Three Girls and their Brother. Theresa Rebeck

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СКАЧАТЬ living in New York City, she came home one day from a café, where she had been meeting friends, and she had a copy of one of his books! Someone had given her a copy of The Trial, and she brought it home with her, and my great-grandmother saw his name, right there on the cover of the book, and she looked at my grandmother and said where did you get that? And my grandmother saw how upset she was and so she said why, what’s the matter? What’s the matter, Mama? And she told her. She was so stunned she just came right out and said it, she said, that man is your father.”

      “That is so amazing,” said Mom. “I have goose bumps. And they never told anybody! That is even more astonishing.”

      “They tried,” shrugged Maureen, bitterly accepting her fate. “No one believed them.”

      “So you’re Kafka’s, uh, great-granddaughter,” I said. “That’s pretty cool.” I smiled politely. But Maureen narrowed her eyes. Now, it may be that occasionally a kind of skepticism sometimes creeps into my manner. I heard later, from Amelia, that in fact not only did I sound actively sarcastic, I also quite literally rolled my eyes before stuffing my mouth with some sort of fried shrimp thing. At which point she, of course, pinched my leg and started snickering. Such a surprise, neither Mom nor Kafka’s gigantic offspring found any of this completely juvenile behavior from me and Amelia all that remarkably clever.“Kafka was one of the greatest minds of the Twentieth Century,” the jolly green giant informed me, as if I needed to be informed, as if that were in fact what I was rolling my eyes about.

      “I am … I love Kafka,” I responded, my mouth full of gourmet Chinese food. Amelia, oh so helpfully, continued to snicker.

      “Philip. Amelia. Please,” whispered Mom, mortified.

      “Never mind,” laughed the giantess, waving her hand with gay dismissal of my hopeless social ineptitude. Instantly, Mom laughed with her, all that beauty queen charm eddying in new directions, right on cue. “Oh Philip, you’re hopeless,” she sparkled. “And frankly I’m surprised to see you here, don’t you have homework?” she asked, tipping her head toward the door.

      “I have homework, Mom,” said Amelia, renewing her mission to escape. “Philip said he’d take me home, you guys can stay, this is so total fun, but I really have to go study. I have a chemistry test tomorrow.” This last bit was politely addressed to the magical ogress Maureen, who smiled benignly on the whole act. “It’s just like a third of my grade and I really have to study.” She was yanking on my arm, which I kind of enjoyed—it was annoying, I mean, but it was also nice to have someone paying attention to me for once, even under such bizarre circumstances. I stood up and grabbed a couple of dumplings and an egg roll to go.

      “What an extraordinary girl,” said Maureen. “Most girls her age would give their eye teeth to meet Rex, but I honestly don’t think Amelia is all that impressed.”

      “Of course she’s impressed! Good heavens, you should have seen us all when we got your call, what a flurry of nerves we were. And here’s Philip, who decided to party crash I’m sure because he just couldn’t stand his sisters having all the fun, isn’t that right, Philip?” This sentence I could not even figure out, so I looked at my hostile mother and said, “What?” in an overtly teenage way that I was sure would work her last nerve.

      Amelia butted in again. “He came because I called him, Mom,” she lied. “I knew you wouldn’t want me taking the subway by myself. This way you and Polly and Daria can stay, ’cause this is so cool. I really do think it’s cool, I so love it, and please tell Rex I had such a cool time.” She was laying it on thick now, with her hand on my sleeve, pulling. The ogress was watching her and, I have to say, she was not impressed. She was kind of leaning back out of the light again, and all those crystals and giant beads were left sparkling on her chest, while her eyes were in shadow. It was quite peculiar, really. Amelia was, as usual, right; this party had a bad feel to it, as did Kafka’s massive green great-granddaughter. I slammed back the rest of my mango margarita and stood. It was time to cut our losses and beat it out of there.

      “Of course, I completely understand, Amelia. It’s so lovely to see a girl with the right priorities,” said the ogress, in her perfectly modulated voice. She held out her hand to Amelia, and gave her a friendly little good-bye shake.

      “Rex!” she called, leaning back and smiling at him, “Amelia is saying good-bye.”

      The great man turned and looked at us. His hand was still down Polly’s pants, and she seemed pretty happy, curled under his arm, but his interest had already started to roam. In retrospect, I have to say, I found this aspect of movie stars to be the most peculiar of all: They were bored with the girls they were screwing, even before they had screwed them. This guy had not even done my gorgeous and smart and fun sister Polly, who truly was gorgeous and smart and fun, in addition to being less than half his age. He planned to, and he was working on it, and he knew it was going to happen, maybe a couple times, even, and then he would get bored and dump her. But psychologically, he had already skipped the ride and gone straight to the boredom. And I’m pretty sure he didn’t even know why. I don’t know why everyone thinks it would be so great to be a movie star; aside from the fame and the money and everybody sucking up to you all the time, there doesn’t seem to be a lot in it.

      Anyway, as soon as the ogress tipped old Rex Wentworth off as to Amelia’s escape plans, his future boredom with Polly peaked. She didn’t even exist anymore. “No, come on, what are you talking about? Hey, where you going? Get over here, short stuff.You’re not getting off that easy.” Rex grinned, a really fun guy, just a swell fun camper, and he leaned out, away from Polly, and reached across the table to grab Amelia by the arm. In his swell-guy, fun-party mode, he was going to playfully grab her, I guess, make her sit in his lap, and tickle her, or something.

      Amelia took a step back, so Rex’s arm swung through midair.

      Okay. A second before, old Rex couldn’t have been less interested in what was going on at our end of the table; there were something like twelve people hanging on his every word, waiters coming and going, drinks and people laughing and talking about nothing, and he wasn’t anymore interested in Amelia than he was in anything else. But boy, that little step back got to him. He looked at her, surprised, and then you could tell he really liked that. That she wouldn’t let him grab her by the arm, and make her sit on his lap? He thought that just was so cool.

      “Whoooa. Hey, what’s that? Where you going? What’s that, what’s that?” He was on his feet now, reaching for her, forcing her to dodge him, making what looked like a game out of it. Amelia laughed at him, playing along, batting his arms away from her, and the hangers-on all started to laugh. Then old Rex grabbed Amelia and swung her in the air, just like somebody having a good time rough-housing with a little kid. She was kind of laughing and squirming, like a little kid, trying to keep it light, even though it wasn’t light, the whole thing was creepy as hell. Rex started to whisper something in Amelia’s ear, or maybe he was blowing in it, I don’t know, she was smiling and wriggling and pushing his hands down, away from her chest, and he was holding on tight, enjoying every last bit of this. Polly was watching this with no expression on her face, looking more like Daria than like herself. Daria by this point was in the dark, you couldn’t even see her, all the way down in Siberia at the far end of the banquette.

      Someone snapped a picture. Rex swung Amelia into the air, grabbing her in between her legs, by her crotch, making like he was going to carry her off. And she bit him.

      She did, she bit him. On the arm. And she must’ve bit him pretty hard, because he suddenly howled and dropped her, yelling, “Jesus Christ!” Everybody leapt to their feet and a couple of the hangers-on rushed to Rex’s side, including Mom, even though Amelia was the one who got dropped on the floor.

      “She СКАЧАТЬ