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chapterone
Hannah
There isno triumph in my return home.
“Five years this freakin’ door has been half off the hinges!” I throw my hip into the crooked back door on a grunt, then my sister and I add in unison, “Stupid door.”
It’s a twin thing that is equal parts fun and annoying.
The faint scent of cigarette smoke fans the flames of my irritation as we step inside. A year ago, our father promised he would quit smoking in the house. To celebrate his commitment, Brigid and I spent a whole weekend scrubbing the nicotine stains from the kitchen walls, then re-painted in a cheerful lime green with white stripes.
I note the window above the sink standing open, allowing the hundred and five-degree heat inandthere’s a cigarette shaped burn mark on the crisp white paint of the windowsill.
With gritted teeth, I toss my messenger bag on the counter, scaring Puddles, my three-legged Calico, from her sleeping spot on the chair.
“Sorry, Puds,” I murmur, offering an apologetic ear scratch, then proceed to brush the errant ashes from the sill with one of our custom tie-dyed magenta-colored dishrags.
“The director didn’t even give you a chance,” Brigid says.
“Right? I took likeone stepinside the audition room.Sorry, you’re not what we’re looking for. Next.”
“That whole set up was supersketch. Girl Laying Downmakes it sound like porn. And I wouldn’t want you laying on any of Larry’s Discount Mattresses anyway, even for a commercial. Did you see them piled up? They probably all come pre-infested with bed bugs.”
“Maybe it’s a sign. I’m not going to be the next Margot Robbie.”
Brigid bends over, pressing her palms to the floor; knees locked. Her raw linen tank top slips up her back as she presses her nose to her calves. A moment later she releases her stretch, moving into an effortless Dancer Asana.
The closest I get to yoga—or working out at all—is watching MMA rounds on YouTube.
What can I say? The brutality relaxes me. I can’t explain it and I don’t want to. It’s my guilty pleasure and if watching bloody, sweaty men beat each other until they look like raw hamburger gives me a moment of peace, everyone just mind ya business.
Brigid meets my eye, holding the pose with annoying ease. “If it’s a sign of anything, it’s that Larry doesn’t know a good actress when he sees one. Next time, you’ll kill it. You know Dino DeLaurentis called Meryl Streep an ‘ugly thing’ in Italian at the audition for King Kong? Did she quit?”
I shake my head. “No, she didn’t.”
“Damn right she didn’t,” Brigid says with an encouraging smile.
She’s mothering me. I do the same for her when it’s called for. Our twin-ness is strange. We are opposites in looks. She’s lithe and sophisticated with her thick auburn hair and show-stopping emerald eyes. Totally worthy of a cover shot on Town & Country.
She tops my five feet two inches with another seven and her body is runway ready.
I’m this odd mixture of nearly white-blonde hair and black-coffee eyes with dark brows. I’ve got double D’s and a Kardashian trunk, but my arms and legs lack any real substance and the freckles I inherited from God knows where seem to double in number every year.
It’s as though I got in the back of every line in the DNA department and the gods just threw whatever was left over my way.
Despite our lack of resemblance, my sister and I have been each other’s peanut butter and jelly our whole lives. Dad did his best at being a mom and a dad but truth time, he fell way short on both counts.
“I’ll make you a smoothie. Extra strawberries.” Brigid grins, releasing the Asana and turning toward the antique Frigidaire we repainted a bright teal blue when we re-painted the kitchen.
She gently shoos away Puddles, then Murphy, a black, fuzzy Dachshund mix who is always either in the kitchen waiting for scraps or bolting out the front door. We already have a two-hundred-dollar vet bill this month from him trying to chase down a low-riding Cutlass.
The refrigerator handle clunks as Brigid humsLet the Good Times Roll,pulling out a bowl of cut up strawberries, then soy milk.
She frowns, shaking the carton. “Dad didn’t get groceries like he promised.”
I screw up my face fighting back a sigh of disappointment. I’ve seen the past-due notices in the garbage can. One of them from Desert Shore Mortgage Company is of particular concern.
My dad has indulged mine and Brigid’s dream of bright lights and back-end royalties since we graduated high school this past May. Brigid is doing regular theater work, and with the commercial gig, I wanted to be able to saylook, here’s a paycheckinstead oflook, here are the animals I helped rehome from the shelter this week.
