Some Kind of Miracle (14 page)

“Hey!” Lolly yelled. “I was watching that! Dad! Tell her!”

“I’m just turning it down for a second,” Dahlia said as Lolly stormed into the kitchen. Dahlia heard her say, “Let’s get out of here, Dad!” Dahlia pushed the play button on the answering machine, and there was Harry’s voice.

“Hey, doll. Harry here. Faith Hill wasn’t feeling well, so she didn’t show up last night, but not to worry. The fucking song is brilliant, and believe me, I don’t say that a lot. So when the time is right, I’ll get it to her. Meanwhile pull some more songs together and let me hear those, too. This is your manager,” he sang in a cute little voice, “signing off.”

“That man said a bad word,” Lolly piped up.

Harry was calling himself her manager. Based on what? A song she didn’t have the nerve to tell him she didn’t own? One minute before she’d played that song for him, Sunny’s song, Harry had been ready to throw her out.

“Nice message,” Seth said coming back into the kitchen. “Was that a joke about Faith Hill?” He was smiling when he said it, and his eyes got wide when Dahlia shook her head and bristled.

“Why would you think it was a joke?” she asked, trying not to sound as indignant as she felt.

“He said your song was brilliant! Which song?” he
asked, and Dahlia thought there was something in his too-surprised question that implied that he thought it was funny that Harry Brenner thought one of Dahlia’s songs could possibly be brilliant. And of course she couldn’t tell him which one, since the song Harry thought was brilliant wasn’t exactly hers.

“Oh, he liked them all. I don’t know which one he wanted for Faith,” she said, trying too hard to sound casual and hurrying into the bedroom to avoid Seth’s eyes, which knew her well enough to detect a lie. Okay, she thought, Faith’s not feeling well was God’s way of telling her she still had time to confess the truth to Harry. Harry. My God, he wanted her to bring him more songs. As good as “What’s Happened to Me?” She had to sit down and start working now. Shining up her old ones, coming up with new ones so Harry would think she was worthy of a publishing deal where they’d expect her to turn out song after song.

“Want to go out for a bite with us?” Seth asked, turning off the TV and gathering Lolly’s backpack, which was a koala bear with a zipper in its stomach. Lolly held on to her father’s sleeve and made a point of avoiding eye contact with Dahlia.

“No thanks,” Dahlia said. “I need to work on some more stuff for Harry.”

“Yesss,” Lolly hissed triumphantly, thrilled to have Seth to herself.

By the time Seth’s car pulled out of the driveway, Dahlia was sitting on the piano bench with her pencil, her big pink eraser, and her music paper, feeling nervous but determined to come up with something new
and fresh to give to Harry. No wonder Harry hadn’t warmed up to the stuff she’d written alone. It was old-fashioned and kind of low-key. But she could write something good, as good as “What’s Happened to Me?” Couldn’t she? All she had to do was come up with a strong hook, the way Sunny had done with “What’s Happened to Me?” She needed the beginning of a lyric, and that would get her moving.

One songwriting book she read had a whole chapter called “Brainstorming.” The book said to relax and let random thoughts float through your brain and make those thoughts into song titles. “I Could Be Homeless by Christmas.” A cheerful holiday tune, she thought, laughing to herself. Those can always be counted on to bring in some steady income. “My Carpet Needs Shampooing.” Probably not a candidate for the top of the charts. “I’m Hungry.” “I Hate My Life.” “All Men Are Jerks.” Not a decent title in the bunch.

Her eyelids were getting heavy, and she thought about taking a nap, but she couldn’t stop now. She had to come up with more songs for Harry. This was not like all the other times when she’d sat there for a while and eventually given up. Harry could turn her life around, so there would be no going to do her laundry or cleaning the kitchen until she knocked out some songs.

She had to do this. If Harry could get her a music-publishing deal, she could hire someone to do the laundry and clean the kitchen
for
her. And of course, once she brought him a few great ones of her own and he was dying to see them all, then maybe she’d be
able to gently break the news that she had to take back “What’s Happened to Me?”

She toyed with a few bars of something she’d written years ago, and it was lame. Now she was staring at the clock on the bookshelf. And she’d only been sitting here for ten minutes. She’d never noticed before how loudly that clock ticked, and she even tried playing a tune that used the clock tick as a metronome beat. But it sounded like the theme for a Saturday-morning cartoon show. Really stupid!

She drifted, she sighed, she went into the kitchen and made a cup of coffee, pouring boiling water through the filter and over the muddy little pile of ground coffee, hoping that the caffeine would give her a jolt, but it didn’t. Harry was expecting her to show up in a few days and dazzle him with more songs, and she had to have something to give him. She tried the brainstorming technique again, but all that came out was “Help, I’m Dying Here, and I Have Nowhere to Turn.” Maybe that one would work. No. She had to admit that nothing was happening. Nothing. Finally she walked to the phone and dialed Seth’s cell-phone number. She didn’t know what she was calling to say to him until she heard him pick up.

“Seth Meyers.”

“Hey,” she said.

“Whassup?” Seth asked.

“I’m going out of town tomorrow morning,” she said.

“Yeah? How come?”

“I probably won’t be back for the next few days.”

“Where’re you going?”

“Back down to San Diego to be with my cousin.” There was a long silence.

“For days? You’re going there for days? Is this a joke? You couldn’t wait to get rid of her! Honey, do you have a lover you aren’t telling me about, and is the crazy cousin visit a cover to be with him?”

“No lovers. She’s my flesh and blood. We were close. I loved her when we were kids, and I kind of feel as if I owe her something. You know what I’m saying?”

“I don’t,” Seth said. “I mean, not that it isn’t a noble idea to go and hold her hand, but…?”

“But what?”

“Honestly? It just isn’t like you, so it makes me wonder. And worry.”

Dahlia felt anger rush into her chest. “You mean, because it sounds like something a
nice
person would do?”

“Oh, come on,” he said. “Don’t get pissy with me, honey. You know you’ve never been altruistic. So why would I believe you’d start being that way now?”

Anger coursed through her, and she couldn’t stop herself from saying, “Seth, why don’t you do us both a favor and clear your stuff out of this house while I’m gone? I can’t handle your negative attitude about me.”

Seth’s voice was even, but she could tell he was rattled. “What you can’t handle is that I’m on to you. You’re busted for being the brat you are, and you don’t like that. I guess if you don’t want someone around who really knows you to the core and still loves you anyway, then you’re right. I better move my
stuff out of the house. And I’ll do it tomorrow after you leave. But I want to go on record as betting everything I own that this has to do with her music and how you’re going to exploit her and not a damn thing to do with your great and deep commitment to her.”

Dahlia flared. “Well, bet away, friend, since you don’t own a goddamned thing anyway!” she said before slamming down the phone. Then she went into her room, threw some clothes into her duffel bag, and prayed the van would make it back down to San Diego.

I
t was a few months before Dahlia’s twelfth birthday, and she was spending the weekend, as usual, at Sunny’s house, getting to sleep in the same big double bed with Sunny, where she always slept, but that night she couldn’t fall asleep because the stinky smell of nail polish was keeping her awake. Sunny had told her a million times that things would change dramatically for her when she grew up and that eventually she would love all the things Sunny loved already, because Sunny was five years older, but Dahlia found it hard to believe she’d ever like those sickening perfumes and lotions and oils that lined Sunny’s dressing table.

And sex. Dahlia was sure she could never possibly like sex the way Sunny did. Sunny talked about sex much too much and way too often. And not the facts of life or the birds and the bees or the things an older
cousin is supposed to tell a younger one. But details, gory details. “I’m only sorry,” she said one night out of nowhere, “that there’s no candlestick maker around here.”

Dahlia had just started to drift off to sleep, so all she offered was a groggy “Mmmm-hmmm,” even though she knew that when Sunny said something like that, it was her cue to ask, “What do you mean?” But Sunny kept on talking as if Dahlia had asked the question anyway.

“Because I’ve already had Mr. Waldman the butcher and Girard Perreau over at the bakery. So a candlestick maker would have been very poetic,” she said, and then she laughed. She was polishing her toenails. There was a wad of cotton between each toe to keep them spread apart, making her feet look wide and weird.

Now Dahlia was wide awake. Not just because of the awful, acrid smell of the polish but because anytime Sunny got that certain twinkle in her eye, it meant she was going to share personal stories, and Dahlia had to hear every word of them.

“Why do you do that?” Dahlia asked, sitting up and trying to spread her own toes wide without the cotton. “Why do you think it’s okay to sleep with anyone who looks at you?”

Sunny thought about her answer for only a second. “It’s the
way
they look at me that makes me want to,” she replied, and she had a serious expression on her face as if it were Johnny Carson or Dick Cavett asking the question. “When I see in their eyes how much they
want me, I think how much fun it would be to give them what they want. To see that fabulously wild look they get when I take off my blouse. It’s a riot. They turn into these bright red devils, all stiff and hard and tense and panting. And they come at me so feverishly I can’t refuse. It’s so much fun to say, ‘Yes, yes, let’s do it!’”

“Ugh,” Dahlia said, hoping Sunny was finished describing those awful men and that she wouldn’t say any more. But if there was more, of course Dahlia wanted to hear it.

“That’s when you get to know who they really are,” Sunny said, “underneath the apron or that dopey blue mailman suit.”

“The mailman, too?” Dahlia tried to remember what the mailman looked like who came to Sunny’s house. But Sunny didn’t answer. She was expounding on her theories about sex now, and she didn’t want to be interrupted by questions.

“That’s when you see the primitive them, without the act they put on for the world, and I live to see that. The minute I know a man has to have me, lusts after me madly, I have to give myself to him.”

“Yechhh.” Dahlia put the pillow over her head, hoping it would block out the image of Mr. Waldman, the fat old butcher, and Sunny doing with him whatever people did in bed.

“You’ll see.” Sunny patted the pillow with her pretty white hand with the fuchsia polish on every shapely fingernail, which was now matched by every perfect fuchsia toenail. “You’ll grow up and your hor
mones will kick in, and you’ll see. You get this sense of power and surrender all in one. And it’s not just the best feeling in the world, it’s the
only
feeling in the world. Men fight wars because of it. They need that big, powerful rush you get, and all war really makes them feel is sexy.

“My theory is that if every man in the world were getting enough sex, there would never be another war again. But not just hooker sex. That doesn’t count. Because they know they’re paying for that. Or grudging-wife sex, where the wife says to herself, ‘Okay, I’d better do this or he won’t pay the bills.’ That doesn’t count either. I mean, if every man had sex with somebody who was dying to have sex with them, the way I am when I see that look on a man’s face, the world would be perfect. So the way I see it is, the biggest problem in the world is that there’s just not enough of me to go around.”

Dahlia lifted the pillow from her head and looked at her cousin. There was something about the way Sunny said that last part about there not being enough of her to go around that struck them both so funny it made them laugh hysterically. Sunny’s unrestrained laughter always got to Dahlia, and soon she was overcome by the same full-out belly laugh. Still laughing, Sunny took Dahlia by the shoulders and, from the bed, turned her so she could see herself in the mirror.

“Look how pretty you are. You’ll be the best-looking girl in the world when you grow up. And the studio audience agrees. Don’t you, folks?” She stopped to listen. “They’re cheering. Hear them? They’re roaring. They love you!” Then she stood on the bed and pulled
Dahlia up, and the two of them jumped on the bed until they collapsed from exhaustion.

How can I be so lucky, Dahlia remembered thinking, to be so close to the magical Sunny? Everything she says is wise, and everything she does is funny, and everything she wears is so beautiful, not because it’s fancy or expensive but because of the way she wears it. She tosses a shawl around herself so it drapes perfectly and doesn’t sag or fall. She puts colors together fearlessly, like purple and red, and on her they don’t clash—they set off her white-blond curls in a way that makes me have to stare at her and want to copy her and be her.

A
nd steal her songs?
a voice inside her asked, breaking into her reverie as she drove back to San Diego.

Her plan was to get Sunny to pack and come home with her for a week or so, which meant that she had to get to the Sea View in time to talk about Sunny’s medication needs with that man who came to deliver the daily dose to each of the house’s residents. Dahlia had a vague recollection that he had shown up at around the lunch hour last time, so if there wasn’t too much traffic on the 405, she could make it.

It was a perfect idea. She’d tell the medicine man she was going to take Sunny to vacation at her house for a few weeks. Then she’d ask him to give her a supply of Sunny’s medications to last that long. Then, on the days when Sunny did want to take the pills, Dahlia could make sure she had food and a nice, quiet place to sit and watch TV or play solitaire with the computer. And on those days when she didn’t want to
take the pills, Sunny could be near the piano, creating those wonderful tunes. Dahlia would write words to the tunes, and somehow she’d convince Sunny to let her try to sell the songs for both of them. Once Sunny was staying in her house and feeling relaxed, she’d relent.

There must have been an accident in Orange County, because now the traffic was stopped and the damned van was clanking out a song all its own, and suddenly the plan didn’t seem so great anymore. She had a strong impulse to turn around and go home. Maybe she would even call Seth and take back what she’d said about his moving out and hope he’d forgive her. But then the traffic started to move again, and she knew she couldn’t turn back. As long as she stayed with Seth, she’d be trapped forever in nothingness—nothing with him, nothing for herself, nothing to bring to Harry Brenner. No, she had to forge ahead, because whatever happened as a result of this plan had to be better than what was happening now.

The traffic was moving well again when it started to rain, and her wiper blades were smearing the windshield so she could barely see. The blades seemed to be beating out the rhythm of another one of Sunny’s songs, one that was almost as good as “What’s Happened to Me?” Dahlia would call this one “Isn’t It Sad?” once Sunny told her she could take the tunes and run with them.

It was still raining when she pulled up outside the Sea View. As crummy as the place had looked the first few times she saw it, on this gloomy day with rain dripping from its gutters, the old converted
house looked even more shabby and depressing. “Ohhhkay,” she said out loud, “here goes nothin’.” Then she opened the van door and ran up the steps, her tennis shoes sloshing in the puddles. None of the regulars were on the porch, and the wind rocked the rocking chairs. Dahlia could hear the television blasting from inside. The door opened easily, and immediately she was face-to-face with Grover the medicine man. Perfect, she thought. Just the man I want to see. In the room to the left, the television group was gathered around watching Maury Povich, whose guests looked as if they were a group of transvestites. Sunny wasn’t watching TV.

“Hello there,” Dahlia said to the medicine man, putting on her best warm face and hoping he would buy her in this role of concerned relative. “We’ve met before. I’m Sunny’s cousin. And I’m glad I caught you.” Grover raised an eyebrow as she went on. “I’m planning to take Sunny to vacation for a week or two at my house. So I figured I’ll need to take a supply of her medication to bring with us, and I was hoping you could give it to me so I could be sure she takes it every day.”

“Sunny really shouldn’t go anywhere,” the man said, shaking his head. “She doesn’t operate too well in the real world as it is. And even with me coming in here every day, she rarely takes her medication. That’s why she is the way she is. So I ought to tell you from the get-go that the chances of her taking the pills for you are slim and none. And when she doesn’t take them…you don’t want to handle her.”

Dahlia stiffened. She probably should have antici
pated that somebody from within the system would give her a hard time. No, she wouldn’t take that as an answer. This jerk had no power over Sunny, and she wasn’t going to let him interfere.

“Well, maybe being with a family member who cares about her will make her feel better,” she tried, smiling and hoping she looked confident. “Or maybe we can find her a medicine she likes, and then she’ll be more willing to take it.” The medicine man narrowed his eyes and clucked his tongue derisively.

“A medicine she likes? You mean strawberry-flavored?” He laughed a strained laugh. “Look, sweetie,” he said, “this isn’t child’s play. And it’s nothing to me personally whatever you decide. But I can promise you that even though you think you know what you’re doing, you can trust me—you don’t. People like Sunny need a routine. To eat and sleep and take their meds at the same time every day. To do their personal-hygiene regimen every day, to have their grooming and medical appointments at regular times. Well-meaning relatives take them home and screw them up. It’s what always happens.”

Don’t get rattled, Dahlia said to herself. “I’m surprised,” she said. “I’d think it would be good to get them out of here now and then. Very healing for them to spend time in a normal word. All they seem to do around here is stare at the TV all day, sleep, and eat,” she said.

Grover shook his head scornfully. “Is that what you think? Well, isn’t it amazing how the drop-in do-gooder relatives know all the answers about people they haven’t seen in a million years? Great! Give us
your knowledgeable opinions and meddle a little, and freak out about how drugged up your relatives are. And soon you’ll do the same thing as the rest of them: bring her back here, make some phony good-bye speech, then rush out to your car, go back to your nice life, and forget about her. So save the bleeding-heart spiel, ’cause I’ve heard them all. Next time we see you after that is the day you come to claim the body. If you even do that. And by the way, that room of hers? If she’s not back in it again by the end of three weeks, we give it away. There’s a waiting list a mile long for these rooms. People are dying to get in here.”

“I believe that’s what they say about the cemetery,” Dahlia said.

Grover sighed, took out an envelope and poured pills into it, then handed them to her. “The doctors wanted to put her on clozapine a long time ago, but they told her she’d have to take a blood test regularly, and she refused to do it. I remember her saying, ‘No needles in me. No, sir.’ As if some little needle stick was gonna be worse than the hell she’s lived through. So they left her on Haldol. She’s been on that one and a few others over the years, and none of them ever did a damn thing, and she knows it.

“So if you decide to keep her, you can just call down and have them change the address where they send her check. And that’s what you need to know. Doesn’t get much disability except enough to keep her in cigarettes and Coca-Cola. I’ve watched her and all the rest of them for ten years. I don’t know how they still walk around. I’m moving to Florida next month to work in a retirement home. The guy who hired me said, ‘These
old people down here are just waiting to die.’ I said, ‘The people here are, too, only they’re younger so they have a longer wait.’ If you can give her some semblance of a life, you’ll be a saint. My guess is, by the time she’s through with you, you’ll be looking to get into the hatch yourself.”

“Thanks,” Dahlia said. Then she watched him pack up the rest of his things and exit, and as soon as she was sure he was gone, she hurried up the stairs. Some of the doors to the bedrooms were open, so she could see a few of the residents sitting on their beds staring out the window at the rain. Sunny’s door was open, and she was sitting on her bed playing solitaire.

He’s probably right, Dahlia thought, letting doubt fall over her. There are a million traps in this plan. She knew she hadn’t really thought it all through carefully enough, and she’d have to figure it out on the fly. But so what? Who was going to fault her for coming here to free her cousin from a loony bin? She could say it was a debt she’d owed Sunny for years. Even to get her out of this place temporarily was a damn good deed.