Everything's Relative Read online

  “That is so your mom,” Shawn said, shaking his head. “Wait, what’s your condition?”

  “I have to write my book,” Jules said.

  “That’s it? Holy shit, baby, we’re going to be rich! Filthy stinking rich!” He picked Jules up and swung her around in circles until she thought she’d puke. Finally, when he couldn’t manage another spin, he collapsed on top of her on the couch she’d re-slipcovered at least a half dozen times.

  “That’s it?” Jules said, pushing him off of her. “I’ve been trying to write that book for ten years. And do you know how many pages I have? Go on, take a guess.”

  “Fifty?” Shawn said tentatively.

  “Try four. Four lousy pages in ten years. But I’m sure I can whip out another three hundred or so this year—that’s the deadline, one year from now. Oh, I also have to ‘make a concerted effort to sell it,’ which I should give at least, what, a month? Or two or three? Now I’m down to writing it in nine months. No problem.”

  “First of all, we’re not destitute, so you don’t need to freak out,” Shawn said. “Although with that kind of cash in the bank, think of what we could do . . .” Shawn trailed off, lost in thoughts of fishing boats and European vacations, no doubt.

  “It’s not about us,” Jules said. “Brooke and Lexi need this, Shawn. It’s almost like this money is the only shot they’ve got. I can’t not do it. I can’t let them down. I couldn’t live with myself.”

  “And you will do it, I don’t doubt it for a second. You haven’t had time to write because you’ve been busting your ass for me, for us, so quit being so hard on yourself,” Shawn told her. “Plus, you never had a big, fat, golden six-million-dollar carrot dangling in your face before. Right? I mean, Christ. Talk about an incentive! You can do this, Jules. You know you can. I know you can. Let’s do the math. How many pages is a book?”

  Jules loved that about Shawn; his mind went exactly where hers went. “Three hundred. It works out to thirty or so pages a month. Finished pages, that is.”

  “That’s a page a day! You’ve got this, Jules. No problem. And I’ll do everything around here. All of it. The shopping and the cleaning and everything else you do. All you have to do is write.”

  “The book isn’t all,” Jules told him, cracking open a beer and taking a swig before handing it to Shawn.

  “What else? Do we have to climb Kilimanjaro on our hands and knees carrying live porcupines on our heads? Because whatever it is, I’m in.”

  “Brooke has to break up with Jake, for good, and be dating someone who both Lexi and I unanimously approve of.”

  “Well, that seems . . . not impossible,” Shawn said hopefully.

  “Oh, she also has to train for a half-marathon,” Jules added.

  Shawn paused, letting this information sink in.

  “Wasn’t she a track star in high school?” he asked.

  “Yeah, that was ten years and I don’t know how many pounds ago,” Jules said with a sigh.

  “What about Lexi?” Shawn asked. He screwed his face up as if anticipating a blow.

  “Lexi—shit—Alexis . . .” Jules paused here and took a deep breath.

  “What about her?” He wanted to know.

  “She has to get an actual job.”

  “Oh shit.” Shawn took a swig of the Keystone and handed it back.

  “I know,” Jules said.

  Brooke

  “A half-marathon? Really?” Brooke asked her reflection in her dresser mirror with an angry laugh. “You’re funny, Mom. Really funny. You drove me all over California and sat at every track meet because you wouldn’t let me take the bus with all of the other girls! That was your choice, not mine! Why didn’t you just come out and call me fat, or demand that I get back into my high school track shorts before I can get your money? I’m not stupid; I know that’s what this is about. And do you want to know why I quit running and got fat? Because of you. You and your need to control every last thing I ever did. Of course I got fat. When I was finally out of your house and didn’t have somebody scrutinizing every forkful that went into my mouth and yelling at me to go run five more miles, you know what? I sat on my butt and I ate whatever I wanted! And I enjoyed it! And I don’t even mind being fat, so you can kiss my fat ass.” Brooke didn’t usually swear, and she was surprised at how good it felt.

  Frustrated, she flopped across her bed and sobbed. She sobbed because she was fat and she did mind it, and because she missed being known as “the athletic one,” and because while her mother hadn’t spelled out a causal conclusion, Brooke knew she used her weight as an excuse to date down. It had been that way ever since Billy McCann, her high school sweetheart and the one true love of her life. She’d been thin and beautiful, and Billy had fallen out of love with her anyway. So she ate and ate to pass the time, to fill the void that had been left when she’d been abandoned by him and Jules practically at the same time, and to punish her mother and her sister and, possibly, herself.

  Since then, her boyfriend criteria had mostly consisted of one singular item: whether or not they’d have her. But Jake wasn’t that bad, at least compared to some of the other guys she’d dated. At least he hadn’t run off with all of her money. Of course, she didn’t have any money to run off with, but that wasn’t the point. She knew she could do much worse because she repeatedly had.

  If she broke up with Jake, where would she go? What would she do? Brooke had moved into his studio apartment after they’d been dating only three months, when she’d been evicted (after another boyfriend had disappeared with her meager life’s savings, but who was keeping track?) and had nowhere else to go. She’d insisted on paying her share of the rent when she moved in with Jake, which turned out to be just over four hundred bucks a month because his place was rent controlled and he’d lived there forever. Of course, then he’d lost his job, and it wasn’t like she could kick him out of his own apartment or anything, so now she was paying the full eight twenty-five. Even so, Brooke was pretty sure there weren’t a lot of rooms for rent at that price in the Valley, and with her credit card bills and on her salary as a preschool teacher, it was pretty much all she could afford.

  “Why do you even need to go to college to be a preschool teacher?” her mother had demanded when she’d told her she had been accepted to the community college. “That’s just a glorified babysitter. I’ll help you out if you at least promise to get a job in secondary education, preferably high school and ideally something to do with literature. It would make your father so proud.” Brooke knew she could lie and say that was what she planned to do, but she wouldn’t give Juliana the satisfaction. She didn’t want her mother’s help—which she was certain would only amount to a class here or a book there anyway. She was tired of being owned, and she knew what she wanted to do with her life. When Juliana had forwarded her a link to a news article titled “The Ten Lowest-Paying Jobs That Require a Degree” (preschool teacher was at the tippy top), she’d refused to even respond.

  “Kiss my fat ass,” Brooke said again at the memory, sniffling. She pushed herself up to a sitting position and took several deep breaths before padding on wobbly legs to her apartment’s tiny bathroom. She gasped when she saw her reflection. She looked atrocious. Brooke splashed cold water on her face and then held a washcloth there, willing the redness and puffiness to go away. Neither complied. She was playing a sick game of poking her pudgy pink cheek with her finger and watching the spots turn white when her phone rang. She didn’t recognize the number. She really didn’t feel like talking to anybody, but it wasn’t in Brooke’s nature to ignore a phone call. That was just plain rude.

  “Hello?” she said. Her voice was hoarse.

  “Did you not pay the damned phone bill?” It was Jake and he was pissed. “My phone’s dead.”

  “I paid it,” Brooke croaked.

  “Well then, what the hell is wrong with it?” he demanded.
r />   “I don’t really know, Jake,” Brooke sighed. “Maybe you dropped it in the toilet one too many times.” She knew she sounded robotic; she also knew he wouldn’t ask why or even think to ask how it had gone with her mother’s attorney today.

  Jake yelled something to someone in the background.

  “Where are you?” Brooke looked at the clock. It was after eleven at night.

  “Out,” Jake replied.

  “Are you coming home?” she asked. Sometimes he did and sometimes he didn’t.

  “Don’t know yet,” he said. “But if I do, try not to wake me in the morning when you get up.”

  “Okay,” she said mechanically. Jake hung up without saying good-bye.

  “All right, I’m going to start training tomorrow,” she told her splotchy reflection. “I’ll get up and run before work.” She did some mental calculations, and realized that she’d have to get up at four thirty in order to get an hour-long workout in, have time to shower and dress and get to school by six fifty. That was fine. Brooke knew that she was such an awful witch when she was tired that Jake would probably kick her out anyway. She could cross that bridge when it happened. This much decided, she trudged to her computer and looked up marathon training. Five million results? Jeez, this was stupid. Brooke knew what she had to do: Run a little bit farther each day until she could run just over thirteen miles. It wasn’t rocket science. It wouldn’t be easy at first, but she knew she’d be motivated when the weight started falling off her. In high school, she’d had to eat around the clock to keep from getting too skinny from all that running. How could she have forgotten about that?

  Relieved to have a plan, she shuffled to her tiny studio apartment’s kitchenette. After surveying her options, she pulled some Oreos and a jar of peanut butter from the cupboard and grabbed the chocolate-chip-cookie-dough ice cream from the freezer. She dumped the remains of each bag, jar and carton into her giant mixing bowl and carried it to the couch. Yes, she thought as she shoveled spoon after spoon of cold, sweet deliciousness into her mouth, it’s going to be so great to be skinny again.

  Lexi

  “Fuck her,” Lexi said, pouring another shot of rotgut tequila. “Seriously.”

  “Okay,” said Brad. He took a deep drag off his huge glass bong and gave her a thumbs-up.

  “I’m talking about my dead mother, you disgusting perv,” Lexi said. Plumes of smoke shot out of Brad’s nostrils and mouth as he burst out laughing, which led to a loud fit of coughing and sputtering.

  “Damn it, Lexi, that was a good hit, too,” her roommate said, cupping the smoke toward his face and trying to inhale it.

  “It’s Alexis now, asshole,” she slurred, reaching for the bong.

  “Slexis? Sweet. I’ll try to remember that. Slexis. Slexis. Slexis. Yeah, it’ll never happen. Besides, that’s a pretty fucked-up name. What’s wrong with Lexi?”

  “It’ll cost me ten million bucks, that’s what’s wrong with it.”

  “No shit? Damn. I’d change it then, too. Wait, what’s the new one again?”

  “Alexis,” she told him, trying her best to enunciate the awful word. Without the “it’s” in front of it, it was nearly audible.

  “That’s pretty fancy,” Brad said. “Could you just be, like, Mary or Jane or something? Hey, Mary Jane. Get it? I totally didn’t even do that on purpose.” He exploded with cough-laughter again and Lexi couldn’t help but laugh, too.

  “Nope, it’s gotta be Alexis. I know, it fucking sucks. Hey, what’s a good job? I have to get one and I don’t want it to be some lame-ass, douche-y job like secretary or teacher or anything. I can’t think of a single job that’s not lame-ass or douche-y.”

  “Blow job?” Brad suggested.

  “You’re a moron.”

  “Okay, for real. What about, like, a massage person? I forget what they’re called. You could practice on me any time you wanted.”

  “I am so not touching disgusting hairy bodies all day long,” Lexi said with a shudder.

  “I’m not that hairy.” Brad thought for a while. “What about Victoria’s Secret? My girlfriend works there and can probably get you in.”

  “You have a girlfriend? Dude, we just fucked last night.”

  “Sorry, she’s more like an ex-girlfriend. Whatever. I hardly ever see her but she’s chill. Want me to call her?”

  “Yeah, I don’t think selling skanky underwear fits the bill for an ‘actual job.’”

  “Maybe you could go work for your sister?” Brad asked, offering her the bag of Doritos. Lexi had told her roommates all about Jules and her dog-walking “business.” They’d laughed and laughed—who called walking dogs a job anyway? Besides, dogs were smelly and gross, and Jules would probably pay her three dollars an hour.

  “I’d rather sell skanky underwear,” Lexi said, stuffing a Dorito into her mouth. She’d figure something out. For ten million bucks, she was going to have to.

  Jules

  Jules had been very busy enjoying a simple, mostly happy childhood when her dad had dropped dead of a heart attack. They were at the park, the whole family, on an otherwise perfect summer Saturday, eating ice-cream cones and watching him play softball with some of the other dads from school. Jules was just twelve when it happened, and his death rocked her world in every way imaginable. Her parents had had one of the few happy, intact marriages she knew of, even though they struggled financially. John Alexander had been a writer, and from the looks of things, publishing was a tricky, fickle business to be in. He’d sell something one year and nothing the next two, and they were all just waiting for something he’d written to hit it big. Her dad would always say “not if but when,” and of course they believed him. He was talented, everyone knew it; they just had to be patient. Jules and her two younger sisters didn’t complain about sharing a room or having only one small bathroom in the house, because they knew it was temporary. Any day now John Alexander would hit a bestseller list and then they’d be rich and famous. They’d probably move to Malibu or Pacific Palisades or maybe even Beverly Hills. When that happened, the very first thing he was going to do, he promised, was build them a swimming pool. Jules had the floating lounge chairs all picked out. And then he died.

  Their mother was inconsolable. Brooke and Lexi were only eight and six, so it was Jules who picked up the slack. She taught herself to cook and took over as the head of the household, making sure her sisters did their homework and brushed their teeth and had clean underwear. She practiced Juliana’s signature until it was perfect so she could sign school forms and permission slips without having to bother her mother while she sat and stared at the wall. Her sisters, Lexi in particular, weren’t old enough to notice or appreciate her efforts, but Jules wasn’t doing it for the recognition; she was doing it because it was the right thing to do, the only thing to do, and because somebody had to do it.

  At the time, Jules would have said that first year was the worst. Her mother was present in body only, leaving Jules with nowhere to turn with her own grief. Their tiny house, once made a home with laughter and jokes and music and games, became unbearably lifeless and tense. Jules prayed every night before bed. She knew it was silly to ask God to bring her dad back, she told Him, but if it wasn’t too much trouble, could she pretty please have her mom?

  Jules could remember the exact day Juliana had awoken from her stupor. Nearly a full year had passed since her father’s death, and Jules had felt the need to mark or acknowledge it in some way. “Tomorrow is the anniversary,” she’d said to her mother tentatively. Juliana had exploded with fury.

  “Anniversaries are things you celebrate,” her mother had screamed. It was the first time Juliana had shown any emotion other than dejection in months, and Jules hoped it was a turning point. And indeed it was—but not in the direction she was longing for. To her daughters’ great dismay, Juliana was no longer the warm, free-spirited, fun-loving mom they’d on
ce known. Almost overnight she became critical and demanding and obsessed with micromanaging every detail of her daughters’ lives. It had taken years of painful processing, but finally Jules believed she understood: Something inescapably beyond her mother’s control had robbed her of her husband, her life, her entire future. She was bitter and angry and would be damned if she was going to let that happen again.

  Jules thought about her mother now, about how hard it must have been for her, and felt guilty for the ten thousandth time that she hadn’t been more compassionate toward this broken shell of a woman. But damn it, Juliana had made it impossible, she truly had. She’d hovered and criticized, and nothing Jules or her sisters did was ever good enough. She wasn’t quite Joan Crawford, because she didn’t drink and she’d only hit Jules twice that she could remember. But Jules couldn’t count the times her mother would demand she change her clothes, or forbid her from reading a certain book all of her friends were reading, or rip apart the bed she’d just made and insist she do it again. “You’ll thank me someday,” she’d say. Jules was still waiting for someday to come.

  In the meantime, she had a novel to write. She’d called her top dog-walker and had her take over her usual routes. She cringed at the thought of spending the extra money, but it was for the greatest good. She pulled up the story she’d started a decade ago and reread her own words, surprised at how unfamiliar they felt. The writing was fine, good even, but the problem she was having was the same one she’d had since she started: There was no plot, no story. There were lovely and lyrical descriptions of her main characters, and the setting was palpable from her narrative. But what was going to happen to them? She had no idea.

  How hard can this be? Jules wondered. Bookstores were lined with billions of stories, each crafted exactly the same way: by putting one word after another. Why did this feel so impossible? Did she even want to write a book? Or was she just doing it to please her dead parents? How had this become the sole focus of her life? And was money really that important anyway?