“And how does that make you feel?”
I thought about it for a second and blurted out, “Lost. Powerful. Responsible. Hopeless. Elated. It depends on the day. The past is the past and I can’t change a damn thing. The past shapes your present, your future.”
“Would you change aspects of your childhood if you could go back in time?”
Jesus, she was like a machine gun and I was in her line of fire. Worse than a press junket! I looked up, my eyes straying to the left where I locked on a framed painting of a seascape done in oil. Perhaps it was there to make her patients—“clients”—feel at home. I’d once had an acting coach who said that people’s eyes always went in the same direction every time they paused for thought. Up to the left, or right, or down to the floor. Or they leaned back in a chair or leaned forward, habitually doing the same thing, making the same motions, rarely changing their habits, and this defined their character. I was still looking up—to the left as it happened—and leaning back with no space between my back and the chair. This meant I was a “slow-time” personality, not “quick-time,” or some such nonsense. Without looking at her I answered her question:
“I’d re-write the script, sure I would. I’d 86 my brother, I’d give my dad a leading role instead of the half-assed secondary character he played. I’d give my mom a happy ending—”
“Interesting that you see things in terms of ‘roles.’ And yourself?” she asked, her pale blue eyes drilling into mine—“what would you do for yourself?”
“I’m rewriting that part of the script right now. I’m taking control of my life.”
“And the arrest prompted this one hundred and eighty degree shift in consciousness?”
“It did,” I answered. “They—the State of California—forced me to go to rehab. Believe me, I was kicking and screaming when I arrived at the clinic; it was not my idea of a vacation.”
“So why don’t you tell me about your arrest, Star?”
“Which one? There’ve been three. That one? The one I went to rehab for?”
“Whichever one you feel most comfortable discussing.”
“None of them make me feel ‘comfortable’ exactly. I mean I’m not sinking into some feather bed here—no offense to you.”
“Well why don’t we talk about the time when you were arrested for disorderly conduct and violent behavior.”
“Have you been Googling me?”
“Star, it’s in both our interests to hear your side of the story. Your reasons, your motivation behind your actions. I can’t help you if I don’t know what you’ve been through. And yes, I have done my research, not to say that I hadn’t heard about this on the news when it happened whenever it was last year.”
“You want to know about the ‘cat fight’ then?”
“Is that how you would describe it, yourself? A cat fight?”
“That’s what the papers said.”
“And what do you say?”
“I was making a point. And I’m glad I got arrested, by the way. Not for all the other times because, hey, I was out of control drinking and driving and I could have done someone some damage, but the catfight? She deserved it.”
“You don’t think you could have made your point in a more controlled manner?”
“I was acting on impulse. She made me so mad, I had to do something.”
“So you threw your drink all over her in the middle of an award ceremony?”
“It wasn’t just any drink, it was a Bloody Mary, thick with tomato juice.” My lips twitched into a subtle smile at the memory. “The red represented all the blood that had been spilled from innocent animals to create her tacky fur stole. There was a message.”
“Lots of people wear fur. Surely you’ve seen women in fur walking down the street? What made you attack this particular woman in public?”
“Because they are not style icons getting paid twenty thousand dollars to get out of bed in the morning! She’s one of the world’s most famous supermodels and she’s strutting around in fur? Think of all the young girls who think she’s cool, who want to copy her style—” here I took a breath and realized how hypocritical I sounded . . . me, who’d passed out inebriated under tables in clubs, who’d been arrested for drunk driving, photographed with powder—white as a bunny rabbit’s tail—all over my nose—and a thousand other things that young girls might think cool—“and, P.S.,” I continued, “Miss Supermodel had done an anti-fur campaign, way back when at the beginning of her career. Did that not mean anything to her? Talk about hypocritical. No, you can berate me for many things I’ve done, but not that. Can we talk about something else? You know just thinking about it is making my blood boil.”
I caught my therapist’s eye. The “pity” look. “Go ahead,” I said, “judge me with your steady eyes, but don’t judge me on that.” I took another long breath and felt my heart clatter inside my chest. I closed my lids to make the image of all the animal abuse in those PETA videos go away. People making money from death and suffering. Ugh! Spoiled rich bitches, trophy wives, swanning about in fur.
My therapist said softly, “I’m not judging you, Star. But maybe you judge yourself?”
I was used to this psycho-babble talk—trying to turn the tables on me. I took a sip of water. “Doesn’t everyone judge themselves every day of the week? That little voice that says, ‘Hey dummy, why did you do this or, why didn’t you do that?’ The Wouldda-Shoudda-Couldda voice? But I do my best within my boundaries. I have my morals.”
“And they are?”
“Don’t make money or seek pleasure from someone else’s misery. And that includes all living creatures. Don’t be disloyal to a friend. Don’t steal. Don’t hurt others—and yes, by drinking and driving I was potentially hurting others and that’s why I’ve turned over a new leaf.”
“Tell me about your addictions. Why do you do drugs and drink?”
Back to what a bad, bad girl I am. “Did. Not do. Past tense.”
“Yes, I’m sorry. Why did you feel you needed to do drugs?”
“Why do people stuff their faces with too much food? Why do people tell lies? Maybe to protect themselves? To blot out insecurities, drown out the white noise that hums in their brain? Who knows?”
“You used drugs as a way of blocking or numbing your thoughts?”
“When I get high, got high, it wasn’t like a conscious, Hey I want to shut it all out, but more like, Hey, I wanna have some fun. You know? I’m nineteen years old. Can’t a girl have some fun once in a while? It’s hard being a grown-up all the time.”
“You’re alluding to your childhood? To the responsibilities you had as being the main breadwinner of the family?”
“The only breadwinner. Dad was my ‘manager’. He ‘managed’ a lot of my money away, which wasn’t the greatest when it came to paying my mom’s medical bills, for instance. I bankrolled my brother’s private school too: Groton. And the first two years of his college—”
“The first two years? He dropped out?”
“As soon as I got control back over my funds, last year, when I turned eighteen, I thought, Fuck him, why should I pay one cent more of his private education when the guy tried to ruin my life?”
“Tell me what happened between you and your brother.”
“Another day perhaps. Suffice it to say that he and I are not exactly close and I’m glad I have bodyguards, you know what I’m saying?”
“He was abusive?”
“To put it mildly.” My therapist nodded knowingly but her neat, silver bob stayed in place like a helmet.
“I’m sensing anger here, Star.” She swiveled a sapphire ring on her middle finger so it was no longer lopsided. “We’ve touched on some important issues, obviously—things close to your heart.”
“My brother is not close to my heart.”
She nodded. And then said, “Do you feel you’ve been a victim of circumstance?” It was like she had pre-set questions—did she even care about my answers?
“My
brother gets to be ‘circumstance’?” I fired back at her. “No, there’s no circumstance about it. Just Assholedom with a capital A.”
“I understand that . . . you were a victim, I’m sorry.”
I didn’t like that word. Not at all. And I sure as hell didn’t want her sympathy. “How can I be a ‘victim’ when I’m a movie star?”
“You say this as if you feel you have no right to feel vulnerable, or hurt, or damaged, as if only poor, less privileged people than yourself have the right to feel that way.”
“Yeah, well, I guess the majority of people don’t understand a poor-me attitude when it comes to the rich and famous.”
“I think you need to give people more credit,” she said. “Besides, everybody knows you give a lot of money to charity and that makes you popular. Your Rising Star school project for underprivileged girls? That’s a very noble cause you set up, Star.”
It was true that I’d spent a lot of my own money, and with help from Janice, we’d done a huge amount of fund-raising for the Rising Star Foundation. There were now eleven schools in five different countries, including the USA, and it was something I was really proud of. But I also knew from experience that people tended to focus on the negative.
“You know what the general public do?” I said. “Their eyes scan those cheap magazines at the supermarket checkout, and they gloat over celebrities’ cellulite or zits, or the fact they’ve just broken up with their movie-star boyfriend. It’s human nature. They don’t have sympathy for us when we fall. Trust me. I’ve been around long enough to know.”
“Yet you have nine million followers on Twitter.”
“That means nothing.”
“I think it means that you’re extremely popular and your fans love you.”
“It’s not real love.”
“And who would you say does love you, for real?”
I chewed the insides of my cheeks. Good question. Who actually loved me, apart from my oldest friend, Mindy? For me? Who I was? Janice? I was paying her so the line between employee and friend was kind of blurred. My dad? Did he love anyone but himself? In an insipid, pissy way, sure he loved me, but he’d hardly shown any real parental guidance or the kind of love that other people’s parents demonstrated with their kids. He’d never suggested that I go to college, for instance, despite my aptitude for math and science. Jodi Foster—she’d gone to Yale even though she was a movie star. Emma Watson—the Harry Potter actress—Brown University, even when she was shooting practically back-to-back. It wasn’t an impossibility. But it obviously hadn’t occurred to Dad that I could do anything else with my life other than be in movies. Handy that—didn’t want his resources to run dry.
“You don’t seem to have an answer,” said Narissa. Her eyes were as piercing as arrows in flight but her mouth now soft around the edges, tilting into sympathy. “Is that how you feel? ‘Unloved’?”
I could feel an unwelcome lump in my throat, which I swallowed into a smile. “Sure people love me,” I said, willing her off the subject with a flick of my wrist.
“Boyfriend?”
“I don’t do boyfriends.” My mind wandered to Jake and I wondered what it would be like to have someone like him as a boyfriend.
“But—”
“Oh, I guess you’ve read about that too. All my ‘conquests’ and all the guys I’ve dated. Don’t you love that word ‘date’? Like half the time you’re not even going anywhere. Date is synonymous with ‘fuck.’ ” I could see her wince at my choice of word as if she had a bad taste in her mouth. Great—Miss Prissy as my shrink. That was all I needed. Or maybe she was Mrs. Prissy—perhaps she was married?
“So you’ve never had a serious relationship with a boy?” she pressed.
“What for? So they can go all ego on me and boss me around, or secretly film me with their iPhones and post it on YouTube and say what a slut I am?”
“Hopefully, if someone loved you you’d be able to build up a relationship based on trust, get to know somebody gradually without sexual relations at first.”
“Yeah, well. I don’t have time to get onboard The Love Boat. I go away too much. I never spend a whole night with anyone, you know? They never come to my house either. Too personal. Too risky. I always have my own wheels and leave the second I get bored or when the guy starts getting too lovey-dovey. I don’t really do the intimacy thing.”
“Hence your drunk/driving arrest?”
“Excuse me?”
“Driving when you shouldn’t have. To make your getaway.”
“I have a full-time chauffeur now. Just to be sure. Look, I know what I did was wrong and believe me I paid for it. In every possible way. I had to do community . . . hey, isn’t our forty minutes up? Speaking of drivers, mine’s outside waiting for me—I’m running real late.” I stood up, gathered my purse and offered to shake her hand, which she reluctantly accepted. I guess she wasn’t used to having her patients end the session first.
Narissa had wheedled more information out of me in one session than Larry—my old therapist—had done in six months. I had half a mind to fire her but a myriad of voices from rehab chirped in my ear. Feeling uncomfortable, Star? Good! Now we’re getting somewhere. And, “What doesn’t break you makes you stronger.”
Most of the time I was sitting there, I had my mother on my mind—Mom’s face a blur in my memory but my feelings never wavering—that physical ache I sensed inside me, remembering how she’d hold me and say, You can do anything, baby, you know that? And then her eyelids fluttering and her dozy smile as she nodded off from whatever downers she’d taken. Uppers to get her out of bed, yellow and turquoise, stripy or red. Downers to calm her. When she was asleep I’d line them up, color-coordinated or in heart shapes or zigzag patterns. Once I popped one in my mouth thinking it would taste like candy but quickly spat it out; cruel and bitter. At the time I didn’t understand why she’d want to eat something that didn’t taste good.
My mom had always believed in me. When we had no money and lived in a trailer, she’d spend her last dime on a pretty dress for me, or gas for her old spluttery Oldsmobile to get me to an audition on time. Even if she relied on her “mother’s little helpers” to get her through the day, she never once was late, hauling me off to meet a director, or us standing in line for some open cattle call where I’d have to sing and dance, or show them my tap dancing skills. Toothy-gum smile. Little knock knees. Long blond hair to my waist. Smiling and happy, even if I preferred to be playing soldiers with my brother or Doctors and Nurses in the trailer park with Mindy. No video games—we couldn’t afford them. We lived from commercial to commercial and it wasn’t until I was seven and got my first TV show that the money started properly rolling in.
I wanted to please my mom—make her proud. And now I had that same feeling about Jake and I didn’t understand why. It wasn’t just the movie I cared about or doing a good job, but Jake himself. I was yearning to impress him. And at the same time, the Machiavellian devil in me was urging me to play little power games—just to see if I could get to him.
I decided that staying with him in his house . . .
Would be a whole lot of fun.
“SO THIS IS FOR REAL?” Mindy said, and then she slurped up her strawberry, wheat-germ and banana smoothie through a straw even though there was nothing left at the bottom. Her round, fleshy cheeks always gave her an air of happiness, and her sparkly brown eyes—like a loyal puppy—made me feel that the world was right even when it wasn’t. Sure, she was overweight; some people would have called her “fat,” but she had one of the most beautiful faces I had ever seen, like an innocent angel from a Renaissance painting. Timeless beauty. I felt safe with her and one hundred percent accepted. We went back a long way Mindy and I, and she’d seen the worst of me but had still hung around all those years—never letting me down even when I’d been an ass. One of the few people I could trust because we’d known each other since we were four. When you’re famous you can never be sure who your real friends are�
��some people can do a very convincing act.
We’d been shopping and were now hanging out on Santa Monica Pier, people-watching—at least trying to. For me it wasn’t so easy. I was wearing a huge purple hat, dark sunglasses—my signature long blond hair tucked inside a belted mackintosh that made me look like some detective from a pulp fiction crime novel. Except the hat was one of those oversized floppy ones so maybe I looked like something out of a 1980’s Jackie Collins ‘bonkbuster’—the kind my mom used to read. So far, only two people had recognized me but I kept my head down and kept on walking—no eye contact. One of my bodyguards walked ahead of us and another behind. Things had calmed way down since my arrest and three-night stint in jail, but having swarms of paparazzi trailing me could be terrifying and I didn’t want to get caught unawares.
“He doesn’t want me to stay with him but the producers are insisting,” I told Mindy.
“What about Janice, is she coming too?”
“Good point. I guess not. I’ll need her though so maybe I should bring her along.”
“No, no distractions,” Mindy said emphatically. “Jake Wild is a serial womanizer. He might be attracted to her.”
“Over me?”
“You already said he wants to stay clear of you so yeah, he might go for Janice.”
“Yeah, we can’t have that.”
“Guys go crazy when women fool around with them and then don’t give a damn. Makes them nuts!” She grinned at me. “Serves them right most of the time—gives them a taste of their own medicine.” That was my signature behavior with guys. . . Treat ‘em mean, keep ‘em keen and Mindy lived vicariously through me. She’d had her heart broken once and since then hadn’t dared trust a guy. If I treated someone badly it gave her a thrill as if her ex was getting direct punishment. “All men are the same,” she added. “Serves ‘em right to get their butts kicked once in a while.”
Shooting Star (Beautiful Chaos) Page 4