Brett is having a hell of a time, whipping her long, wet hair in circles and hogging the mic only to screw up the order of the lyrics. I’m a bitch, I’m a mother, I’m a child, I’m a lover. By the second verse, Brett decides to personalize the song and shout, I’m NOT a mother, which no one thinks is funny but doesn’t seem to embarrass her.
We’re at the part in the music video that involved a heavy lift from central casting. Black women, wacky women, butch women, old women, pretty women, all dancing together in the same room, proving that the bonds of sisterhood are stronger than cultural and generational walls, than the beauty standards that try to tier us. Whoo-oh-ohhh whoo-oh-ohhh. Brett turns to me, and in a moment of passion, reaches behind my neck and slips her hand under my ponytail. I think she might kiss me—put on a display of faux lesbianism to ruin the very last of our feministic cred—until I realize she’s sliding off my hair tie. Before I can stop her, she tosses it into the crowd with a mirthful laugh. “Let your hair down for once in your life!” she screams at me, forgetting—or not forgetting—that there is a microphone in her hand.
It’s as though she pantsed me. I scan the crowd for Tim, hoping he isn’t watching this. I hope for something different when I locate him, surrounded by his friends, laughing and shaking his head. Why is he shaking his head? Is he denying that he hooked up with me? He says something in a defensive posture to a member of his group. Whatever it is only incites more teasing. He is. He’s denying it.
The band plays the main chord, again and again, softer and softer, until we can hear the crowd cheering again. Brett passes the mic to me to take a deep bow, which is just another opportunity to flip her hair over her back like Ariel the Fucking Mermaid.
“How about a round of applause for these two?” the lead singer says into the backup singer’s mic. “That was terrible,” she says over the jeers and cheers. “Terrible! Stick to spinning and making up stories, you two.”
A low ohhhh travels the crowd and the lead singer brings her hand to her mouth, mortified. I don’t believe she was being malicious, but it doesn’t matter, because that’s how it was interpreted, and I have to say something. I have to defend myself. One of the bouncers is helping Brett scale the speakers, but I still have the mic in my hand when her feet touch the ground.
“I am good at making up stories,” I say into the microphone, before I can think about it too hard. “But this one”—I point to Brett—“she’s the master at it.”
Brett looks up at me from the crowd, laughing a little, because I’ve kowtowed to her all evening and she has no reason to believe I’m about to turn on her. “You heard we had a falling-out, right?”
Brett’s mouth drops open a little.
I continue with a rictus grin. “You’ll see it all play out on TV. But when you do, you should know it’s fake. The whole thing was fake. We made it up for the ratings.”
“Get off the stage!” somebody yells.
Brett is now trying to scramble back over the speakers like an obese mountain goat.
“Oh, and no little girls are raped in the mountains of Morocco. Brett lied about that too. And oh yeah, they’re going to try to make it look like Vince fucks Brett’s sister this season. But that’s not who he—”
Brett tackles me before I can finish. It is a real, honest-to-God football player tackle, a hug around my ankles that cripples me at the knees. I fall back on one hand, raise one filthy heel into the air for balance. It could be a dance move: Do the cover-up, and kick it like this.
“Girl fight!” the singer cackles into the mic, like the fucking traitors we all turn out to be as soon as the opportunity presents itself. I hurry to my feet, furiously embarrassed, clenching my fists at my sides to keep from whaling Brett across the face, which is what I’m dying to do, though not here, not yet. I trundle over the speakers, refusing anyone’s help on the way down. It’s farther than I expected and I feel my shins in my pelvis when I hit the floor, stumble ungracefully, and stride out, as dignified as too many vodka shots will allow.
We get stuck with a van again, Brett in the left middle two seats and me in the back row. The driver had waited after we’d gotten in, sure more of our friends were coming since we’d sat so far apart. “It’s just us,” Brett finally had to say. She doesn’t speak again until the cab has made a U-turn in the middle of Main and we have passed the old Presbyterian church on our right, and then she swivels in her seat to face me. She’s paled considerably in the last few minutes. “Everyone is probably too drunk to remember what you said anyway.”
Somebody is scared. I hold her eye, a half smile on my face, my head grooving in gentle, unconcerned rhythm with the road. “I wrote it on the bathroom wall in permanent marker just in case,” I say. I didn’t, but I’m having too much fun, watching Brett quake in her sneaks.
Brett turns away from me. “I never should have agreed to this,” she mutters to herself. Then louder, for the people in the back, “I didn’t need to agree to it. I’m not the one who’s past my prime.”
I stare at her Cousin Itt hair for a hot minute.
“Your sister is gorgeous,” I tell her, finally.
Brett snorts. “She’s single. Go for it.”
I find my lip gloss, dab some on. I must look a fright. “But I never worried about Vince around her. Not for a second. You know why?”
Brett’s head bobs back and forth with the motion of the van. She doesn’t answer me. I grasp the back of her headrest with both hands and stick my chin over her shoulder. “Because she’s too smart for him. We all know Kelly’s the brains behind the operation. Vince likes his side pieces dumb. Dumb and not ugly, exactly—I mean, look at me—but, you know, like the castoffs. The lemons.”
Brett takes out her phone and at first I think this is some sort of sister strategy that I never learned, being an only child and all—ignore her and she will get bored and give up. But then I see she’s texting Jesse. Steph just got on stage at Talkhouse and told everyone that the show is fake and scripted. She’s badmouthing all of us and I just wanted you to know before we film at your place tomorr—
I rip Brett’s phone out of her hand, drop it on the floor, and smash the screen with a single stomp from my new wedges. This next part, this does happen so fast. Brett throws herself at me, all claws and wet lashings from her hair. She slashes my face, drawing three lines of blood along my jawline.
My fury is swift and deafening, makes outrageous demands: break her nose, blacken her eyes, bite off an ear. With a battle cry, I comply. The two of us are a twister of limbs and low base insults, rolling around on the floor between the two middle seats, scratching, biting, wailing at each other to stop even while our fists blur in motion, because stopping feels about as impossible as sneezing with your eyes open. It is the most conventional catfight you’ve ever seen, and it feels like doing heroin for the first time. The pleasure center of my brain must look like a club in Ibiza during spring break. Lit. I cannot control much anymore, but I can control how hard I hit, how much I hurt this unrepentant impostor. The cabdriver swerves to the side of the road, shouting at us to stop or he’ll call the cops. We pull apart, gasping, exhilarated, and when I look down I realize I’m holding a hank of Brett’s hair in my hand. No, wait. Not Brett’s hair. Brett’s extensions. I actually bow down to her. At last, someone to whom I can cede the moral low ground.
“I should sell this on eBay,” I say, dangling the pelt in front of her face.
Brett wipes her lower lip and pulls her thumb away to check—yup, it’s blood. She stymies the cut with her tongue and says with hangsman good cheer, “Might help pay for your divorce. I hear they get expensive.”
That’s funny. For a second, I actually think about sparing her.
Nah.
CHAPTER 19
* * *
Kelly: The Interview Present day