Sorority Sisters (34 page)

I remember that day. We were driving out to Camarillo to visit Diane's dad.

The next film cut is Megan getting off the school bus from her first day of school, Ellen whispering as the bus brakes to a stop:
“Megan's first day!”
Megan, her little legs negotiating the big bus steps one by one, and then she was down and running across the road, and then from behind the camera, very loud, Ellen's voice: “Both ways!” Megan jerks to a halt and looks right, left, right, and then runs to her mom, her little face beaming with pride and accomplishment; then the camera jolts and we see only the top of Megan's head, her arms wrapped around Ellen's legs.

I look over at Laurie and Megan. They are holding hands. Laurie is silently and slowly weeping. Megan is simply smiling.

The music stills and the light fades, and when the focus returns, it's Ellen behind the camera again and Megan is in the distance, walking away down the street in Encino where Ellen used to live. “Bye, Megan,” Ellen calls out. Megan turns around and glares at the camera. “I'm really leaving, Mom!” she calls back. Megan must be about eight years old, her little body so taut with anger, her hair thin and slightly tangled, the seat of her pants loose and dirty. “Okay, well, take care of yourself,” Ellen calls out. Megan turns stiffly and walks a few more steps. “I mean it, Mom!” she says, turning around swiftly to throw this latest threat. “I know you do, kid,” Ellen says softly to the microphone. “I'm here if you change your mind!” she calls out. Megan keeps marching until she's lost to the dusk and the distance the camera can manage.

Megan, next to me, sniffs.

“How long were you gone?” I ask.

“Maybe fifteen minutes,” she says. “She didn't say a word about it when I sneaked in the front door, just, ‘Glad you changed your mind.' ”

Then there's Megan at a swim meet, a row of kids racing down the lanes doing freestyle, all glistening bodies and swim caps, impossible to tell one kid from another, parents shouting from the edge of the pool, the teammates swinging white towels, the timers looking at the kids so seriously, stopwatches and clipboards proclaiming their official duty. The camera swings slowly from one kid to another, trying to focus in on
the
kid, the one kid that this camera should be paying attention to. The microphone picks up Ellen breathing, “I forgot her lane number!” Then the swimmers touch the wall and look up at the face of their lane timers, panting, asking, “Time?” their faces covers by goggles, water sliding down their bodies as they climb out, a wash of clear water covering them, like walking through a waterfall. Still, the only difference between these kids is the team color of their swimsuits and whether they're boys or girls. Finding Megan in that pack of eight swimmers is impossible. Then one of the young swimmers comes over to the camera, her goggles pushed up to rest on her cap, impossibly long legs toned and tanned, breasts just starting to bud, and she says, “Did you see me, Mom? Did you see me? It was my best time ever!” And Ellen answers, “I was watching you the whole time. You looked amazing! Like a shark!”

Then we're at Ellen's funeral service and Laurie is speaking about Ellen, about how bossy she was and how much of a fighter she was and how she wouldn't put up with anything from anyone and was willing and eager to take all comers. And how she transformed and enriched all our lives. It wasn't very long ago; we all remember so clearly that day and that moment, and we didn't really need to include it in this video, but it seemed wrong not to include it. It seemed that, if we didn't put it in, it would be as if Ellen simply disappeared and we just didn't take note of it. So it's in. Because nothing could be further from the truth.

The sound comes up slowly, Pearl Jam's “Smile,” and there's Megan, flashing a big grin full of braces, and next to her is Laurie, flashing her own braces at the camera. They stand side by side, arms around each other's shoulders in front of an orthodontic office, but not Ed's because he retired in 1995, right after Ellen died.

The music shifts to “Heartbreaker,” and Megan and Ben are standing in front of Laurie's fireplace, Megan in her lavender gown, Ben in formal wear and looking more handsome than usual. Ben has a wrist corsage of deep pink roses with a purple ribbon and is putting it on Megan's wrist. They look solemn and a little nervous, and then Jim says off camera, “You could have had a 'sixty-six Mustang to go with those flowers!” Ben smiles and then I say off camera, “No, he couldn't!” and then Ben starts to laugh. Megan smiles at Ben, and she leans toward him to whisper something, and Ben grins and looks at the camera. “Are you really marrying a guy called Lavender Barrette?” And then Laurie starts laughing and the camera bounces around a bit, and then Matt's face appears right in front of the camera, really close, and he says, “No. She's marrying the Lazy Stalker. There is no Lavender Barrette. There
is
no Lavender Barrette.” And he makes that move with his hand that Obi Wan did in
Star Wars
. The power of the force isn't working for Matt, because to us, he'll always be Lavender Barrette. And you know what? I think he secretly loves it.

I hope he loves it because he's stuck with it.

The video closes in on the roses of the corsage, fades out, and then fades in on a cluster of red roses: Laurie's bridal bouquet. It's Laurie's backyard and it's Laurie's wedding to Matt Carlson. One of the most romantic songs of all time—“If,” by Bread—is playing softly, and there's Laurie, walking down a grass aisle to marry Matt.

We're all there in this video; everyone came. Candy and Steve have just moved back to California from Hawaii, Cindy and Bob from San Diego, Joan and Benedict from New York, Holly and Bill, Lee from Arizona . . . all the Exclusives we see as often as we can, but as often as we can sometimes stretches for a decade or two. My kids are there, Ben, David, and Charlie. One of Laurie's nieces came, Bond, who's twenty-three and going to grad school at UCLA, the only one of her family to come. Except for us, of course.

The video shows us all as we sit under the trees, the pool sparkling off to the right. Megan is standing next to Matt, waiting with him as Laurie comes down the garden aisle. I haven't seen this video before; it was taken by a professional videographer, and it's nice to be able to see the wedding from this point of view, almost omniscient.

Laurie looks beautiful, of course; she is the bride. Matt looks like a guy on his first date, so nervously excited that he looks close to throwing up. He leans in and says something to Megan, and Megan smiles at him. Then they both turn to smile at Laurie just as she joins them at the rose arbor altar. I remember that moment from the wedding, that leaning in, smiling, sharing moment, and it warmed my heart then as it warms my heart now.

They've found each other, these three; they've made a family.

“He looks so happy, doesn't he?” Laurie says softly, next to me.

“He does,” I say. “He always did. He was always such a happy guy.”

“It's a rare trait. I appreciate it more now,” Laurie says.

“Words of wisdom there, Megan. Listen up,” I say.

Megan nods and says, “Mom's got a good one.”

Laurie beams at me and presses Megan to her side.

The music becomes “Brick House,” and Diane says, “Really? ‘Brick House'? That's what I get for my wedding segment? Who put the fix in on me?”

“Laurie paid me off in Girl Scout Thin Mints.
I'll never go hungry again
,” Pi says, fist raised to the sky.

“Okay, Scarlett. At least we know your price now,” Diane says.

“Hey, at least no one played it at your
actual
wedding,” I say.

The camera focuses on Diane at her dad's house in Camarillo. Diane in a dress of oyster silk, belted at the waist and slightly off the shoulder. She's standing in the living room, the view of the green hilltops and a distant slice of ocean. Her dad is in a wheelchair next to the stone fireplace and the guests, all thirty of us, are sitting on her mom's old beige couch and nubby green chairs. (Diane did get her dad to agree to throw out the old blue accent pillows, but Diane and I, on a shopping trip that will live in infamy, chose the same shade of light blue, only with a checked pattern. Her dad was relieved; you could actually see it on his face.)

Standing next to Diane is her soon-to-be husband, Mac. Captain Diane Ryan met Captain Jeff MacKay in New Orleans, about a year before she retired in February 2000 (we all went, including Megan, and we were all overwhelmed by the Change of Command and Retirement ceremony; I wasn't the only one who cried). So Diane did, after twenty-five years in the navy, fulfill her dad's command that she not “shit where she eats.” Megan is standing next to Diane wearing a pale turquoise silk sheath dress.

“I knew I was being upstaged,” Diane says now. “The kid gets blue and I get
been there, done that
white.”

“You reap what you sow,” Pi says.

“Oh, nice,” Diane says.

Megan laughs and leans forward; Laurie reaches out and runs a hand down her daughter's hair.

Diane's segment only shows the part where Megan, Diane, and Mac are all standing, Megan taking Diane's bouquet from her when the rings are exchanged, and then it fades out, taking “Brick House” with it.

The next photo is of Megan in a two-piece bathing suit, sitting around the pool with three of her high school girlfriends, all of them with earbuds and cell phones in pretty cases, talking to one another and to the thousands of people trapped in their cell phone memory cards. Megan looks at the camera and scowls, “What is it, Mom?”

“Just wanted to get this on tape for you,” Laurie's voice says from behind the camera.

“It's not tape! It's a disk!” Megan says in annoyance. One of the girls chuckles, the one with really big, fake boobs.

“Sorry. Right. Disk,” Laurie says, tightening the focus on the camera, showing us Megan in all her youth and anger and misdirected frustration. Megan looks wonderful, of course, even in her teenage rage; she has a lot of Ellen in her, the same hair, the same tendency to freckle, the same full bust.

The view of Megan around the pool fades out and then fades in to a picture of Ellen at the beach with Laurie, both of them propped on their elbows, lying on their bellies, their bikini tops outlining the shape of their breasts like an old
Playboy
cartoon.

The music is “If I Only Had a Brain,”
from
The Wizard of
Oz
.

Pi starts laughing. So do I.

“What's so funny?” Diane says. “I don't get it.”

“Why's this in here?” Megan asks.

“Think about it for a minute,” Laurie says, motioning for Diane to put the tape on hold.

“I wish
I
had a brain,” Diane says. “Maybe then I'd know what's going on.”

Megan's face clears in understanding and then she looks embarrassed. “Oh,” she says.

“What?” Holly says.

“I wanted my breasts done,” Megan says in a muted voice. “For a graduation present. Mom and I had a fight about it just before my friends came over.”

“You mean, made bigger?” Diane says. And then she starts laughing. “What is it with these Olson girls, never happy with their boobs? It has to be genetic, some sort of mutation, right?”

“You know your boobs are just the same size as Mom Number One's, right?” Pi says. “And you know that she hated her boobs because she thought they were too damn big, right?”

“Could you please stop calling Ellen Mom Number One? I really don't like being referred to as Number Two,” Laurie says.

“Luck of the draw, McCormick,” Pi says.

“Anyway, you, with the same boobs, think yours are too small,” I say. “What does that tell you?”

“I know,” Megan says, “but—”

“No buts,” Laurie interrupts her. “What was too big in 1976 is too small in 2001? That's nonsense. Don't fall for it.”

“You're a beautiful girl,” I say. “Don't let anyone make you think you're not.”

“Hear, hear,” Diane says, nodding.

“Let's finish this tribute,” Pi says. “I'm out of popcorn.”

Diane hits
play
again and we all snuggle into a cozy position, the bittersweet moment of seeing Ellen again and her own, and our own, self-loathing pushed behind us.

The next video clip is of Megan onstage in her high school's production of
Guys and Dolls
(she played Adelaide and really rocked it); the video is of her singing “Take Back Your Mink,” and it segues beautifully into her being given the mobile home in Malibu.

“That was amazing! How did you do that, Pi?” Candy says. “I didn't know you were that good.”

“Gee. Thanks,” Pi says.

“It's the irony of the juxtaposition that I love,” I say.

“Yeah, I'm all about the juxtaposition,” Pi says.

“Anybody else notice how it sounds dirty when Pi says it?” Diane says.

The music becomes “California Girls” by the Beach Boys, and Megan is standing with her Olson grandparents at Paradise Cove, Laurie next to her. They're on the road that's in front of the trailer, the ocean in the background, a bed of red geraniums in the foreground. Mr. Olson, Ed, stands stiffly next to Laurie and Megan, looking both grim and worn down by life. Life will do that to you. He looks at the camera and says, “This was Ellen's favorite place, and since she's gone, I think you should have it.” He hands the key to Laurie, who gives it to Megan. They both look at him, and at the camera, and then Megan grins and waves at the camera (Gammi) and the camera goes dark.

“You'd never know, from looking at that, that I bought the place from him,” Laurie says. “Of course, he might have been able to get more if it had actually gone on the market.”