That was two hours ago.
Bored and done reading the latest gossip on the members of the cast, I decide to Google Molly’s name to see if there’s any buzz about her joining the show. 282,000 hits! The first listing is for the YouTube video, the second is a Wikipedia listing, the third is for the Gap, and the fourth is for a video I’m unfamiliar with. Its title is Molly Martin Dances Like You’ve Never Seen Her Before.
I click on the listing and stare horrified when a video pops up showing Molly’s face superimposed on a naked white woman dancing with a black man. The man strums a guitar and belts out “Go, Molly, Go” to the tune of “Johnny B. Goode.” I close down the window, my jaw quivering with rage and disgust.
“Molly, on set,” Chris says, interrupting my revulsion, and as I stumble from the car, I decide never to Google Molly’s name again.
“Ready?” Beth asks.
Molly looks unsure. I’m unsure as well. No matter how many times I’ve been assured Molly will be safe, it goes against every fiber of my being to let my daughter go anywhere near the tangled, burnt wreckage of metal and glass that lies smoldering on the sidewalk.
I kneel down to her height and take hold of her arms. “Bug, you okay with this?”
“It’s just pwretend,” she says bravely. “Chwris says it’s going to be a piece of cake.”
I stop myself from telling her that she shouldn’t trust everything a man says, especially when he wants something from you.
“Okay, baby. I’ll be right here.” I peck her on the nose, and Beth leads her away.
I turn to look at Chris for reassurance, but he is across the street talking…no…arguing with Griff. I can’t hear what they’re saying, but Chris’s shoulders are jacked up high and Griff’s expression is fierce. The two seem to get along well most of the time, but at the moment, Griff looks like he wants to tear Chris’s head off, and Chris looks like he’s challenging him to do just that. Chris gestures with his hands to emphasize his point, and Griff glowers at him, his head shaking back and forth.
I move closer, curious if the argument involves Molly, but before I get near enough to hear what they’re saying, Chris whirls and roars, “Places.”
“He’s drunk,” Griff hisses.
Chris ignores him.
“Who’s drunk?” I say when I reach Griff.
Griff squints down at me, the pulse in his neck throbbing. “Who do you think?”
Jules. Jules is always drunk.
Jules is supposed to pull Molly and Miles from the car before the ambulance explodes.
“Clear the set,” Chris says, causing me to move from the pavement to the sidewalk to stand beside Griff.
Across the street, in front of the hospital, Jules and Helen stand near the exit. In the wrecked car, Molly and Miles are strapped into the backseat, and the woman who plays the social worker is in the driver’s seat. The extras are in their places, and the set has fallen silent.
Griff still looks at me, his eyes fierce, challenging me to do something.
My eyes bulge, and my mouth almost opens.
“Action.”
Flash—the ambulance lights up, flames flicking from its engine, black smoke billowing from the smashed hood. Molly cries out, screaming for help.
Mr. Foster runs toward the crash, and Mrs. Foster yells, “Frank, stop. There’s oxygen in the ambulance. It might explode.”
He doesn’t listen. A red-blooded American hero, a veteran who has survived two wars, he charges forward. The car is on its side, its smashed windshield facing us. Through it, I see the social worker kicking at the glass to free herself. The window gives, and she drags herself through, the toxic smoke engulfing her as she staggers out, blood dripping down her face.
She takes two steps then her face transforms from pain to panic, and she cranes her head back toward Molly and Miles.
“I’ve got them,” Mr. Foster yells. “Go.”
An extra dressed as an orderly runs forward and leads the social worker toward the hospital.
Through the smoke, I see Miles tugging at his seat belt while Molly continues to cry.
Mr. Foster clumsily scrambles onto the car and wrenches open the door. Griff was right—he’s drunk, more drunk than usual. He reaches in and grabs hold of Miles, who has managed to free himself.
Awkwardly he pulls Miles out, nearly falling off the car in the process and causing Miles’s legs to flail. Molly yelps, a genuine howl of pain, different from her pretend ones. Miles must have kicked her. I step forward, but Griff grabs hold of my arm, stopping me.
Miles falls to the ground, and Mrs. Foster runs forward to pull him to safety.
“Molly,” Miles cries, resisting her efforts.
At the same time, Mr. Foster struggles to free Molly from her car seat while Molly continues to sob. The clip releases, and I watch in horror as she tumbles from the seat to the ground, a four-foot drop.
“Cut,” I scream with Molly’s shriek. “Cut, cut, cut.”
I try to wrench free from Griff’s hold, but he only strengthens his grip.
Jules climbs inside the car. He’s not supposed to do that. The script said he was supposed to release Molly, pull her out, and carry her to safety. This is wrong. It’s all wrong.
Awkwardly, he pushes Molly up through the door. Tears stream down her face, but she manages to scramble out, her body shaking.
“I’ve got you,” Helen says, reaching up and lifting her down.
Cradling Molly against her chest, she runs the opposite direction of where she was supposed to run, away from the hospital and straight toward me.
Miles runs beside her, and Jules stumbles behind them. When they’re ten feet away, the ambulance explodes. Helen shelters Molly from the blast as best she can, shielding her head with her own and covering Molly’s ear with her hand, though there’s no real danger, the blast entirely contained to within a few feet of the car.
Griff releases my arm, and Helen hands Molly to me, genuine concern in her eyes.
“Paramedic, now,” Griff barks, and it’s only then that I realize Molly is actually hurt.
Blood covers her shirt and stains her face. I crumble to the sidewalk to scan for the injury. Four inches above her wrist is an inch-long gash.
“It’s okay, baby. You’re okay. You’re going to be okay.”
Molly clings to me, blood dripping down her arm. Griff pulls off his flannel shirt and wraps it around the wound.
“Hang in there, kid,” he says.
“I fewll,” she says through her tears.
“I’m sorry,” Jules says, appearing beside us.
Griff whirls on him. “Get your drunken ass out of here.”
Jules simpers away, his head hung like a beaten dog.
“She okay?” Chris asks, walking up and crouching beside me.
A paramedic pushes past before I can answer. He peels off Griff’s shirt to examine the wound. Molly isn’t crying now, only whimpering, her nostrils flaring with her broken inhales of breath. I press her face against me so she won’t see the blood.
“She needs stitches,” the paramedic says. “Do you want me to call for an ambulance?”
“No,” Griff and Chris say together, panic flashing in both men’s eyes.
Chris looks at the man and says sharply, “This doesn’t get out. You hear me? Leak a word of this and I’ll have your hide.”
The man nods as he wraps gauze around the wound.
Helen speaks up. “I can take them,” she says.
I didn’t realize she was still beside us. Her blouse is smeared with blood, her eyes glassy with emotion.
“Thanks, Helen. I appreciate that,” Chris says.
I lift Molly, and Griff drapes his shirt over her. I shove it back at him. “No thank you,” I say harshly. He should have let me go to Molly when I tried. Him, of all people, with his condescending judgment when I don’t speak up, but when the time came for his job to be compromised, all he cared about was getting his precious shot.
&nbs
p; “Give me your keys,” he says, the vein in his neck pulsing. “I’ll have one of the crew bring your car to the hospital.”
I fish my keys from my pocket then, carrying Molly, follow Helen to her Mercedes.
Helen doesn’t talk as she drives, her focus intent on the road as we race well past the speed limit to the hospital a few miles away.
The car skids to a stop in front of the emergency room entrance, and Helen runs around the car, opens the door, and takes Molly from my arms so I can get out.
When she hands her back, she stutters, “I would go in with you…if you want me to…if you need me to, I will. It’s just…I’m not sure it’s the best idea.” Her eyes skit around like we’ve entered enemy territory and there might be snipers. Which I realize is exactly her predicament. She’s Helen Harlow, and there might be snipers. Who knows what headlines they would make up about this? Helen Harlow and Lesbian Lover Rush Love Child to Hospital after Domestic Dispute.
“It’s okay,” I say. “I’ve got it from here. Thanks for the ride.”
She hesitates then says, “Griff was doing you a favor. If he had let you interrupt the scene, they would have made her do it again. Maybe not today but at some point. Once it started, he knew it was better to finish it. If you want to blame someone, blame Chris or look in the mirror, but don’t blame Griff. He was trying to help.”
35
When the doctors asked what happened, I spun the first lie that came into my head, knowing from the warning Chris gave the paramedic that the truth would hurt the show. The doctor didn’t believe my story and neither did the nurses. Metal slides went out with eight-track tape players and pet rocks, but cutting her arm on a metal slide at the playground was all I could come up with when I was asked what happened.
The cut required five stitches and a tetanus shot. We were at the hospital almost three hours, and in that time, I think every member of the cast sent flowers or balloons or a stuffed animal.
Jules felt so bad that he sent a teddy bear the size of a car. He also called at least sixteen times in increased states of inebriation to tell me how sorry he was.
Molly took it all in stride. Once the wound was cleaned and bandaged, and we were just waiting for the doctor so he could put in the stitches, she was in good spirits. She watched television, took a nap, and ate apple sauce that the nurse brought her, artfully dodging the woman’s probing questions about how she got hurt—intuition or intelligence cautioning her against divulging the truth.
As Griff promised, one of the crew brought our car. I was disappointed and relieved Griff didn’t bring it himself. I hate to admit it, but Helen was right; Griff tried to stop it before it happened, and my lame efforts after were too late. Which means I owe him an apology—an apology I want to give, while at the same time I dread the idea of facing him.
* * *
There are so many gifts that they won’t all fit in the car or in my mom’s condo, so Molly and I leave most of them for the nurses to bring to the pediatric ward, including Jules’s giant teddy bear.
We’re walking toward the parking lot, our arms loaded with loot, when a voice cuts through the night. “Hey, Two-Bits.”
I look up to see Chris leaning against a black Porsche.
“Hey, Chwris Cwross,” Molly says.
Her jolly greeting seems to bring him enormous relief.
“I thought I could take you two lovely ladies to dinner.”
I glance at my watch. It’s nearly six. While we were waiting for the doctor, I had called my mom and told her I would make spaghetti when we got home. It’s been almost a week since we had dinner as a family.
“Do you like lobster?” Chris asks.
Molly crinkles her nose.
“How about steak instead?” he says, and his warm laugh causes instant amnesia, a sudden forgetfulness about spaghetti and the remainder of my family.
“Now you’wre talking,” Molly answers.
36
We walk into Ruth’s Chris Steak House hand in hand, Molly between us. I know how we look, and shamelessly I revel in it. We look like a beautiful couple with our adorable child. Chris is handsome, I am pretty, Molly is darling. He drove us here in his Porsche. We will enjoy a nice bottle of wine with our steaks, and after, we will return to our beautiful home in the hills with its manicured lawn, swimming pool, and built-in barbeque. We probably have a dog and maybe a cat. We definitely have a housekeeper, a gardener, and perhaps even a nanny.
At this moment, I do not have an ex-husband who has reappeared after eight months of being gone, another daughter who hates me most of the time, a son who will not talk. I only have perfection.
* * *
Dinner is divine. I actually say that to myself, This dinner is divine, darling, causing me to chuckle out loud. Molly sleeps on the bench between us, her head on my lap, her feet pressed against Chris’s thigh.
Chris looks over and smirks. “Something funny?”
“I feel like I’m playing pretend,” I say, fully aware that the wine is making me loose-lipped and loopy. “Like I should have a long cigarette holder, a fur capelet, and should be blowing smoke rings in the air with a pout.”
“Why would you be pouting?”
“Because, darling, our server—who is quite lovely by the way, and quite young—is clearly enamored with you, and though I’m not your date, I could be your date, and she doesn’t know I’m not your date, and if I were wearing a capelet and smoking a cigarette, I would most certainly be your date, and therefore I would be pouting because that girl is shamelessly flirting with you while I’m sitting right here beside you…as your date!”
His laugh creates deep lines around his eyes that are very sexy.
He cranes his neck in search of our server who stands at the pickup line traying up an order of food. “Quite lovely indeed,” he says. “Though not even close to the loveliest lady in the room. And you are in fact my date.”
I blush and smile, pleased to be his date, while at the same time well aware that there is a four-year-old snoring between us, which prevents this from being an actual date. “Do desperate actresses always fawn over you like that?”
“What makes you assume she’s a desperate actress?”
“Because of the way she’s fawning over you.”
“Ouch. I’m wounded. You don’t think it’s my rugged handsomeness and charm?”
“The Bounty Man could walk in here, and he wouldn’t get that kind of worship. It’s like you’re a god.”
“I am a god, a short, nebbishy, Jewish god whose humble job makes him the gatekeeper of dreams for all the wanton waitresses of Tinseltown.”
“Humble, hardly.”
“I would have preferred you protested the nebbishy part.”
“You don’t need any more idolization.”
His face gets serious. “But I am humble, at least I am today.” He reaches over Molly and takes my hand that rests on her hip, his dark eyes, the color of espresso, holding mine. “I’m sorry about what happened.”
Like static electricity, a jolt shocks my cortex, and I flinch and pull my hand away, setting it on the table and out of his reach. His expression is so like Sean’s. If you give me another chance, I’ll spend the rest of my life making it up to you and to them. But even if you never forgive me, I promise, if you let me see them, I won’t hurt them. I won’t ever do that again.
Do they practice in the mirror, mastering the art of deception? So incredibly earnest, the words smooth and sincere, a honed ability to say exactly what you want to hear the moment before they rip the carpet out from beneath your feet.
He feels bad. Sean feels bad. But the moment I let my guard down, both would do the same damn thing again.
“Everything okay?” he asks.
“Fine.”
He lifts Molly’s legs to his lap, scoots closer, and takes my hand again, setting it back on top of Molly, the spot it was originally, the spot he wants it to be. I let him, mostly because I don’t have the courage to pull
it away again.
The waitress delivers our check, and Chris doesn’t even glance at her as he pulls a platinum American Express from his pocket and places it on the silver plate.
He sips his port and I sip my wine, and after a moment, his thumb begins to move gently across my hand, almost imperceptible, and the soft tickle short-circuits my brain, making me forget how little I trust him, or more accurately, making me not care. It’s been a long time since I’ve been caressed by a man and even longer since I’ve experienced the heart-fluttering rush of seduction.
When Chris’s drink is gone, he lets go to retrieve his credit card and the receipt from the tray. Discretely he slides both into his coat pocket, but not before I notice the scrawled note at the top that says, Call me, with a name and number scribbled beneath.
I glance at our server, who stands at the server station filling a water glass. Her face lifts, and I turn away just in time to see Chris give her a wink.
I pretend not to notice. “I should get Molly home.”
Chris carries Molly from the restaurant, and again I feel the eyes of admiration watching us, but already I’m tired of the game. It’s been a long day, and all I want to do is go home, curl up on the couch with my three kids, and watch TV.
37
Sean’s coming here? You said yes?”
My mom and I are in the hallway and the kids are inside.
“Shhh, they’ll hear you,” I say.
“You haven’t told them?” Her face has progressed from pink to red, steam practically blowing from her nostrils, which flare with a combination of incredulity and outrage.
“I’m going to. I just haven’t figured out exactly what to say.”
Her arms are crossed, her finger tapping impatiently against her elbow. “How about you tell them the truth, that their no-good, two-timing, runaway dad is popping in for a quickie before he returns to his life with his girlfriend in Albuquerque? Probably so he can claim he didn’t actually abandon you and cash in on Molly’s success.”
No Ordinary Life Page 13