Play Me

by Laura Ruby

  Bernardo leads us to a small trailer. He knocks on the door. A voice says, “Come in!”

  He opens the door and lets us into the tiny space. Inside, there’s a chair with a big, lighted mirror in front of it. A rack of clothes. A small table with a plate of cookies and a half-drunk cup of tea in a china cup.

  “Eddy,” my mom says. “Baby.”

  I haven’t seen her for a year. She’s blonder now and thinner. Her skin is a shade of bronze not found in nature. Her pantsuit is Florida yellow, banana yellow. All of a sudden, I’m hearing the song “Banana Phone” in my head, blathering on about calling for pizzas and calling your cat, complete with visuals by way of video game characters.

  She holds out her arms. I hug her, though it’s kind of hard to do, because I’m still holding the video camera and because the table’s between us. She smells of the vanilla-scented lotion she always used.

  She steps back, still holding me by the shoulders. “Look at these muscles! You certainly don’t take after your father,” she says. “Bernardo, isn’t he handsome?”

  “Yeah, sure,” says Bernardo.

  “And you’ve brought your girlfriend!” my mother says. “What’s your name?”

  “I’m Gina, but I’m not—”

  “Oh, give me a hug anyway.” My mother wraps her in a bear hug. “Are you a fan of Crime Scene?”

  “I’ve caught it a few times,” Gina says.

  “Just a few?” Mom says, like she doesn’t quite believe her. “You know, we might be able to use you as an extra. You have a very unique look.”

  “So I’ve been told.”

  “Shelby, I got to get back,” says Bernardo.

  “Thanks, B.,” my mom says. “See you later.”

  Bernardo rushes off to do something vital like scaring up a taco for the best boy.

  My mom smiles. Her teeth look bigger and whiter. I can’t tell if it’s because she’s the color of an Oompa-Loompa or if it’s because she had them bleached. She gestures to the small table. We sit around it.

  “I’m thrilled to see you, Eddy. Surprised, but thrilled.”

  “That’s me,” I say. “Always surprising people.”

  “And thrilling them,” says Gina.

  “You told me you would never come,” my mom says.

  “Yeah, well. Things change.”

  “People grow up?”

  “Some of us do,” I say. My throat feels tight. My teeth feel tight.

  She sighs. “Are you going to take potshots at me the whole time you’re here?”

  “I might,” I say.

  “And are you going to film said potshots?”

  “I might.”

  She touches the camera. “Gina, he was always making little videos when he was a kid. Once, when he was eleven or twelve, he wrote a script about a mad ghost that haunted this suburban town. I,” she says, putting a hand on her heart, “played the ghost.”

  “That turned out to be prophetic,” I say.

  “You’re still mad. I don’t blame you. Maybe you’ll understand when you’re older.”

  I’m so angry I think pieces of me might start randomly falling off. I don’t even know what I’m mad at. I pick up the camera and aim it at her. “So, explain it to me.”

  “I don’t want to end up in one of your shows.”

  “Pretend the camera isn’t here.”

  “It’s very hard to do that with you pointing it at me.”

  I put it down on the table, but I don’t turn it off.

  “How’s Matthew?” she asks.

  “He dies a lot. He’d like you to come home, please.”

  My mother downs her tea even though it has to be cold by now. “Eddy, I know I’ve made some mistakes. I know I’ve hurt you.”

  “Forget about me. You hurt Dad. You hurt Marty. You hurt Matthew.”

  “I’m trying to make amends.”

  “By moving to Miami?”

  “I thought it was best.”

  “For who?”

  “For everyone.”

  “Talk to the camera,” I say, tapping it. “I want to record this moment for posterity.”

  “You’re not making this easy,” my mother says. “Marty was more understanding. Your father was more understanding.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He made a few calls and told me about the audition. He knew I was miserable after…you know.”

  “Villerosa.”

  “What’s Villerosa?” Gina asks.

  “Why don’t you tell her, Mom?”

  “It was a movie,” she says.

  “A bad movie. Possibly the worst movie ever made, according to The New York Times. The Chicago Tribune said it was like watching a train wreck over and over again every day for a month straight. It was my mom’s first major role.”

  My mom sighs. “I worked my whole stupid life to get that break. As much good as it did me. Didn’t get another part until this one came up.”

  “What’s wrong with this one?” Gina says.

  My mom smiles again, this time without showing any teeth. “Nothing, honey. It’s great.” She massages her temples. “This is not going the way I’d like it to go,” she says, more to herself than to me.

  “You expected that maybe I wouldn’t mention anything uncomfortable?”

  “Come on, Eddy. We’re not going to get this all worked out in the next half hour. Let me introduce you around. You can take up your bad mommy lecture later. I promise I’ll listen to the whole thing.”

  She’s already up and outside before I have a chance to formulate a witty or even an unwitty response. She stops by the craft table, where a short, way-too-skinny woman is eating macaroni salad one noodle at a time by spearing it with a toothpick.

  “Melanie, I want you to meet my son. Eddy, this is Melanie. She plays Officer Sasha DePonce on the show.”

  “Your son!” Melanie smiles, her teeth as white as my mom’s. “You don’t look old enough to have a son!” It’s so obvious that she doesn’t mean a word she says. Gina’s mouth twitches.

  “And who’s this?” Melanie says, spearing a single noodle with the toothpick. “Your daughter?”

  “Oh, no. This is my son’s girlfriend. I’m going to talk to Bob about using her as an extra.”

  She scrapes her eyes up and down Gina’s body. “We can always use hookers.”

  Gina giggles and takes a step closer to Melanie, breathing down on the top of her head. Melanie frowns, or tries to. Her forehead seems to be frozen.

  “That’s Dave, the cameraman,” my mom is saying. “That’s Rocco, he does some of the lighting. And that’s Bob. The director. Bob? Bob!”

  The man who had been yelling and waving his arms around turns. “Yeah?”

  “You have a minute?” My mom drags me over to the guy. “I want to introduce you to my son. Eddy, this is Bob Auster.”

  Bob has dark brown hair with a strip of gray roots at the part. And I thought only actors were vain. “Your son, huh? Hey, kid, how you doing?” The accent is pure Brooklyn. I wonder how he likes Miami. His skin doesn’t like it. It’s red and angry.

  My mom clutches my arm. “Eddy wants to be a filmmaker, Bob.”

  “I am a filmmaker,” I say.

  Bob looks at the camera in my hand. “Oh, yeah?”

  “Yeah. I’m in talks with MTV right now.”

  “Do you have any advice for him?” my mom says.

  “Heh, sure. Those pukes at MTV will screw you over soon as look at you, so don’t be surprised when they do, okay?” he says. “And then get yourself over to film school. Study. Graduate. Get some work on some sets. Like Bernardo over there.” He points. Bernardo is helping Melanie select the rest of her afternoon snack, which will most likely consist of half a carrot, two olives, and a brimming cup full of air.

  “Ed wants to make his own films,” Gina says.

  “That is how you get to make your own films, sweetheart,” Bob tells her. “Work on other people’s films first. After you get a lit
tle experience, you max out your credit cards and your parents’ credit cards to finance something you might be able to get into Sundance or one of those other festivals. And then if you make a big enough splash, someone will let you direct a horror sequel, and so on. It’s a food chain thing.”

  “Is that what you did?”

  “Yep,” he says.

  “And look where it got you,” I say.

  My mom’s hand tightens around my arm. “Yes! All the way to Crime Scene: Miami! Thanks for the encouragement, Bob. We really appreciate it.”

  She hustles me and Gina away, walking so fast that I have to break into a skip to keep up. “Okay, Ed. Was it really necessary to antagonize my director?” she hisses in my ear.

  “Yes, Mom, it really was necessary.”

  We get as far as the millionaire’s set when she stops. “Why did you come here?”

  “You left.”

  “Yes, I left. And I’m a horrible person; is that what you want to hear? Fine. I’m a horrible person.”

  “That’s not what I want to hear.”

  “Eddy, I was drowning in New Jersey. Drowning. Losing my mind. I’d quit my job at Cleaning House to take Villerosa. And after Villerosa, who was going to hire me? I’d have been lucky to get a job as a weather girl. And I wasn’t lucky. Your dad refused to move. Not to Hollywood, not even to New York City. I had this one chance. Is it so wrong for me to want to be happy?”

  “It’s wrong to leave your six-and-a-half-year-old son.”

  “Don’t you mean it was wrong to leave you?”

  “We’re not talking about me,” I say.

  “We’re not?”

  “No.”

  “Don’t you think that was hard for me, too?”

  “Not hard enough.”

  She lets go of my arm. “I left New Jersey. I didn’t leave you. I’m still your mother. I’m still Matthew’s mother.” She makes an attempt to run her hand through her hair, but there’s too much hair spray and it gets stuck. She has to yank it away. “I want to have both of you down for a few weeks in the summer, how about that? So that you could get to know Worth. As hard as this might be for you to hear, I love him. He’s the first man who truly understands me.”

  At this, Gina snorts.

  My mother looks at her. “You don’t believe me.”

  “Oh, I believe you,” says Gina. “But I bet you said that about Eddy’s dad and your second husband, too.”

  “I…” My mother trails off, frowning. “I’m not sure this is any of your business.”

  Gina’s mouth twists. “Right.”

  “Look,” I say. “I just want to know why. I don’t think it’s so much to ask.”

  “You know why.”

  “But I don’t!” My voice cracks and now both Gina and my mother stare at me.

  Suddenly it occurs to me that this whole trip, this whole stupid, twenty-million-hour, hundred-bucks’-worth-of-gas trip, was a complete waste. I have no idea why I’m here. My eyes are filled with grit, my stomach feels like a shot put, and I’m never going to get the answers that I want. Didn’t I believe that Marty and Matthew and Dad were worth staying for, no matter what? That I was worth staying for? Isn’t that what I believe? And if I don’t believe it, if I believe that there was some weird circumstance in which it was okay to leave us, do I really want to know what that is?

  “Let me ask you something,” my mom says quietly. “Did you come here because you wanted to understand why I had to come, or did you come here because you thought maybe I could do something for you?”

  Blood pulses in my throat, I can feel it, like something in there trying to kick its feeble way out. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Yes, you do. Because you’re like me, Eddy. You want things. You want them so bad that it will eat you up if you don’t get them. So even though you’re pissed as hell at me, you’ll still use me to move up in the world, right?”

  There’s a swift intake of breath. Me? Gina? I don’t even know.

  “You have a three-minute scene on a weekly TV show, Mom,” I say. “You don’t exactly have that much clout.”

  “At the moment I have more than you do. Your washed-up old mother in her funny yellow suit and her skimpy tops and her three-minute scenes has more clout.” She absently buttons up her jacket. “I know what happened with MTV. Your father told me. We talk. I bet you didn’t know that, but we do. And what I’m trying to say is that I understand why you came down here. ’Cause that’s exactly what I would have done.”

  Rebel Without a Cause

  Somehow I get from the studio lot back to the car. Maybe I ran. Maybe I floated. Maybe I grew wings and flew. I don’t know. Gina’s pulling on my elbow as I turn the key in the ignition, she’s saying something about calming down or slowing down or whatever, but I don’t care what it is. I just have to get away.

  I drive. But I’m too exhausted to drive very far, so we find a Super 8 motel that’s charging only twenty-eight dollars a night. When I put my debit card on the counter, the pimpled clerk taps his pen.

  “She at least sixteen?” he asks, jerking his head toward Gina.

  “Are you?” Gina shoots back.

  On the way to the second floor, we stop at the candy machines and stock up on energy bars and cookies, as well as tiny toothbrushes and toothpaste also loaded in the machine. Then we drag ourselves through the door of our room.

  “This is very nice,” Gina says, bouncing on one bed. “I think we got the fleabag suite.” She rips open a Twix bar and eats the whole thing in about three bites.

  I sit on the other bed. “Sorry I dragged you down here. I don’t know what I was thinking. I hope you don’t get in trouble.”

  “If I didn’t want to come, I wouldn’t have gotten in the car. And I had a feeling it would be a long trip. I called my mom and told her I was staying with a friend.”

  I pluck at a loose thread in the bedspread. How many hundreds of people have sat here and plucked at this same thread? “There’s something I should tell you,” I say.

  “Yeah? What?” She’s moved on to the chocolate chip cookies.

  “Riot Grrl 16 wasn’t picked up by MTV.”

  She washes the mouthful of cookies down with a swig of Sprite. “I know.”

  “You know? How do you know?”

  “I guessed before, remember, back at my house? But Joe confirmed it.”

  “When did you talk to Joe?”

  “I called him this morning.”

  “What did you call him for?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. He’s your friend? You’re out of your mind and he might know why? Anyway, he got a call from Erin Loder and told me about it.”

  Of course Joe would have gotten the call. Of course he would have told her. “That’s why you asked about college in the car.”

  “Yeah.”

  “So, if you knew about the show, why did you come down here with me?”

  She shrugs. “Because you’re a pathetic, self-destructive, moronic ass face who couldn’t be trusted to be by himself.” She licks the crumbs from her lips, then the chocolate from the tips of each finger.

  I can’t stand it anymore. The thing with the show, the thing with Lucinda, the thing with my mom, the thing with me driving all the way down here. I want to forget it all. I’d do anything to forget.

  I leap from my seat to kneel on the floor in front of her. She raises both arms in surprise, which allows me to grab her around the waist. I kiss her. She tastes sugary and rich and smoky like cookies and chocolate and cigarettes and not anything like Lucinda, not even a bit like Lucinda, so I keep kissing her, pushing her up onto the bed, moving on top of her, trying to lose myself in her. She buries her hands in my hair, then slides them forward so they’re cupping my face. I’m still trying to kiss her when she breaks the kiss. She pats my cheeks so gently when she says, “Eddy. I’m sorry. I just don’t feel that bad about myself anymore.”

  I make a horrible noise, I don’t even know where it
comes from, that a body could make a noise like that without wanting to. Gina scoots out from under me, sits up, puts both hands on my shoulders, turns me over so that my back is to her. She wraps her arms around me and lays me down again. She says, “Sleep now, just sleep. Sleep now, just sleep,” over and over until I do.

  The sun is searing my eyelids when I wake up. Gina’s not in the bed, she’s sitting in a chair, dragging on a cigarette. Her hair is wet, her face is scrubbed clean, and she’s changed into pair of ripped jeans and a black T-shirt.

  “Morning, sunshine,” she says and sends a plume of smoke into the air. Then she coughs. “I promised myself that I would quit by the time I graduated. Hope I can stick to it.”

  I push at the blankets. She must have covered me with them sometime in the night. “How long have you been up?”

  “I don’t know. Awhile. I slept in the car, remember? You needed a chance to rest.”

  “Thanks,” I say.

  “No worries. Not as if I had any big plans for the day.”

  I nod. I remember last night and swallow hard. I can’t believe she’s still talking to me. I don’t know what to say. So I don’t say anything. I stumble to the bathroom. I strip off my clothes and jump in the shower. I make the water hot as I can take, letting the steam and the soap clear my head. Then I jump out, try to dry off using a towel the size of a washcloth, and get dressed again.

  Even though I’ve humiliated myself in a thousand different ways over the last two days, I have the nerve to feel better.

  I’m astonished that more people don’t hate my guts.

  I open the bathroom door and step into the room. Gina’s opened the ugly curtains wide and is standing in front of the window. The sunlight makes a blinding corona around her, like she’s not even real, like she’s a vision or a dream.

  I take a step toward her.

  She puts one shaky hand up. “I won’t ruin it if you won’t.”

  And for once, I don’t.