I sat up straight, remembering The Sound of Music. Hadn’t that musical featured a talent show—a show within a show—and hadn’t the von Trapps used the show as cover when they made their escape?
There were talent shows in rehab. I knew that from the Sandra-Bullock-gets-sober film, 28 Days, which they’d shown us. Could that be the answer? Suggest a show, come up with an act, convince Dave that I’d gotten a day pass . . . well. I’d figure out the specifics later, but for now, I could at least see a glimmer of possibility.
TWENTY-THREE
The next day at breakfast, I brought it up, as casually as I could. “You guys all know The Sound of Music, right?”
Blank looks from around the table. “Is it like American Idol?” ventured one of the Ashleys.
“No. Well, actually, you know what? There is a talent competition. See, there’s this big family, and the mother has died, so the father hires a governess.”
The Ashley made a face. “You can’t hire a governess. They have to be elected.”
“No, no, not a governor. A governess. It’s a fancy way of saying babysitter. So anyhow, she takes care of the kids, and the father starts to fall in love with her . . .”
Aubrey immediately launched into a p**n ographic soundtrack, thrusting her hips as she sang, “Bow chicka bow-wow . . .”
“Cut it out!” I said sternly. “This is a classic!” I remembered Christopher Plummer and Julie Andrews dancing on the veranda, his arms around her tiny waist, her eyes gazing up at him like he was the God she’d failed to find in the convent. “So they fall in love, and the kids, who’ve never gotten more than ten minutes of their father’s time, start to straighten up and fly right. There’s, like, six kids, and one of them’s a sixteen-year-old, and she’s in love with the messenger boy . . .”
“The messenger boy!” Lena snickered. “She needs a man with a real job.” She shook her head. “Ridin’ around on his bus pass, probably. Fuck that shit.”
“Anyhow. The Nazis organize this big talent show, and the Von Trapp Family Singers enter . . .”
“Wait, wait. That’s their name? That’s a terrible name.”
“Well, this was a long time ago,” I said. “Cut them some slack. So who’s into it?”
I looked around the circle. The Ashley was peeling strips of pink polish off of her fingernails. Aubrey was scribbling in her notebook—probably a list of everything she intended to do when they let her go. We all had versions of that list. The women my age wrote about the luxuries we missed, the foods we wanted to eat, the clothes we’d neglected to pack, taking a shower in which the water would not emerge in a lukewarm trickle, reading books where every single story did not involve an identical arc of despair and recovery, or watching made-for-TV movies that did not involve some C-list actor in the grip of either DTs or a divine revelation. The young girls, as far as I could tell, all wanted drugs and sex, typically in that order, often from the same person.
I sat up straight and breathed in from my diaphragm, trying to remember back to high-school choir. “Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens . . . Bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens . . . Brown paper packages tied up with strings . . .”
“These are a few of my favorite things!” sang Shannon. She was looking better than she had during Share. Her skin didn’t look as dull, and her hair was shiny. “I used to watch it with my parents. It’s cute!”
“It’s corny,” said Lena.
“But we could change it!” I said. “Like . . .” I thought for a minute. “Dealers on corners and elbows with track marks. Cop cars and dive bars and—”
“Blow jobs in state parks,” said Mary, who immediately clapped her hands over her mouth and giggled.
“Silver-white Beamers, got repo’d last spring. These are a few of my favorite things!” I sang. “When the dog bites! When the cops call! When I’m feeling sad . . . I simply remember my favorite pills, and then I won’t feel so bad.”
Everyone applauded. Mary frowned. “Do you think it glamorizes drug use?”
“Maybe we should do a song about how bad it is,” Shannon offered. “Like, do you guys know Avenue Q? There’s this song called ‘Mix Tape.’ ” She straightened her shoulders and began to sing in a low, pleasant alto. “ ‘He likes me. I think he likes me. But does he like me, like me, like I like him? Will we be friends, or something more? I think he’s interested, but I’m not sure . . .’ ”
She thought for a minute, and then sang, “Piss test. Just failed my piss test. I didn’t know I’d have one . . . but then I did! And I smoked crack. And had some beers. And now I’m sitting here . . . all full of fear!”