Hollywood and Maine

by Allison Whittenberg

  “A mere three hundred ninety-five dollars plus forty dollars for the makeup session.”

  The air got heavy.

  Ma leaned back and placed her hand over her heart. The woman who’d asked the question grabbed her daughter’s hand, and together they left the room.

  “Do we get to keep the negatives?” someone else asked.

  “That will be an extra twenty per slide.”

  Two more mothers left with their daughters in tow.

  “What else is highly recommended?” someone asked.

  “Before we send you out on auditions, you have to take our classes, which run ten-fifty per session, or ten weeks for a hundred dollars. That’s a savings of five dollars!” she said as if generosity dripped from her pores.

  The crowd thinned more.

  My heart sank. Why was it that everything cost money?

  Life is an open sea and then it’s not. There have been big stars who have leapfrogged over all these primary steps. In Raymond’s Hollywood book, it told of the famed actress Lana Turner, who was discovered sipping a malted at Schwab’s drugstore. Talk about luck. If you lived in L.A., you were more likely to run into those people, but what were the odds of me meeting a movie producer on the number thirteen trolley?

  More insurrections followed as people asked pointed questions about money, money, money.

  Mrs. Sharpe-Adams spoke over them. “These were taken by our photographer, the fabulous Pierre Brochère.”

  I got a sinking feeling.

  I felt like the lovely honeybee that passes the fragrant garden of daffodils and lands in a pile of crap.

  “Why can’t we take our own pictures?” someone asked.

  “I’m sure they won’t come out like this,” Mrs. Sharpe-Adams responded. Next came something else that the letter had promised: our one-on-one consultations. I saw plaques on the wall of the many accolades Thomas Sharpe had won. There were also pictures of celebs like Farrah Fawcett and Robert Redford.

  Sharpe’s chiffoned granddaughter had brows that climbed to tapered peaks above her brown eyes. At the sight of me she exclaimed, “Where did you get those cheekbones?”

  After shaking her hand with a firm grip, I sat down between my mother and my cousin.

  “I can’t believe you have been waiting this long. You could have been modeling for years,” she told me.

  “She’s only a teenager,” Tracy John said.

  I pressed my knee heavily against his, as if to tell him Cut it.

  “She could have taken up modeling when she was your age or even younger. We have clients as young as six months.”

  “That’s a baby.” Tracy John folded his arms across his chest. “Babies can’t walk or talk. How are they gonna model?”

  “They can still be in front of the cameras. What are you waiting for?”

  “Me?” Tracy John uttered the first humble word in his life.

  She handed a brochure to Ma.

  “I’ve been thinking of starting a class just for little boys. However, we probably won’t get it going until the fall.”

  “In the fall, Tracy John likes to play peewee football. That’s enough of his time occupied,” Ma told her.

  “Are you sure?” Ms. Sharpe-Adams asked. “This is important.”

  “So is football,” Tracy John said.

  Her smile didn’t fade; in fact, it grew. “That’s a pity; you definitely show great potential,” she said to my cousin.

  I nodded, agreeing wholeheartedly. My little cousin reeked of star quality.

  She directed the questions that followed to Ma. “Do you have any other family members, Mrs. Upshaw?”

  Ma told her Leo had dance lessons.

  “How about Horace?” Tracy John asked.

  Ma patted Tracy John on his head. “Horace can’t do this, honey. He’s in the military.”

  “Where is he stationed?” Ms. Sharpe-Adams asked. “We have offices all around the world.”

  I sighed. There I was, lost in the shuffle at my own interview. After her comment about my cheekbones, Sharpe’s granddaughter seemed to all but forget I was in the room.

  She went on to explain the different payment plans, which knocked off five percent of the enrollment price per family member that joined.

  “It’s never too late, Mrs. Upshaw. We also have adult classes.” She winked at us.

  During the trolley ride home, Tracy John unfolded the accordion-like brochure and read it closely.

  I shook my head at him and Ma caught me. “At least he’s going over the material. That’s what you should be doing. You know what they say, Charmaine. Fools rush in.”

  Tracy John looked up from the paperwork and agreed, “Yeah, Maine, fools.”

  I turned to the window. The trolley went underground.

  The inside lights came on, but I had to wait five more stops for there to be a light at the end of the tunnel.

  thirteen

  During supper, I told Daddy, “The head of the agency said I have good cheekbones.”

  “What do bad cheekbones look like?” Leo asked.

  Daddy shook his head. “Enough, Leo. Your sister has a nice face.”

  Here we went again with that word.

  “Charmaine also has a nice speaking voice,” Ma said as she passed around the peas and carrots.

  Nice. Nice. Nice. My parents were trying to make my head explode.

  Leo reached for a roll. “How could they tell her voice by looking at her picture?”

  I gave Leo a dirty look. I’d always heard that it was lonely at the top, but I thought you’d have to get to the top first to be lonely. “You know, a lot of models move into acting.”

  “Is that right?” Daddy sliced into the baked flounder. “Well, sounds like you had quite an experience.”

  “It may not be over yet,” I said.

  “The classes cost ten dollars and fifty cents,” Ma said.

  Daddy whistled. “That’s out of sight.”

  Leo shook his head. “If that’s what you get from winning a competition, you better hope you don’t lose one anytime soon.”

  “Ten dollars a class,” Daddy repeated.

  “And fifty cents,” Tracy John said.

  Leo asked, “What’s the fifty cents for?”

  I glowered. I knew money would stand in my way. If all of a sudden the cost of Leo’s tap lessons shot up like a rocket, Daddy would find a way to cover it. If Tracy John’s peewee football stuff cost a million dollars, he’d move Heaven and earth to pay for it.

  I shifted my collard greens around my plate and meekly said, “Lessons could lead to millions.”

  “Can they guarantee that?” Leo asked.

  I began to cry inside. Everyone shot me down. Nobody loves me. No one at all.

  “Well,” Daddy began, “if that’s what you really want, we’ll try to come up with the money for a few classes.”

  Ma gasped. “Peyton.”

  “I said a few, Miss Sweet Thang.”

  My heart had wings again.

  “How many is that, Unc?” Tracy John asked.

  “A few”—he paused and drank a swallow of water—“is a few. But Charmaine has to really investigate this place.”

  “Unc, that lady wanted me and Auntie to take classes,” Tracy John said, and pointed to Leo. “And you and Horace.”

  Daddy nodded knowingly. “So they want to recruit my whole family, eh? Now, Charmaine, put on your thinking cap, what does that tell you?”

  I put on a big smile and batted my eyelashes. “That we’re all photogenic?”

  “Come on, Maine,” Leo said. “They’ve never even seen me or Horace.”

  “Leo, didn’t I say that was enough from you?” Daddy said.

  “This thing stinks to high Heaven, Daddy,” Leo said in a voice rich with righteous indignation.

  I turned to Tracy John. He held his nose and said, “Pew.”

  I flipped back to Daddy, who said, “Charmaine is no dummy. I’m sure she would not let someone who t
ells her that she has good cheekbones pull the wool over her eyes. I trust that she wouldn’t let us fall prey to a scam.”

  “You won’t be sorry, Daddy. We’ll be in Hollywood before you know it.”

  Daddy frowned; it wasn’t often that I saw Daddy frown. “You still don’t understand, Charmaine. Even if this agency wasn’t suspect, Hollywood is the last place I’d want us to be.”

  Leo was a frowner and an eye-roller and every other gesture of disapproval known to mankind. “Hollywood? You’ve never even been in a school play, Maine,” Leo said.

  “That’s not a prerequisite,” I told him. “Since when have you ever been interested in acting?” Leo asked.

  I sighed. Did I have to explain everything? “I’m not talking about acting; I’m talking about being in the movies.”

  I cleared the dinner plates without a clang and met up with Ma by the sink.

  “I don’t know why you are suddenly so preoccupied with money. You know there’s more to life than that,” Ma said as she spooned out a dollop of vanilla ice cream for each helping of peach cobbler. Immediately, she followed that cliché with a story I’d heard a thousand times. She told me about how she and all of her four sisters had to share one coat. They had to take turns wearing it.

  How cold does it get in Alabama, Ma? I wanted to ask, but I didn’t want to ruin the flow of her favorite story. I politely listened, wondering, Why, oh why, do older people like to do this? They always made out like they walked, no, crawled, no, swam ten, no, twenty, no, a hundred miles to school. They made out like their generation had it so hard and my generation had it so easy. Ha. I had it easy? Look how tentatively Daddy agreed to fund my modeling lessons.

  I placed an à la mode helping in front of Daddy and another one before Tracy John.

  “You know, Cicely Tyson was nominated for an Academy Award.”

  “Oh, that Sounder was a lovely movie,” Ma said.

  “I liked the dog in Sounder,” Tracy John said.

  “They should have given that dog an award,” Daddy said.

  Tracy John laughed so hard at that, he spat out some of his ice cream.

  Ma went to clean him up.

  “I want to win an Emmy and a Tony and an Oscar and a Grammy and a Golden—”

  “Maybe you ought to slow down with all this show business talk, Charmaine,” Daddy advised over his cobbler. “See how things go after you learn more about this, because one thing is for sure: You can’t go taking the cart before the horse.”

  Ma continued to gang up on me. “I done told her fools rush in.”

  “Yeah, Maine, fools,” Tracy John said.

  “What is the harm in—” I began.

  “Maine, that’s what Daddy’s telling you,” Leo said.

  “Can I finish my sentence?” I asked heatedly.

  “Charmaine, there’s no need to raise your voice,” Ma said.

  Daddy nodded knowingly. “Charmaine, this is what I was talking about. This is exactly how it starts.”

  Just ten minutes ago, there’d been a glimmer of support from him. “How what starts?” I asked.

  “Trust me, you don’t want to get mixed up with that world,” Daddy said.

  “Yeah, Maine, you need to stay in this world,” Tracy John said.

  Though I felt my heart go to clear liquid, I made one last effort. “I just don’t see the harm in pursuing a career in entertainment.”

  Daddy pointed at me with his fork. “I hope you heed my advice. Stay away from those people. They are the unhappiest people God ever created.”

  “They sure look happy.”

  “That’s why they’re called actors,” Leo said.

  I didn’t care what my family thought; I knew the truth. Nobody wants a humble life; everyone craves to be pushed to the front in one way or another. I understood that not everyone can make it into the limelight, but some people do. Every single day, new famous people were in the newspaper.

  Why couldn’t I have what they had? It was a simple question.

  I’d seen Daddy struggling, getting up before the birds every morning, and Auntie Karyn studying and studying with her big, thick medical books. That’s the long way. My plan was the fast track.

  The dynasty begins with me and it will be big, I thought. I will not just conquer showbiz, but one day I will franchise. First, I’d have my own jeans. I’d have my name on everyone’s butt, like Levi Strauss. Then I’d move on to a line of perfume. Then snack food. What customer could resist Charmaine’s Potato Chips?

  My family was just the opposite of the way the saying goes. Nobody wanted to get into the act. They were too cautious and conservative. They couldn’t fathom the gold mine we were sitting on.

  I’d love to see Daddy in a movie. He could take the roles Billy Dee Williams was too busy for.

  And Ma, well, there’d be parts for her. Ma could play someone’s ma. She’d be very believable at that.

  Now, what part could Tracy John play? After one glimpse, a casting director would stick my cousin’s angelic, innocent face and princely bearing in a Little Lord Fauntleroy part. Wrong. That would waste his flinty personality. If I were in charge of production, I’d get a cowlick going with Tracy John’s ’fro and voila, I’d give him a role where he could be a black version of Dennis the Menace.

  Horace would prove versatile, but that would have to wait till his enlistment contract was complete.

  And Leo, with his dancing ability, he would have been a shoo-in twenty years ago. Who made musicals anymore? Uncle E and his guitar would have the same problem.

  fourteen

  The next day I rethought my whole casting and ran through a totally new scenario. “Think of it, Daddy, I could emcee. Leo could showcase his dance ability. Horace could tell jokes.… I haven’t figured out yet what Tracy John could do.”

  “You haven’t?”

  “No, not yet. But I figured we’ll give him a few years before he joins the routine. Well, what do you think?”

  “Charmaine, we ain’t the gosh-darn Jackson Five.”

  It’s funny he mentioned that. Millicent and Cissy were deep in mourning ever since they heard that the five brothers from Gary, Indiana, had parted company. I took the news less to heart. I was a Jackson Five fan, not a JACKSON FIVE FAN. I hated the way they made that little guy, Michael, do all the work in the group. Whose brilliant idea was that? An eleven-year-old front man who was asked to be James Brown, Jackie Wilson, and Sam Cooke all rolled into one. Talk about pressure.

  Still, there was a vacancy. A space where the right act could fit in. After all, nature abhors a vacuum.

  “Maine, your father already said he’d pay for some of your classes,” Ma told me. “Now, let’s not run this thing into the ground. I want you to find something else to talk about.”

  Find something else? Like that was easy. Hadn’t she heard? There’s no business like show business.

  During English class, I observed Demetrius with skepticism as he approached, then interrupted my conversation with Raymond.

  “What time should I drop by?” Demetrius asked.

  Raymond’s face froze in wild alarm.

  “Huh?” I asked.

  “To practice the commercial audition. I want to help you rehearse.”

  Raymond turned to me. “When did you arrange this?”

  Demetrius all but stepped on Raymond’s words. “How about right after school?”

  “I don’t even know what you’re talking about,” I said.

  “You remember. I’ll be over at three.” I noticed he wasn’t asking. My eyes followed him as he went to his desk; then they returned to Raymond. I swear I saw steam coming out of his ears.

  Mr. Mand began his lecture. More about The Pearl.

  Raymond wrote this in his notebook and flashed it at me: Are you interested in him or are you interested in me?

  Did he really expect any perfidy on my part? I had barely gone out with one guy in my entire life on this earth, how could I be accused of dating two?
>
  I tore off a small piece from the sheet I was to take notes on and scripted the words: What do you think?

  Raymond made a face.

  Mr. Mand was in the middle of making a point about the colonial structure of Mexico when he noticed something was going on between us. It couldn’t have been more obvious. Raymond and I occupied seats in the front row. Mr. Mand paused for a moment and gave me a sharp look.

  Oblivious, Raymond turned the paper over and wrote something on the back, then passed it to me.

  I slipped it into my book as a marker. Throughout the rest of the session, I kept my eyes front. At the bell, I pulled the note out and read: Would it pain you, Maine, to say it?

  “Say what?” I asked Raymond.

  “That you are not interested in Demetrius.”

  “This is way past absurd. You know Mr. Mand caught us passing notes.”

  “All I want is an answer.”

  I bridled at this. “You’ve turned into Dr. Jekyll.”

  “You mean Mr. Hyde.”

  “Which one is the crazy one?” I asked.

  “Mr. Hyde.”

  “Oh, then you’re right.”

  “Is he going to come over your house?”

  His question had such histrionics, such urgency, I didn’t know what to say. Luckily, there was a buzzzzzzzzz. I went to phys ed, and he went to U.S. history.

  I could hardly wait for lunch, so I could relay to my two best friends what had happened. Dardon Junior High’s cafeteria was serving South Philly hoagies, which Cissy and Millicent took forever waiting in line for. One look at those oily kaiser rolls made me glad that I always brought my lunch. I sat at our table alone until they came with their trays. I told them everything in a rush.

  “Who’s Mr. Hyde?” Cissy asked.

  “Forget him. Who’s right, me or Raymond?” I asked.

  “Raymond,” they both said.

  “Huh?”

  “You’re only going to make things confused,” Millicent said.

  “How? I’m not interested in Demetrius.”

  “You used to be,” Cissy pointed out, and took one of my Fig Newtons.

  I pushed the entire package closer to her. “Used to means not anymore, right?”