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Dad had married her just to get even with Mom. I knew he hadn’t gotten together with Joan for her chocolate chip cookies.
    Even though I was already ten, they made me be the flower girl at the wedding. Joan nagged and pleaded and bullied me into dressing up in a frilly pink princess dress and scattering rose petals from a basket. I flungthe petals down the aisle of the church as if they were tennis balls that might bounce. No one noticed. They were too busy admiring Josh Darling, whom Joan dolled up in a pastel blue tuxedo with a ruffled shirt and short pants, and who got to carry the ring on a velvet pillow bigger than his head.
    At first I was really upset that Joan was sleeping in my mom’s bed, but pretty soon I got used to it, and I could hardly remember when Mom had slept there. Joan was also divorced. I always thought that Dad should have had a man-to-man talk with Joan’s ex-husband to find out who Joan really was. One of the things I found hardest about our Brady Bunch combined–family life was how often Dad agreed with Joan, even when she was wrong, and how everything Josh Darling did was perfect, while all I did was make one mistake after another.
    In fact, it was as if I was the huge mistake that Joan was trying to correct. What I ate, what I wore, how much TV I watched—Joan was full of helpful suggestions that were really criticisms disguised as advice. Maisie, why don’t you wear your hair like that pretty girl over there? Maisie, why don’t you throw out those smelly sneakers and wear some tight, uncomfortable heels? Maisie,try on this flouncy skirt—it would look so attractive on you. What she really wanted was to change me into a miniature Joan.
    As soon as my dad remarried, it drove my mom over the edge, and she started calling every day, sometimes twice a day, theoretically to see how I was adjusting to my new stepfamily. I remember thinking: If Mom and Dad are still so obsessed with each other, they should have stayed together. And though you’d imagine that having to deal with Wicked Stepmother Joan would have made me miss and appreciate Mom more, it only made me angrier. It was all Mom’s fault. If she’d stayed home and found her bliss in Germantown, or even Philadelphia, none of this would be happening.
    Then, two years ago, I picked up the phone, and it was Mom. Before I could tell her that I was so busy that I had to hang up, Mom said, “Good news, darling! Geoff and I have gotten married! And—you don’t have to decide right away, take your time and think it over—but now that I’m finally settled, I’m wondering if you want to come live with us. Maybe you could just give it a try—”
    I knew she’d had a serious boyfriend for the last yearor so. Dad had let that slip. But now, it seemed, Mom and this guy had a house—guess where? In the blissedout suburbs of Milwaukee. A big beautiful home they couldn’t wait to share with me. Mom’s new husband was a math professor at the local community college. I’d always hated math. It was strange, how Geoff’s job seemed to make my dad jealous—competitive, maybe—even though everyone knows that dentists make way more money than math professors.
    Mom started begging me to come out to Wisconsin and live with her and Geoff. I knew that suburbs were suburbs: Milwaukee, Philadelphia, it would have been the same place. Same malls, same trees, same schools. The same kids, probably. And living with Mom and Geoff would probably be a lot like living with Dad and Joan, only minus annoying Josh Darling. Geoff didn’t have any kids of his own—or anyway, none that I knew of. And somehow I had the feeling that Geoff didn’t wear hooker underwear, and that he wouldn’t be especially interested in turning me into a younger version of himself.
    When my mom suggested my coming out to livewith her, it might have seemed like a good idea—if only to get even with Joan and make everybody realize what a bad job Joan was doing of being Sitcom Mom. I