“Scarlett…” Lola admonished.
The Martins were, on the whole, a fairly open family, but Marlene was one subject no one was allowed to touch. She was the elephant in the room. They all knew that it was Marlene’s medical bills that had caused so many of their problems. Talking about this, ever, in any context, was not allowed. Scarlett even wondered if they were allowed to think about it. The other thing that you really weren’t supposed to mention was Marlene’s personality, which was not entirely composed of sunshine and rainbows. She responded a little differently to each member of her family, with Lola at the top of the pack and Scarlett at the far, far bottom. Marlene’s normal greeting for Scarlett was a contemptuous glance, and (if she was very lucky) a little side-brush out of the way.
“I’m going to go upstairs,” Scarlett said, getting up. “To put on my biggest smile! How’s this one?”
She gave Lola a wide, alarming grin. Lola just shook her head and picked up her cleaning caddy.
Scarlett had nothing to do upstairs. She sat on her bed in the Orchid Suite and watched dust motes float in the sun for a few minutes. She examined the crack in her windowpane that prevented it from being opened more than halfway. She watched her neighbor on her roof deck. The neighbor, who was about seventy, was often proudly naked, especially in the morning. Today she was setting some kind of art project, a big collage, out on a table and spraying it with some kind of substance in an aerosol can.
Her sheets needed washing. She hadn’t stripped them and taken them downstairs in more than two weeks. Bad hotel daughter. That would be a good thing to do. Or any of her laundry, really.
Or she could watch that commercial. Her laptop was right under her bed. One little view…Dakota would never know.
She hit PLAY.
The commercial was for a pizza chain, and Eric was playing a guy who accidentally set himself on fire while cooking dinner (which is why he had to order the pizza). Scarlett had seen the commercial many, many times before she met Eric. It was kind of funny, but it didn’t make much of an impression. Once she knew Eric, though, the commercial was her obsession. She knew every expression in every frame.
The flames, Eric told her, were part real and part CGI. When the fire just started at the stove, that was real. His shirt had been treated with some chemical, and he wore protection underneath. They put him out after just a few seconds. When he fell to the floor and started rolling around, and when he tumbled through the window, those were all fake. At the end, he was seen bobbing up in his neighbor’s swimming pool, fully dressed, soaking wet, shirt clinging to his body. (Though he looked much smaller on television than he did in life, which was the opposite of what Scarlett had heard about what the camera did to you. The real-life muscles were welldeveloped, but you couldn’t see them on TV. Which was fine by Scarlett. This was a secret the world did not need to know.)
The commercial took two days to shoot, and Eric earned enough from it to pay for four years of college in his home state, or one year of the extremely pricey NYU acting school. He auditioned. He got in. He opted to blow it all on NYU and take his chances. He’d moved to the city for the summer and scored a part in Hamlet as Spencer’s partner, and that was that. That was where their lives connected. A pizza commercial.
Scarlett was about to add a few more forbidden viewings to the counter, when there was a knock at the door. She slammed the computer shut and shoved it off her lap.
“It’s open,” she called.
A very tan and freckly Marlene stood in the doorway with a duffel bag. To Scarlett’s amazement, Marlene came over and gave her a tight, businesslike hug. Then she sat on the edge of Scarlett’s bed. There was something about her expression that chilled Scarlett. It was a kind of peacefulness. An even-temperedness. No scowl or evil look or shifting eyes. She just sat there, all prim and vaguely saintlike.
“I’m home,” she said.
“I see that,” Scarlett replied.
“I missed you.”
Scarlett coughed in shock.
“Camp was good,” Marlene went on. “I won the award for canoeing. Want to see?”
She opened up her bag, shuffled around through the dirty shorts and shirts and still-damp bathing suits and produced a small plastic trophy with a picture of a canoe on it. Marlene had never bothered to share something like this with Scarlett before. Scarlett had learned from television that the appropriate big sister reaction to this sort of thing was praise, but it seemed like too big a leap. Maybe she should start out slower, by fact-finding.
“How did you get this?” Scarlett asked. “What’s it for?”
“Canoeing.”
“Right, but, was it a race, or…”
Marlene squinted a bit, probably sensing Scarlett’s weakness and confusion, but she kept playing the politeness game. There was maybe a little tension in the jaw area, though. A sign of strain.