

  “I hear you, Bonnie,” I said, my voice in my ears sounding like an old forty-five played at 33 rpm. “And I’m pretty sure we just did it.”

  It’s not the size of the dog in the fight, but the size of the fight in the dog.

  —MARK TWAIN

  Two miniature Russian guys were lodged in my head, doing that famous Russian squat dance with tiny steel-toe boots against the back of my eyeballs. My mouth was as dry as the Sahara Desert, and my stomach completely understood how Mount Vesuvius felt just before it erupted.

  I opened one eye carefully. The little bedside clock read 6:03. Judging by the sunshine pouring in through the floor-to-ceiling window and the French doors, that would be a.m. If only I had a remote control for the curtains I hadn’t bothered to close. This daylight thing was killing me.

  I’d woken up around midnight. I’d practically crawled my way into the bathroom to pee and then wash down either four or five Advil with as much water as I could swallow. After all that exertion, I found myself craving a snack. I made it halfway down the stairs, then pictured myself falling to the bottom only to be found when the smell of my mangled and decomposed body alerted Tag’s lawn guys. I bumped the rest of the way down the stairs on my butt like a drunken toddler.

  When I got to the kitchen I poured a glass of cow’s milk and went right for the Devil Dogs. Tag ordered them by the caseload: sixteen Devil Dogs to the economy box, twelve boxes to the case. They’d been his favorite since we were kids.

  Growing up, Saturday was allowance day, and the four of us would walk the mile to Marshbury Center and stock up at the A&P. I’d preferred the round shape and crisp chocolate shell of Ring Dings. Joanie Baloney always went for the cellophane-wrapped three-packs of Sarah Lawton Chocolate Chip cookies at the register. Colleen would save most of her money for magazines like Tiger Beat and buy one paltry roll of Necco Wafers and ration it so it lasted all week. Every once in a while after I finished my stash, I’d sneak into the top drawer of her shiny white bureau and steal a single powdery gray licorice-flavored wafer just to see if I could get away with it.

  The year Tag moved up to Marshbury Junior High, he left the rest of us stranded like babies at Harborside Elementary, one of four elementary schools scattered across town. Suddenly he had friends from all over the place, four times as many as we did, three-quarters of them strangers to the rest of us. But Colleen had managed to beat him to a growth spurt.
Almost overnight she was skinnier than ever and almost a head taller than Tag. She scrubbed her face three times a day and tried every shade of Clearasil in an attempt to discover the magic one that would make her pimples disappear.

  “Catch ya later,” Tag said one day as soon as we got to Main Street. “I’m gonna do my own thing.”

  It was too late. Some boys had seen him with us. “What’s happenin’, Tag,” one of them said. “Takin’ a walk with the girls?”

  Tag smiled, all confidence. Then he turned and pointed at Colleen’s Clearasil-dotted face. “Just tryin’ to help zitface pop a few white-heads.”

  The boys burst out laughing. Colleen ducked her head and kept walking, Joanie in her wake. I froze, just long enough.

  Tag turned toward me, a junior high comedian looking for some new material to impress his fans. “Yeah,” he said. He pointed a thumb in my direction. “And after that I’m gonna put fatso here on a diet.”

  I went numb. I couldn’t seem to move. The boys were on our side of the street now. The biggest one threw an arm across my shoulders and pinched my cheek with the other hand. “Whoa,” he said in Tag’s direction. “Where’d you find this porker?”

  He was on his back before he knew what hit him, Tag sitting on his chest and punching him in the face.

  The night before at dinner, my father’s chiasmus had been a quote from Mark Twain: It’s not the size of the dog in the fight, but the size of the fight in the dog.

  “Don’t. You. Ever,” my brother finally said, “trash-talk one of my sisters again.”

  I ran the whole way home, my chest burning, hot tears streaming down my face. When Tag got home, he even offered me a Devil Dog, but I’d already decided I wasn’t going to speak to him for the rest of my life. Just because he’d defended me didn’t mean he hadn’t started the whole thing.

  It was the last time I ever walked to Marshbury Center on allowance day. I stayed home and read a book instead, and gave my Ring Ding money to Joanie Baloney, who was the only one I could count on to bring me back the change.

  I opened both eyes. Dread was sitting on my chest as if it were an animal. I mean, dread so real it had physical presence, like a Labrador retriever I could teach tricks to. Here, Dread. Sit, Dread. Roll over, Dread. Play dead, Dread.

  My hand found a hard object and I realized I’d slept with my laptop. I slid it over to my lap and pressed a key. No power. Good. Who knew how long it would take to charge up again. I patted my bed with both hands, but it was my right toe that came in contact with my cell phone under the sheets. I caught it with my heel and slid it toward me until I could reach down and grab it with one hand.

  I closed my eyes and thought for a minute. My cell had been turned off, so chances were it still held a charge. If I turned it on I’d have to face whatever messages it held. But since I had to charge my laptop anyway, I might as well charge both devices at the same time, so that when I finally faced whatever was in store for me, I’d get it all over with at once.

  It made sense. I flopped over sideways, then slowly wiggled my way to the edge of the bed like an inchworm. I turned onto my stomach and slid off the bed till my feet touched the floor. I carried my laptop and phone over to my little desk and plugged them into the surge protector. I thought for another minute, then unplugged the surge protector and plugged both chargers directly into the outlet. I mean, maybe I’d get lucky and the house would be struck by lightning and fry them both. It would probably take me at least a week or two to replace them. Maybe longer.

  I walked slowly and carefully into my bathroom and washed down another four Advil with tap water. I considered throwing up, but I didn’t want to lose the Advil and I didn’t really have the energy anyway, so I just peed again. I looked at the shower for a long, spacey minute, maybe more, and thought about how good it would feel to finally get out of my T-shirt and sweats and feel clean again.

  “Later,” I said. My voice was low and raspy, as if I’d been out all night, laughing and talking with friends.

  When I finally made it to my kitchen, my first thought was that I’d been robbed. There were Devil Dog wrappers everywhere. I picked up the clear cellophane wrappers as fast as I could, trying not to count them as I threw them away. I can’t believe I ate the whole thing flashed through my head from an old commercial I could no longer attach a product to.

  I opened the tiny refrigerator. I stared at the eggs for a while but couldn’t quite picture getting them from the shell into a pan and onto a plate. I shut the refrigerator door and opened the freezer. A plastic container filled with frozen Afterwife chicken-and-Gorgonzola pasta called out to me. I plopped the whole thing onto a plate. Liquid fat sputtered and spattered all over the walls of my little microwave as I nuked it, but I didn’t have the wherewithal to do anything about it. I poured a glass of ginger ale to settle my stomach and carried the whole thing back to my bedroom.

  I ate every single bite, then put the plate on my bedside table. I thought about closing the blinds, but it seemed a lot more efficient to pull the covers over my head. Alka-Seltzer, I thought, I can’t believe I ate the whole thing was a commercial for Alka-Seltzer.

  I fell asleep again like a ton of bricks, maybe two tons. I dreamed about Ethan, my boyfriend from my postcollege stint in Denver, who’d ruined everything by inviting me to Sunday dinner with his family, because it made me realize that if I stayed, Sunday dinner would never be with my family. “Why?” Dream Ethan said. He was standing on the corner in the threadbare flannel shirt he always used to wear, but his eyebrows were gray and a baby was peering over his shoulder from his backpack. “These could have been your eyebrows.”

  I turned away and suddenly I was walking down Main Street in Marshbury and Mitchell was on the same sidewalk, riding a golf cart in my direction. His drum set was somehow slung over his shoulders, and he had long, limp, stringy hair again, just like when we first met.

  I didn’t like the way he was looking at me, so I turned and started heading in the opposite direction. A group of junior high boys came out of nowhere and surrounded me.

  “What a porker,” one of them said.

  “Whoa,” another one said. “She’s a tusker, a real tusker.”

  Maybe the second boy was sticking up for me. “What’s a tusker?” I asked.

  Sajid Khan came out of nowhere. “Silly girl. A tusker is an elephant.”

  “Really?”

  He nodded. A pretty girl came out of nowhere, too, and powdered his nose. “And now you have to dance or I want my postcard back,” Sajid Khan said.

  “I don’t want to dance,” I said.

  “Dance, dance, dance,” they all started to chant, even Ethan and the baby, even Mitchell, who was flooring the golf cart and heading straight for me.

  The chant turned into a knock on the door. A loud knock. A knock that just wouldn’t go away.

  “What?” I said. I opened my eyes. Downstairs, someone was knocking like crazy on my door.

  I tiptoed halfway down the stairs and sat down. My front door had a glass insert, and if I turned my head just right, I could see who was out there without being seen.

  The top of a head covered with short curly hair appeared. The knocking started again.

  “Open up,” a voice yelled. “Come on, I know you’re in there, Deirdre.”

  She who hesitates is lost, but she who doesn’t hesitate might end up even loster.

  What were you thinking?” Joanie Baloney said when I opened the door.

  “Nice to see you, too,” I said. Tag’s golf cart was directly behind her, tilted at a funny angle. I remembered hitting Mitchell, and for a minute I wondered if he’d damaged it. Then I realized I’d managed to drive one wheel onto the bottom step when I parked the cart as close as I could get to make it easier to unload the groceries. I squinted. Mitchell hadn’t even left a dent. What a crybaby.

  Crybaby made me think of baby baby—Ethan’s dream baby, Mitchell’s baby-to-be. Sadness flooded over me like sleeping sickness, and al
l I wanted to do was find my bed again.

  “Nice parking job,” my younger sister said.

  “Boo!” My six-year-old niece, Jenna, jumped out from behind the golf cart.

  “Boo!” My two-year-old nephew, Johnny, jumped out, too.

  Joanie and Jenna were wearing matching little purple cotton dresses that were perfect for a six-year-old, and the purple of Johnny’s golf shirt was exactly the same shade. I just knew Joanie’s husband, Jack, was sitting at home in a bigger version of the same golf shirt. Maybe I’d never had kids, but at least I’d never humiliated any either. Joanie said they all loved to dress alike, but I could only hope they were humoring her.

  Jenna and Johnny threw themselves at me, a cross between a hug and a tackle. They both had curly dark hair and shiny brown eyes, and when I looked at them, all I could think was that these apples hadn’t fallen far from the family tree. They could have been us when we were kids.

  I squatted down to hug them back. “Hey,” I said. “What’s up, munchkins?”

  “Brush you teeth,” Johnny said.

  I turned my head. “Sorry. I’ve been working up to that.”

  “Can I come watch you be on TV?” Jenna said. “I’m a good dancer.” She pushed away from our group hug and started twirling around on the front yard.

  I wasn’t quite following her. I looked at Joanie.

  “Okay, kids,” she yelled. “Give Auntie Dee another hug and go tell Daddy Mommy said to push you on the swings.”

  “I don’t need a push,” Jenna said.

  “Me want a push,” Johnny said.

  Maybe all that dressing alike had caused some kind of extrasensory family perception, because a purple-shirted Jack magically appeared at the end of the path that led from their house to mine. He waved. Joanie waved back.

  Then she crossed her arms over her chest and walked past me and into the sheep shed.