Some Kind of Miracle (24 page)

“So whaddya think of my two clients?” Harry asked. “Dahlia had a song a while back that was recorded by Naomi Judd, and the other girl—”

“The other girl…” the older one of the record company executives said, shaking his head. “Man, she delivers. I haven’t seen anyone like her since Laura Nyro. What’s her name again?”

Dahlia heard the panic in Harry’s voice. “Uh…yeah…she is kind of like Laura Nyro and she…” He didn’t have a clue what Sunny’s name was. Didn’t remember it even though Dahlia had announced it.

“Sunny,” Dahlia said, stepping into the circle of men. “Sunny Gordon. I’m Dahlia Gordon,” she said, shaking the hands of the two men as Harry sighed with relief.

“Great stuff, great tunes,” one of the men said, barely looking at her. “You know how to find me,
Harry. I’m very interested in these girls. Get me some of their latest songs, and maybe we can make a deal.” Then the two men left, and Harry ordered a scotch from a passing waitress to calm himself down.

Seth hugged Dahlia in congratulations, and while Harry and Sunny chatted about the demo he planned to make of Dahlia and Sunny’s songs and how he wanted to arrange some of them, Dahlia relaxed in her chair and held tightly to Seth’s hand.

“I guess it would be stupid to think you could ever come back and live in Laurel Canyon with two crazy women,” she said hopefully, but Seth smiled at her sadly and shook his head.

“Can’t do it,” he said.

“Didn’t think so,” Dahlia said, embarrassed that she’d even mentioned it. It must have been the high of the moment that made her think she could get away with something so impossible.

“I mean if I did, it would end up being me and
three
crazy women, because I just got full-time custody of Lolly last week.” Dahlia saw the sad smile on his face, and she realized that Seth’s having Lolly to himself must mean something bad had happened. “My ex broke up with the pediatrician, or, more accurately, he left her, and she was so depressed she decided to go live in Maui and become a reflexologist, but she didn’t want to take Lolly with her there or anywhere else. So she moved her into my place last week and got on the next flight out.”

“I’m sorry for Lolly,” Dahlia said. “Poor kid. Abandoned like that. She must be very sad.”

“She’s completely blown away,” he said. His voice
was even, but Dahlia could see the worry in his eyes. “And that’s why I promised myself that the next time I live with a woman, she’ll be my wife and someone who really wants to be a mother to my daughter.”

Dahlia didn’t know what to say to that. There was no chance he or anyone else would ever believe her if she said she could take on the job of being a good mother to a little girl. And worse yet, she probably wouldn’t believe it herself.

“Okay, you two,” Harry said, patting both Sunny and Dahlia proprietarily on their backs. “First thing Monday morning, at my place, we start working on the demo. Gotta use this momentum to get it made and out there to the guys that matter.”

“Sounds like fun. You happy, Dahl?” Sunny asked.

“Very happy,” Dahlia said, looking at Seth, who knew she was lying. “Very, very happy.”

It took two seven-day-a-week workweeks plus evenings to pull the demo together, even though there were only four songs on it. Some of the instrumentals were created by Harry’s synthesizer, and some of them were done by live musicians who came into the studio and played along with Sunny.

Sunny did all the vocals and rerecorded each one of them at least twenty-five times. Harry was a perfectionist, but Sunny was worse, needing to be certain every note of every song was flawless, every lyric clear and comprehensible. Dahlia would rewrite lyrics on the spot and change them again and again until they sounded good to Harry’s ear. In the end Harry and his engineer, Dave, pieced together a line from
one verse, with two lines from another, a chorus from yet another take, until they had a perfect and completed version of each song.

Every night after their grueling day at Harry’s, Dahlia and Sunny drove home to the cozy, pretty Laurel Canyon house, still singing the songs, and when they arrived, they were elated but too exhausted to do anything except collapse on the sofa and watch television. On several of the nights when Dahlia didn’t have the heart to wake her, Sunny slept through until morning on the sofa in her clothes. One night on a rerun of
The View
, they watched four teenage girls having “prom makeovers” where they showed the girls in their “before” states, then had all the young women appearing live after they’d been made over by studio hair and makeup artists. Every time one of the redone teenagers walked onto the stage, the audience gasped and cheered.

“I need a makeover,” Sunny muttered at the end of the segment.

“Me, too,” Dahlia said. “So let’s get them. As soon as we finish the demo, let’s make ourselves appointments and go get them.”

Sunny didn’t respond, and when Dahlia looked at her cousin, she saw the trepidation in her eyes.

“Oh, sorry. I forgot,” Dahlia said, realizing.

“Forgot what?” Sunny asked, even though she knew what Dahlia was thinking, because she was thinking it, too.

“There are mirrors, big mirrors in every salon. Lots of them. Sometimes wall to wall. We’ve been avoiding mirrors everywhere we go. Has that changed?”

Sunny thought about the question for a while, then looked at Dahlia and shrugged. “I’d like to try to do it,” is what she said.

It was at least eighty degrees outside, but Sunny was shivering a little as they rode up in the elevator. The Beverly Hills salon was big and brightly lit, and each station was out in the open so Dahlia and Sunny could see every one of the other women who were having their hair styled.

“We don’t have to do this,” Dahlia said, looking at Sunny’s expression as she took in the room, standing far enough away from all the mirrors so she wouldn’t have to see her reflection yet.

“We do,” Sunny told her. “We’re in the music business now. We have to look a lot cooler than we do, or nobody will believe us.”

Dahlia laughed at that. “How do you
know
how you look? You never get near a mirror.”

“Believe me, I can tell,” Sunny answered.

The giant mirrors over each station had strips of lights over them, and Sunny froze in the middle of the room. From where the two of them stood, their images were recreated dozens of times all around them. Dahlia felt afraid for an instant as Sunny made a 360-degree turn to see all of the Sunnys everywhere, even the distorted ones in the chrome domes of the hair dryers. Dahlia held her breath, knowing Sunny could fall apart at any moment, but she seemed very even.

One of the hairstylists was away from his station, so the mirror above his counter wasn’t blocked by anybody. Sunny noticed that and headed toward it cau
tiously. Dear God, Dahlia thought, let this be okay for her, and she crossed her fingers the way she used to as a kid, hoping for Sunny’s well-being.

Sunny moved closer and closer to her own image, seeing herself, looking at the reflection of herself probably for the first time in years. She was still a radiantly beautiful woman, with pink skin and that naturally white-blond hair, and her body was curvy and well proportioned. Today she wore a pair of black jeans Dahlia had ordered for her from a catalog and a scoop-necked black T-shirt that set off the whiteness of her skin and hair.

Now she was in perfect range to examine herself, and after a moment when she took herself in at last, Dahlia exhaled. Yes, she thought. Yes, thank you, because she could tell by the upturned corners of Sunny’s mouth as she studied every inch of herself that she was pleased with what she saw and that the intruders in her life, the ones through the looking glass, were either gone or benign for the moment. And then she lifted her arms over her head and tossed her head back, victorious, as she spun around in a circle joyously and rushed over to tell Dahlia the news.

“I’m free, I’m free! The audience’s seats are still there, but they’re empty. At least for the moment, I’m free!” The two cousins embraced with joy.

“Which one of you is Gordon?” the pretty brunette hairstylist asked.

“We both are!”

“Sunny?” she asked, referring to a piece of paper in her hand.

“That’s me.”

“Come on, darlin’, you’re next.”

A color specialist put a toner in Sunny’s hair to brighten its whiteness, and then she put reddish highlights in Dahlia’s dark hair. While the cousins sat waiting for the colors to set, with Sunny’s hair in a turban and Dahlia’s sticking out in every direction wrapped in pieces of aluminum foil, they had manicures and signed up to get pedicures. It was while their feet were soaking in water in adjacent tubs that they heard the music coming from the countertop TV that one of the hairdressers was watching. The music was part of a commercial in which an older, white-haired couple was walking hand in hand.

“Stay by my side forever. Stay by my side, my friend…”

“Sun, it’s our commercial!” Dahlia shouted, and she was so excited she stood up in the tub of hot water and hollered out across the salon. “Turn it up! Please turn it up!”

The hairdresser with the TV hurried to turn the volume louder.

“I hear it,” Sunny said, and she stood also. Dahlia was too fired up to stand still, and she jumped out of her tub and grabbed Sunny out of hers, and they twirled in circles, getting soapy water everywhere, dancing to the song they’d written more than twenty-five years before as it played behind a commercial. Dahlia left wet, soapy footprints as she hurried to the TV and turned up the volume even more, and they cheered for their song with everyone in the salon looking over at them.

I
t wasn’t until a few weeks after Louie Gordon saw the commercial on TV that Dahlia heard the whole story. Louie had been getting ready to leave for work in the morning. Just doing what he did every weekday at 8:00
A.M
., pouring coffee into his thermos so he’d have a few extra cups at the store while he was opening up and putting the merchandise on the sidewalk. The coffeemaker in Louie’s pretty Valley house was on the same counter where he and Penny kept the portable TV, because Louie liked to watch the
Today
show every morning, and on that particular morning, just after Katie Couric said, “We’ll be right back,” a commercial came on.

Ordinarily Louie pushed the mute button during the endless commercial breaks, but that morning he didn’t remember where he’d put the remote and the coffee was only halfway into the thermos, so he was
stuck watching this commercial for whatever the hell it was…health insurance or something like that. There was a cute little old couple with white hair holding hands and walking in a park. And the song that some really syrupy singer was singing in the background was one that Louie recognized instantly. But for a minute he couldn’t remember from where. So familiar. From a long time ago.

“Stay by my side forever. Stay by my side, my friend.” Jesus Christ! Louie whirled around and stared at the TV.

“My sister wrote that song,” he said out loud to nobody. “But how did it get on TV?” Now the announcer was saying something about some insurance policy for old folks, and the little white-haired couple was on a golf course together yucking it up. And then there were a few more bars of the song again, and the commercial ended and Louie went to his little leather phone book to look up the number of that weird halfway house in San Diego, even though he knew he didn’t have a prayer that anyone there would ever answer.

After he finally found the number and dialed the place, he let it ring twenty times, but something told him he didn’t have to go all the way down to San Diego to look for Sunny. No. Not at all. Louie was pretty sure he knew where to find her instead.

“Louie, what a surprise. I’ve owned this house for eight years, and you’ve never once dropped in on me before. How come I get the pleasure today?” Dahlia
asked, trying to look calm, even though she knew that Louie’s being there had to mean trouble.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Don’t get cute with me, Dahlia,” an irate Louie said. “You got my sister here?”

“What’s the problem, Louie? You look as if some disaster happened.”

“Some disaster did happen, Dahlia, and it’s you! You took her outta that place in San Diego without asking me.”

“You’re right, Louie, but I did ask Sunny, and she said yes, and she’s an adult, so that was enough.”

“She’s a retarded, mental-case, dangerous-to-the-world adult. And you have her out walking the streets. She’s liable to hurt somebody, and they could come after my ass for not keeping her in a safe place. I’m her next of kin, Dahlia. Not you. That means I’m responsible for her and I should decide when she’s in a fruitcake factory and when she’s not.”

“Louie, if you decided that she was better off in that falling-apart home where they overdrug people and call it taking care of them instead of her living with me, then you’re the one who ought to be locked up. And she isn’t going to hurt a fly.”

“How do you know?
What
do you know? You’re the big expert?”

“Louie, what do you want?”

“I want to talk to her.”

“Yeah? Well, I’ll ask her if she wants to talk to you.”

“Oh, right. As if she’s capable of making that decision.”

“She’s not only capable. She’s in a really good place
right now emotionally. And she’s on her way to being real successful. Have you seen the commercial for—”

“Yeah, I’ve seen it. How much did she get for it, Dahlia? And what’s she doing with the money? Do I need to send in my accountant to make sure you’re not taking more than your share?”

“Louie, get your nasty little face out of here,” Dahlia heard a voice behind her say, and Louie stepped back at the overwhelming sight of the way his sister looked standing in that doorway. How could this possibly be the woman he saw last time at that stinking place in San Diego where she’d been so scary-looking that his kids had gotten sick just meeting her? Now her hair was its natural white, and she had it cut in a very trendy spiky haircut. She was far from Hollywood skinny, but her slick black parachute outfit was as shiny as leather and made her look very show-business cool.

Dahlia loved the expression in Louie’s eyes, somewhere between awe and terror. Later she told Seth it was like Ebenezer Scrooge must have looked when he saw Marley’s ghost. Louie’s first impulse was to laugh, but then his face twitched—maybe just holding back tears of joy made him blink that way. Whatever the emotion that came with that look in his eyes, he seemed genuinely stunned to realize that this pulled-together woman in the doorway was the once-tragic figure Sunny.

“My sister. You’re my kid sister, and you’re okay,” Louie said, shaking his head and clucking his tongue. “It’s a miracle. This is some kind of miracle.”

Sunny exchanged a look of disdain with Dahlia. “Believe me, it’s no miracle, Louie,” Sunny said. “It’s
hard work, but I’m doing it, and Dahlia’s helping. Now, what are you doing here?”

Louie put his hand on Sunny’s face, and Dahlia watched her try not to recoil, just gentle his hand away. “All I can think of is Mom and Dad and how happy they’d be to see you like this,” he said. “When I think of all the years they wished for this.” His words sounded as stiff as if he were reading lines from a TelePrompTer. “I take my kids to the cemetery every year because I want Mom and Dad to know how big they’re getting. Hey! Maybe you should come with us. We always go on Mom’s birthday, and it’s next week.”

Dahlia remembered that Aunt Ruthie’s birthday was in March, and this was September. “You’re not taking her anywhere, Louie,” she said as Louie put on an insulted face.

“Hey, this woman happens to be my children’s aunt,” he said. “The only aunt they’ll ever have, and they don’t even know her,” he said, reaching into his back pocket and taking out his wallet. “Sun, look,” he said, opening it and pulling out three school pictures, which he thrust at Sunny. “Here’s Kassie, and here’s Robin, and here’s Michael. Look how much he looks like Daddy.”

Sunny held the pictures and looked closely at each of the children’s faces as Dahlia watched her.

“My God, he does look so much like Daddy,” she said, shaking her head in amazement. “And Kassie is so pretty with that white-blond hair.”

Louie grinned. “And who does she look like to a tee?” he asked. “Her Aunt Sunny. Do you know how many times I’ve called her Sunny by mistake?”

“Really?” Sunny looked at him, and her eyes were so filled with hope that Dahlia knew this was all heading in a dangerous direction.

“Sun,” Louie said, knowing that his appeal to her was working, “she couldn’t look more like you if she were your own daughter. And she plays the piano like an angel. Of course, we don’t have the baby grand, because Ma left it in her will to her,” he said with a roll of his eyeballs toward Dahlia. “But Kassie could make a broken-down spinet sound like a Steinway in Carnegie Hall, just like you. And look at my little Robin. She plays, too, and writes songs that the two of them sing. Listen, the kids hear stories about you night and day. And that time I brought the older two to see you? They don’t even remember that. They idolize you.”

Sunny was going for it hook, line, and sinker. Flushed and smiling and holding the pictures to her chest and misting up.

“They’re so adorable,” she said.

“Sun, I’m not kiddin’. These are the daughters you never had, these are your surrogate children. They want to be with you. Dahlia doesn’t understand because she’s an only child, so she can only imagine the way aunts and uncles feel about the children who look up to them. The way you have to be connected to these children who are your blood.”

Dahlia leaned on the doorjamb waiting for Louie to finish. Sunny was probably thinking about how sad it was that she had missed the early childhood years of these children, but Dahlia couldn’t believe that Louie, that little rat, wanted Sunny to be with his children for
anything other than the most selfish reasons. Now Louie was taking Sunny’s hand and holding it tightly as he went on.

“Hey! Want to be spontaneous? Throw some stuff in a bag and come to my house for a few days! These kids will be all over you. They’ll put on a show for you, and you’ll think you’re watching yourself. They need you in their lives, and you need them. These three kids are carrying the genes of our mother and father into the future. Long after we’re gone, who’s gonna talk about their Aunt Sunny who fought her way back from mental problems and had her songs sung in commercials? And probably had her great songs being sung in other places, too.”

Sunny nodded proudly, and Louie brightened.

“For example…what other places can I tell them about?” he asked. No, Dahlia thought. Please don’t tell him. Don’t give him fodder for his nasty, greedy plot. But Sunny already had the words on her tongue.

“Well, Faith Hill has a song of ours on her new CD.”

“Faith Hill?” Louie said, wide-eyed. His breathing had changed to a pant. “By the way, Dahlia,” he said, turning to her, “would it be too much to ask if I stepped inside your cute little house instead of standing out here like I’ve got cooties or something? I mean, I know you always hated me, but some courtesy…”

“I never hated you, Louie,” she lied, knowing there was a force at work between the two siblings that she was powerless to counteract. “And of course you can come in,” she said as Louie backed her and Sunny into the room, then strolled over to the piano and looked at it covetously.

“You know, Sun, Ma left this to Dahlia because I didn’t play and she was afraid you were so hopeless you’d never come back from your hell, and now here you are, doing so well. You really have to come and be with my kids. The girls will both be dying to hang around with you. I have a gorgeous house with a pool. You’ll think you’re at a luxury hotel.”

“Louie, Dahlia and I write songs together every day,” Sunny said, but it was a halfhearted attempt, and now Louie was on a mission.

“So? You’ll write them at
my
house. It’s a hotbed of creativity over there. And nobody’s home all day. Dahlia can come to my house. I’ll let her in. I’ll even offer her a cold drink, unlike the way she is currently treating me.”

“I’ll be glad to give you a cold drink, Louie, and Sunny doesn’t want to come to your house,” Dahlia said, but when she looked at Sunny, hoping for a nod of agreement, she saw the wistful look on Sunny’s face that made it clear Louie had gotten to her. “I’ve been keeping her on a schedule. I’m the one who makes sure she takes her pills every day,” Dahlia tried.

“Dahlia, don’t make me laugh,” Louie said scornfully. “I run a highly profitable business that everyone said wouldn’t last because big hardware chains were opening all around me, and you think I’m not capable of making sure my baby sis takes one stinking pill every day?”

Sunny let out a little giggle at hearing him call her his baby sis, and Louie picked up on that. “Remember how I used to call you baby sis?” She laughed a big laugh now. “When you were atoddler and you called me—”

“Woowee,” Sunny said, remembering.

“My God, she remembers!” Louie said, running his hairy arm against his eyes to remove a crocodile tear. “My kids know that about their Aunt Sunny. How she used to call me Woowee before she could pronounce her
L
s.
You
didn’t know that, Dahlia.”

“I wasn’t born yet, Louie,” Dahlia said, wanting to strangle him for this obvious con job he was pulling on Sunny. If his sister didn’t have money pouring in, Dahlia was sure he wouldn’t even be here.

“I rest my case,” he said. “I’m the one who has a lifelong history with her. I went to the hospital, and my dad lifted me up so I could look into the nursery window when she was born, and I said, ‘Let’s take her home and love and hug her forever, Daddy.’”

“You never said that or did that, because they didn’t even let little kids into hospitals in those days, Woowee,” Dahlia said disdainfully.

“What do
you
know? Get your toothbrush, Sun.”

“Hold on there, Louie. When does she come back?” Dahlia asked, watching Sunny turn to go to her room.

“Whenever she feels like it,” Louie said, “but don’t hold your breath. We’ve got a lot of catching up to do, and besides, I don’t owe you any explanation. She could decide to come and be at my house for good. And I could become her manager.”

“She has a manager. Someone who really knows the music business.”

“Those guys are all sharks. How do I know if he’s looking out for her best interests? What about a financial planner? What’s she investing her money in?”

“She’s giving it to charity,” Dahlia said, and Louie gasped and clutched his chest.

“What?” he said, glaring at Dahlia with fire in his eyes. “What charity?”

“Board-and-care places. Places that specialize in taking care of people like her.”

“Oh, my God. Who told her
that
was a good idea? And your share? Don’t tell me you’re giving your share away, too.
That
I will never believe.” Dahlia didn’t say a word. “Oh, I get the whole picture now. You went to get her out of that nut palace because you needed her music ’cause you’re burned out. I saw a movie like this. It was called
Death Trap
, about a playwright who lost his talent so he kills a young writer and pretends he wrote the young writer’s play.”

“That’s not the story. The older writer and the younger writer were lovers, and they were trying to kill the older writer’s wife,” Dahlia said.

“Whatever,” Louie said, his eyes glowing. “In tonight’s performance the part of the has-been writer is played by you.”