“I hope they get the ones fwrom Wawlmawrt,” Molly says. “They’wre way mowre comfowrtabwle.”
“And guess what?” my mom says, holding Molly by her shoulders so she’s pinned in place.
“What?”
“Your agent called. A casting director saw your commercial, and she wants you to come to an audition.”
“Really?” I say, my emotions reversing course at the thought of doing another commercial and earning another boatload of money that could possibly buy us a new car.
“What’s an audition?” Molly asks.
“It’s where you try out for a part on a show, and if they like you best, you get the part.”
“And the othewr kids get the othewr pawrts?”
“And the other kids go home until their agent calls for them to try out for a different part. But this is a really good part, so I really hope you get it. It’s an audition for The Foster Band.”
The words electrify the air.
“I wlove The Fostewr Band,” Molly says.
Everyone loves The Foster Band.
“With Cawleb?” Molly says.
“With Caleb. And they want you,” my mom says.
“Want me fowr what?” Molly asks, confused.
“To be another Foster kid, to join the band.”
Molly’s face tilts, and I can tell the idea is too abstract to get her head around. To her, the show is real and so are the Fosters, and you can’t just join a family. It’s like telling her Santa Claus isn’t real. At this age, she simply wouldn’t believe you.
“You don’t worry about it,” my mom says, tapping Molly on the nose. “You just show up tomorrow and be your cute, adorable self, and they’re going to love you. Okey dokey?”
“Okey dokey, jokey smokey,” Molly says, skipping off to sit beside Tom on the couch where he is playing on Emily’s iPhone.
My mom stands, a slight groan emitted with the effort, making me realize, not for the first time since I’ve returned, that she is older than when I left, and a pang of unexpected concern prickles me.
“You need to be at Fox Studios at ten thirty,” she says. “Monique sent the details in an email. We think it would be best if Molly wears the dress the Gap gave her, the one with the stripes. I went out and bought a pair of Mary Janes that match. Monique also thinks it would be best if she wears her hair in braids, since the show is set on a farm.”
My concern for my mom’s aging evaporates with my annoyance. Monique this, Monique that. My mom flings the name around like she and Monique Braxton are pals. Monique Braxton has never even seen the striped dress the Gap gave Molly.
“I haven’t decided if we’re going,” I say, just to assert my authority and piss her off.
“Well, of course you’re going. You can take my car.”
And though of course we’re going, I refuse to give her the satisfaction of saying so. Instead I shrug and plop myself on the couch beside the kids, flick on the television, and scan through the channels, pretending to look for something interesting to watch, while secretly hoping I’ll land on the Gap commercial so I can watch my little star.
14
The tickle in the back of my brain has a voice that sounds distinctly like Bo. I try to swat it away, and when that doesn’t work, I turn up the radio to drown it out. Buzz, buzz, buzz.
“Get lost,” I say out loud.
“Who you tawlking to?” Molly asks from her car seat.
“Mr. Bo. He’s in my head, and I want him to leave.”
“You’wre funny.”
Sometimes I am.
Bo quiets, but seconds later, my brain is ambushed again, this time by the flash of the insidious tabloid my mom works for, Star Gazer. This morning, the current issue was on the counter as I poured my coffee, the face of Zeke Aaron splashed on the front page, the latest teen idol to fall from fame into shame. Zeke Aaron Enters Rehab Again!!!
“Mom, tewll me again what I do fowr the audition?” Molly asks.
My eyes move to the rearview mirror to find my baby, her curls sticking up every which way around her saucer eyes.
“Are you nervous?” I ask, sensing more than curiosity in the question.
“A wlittle. I want to do good. Gwrandma says it’s impowrtant.”
I force my own desire from my voice. “Love Bug, this is no more important than picking apricots from the orchard. You’re going to meet some of the people who help put The Foster Band on television and pretend you’re a Foster kid like Caleb. Doesn’t that sound like fun?”
Not entirely convinced, she says, “But if they wlike me, I get the job, wright?”
I swallow at the word “job.” “Sweetie, you’re four, you don’t need a job. But yes, if they like you, you would get the part.”
“And I’wll get paid wlots of money?”
“I don’t know how much, but yes, you would get paid.”
“And then we could get a new cawr, and you won’t have to wowrk, and Em can go to hewr soccewr games?”
This morning, I needed to break the news to Emily that, on top of everything else, she would miss her game because of the audition. I needed my mom’s car, so there was no way to get her to the field. It was an ugly scene, replete with screaming and door slamming, and a dozen I-hate-yous.
“Bug, this isn’t about that,” I try to reassure, though I know it’s impossible for Molly to see beyond the tumultuous emotions of the past day. “This is about doing something we’ve never done before and having fun. Tomorrow I’ll get a new job, then we’ll get a new car, and then Emily can go to her games.”
“But Gwrandma says if I get the job, we can get a wreawlly good cawr. She says we could pwrobabwly even hiwre someone to dwrive Emiwly to hewr games if you and Gwrandma awre busy.”
I grit my teeth and don’t answer. I should have known there was a reason my mom volunteered to give Molly her bath this morning.
A few minutes later, when I glance in the mirror again, Molly is turned toward the window playing her own quiet game of Sweet or Sour, grinning at the drivers beside us and trying to get them to grin back. If they smile, they are sweet. If they don’t, they are sour.
I imagine her in fifteen years and wonder, if she gets the part, if it will change her. I picture a curly-haired young woman with saucer eyes beneath the Star Gazer’s banner and the headline Molly Martin Enters Rehab Again!!!
I shake my head to clear away the image. Molly is not Zeke Aaron, and his fate is not hers. Bo is wrong—a bazillion kids who aren’t famous get into trouble with drugs and alcohol every day. We only think of it as prevalent in show business because it’s splashed all over the news.
Molly’s not the one I need to worry about, Emily is. It’s hard to believe that, in such a short time, a chasm has grown so wide between us that I have no idea how to bridge it.
Things will get better after today. I will get another job and get us back on our feet, then we’ll go back to Yucaipa and things will return to normal.
I sigh at the thought, surprised at my sudden apathy to the idea, when yesterday, all I wanted was for things to return to what they were. But today, things are different than they were before. Yesterday, Yucaipa was our certain fate, while today another possibility exists. It’s a long shot, but that doesn’t stop my mind from imagining a future different from the one of which I had been so certain, my thoughts churning with the possibility of something more, something beyond the impossible struggle that is less difficult and more fun. And in a single day, Yucaipa has been reduced to a consolation prize, the choice we will make if the dream doesn’t come true.
15
We pull into Fox Studios, and a security guard directs us to the parking area. A man and a woman cross in front of us, and my eyes follow them, wondering if they are famous. They look familiar, but I don’t watch much television, so they could be and I probably wouldn’t know. I decide they are famous and try to memorize their faces so I can search for them in the Star Gazer when we get home.
In the past day, the weather has tr
ansformed from cool to stifling hot, and as we walk toward the warehouse-looking building with a giant number six painted on its side, sweat pools beneath my shirt and my hair sticks to my neck.
Molly seems immune. Taking my hand, she pulls me toward the building. Despite my pleading for her to wear the Gap dress, she insisted on wearing her Walmart overalls over her frayed white tank top and refused to let me braid her hair, and as we hurry toward the door, I bristle with self-consciousness.
Molly can be very obstinate, and this morning she was in a fit. Emily’s meltdown over missing her soccer game stressed Molly to the point of refusing to even go to the audition. This in turn broke Emily, who then convinced Molly that the audition was more important.
Emily might hate me, but her love for Molly is absolute and vice versa.
By the time all this came around, we were running perilously close to being late, so I gave in on the clothes and hair and let Molly have her way. But now, looking at her—her hair a mop of haphazard curls and her overalls rolled at the cuffs revealing a battered pair of red cowboy boots—she looks like a country bumpkin plucked off a farm, and I can’t believe I brought her to something as important as this looking the way she does.
Handwritten signs with arrows direct us through the building to the casting room, and as we hurry through the littered corridors, I’m surprised how industrial and drab the building is. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but I think I assumed a soundstage would be more glamorous, at the very least charming and romantic. This is none of those things. Dark and cluttered, it is a parceled-off warehouse with exposed trusses, concrete walls, and buzzing fluorescent lights.
We reach the casting room, and when we step inside, I nearly laugh out loud. The room is filled with at least two dozen little girls sitting beside their moms, almost all of them dressed in denim overalls and white T-shirts, and almost all of them with curls worn in loose ringlets. Without knowing it, Molly insisted on dressing perfect for the part.
I sign the clipboard beside the entry, take a script from the stack beside the door, and as Molly and I make our way toward two empty chairs toward the back, all the eyes in the room follow. It feels like we’ve just entered a gladiator arena for a fight to the death and the other contenders are sizing us up. I offer an I-mean-you-no-harm smile to each pair we pass, but the gesture isn’t returned.
A woman on the opposite side of the room stares particularly hard then turns and whispers something to the mom beside her. The other woman lifts her head to look at us, then her mouth forms into a pout. Her voice is not as hushed as the first woman, and the words “Gap commercial” cut through the mumbles around us.
My pride swells as I realize they recognize us, and that these veterans are actually intimidated. Way to go, Molly.
We take our seats, and I look at the script, giddy with the privilege of being allowed to read a scene from one of the future episodes. The season finale of The Foster Band was a huge cliffhanger. The youngest Foster kid, Birch, a boy who literally grew up on the show from the age of five to eight, was taken away by his birth mom, an on-again, off-again junkie. The Fosters fought to keep him but ultimately lost the battle, and in the final scene, Birch waved good-bye to his foster family, then he and his mom drove away.
All the Fosters were on the porch, Mrs. Foster crying against Mr. Foster, all of them watching as the car picked up speed, began to weave, then lost control, flipping into the ditch beside the road. The Fosters ran toward it, and the season ended, no one knowing whether Birch survived.
Looking at the script, I’m guessing he didn’t, and though I know the show is pretend, a knot forms in my throat at the thought of Birch not making it. I really like Birch. He’s a tough little guy, a troublemaker who lends a healthy dose of humor and mischief to the show.
The two new characters, Annie and Ben, are four and seven, and the scene Molly needs to memorize is fairly short, two pages total—eight lines for Annie, ten for Ben.
“Ready to try this?” I whisper to Molly, who is attempting to befriend the girl across from her with a smile and a wave. The girl turns away, clearly not interested.
Molly looks at me, her brow furrowed in an expression that says, What’s up with that?
I shrug. “What do you say, Bug, should we give this a try?”
She doesn’t answer, her attention returning to the room and the kids around us. It’s hard not to be distracted. There’s a lot going on. Each mother-daughter pair has their own approach to the process, and while all the girls are similar in size and cuteness, the moms vary quite a bit in size and cuteness. And attitude. Some try the sweet-talk approach, doling out incessant compliments and incentives to get their daughters to perform…Sweetie, that was wonderful…Oh baby, you’re the best…Let’s do a good job, then we’ll go to the mall after this…Did you see the cupcake store we passed? Just practice a few more times. Others take a hard-line approach, harsh and relentless…Again…Don’t fidget…This is important. Do you know how important this is?
“Baby,” I say, trying not to fall into either extreme, “do you want to do this?”
Molly looks up at me with her big saucer eyes and nods.
“Okay then. I’ll read it to you first, then we’ll see if you remember it.”
She curls her legs beneath her and snuggles against me the way she does when I read her a story.
Before I can start, the door on the other side of the room opens and a young woman with a clipboard steps through. “Janine Jones,” she announces, causing my heart to leap into my throat. The auditions are beginning, and we have yet to even read the script.
A pair two rows from where Molly and I sit jump to their feet, and the pudgy mom pushes her pudgy daughter forward. A foot from the door, the mother makes the sign of the cross, then with a deep breath, she and her daughter follow the young woman into the room.
Everyone quiets, and we all lean slightly toward the door as if a strong wind is blowing us that way, our ears straining to hear through the wood for a clue as to how it’s going, listening for a giggle, a sigh, applause—some sign of whether the woman’s prayers were answered.
The door is beside the two women who hissed about us earlier, and I realize those are the prize seats, those nearest the casting room where they can hear what’s going on inside. After a minute, I realize not only am I being ridiculous, but I am wasting precious time. The door could reopen at any moment, and we could be called next.
“Mols, we need to go over this,” I say, my voice tight.
I read her the script. Ben is asking Annie to sneak into the neighbor’s yard to take some carrots from the man’s garden, and Annie doesn’t want to because she’s scared.
“Then what happens?” Molly asks when I finish.
“It doesn’t matter. They just want you to know this part.”
Her nose wrinkles. “But I want to know the stowry.”
I stare with fear at the closed door on the other side of the room as if it has claws and teeth, certain that at any second, it’s going to open and swallow us whole. “Baby, let’s just memorize this part.”
“But why is the giwrl scrawred and why awre they going to steawl the cawrrots? Why not just go to the stowre owr ask the neighbowr fowr some cawrrots?”
I smile. I can’t help it. Despite my terror that we’re going to make total fools of ourselves when we walk through the rabbit hole on the other side of the room, Molly’s right: without context, the script makes no sense. So with a deep breath, I set down the pages and tell her a story to go with the script. I explain that the neighbor is an old man who lives by himself. He doesn’t talk to the neighbors, and he keeps a gun on his porch. His leg is twisted, so he doesn’t walk right, and sometimes at night, he hobbles around his backyard carrying his gun and making strange noises.
Because of this, everyone thinks he’s mean and crazy. But the truth is, he’s just old and his leg hurts when it gets cold, so he walks around to ease the pain, sometimes grunting because it hurts so bad.
He carries the gun, which is actually only a BB gun, to scare off the raccoons that like to eat from his garden.
“That’s sad,” Molly says. “He’s awll awlone.”
“He is,” I say, “but I think it’s going to turn out okay because I think Ben talks Annie into sneaking into the garden, and then the old man catches her, but he doesn’t get mad and they become great friends.”
“And I bet he’s going to give hewr the cawrrots so she doesn’t need to steawl them.”
“I bet you’re right.”
“Why’s she and Ben need the cawrrots?”
The door opens, and Janine Jones and her mom walk out. Judging by their expressions—Janine’s stunned, her mom’s long and lined—I’m guessing it didn’t go well.
“Dana Kincaid,” the clipboard girl calls.
My pulse beats a little harder. If they’re calling the girls in alphabetical order, we might be next.
“Bug, we need to memorize this.”
“Why they need the cawrrots?” she asks again, her face set in the stubborn look she has that’s difficult to override.
I force myself not to panic and scream, What the hell difference does it make? We just need to memorize these two pages before they call your name and we go into that room and they ask you to recite your lines. These lines. These eight lines that, at this moment, you don’t know!
“Because they’re taking care of a bunny with a hurt paw, and their mom told them they couldn’t keep any wild animals, so they have to get food for the bunny without their mom knowing,” I say in an amazingly calm voice.
“Oh,” Molly says, mercifully satisfied. “Wread it again.”
I do, then I show her which parts are hers.
The door opens surprisingly quick, and Dana Kincaid bursts through in tears, her mother racing after her. Satisfied smirks cross the faces of the two women beside the door.
“Marley Harkin,” the woman in the doorway announces.
My heart bounces around like a pinball in my chest, until I realize she said Marley not Molly, and Harkin not Martin. Which means there’s no rhyme or reason to the order in which the kids are called. It isn’t alphabetical, and it doesn’t follow the sign-in list. Somehow this adds to my anxiety, the uncertainty of when we might be called.
No Ordinary Life Page 6