Diary of a Stage Mother's Daughter

by Melissa Francis

Bruce chanted his lines, looking possessed. Every muscle in my body seized up. Finally the moment of truth arrived and he shoved my head underneath the water and into certain bacterial infection.

  I guess I didn’t really allow him to push my head all the way under, but just sort of fought away from him as the water started to fill my ears. It all happened so fast. When I came up, slimed and embarrassed, I was hoping that somehow my flailing had looked normal, and I was done. The crew groaned.

  “Cut.”

  Bruce waded back to shore and wandered off, adjusting his burned skin, and I quickly scrambled to safety. They rushed me inside a trailer, threw me a robe, and started combing the slime out of my hair and blowing the ends with a hair dryer.

  The director came into the trailer.

  “So this time . . .”

  Oh my God, I thought. We’re doing it again.

  They finished drying me off and restyling my hair in silence. And all the while I knew that this effort to get me warm and clean was leading me closer to having my nostrils refilled with slime.

  As the hum of the hair dryer insulated me, I steeled my insides against the inevitable. I had to just go out and do it right, or I’d be marching into stagnant mosquito larva for the next three days. It was certainly getting harder to earn a buck in this town.

  They delivered me to the set, and this time the crew looked at me with annoyance. They were clearly put out. I was costing everyone time, and until I did my job, no one was going anywhere.

  That was it. I refused to be unprofessional. No matter how inhumane the task was, I was going to do the job I was hired to do. I had hoped that Mom would somehow save me from this, but she hadn’t said a word since the first take. She just frowned in pain, offering no alternative, no relief. I was alone in this torture, and there didn’t appear to be any way out.

  “Action!” the director yelled with extra force, willing me to do it right this time.

  I let the extras lead me to the edge of the water, and in my mind, I left my body, disconnecting myself from the horror of the experience.

  I felt the water once again rise to my waist as Bruce led me back to the middle of the swamp. As my body began to shake with panic, I just let go. I let go of my fear, my sanity, my inclination to vomit. If I could disconnect long enough, it would be over.

  I pressed my mouth and eyes closed tightly, hoping I could vacuum seal myself against the sludge. If I could have sucked my ears closed, I would have.

  Scary Bruce dunked me, and held me under for good measure. Then he brought me up, and I broke free and stumbled to the edge, as the director yelled, “Cut!”

  I’d done it. It was over. I hadn’t done it well, no awards would roll my way as a result, but I least I’d let myself be baptized as directed, and we could move on.

  When the movie hit the theaters, the kids from school went together to the Northridge Mall to see it. I didn’t go along. I was mortified that the movie was completely silly and I wasn’t at all good in it. Now a huge group of my peers were going together to sit in judgment of the production and make fun of me.

  “They’d all give their eyeteeth to be in it,” Mom said, trying to make me feel better. I was sure that she was right, but it didn’t really help. I knew they were going to give me the hazing of a lifetime after they saw it. I looked ridiculous gulping for air, eyes big and wide as the moon during the fake baptism. The last thing I wanted was to go along and witness the snickering and mocking firsthand.

  Besides, it was impossible to watch myself in any production, must less this one. I hated watching myself on television or on a screen of any type. I’d focus on any physical flaw, any bulge of fat or the bump in my nose, and every line I delivered made me cringe. I don’t know why I couldn’t enjoy watching myself. Lots of other performers did. All I ever saw was the faults.

  I tried to see being in a horror flick as a good time, but in my heart, I was struggling. Was this the kind of work I had to look forward to? Fifteen was a tough age to be embarking on a midlife crisis, but no matter how much I focused on school or anything else, I couldn’t escape the thought that my career was stalling.

  Agents and casting directors expected successful child actors to fail to make the transition to working adult actors, and they didn’t hesitate to speculate about it right in front of me. It seemed to be all that I heard. Other parents seemed to derive glee from my cresting professional failure. I didn’t understand how people could be so hard on someone who hadn’t even achieved her full height yet, but the swords were out and no one seemed to care that I was basically still prepubescent.

  “Right! The kid from Little House on the Prairie! Has she done anything lately?” another cheerleading mom asked my mom. I was standing right there, and the woman insulted me, in the third person nonetheless. I wanted to ask her if her kid had worked lately, but then she would know she got to me. It was easier to just silently lick the wound.

  I tried to act as if I didn’t care, but that made things worse. Mom would accuse me of not caring, which was so far from the truth. I desperately wanted to stop the slide to failure, but I had no idea how. I didn’t even love acting that much any longer. I felt like a puppet mouthing someone else’s words. But I missed the sense of achievement, the sensation of winning, and the pride I’d see in Mom’s eyes that came with completing a job successfully. Getting straight A’s at school was a feather in my cap, but being a successful actress had been a diamond-encrusted crown almost no one else had been privileged to wear.

  When summer rolled around Tiffany didn’t come home from Berkeley. She decided to stay up in northern California, to get a jump on the required classes for sophomore year by knocking out a few over the summer.

  The decision felt like a wise move. When she’d come home for holidays, at first, she’d seemed like a new person, free and happy. She’d slept in late, and we’d hung out having coffee and toast until we decided to get manicures and pedicures together or go to the mall shopping. I loved having a pal around the house, and Mom doted on her, at least initially.

  But after a few days, Mom was picking at her, criticizing her sloppier appearance or where she threw her dirty clothes, and it seemed to me they couldn’t coexist under the same roof for longer than a week.

  “It might be time for you to go back to the dorm,” Mom growled over a heap of wet towels on the rug in Tiffany’s room.

  “I will pick them up! Jeez! I’m still using them,” she said from other end of her closet, where she surveyed what little she’d left behind.

  Still, Mom didn’t like to be left out of what Tiffany and I did. So she’d come to the mall but quickly wear out her welcome.

  “Those pants look tight,” she said from the couch outside the dressing rooms where Tiffany was trying on some new Guess jeans.

  “Well, I’m not starving like I was at the end of last year. I could stop eating if you think that would be better,” Tiffany said while fixing her eyeliner in the mirror.

  “I’m sure there’s a middle ground between starving and eating pizza and drinking beer. I just don’t want you to gain all the weight you lost. Have you gained the freshman ten? Have you weighed yourself lately?” Mom pressed.

  It wasn’t the best conversation to have in the middle of a store. I knew Mom road us about weight because of her own struggles with a fluctuating figure, but inflicting pain on Tiffany right on the spot wasn’t the way to make a visit home a pleasant one. I gave Mom a pleading look.

  “What?” she snapped.

  “I don’t know,” I said quietly when Tiffany went back into the dressing room. “Maybe go easy on her?”

  “Oh, of course. It’s all me. I’m the bad guy. You guys gang up on me and I’m the bad guy. You only bring me along for my wallet. That’s all I’m good for. Pay for your clothes and keep my mouth shut! Why don’t I just take my wallet and go home and see how you two like it!”

  Her response was so disproportional to what had come before it, but there was no reasoning with her. />
  So Tiffany’s decision to get ahead of the course load was brilliant, no matter how thin that excuse sounded.

  To my own surprise, I started to strain and blister under Mom’s totalitarian rule. I had always faulted Tiffany for not simply following the party line and promoting harmony. But now that I was carrying out that mandate alone, I realized what a burden it was. It was exhausting to constantly manage Mom’s mood. When she picked me up from school she’d show up angry, and I’d have to cajole her with gossip from school. On a whim, she’d suddenly ground me and stop me from going to the movies with my friends because I had looked at her the wrong way. Sometimes she’d just say she didn’t like my attitude and would refuse to tell me why. She was wildly unpredictable, striking out at me, even hitting me, with almost no warning or provocation.

  “Get off the phone,” she said one day, storming into my room unannounced. “Laura, hang on . . . ,” I said, not hanging up right away. She took the cordless phone out of my hand and threw it against the wall.

  “How do you like that!” she said before stomping out. I never found out what got the ball rolling.

  Other times she’d be quiet and sullen for days, and then suddenly turn sunny on a dime. I had no idea what to expect, and having Mom as a constant variable in the equation made life even more complicated than it needed to be.

  Around this time, Mom let the house slowly go to hell. I noticed half-empty boxes and shopping bags filled with papers piling up in the family room. They’d appear one day, seemingly for no reason or purpose, and blend in with the furniture, taking up permanent residence.

  Lulu, the housekeeper who had been with us for years, continued to come by on Fridays, but cleaned only the middle of each room while clutter piled up around the edges, like snow being pushed to the side of the road.

  In the formal sitting room, which we’d never been allowed to use, the fabric and carpet had faded under the sun’s glare, frozen in time, like an abandoned dollhouse. The once bright and cheery Kelly green carpet that ran through the house now looked tired and tattered.

  While Mom gained weight and lost energy, I assumed she didn’t notice or didn’t mind our home’s deterioration. Until I tried to invite my friend Cori over to go swimming.

  “The house is a mess; you can’t have anyone over with it looking like this, for God’s sake,” she said, lying on her bed, her left arm curled under her head while she rested. She was wearing stretch pants and the same shirt she’d worn the day before.

  “Okay, I’ll clean up,” I offered.

  I scurried around the house with Ajax, cleaning the sinks and tub in my bathroom, finding the smell of the toxic cleaner oddly refreshing. I polished the faucets with Windex for good measure, and the bathroom sparkled when I finished. Then I vacuumed the halls to make the carpet—where it wasn’t worn down—stand up at attention like freshly mowed grass. I tucked as many bags and boxes behind the couch as possible, and scrubbed the kitchen with a mixture of Fantastic and Ajax as warranted. I was efficient and motivated, and the whole exercise took about ninety minutes.

  I returned to Mom’s room, where she hadn’t moved.

  “House is clean,” I said hopefully. “Can I tell Cori to come over?”

  “No,” she said without moving her eyes off the small color television that sat on the table next to her bed.

  “Why not? The house looks great.”

  “There’s too much crap in the family room,” she said with an edge in her voice.

  “Okay, where do you want me to put it? I could move it all out to the garage. Would that be good?” I offered.

  “Don’t touch it. I have a lot of important papers in those bags. I’ll never find anything again if you move it,” she said.

  I stood there silently, trying to figure out how to move this discussion forward.

  “What if we don’t go through the family room at all? I’ll make sure we only go to the pool through the kitchen. Please? I kind of already invited her.”

  “That was stupid of you. You didn’t ask me. The carpet is torn. We cannot have people in the house until we replace the carpet. And the walls need to be painted. You can’t have anyone over,” she ruled.

  I stood there trying to wrap my head around the idea that I was basically never having anyone over ever again. I was the only one taking any action around the house, but I didn’t have the ability to reweave the carpet. That one was beyond me.

  I left the room crestfallen, and went to my room to call Cori. I couldn’t figure out how I was going to explain this. I was embarrassed to disinvite her and ashamed that Mom thought our house was too much of a shambles to have friends over. It was worn, but who cared? Certainly not Cori. She was the nicest, least judgmental person I knew. She just wanted to hang out and swim.

  I picked up the cordless phone, which I’d duct-taped back together, and dialed slowly. It rang twice and then I heard Cori’s voice on the other end.

  “Hello?” she said.

  “Hey, it’s me. You aren’t going to believe this. My mom says I can’t have anyone over. She’s mad at me for something, I don’t know what. I live in hell. She’s insane and I don’t want to subject you to it anyway. She says our house is a mess or something and not suitable for company,” I said.

  “That’s okay. Our house is immaculate. I just squeegeed the shower. I’m not sure my mom’s beating yours on the sanity scale,” Cori said.

  “I love your house. It’s so clean. I’d like to move in,” I replied.

  “Bring a squeegee if you want to shower. Wait, scratch that. We’ve got like six.”

  “I’m so sorry about today,” I said truthfully.

  “Oh my God, don’t sweat it. You’re welcome to come over here if you want to swim. We’ll eat lunch, we can eat off the floor. I’m pretty sure my mom just bleached it,” she offered.

  “Yeah, I don’t know. I’m not sure I can even get out of the house now. I will keep you posted,” I said and hung up.

  When I went back to school in the fall for my sophomore year, I was on the cusp of getting my driver’s license, which meant real freedom, and Mom knew it. The day I got the precious document, I borrowed her car and barreled off to an interview.

  “This doesn’t mean you can go where you want, when you want, you know,” she threatened.

  But, of course, that’s exactly what it meant. I had been dating a boy who lived on the other side of L.A. in Beverly Hills, and if I had my own transportation, I could see Oscar anytime I wanted as long as I had a good cover story, another fact that set Mom and me up to battle.

  Tiffany had gotten a car for her sixteenth birthday, so in the months preceding my birthday I fantasized about owning the ultimate teenage dream car: a brand-new red BMW convertible. In what seemed like an act of extreme generosity, Mom went ahead and ordered it for me. The car was about to arrive when Tiffany came home from college for winter break, and I suddenly felt awkward knowing that she had a utilitarian Jeep and I was getting an expensive sports car.

  Me around age four in my audition uniform. Boy, did I get sick of those overalls and puff sleeves. Don’t forget the bows!

  Photo courtesy of the author

  Tiffany, with her signature shy smile, at around five years old when she became a Barbie commercial favorite.

  Photo courtesy of the author

  Missy Francis

  BIRTHDATE: December 12, 1972

  HEIGHT: 42½“

  WEIGHT: 38 lbs.

  HAIR: Brown

  EYES: Hazel

  Missy Muffin has a personality perfectly suited to her nickname. She is affectionate, effervescent and a constant joy. Missy has already earned fine commercial, photographic and modeling credits, attesting to her self-confidence and ability to take direction.

  She has appeared on “The Young and The Restless” and was featured in “The Ghost on Flight 401”. Missy also appeared in the television special ”I Love You”.

  She enjoys her dancing classes and playing with her big
sister Tiffany-Ann and together they swim, horseback ride, ice skate and love animals.

  My “composite” for auditions, boxes of which were kept in the back of the station wagon at all times. The photos were meant to show a full range of emotions so the casting agents could envision me in any role, from drama to comedy. Plus, I had a sister, just in case the production needed another kid!

  Photo courtesy of the author

  The cast of Little House on the Prairie when Jason and I joined the show. Melissa Gilbert’s character, Laura, was already the schoolteacher. Both Grace (the blond girl in front) and Carrie (next to me) were played by sets of twins, and I have no idea which twin of each set is actually in the photo.

  Photo by: NBCU Photo Bank

  Me with my fictional brother (Jason Bateman) and adoptive father (Michael Landon) on a rare day when I wasn’t in those Ingalls braids. The smiles are real; we had a lot of laughs.

  Photo by: NBCU Photo Bank

  Fake snow falling indoors on the studio set in Culver City, on the magical day my Brownie troop came to visit the show. On the show, it was Christmas Day, and the Ingallses couldn’t get to the barn to get their gifts because they were snowed in by the blizzard.

  Photo by: NBCU Photo Bank

  The scene where Michael Landon (as Charles Ingalls) stopped the train and climbed aboard after deciding to adopt Jason Bateman (as my brother James) and I, rather than sending us off to an orphanage. We were rehearsing, so I hadn’t turned on the tears, yet.

  Photo by: NBCU Photo Bank

  A glamour shot of me and Tiffany right after I started at Chaminade. That’s my cheerleading uniform. Tiffany’s spiky hairdo covered the scars on her forehead from the accident.

  Photo courtesy of the author