In Stereo Where Available (20 page)

I toyed with the idea that perhaps I should stay a virgin for the rest of my life, purely as a form of social protest. Jerry and I would get married and adopt a dozen children and never have sex. They’d interview us on
60 Minutes
. We’d give lectures all over the country, and people would crowd in to see us, staring at us like we were carnival freaks. But then, I doubted if Jerry would go for it. He wanted to make love, I could tell. And he’d want kids who looked like him. That was okay. I was starting to want kids who looked like him, too.

Sometimes I wondered if maybe my sister was a little more clever than I gave her credit for. Jerry, for example, could see things in poetry that I couldn’t see; he could also look into a spice cabinet and instantly know ten things that would taste great when thrown into a bowl together, and get all philosophical about the meaning of a song called “Bring Your Daughter to the Slaughter.” Other people could understand the intricacies of tennis, or the symphony, or how elections worked. I didn’t get those things. Usually I saw my sister as, at best, an airhead, and, at worst, a bimbo. But occasionally, her bimbo-ness was so transcendent that I suspected it was a gift I simply could not understand.

Take Thursday night, for example, as Jerry and I sat in front of the TV with a plate of microwave s’mores, watching her duke it out with the other five remaining debutantes. The first thing she did was cry. The producers had arranged a heart-to-heart around a crackling fire in the parlor, lit softly by candlelight from the sconces along the walls. The girls all curled their bare feet up under them and pressed their glossy pink fingernails against their mouths and talked, really, about nothing in particular, but cried the whole time. Or at least, they
sort of
cried; mostly they looked upward and blinked back tears to spare their mascara, occasionally running a curled index finger beneath the bottom lashes, their upper lips pulled down the way men do when they’re shaving.

“Oh, the pathos,” said Jerry. “I should have made this homework for my seniors.”

Madison was the worst of all of them. “I just think of all those little girls in my class back home,” she said. “They’re just like I was, you know? Every little girl wants to meet a handsome prince who makes her feel just like Cinderella dancing at the ball.”

Jerry looked at me. “Is that true?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “I didn’t. I wanted to marry a zookeeper so he could take me to work with him and let me feed bamboo to the pandas.”

He nodded understandingly. “You know, I remember Stella used to say she was going to marry this kid named Nick who lived across the street. He had this really cool go-cart that his dad had painted up to look like the
Dukes of Hazzard
car, but he wouldn’t let her ride in it because she was a girl. She thought if she married him, he’d have to, the way my dad had to let my mom drive his El Camino once in a while.”

“Maybe some girls have that fantasy. I think it’s kind of a myth, though. It’s mostly middle-school girls who have those kinds of fantasies. I mean, I wanted to marry C. J. Anastasio, but you don’t see me crying into my popcorn because he never showed up to carry me away.”

Jerry gestured to the TV. “Well,
they
are.”

By the end of the scene, one of the Rebels had moved over to sit next to Madison on the sofa. She handed her a tissue, which Maddie crushed down in her hand as she hugged her. Maddie didn’t need it. It would have just smudged her makeup, anyway.

Naturally, they saved the cliff-hanger for the last five minutes of the show. In ghostly blue night vision, Madison slowly opened her bedroom door, peeked up and down the hallway, and ran down the hall wearing satin mules and a short silk robe with marabou sleeves. Somehow, as luck would have it, there was also a camera upstairs by Rhett’s room. Madison took a last look around, huddled up against the door, and knocked; Rhett answered wearing nothing but a pair of boxer shorts.

“Grace,” he said, surprised. “Come on in.”

“She is not,” I said, aghast.

Jerry reached for the last s’more. “Uh, I think she is.”

Next thing I knew, Rhett’s back was moving up and down in shadow, the bedsheets electric blue and shiny. “Oh,
no
. Oh, I hope my mother isn’t watching.”

“Wow,” said Jerry, his mouth full of s’more. “I haven’t seen a porno that bad since the Paris Hilton video.”

“Stop it. That’s my sister you’re talking about. Oh, Madison, how
could
you? You just totally ruined your career!”

“Are you kidding?” asked Jerry. “She just
made
her career. Who’s ever going to forget her
now?”

A week before the Christmas finale, it all came out. Rhett’s real name was Colby McGeever, and he was a plumber from Deerneck, Missouri. A
master
plumber, the studio said in a statement, like that made a big difference. He’d never even visited Charleston. He’d also spent some time in prison for fighting, solicitation of prostitution, illegal gambling, and failure to pay child support.

The studio was unconcerned. “We haven’t been the least bit deceptive,” said a spokeswoman. “We chose the male contestants based on their attractiveness, acting skill, and similarity to the beloved cultural icons.”

I was less concerned about Ashley, since Madison didn’t stand a chance with him, but he was getting even more tabloid attention than Rhett. His name was Les Applebaum, and he was an unemployed actor from Long Beach, California. Apparently he was fairly well known in the local gay community, although his friends and associates made sincere, emphatic statements to the news media insisting that he was not gay, only bisexual, and really a wonderful person and a great friend. A few days later there was a smaller item on
Access Hollywood
mentioning that his parents were second cousins.

“We stand by our original statement,” said the studio.

It was a huge scandal.
USA Today
had a column about it above the fold, splashed across newspaper boxes all over the country.
Has Reality TV Gone Too Far?
A woman from the Center for Media Responsibility spoke on one of the evening shows on the Fox News Channel. A couple of girls from past seasons of
The Bachelor
were on one of the network channels, offering their take on things. Rhett’s mother gave an interview with Barbara Walters. One of Ashley’s former lovers gave a tearful account of their relationship, standing with his hand on the doorknob of his house in San Francisco and speaking into a microphone. Jerry finally gave up and shut off the TV.

“You want to play Scattergories?” he asked.

We played until bedtime, my phone playing “Für Elise” beside us like a CD on auto-repeat.

My stepbrother, Pete, called the weekend before Christmas, several days into the
Belle of Georgia
publicity bonanza. He and Dominic were in town visiting my father and stepmom for a few days before they had to get back on the ship and head for Nova Scotia. I was over at Jerry’s, cleaning up the kitchen while he was on a run to the grocery store to buy ingredients for a crab-cake recipe he’d torn out of the newspaper.

“Happy holidays,” Pete said.

“To you, too. Are you going to watch the finale of Madison’s show?”

“Are you kidding? I haven’t missed a single episode. Have you caught any of the publicity about the Ashley character?”

I laughed grimly.
“Have
I? I can’t even get a cup of coffee at 7-Eleven without seeing six different versions of it. What do
you
think of it all?”

“I think it’s a lot of fuss over nothing. Like anyone couldn’t tell that the man was gay. Excuse me,
bisexual
. He discussed Barbra Streisand movies on three of his dates. I mean, what more evidence do you need?” I could hear Dominic yelling in the background. “Hold on,” said Pete. “Dominic wants to talk to you.”

I heard the phone being handed off and then Dominic’s voice came on, talking rapidly in his Tagalog-accented English. “So annoying. Such a terrible surprise, right? Oh no, gay fiancé. Maybe reality TV relationship won’t work out. My sister called me from New York and asked me if I know him. Like I know every gay person in United States. Let me look him up quick in my big Gay White Pages. The show been running for eleven weeks and
now
they realize. What else can he do, put on Indian headdress and sing ‘YMCA’? Hold on, Pete wants to talk.”

“Sorry about that,” said Pete. “Dominic’s got some pretty strong opinions about
Belle of Georgia.”

“That’s okay. Are you guys going to be back in town for Christmas?”

“Not this year. We’ve got a fourteen-day cruise from San Diego to Alaska and then back to British Columbia, and then we’re laid over for a couple of days before we head down to South America. We don’t get a real vacation until the middle of February. Speaking of holidays, I hear there’s a new man in
your
life. Mom says you’re going to Florida for Christmas. That sounds pretty serious.”

“I’m keeping my fingers crossed,” I admitted. “I could really see myself settling down with this guy, Pete. He’s good with kids and he likes to cook and he’s responsible with money. He goes to church. He’s about as perfect as a guy can get.”

“Nobody’s
perfect, Fee. Everybody’s got something.”

“I guess, but so far, so good. We just really enjoy each other’s company. He’s got everything I want in a guy.”

“Does he love you?”

“I don’t know. I’ve totally got it for him, but I don’t want to scare him off. We’ve only been together a few months, and you know how guys are about that stuff.”

“Well, I wish you guys the best of luck. How are things working out with your housemate?”

“Oh, Lauren? Fine. She’s found the man of her dreams, too. I’m over at Jerry’s right now, but she’s supposed to be going out with him again tonight. She’s been acting like a total goof-ball for weeks now. She just sits around reading relationship books and talking about how compatible they are, Myers-Briggs-wise.”

“What?”

“Some personality test she’s really big on. Oh, I hear Jerry coming in the door. Have a great Christmas, Pete. Give Dominic a hug for me.”

“I will. You have a good holiday, yourself. And tell your housemate I said congratulations.”

Unfortunately, the man of Lauren’s dreams turned out not to be so dreamy after all. She told me on Sunday afternoon, the night after their third date, almost as soon as I walked in the door from spending most of the weekend at Jerry’s.

“In his underwear,” she said angrily. “Can you believe that? I should have racked him.”

“I wouldn’t have blamed you.”

“He didn’t even have all his clothes back on yet, and
then
he tells me. Like it’s nothing. Like I should have known. ‘Oh, and by the way, I won’t be around next weekend because I’ll be spending Christmas with my parents and my girlfriend.’ And then he pulls his pants on and says, ‘I think I’m free the weekend after, though.’“ She smacked her commuter mug into the metal kitchen sink and turned on the water. The force sent a spray of water droplets across the counter.

“I guess you weren’t up for that, huh?” I asked over the rush of water.