I was wrong. Renee slipped into my life as deftly and unceremoniously as Mom had slipped out. To Aunt Edie, she became my reason for staying here: the “old friend” with a car who would love to room with me and was not opposed to paying rent. She even drove me to Baker for the funeral, where, predictably, she wept buckets during the eulogy, much to the bafflement of the other mourners. By the time we got back to Los Angeles we were a functioning unit. Renee had become an old hand at waiting for me to climb down from the car, or asking the waitress at Denny’s for a phone book for me to sit on, or fending off the small children and large dogs I invariably attract in public places. She was natural and un-nursy about this too, as if she performed these courtesies for all her friends.
Better still, she never stopped being my fan. If anything, her fascination with my career seemed to escalate as we settled into comfy sisterhood. One day I showed her my listing in The Guinness Book of World Records. She was so impressed that she made a Xerox of the page and kept a copy in her purse, so that the girls at The Fabric Barn—or the post office or the checkout counter at Ralph’s, for all I know—could see for themselves that she, Renee Marie Blalock, was now sharing a house with the World’s Shortest Mobile Adult Human.
I feel a little fraudulent about this, since the Guinness listing I showed her was about four years out of date. In 1985 the World’s Shortest title was copped by a twenty-nine-inch Yugoslavian, who appeared, so help me God, out of thin air. Mom and I went so far as to call the Guinness offices in New York to ask if this foreign pretender had legs, and we were given the most incredible runaround. One of these days, having bragged once too often, Renee will be challenged by some troublemaker with a more recent edition, and I’ll have some serious explaining to do.
It’s well past dark now, and a nice spring rain has begun to fall, sluicing off the awnings and shellacking the banana leaves just outside our sliding glass door. We have a pink spotlight on that part of the yard, so the general effect, if you squint your eyes just so, is of a rosy-hued aquarium. I half expect to see a school of huge red fish, or a giant crimson octopus, maybe, come shimmering past the door.
Renee has turned off the TV and is studying an old issue of Us as if she’s expecting a pop quiz. She hasn’t spied on me in a long time, so I figure she’s pleased with my activity, or at least has decided that benign neglect is the best policy. I’m lying stomach-down on my favorite cushion, my “tuffet,” as Renee insists on calling it, even though I explained to her years ago that a tuffet is either a small stool or a tuft of grass. The cushion is covered in a dusty-rose tapestry depicting unicorns and a maiden with a conical hat. It isn’t antique or anything, but I like it because it fits my body, and because Mom gave it to me on my birthday the year before she died.
I’ll tell you about the rest of the room, in case you need it for set decoration. Against one wall there’s an old green corduroy sofa (where Renee is sitting), which needs reupholstering in the worst kind of way. We’ve covered the most gruesome splits with strategically positioned pillows, though God only knows who we’re fooling. The bookshelf next to it is one of those cheapo wicker numbers, the bottom two units of which are reserved for my own library: a boxed Tolkien, half a dozen recent star bios, and a book of Mapplethorpe portraits that’s so huge I peruse it only when I’m in need of serious exercise.
The walls of the living room are painted Caribbean Coral, a shade that looks subtle and warm on the little paper strip at the hardware store but is distinctly reminiscent of a whore’s nail polish when actually applied. We both hate it and plan to redecorate one of these days, but the money just isn’t there at the moment. I’d like to try for something stark and Japanesy, but Renee seems to have her heart set on pink-and-green chintz, a Laura Ashley nightmare. I may have to be firm with her.
There are three lights in the room—a plain brass floor lamp, a ceramic black-panther lamp with a ball-fringed shade, and a small plastic modern thing that clips onto the stereo cabinet just below the shelf where Mr. Woods lives. I bought that damned panther on an impulse five years ago at a junk shop on Melrose, mostly because my friend Jeff, who was with me at the time, said it was an extremely valuable example of fifties kitsch. Others have been less convinced. Mom wanted to toss it the moment she saw it, and Renee has seconded the motion on several occasions. I think I’m beginning to agree with them; there’s something really depressing about it.
Later, in bed.
Renee is in her room now, giggling on the phone with her latest squeeze, a guy named Royal she met at The Sizzler last week. She has yet to bring him around here, but I’ve got a great mental image of him already: rumpled black clothes, an iodine-colored tan, and long hair slicked back to a ratty little ponytail. Renee says he’s a Scientologist and makes his own beer, and she seems enormously impressed by both things. Sometimes I just don’t know about her.
A little while ago she came in here and told me that I’d just bounced a check to Dr. Baughman, my dentist, for work he did three months ago. When I told her I hadn’t heard the phone ring, she looked confused for a moment, then said: “Oh…no, it didn’t. I knew about it earlier, but I didn’t wanna spoil your concentration.”
While I was writing our opus, she meant. Now it would only spoil my sleep.
“His helper, that girl with the big eyebrows…”
“Wendy,” I said.
“Right. She called me at work today.”
I could actually feel my face turn hot. “She didn’t try here first?”
“Well, no…I mean, she might’ve, but…”
“She didn’t. I was here all day.”
“Oh.”
“In the future, Renee, would you please tell her that I’m a big girl and can handle my own finances?” Maybe this sounds a little bitchy, but I get so tired of being patronized by people who think that small means dependent. Even my own mom, may she rest in peace, pulled this shit on occasion. Once, when I was about twenty-five and we were visiting Universal, a casting director, this really hip lady who seemed to like me a lot, offered to take us to lunch at the commissary. Mom put on her best Donna Reed face and said: “That’s nice of you, thanks. I just fed her.” I didn’t say a word at the time, but I was pissed at my mother for days. How could she have made me sound so much like a hamster?
Renee looked cowed. “She didn’t really call about you. She was confirming my appointment tomorrow.”
“Oh.”
“She was just…you know, killing two birds with one stone.”
This made me feel a little better, but not much. Wendy still should’ve called me personally. “How much do I owe?” I asked.
“Two hundred and seventy-four dollars.”
“Shit.”
Renee ducked her head, and I was pretty sure I knew what was coming next. “I could loan you some.”
“No,” I said firmly. “Thanks.”
“Maybe I should start paying rent. It isn’t really fair that…”
“Fuck that, Renee. You do enough as it is.” I smoothed the bedclothes, reviewing the options. I’d bounced three checks in a week, and there were no reinforcements in sight. Another loan from Renee would be a temporary solution at best. When all was said and done, I needed work and fast if I was to maintain my sacred independence.
“What about Aunt Edie?” Renee asked.
“What about her?”
“Couldn’t she loan you some?”
I gave her a menacing look, knowing she knew better. The slightest whiff of my impoverishment would have Aunt Edie on my doorstep in three minutes. And nothing would please her more. I might be desperate, but not that desperate. There are worse fates than starvation.
“Well…” Renee fidgeted with the neck of her sweater, fresh out of solutions. “Want some cocoa, then?”
“Get outa here. Go call your studmuffin.”
“But what are you gonna…?”
“It’s OK,” I assured her, shooing her out of the room. “I’ll give Leonard a call first thing
.”
Leonard is my agent, the source of all hope and despair. I signed on with him after finishing Mr. Woods. The first job he landed for me was a role in a horror flick called Bugaboo, in which I played a zombie and appeared on screen for exactly four seconds toward the end. An unsuspecting housewife—Suzi Kenton, remember her?—opens the door of her refrigerator and finds yours truly crouching on the bottom shelf next to the orange juice.
This was a real advance for me, believe it or not, because you actually got to see my face (albeit gray and scabby-looking) and it filled the entire screen. According to Aunt Edie, who never tells a lie, that one brief, shining moment in the light of the Kelvinator was so recognizably mine that theatergoers in Baker actually stood and cheered. This isn’t possible, since all they’ve got there is a drive-in, but I knew what the old bat was trying to say. In the eyes of the people she cared about, I was legitimate at last—a real movie star—no longer just a dwarf in rubber. I won’t pretend it didn’t feel good.
Since then everything and nothing has happened. There was a brief period in the late eighties when I worked in performance. I was more or less adopted by a space in downtown Los Angeles, where I was in great demand by artists doing pieces on alienation and absurdity. They were gentle, surprisingly naive kids, who took endless pains to guard against what they referred to as “the exploitation of the differently abled.” This got to be old fast, so I pulled two of them aside one day and told them not to sweat it, that I was an actress first and foremost, that of course I would play an oil-slick mutant for them, that I would sit on a banana and spin if it was in the goddamned script and they paid me something for it.
This seemed to relax them, and we got along famously after that. My mom, who thought Liberace was avant-garde, came to one of the presentations and left in horror and confusion, though she pretended afterwards to find it “interesting.” I have no doubt Renee would feel the same way if I were still in performance, so it’s probably just as well that I’m not. Besides, the money was pretty awful (if not nonexistent), and the work was unconnected with the Industry, so I was getting nowhere fast.
Except that one night we were visited by a star: Ikey St. Jacques, the black child actor who used to play the adorable seven-year-old on What It Is! Little Ikey sat in the very back of the bleachers, all duded up in silver and burgundy, in the company of an extremely long-legged adult female. Word of his presence spread through the space like wildfire. The other cast members did their best to look blasé about it, of course, but they were clearly stunned that such a recognizable icon was in our midst. Frankly, I’d had my suspicions about the kid for years, so it didn’t surprise me a bit when he came backstage and confessed.
It wasn’t that easy for him to do, either, logistically speaking, since he was forced to wade through the refuse of the night’s performance, great gooey wads of surgical gauze smeared with stage blood and about two dozen rubber baby dolls in varying states of dismemberment. His friend was waiting for him in the car, he said, but he just had to tell me that I was wonderful, a great actress, that he’d been totally inspired by my performance, since he himself was a little person and really seventeen years old, not seven. I shrugged and said, “What else is new?” and we both laughed and became buddies on the spot, exchanging phone numbers. His real friends called him Isaac, he said, so I should do the same. Before he left, he told me some great stories about other closet midgets in Hollywood, some of which, I promise you, would curl your hair.
Imagine my excitement when Isaac called a week later to say that he’d proposed a little people episode for What It Is! and that he wanted me to guest star. (That was just the way he put it.) I was to play a clown who meets Ikey at a Dallas mall and teaches him about the true nature of compassion. How I was to accomplish this inspiring feat of liberalism Isaac didn’t say, but he assured me the role would be both touchingly hilarious and cutting-edge, a surefire candidate for the Emmy.
No sooner had I phoned half the population of Baker to spread the good news than Isaac called to say the project had been killed—by his own producers, no less. They were desperately afraid that another little person on the show might provoke a discussion of the subject in the press, thereby blowing Ikey’s cover. It was just too risky, they said, given that the kid’s voice had already changed drastically and he was “in grave danger of becoming a grotesque.” Isaac had fought for the idea tooth and nail, or so he assured me, but the powers that be were unbending. My long-awaited showcase role never even got to the script stage.
To his credit, Isaac called out of the blue about six months ago to see how I was doing, but I didn’t have much to report, career-wise. I had picked up some money doing phone solicitations for a carpet-cleaning service in Reseda, but the work had proved boring beyond belief. My boss there had said some nice things about my speaking voice, however, so it made me consider the possibility of radio work. Since Isaac seemed to think that might be a good approach, I phoned Leonard Lord, my intrepid agent, and asked him to keep an eye open. He told me his contacts in that arena were minimal, but he’d put the word out and see what he could do. I haven’t heard from him since.
That’s enough for tonight. It’s late and I’m beginning to depress myself. The rain clouds have shifted a bit, and there’s the oddest little nail paring of a moon hanging in my bedroom window. I’ll concentrate on that and the nice warm breeze that’s rippling my curtains. Things could be worse, after all, and I’ve always been able to cope. I have my friends and my talent and my commitment, and I know there’s a place for me in the firmament of Hollywood.
If not, I’ll get a new agent.
2
A WEEK LATER. ON MY AIR MATTRESS IN THE BACKYARD.
I’ve just read my first entry and can’t believe how dismal it sounds. Oh, well. I could blame it on the wrong time of the month, I suppose, but I don’t think you’d be fooled for long. The truth is, it’s the wrong time of the century. I don’t know when this happened, or how. The world simply changed when I wasn’t looking—when I was out eating a cheeseburger, maybe, or buying a magazine or catching a flick in Westwood—so that when I got back it was utterly different, an alien place filled with people I’d never known and customs as inscrutable to me as the control panel on my VCR.
This morning, for example, I looked out the window and saw a huge yellow ribbon tied around my lamppost. I put aside my sewing and went outside, glaring up at this plastic monstrosity and wondering for a moment if Renee could be responsible. It was just beyond my grasp, but I managed to yank it down after a few graceless leaps. No sooner had I done so than Mrs. Bob Stoate, my next-door neighbor, came running across her perfect lawn in a neat little seersucker shirtwaist.
“Cady, what are you doing?” She looked as though she’d caught me selling dope to her kids.
I told her I was taking the tacky thing down.
“But Bob and me got them for the whole street.”
I peered up and down, in both directions, and saw what she meant: there was a ribbon at every single house. “Well, that was very nice of Bob and you, but this is my front yard, and I don’t want it.”
She flinched a little. “It’s an American tradition.”
I walked back to the house, dragging the ribbon behind me. “And I thought it was just a stupid song.”
She hollered after me. “We only did it because we figured you couldn’t…”
“Reach,” she was going to say, but she caught herself just in time.
“The war is over,” I yelled. “Stop gloating.”
“We’re just showing the boys how we feel!”
True enough, when you think about it. Like everybody else around here, the Bob Stoates can barely contain their delight over finally having kicked some foreign butt. The shame of Vietnam is behind them at last, magically erased by that nifty little Super Bowl of a war they all just watched on television. Never mind that we flattened a country, polluted an ocean, and incinerated two hundred thousand people—the Bob Stoates are
once again proud to be Americans.
When I reached the front door, I turned to see Mrs. Bob Stoate watching me in murderous silence, her darkest suspicions confirmed. I gave her a cheery wave and slammed the door. By now, no doubt, she’s called her husband at his place of business—a Toyota dealership, if I remember correctly—to inform him of my traitorous behavior. By tonight the whole family will know the score, which is fine with me, since their open hostility is preferable to the sugary Christian condescension they’ve heaped on me for years.
If I had any sense at all, I’d sell this dump and move to Hollywood or Santa Monica, where some of the neighbors might still think of Tony Orlando as a bad joke. I couldn’t afford to buy a house, but I could rent something nice and still have a little mad money in the bank. I’ve always envisioned myself in a twenties hacienda with tiles on the roof and a fountain splashing in the courtyard. It wouldn’t work for Renee, of course, since The Fabric Barn would be too much of a commute for her, and she’d probably be intimidated by the scary prospect of moving to that side of Mulholland Drive.
Not that we’re a set that can’t be broken. One of these days, I promise you, Renee will meet some slow-footed mesomorph who reminds her of Ham and be history in no time. And why not? She owes me nothing and vice versa. It’s comforting, really, to know that she and I can live together and be this close and still maintain the sanctity of our personal agendas. Since she’s out for True Love and I’m out for Stardom, we almost never stumble over each other on the Road to Success.
In case you’re wondering, the beer-making Scientologist is no more. Renee ran afoul of him on the second date when she discovered a portrait of L. Ron Hubbard over his dresser and found out what a Scientologist is. Until then, she said, she’d thought it was “some sort of complicated scientist,” which explains why she sounded so impressed earlier. Turns out the guy was only recruiting, since he spent the whole night telling Renee how L. Ron had made a new woman out of Kirstie Alley. Renee was pretty rattled by it, and seems to have sworn off men for a while. I say this because she’s sleeping with her Mr. Woods doll again, a telltale sign if ever there was one.
Maybe the Moon: A Novel Page 2