But then money—not huge amounts of it, but money nonetheless—began to arrive, money for them to live on while they mixed the album. Money to hire a famous, crazy photographer to take moody, retro shots for the album cover; money to plaster the city—or at least the East Village—with posters of that cover; money to send them on tour (they left on Thursday; Emily had been trying not to think about it); money to pay a shrill publicist with streaked blonde hair and a Five Towns twang, who called almost daily with reports of her success on their behalf: a piece in Time Out, a piece in New York to coincide with their show at Hammerstein Ballroom (back of the book, but still); reviews here, interviews there, Saturday Night Live was maybe interested. “Big things are HA-pen-ING,” she liked to say. And then the biggest: an off-puttingly cool magazine—its text printed in mod sans serif, its models clad in rags—selected them as one of its “five bands to watch.” Or something like that. The issue would be out on Tuesday—Curtis had been promised an advance copy, which never arrived—and it was possible, the publicist kept bleating, that the band would be on the cover (“They’ve told me the cover is a POS-si-BIL-ity. Fingers crossed!”). A couple months back, Curtis and Dave and the others had been styled and photographed and interviewed. Afterward, they’d talked about how silly it all was, but Emily could see they all loved it. All except Curtis, who seemed even more fidgety and quiet than usual. When Emily asked him about it—Was he not excited? Worried? Anxious?—he shrugged his shoulders, which were narrow, and blinked behind his round glasses. “I don’t really want to talk about it,” he told her. “I’m trying not to think too much about it. I don’t want to be disappointed. This could all turn out to be nothing.”
Emily tried not to take such statements as a reproach of her own, more optimistic mode, which had led to such extreme disappointment. But there was reproach in his voice, she could feel it, whether Curtis intended it or not, and she told herself not to be bothered by it, for if she allowed herself to be offended on this count there was no turning back, the gates would open and it would all be over. At work, over the long, dull day, she found herself dwelling on this small injury. It was one thing, she thought, for her friends, who had known her for so long, to express anxiety over her future or her well-being (though, of course, it annoyed her when they did so). It was quite another for Curtis—who was younger than she, who had barely struggled—to criticize her, to act as though she was to blame for everything that had happened, when she had been cheated, wronged, taken for a ride, and when he didn’t know the first thing about theater, anyway, about how things worked, how promises were made.
This line of thinking troubled her, for it smacked of Clara, who eternally believed herself cheated, wronged, taken for a ride by anyone who’d crossed her wayward path. And lately a new worry had crept into Emily’s tired brain: that she would end up like her sister, talking to her demons on a street corner. Clara was on her mind, as she seemed to be all Emily and her parents spoke of these days. Back in May, Clara had been found in a roadside motel off 70, ranting about a patient of their father’s, a skinny high school student who, she said, had broken into the room, raped her, and stolen her “meds.” Indeed, there were no meds on the premises, but this appeared to be because she’d taken them all herself and, as a result, entered into what the ER doctor called a “drug-induced psychosis.” Emily’s father, for the most part, concurred and a day later, the Kaplans drove Clara up to a facility in Vermont. Now, every afternoon around four, Emily picked up her line at work and heard Clara’s low, cigarette-scarred voice complaining about the food, the know-it-all psychiatrist, and the crazy people in her group sessions. “They’re all crazy-crazy, know what I mean? Not like me.”
Meanwhile, Emily knew, from talking to her parents, that the institute was on the verge of kicking Clara out for refusal to cooperate. “She lies,” her mom explained. “She simply will not tell the truth about anything in her sessions. She lies to her psychiatrist. She lies to the nurses, to the other patients in group. And she refuses to take blame for anything. It’s all part of the disease.” Emily asked why, then, they were planning on letting Clara leave. Shouldn’t she stay until they’d cured the disease? “Yes and no,” her mom said, clicking her tongue impatiently. “Hasn’t your father explained this to you? They used to think Clara had a mood disorder. Mood disorders are stabilized pretty easily with medication. You know this, Emily, you took psych”—Emily’s parents were fond of reminding her of this, by way of suggesting that she had other skills, that she could leave this ridiculous acting business anytime and become a therapist, like her father—“but Clara never responded well to any of the medications. They never really worked. You know.” Emily did know. What she didn’t know was why her mother felt the need to rehash Clara’s sad history each time Emily asked a question about her sister’s current situation.
“So now, this new doctor says the other doctors were wrong. She has borderline personality disorder—”
“Mom, I know. But I don’t get why the doctor is trying to send her home for lying, if lying is a symptom of her disorder.”
“It’s because of money, Emily. Personality disorders take time—months, years—to treat. You can’t just give someone like Clara a pill and send them on their way. The doctor thinks Clara would need to stay at Brattleboro for a year in order to make some real progress. And there is absolutely no way we can afford a year at that place. The well has run dry, my dear.” She let out a brittle laugh. “Since she can’t stay long enough to be treated properly, there’s no point in keeping her there for much longer, unless she has some sort of breakthrough.”
“What does that mean?” Emily asked.
Her mother sighed. “She needs to start talking. Or show some sign of progress. Like that she’s in touch with reality.” For the time being, she told Emily, they were giving Clara “coping classes,” which would help her develop techniques for managing her anger, for keeping the various elements of her life in check. She was learning to draw up lists of pros and cons, which would help her make decisions (she would often become paralyzed at, say, the grocery store, unable to choose between Raisin Bran and Special K), to balance her checkbook, to keep a calendar on which she would write down the due date for her rent and credit card bills and shifts at work, and other seemingly basic human activities that Clara had never mastered.