“This isn't working,” Sabrina said calmly. “I know you don't want it, but you need help. You need to learn some tricks of the trade here, or you're going to drive yourself and everyone else nuts. What can I do to help?” Sabrina asked, cleaning up the bathroom.
“Just leave me alone!” she shouted at her and locked herself in her room.
“Fine,” Sabrina steamed, but said nothing more. In the end, she had to call an electrician, a carpeting firm to dry the carpets, and a painter to repair the damage. Annie was furious with both her sister and herself. It took two more incidents for Annie to agree to at least think about going to school in September, to learn how to deal constructively with being blind. Until then she pretended to herself that it was a temporary condition and she could deal with it on her own. She couldn't. That much was clear to all of them, and her anger at all of them was very wearing. She was no longer anyone they recognized. She wouldn't even let Sabrina or Candy help her comb or brush her hair, and the second week she was home she chopped it off herself. The results were disastrous, and Sabrina found her sitting in her room, on the floor, sobbing, with her long auburn hair all around her. She looked like she'd been attacked by a buzz saw, and when Sabrina saw her, she put her arms around her and they both cried.
“Okay,” Annie said finally, resting her head on her sister's shoulder, “okay…I can't do this…I hate being blind… I'll go to school… but I don't want a dog.”
“You don't have to have a dog.” But she clearly needed help. Just seeing her in the mental state she was in was depressing their father too. He felt helpless when he watched her stumble and fall, pour hot coffee on her hand as she tried to fill the cup, or spill her food like a two-year-old.
“Can't you do something for her?” he asked Sabrina miserably.
“I'm trying,” she said, doing her best not to snap at him. She was calling Tammy five and six times a day, who was feeling guilty for having left, and still hadn't found anyone to fill the pregnant star's place. Her life was in turmoil too, and she felt as though she was letting her family down by being in L.A. All of them were desperately unhappy in one way or another, and Annie most of all.
She finally let Candy fix her hair. She was too embarrassed to go to their mother's hairdresser to let them clean it up. She didn't want them to see her that way, blind, with hair that looked like it had been lopped off with a machete. She had used her desk scissors, and it looked pretty bad. Her hair had been beautiful, silky, and long, much like Candy's, only longer and a reddish-brown color instead of blond.
“Okay, new hairdo coming right up,” Candy said, sitting on the floor with her the day after she'd cut off her hair. Until then, she looked like she'd just been let out of prison. Her hair was sticking up all over the place, some bits were short, others were slightly longer, and all of it was a mess. “I'm actually pretty good at this,” Candy reassured her. “I'm always cleaning up people's hair after shoots, when some nutjob psycho hairdresser does something that fucks the model's hair up even if it looked great at the shoot. But the good news here,” Candy said cheerfully, “is that you can't see what I'm doing. So if I fuck it up, you won't get mad.” What she said was so awful that it made Annie laugh, and she sat, looking docile, for the entire procedure as Candy snipped, tugged, brushed, combed, and snipped some more. It looked stylish and adorable when she was through, and Annie looked like an elegant Italian elf with a slightly spiked top and a little longer on the sides, and all of it framed her face with its shining copper color and set off her green eyes. Candy was just admiring her work when Sabrina walked into her bedroom, and saw hair all over the floor. The room was a disaster, but Annie looked prettier than ever, as though she'd gone to a top hairdresser in London or Paris for her new style.
“Wow!” she said, as she stood in the doorway, impressed by how competent Candy was. It was her business, after all, to look stylish, sexy, and fashionable. It was the best haircut Sabrina had seen in years. “Annie, you look fantastic! It's a whole new you. And now we know what Candy can do if her modeling career ever tanks. You can definitely open a hair salon. You can do mine any day.”
“Do I really look okay?” Annie asked, looking worried. It had been a major gesture of confidence to let Candy cut her hair. She had had no idea how bad it looked after her irate hack job-totally awful and scary-looking. And Candy had transformed it into something magical and cute. It was sexy and young, like Annie herself, and actually looked better on her than her long straight hair, which Candy had always told her made her look like a hippie, and half the time she wore it in a braid. She had gone from Mother Earth to movie star in half an hour, at Candy's hands.
“You look a lot better than okay,” Sabrina reassured her. “You look like the cover of Vogue. Our baby sister definitely has a knack with hair. All these hidden talents we seem to have. I seem to have missed my calling as a maid. Which reminds me, ladies, if we're going to play Hair Salon in the future”-it was a game they'd loved as children, doing each other's hair and nails, and creating a gigantic mess-“do you think we could do it in the bathroom? I'd like to remind you that Hannah is off this week, and the cleaning staff is me. So please…”
“Oops…,” Candy said, looking embarrassed. She hadn't even noticed. She never did. She was so used to other people waiting on her and cleaning up after her, on shoots and even in her apartment, that she was totally unaware of the mess she'd made. There was hair everywhere. “Sorry, Sabrina. I'll clean it up.”
“Sorry,” Annie added, wishing she could help, but there was no way she could see the hair, or even sense it, to help clean it up.
“Don't worry about it,” Sabrina said to Annie. “You can do other stuff to help me out. Maybe you could help Dad load the dishwasher. He must have a vision problem too-he keeps putting dishes in it with food on them. I don't think he gets how it works. The dishwasher just cements the food onto the plates and cutlery. I guess Mom never let him help.”
“I'll go downstairs,” Annie said, getting to her feet and feeling her way out of the room. She looked absolutely beautiful with her new haircut, and Sabrina told her so again.
She found Annie and her father in the kitchen twenty minutes later. Annie could feel the food on the plates and rinsed them off. She did a much better job of it than their father, who wasn't blind, just helpless and spoiled. It was depressing to see how lost he was since their mother had died. The strong, wise father they had all looked up to had vanished before their eyes. He was weak, scared, confused, depressed, and cried all the time. Sabrina had suggested seeing a shrink to him too, and he refused, although he needed one as much as Annie, who seemed to be liking hers.
She let Annie babysit for him, while she and Candy went into the city to get ready for their move. Annie had already been to the house and felt her way around it. She said she liked her room, although she couldn't see it. She liked having her own space, and said it was a decent size, and she was pleased with having Candy across the hall, in case she needed help. But she didn't want anyone's assistance unless she asked. She had made that clear. She got into jams constantly, but tried valiantly to work them out for herself, sometimes with good results. At other times she didn't, which usually led to temper tantrums and tears. She wasn't easy to live with these days, but she had a more-than-valid excuse. Sabrina hoped that going to a training school for the blind would improve her attitude. If not, Annie was going to be tough to be around for a long time. Between their father's crushing depression over losing his wife and Annie's anger over her blindness, the atmosphere around them was extremely stressful for them all. And Sabrina noticed that Candy was eating less and less. Her eating disorder seemed to be in full bloom since their mother's death. The only normal person Sabrina could talk to was Chris, who had the patience of a saint, but he was busy too, with his latest mammoth suit. Sabrina felt as though she was being pulled in fourteen directions, caring for all of them and organizing the move, especially now that she was back at work.