Hello, Sunshine

by Leila Howland

  “People love you because of who you are. When you do things, when you get things, no one can say you didn’t earn it. It’s yours.”

  “This is my real life, Marisol.” I shake her hand off of mine and zip shut the suitcase. “And I have nothing.”

  “But what about MTV?”

  “They backed out. It’s all over. Hal is in Palm Springs or something.”

  “Oh my God. I’m so sorry. Are you okay?” She steps toward me as if she’s getting ready to hug me, but I put my hands up, stopping her. She retreats.

  “You don’t understand. It’s so different for you. You can stay here and do whatever you want, whenever you want, for as long as you want. You can be an actress forever. I have to go deal with my life. Don’t you think I want to stay out here with you?”

  “Don’t take your anger out on me.” She stomps her foot like a little girl. Fat tears spill down her cheeks.

  “You lied to me for our entire relationship. And the worst part”—my voice trembles wildly—“the worst thing is that I thought we were in it together, but this whole time I’ve been alone.”

  “We were. I mean, we are in it together.”

  I lose control of my voice. It has a life of its own. It’s high and loud. “Then you should’ve told me the truth.”

  She pulls back, alarmed by my transformation.

  I take a deep breath. “I need to get out of here.” I strap on my backpack and bang out the door.

  “Wait, don’t leave! Where are you going?”

  “To Raj’s.” I head out the door, leaving a pale, speechless Marisol in her doorway.

  I knock on Raj’s door, and he calls, “Come in.”

  I open the door and drag my stuff inside. He turns around and beams at me. Then he takes in my stuff, wrinkles his brow, and gives me the one-second signal. That’s when I see he’s on his computer, FaceTiming with Sierra.

  “So we’ll need to shoot tomorrow, if you’re free,” he says. “As early as possible.”

  “I’ll be there at six a.m., camera ready,” Sierra says.

  “Perfect,” Raj says. “I’ll text you the directions. And thank you so much for doing this for me last minute. We should be able to get it done in one day, though if you could reserve Thursday in case we need to reshoot, that’d be great, too.”

  “You know I’d do anything for you, sweetie,” Sierra says.

  “Thanks, Sierra,” Raj says.

  “Call me Olivia,” she says. “I’m going to start getting in character now.”

  “You cast her?” I ask, feeling as if this day couldn’t possibly get any worse. My throat is as dry as paper.

  “Okay, see you soon.” Raj quickly signs off and turns to face me.

  “Yeah,” he says. “I know you said you wanted to play Olivia, but the part is so not right for you. Olivia is supposed to be this controlling, unemotional, unattainable—”

  “Unattainable? Beautiful, you mean,” I say.

  “Oh my God, no. I mean, yes, but that’s not why—”

  “So you don’t think I’m good enough. Is that it?” I ask.

  I think it was Ms. Bishop who told me that the heart has muscle memory. Now I know it’s true because the place where mine has been ripped in half is burning, tearing at the seams. Heartburn.

  “Becca,” he says, standing up and taking me by the shoulders. “It’s about being right for the part. Just this one part. I have to nail this. The whole school is going to see this.”

  “Really?” I say, freeing myself from his grip. “So it’s not about the fact that she looks like a model and has been on TV. You probably want to take her to the banquet, too, don’t you? Because it will impress people.”

  “NO! Oh my God. I want to go to the banquet with you.”

  “You’re just saying that because we slept together and you feel bad for me,” I say, tears streaming down my face. “Admit it.”

  “Becca, you’re not listening to me.” His eyes are wide and panicked.

  “Oh no. I’m listening. The message is perfectly clear,” I fume.

  “You’re overreacting!” he says. “Where is this coming from? And it’s not like I wasn’t going to cast you at all. I was thinking you would make the perfect hotel maid.”

  My jaw sets, and I can see from his face that he knows he’s just made a huge mistake. “That’s one of the best parts in the script.”

  “She doesn’t even have a name, Raj,” I say. My voice is so low that it’s practically a rumble.

  “If you’ll just come and sit next to me and take a deep breath, I think I can explain this all in a way that makes sense to you.”

  “No way,” I say. Whatever has come over me is strong and angry. “I’m getting out of here.”

  VIVIAN OPENS THE DOOR to her Pasadena condo, a cup of hot cocoa in hand. I called her from the Uber and told her what happened. She’s made up the guest room with sheets, a blanket, and a pillow in a flower-print pillowcase. She’s even laid a nice pair of pj’s on the bed for me.

  “I wasn’t sure how you’d react to my call,” I say after a hot bath in her sunken tub. I sit on her sofa and put my feet up on the matching ottoman.

  “Becca, I’m your family,” she says, and stands behind me to brush my hair, just like she used to do when we were little after we went to the beach.

  “Thanks, Viv.” My voice catches as she brushes my hair in a ponytail.

  “You’d do the same thing for me,” she says, and sits next to me on the sofa. “I have to say, I’m glad you’re out of that place. I’ve had nightmares about that bathroom.” She makes a face and shivers in disgust.

  “Come on,” I say. “It wasn’t that bad.”

  “Yes it was,” she says, and we both laugh.

  “Marisol’s place was a little nicer. There wasn’t any peeling paint or weird bathroom stains.”

  “I should hope not! That girl is so lucky to have two hundred million dollars,” Vivian says. She shakes her head and stares at the ceiling. “I can’t even imagine.”

  My phone buzzes with a text. It’s from Chase Quick Pay—Marisol Alvarez has sent you $600.00 and the following message: Here’s what I owe you in cash. For what I owe you in friendship there is no sum. Call me.

  “Speak of the devil,” I say. “She’s just paid me back.”

  “That’s a start,” Vivian says. “But I didn’t trust her from the moment I met her. There was just something off about her that I couldn’t put my finger on.”

  “I never felt that way, but I guess you were right,” I say. It makes me feel sick. I wrap my hands around my coffee mug and take a deep breath. “I can’t tell you how grateful I am to you for letting me stay until I figure out what I’m going to do. It won’t be more than a week, I promise.”

  “Stay as long as you want.” A sly grin crosses her lips. “Maybe you can help me figure out some wedding stuff.”

  “Wait, what? WHAT?!”

  “I can’t believe you didn’t notice!” She extends her hand to me. A giant rock of a ring sits on her left ring finger.

  “Oh my God! You’re engaged? Who’s the guy?”

  “His name is Dan. He’s a lawyer. An esquire. Gorgeous. Grew up in Pasadena. Mom’s Chinese, dad’s Jewish. Went to Yale and then Harvard Law. He’s perfection!” She shows me a picture on her phone of the two of them walking on the beach in matching sweaters. He is pretty damn cute.

  “Oooh!” I say, grabbing the phone and giggling. I’m happy for Vivian and desperate to change the subject from my troubles. “Where’d you meet him? Looks like he has a nice body.”

  “Becca!” she says, snatching her phone back. “I met him right here in this complex. He lives upstairs from me. Can you believe it? All that online dating torture and meanwhile the love of my life was right on top of me.”

  “Literally!” I say. “And under you, too, I bet!” She laughs and smacks me with a needlepoint pillow.

  I laugh with her, but of course this makes me think of Raj, and I have to hold my
breath for a second to keep from sliding into tears. “So, when do I get to meet Mr. Foxy, Esquire?”

  “He’s actually in DC for a few weeks working on a case, but as soon as he comes back we’ll have dinner together.”

  “I’m so happy for you,” I say, but as I do, I find myself curling up into a tighter ball.

  “Aw, Becca. Don’t worry. You’ll get back on track.” She places one of my feet in her hands and rubs it. “In the meantime, you can hang out here. How about this weekend we go shopping in Old Town? You can help me start my registry. What do you think, Williams-Sonoma, Sur La Table, or Crate and Barrel?”

  “I have no idea,” I say. “Is there a difference?”

  “Oh my God, YES! But I can’t do all three or I’ll look greedy. You’ll help me scope it out this weekend. Maybe while I’m at work you can compare their cookware options. I’d like a matching set, but something really high quality.”

  “Sure,” I say, feeling like this is a task I can succeed at, even though it’s pretty much the last thing I want to do. “I can do that.”

  “You know that you have to tell your mom about not applying to college, right?”

  Actually, that’s the last thing I want to do.

  “I can’t believe you lied to me,” Mom says when I call her first thing in the morning. Vivian has gone to work and I’m sitting at her kitchen table, drinking from one of her designer mugs. Chantal has texted me to tell me she’ll cover another shift for me, but I’d better be back soon because “despite what you might think, I do have a life!”

  “I’ll pay you back for the application fees,” I tell her.

  “I know you will,” Mom said. “But honestly, Becca, I’m not upset about the money. I just don’t understand what happened. You’ve never lied to me before. Why didn’t you come to me to talk? I could’ve helped you. We could have gone through this together. You wouldn’t be in this situation right now. In fact, if you’d let me—”

  “Mom, Mom, Mom, stop. Please.” I can feel her revving up for a lecture. “I’m really scared right now. I’m really lonely.”

  “I know.” She takes a breath. “I know. Do you have enough money to come home?”

  “I have about eight hundred dollars total. But I’m not sure if coming home is what I want.”

  “I’ll book you a ticket home as soon as possible. Then we can start over. Get you enrolled in some classes this summer. Hire that college specialist that Mr. Walker told me about—”

  “You’re not listening, Mom. I’m not sure if that’s the best decision for me.”

  There are a few seconds of silence before Mom sighs and says, “I guess if there’s one thing I’ve learned from this situation, it’s that I can’t make you do something you don’t want to do. So what do you want?”

  “I’m not sure yet,” I say.

  “Okay. We did say you’d give it a year. You’re never alone in this world, Becca. You always have me. Why don’t you just take a little time, see if you can get some perspective, and let me know. I’ll come out there and get you if you want. You know that, right?”

  “Yeah, I do.” My mom really is the only one I have in this world. For sure and no matter what. “I love you to the sky.”

  “And back,” she says.

  That weekend, while Vivian and I are strolling from Williams-Sonoma to Sur La Table in Old Town, I look up and see a billboard that takes my breath away. “Time for Girls’ Night Out…at the Olive Garden!” is written at the top in loopy purple script. Below is a picture of four girls drinking wine, sitting around a table with a checkered tablecloth and a centerpiece of breadsticks, bowls piled high with pasta steaming before them. The group is focused on the well-dressed girl in the center who’s laughing with her mouth open, whose eyes are crinkling at the corners, whose hand is open, midair, mid-gesture, as if to catch the night by the necktie and take it for a spin on a nearby dance floor. It’s Marisol. I feel like I’ve been struck by a blunt object.

  There’s no place I want to be more than at that table at the Olive Garden with that girl, whispering something ridiculous, recounting a childhood memory over a piece of mass-produced cheesecake—the story at hand told with the color and action of a tentpole movie—our laughter tilting the world in our direction, giddy on free soda refills. I fish my phone out of my purse.

  “Marisol, I’m looking at your face in Old Town. You look great.”

  “Becca!” Her voice is full of relief.

  “But I have to ask, what kind of heiress does a print ad for Olive Garden?”

  “A very sorry one?”

  “I miss you,” I gasp into the phone. “I miss you so much.”

  “Come home, then,” she says. “Please, come on home.”

  THE NEXT DAY Marisol picks me up in her Jeep, and we go whale watching in Dana Point.

  We’re sitting on a boat with a bunch of German tourists. The sky is damp and gray. She wraps her shawl around both of us. She talks about how lonely she’s been this week, too. I don’t bring up the money. I don’t ask the questions I really want to. Like, do you get it all at once? Are there bricks of money piled in some vault, or is it in stocks and bonds? Have you spent it on anything yet? Even with Marisol, there’s a dome of privacy around the subject of money. I’m not allowed to ask; I can just feel it. I need to have something private, too. So I don’t tell her what I need to tell her most, that I slept with Raj and am confused as hell about my feelings. Instead, I tell her about how I’m going back to Boston.

  “Wait, why are you going back to Boston?”

  “Because I’m broke? Because everything fell through? Because…oh, I don’t know…I don’t have a secret stash of millions of dollars that allows me to do whatever I want.”

  Marisol grabs my arm, forcing me to look at her.

  “This is the reason why I didn’t want to tell you. I knew you’d push me away.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “If we’re fortunate today, we may get a glimpse of a blue whale,” a tour guide booms over a loudspeaker. “Lucky for us, there have been sightings in the area in the past few weeks. A hundred feet in length, two hundred and ten tons, with a heart the size of a Volkswagen Bug, blue whales are thought to be the heaviest creatures to have ever existed.”

  “You’re the one who thinks you’re not as good as people who have money, or people who get into college, or people who book commercials.”

  “That’s so not true,” I say, my arms crossed, my hands curled in fists.

  “Listen to me. All these college rejections have really messed with you. You think the world is a club that you can’t get into. But it’s bullshit. You’re looking for proof against yourself.”

  “Aren’t you the psychologist.”

  “No, I’m your friend. And friends tell the truth.” She blushes as she says this, realizing the irony. “You taught me that. I want my friend back, but that’s not going to happen until you let go of this stupid, fucked-up idea that you don’t deserve things.” I tear up. I do feel alone. I do feel deprived. She takes my hand. “You deserve everything, Becca. You’re incredible. A star.” I bow my head as tears streak down my face. “And you don’t have to feel alone ever again,” she says, wiping away her own tears. “Not if I can help it.”

  She hugs me and I hug her back, clutching her sweater. She pulls out an antique handkerchief and dabs her eyes.

  “I slept with Raj,” I blurt, “and then I just freaked out.”

  “What?” She shakes me, smiling. “It’s about time. When?”

  “Over to the port, or left side of the boat, you can see a friendly pod of dolphins frolicking,” the tour guide says. People rush to the left side of the boat, pulling out their cameras and binoculars. Marisol and I stay put.

  “The night before I saw you. But then the very next day he cast that girl Sierra in his movie. Have you talked to him?”

  “Of course I have. Since you haven’t been picking up your phone, he’s been knocking on my door asking i
f I’ve heard anything from you. I think you two just had a misunderstanding. It’s possible to not be right for a part, you know. I think that’s all that happened.”

  “I freaked,” I say. “I just totally freaked out.”

  The sun is out and even though seconds ago it was freezing, suddenly it’s hot.

  “Folks, we have a blue whale!” the tour guide says. “She’s approaching from the starboard, or the right of the boat. The captain is going to turn off the motor and see if she’ll come to us.”

  “You need to talk to him,” Marisol says. “Now, come on, let’s go see this whale.” We link arms and join the tourists. “Come back home. Please.”

  “I’m trying to get my shit in order.”

  Marisol doesn’t respond. She just takes my hand. Moments later, I see a spray of water. Then a massive gray back rises from the water, taking our collective and international breaths away. A giant tail appears, raining ocean water. We gasp, and Marisol kisses my hand.

  “Look, look,” Marisol says, squealing.

  “I know,” I say, as the whale breaches. “She’s like a miracle.”

  “She is,” Marisol says, and rests her head on my shoulder.

  I’M COUNTING MY TIPS at the counter—over two hundred and fifty bucks, not bad for brunch—when my phone buzzes with a text. It’s a group text from Kingman. He’s testing out some funky old plays tonight, public domain stuff, to see if any of them would be suitable for productions this spring. He’s looking for actors to come and do read-throughs. No pay, of course, but he’s going to bring some pizza and beer. Casting is not in any way guaranteed, he writes, but the people who show up get first crack at the material. I feel a buzzing in my chest at the thought of being back at Company One. It might not pay the rent, but it’s real acting in a legit theater with like-minded people.

  Peanut emerges from the kitchen with a salmon salad and places it in front of me.