She continues, “Of course the ending is rather dreadful, the girl married off to the greedy king who only married her for her ability to spin gold, and Rumpelstiltskin torn to shreds because the girl didn’t hold up her end of the bargain.”
With her words, the ending comes back to me, the girl spying on Rumpelstiltskin to discover his name, thereby avoiding giving him her baby, which she had promised she would do if he helped her change the straw to gold.
Helen Harlow’s lips curl into a rueful grin. “But I suppose at least the king got everything he desired—the gold, the girl. Happily ever after.” She laughs, a silky chortle. “Someday you’ll have to tell me how you managed it. I always wish I had asked my mother before she died, the original Rumpelstiltskin, three of us spun from straw into gold.”
I’m entirely caught off-guard, with her words veiled as a compliment, her eyes sparkling and that awful smile on her famous face, in front of everyone, she has nailed me to the cross.
26
A block away, I see Molly’s fan standing on the corner. Tom has nicknamed him John Lennon on account of the round glasses he wears. I wonder if he’s been out there waiting for us all day, not realizing we left so early.
When we are nearly upon him, his head lifts, and he musters a thin smile and a weary wave, and I feel bad for him. He looks nearly as exhausted as I feel, his thin shoulders slumped, his young face worn and drained of color. Since Molly is dead asleep behind me and unable to offer her normal enthusiastic greeting, I do the honors, forcing my tired mouth into a friendly smile and giving him a wave.
I look at the clock. 7:32. If he arrived at nine this morning as he usually does, that means he waited over ten hours for that small exchange. I hope he realizes that we are leaving early again in the morning.
* * *
“Hey, guys,” I say when I walk in the door of the condo carrying Molly, who is still sound asleep.
Until this moment, I had completely forgotten about the birthday party fiasco, but one glance at Emily’s red-rimmed eyes brings it hurtling back. Tom seems fine, probably relieved that he didn’t have to endure the event that certainly would have incited an episode of acute mutism.
“How was the party?” I say, feigning ignorance, my words slurring with exhaustion.
Emily runs into her room, and my mom glares at me as if somehow it’s my fault. It’s all I can do not to snap at her that this is absolutely not my fault. She’s the one who accepted the invitation. She’s the one who should have remembered to bring a gift. I didn’t even know about the party until this morning. Something about that last statement makes me bite my tongue, a twinge of guilt pulsing through the fatigue.
My mom opens the sleeper couch, and I lay Molly down and tuck the blankets around her.
“Thanks, Mom,” I say, remembering my gratitude for everything she’s done and everything she’s doing.
Dropping a kiss on Tom’s head, I continue on to the bedroom to comfort Emily.
“Hey, Em,” I say, sitting on the edge of the bed and placing my hand on her back. She lies on her stomach, her face buried in her pillow.
“I hate it here,” she says.
“I know, baby. I’m sorry.”
She cries quietly, her distress so complete that it breaks my heart. LA is not a place for a girl like Emily. She belongs in a world where her long limbs can stretch out and run, where there are horses and open fields.
“I want to go home,” she says. “I’ll die if I have to go to middle school here.” She rolls her head so she’s looking at me. “Seriously, Mom, I’ll die. The kids carry weapons; they have metal detectors at the front door to try and catch them.”
“I’ll look into private schools.”
“That’ll be worse,” she says. “The rich kids around here are horrible. You should see the way Melissa and her friends look at me when Grandma pulls up in her Honda.”
“Shhh,” I say, hoping for a quick consolation so I can collapse on the bed beside Molly. It’s terrible, but my exhaustion is so complete that my eyes are closing even as I sit here.
“Are you even listening?”
Not really. “Yes, baby, I know.”
My eyes alight on Emily’s soccer clothes that she sloughed off after her game this morning, and I decide to take the easy way out.
“How was your game?” I ask with as much brightness as I can muster.
She sneers at me then turns her head to feel sorry for herself alone.
I should recant, retreat, apologize, tell her that somehow we’ll work it out, but I do none of these things, instead stubbornly I plow forward with my boneheaded approach of avoiding the issue completely. “Did you score any points?” I ask.
“Goals,” Emily says to the wall. “They’re called goals.”
27
Molly groans when we walk through the door of “base camp,” a two-room building across the alley from the soundstage that serves as the hair and makeup salon for the show.
“Welcome, welcome, welcome,” a man standing in front of an empty barber chair says. He has short, spiky hair and heavily lined gold eyes. “Henry O’Henry at your service. Really, that’s the name. My parents thought it was cute.” He talks very fast, his voice quick and sharp like his movements.
His hair is the color of plums and his lips are so soft that they affirm the theory that sexual orientation is not a choice. He’s a small man, his arms and legs chicken-bone thin, though his middle is thick, which almost gives him the appearance of being pregnant, perhaps entering his second trimester.
He circles Molly. “My oh my, that’s quite a roost. Find many eggs?”
Molly squints up at him.
“Well, let me work my magic. Mom, be gone with you.” He shoos me away with the back of his hand. “When you return, she’ll be nothing but bouncing curls. Forty minutes.” Then he touches Molly’s hair and grimaces. “Make that an hour.”
I wander to the staging area of Mr. Foster’s law office set and perch on a stool to wait. Though it’s only our second day, I have come to the conclusion that most of the time spent making a television show is waiting. It’s almost torturous how slow things move. Everyone deals with the tedium differently. Some have idle hobbies like knitting or reading; others are incessantly on their phones. I can’t figure out what or who they’re interacting with, but their thumbs move constantly, their eyes fixed on the minuscule screens.
Once in a while people chat, but I imagine most of what anyone has to say has already been said since everyone’s waking hours are spent here, and almost all of that time is spent standing around, which isn’t real interesting.
Most of the primary cast wait in their dressing rooms, a row of trailers parked behind the soundstage. Molly has a dressing room as well, a dinky little space with a fridge and a couch and a television, but since her work hours are so constrained, we have yet to spend five minutes there.
At the moment, the only cast members in sight are the woman who plays the social worker and a few extras.
Bradley Mitten turns the corner, causing heads to lift and eyes to follow. He and his wife are the writers of the show. A short man with a beak nose and heavy frame glasses, his eyes skit side to side over the actors, lingering on some and passing over others.
The social worker steps forward. “Mr. Mitten, good morning,” she chirps, all smiles. Asian with silky black hair, she’s very pretty and a talented actress—one minute you love her character and the next you don’t.
Mitten gives a brief nod as he tries to sidestep her.
She blocks him. “I’ve been meaning to stop by your office…”
“Save it,” Mitten says, cutting her off. “No one wants to watch a bitchy social worker traipsing around LA saving the future thugs of America.”
He continues on without the least bit of concern that he just steamrolled over the woman’s dreams, and I wince at the harshness. Though he’s right—my least favorite episodes are those about her dealing with the drugged-out moms or abusiv
e dads of the foster kids.
Mitten finally spots who he is looking for, a girl around sixteen with thick gold hair. She stands beside a woman who looks like her twin except a generation older.
A toothless grin fills his face. “Rebecca.”
“Mr. Mitten, what an honor,” the mom says.
Mitten ignores her, his focus entirely on the girl. “Playing an accident victim today, are you?”
The girl nods. “Thank you, Mr. Mitten, for getting me the part.”
He waves her off. “All I did was put in a good word; you did the rest. I’m still struggling with the story line about Jeremy’s new love interest. You would be perfect, a girl a little young for him, innocent and sweet, with that beautiful hair of yours.”
She nods her beautiful-haired head.
“Sorry I didn’t get it done in time. But don’t worry, I’m still working on it, and I still have you in mind.”
The girl’s face lights up, and the mother nearly squeaks with excitement.
“Rebecca could help you,” the mom suggests. “You know, perhaps stop by your office, give you some inspiration, be your muse.”
My stomach turns with the not-so-subtle intimation, and Rebecca’s face blanches, though she continues to smile and nod.
“Perhaps she could,” Mitten says. “I’ll be in my office all afternoon. Stop by anytime.”
“She will,” the mom says. “She definitely will.”
My phone buzzes, letting me know that Molly’s hair is done, and I rush past Rebecca and her mom who are hugging each other and bouncing up and down as if Christmas came early.
* * *
“Mom, wlook,” Molly says when I walk into base camp. She shakes her head back and forth to show how her curls now bounce.
It’s nothing short of a miracle. Her hair, which an hour ago was an irrepressible, straw-colored, out-of-control afro, has been tamed into a caramel-gold crown of perfectly coiled ringlets.
“How?” I say, astounded.
“I know, I’m amazing,” Henry O’Henry says, causing Molly to knock knuckles with him. “And you, Mom, could use a little Henry amazement yourself. I mean really, girl—blah, blah, blasé.” His hands flick toward my blah, blah, blasé waist-length hair.
Molly giggles and flicks her hands at me as well. “Yeah, Mom, bwlah, bwlah, bwlasé.”
“Sit,” Henry orders.
“Do I have a choice?”
His eyes look through his fine-tweezed brows. “Girlfriend, no one is walking around my set looking like Jan Brady.” He whips open a smock like a bullfighter taunting me to charge. “And you, Miss Jolly Molly, will be my assistant.”
“Okey dokey, jokey smokey,” Molly says, and I know she’s found her new rhyming partner.
I laugh and take a seat in his chair. My hair has been the same since high school—long, blond, and wavy. And though I’m nervous, a little change might be exactly what I need.
Snip.
Crap.
He holds out the tail of hair he just cut from my head like a prized scalp, two feet of wavy blond hanging from his fist. “For Locks of Love,” he says. “Molly, hold open that baggie for me.”
He drops the cascade of hair into the Ziploc and doesn’t give it another glance, while I, on the other hand, can’t stop staring at it.
“Relax,” he says, turning my chair from the mirror. “You’re going to look fabulous.”
And I pray that by “fabulous,” he doesn’t mean spiky and purple like his own hair. I touch the back of my bare neck, and he smacks my hand away. “Trust, darling, a little bit of trust.”
I force my hand to my lap and try not to wince each time he snips and snaps with his lightning-fast shears, clippings floating past my eyes until I’m certain not a hair remains.
He tells me he’s adding highlights and shushes me when I ask what color. Conspiratorially, he and Molly giggle as they work together at the mixing counter, and I get a horrible feeling that he’s asking Molly her opinion, which inevitably will be orange.
When he finishes smearing the concoction on my hair, I’m put under the dryer.
“Don’t move and don’t look,” he orders. “We’ll be back.”
Taking Molly by the hand, they gallop off, and resigned to my destiny, I close my eyes and drift off to the whir of air and heat.
* * *
When I startle awake, I have no idea how long it’s been. It could have been a minute or an hour. The dream was right there, but now it’s fading. I try to reel it back in, my heart pounding. A premonition. No. Just a nightmare. Vague. Drowning or something like drowning. I hate dreams like that, the kind that make your pulse race and your skin crawl, reminding you of how bad the terror was but not giving you any more information than that to figure out what was so chilling so you can rationalize it away and ease the sick feeling of foreboding that lingers.
Molly and Henry walk through the door, both of them with ice cream on their face—Molly’s predictably chocolate, Henry’s chalky green, probably mint chip.
He laughs when he sees his face in the mirror, and Molly laughs as well. They wipe each other’s faces and end up in a towel fight that leaves Molly squealing with delight. I barely know Henry, but already I like him as much as you can like someone you barely know.
“Okay, Faye, let’s see if your hair is now as fabulous as your name.” He lifts the dryer and moves me back to the barber chair, where again, with my back to the mirror, he whirls around snipping and snapping like Edward Scissorhands.
Finally he stops, arches his brows at Molly in question, and Molly nods her approval.
“Okay. Ready? One, two, three, voila!” With great dramatic flair, the chair is spun to face the mirror.
I gasp, unsure the woman staring back is actually me.
The hair is wispy and short—chin length—the lobes of my ears showing. Just-rolled-out-of-bed sexy—short, sassy, and bold, yet feminine. Meg Ryan, Annette Bening, Halle Berry, women like that have haircuts like this.
My neck is so long it looks like it’s been stretched two inches. I reach up and touch it, checking that it’s mine.
“You like?” Henry asks.
Molly stands beside him grinning ear to ear.
“I like,” I say as my eyes, which now seem larger and more blue, fill with gratitude. “No more blah, blah, blasé. Thank you. This is amazing. You didn’t have to do this. It was very generous.”
“Generous, my ass,” Henry says. “Girl, this is Hollywood. Nothing is for nothing.”
My blood ices with his abrupt change in attitude. I have no idea what a haircut like this costs, but I’m certain I can’t afford it. We have yet to get our first paycheck, and the new bills are simply piling up on top of the old.
His face lights up in a full-wattage grin. “Pies. You will pay me in pies. Molly says you make a mean pecan pie, and I’m a boy from the South who misses his mama’s cooking.”
I exhale in relief and extreme gratitude then reach over and take his hand. “I don’t know if I bake as well as you cut hair, but I’ll try.”
28
Molly looks as ridiculous as E.T. did when Drew Barrymore dressed the alien up like a girl. Her skin is painted orange, a makeup trick that keeps the cast from looking sallow, and the dress Ingrid put her in is red-and-white gingham with lace trim. Molly has never worn a dress in her life, and she’s certainly never worn frills.
We stand at the edge of the law office set as the crew makes a few last-minute changes to the lights. Chris sits a few feet away directing them. I wait for him to notice my hair. I know I shouldn’t be waiting. After all, I’ve made a solemn vow to no longer be attracted to Chris Cantor, director of stars, the out-of-my-league, most eligible bachelor in Hollywood. Yet my breath catches in anticipation each time he looks my way.
Finally he glances over but only to say, “Two-Bits, you’re on.”
The words stop my narcissism cold. This is the moment of truth. Molly’s first scene. Molly steps from my side and onto the set
, and the stand-in walks off.
Beth lifts her fist in the air, and the studio grows quiet. Her fingers pop open: one, two, three, four, five. “Action.”
Molly and Miles walk into the law office with their pretend dad, a burly man with a barrel chest and a wide face. The receptionist greets them, then Mr. Foster walks from his office.
“Paul, nice to see you. Who have we here?” he says.
“The two best investments of my life,” the dad says. “This is my son, Miles, and my daughter, Molly. Kids, meet Mr. Foster.”
“Miles,” Mr. Foster says, shaking Miles’s hand. Then he bends at the waist and says, “Molly, a pleasure.”
I hold my breath. Molly’s first line. Nice to meet you as well.
“A pwleasuwre I’ll twreasuwre fowrevewr,” she says, stopping my pulse, her curls whipping as she gives the line proper sass the way Bo taught her.
“Cut,” Beth squawks, running onto the set and glowering at Molly, who shifts to hide behind Jules, who is smirking at Molly’s improvisation.
“Beth…” Chris’s voice smothers the assistant director’s screech of “Your line is, ‘nice to meet you as well.’”
Beth’s mouth snaps shut as she turns red-faced to Chris, who says, “Last I checked, ‘cut’ was my line. Remember that or get off my set.”
“I’m sorry, Chris. I was just…”
His scathing look stops her protest, and she slinks away, and though I’m not a big fan of Beth’s, I feel bad for her. She was just doing what she thought was her job. Molly’s the one who messed up.
“Ingrid,” Chris bellows in the general direction of backstage.
The wardrobe woman steps from the shadows.
“What the hell is this?” He gestures to Molly’s outfit.
“You said she was wealthy.”
“Exactly. I said wealthy, not from the 1950s. We chose her because she’s spunky, and you have her dressed like Little Miss Muffet. Fix it. Now.”
No Ordinary Life Page 10