“Love Bug,” I say, turning my attention to my youngest.
She ignores me, her attention fixed on the odd-shaped animal characters on the screen.
I click off the television, breaking her Backyardigan-induced trance.
“I watching,” she says.
“I know, but I need to talk to you about something important.”
She sighs and frowns.
“Bug, did you mean what you said about not wanting to be on the show?”
She shrugs.
“Sweetie, Em’s just upset right now. You know that, right? Once things settle down, and we get a new car, and she makes some friends, she’ll be just as happy as she was in Yucaipa.”
“What about the howrses?”
“Maybe I can get her riding lessons? Do you think she’d like that?”
Another shrug, her focus still on the screen.
“So, what do you say? Do you want to be on television and play the part of Annie?”
“Sure,” she says with no great enthusiasm. “Now can I watch?”
I turn the television back on, give her a peck on her curly head, and pretend I feel better. Decision made.
I look at Emily’s closed door. She’ll get over it. Kids adapt. She’ll learn to adapt. Emily can’t see it, but things will be different now. We’ll have money, and she’ll have nice clothes and be able to go to concerts and movies and amusement parks, do all the things we couldn’t afford to do before. This is the right choice. It promises us a better present and a brighter future. Therapy for Tom, a new car, and at some point down the road, a house of our own and money for college.
I open the issue of Star Gazer and absently page through it, glancing at the faces to see if I spot the couple Molly and I passed in the parking lot. On page twenty is an article about Jeremy, the oldest child on The Foster Band, and his new romance with Maya Chin, the star of the show Mainland. Someday soon, Molly might be in these pages. Maybe they’ll ask her about ice cream or rhyming.
This is going to be amazing. Emily doesn’t realize it, but it will be.
She’ll be happy. We all will.
19
The studio is less than ten miles away, but nervous about being late, I allow an hour to get there. We turn from the parking garage onto the street, and my eyes slide to a man standing on the corner. Young twenties and average in every way, he is not tall or short, heavy or thin, his hair is brown, his skin medium, his eyes concealed behind wire-rim glasses—he is entirely unremarkable except for the way he watches us and the disturbing notion that he has watched us before. Molly waves, and his face lights up as he waves back.
“Do you know that man?” I ask.
“No, but he’s awlays sweet and nevewr souwr.”
“He’s waved to you before?”
“Uh-huh. He wlikes to stand on that cowrner and sometimes waves at me when I wlook out the window in Gwrandma’s wroom. When he’s wreawlly being funny, he’wll do the dance wlike Lewroy, not the whowle thing, just the fiwrst pawrt.”
The hair on the back of my neck bristles. “Baby, maybe you shouldn’t wave at him anymore.”
“Why?”
I consider this. Why?
Because it’s creepy.
But not really. The guy looks harmless. Molly’s going to be a star, which means she’s going to have fans. My blood warms with the thought. We are going to need to get used to this, people getting excited when they see us.
Traffic moves at a slug’s pace, and I’m glad I allowed extra time for the commute. We park in the same lot we did for the audition, then carrying our crayon note, make our way toward Soundstage 19, which it turns out is on the other side of the lot.
Fox Studios is huge, a labyrinth of buildings and streets and sidewalks teeming with people and golf carts and Segways. There are actors dressed in costumes walking from set to set; crew members hanging out, smoking, and eating; construction crews working on sets; and tour groups shuffling along in small herds, snapping photos, and gaping.
I pull Molly along as she staggers wide-eyed behind me. Two gladiators with swords slung from their waists walk past followed by a woman made up like an alien. I’d like to stop and stare as well, but where I thought I had allowed plenty of time, now the minutes are ticking down quickly, and we are dangerously close to being late.
I get turned around and stop a woman with a lanyard around her neck that holds an ID. “Excuse me, we’re looking for Soundstage 19.”
The woman is in her forties and has the confident look of a person in charge. “The Foster Band set?”
“Yes,” I say, relieved to have stopped someone who knows the lot. “My daughter is the new Foster kid,” I boast.
She glances at Molly then back at me, and instead of the impressed expression I was expecting, her face softens to one that seems to say, Oh, I’m sorry to hear that.
Perhaps she heard me wrong. Perhaps she thought I said, “My daughter is a foster kid.”
With a thin smile, she directs us to keep going. The soundstage is half a block farther.
“Good luck,” she says, and again I sense sympathy in the tone.
I shake off the strange encounter, and we hustle on to our destination, bursting through the door then stopping.
Despite the swelter outside, inside the building it is cool to the point of cold, and the drop in temperature combined with the stark emptiness causes goose bumps to rise on my arms. There’s not a soul in sight, and other than the buzz of the fluorescent lights, not a sound.
Taking Molly’s hand, we walk forward, unsure where we’re going or even if this is the right place, and I wonder if perhaps there was another entrance.
Halfway down the corridor, a sliver of light glows from beneath one of the doors.
I look at my watch. 9:02. We are late and getting later, so with a deep breath, I kick my timidity to the curb and knock.
“Come in.”
“It’s the guy,” Molly says, her face lighting up as she throws open the door to reveal Chris Cantor sitting behind a paper-strewn desk.
“Well, well,” he says, leaning back in his chair. “Look who it is, the two loveliest women in the show.”
“Hey, mistewr,” Molly says. “We’wre hewre ’cause I need to get measuwred.”
He smiles, and I can’t believe I didn’t think he was good-looking. Perhaps not in a GQ model way, but undeniably sexy in a Sean Penn or Al Pacino kind of way. Dressed more casually today than he was at the audition, he wears jeans and a surfer T-shirt, and his hair is mussed and his face unshaven.
“Well, I’m not the one who does the measuring, but I know who does. Follow me.” He stands and extends his hand. “Hello, Molly’s mom. I’m Chris.”
“Faye.”
“Please tell me you’re not as much of a diva as the infamous Ms. Dunaway.”
“Just don’t piss me off and you’ll never have to find out,” I say, shocked and a little embarrassed by the flirt in my voice.
The right side of his mouth lifts. “Then I’ll try to stay on your good side.”
I realize he’s still holding my hand, and I pull it away, my skin so warm that the building is no longer cold.
“We’re late,” I manage.
“Well then, right this way.” He leads us back into the hall. “Is Molly your only one?”
I hesitate a flicker before answering, “No, I have two others,” my answer instantly deflating the moment.
“Triple the fun,” he says, not missing a beat.
His response nearly brings back my hope but not entirely. Chris Cantor, producer of The Foster Band, is not looking for a three-kid single mom. I might as well hang an “Undesirable” sign on my forehead.
“Hey, Two-Bits, you passed it,” he says to Molly, whose idea of following is to skip ahead.
She pivots and dodges ahead of us through the door Chris is holding open.
I walk into what looks like a massive closet—racks and racks of clothes and dozens of shelves of shoes and accessori
es stacked to the ceiling. In the center of it all is a massive woman, her forearms crossed over her very large bosom.
“You’re late,” she bellows in an accent I think is German, adding to her formidableness.
“Go easy on them, Ingrid,” Chris says from the doorway. “It’s their first day, and I found them lost and wandering the hallways.”
“You.” She points to Molly. “Come here.” She points to Chris. “You. Leave.”
“You love me,” Chris says. “Admit you love me and I’ll go.”
She grabs a shoe from a shelf beside her and flings it at him. He pulls the door in front of him as a shield. “You love me,” he says as the door continues to close. “You know you do.”
He’s so darn cute. Was he wearing a ring? No, he wasn’t. If he was, I would have noticed. No ring and no photos of family on his desk. No silver-framed portrait of a wife, two kids, and a golden retriever sitting on rocks at the beach—the kind of picture designed to make those of us without that silver-framed life miserable with envy.
Ingrid harrumphs with disapproval, knowing my thoughts, which are easy to figure out since my eyes still linger on the door through which Chris just left.
I give an innocent smile that she doesn’t return.
“Mom, make yourself useful,” she says.
I perk up, excited to start my job as Molly’s manager.
“The coffee station is down the hall. Decaf, two creams, one sugar.”
If I had the guts, I would harrumph back, but I don’t, so instead I walk from the room to fetch her coffee, my mind filled with the image of me and the kids sitting on an outcropping of rocks at the beach, Chris’s arm around my waist, Gus in front of us. Gus is a bit mangy for the dream, but we come as a package deal, all or nothing. Plus, I kind of like it. Gus adds a bit of personality.
20
The contract is for so much more than I expected that I can’t get my head around the numbers. Molly will be paid $20,000 per episode for the first seven episodes. If her contract is renewed for the rest of the season and the two seasons after that, a three-year contract total, she will get $30,000 an episode for the remaining episodes. For any Foster Band merchandise that has solely her image on it, she will receive a ten percent royalty. For merchandise with multiple persons on it, she will get a proportional split of the ten percent royalty. The contract is exclusive of any money Molly receives for concerts, music royalties, endorsement deals, magazine shoots, or appearances.
Twenty thousand an episode for seven episodes is $140,000. Thirty thousand an episode for fifteen more episodes is $450,000. Molly’s gross income for the year will be $590,000, not including the money from the Gap commercial or anything else she might do. The years after, she will make $660,000.
I am designated as Molly’s manager, and as such, fifteen percent of what she earns will be mine. Fifteen percent of $660,000 is $99,000. I suddenly have a job that pays nearly one hundred grand a year, possibly more, and the job is to take care of my little girl. I can’t believe it. I really can’t.
I read the contract three times. Some of the legal jargon is a little confusing, and there’s a paragraph about breach of contract that is unsettling because it says if we leave without cause we can be sued, and since I’ve never committed to anything for longer than a day, signing on to do something for three years is a bit out of my comfort zone. But I also can’t imagine ever wanting to quit something like this. Why would we? This is the greatest thing that’s ever happened to us.
I sign on every line I’m supposed to then grab a sheet of paper and write a list:
Therapy for Tom
Buy car
Start looking at neighborhoods where we might want to live
Look at private schools
Repay Bo
File for divorce
I smile. I kiss my list. I twirl in a circle then sit back down and stare some more at my wonderful, amazing list.
When my eyes grow too heavy to keep them open a moment longer, I crawl onto the sleeper couch beside Molly and continue the silent reverie in the dark, swooning a little with the disbelief of it all. My hand slides across the mattress until the knuckles rest against Molly’s forearm, her solid warmth anchoring me. We made it. All the scraping and scrapping we’ve done to survive is over, and somehow, miraculously, it all worked out. Tears squeeze from my eyes with the sheer relief of it.
It’s so wonderful and I’m so overwhelmed by the thought of it that I can hardly believe it’s real. Money, that sweet green stuff that makes the world go round, is going to start rolling in. I open my eyes and stare at the ceiling, the little stucco bumps shadowed blue by the moonlight through the window. No more struggle. Incredible.
Molly snorts then resumes her steady snoring, a perfect rhythm of breath I try to match with my own, hoping to settle the erratic pounding in my chest. It is real, I assure myself, but the thought only causes my heart to pound harder.
Our new reality seems so fragile that it unnerves me. We only just got here, but already I’m terrified it will be taken away, that as quickly as it arrived, it will disappear—the whole thing amazing and tenuous as a butterfly’s life.
I tell myself it’s only the newness that has me off balance, that this is the greatest thing that’s ever happened to us. A good night’s sleep and tomorrow the shadows of doubt will be gone.
21
We pull onto the lot, and Molly yawns awake then climbs from the car without an ounce of urgency, and it’s all I can do not to scream at her to hurry up. It’s our first day and already we are ten minutes late.
We race to the soundstage then through the corridors toward the sound of voices, and when we find a small crowd, we stop, assuming this is where we are supposed to be. A few people look our way, but no one says anything and I don’t recognize a single face. Some chat in small groups, others hang by themselves with cups of coffee and their cell phones, and a few slump against walls with their eyes closed.
“You’re late.”
I don’t know the woman who has stepped in front of us, but by her tone and demeanor, I assume she’s in charge. Petite as a pixie, her hair is jet black and her eyes piercing blue. She could be a haggard thirty-year-old or a well-maintained fifty-year-old; it’s impossible to tell. She carries a clipboard and wears black jeans, a black sweater, a headset, and a scowl.
“You need to leave,” she says. Her voice matches her hairstyle and wardrobe—severe and shrill—like the squawk of a raven.
I blink, not understanding. Are we being fired or is she sending us home as punishment for being late?
“Give me your cell number,” she says.
I scrawl the number on her clipboard as I stammer, “I don’t understand.”
“What don’t you understand?”
“You just told us to leave.”
She frowns, her mouth pinching so tight that it puckers. “Minutes. Your daughter has 270 of them a day. They are clocked from the moment you arrive on the lot.” She looks at her watch. “You pulled in at 7:09. It is now 7:16. Seven minutes are gone and nothing’s been accomplished. By the time you pull off of the lot again, another ten minutes will have been wasted. At this rate, we’ll finish the first episode in time for the finale. I told Chris he should have cast twins, but no, he insisted your daughter was the one, so now I’m stuck dealing with three hours of set time and four and a half hours of lot time. Does he know how difficult that’s going to be?”
I pull Molly against my hip to buffer her from the woman’s rant.
“From now on, when you’re given your call time, it means you’ll be waiting somewhere nearby at that time. Seven means seven, not seven-sixteen. You will wait until I call, then you will come onto the lot. Understood?”
I nod.
“Good. Now go.”
“But Molly doesn’t have a scene until halfway through the first episode. Do you even need her today?”
She runs me up and down and sneers in distaste like I’m a fly that landed in her
soup. “You’ve never done this before?”
I shake my head.
“First, we don’t shoot in sequence; that would be incredibly inefficient. Second, today and tomorrow are blocking.”
I swallow.
“Christ, you don’t know what blocking is? Are you kidding me?” Her voice has reached a glass-shattering octave, and now everyone is looking at us. “I’m going to kill Chris. I don’t have time for this.”
“She’s scawry,” Molly says as we hurry back the way we came.
22
Extreme boredom has set in.
We wait at a nearby McDonald’s for the woman to call. We’ve been here five hours.
Molly plays in the play area, rotating friends as previous ones leave to get on with their days.
I’ve eaten breakfast and lunch, indulged in a chocolate sundae, and am now contemplating an apple pie. If each day is like this, I’ll weigh three hundred pounds by the time the season begins.
While I wait, I contemplate what a loser I am at my new job. I don’t know the woman’s name who sent us away. I didn’t get her number. And I have no idea what blocking is or why we’re not a part of it.
Reluctant to tie up my phone, I’ve resisted calling home to check on Emily and Tom, but unable to stand the boredom one more second, I cave.
First, I call home. No answer.
I try to recall if my mom told me her plan for the day. Emily had a soccer game this morning, that I know because her uniform needed to be washed, but after that, the activities of my other two kids are a blank. My mom might have told me, but last night I was distracted. Molly and I needed to memorize her lines, and it was a lot of work. My mom and Emily and Tom were there, but I can’t remember if they talked about their day. If they did, I wasn’t paying attention.
I try Emily’s cell phone, and she answers on the fifth ring.
“Hey, baby, where are you?”
“We’re going to Sky Zone for Melissa’s birthday party. Didn’t Grandma tell you?”
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