American Girls(20)

As much as I did not identify with Patricia Krenwinkel, it made me think of how after she was arrested her family wanted to make it like she had this perfect home life, when her parents were both AWOL while she was getting tortured at school for being fat; how her folks separated and Patricia felt like it was her fault. No one seemed to care that she was drinking and smoking pot, or that she’d run away, until mass murder in the news made them look back. They were an awesome family, the Krenwinkels—all you had to do was ask them. Maybe that was part of the appeal of the Manson “family,” not as a family, but as a myth of a family, a clown-collage of bad parenting and anger focused in all the wrong directions. And batshit crazy—it was every bad headline you ever read, supersize—something you could point to at the end of the day and say, Well, I’m not that bad, my life couldn’t suck that hard.

I’d meant to check out front to see if anyone had come during the night, but my sister’s keys rattled in the door first. She had a dead-bolt lock and one of those chains at the top of the door that I’d seen kicked through in 3.5 seconds in true crime reenactments. The security system in the apartment was defunct, though she still kept the sign for it outside her door. Last night I thought I’d heard a car driving past, idling, and I turned on a light and slept with the covers over my head. My sister’s apartment faced a large, sloping hill, and since the curtains were practically see-through, I had tried to maneuver a sheet to cover the glass with little success. Anyone determined could still look inside. I couldn’t imagine how that never bothered my sister, who seemed to think it was no big deal.

Delia said that if you looked carefully, up the hill, there was a house that flew a rainbow flag on Sundays because that was the day they filmed porn, and people wandered around naked talking on their cell phones and eating pizza. She said that as long as people could look out their windows and see something like that, whatever happened in her living room was snoozer central.

“How’d it go?” Delia asked. “Did the pizza come?”

“Do I have to stay here every night?”

“Why? Did you find a hotel you’d prefer?”

She went in the bathroom and half closed the door; the hum of her electric toothbrush made it hard to hear what she was saying. Something about how she was doing me a favor.

“No,” I said. “It’s just kind of creepy.”

“Anna,” she said, “Do you know how much it costs to live in this neighborhood? There’s nothing creepy about it.”

“Did you know that Charles Manson didn’t even kill anyone? And those people that got murdered lived in neighborhoods even nicer than this one.”

She switched the toothbrush off and started running water.

“I did. Are you reading that book at night? Of course you can’t sleep. Manson is day reading, okay? Read it when you’re watching Chips Ahoy! shoot this afternoon, not when you’re alone waiting for the pizza man. Sometimes I think you like to be miserable.”

I wanted to ask her about our mom, about how sick she thought she really was and if I should call her back, but I didn’t want to be shut down, and Delia looked like she was closed for the season, emotionally speaking. My sister could do that, be broken down one day and then look at you the next like you were delusional and had hallucinated the scene where she had acted like a human being.

“I don’t like to be miserable.” I took a piece of cold pizza from the refrigerator and gnawed on one petrified corner.

“There are bananas in the bag,” she said, gesturing at her tote. “Dex is going to pick you up at eleven. Are you okay with that? Don’t attack him with a hammer because you think he’s going to kill you. And please don’t mention anything about last night.”

“You mean the pot?”

“I mean Cora.”

“Okay,” I said. The bananas Delia had bought were too green to eat, but she’d also picked up vanilla almond milk and a box of organic chocolate chip cookies. “Why don’t you want him to know about Mom?”

“Because I don’t like having to explain our family all the time.” She had washed her face and was patting the skin dry. The words came out like an accusation, like she’d already had to pass off one crazy and wasn’t in the mood to explain another. Evidently, according to my family, I was pretty much responsible for all the evil in the world. But wasn’t the whole point of having a boyfriend that he would help you out when terrible things happen?

No wonder she and Cora hated each other. They were exactly the same. Neither one of them had ever found a situation good enough that they couldn’t find a way to wreck it.

“Don’t worry,” I said. “I wouldn’t want you to have to lie.”

“Then I’m glad you understand.”

We had a sister stare-off for a good thirty seconds, and then we both let it go.

*

My sister was auditioning for a reality show, the herpes commercial, and a bit part in a feature-length. Dex had agreed to take me to work with him all week, and Delia would meet up with us whenever her day ended. At first I wondered whether Dex was a secret perv, not that I was so hot or anything, but it seemed crazy to me that anyone would do as much for Delia as he seemed to be doing. But since I hadn’t woken up drugged and in a second location, I figured that he must really like my sister. Way, way more than she deserved.