CHAPTER TWELVE
By the time the airport came into view, I’d nearly lost hope. The flight would take off in about thirty minutes, with or without us.
“Look, you guys get out and check in,” Dad said. “Dump the bags. I will park the car and meet you at the gate.”
We’d all gone silent amid the tension, although Mom had spent a good part of the trip berating Dad as he dodged in and out of cars in the heavy traffic that clogged the length of the 405 freeway.
In truth, he deserved the abuse. Mom and I had been ready to go for hours. Our destination: Boston. Harvard was holding a weekend of spirited events for prospective freshmen who had already been accepted, and I was one of them.
Stanford summer school had been even more fantastic than I’d imagined. Not only did I have total freedom and control over my life and my time, but I was introduced to a whole world beyond Hollywood, where intellectual curiosity and the ability to reason were the main values, not body type and how convincingly I could pretend to be someone else. I hadn’t realized that school could be more than figuring out how to crush a test. I had just seen school as a competition and a means to an end. I had a lot more in common with this group of people than the kids I saw on auditions. I hungrily consumed the opportunity to find my own way without Mom steering me toward what she valued.
Now I couldn’t wait to see what it would be like if I were to move all the way across the country pursuing the same dream on my own. I’d never been to Boston, and it was hard to believe that the ivy-covered old buildings depicted in the catalog really existed. The pictures of the campus looked like Paul Revere might canter through one of the courtyards on a snorting bay stallion just in time for lunch.
I’d packed for any weather possibility, from flurries to subtropical heat. I didn’t want to take any chances. Mom, insecure about having gained more weight, packed a wardrobe of black pants, tops, and sweaters. She threatened not to go on the trip, since she had failed at another crash diet, but we convinced her no one cared, which was the truth.
Dad on the other hand had waited until the morning to pack. Then as we rushed around him in a buzz of activity, he calmly drank his coffee and watched the morning news. Slower than the grass grew out front, he’d climbed the stairs to their bathroom and started his morning ritual, which included a twenty-minute shower, complete with multiple verses of multiple songs, and a thirty-plus-minute tour of the sink area, where he’d polish every tooth individually, shave, and then slowly blow his hair dry with a fifteen-year-old hair dryer that had a comb attached to the vent so he could smooth his hair as it dried.
By the time he came downstairs with his bag, Mom and I were sweating with panic.
“Dad, seriously. We have to go,” I pushed.
We hadn’t waited for him to load our bags into the car. Now we rushed out and threw ourselves into our seats, slamming the doors, while he slowly circled the house, closing the wrought iron gate and tugging on each individual sliding glass door and entry to make sure it was locked. He worked slowly and deliberately while we lost our minds waiting.
By the time we hit the highway, I realized we’d have to be the only car on the road in order to speed down to LAX in time, and in L.A., gridlock was the norm. Indeed lines of cars inched forward like endless armies of crawling ants, as frustrated drivers tried to push into the next lane, which wasn’t moving any faster anyway.
At the curb in front of the terminal, Mom jumped out and waved frantically to a United skycap, who wheeled a cart over and started unloading. I headed to the outdoor counter to speed things along before the bags could be wheeled over.
“We’re on the three PM to Boston. The last name is Francis,” I said.
“Oh, boy. You guys are cutting it close. You better run,” the second skycap said as he pulled the plastic off the back of our baggage labels and slapped them onto the bags. He checked his watch and confirmed that we were screwed.
“You hear that!” Mom shouted at Dad breathlessly.
“I will just go park the car,” Dad said, still calm, as if the pilot would simply wait.
“Don’t go to some bargain lot. We don’t have time! Just park nearby and come right back. We’ll wait for you inside,” Mom said.
“Dad. Hurry,” I begged.
“Don’t worry.” He laughed nervously, finally realizing the gravity of the situation.
Mom and I went inside the terminal and rushed to the gate. We swam upstream through a school of travelers who’d just gotten off a long flight from overseas. They all looked tired and rumpled, speaking an Asian language I didn’t recognize. I envied them because they’d arrived at their destination, while we were still struggling so mightily to get off the ground.
We pushed our way through the crowd to gate 71. A tall woman stood at the gate in a blue uniform. She wore a tight smile as she scanned the waiting area. Her eyes landed on us, and she smiled through her irritation.
“You must be my stragglers,” she said as we approached.
“We’re on this flight, but we’re waiting for one more person. My dad,” I said. My heart pounded in my chest and I could feel my blood pressure rising.
“Oh, sweetie. There’s no time to wait. I suggest you board. We’re closing the door,” she said as if she’d seen this scene before.
“Not without my dad. We’re visiting Harvard. He’s parking the car. He’s right behind us,” I said, panting from our rush to the gate.
“Please,” Mom begged. “He’s coming.”
“You two should wait for him on board,” she warned.
“We can’t. We’re all together,” I said. “We can’t go without him.”
“Does he have his boarding pass?” she asked.
“Yes,” Mom said.
“Then you should definitely get on,” she said.
I looked at Mom. “Let’s just run back and tell him to run. I’m sure he’s coming.”
The flight attendant shook her head, washing her hands of the matter, as we rushed back to the main artery of the terminal, which was still flooded with hundreds of people moving in every direction. I stood on my toes, trying to see over the crowd, and I realized we didn’t even know for sure what direction he was coming from. I picked up the pace and broke into a run, heading back toward the door to the street, weaving in and out of the crowd, while Mom tried to hurry behind me.
I reached the doors and pushed through to the curb. My eyes swept the long line of cars pulling up to drop off passengers. I looked through the crowds, face by face, and came up empty.
“Let’s go back to the gate and see if he passed us somehow,” I said when Mom caught up.
“You go. I’ll come as quickly as I can behind you,” she huffed, breathing hard from the stress and exertion.
I ran back to the gate now, darting through the families pushing carts piled high with luggage ready to topple at the slightest bump. Children trailed their families, dragging backpacks and dolls. A pack of teenagers sat cross-legged at another gate area, passing magazines back and forth.
I raced all the way back to the gate without encountering Dad. When I reached the door to our flight, it was closed. They’d finished boarding without us. I had no idea if Dad had gotten on without us, or never made it inside. But our luggage was taking off for Harvard without us.
Defeated, I collapsed into a seat and watched Mom slowly amble up. The corners of her mouth turned down into a frown.
“What do we do now?” I asked, trying not to cry.
“I wish I knew what happened to your father. For all we know, he had a heart attack in the parking lot,” she said.
I hadn’t even thought about that possibility. The new dimension of worry was more than I could take. Tears rolled down my cheeks as Mom looked around the terminal, searching.
After a minute or two, we rose to our feet and walked back to the ticket counter, combing the masses that came toward us, still looking for any sign of Dad. By then, searching felt hopeless.
When w
e reached the counter, Mom cut the line and stepped up to a haggard but capable-looking agent with graying hair and heavy eyelids. I stood by her side, holding my breath to stop crying. Another man at the front of the line looked peeved, but saw my tears and didn’t have the nerve to complain aloud.
“We were supposed to be on the flight that just left for Boston. We lost my husband on the way to the gate. Is there any way to page him?” she asked.
“Of course. Give me his details. We can page him and call security. And I can help you get another flight if you still want to go today. There’s one on American that leaves in about hour. I think there are a few seats left.”
She paged Dad and booked us on the flight. We bought two seats for more than a thousand dollars. All the planning, buying our tickets in advance to save money, everything we’d done, down the drain.
Thirty minutes later, we sat at the new gate, silent and defeated. “What happened to Dad?” I asked.
“I have no idea. This is typical. If he’s not lying dead somewhere, I’m going to kill him.”
“You know, the real problem is that he doesn’t want you to go to Harvard,” she said. Mom always had a larger conspiracy theory to fit any crisis, no matter how accidental the situation seemed.
“Why?” I asked, unconvinced.
“He always said the UC schools were good enough. He doesn’t have the same drive that I have. He wants you to go to Stanford because it’s closer. I’d like you to stay too. But who gets into Harvard? You can’t just turn it down. I don’t know what you should do for sure, but this is sabotage on his part. Maybe he doesn’t know that’s what he’s doing, but that’s what he’s doing.”
When we arrived in Boston, Dad was waiting for us. We’d left a message with my aunt about the new flight information, and he’d thought to call her. He was sitting on a bench, hands folded in his lap, looking beaten and exhausted.
He’d somehow weaved past us in the crowd and boarded the original flight. He assumed we’d boarded that flight ahead of him as planned, but when he saw the empty seats in our row, he kept going instead of getting off. That decision was logical, he explained. We were all heading to Harvard no matter what.
“I stuck with the plan,” he said, a phrase he loved to hold over us. He constantly saw value in staying glued to whatever plan we’d made, not deviating, not flaking, no matter what circumstances arose.
I had been too worried about him to get on a plane and just ditch him. I wanted to make sure the whole team was okay and on board and count heads before moving forward. In retrospect, I should have just kept going east.
The weekend at Harvard turned out to be magical despite the rough start. The campus could have been a set for a movie about Colonial America, with centuries-old ivy-covered brick buildings at every turn. Each quadrangle of classrooms and dorms looked unlike anything I’d ever seen in California.
I’d picked up two new friends, Matt and Michelle, who were committed to enrolling at Harvard and immediately infected me with their unharnessed enthusiasm and momentum. They were shocked I’d even consider any other school, which was by definition second-rate.
Matt was a worldly, cerebral New York kid who I could tell would eventually own or at least finance most of the island of Manhattan. Michelle was pretty with long brown curls and a laugh that made you love her immediately. Plus she was one of the only girls on campus wearing makeup, so it made sense that we should team up. She had an older sister and brother already on campus, and they were both so welcoming. They adopted us and made the school irresistible.
I could see a window into my new life, controlled only by me, and the thought of being a million miles from home and Hollywood morphed from frightening into freeing. If I left behind everything that tethered me to my past, I would fly or drown, but I would know for sure whether I could live without Mom or the business driving my life. Maybe there was another option, another path, another life. Maybe there wasn’t. I hadn’t really considered the possibility that there could be another way to live until that weekend. Once I opened the door to that possibility, it couldn’t be closed.
I announced the news in the family room. I was going to Harvard. Mom sat on the corner of the fading green couch. Still in a housedress, she held a section of the Los Angeles Times in her lap, her bare feet on the coffee table and her eyes fixed on the television.
Dad sat upright in his chair, still in his sweats from the night before, deeply engrossed in the Times opinion section, which he never agreed with. He’d already swept through the sports pages. He sipped his second cup of coffee, still a good thirty minutes away from folding the pages and heading upstairs for his morning routine.
“I’ve decided. I’m going to Harvard.,” I declared to the room.
Mom looked up and smiled slightly, her lips closed. She knew this was coming. It was hard for me to surprise her. Dad cleared his throat but didn’t look up.
“Well, that’s a nice idea. I don’t know how you are going to pay for that,” he said. “You guys never sweat the details,” he laughed, but not happily. “But someone has to. Someone has to write the check. I don’t know who that’s going to be.”
“They offered loans and financial aid if we can’t swing it. I went to the financial aid office when we visited. They said that I was in and there was always a package to make it work, no matter what,” I said.
I had prepared for the standard dismissal: we can’t afford it. Lunch? We can’t afford it. Toast? No way. But I honestly didn’t think he would go there this time. Harvard wasn’t frivolous; it wasn’t a pony. This is what the money I had earned was supposed to be saved for, and my father had always assured me that it would be there for this purpose. If the cash wasn’t there anymore, it was hardly my fault, or my responsibility to replace it, no matter how the two of them justified its absence.
“Financial aid takes care of tuition, which is only half the battle, maybe less,” Dad pointed out. “What about flying back and forth? What about winter clothes? That takes bread. All things you don’t need if you go to Stanford. You get in your car and drive to Stanford, and wear the same clothes. It’s closer, it makes sense. It’s a fantastic school. You need to be practical. Like I am. It’s hardly a sacrifice to go to Stanford, and it’s probably a better school anyway.”
With that, Dad turned his attention back to the opinions of the Times writers. I was stunned. Dad always seemed to be in my corner; he was the rational one. I looked at Mom, who shrugged. I knew she didn’t want me to escape, but as she liked to say out loud, it was such a big deal to go to Harvard. I thought maybe I could swing her. I couldn’t believe Dad was going to be the holdout.
I was already late for school because it had taken me so long to work up the nerve to walk in and make the proclamation. Now I stormed out of the house and got in my car, flying backward down the driveway, throwing the car into drive at the bottom the hill, zipping out of the cul-de-sac.
All day at school, I went through the motions of going to classes, still in disbelief at my parents’ reactions. Who ever heard of a kid getting into Harvard and her parents not wanting her to go? It was astounding to me. Maybe I was making the wrong decision. Maybe they were right. Maybe I’d go thousands of miles away and fall off the other side of the continent.
I felt so confused I didn’t raise my hand all day. Was I just trying to escape from my family and would I later regret that? Was I the rash one? My relationship with acting had turned sour. I needed some distance. I’d never known a life that didn’t include it. I’d been an actress since my earliest memory. I’d taken for granted that acting would always be a part of my life. But then we’d had a falling-out. I started to feel silly playing dress-up. By the time I decided I wanted it back, it was too late. Like a spurned lover, it had moved on without me. I couldn’t break back in. In the last year, I’d done a few commercials, but I was barely even getting called to audition for the good roles, and even then, I wasn’t getting called back. I’d gotten close to landing a role
on a new show, Beverly Hills 90210, but when that didn’t happen, I was so frustrated at having my hopes raised and dashed again that I wanted to put acting in a closet, lock the door, and throw away the key.
“What’s up with you?” Cori asked as we walked to AP Literature.
“My parents won’t let me go to Harvard,” I said.
She laughed. “That’s fresh,” she said.
“I know. It’s a mess. I don’t know what to do,” I said. Cori was wearing a Northwestern sweatshirt, her fate signed, sealed, and delivered. I envied how certain her future looked. Everyone in her family rowed in the same direction.
“I guess I do know what to do. I’m going,” I said.
I sat in last period Religion and filled out my acceptance card. I signed the bottom. Melissa Ann Francis. That was it. I was going no matter what. The response date was in a matter of days, and all that was left to do was get the card postmarked at the post office.
If the money really was gone, I would find a way to pay the tuition myself. I’d waitress. I’d save what I could to get going. I didn’t care how Mom and Dad felt about it. I was making this decision for myself, and I’d see it through. I needed to see if I could leave behind the life I knew and still survive. I could always come back. If acting called, I could always give up and come back. But I had a feeling there was a whole other life out there, and I had to try it on for size.
Technically, I didn’t need my parents’ permission to go, but I wanted it. I decided to go by Dad’s office and give him one more chance to get on the train before it pulled out of the station. Maybe he’d been thinking all day too. Maybe he regretted dismissing me that morning.
I pulled into the industrial park where his office was located and took a spot right across from the door. The company name, Theatre Products International, and the logo were painted on the glass door in hunter green. The facade was modest but respectable, like the occupant.
Diary of a Stage Mother's Daughter Page 17