I don’t think so, but she might have. Not wanting to incriminate myself, I say nothing, feeling bad for either not listening or not asking. But it doesn’t matter because, for the first time since we got back from Bo’s, Emily sounds happy, and I grab onto it. “That’s terrific. Melissa from your class?”
“My soccer team.”
How do I not know this? In Yucaipa I knew every classmate, every teammate, and most of the parents.
“And Tom is going with you?”
“Yep. Melissa’s parents are like super rich, so she invited the brothers and sisters too. They rented out the whole place, like the entire Sky Zone.”
“That’s wonderful. Did you get her a present?”
“Grandma,” Emily squeals in alarm, “we didn’t buy a present.”
“Crap,” I hear my mom say in the background.
“Em,” I say, trying to get her back on the phone.
My mom’s muffled voice says, “We’re already late. We’ll give her something at the next practice.”
“We can’t,” Emily cries. “I can’t not have a present. She’s going to open her gifts, and I’m just going to be sitting there.”
“Em,” I yell louder, hoping she’ll hear me. The other customers in the restaurant look over at my screech that Emily still doesn’t hear.
How could my mom not have realized that you need to bring a gift to a birthday party?
Because my mom never remembers things like that. My dad was the one who took care of the details of life—cooking, buying toilet paper, making sure I had gifts for birthday parties.
Emily’s sobs resonate through the line, and I want to grab Molly and run to her rescue, but there are way too many problems with that idea. First, I have no idea which Sky Zone they’re headed toward. Second, by the time I fight my way out of the downtown, the party will be over. Third, we’re waiting for a callback so Molly can finish her workday.
“We’re here,” I hear my mom say. “Emily, stop crying.”
Emily continues to sob.
“Em, come on, let’s go. Melissa won’t care that you don’t have a gift.”
More hysterics.
Minutes pass.
“Fine. Then we’re going home,” my mom says, clearly frustrated.
And that’s that. No Sky Zone, no birthday party.
“Mom, what’s wrwong?” Molly says, appearing in front of me, and I realize tears are rolling down my cheeks.
I wipe them away and click off the phone. “Nothing, baby.” I pull her onto my lap and bury my wet face into her soft hug, reining in my frustration and trying not to be angry with my mom, reminding myself that she’s doing the best she can. She didn’t sign up for this. Until a week ago, she was a part-time volunteer librarian, and now she’s a full-time babysitter.
My phone buzzes.
We’re needed back on the set.
23
The black-haired pixie’s name is Beth, and she is the assistant director, Chris’s right-hand woman, but I’m thinking Hitler in drag or Medusa. She walks very fast as she leads us through the backstage area, and Molly needs to run to keep up. We turn a corner and race past a dozen people who lean, sit, and stand in various states of boredom.
“Who are they?” I ask.
“Extras,” Beth says. “We always keep a few around just in case.”
Spare people—that’s something I’ve never heard of before.
She pushes open a door, and we walk onto the set of Mr. Foster’s law office, and a thrill rushes through me. I’m standing in Mr. Foster’s office. How cool is that?
In front of us is his desk with two photos of his family on it, his beautiful wife and his five foster kids. One of them shows the family posed on the porch; the other is a shot of them performing at a concert. In the corner of the room is his guitar, and on his desk is a baseball that was given to him by a famous baseball player who guest starred on one of the episodes.
Beyond the office is the reception area, and standing in the middle of it is Chris. His easy smile from yesterday is gone, and today he is clean-shaven and all business, wearing tailored pants and a button-down dress shirt rolled at the sleeves.
Standing beside him is a large man with a rusty beard.
Molly skips ahead of Beth and straight through the open door. “I’m hewre,” she announces.
Beth runs in behind her. “Sorry, Chris,” she says, corralling Molly away from him.
“Hey, Two-Bits,” he says. “Take that toosh off my set until I ask for it.”
He turns back to the bearded man but not before noticing me and giving a wink.
A wink! My heart triples its pulse. Molly’s wardrobe fitting was two weeks ago, and since then, I’ve obsessed over not obsessing over Chris Cantor, reminding myself that not only am I a mom with three kids who is not remotely in Chris Cantor’s league, but that I am also Molly’s manager, and as such, I need to be professional.
A wink, the twitch of a muscle, and all that effort has been undone, my eyes sliding sideways to look at him as the sterling-frame image of our future returns in high-definition Technicolor.
Beth leads us into another corridor, this one teeming with people, and directs us to a spot against the wall. “She knows her lines?” she says, more statement than question.
I nod. Molly kind of knows her lines. We ran through them three times last night then she fell asleep. The scenes are long, and she’s only four. I hope the expectations aren’t too high.
“Stay,” she says as if giving a command to a dog. “Not one toe on the set until I tell you.”
Molly’s mouth tightens, and I’m afraid she’s about to say something not very nice. Molly has a temper, and she doesn’t like being bossed around. Fortunately she only nods.
In the reception area, Chris still talks to the bearded man.
“Wlook, Mom, thewre’s Cawleb and Gabby.”
Standing a few feet away, the young heartthrob talks to Gabby, his foster sister on the show.
Gabby is the middle Foster daughter and the one with the most attitude. Her character has a hard edge from a hard life, but beneath the tough veneer is a golden heart and a diva voice that can fill a football stadium. She’s beautiful in a different way, her black hair shaved on one side, chin length on the other, the tips dyed indigo. A thick Hispanic girl, she has broad shoulders, strong arms, and dresses in leather and torn jeans.
In real life, it’s strange how ordinary she and Caleb are. Caleb is probably Emily’s age, maybe a year older, and if he wasn’t a mega-sensation whose face was splashed on the cover of every teen magazine, he’d just be a normal kid I wouldn’t look at twice—medium build, brown hair, nice dark, almost black eyes, a small nose, and a dimpled chin.
Beth is back, marching toward us with a boy and a large-breasted, blond-haired woman in tow. The boy looks about seven, and I’m guessing he got the role as Molly’s brother. The script said his name is Miles.
Because the kids in the cast are also members of The Foster Band, which does concerts and has albums outside the show, their real-life first names are used for their characters to avoid confusion. So Kira is Kira, Jeremy is Jeremy, Gabby is Gabby, Caleb is Caleb, and Molly and Miles will be Molly and Miles. Which worked out well for the producers since Molly and Miles sounds cute together.
Beth doesn’t bother to introduce us, just barks a reminder about staying off the set then marches away.
“Bossy,” the woman says.
We introduce ourselves. Her name is Rhonda.
Miles and Molly go off to check out the craft service cart, which Rhonda explains is a food buffet.
“They feed us?” I say.
“Yep, but be careful. I think I gained thirty pounds from boredom and unlimited access to mac and cheese when Miles was on Young Riders.”
“You’ve done this before?”
“Hell, yeah. Miles has been acting since he was born. My daughters gave it a go also but weren’t as successful. Miles is the smartest, and the blond hair h
elps. The other two take after my ex. They don’t photograph as well and have absolutely no stamina.”
The more we talk, the less I like her. First, she smells like an ashtray, and second, the way she talks about Miles is like she’s talking about her car—his features, his performance value, how many miles he has left in him.
“He’s small for his age, which is probably why he got the part,” Rhonda says. “He just turned nine, so he can work five hours and be on set nine.”
Rhonda is still talking, but I’m not listening because Jules Buchner has just walked into the staging area. For nearly four decades, he has been a superstar. I grew up watching him, and my dad was a huge fan. He has won two Academy Awards as well as a CMA for a song he wrote for his daughter when she got married.
He’s shorter than I thought, maybe five foot ten. When he was young, his hair was light blond, now it’s white. His eyes are brown and slightly watery at the rims, and though I’m thirty feet away, I can smell the alcohol perfuming off his body.
“Let’s do this,” he bellows as he steps onto the set.
24
Sex, sex, sex, sex.
I should be concentrating on Molly and what she needs to be doing, but my mind is occupied with Chris and what he needs to be doing to me.
The problem is deprivation combined with boredom.
Blocking, it turns out, is absolutely tedious. It’s the orchestrating of the scene, figuring out the movements of the actors, the lights, the microphones, and the cameras. To conserve Molly’s set time, a stand-in poses as Molly while they figure things out, and Molly only steps in for the final rehearsal.
I feel bad for the little girl who is her stand-in. Her job is even more boring than Molly’s. I remember her from the audition; she was the girl who didn’t return Molly’s smile. And she doesn’t smile now. She’s almost cute, and perhaps would be if she had more personality, but like a robot, she dutifully follows Beth’s instructions with precision and remarkable professionalism but without an ounce of animation. Her mom sits off to the side knitting, and I realize I’m going to need a hobby as well or else I’m going to spend the next three years obsessing on Chris Cantor and sex.
It’s not my fault. My involuntary celibacy is entering its eighth month. That’s a really long time. Combine that with Chris’s diabolical wink and the fact that watching blocking is about as entertaining as watching golf, and I’m like a teenage boy, every other thought going rogue on me.
“Molly, you’re on,” Chris says.
The stand-in walks off, and Molly leaps up from the floor where she had been playing Go Fish with one of the extras. “Sowrry, gotta go,” she says.
Molly’s done great so far. Though it doesn’t seem like she’s paying attention, she incorporates all the notes that were given to the stand-in when it’s her turn.
The bearded man is named Griff, and he is the director of photography. Between the props, the actors, the lights, the cameras, and the microphones, there’s a lot to coordinate. It’s like a choreographed dance with a hundred moving parts, and Griff orchestrates it beautifully.
Something about him is familiar. His eyes are the giveaway, a distinct shape and color, gold fanning to bronze, and I’m certain I’ve seen them before, but I can’t place it. Griff, Griffin? Perhaps we went to the same elementary school. He catches me looking at him, and his eyes lock on mine, causing me to turn away.
While the crew adjusts the overhead microphones, Chris settles back in his director’s chair, giving me a close-up of the back of his head. His hair is slightly thinning, and I see now that there are strands of gray among the brown, making me realize he’s older than I originally thought, probably closer to forty-five than forty.
An older man. I mull that over. Sean is only four years older than I am, and the only other guy I’ve been with was my high school boyfriend.
The boyfriend was nothing special, but sex with Sean was one of our strong points, never too kinky but always interesting. Once he brought home a feather duster he had swiped from a hotel cleaning cart. He said he saw it and thought of me. We had a lot of fun with those feathers. The memory makes me smile.
I look at Chris and wonder if he’d know what to do with a feather duster. Studying his thinning hair and his intensity, I doubt feather dusters are his thing, and it makes me a little sad to think my feather duster days might be over.
“Cute, isn’t he?” I look up to see Rhonda talking to me, a knowing smirk on her face. “Most eligible bachelor at Fox, maybe in all of Hollywood. Rich, talented, charming, nothing not to love.”
“I wasn’t…”
“No, of course not, you were just admiring the scenery. Can’t blame you, need to occupy yourself somehow.”
I swallow and say nothing.
Griff gives a thumbs-up that the microphone issue is resolved, and Chris says, “Let’s move it to the hospital.”
Molly shuffles off the set, and I lift her into my arms.
“Hey, Bug. You’re doing great.”
She nods sleepily, and her head collapses on my shoulder, our early morning catching up with her. I wish I could let her rest for a few minutes, but everyone is moving toward the exit, so carrying my burden, I follow.
Chris leads the pack across the lot toward the soundstage of the hospital, the mom of Molly’s stand-in latched to his side. As we walk, her flirtatious laughter floats back to the rest of us, and I realize that’s how I would look if I showed my interest, and I resolve to check my attraction for good. Chris Cantor is not in my league, and I’m embarrassed for that woman for mistakenly thinking he’s in hers.
25
Fortunately it takes half an hour for the cameras and lights to be positioned for the next scene, and I take the opportunity to find a half-quiet spot around the corner from the hubbub and slide to the floor so Molly can continue to sleep against me.
Molly’s four-and-a-half-hour workday has already lasted nine hours—three and a half on the lot and five and a half at McDonald’s—and I’m starting to wonder exactly how flexible I should be. Rhonda isn’t complaining, and neither is Molly’s stand-in’s mom.
I look at Beth then at Chris, wondering if perhaps they’re unaware how long we’ve been here and if I should remind them. The thought of saying something causes my stomach to spit and sputter. Speaking up has never really been my thing.
“Let’s do this,” Chris says then looks at his watch. “Molly has an hour left then she needs to be off the lot, so let’s go, people. Let’s get this done.”
He knows exactly what he’s doing.
The set for this scene was originally used for the hit show 9-1-1 and is now used by various Fox shows whenever they need an emergency room, an operating room, a waiting room, an elevator, or a cafeteria.
I rub Molly’s back to wake her, and she yawns, rubs her eyes, realizes we’re still at work, then sighs. I sigh with her. It’s only the first day, but already the excitement has worn off. This is a job and she’s expected to work.
“Ready, Bugabaloo?” I say, nuzzling her nose.
She nuzzles my nose back. “Wready, Fwreddy,” she says, hopping off my lap and making me feel a little better about the long day.
I push to my feet to follow and stop in my tracks when I find myself looking at Helen Harlow standing beside one of the cameramen.
I am starstruck. Helen Harlow has as many Academy Award nominations as she has fingers. Statuesque, blond, and insistently sexy, she was in the first movie I ever saw, Odessa, and has been my idol ever since.
Molly skips over to her. “You’wre Mrs. Fostewr,” she says, as if the woman didn’t already know that. “My mom wloves you.”
Her head tilts slightly as she sizes Molly up, looking her over as if appraising a piece of art she’s unsure of, then she says, “So you’re the little urchin everyone’s making such a fuss about.”
“What’s an uwrchin?”
“Adorable, quite. So where is this mom of yours? I’d like to meet her.”
&n
bsp; Molly grabs the star’s hand and drags her toward me.
“This is hewr,” she announces proudly, as if the introduction were the other way around and Helen Harlow should be the one honored by the meeting.
Forty-eight but still gorgeous, she’s a woman who has aged gracefully without silicone or stitches, her hair the color of nectar with wisps of silver woven at the temples and around the widow peak of her forehead. Beneath the heavy powder on her face, faint freckles and fine lines patina her skin, revealing that she is in fact human, a revelation both comforting and crushing, a little like pulling back the curtain to discover the great wizard is a mere mortal like myself.
Introduction complete, Molly skips away.
Helen watches her go. “Charming and quite precocious. We’re going to get along fabulously.”
When she turns back, her notorious green eyes have transformed to stone and her lips are curled in a bemused smile, as if there’s something funny of which only she is aware, and I retract my earlier statement that this woman and I are anything alike.
Others are watching us, the room suddenly quiet, and I shift uncomfortably under her stare.
“Hmmm,” she says, “you don’t look the part.”
“Excuse me?” I say, wondering if perhaps she’s confused and thinks I am a cast member.
“Rumpelstiltskin. Quite brilliant indeed. Able to spin straw into gold, a trick few possess. My mother of course was the master. She would have been impressed.”
Helen Harlow’s mother is nearly as famous as her daughter. A bit actress when she was young, her claim to fame was as the poster child for overzealous stage moms. Nicknamed Mommie Dearest II, all three of her children began acting as babies and two went on to become superstars.
“Rumpelstiltskin?” I say, not following.
“Quite. You do remember the story?”
I nod, vaguely recalling the fairy tale about a girl locked in a room and ordered by the king to spin straw into gold, a task she completes with the help of a magical little man named Rumpelstiltskin.
No Ordinary Life Page 9