Cousin Cindy, taking me to my second concert in the world. I’m eleven. It’s Britney Spears, and Britney is wearing white leather pants with pink patches on her knees. We’re in the first row—my mother bought us the tickets—and Cousin Cindy is sneaking drags from her Newports, blowing the smoke beneath our seats. The bouncer wraps his hand around her neck, tells her it’s okay—I won’t tell if you won’t, sweetheart—and she gives him a wink.
I am standing, dancing, my belly showing like Britney, but Cousin Cindy stays knees-up in her folding seat. She acts annoyed, but every once in a while I catch her mouthing the words—My loneliness is killing me—smiling. I can tell there is something inside her that is burning to be here. The lights, the glamour, Britney’s long, plastic ponytail, the bubblegum beat. I think, Cousin Cindy should have been a star. She has never talked about a life she wants, but maybe this is it. Maybe she was right to drop out of beauty school. Maybe she’s meant to be the glittering girl on this stage, uglier girls at her feet, their hands cupped around their mouths screaming Cindy! Cindy! as she pauses before the last word of everyone’s favorite song, closing her eyes, making the whole world beg for it.
Cousin Cindy is sad on the car ride home. She chain-smokes, pops the car lighter, bites the side of her lip till the scarlet drags off. She says it’s a good thing I have her to take me to these concerts, to show me a good time. It’s a good thing she’s around to take care of me, since my parents are so fucked. Fucked how? I ask. I’ve never heard the words used in quite this way. Cracked out, she says. Coke, rocks, all that shit. Your parents are the reason I’ll never get high, swear to God, that shit ain’t for me. You’re so goddamn lucky you got your Cousin Cindy.
Cousin Cindy, calling my first cell phone. I’m thirteen.
Your mom can’t hear, right?
No way.
I’ve got a new job in Hollywood. It’s rad; the people are nice. I’m tired all the time but most of all, I miss you. Come out, she says, I miss my baby.
Hollywood, Florida, is nothing like the Hollywood on television. There are no movie stars, no hills. Instead, there’s a trash mountain big enough to block out the sunset, where men in jumpsuits torch diapers under the buzzards. My mother says I’m not allowed to go to this Hollywood, this particular block Cousin Cindy is describing, where sex shops line the streets in mean yellows.
I can’t come, I tell Cousin Cindy. You know I can’t. Everybody knows about your job and what it is.
Jesus Christ, it’s not like I’m a stripper, she says. I’m a waitress at a strip club. I serve drinks, chicken wings. I don’t take my shit off.
I know. I didn’t say—
Tell your mother I don’t take my shit off.
We know.
I need my baby, she says. I’m lonely. Just come down for lunch, will you? The wings are so good here. You’d like them. Extra hot.
A weekend with Cousin Cindy. It’s been a while since the Julia Roberts movies and the matching manicures and the Tell me, how’s it like in real school? So goddamn rich the kids have diamonds on their cell phones, no? You still have those spy laptops? Those yacht parties?
Tonight we’re on a cruise ship because I am this winter season’s Grand Champion Equestrian. It’s the end-of-the-year awards banquet, and the Wellington Horse Show Association wants to hand off ribbons taller than I am, little statues and trophies with golden ponies on top. My parents haven’t left their bedroom in almost a week, so Cousin Cindy volunteered.
Free steak? A reason for my party dress? Duh.
She wears crimped hair teased and fastened in a circle by glittering pins. The mound of bright blonde curls is bigger than a cantaloupe. Cousin Cindy never liked the natural ash of her hair, and has been painting on boxes of dye since she was old enough to ride a bike.
During the award ceremony, a shipmate dressed in all denim approaches Cousin Cindy at our table. He whispers in her ear, presses a folded piece of paper into her palm. When the trophies are gone, she takes me below deck to meet him. She holds my prizes in her arms.
The denim man is waiting in a room full of humming machinery. His name, he says, is Sean Connery. Oh my God, like the movie star? Cousin Cindy asks. Any relation?
A different spelling, he says. I’m S-H-A-W-N. I’m bigger, you see. He flexes a bicep and stares at it, points at the bulge, as if surprised. I don’t know who the real Sean Connery is, but I hate this one.
Why don’t you girlies let Shawn Connery take you on a tour of the underbelly?
Can I drive this ship? asks Cousin Cindy.
If you’re good. Shawn Connery slaps her ass.
It only takes three rooms, three explanations of the rudders, the hull, before Shawn Connery starts eying me differently, closing a metal door before I can step into the room. Don’t you have pony stuff to do? he says, giving Cousin Cindy a smile, an emphasis on that question mark in a tone they both believe to be Grown-Up Talk—a language all children, anywhere, understand. I step outside the room and wait a few minutes. I wait until I hear Cousin Cindy whispering Shawn Connery’s name before I get it, feel relieved, before I ask if they can at least hand over my trophies.
Cousin Cindy takes me to the state fair, her favorite day of the year. She wants the wind in her hair, the rickety coasters. She wants to suck on cotton candy and ride the Gravitron until we crawl across the wall to each other, in slow motion, puking. I say, Sure, Cousin Cindy. I’ll go with you, sure.
Outside the Fun House, Cousin Cindy meets a man named Costas. He works the kabob stand, but says he owns an island somewhere in Greece. His white T-shirt is tight, dirty, grease stains blooming over the muscles of his chest. He looks like a movie star playing the role of Greek Kabob Man.
Is this your child? he asks Cousin Cindy, pointing a kabob at my face. She no look anything like you?
Baby cousin, she says. Ain’t she cute?
Too bad, I love kids, he says.
Costas gives us free meat all night. Kabobs piled on Styrofoam plates, lamb shawarma. We gnaw at the chunks of salty meat until our faces glow turmeric orange. When Costas’s shift is over, he leads us to the front of every line, wins us bags of fighting fish, Chinese finger traps. We tell Costas we’re ready for him to take us away to his island. We will eat all of his food and we’ll be good wives. Costas kisses Cousin Cindy goodnight with a gentleness I have never seen from a man. Cousin Cindy smiles the whole way home and, for once, doesn’t want to talk about it.
One week later, our family sits down to eat dinner at Stir Crazy, a restaurant in the Boca Raton Town Center mall. Grandma Sitchie informs me that I’m a very rude girl for reading Go Ask Alice under the table, and tells me it’s time I learn to hold knives and forks properly, instead of chopsticks.
Costas shows up with Cousin Cindy, hand in hand. He’s holding a bouquet of daisies wrapped in brown paper, and his shoes are flawless, shining. I think he must have bought them this very day, for us.
Good-looking fella, says my Grandma, nodding. Why Cindy?
I find her fascinating, he says. And obviously, quite beautiful.
Fascinating. She pauses on the word, sips her merlot. Do you know what your fascinating girl does for a living?
Cousin Cindy hates all fairs, all amusement parks, after this night. She says they’re for kids.