I’m so nervous the rest of the weekend that I can barely breathe. Every time my phone buzzes, I’m convinced it’s Phil calling to fire me, or Mario Lopez, cohost of Access Hollywood, angling for an interview with the unhinged gorilla lady who went full Karen on the world’s most beloved puppy rescuer. On Sunday afternoon, I burrow into the soft cushions of the living room couch and sip a glass of wine as I obsessively refresh Kai’s social media pages. If he decides to publicly drag me, I want to see the post right away, so that I have time to pack a go-bag before any of his rabid fans show up to seek revenge.
“Whatcha watching?” a voice behind me asks, startling me so badly that I almost spill wine all over the cream-colored couch.
I turn around to see my grandmother’s best friend Trudy studying my iPad over my shoulder, and I tilt the screen away from her quickly. “Oh, nothing. Just browsing.”
The last thing I want to do is get stuck in a conversation with Trudy, whose two favorite hobbies are collecting embroidered blouses and bringing up the sore subject of my ex-boyfriend. She and Nona grew close after meeting at a widows’ support group twenty years ago, and while I admire their long-lasting friendship, I try to avoid Trudy’s gossipy inquiries whenever I can.
“How was the fundraiser?” Nona asks, following Trudy into the living room.
“Is that what you wore?” Trudy asks, eyeing my ratty Ohio State T-shirt with obvious surprise. “It’s not khaki.”
I sigh and take a generous sip of wine. “The picnic was fine,” I lie. “And of course I didn’t wear a T-shirt with holes in it to the fundraiser. I didn’t wear khaki, either. I’m not totally inept.”
Trudy, who’s currently sporting a collared sweatshirt with a beaming basset hound on it and has zero right to judge my fashion choices, shrugs. “If you say so. Was Nick there?”
I take another swig of wine. If I keep drinking at this rate, I’ll be seeing two-headed basset hounds before the conversation is over. “I’m not sure. And if he had been, I would have avoided him anyway.”
Trudy helps herself to a handful of Cheez-Its from the box beside me. “That’s too bad. I always liked Nick. Such a nice young man. Do you know he changed a flat tire for me once?”
I wish the iPad was a book so I could slam it shut, because pulling my index finger away from the screen doesn’t have the same effect. I’m fully aware that Nona, Trudy, and their entire social circle liked Nick. Loved Nick. Their friend Shirley was so disappointed by our breakup that I had to hand her a wad of Kleenex at Nona’s Galentine’s Day party. If I have to listen one more time while Trudy rhapsodizes about the time Nick said her perm looked nice, I might lose my shit.
“Yes, Trudy,” I say, making a concerted effort not to grit my teeth. “I helped him change the tire, remember?”
“And he had such nice buttocks,” she adds, grabbing another cracker and ignoring my response completely. “It’s really a pity he doesn’t come around anymore.”
“He’s not dead, Gertrude,” I snap, running out of patience and Cheez-Its. “If you like his ass so much, why not ask him out yourself? He was a big fan of your perm.”
She lets out a high-pitched whistle, as if to say, My, my, somebody’s testy, but Nona places a soothing hand on the top of my head.
“Speaking of nice buttocks,” my grandmother says, nodding toward my iPad. “He’s quite the looker, eh?”
I know she’s only trying to change the subject so that Trudy and I don’t rip each other’s heads off, but I scramble to pause the video playing on the screen.
“Oooh, On the Wild Side!” Trudy chirps, batting my hand away from the iPad. “Love that show. That Kai Bridges sure is a tall glass of water.”
My petrified refreshing of Kai’s social media led me down a YouTube clip rabbit hole of his greatest hits, and I seriously regret not doing my Insta-stalking in the privacy of my bedroom.
“He’s not that tall,” I protest. “And I wouldn’t call him a looker, exactly.”
Nona blinks at me and then at the iPad, where an on-screen Kai traverses through a grassy plain in a military green Jeep. Wearing a gray Patagonia jacket, a safari-style hat, and a mischievous grin, he keeps one hand on the wheel and rests the other on the back of the passenger seat. It’s very Crocodile Dundee meets GQ, and by the time he stops the Jeep next to a watering hole and removes his jacket, both Trudy and Nona are practically salivating.
“You were saying?” Nona prods as the camera swoons over Kai, zooming out so that the waning rays of the sunset shine on his auburn hair.
“Wowza!” on-screen Kai says in a lilting accent as an elephant approaches the hole and lowers its trunk into the water.
“Wowza,” Trudy repeats, pressing one hand to her chest. “Magnificent.”
I’m not sure if she’s talking about the elephant or the annoying human who’s probably going to wreck my career, and I pause the clip as Kai removes his safari hat and runs a hand through his hair like he’s a star-crossed lover in a Taylor Swift video.
Before Trudy can protest, I hear the patter of footsteps in the foyer, and I down the remaining contents of my wineglass as Mia and Karina enter the living room, Mia’s perpetually slobbery Saint Bernard Dynamite trailing behind them.
“Lucy!” Mia greets me. She’s wearing her hair in twin braids high up on either side of her head, and between those and the mound of curly bangs piled on her forehead, she looks like the love child of Pippi Longstocking and Curly Sue.
I wince as Dynamite places his enormous front paws in my lap, but I’m grateful for a distraction from listening to Nona and Trudy wax poetic about Kai’s rear end. “Hey, Mia.”
“Want to come to lunch with us, Luce?” Nona asks, grabbing Dynamite’s collar before he can curl into a gigantic ball on my lap. “We’re going to the Pearl, and I know you love their fried oysters.”
I do love fried oysters, but the hopeful look on Karina’s face when Nona invites me makes my stomach clench. I’d rather get a root canal than join in on an unnecessary outing with my mother, and besides, I have big plans to spend the rest of the day hyperventilating about my job security.
“Thanks, but I have a ton of research to do.”
Karina’s face falls, but she quickly recovers with a half smile. “We’re stopping for ice cream afterward. I’ll bring you something from Handel’s. The butter pecan cone is your favorite, right?”
“Bring one for me, too,” Mia tells her. “I don’t want to go to lunch, either. I’d rather stay here and help Lucy with her research.” Before I can protest, she unzips her backpack and retrieves a handful of pencils and a notebook bearing JoJo Siwa’s beaming face. “See? I’ve got supplies and everything.”
Her expression is that of a shelter puppy hoping to be loved by a new family, and I can’t bring myself to point out that I don’t need pencils or notebooks. I’m not writing a Kai Bridges–themed burn book, after all—not that it’s the worst idea in the world.
“Um, well,” I stammer, trying to think of a gentle way to break her heart, “I actually don’t—”
“That’s lovely, Mia,” Nona interrupts, shooting me a look that says, How do you like your free rent and 24/7 access to my wine cellar? “I’m sure Lucy can use your help.”
I curse my grandmother silently, but I know she’s right. Lots of people would kill for the generosity she’s shown me, and the least I can do to repay her is not be an asshole to innocent Mia.
“Really?” Mia asks, her face lighting up.
The fact that spending time with me is worth skipping dinner threatens to fill me with guilt, but I push the pang away. It’s not my fault that Mia and I aren’t close, and I can hardly be expected to rearrange my busy schedule to accommodate her.
But I guess I can let her sit next to me while I panic.
“Sure,” I reply, not sounding sure at all.
Mia doesn’t seem to notice my reluctance. “Every good research team needs snacks,” she declares, skipping toward the kitchen. “I’ll be right back!”
As Dynamite lumbers after Mia, Nona runs a hand over my hair. “Thank you. Spending time with you means the world to your sister.”
Half sister, I’m tempted to correct her. Sister implies that Mia and I grew up fighting over clothes and toys and the remote control and entrusting each other with our deepest, darkest secrets, but that’s a bond we’ll never have. After all, I’m nineteen years older, and before Karina showed up in Columbus with a dad-joke-machine husband and a gangly preteen in tow, Mia was barely a blip on my radar. And while it’s not her fault that the same mother who lovingly stitches Girl Scout patches onto her vest dropped ten-year-old me like a hot potato, it doesn’t change the fact that spending time with her makes my chest ache.
“I’ll bring you back two scoops of fudge ripple,” my grandmother promises, lowering her voice and pressing a kiss to my cheek. The silver locks of her hair tickle my ear, and the scent of vanilla and Chanel No. 5 lingers when she pulls away.
I nod toward the iPad. “Thanks. Better get back to it.”
I don’t need to tell Nona, who knows I haven’t touched butter pecan in years, that I’ll have another excuse ready the next time Karina invites me out, just like I blamed my busy schedule for skipping Alfie’s birthday meal. Because as much as I try to pretend it doesn’t bother me, Nona understands that seeing Karina and Mia together for an entire dinner reminds me of the inescapable fact that will forever set my sister and me apart: we might have the same mother, but we had very different moms.
And there’s not an ice cream cone in the world that can fix that.
Within minutes, Mia’s assembled a pile of lopsided sandwiches on the coffee table.
“It’s fairy bread,” she says, pointing to the slices of bread loaded with peanut butter, sprinkles, and marshmallows. She plops onto the couch and slides an iPad out of her backpack. “So, what are we researching?”
I watch as Dynamite sniffs the bread, coming dangerously close to dripping slobber onto the stack of sandwiches. “It’s not what, it’s who,” I explain. “And when did you get an iPad?”
“Last week. Mommy said she’d get me one if I promised to stop practicing my harmonica before sunrise. I’m trying to learn the Mario Brothers theme song.” She snuggles closer to her dog, and it occurs to me that if it weren’t for my strained relationship with Karina, I might like Mia a hell of a lot.
“Do you play any instruments?” she asks, wiggling her toes against my hip. The casual familiarity of the gesture unnerves me, and I slide farther away and place my iPad between us.
“No. I took voice lessons when I was little, but I wasn’t very good.”
Just as Karina’s TV show Guilty Pleasures took off, back when my mom fantasized that she could fashion me into a young Melanie Griffith to her Tippi Hedren and we’d be the next mother-daughter duo to take Hollywood by storm, she signed me up for singing lessons with a lady who’d trained half a dozen Nickelodeon stars. But by the third session, when I still couldn’t squeeze out a round of the Mommy made me wash my M&M’s vocal warmup without making my own ears bleed, Karina gave up on my musical abilities. I’ll never forget the mortified bewilderment she studied me with as I followed her to the car after class, like she couldn’t possibly fathom how she, who performed with the tenderness of Judy Garland and the hip flexibility of Jennifer Lopez, birthed a creature who sounded like Alanis Morissette being tortured underwater.
“Sounds fun,” Mia says, not even flinching when Dynamite licks a glob of peanut butter off her chin.
“It wasn’t,” I say flatly.
Her eyes widen like I’ve scolded her, and I instantly regret my harsh tone. It wasn’t Mia who treated me like I was a disappointment. But her excitement returns full force when she points at my iPad, where on-screen Kai’s face is frozen into a grin that could, despite my reluctance to admit it, melt the hardest of hearts.
“Wait, you’re researching Kai Bridges? I love him!” Mia coos. “The episode where he gets licked by a sun bear is hilarious. And look, have you watched his dance with Ellen? My friend Abby almost fainted when she saw it.”
Before I can say “sun bear,” Mia hoists her iPad in front of my nose, and I’m watching Kai strut onto the stage of The Ellen DeGeneres Show, his hips snug in a pair of dark-wash jeans that show off the bulk of his thighs. He sways from side to side, moving with more rhythm than I’d expect from a man who has a large stick up his ass. When he turns his booty toward the audience, gyrating in a hypnotizing fashion that helps me understand why Abby got light-headed, I have to take a bite of fairy bread to stop myself from panting.
But that easygoing, ass-shaking Kai is nothing like the guy who stole my book.
When the dance is over, Mia types Kai’s name into Google and scrolls through a dizzying number of hits. She reads aloud from an Interview magazine article detailing his remarkable childhood: he had twelve stamps in his passport by the age of two, and his parents, American primatologist Dr. Charlotte Kimber and South African wildlife photographer Alexander Bridges, had divorced, remarried, and divorced again before Kai was old enough to read.
“Did you know Kai’s mom saved a bunch of gorillas in Rwanda?” Mia asks. She points at an image of a tiny, gangly-limbed Kai poking his head out of a canvas tent, a notebook-toting Dr. Kimber looping an arm around his shoulders. “Virunga National Park, 1997,” Mia reads. “Wow.”
Mia asking if I’m familiar with Dr. Kimber is like asking Harry Potter if Voldemort was bad, and I nod. Kai’s mother isn’t just my professional idol; she was my childhood vision of the perfect mother. After Karina shipped me off to live at Nona’s so she could enjoy Guilty Pleasures’ success without me dragging her down, I fantasized about what it would be like to have a mom who loved me. My first pretend mom was Nona’s neighbor Mrs. Elgine, who styled her daughters’ hair into matching French braids and always carried Skittles in her purse. Then it was the Lizzie McGuire mom, followed by the ever-patient and awesome-haired Marge Simpson. Finally, after Nona took me to visit Zuri at the zoo and kickstarted my gorilla obsession, she bought me a copy of Dr. Kimber’s Majesty on the Mountain. After that, I retired my fantasies of being the fourth Simpson kid and reimagined myself as Dr. Kimber’s only daughter. In my daydreams, Mommy Kimber and I wore matching braids and traipsed through the jungle hand in hand, eating beef jerky and berries and tracking mountain gorillas until our feet ached. Sometimes Kai, whose childhood adventures at Dr. Kimber’s research camp are documented in her book, came, too.
Carrying a satchel full of Goldfish crackers and Hug juice barrels through the woods behind Nona’s subdivision, I’d spot a white-tailed deer and pretend it was a gorilla. In my fantasy, Dr. Kimber and I would return to camp after a hard day’s work, and we’d cook stew and play Uno, and she’d never force me to suffer through humiliating singing lessons or call me a disappointment.
She’d sic a mountain goat on anyone who tried.
“Whoa, there’s even a movie about her,” Mia continues, unbothered by my silence. “Have you seen it?”
“Uh, yes. Probably a hundred times.”
The movie, titled Majesty on the Mountain like the book, starred a glammed-down Diane Lane and followed Dr. Kimber’s attempts to study a gorilla troop led by the proud silverback Taji. In the film’s most famous and heartbreaking scene, a band of poachers murders Taji, and eleven-year-old me was so scarred by it that I almost vomited up my popcorn.
“Well, if you like it, then I know I’ll like it, too. Let’s watch,” Mia says, grabbing the Fire TV Stick remote. “For research.”
“You might have nightmares,” I warn.
“Don’t worry, I’m brave.” Ignoring my protests, Mia hits the play button, and the opening credits roll on Nona’s TV.
I know the dialogue by heart, and I find myself mouthing the characters’ lines as we watch the actor versions of Dr. Kimber, Kai, and her research team trudge through the thick Rwandan forest. At first, Taji’s troop runs for safety anytime Dr. Kimber approaches, but by the second half of the movie, she’s earned their trust, and Taji looks on as a young gorilla drops tree bark onto Dr. Kimber’s head and playfully cuddles into her lap.
Mia gasps at every plot twist that threatens the team’s quest to save the gorillas from extinction—tense skirmishes with poachers, run-ins with corrupt governments, Dr. Kimber’s bouts of malaria and depression—and coos at every shot of the majestic animals. My heart races as we get closer to the pivotal scene, and when the gap-toothed actor playing a young Kai and a sweating Diane Lane zip up their raincoats and head out to find Taji’s troop, I grip Dynamite’s paw for comfort.
“Oh no,” Mia whispers as the score reaches a haunting crescendo and young Kai steps on a poacher’s snare, dropping to the ground and screaming in pain. Diane Lane turns back to help him just as a band of gun-wielding poachers cuts between her and the gorillas, and the camera lingers on her terror-stricken face as she recognizes the gut-wrenching decision before her: leave her son in agony and risk the poachers finding him, or abandon Taji’s troop to the same fate.
“Mom! Help!” little actor-Kai screams as Taji roars a warning to his troop, and poor, tortured Diane Lane takes three steps toward the gorillas before turning back toward her son.
By the end of the scene, Mia and I are both in tears, and Dynamite uses his long tongue to lick Mia’s away. But our heartache is nothing compared to the tragedy played out on-screen, where Dr. Kimber saves Kai but Taji, her beloved friend, dies trying to protect his troop from the poachers. Nona and Karina get home just as the movie flashes forward several years to the opening of the Charlotte Kimber Research Center near Mount Karisimbi, a conservation station dedicated to noble Taji’s memory.
“Crap. I don’t think we brought enough ice cream for this,” Nona says when she finds us crying into our shirtsleeves.
“I’m too sad to eat,” Mia announces, and when she scoots Dynamite off the couch so she can slide closer to me, I don’t protest.
Because what I just witnessed on-screen—the decision of a mother who loved her child so dearly that she sacrificed everything for him—hits me as hard now as it did when I was little. The thought of having a mom like that, a mom who wouldn’t abandon her kid, whether to a snare or to achieve her dreams of stardom, fills me with a heavy longing.
“You know, I met Diane Lane at a casting call once,” Karina says, as if I needed the reminder that she’s no Dr. Kimber. “Super nice lady, and she had the shiniest hair I’ve ever seen.”
Mia, who doesn’t seem to give two shits about the sheen of Diane’s hair, blows her nose into the collar of her T-shirt.
My phone pings, and I realize I got so sucked into the movie that I forgot about my job-related panic. But it rushes back to me when I glance at the screen to see a text from Phil: Please meet me in my office at 8am tomorrow.
My heart plummets to my knees, and my fingers tremble as I unlock my phone to type out a response.
“You okay, Lucy?” Karina asks, studying me with a look of concern. “You’re shaking.”
“I’m just upset about what happened to poor Taji,” I lie, doing my best to steady my hands. “It makes the Shadow-gets-stuck-in-a-hole scene from Homeward Bound look lighthearted.”
I try to sound calm, as if my world’s not on the verge of imploding, but I can’t hide the flood of panic that makes my voice waver. Because unlike my mother and Diane Lane, I’m not an actress.
And after tomorrow, I might not be a zookeeper, either.