No Ordinary Life

by Suzanne Redfearn

  Jeremy and Molly stand beside the set playing a game of who can slap whose hand before they pull it away, which is rapidly degenerating into a full-fledged game of tag. Jeremy is my favorite of the Foster kids. He plays the oldest Foster boy, and though he’s a troublemaker on the show, in real life he’s a happy-go-lucky sweetheart, and he and Molly get along great. I wait for Miles or Gabby or Caleb to join in on the fun, but all three seem very old for their ages, and I have yet to see them act like kids. Gabby and Caleb talk quietly, and Miles is off by himself looking at the script.

  As I wait, my mind spins to last night and Sean. In the light of day, without his magnetic eyes pleading for clemency from two feet away, I’m not nearly as forgiving, and I’m fairly certain I made a mistake agreeing to let him see the kids. Despite his promises, a stiff wind and he’ll abandon us again, leaving me to pick up the pieces. On the other hand, he is their dad. Is it right to keep their father from them? Or to keep him from his kids? He was there for twelve years. That’s not nothing.

  “Morning.”

  I lift my head to see Chris looking at me, a smile on his face.

  Normally this is where I get flustered and trip over myself, but today my thoughts are so distracted that I offer a surprisingly composed “Good morning.”

  “You found my weakness,” he says, dimples deepening.

  I tilt my head as I try to regain my bearings.

  “Pecan pie,” he says. “I just had a slice, and I’ve got to say, I fell a little in love with you at first bite.”

  His words snap the moment into high definition, the edges vividly sharp, the colors extra bright.

  “Do you always bake like that?” he asks.

  I manage a nod.

  “So rare. And I know it’s horribly sexist, but a woman who is beautiful and can cook is a dying breed and damn attractive.”

  My mind races for something clever to say back.

  Blank.

  His smile widens, and he gives a wink then walks away.

  Your cave or mine? Thank God that didn’t come out of my mouth.

  I lift my head to see Rhonda glaring at me, confirmation that Chris Cantor, producer of The Foster Band, most eligible bachelor in Hollywood, did in fact just flirt with me.

  Jules saunters past. “Let’s do this,” he bellows as he always does when he finally chooses to grace the set with his presence, alcohol fumes wafting in his wake.

  “Okay, guys,” Chris says, “places. We’ll shoot once without blocking to see what we’ve got then finesse it from there. I want it to be raw, so let’s make it good. Remember Molly and Miles have never sung with you before. I want to feel their hesitation and everyone else’s surprise at their talent. Beth, let’s go.”

  Watching the actors transform into character is one of my favorite parts of the shoots. Some, like Jeremy and Molly, switch to their alter egos the moment their feet hit the set. Others, like Helen and Kira, need a minute. Helen closes her eyes, turns her back to everyone, takes a few deep breaths, and when she turns back around, she’s Mrs. Foster, her face and posture softer and less untouchable. Kira rolls her shoulders forward, works out her neck, and flexes her jaw like a prizefighter getting ready to step into the ring. And when they take their places, Helen looks maternal, Kira looks sweet, Jeremy looks like a sex symbol, and Molly looks like Molly.

  “Action,” Beth says.

  Molly holds a maraca in each hand, and Miles holds a tambourine. Behind them is the band, Jeremy and Mr. Foster holding guitars, Helen at the keyboard, Kira standing center stage behind a microphone, Gabby on bass, and Caleb on drums.

  “Play along if you like,” Mr. Foster says to them.

  Miles shakes the tambourine a few times then decides against it. Molly stands unmoving beside him, her eyes on the ground.

  The band continues without them, then Mr. Foster steps forward, swings his guitar behind him, takes Molly by her maraca fists, and starts to dance with her, cha-cha-ing to the beat so the maracas play along. Molly breaks into a smile, and when he releases her, she continues to play. After a few notes, Miles joins in as well.

  Kira, who is the sweetheart of the show, starts to sing. She has a beautiful voice with just enough gravel in it to make it interesting. On the show she is seventeen. In real life she is twenty-two. On the show she’s pretty and sweet. In real life she’s gorgeous and a bitch.

  When the chorus hits, Kira pulls the mike from the stand and holds it between Molly and Miles so they can sing along. Molly lisps her part, and Miles melodically chirps his, and I know I am witnessing magic. The scene is clumsy, and they will need to shoot it a dozen more times to get it right, but Molly and Miles are irresistible, their voices a perfect blend of adorableness and talent that conjures up memories of a young Michael Jackson or Shirley Temple or, in this case, a strange duo of both those legends at their most iconic moment transported through time into the present to perform together.

  A chill shivers my spine as I think of Molly being that kind of megastar, and I can’t decide if the shudder is from exhilaration or fear.

  31

  I’m giddy with excitement. I’ve never bought my own car. My first car, an old Toyota, I inherited when my dad passed away, and Sean picked out our van.

  It’s nearly lunchtime, so I decide we’ll eat before starting our quest. Feeling rich from my first paycheck as Molly’s manager, I decide to treat us to Red Robin.

  “Order whatever you like,” I say, surprising them. Rarely do we eat out, and when we do, I make us share—Molly and I share one meal, Emily and Tom share another.

  I scan the menu, and my mouth waters with the idea of ordering what I want, not a meal suitable to share with a four-year-old.

  We’re not wealthy…yet…but already I feel liberated from my life of frugality.

  “Excuse me,” a woman says as she approaches our table. She looks near forty, has wide hips and brown hair teased to twice the height of her head. “Aren’t you the girl from the Gap commercial?”

  I smile as Molly nods.

  “Can I have your autograph?” She holds out a napkin and a pen.

  “She wants you to write your name,” I tell Molly, setting the napkin on the table in front of her.

  Very deliberately, Molly carves out the letters, the “y” ending up backward.

  “Thank you,” the lady says, her face blushing with excitement.

  When she leaves, all of us giggle. Our little celebrity signing autographs for her fans.

  * * *

  The car we bought is awesome. It’s a three-year-old lemon-yellow Nissan Pathfinder. It has an auxiliary jack for the iPhone, so Emily thinks it’s super cool. It’s yellow, so Molly loves it. And it has amazing reliability ratings, so Tom thinks it’s perfect—he’s still shaken about our breakdown in that seedy neighborhood of LA.

  And it’s mine! Ours! Mine!

  I could drive around for hours reveling in that fact.

  Technically I don’t actually own it. Only a quarter of it is mine. The rest will be mine after three short years of payments.

  It has a sunroof and automatic windows and cruise control. It even has seat warmers. The day is broiling hot, but I roast my toosh anyway just because I can.

  The thought of how much I spent makes my stomach queasy, but I just need to keep reminding myself that I get paid again in two weeks.

  I roll down the automatic windows and open the sunroof. This is what it feels like to have money. I like it. I really, really do, and so long as the money keeps rolling in, we’ll be fine.

  32

  We arrive home to a surprise, a bouquet of two dozen stunning long-stem red roses in a crystal vase beside our front door. My pulse quickens with the thought of either Sean or Chris sending such an extravagant overture of courtship.

  “Those awre fowr me?” Molly asks.

  It’s then that I notice the envelope sticking out above the flowers with the name Molly scrawled on it, and instantly my excitement transforms to alarm, my eyes darting ar
ound the hallway.

  “Kids, go inside,” I say.

  Molly reaches for the vase, and I pull her away.

  “Leave it.”

  “But theyw’re mine.”

  “Em, take Molly and Tom inside and send Grandma out.”

  Emily shepherds Molly and Tom through the door, and when they are safely inside, I pluck the envelope from the plastic stick and pull out the card.

  Roses are red and your eyes are the prettiest blue,

  Waching you dance made me fall in love with you.

  Your smile and laugh takes away my blues.

  Someday we will meet and my dreams will come true.

  My mom steps into the hallway and reads the card over my shoulder.

  “What should I do?” I say.

  “Do you think they’re from John Lennon?”

  Since our first day on the set, John Lennon has figured out that, in order to see us, he needs to be on the corner by six, and each morning, he is dutifully there, waiting for us to pull from the garage so Molly can smile and wave at him. It shows incredible commitment, and I have rewarded it with my own enthusiastic greeting each morning and even an occasional small honk.

  But now I wonder if it was a mistake to encourage him, if I should have realized that his starry-eyed devotion might develop into something more, something disturbing and possibly dangerous.

  “You think there could be more than one nutcase obsessed with Molly?” I ask.

  My mom shrugs. “Could be. Molly’s commercial is on all the time, and the YouTube video is up to over thirty million views.”

  “Thirty million?” I shake my head in disbelief. The video is cute, but it’s not that cute. “Should I call the police?”

  “I don’t know. Is sending flowers a crime?”

  “Claiming to be in love with a four-year-old should be.”

  “So should butchering the English language and bad poetry, but I don’t think it is.”

  “Mom, be serious. What should I do?”

  “Call Monique. See what she says.”

  * * *

  “Throw away the flowers but keep the note in case things escalate,” Monique Braxton says. “Ask your building manager to change the security code and hire a security company to install a camera in your hallway.”

  “But shouldn’t I call the police?”

  “You could, but you’d be wasting your time. There’s really nothing they can do. The guy didn’t leave his name, and even if he did, the cops aren’t going to chase someone down for sending flowers. It’s part of the business. Some fans are weird and some step over the line. If it gets creepy or there’s a threat, call the police, otherwise don’t worry about it.”

  33

  The day after we got the flowers, John Lennon was on the corner when we pulled from the parking garage in our new car. It took a minute for him to realize it was us, and when he did, his face lit up and he waved.

  Molly didn’t look at him, and neither did I. We passed with our eyes glued to the road, my hands gripping the steering wheel so tight that my fingers hurt. I glanced in the rearview mirror to see him frowning, his shoulders folded forward as he watched us continue on, clearly confused over what had changed.

  Good job, Bug, I said.

  I don’t undewrstand why I can’t wave at him.

  Because he’s a stranger and we don’t know if he’s dangerous.

  I caught her sad expression in the mirror, and it broke my heart. Immediately suspecting the worst of people instead of the best is a hard lesson to learn.

  Today is Friday, the last day of our third full week of working. Three weeks doesn’t sound that long, but the time has passed like dog years, the schedule so relentless and tedious that it feels like we’ve been working for months.

  Today the shoot is on location so we can film the final climactic moment of the first episode, a scene in which Molly and Miles are pulled from the burning wreckage of a car that was just T-boned by an ambulance. The site for the shoot is an industrial neighborhood on the outskirts of the city, the storefronts dressed up to look like a bustling street with a restaurant and stores on one side and a hospital on the other.

  We park in a vacant lot with dozens of other cars, several trailers, and a food truck, and Molly and I step from the car to the smell of sizzling bacon. One of the most rewarding perks of working on the show is the constant access to food. Between the craft service stations, the cafes and restaurants on the lot, and the on-location food trucks, Molly and I are never hungry.

  As we walk past the set, my eyes slide to Chris. He sits in a director’s chair staring at his laptop and looks like he’s been here for hours, his shirtsleeves rolled up, a shadow of beard darkening his chin.

  His flirtation has not progressed beyond the occasional wink, compliment, and smile, and though my pulse quickens when I see him, the truth is, when I think about it, I’m not certain how I feel about him. Like at this moment, though I’m excited he is here, I also know to steer clear. Coiled like a cheetah, tension pulses off him like he’s ready to pounce and tear someone’s throat out. That’s the thing about Chris, he’s a Jekyll and Hyde kind of character, one minute jokey and fun, the next, unrelenting and harsh. The result is greatness. Because of Chris Cantor, The Foster Band is the number one show on television, his energy creating a magnificent propulsion that keeps the show in orbit, but that same magnificent force also threatens instant annihilation to anyone who messes up.

  We grab a quick breakfast from the food truck, get Molly’s hair and makeup done, then return to the car to wait until we are called, the windows down so we can hear what is happening.

  I watch as Chris marches toward two extras. “You.” He points to one in a business suit. “You cross and go into the building, then the ambulance comes barreling around the corner.”

  The extra nods enthusiastically, excited to be chosen from the dozens who mill around the hospital entrance. Pulling his shoulders back, he saunters across the street with great noble strides, and Chris rolls his eyes. Beth rushes over to talk to the guy, and I watch his posture deflate as Beth reduces him back to mere mortalness, telling him to just walk across the street like a normal businessman, one who no one will notice or remember.

  I sympathize. Every day I watch as the extras and guest stars overplay their roles, turning in a performance worthy of Jack Nicholson in The Shining when their part is to play a bicycle courier dropping off a package or a man in a suit crossing the street.

  A fire truck pulls into the lot, and I tense. It’s here to put out the flames after the crash. Molly and Miles won’t be in the car when the ambulance smashes into it, but they will be placed in the wreckage after and a controlled fire will be lit to make it look like the car and ambulance are on fire, and although I’ve been assured by a dozen people that Molly will be safe, I’m still not entirely comfortable with it.

  The car being used for the crash is a late model Camry, and I can’t help but think what a waste it is to destroy such a nice car, not to mention the ambulance. But I’ve learned that waste and cost is rarely a consideration. Cars, furniture, clothes, electronics, whatever is needed to get the shot is sacrificed without a second thought.

  Molly sits beside me watching a movie on the iPad I bought a week ago. There’s so much idle time that she needed something to keep her occupied. I need something as well but have yet to figure out what that something is. Maybe I should take up knitting or read all the classics, something productive. So far all I’ve done is fritter away my time. Several times a day I check in with my mom, and once a week I call Tom’s therapist. I make shopping lists for groceries and sometimes I pay bills. But mostly I watch the slow plodding of the show, and when nothing is happening there, I waste time on my new iPhone Googling the cast, fascinated by the stories the reporters make up and the few facts they occasionally get right.

  Today, one of the more popular gossip sites reports that Helen is pregnant with Jeremy’s child, which is preposterous on so many levels I
can’t believe it made it to print. Not only is Helen forty-eight, but she’s had a well-documented hysterectomy. And Jeremy isn’t going to be procreating anytime soon with anyone from the XX chromosome pool. Gorgeous as he is, and despite his publicist doing a fabulous job spreading rumors about him dating the girl from Mainland, Jeremy’s ship doesn’t sail straight.

  Another site suggests that Gabby is Jules’s illegitimate daughter, that her mother was Jules’s housekeeper and lover, and that he turned them out when he discovered she was pregnant. There’s always a lot of speculation about Gabby, mostly about her weight and her suspected drug use.

  They also love to talk about Kira’s weight, that she is too skinny and might have an eating disorder. They’ve got it wrong about Kira. Kira is obsessed with her weight, but she’s too smart and too driven to deal with it in a way that would be counterproductive to her career. Her rocking hot body is achieved the old-fashioned way, through a strict diet monitored by a personal nutritionist and prepared by a personal chef, combined with a brutal body maintenance routine managed by a private trainer, a private yogi, and a personal masseuse.

  They might have it right about Gabby. The other day I heard her talking to Caleb about rolling with “Molly,” so I eavesdropped thinking she was talking about my Molly, when in fact she was talking about the drug called Molly.

  “Let’s do this,” Chris bellows, interrupting my perusal of an article about Caleb dating his mother’s boyfriend’s daughter, bookmarking it so I can return to it later.

  34

  The crash was spectacular. The ambulance barreled into the Camry, sending it hurtling onto the sidewalk, where it careened on its side toward a store dressed to look like a diner. For a heart-stopping second it looked like it was going to smash right through the window and into the extras sitting at the tables, but it skidded to a stop a foot from the glass.