“I do want to. Seriously, I do. But this summer is really important...” I eye Lilli, who, I notice, has stopped chewing her crunchy bacon so she can hear better. “This might be the last summer...you know...”
I’m not sure how much to safely say in front of Lilli. My sisters know I have a different bio father, and they know I have another set of older siblings, but we generally keep the details scarce. I don’t know if it’s because of our Midwestern reluctance to expose any complicated feelings or because we’re such a tight unit—the congregation at our church and our teachers nicknamed us Triple Threat Jepsens—but we don’t acknowledge that our perfect, quirky little family is actually a lot more complicated than it seems.
Mom eyes me and heaves a sigh. “You’re being so melodramatic,” she says, without a trace of irony.
Keep your mouth shut, keep your mouth shut, I lecture myself, knowing full well the cost of calling my mother out, especially when she’s in one of her edgy moods.
“Vanessa, it’s not melodrama,” Peter says, and I feel a warm rush of affection for my calm, logical stepdad—though, the term step is verboten in our house. As is half, which is why my sisters and I never, ever refer to each other as half siblings. “AJ’s summertime with her family is incredibly important. But as a father...” He pauses, like he knows how complicated it is, how knotted all our ties are. Lilli stares at him, eager to hear more, and Mom makes a short hiss of warning. Peter plows on anyway, bless. “As a father, I know any dad would be happy for his kid to go ahead and do this, even if it meant losing some time together. Okay, I said my piece. Vanessa? You look like you want to jump in.”
Peter is an incredibly skilled diplomat—which I guess he’d have to be to navigate the big personalities of the four Jepsen women on a daily basis.
“Just do whatever you want, AJ.” Mom starts clearing the table with a dangerous amount of force. Peter winces as two handmade Italian serving bowls clank together sharply. “I have more than enough on my plate figuring out what I should do with Marnie this summer. Or are we just letting everyone do whatever they feel like doing, Peter?”
Peter puts a hand on Mom’s wrist, and she stops, closes her eyes, and takes a deep breath. He pulls the bowls out of her hands and places them on the table, then tugs her onto his lap. “Hey, hey, listen to me. I know you’re stressed,” he says, rubbing her back in slow circles. Mom seems to melt against him. “You’re our glue, honey, and that’s not an easy position to be in. What can we do to help?”
She nestles her face into his neck, and he runs a hand over her red hair, the same color as Marnie’s. “You’re our rock. What would I do without you?” She adjusts the glasses she knocked crooked on his face. “Thank you. I’m just feeling really overwhelmed. This summer is going to be so complicated, and you know I don’t do well when I can’t make a plan.”
I nod to Lilli, and she and I start to—very quietly—clear the table. We tiptoe into the kitchen to do the dishes and let our parents finish talking in peace.
“Where is Marnie?” I ask, my voice low enough that it can’t be heard over the running water.
Lilli grabs a plate from my outstretched hand and rubs it dry with a linen dish towel. “She got into another huge fight with Mom about volleyball camp when you were at Lex’s saying good-bye last night. She slammed her door and everything. And then she listened to, like, every Lana Del Rey album super loud on repeat, and Mom said she had to go meditate with her noise-canceling headphones on or she’d break the door down and smash Marnie’s speakers with a sledgehammer.”
“Jesus Christ.” Jepsen House Rule 12 forbids door-slamming, and House Rule 15 says music must be played at a respectful level. “So, that’s why Mom’s in such a bad mood?”
Lilli keeps rubbing the plate, even though it’s clearly dry.
I take it out of her hands. “Lil?”
She looks up at me. “You won’t tell anyone if I tell you something, right?”
For a second I panic, thinking about the secrets I already keep for Marnie—secrets that I constantly wonder if I should have let an adult know about a long time ago. But this is Lilli; my youngest sister is as sweet and sunshiny as Marnie is impetuous and mercurial.
“You can tell me anything. You know that.”
She nestles closer to me, tucks a piece of hair behind her ear, her thin fingers shaking so hard the glitter polish throws sparkles around the room, and whispers, “One of my YouTube followers is the daughter of a big, big record-label CEO, and Ronnie heard this rumor that she played my Advent song for her mother, and they’ve been, like, playing it nonstop at the offices and talking about it and about maybe setting up a meeting with me. I guess they’re, like, worried I’m so young and all, but they really, really like my music. That’s the rumor, anyway.” Her mouth pulls into a tiny bud, and her eyes bug out wide.
“Ronnie told you that?” Lilli’s agent is a very businesslike, serious woman who shoots straight from the hip. She would never give Lilli false hope. If she told her about a supposed rumor, it’s likely way more than unsubstantiated whispers.
“Mmm-hmm. So Mom is, like, freaking out because if this works out—” Lilli cuts that thought off before she can formulate anything concrete. “And it’s, like, so weird. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know if I should post a new song? Should I do a vlog? Should I just, like, chill out? Mom and I have been talking about it, and there’s no way to know what to do.”
“What do you want to do, Lilli?” I ask, but I know the answer is never simple, at least not for the Jepsen girls. When you have the weight of so many opportunities and expectations pressing on you all the time, everything is complicated.
“I think I know what I don’t want. I don’t want to get pressured to make music that I think sucks or that I’ll be embarrassed about. And I don’t want to do a whole, like, makeover of who I am, you know? I talked to Pastor Kitty for, like, two hours after youth group last week, and we talked about what makes a truly good life versus what makes a life everyone envies from the outside, and it’s just really hard to know how to do what I want without losing my way.” Lilli presses her fingers to her throat, the home of her mermaid-gorgeous voice, and her delicate little face crumples with worry.
I turn off the water and wrap my arms around her. “You are so talented and so smart, Lil. Sometimes I feel like you have things figured out better than I ever will. I know you’re thinking about things and praying about them, and I think that’s maybe half the solution to your problems right there. As long as you keep reflecting on things, I think it’s all going to be great. And you know I’m always here for you. We all are.”
She rubs her face on my shoulder and breathes out a little sigh. “I wish you could come with me and Mom. You and Marnie. I always feel better when you guys are with me.” She pulls away and looks up at me, her golden hair fuzzed around her head like a halo. Her eyes narrow with mischief, and she gives me a wicked, teasing grin. “Too bad you guys have voices like bullfrogs or we could have been, like, the Beach Boys or Heart or something.”