I yank him behind a tree as a young woman zooms up the jagged driveway on a motorcycle and unclips her helmet, finger-combing her brown-blond pixie cut. She must have ridden here from her vacation home in Aspen, which she’s turned into a recording studio. She’s wearing a long navy tunic over a black lace skirt, over striped leggings and old-timey boots with a zillion decorative buttons up the sides. It’s a bohemian-Victorian style that she calls botorian. “That’s my sister Kaia,” I hiss. The L.A. Dodgers ball cap she removes from her backpack to pull over her head shouldn’t go with that outfit, but it does. One more detail to be envious of.

I narrow my eyes at curtains ruffling in an upper window. Judgment Time has begun. My heart leapfrogs around like it’s looking for an exit, but I remind myself that this time I have backup.

“The thing that really sticks in my grandmother’s craw is that I’m the spitting image of her, and she doesn’t approve of what I’m doing with that image. Also, I’m named after her. As far as she’s concerned, I’ve blighted the name, too.”

Hall nods in agreement. “You do look like you could’ve been twins.”

My brother and sisters (beneath Athena’s peroxide) have medium brownish hair and blue eyes, like our dad. I inherited Grandma Bettie Watson’s jet-black hair, her thick, expressive eyebrows, and eyes so dark you can’t distinguish iris from pupil. As a child, all I ever heard was that I looked exactly like my glamorous Hollywood grandmother. No matter what I do, I can’t weaken the resemblance. Whether I’m au naturel or wearing heavy eyeliner and glittering smoky eyes, denim halter tops or a little black dress, she’s already perfected it, and I look like I’m trying to copy one of her countless phases. I refuse to wear the retro swing dresses I used to be famous for anymore, which ticks her off because she’s adamant that those suit me the best. My wardrobe of late consists mainly of black tights, black sweatshirts three sizes too large, and a black rain slicker. I’ve been dressing like a burglar so that no one will notice me picking flowers and pumpkins from the neighbor’s yard, to garnish my Instagram selfies.

You would be so much prettier if you did something with your hair is Grandma’s favorite parting remark (I haven’t changed my hair up in ages; it hangs limply to my shoulders and doesn’t hold a curl. It bores her), especially while sobbing: You could have been the face of Chanel. Chanel made the offer when I was an excited, Who Cares What’s In The Contract, I Want To Do It fourteen-year-old, but Dad said no. He didn’t like that I accompanied my grandmother on red carpets, or that my picture was so public when I was a child purely because I looked so uncannily like Bettie Watson.

All of the big fights my parents had when I was growing up were about parenting differences. Mom’s a deeply compassionate, people-pleasing softie who couldn’t tell any of us no when we wanted something (we were always wanting lots and lots of things), and Dad was the wary, serious sandbar against the wave of all his children’s requests. I can never ask them for financial help because she’ll want to say yes; he won’t, and I’m not driving a wedge. Their relationship is so much better now as empty-nesters.