Likely Story!

by David Levithan

  Robertson is one of the main celebrity drags in Los Angeles. While Rodeo Drive is for tourists and just-Botoxed trophy wives too lazy to leave Beverly Hills, Robertson is where “locals” go to overspend on James Perse T-shirts and Cynthia Rowley dresses. It’s where starlets like to get into car accidents. A couple of prominent production companies have offices there, but it’s essentially dominated by shopping and lunching options. Robertson starts more or less in West Hollywood at Santa Monica Boulevard with a cluster of gay bars and cafés and then slowly becomes more and more dominated by high-end retail shops the farther south you drive. Its beating heart—the main muscle from which all the surrounding glamour flows—is The Ivy.

  My mother and I were chauffeured in a vintage silver Rolls past the tiny boutiques, and I had to admit I was somewhat drawn to things I saw in the windows. My mother had always lavished me with expensive clothes and toys, but I’d always resented them because they were a symbol of what she wouldn’t provide: nurturing attention and love. But now that I could potentially afford some of these items myself—with my own money—it made me reconsider (only slightly) the merits of treating oneself to the finest of everything. Someone had to do it, right?

  My mother spent most of the car ride scribbling away on a pad. She barely spoke the entire time, which was fine since the driver was playing NPR at my request. Eventually, I had to know what it was she was working on.

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  She put the pad down in her lap and sighed with exhaustion as if she were trying to hammer out the details of a Middle East peace agreement.

  “Soaps Monthly has asked me to compile a list of my five favorite moments from my many years on Good As Gold. It’s like trying to pick the five finest Fabergé eggs or the most gorgeous statue at the Louvre. I don’t know what to choose.”

  “What have you got so far? When you narrowly escaped being executed on death row? When your plane caught fire and you narrowly escaped being killed in the crash? Or when you single-handedly discovered the cure that saved Max from being killed by the flesh-eating bacteria?”

  “No,” she said, waving her hand dismissively at me, “those are all so obvious. Number one is of course the birth of Diamond.”

  “Really?” I blushed. It never occurred to me that the birth of Geneva’s daughter, which matched my birth in real life, would be that meaningful to her.

  “Naturally—it was one of the highest-rated storylines in Good As Gold’s history!”

  Oh, right—it had nothing to do with me, just the ratings. “Then what else is on the list?” I said with diminishing interest.

  “I’m thinking about the time I was forced to work as a high-priced hooker in order to get Diamond the new kidney she needed. Also maybe when I risked jail by perjuring myself on the stand in order to save Rance from the gas chamber because I knew it was Roger, not Rance, who’d killed Ricardo in a drunken rage at Charlotte’s wedding reception. But I couldn’t reveal that because I thought I was carrying Roger’s love child.”

  “Those are fine. Just pick anything—who cares?” I said, looking out the window at the girls with Chihuahuas in their purses strolling up and down the sidewalks.

  “Who cares?!” my mother repeated indignantly. “The fans care—and you had better start caring about them or else this Love Boat you’ve got us all sailing on will be sunk before we hit San Diego.”

  “Remember,” I said coldly, “I didn’t ask you to be on this show. You forced your way on.”

  She put a hand on my leg and said, “That’s called being an opportunist, and you’d best learn a thing or two about it or you’ll find yourself without a job and, God forbid, without royalties. I won’t have you living in my basement forever like some stoner garage-band bass guitarist.”

  “Don’t worry, Mom, I’ll be out of your hair and your house the day I turn eighteen. Count on that.”

  This seemed to wound my mother more than I expected. Instead of retorting with a nasty comment, she looked slightly stricken and remained silent. I could hear Gina tsking sadly in my head: Why couldn’t I be nicer to my mother? Richard’s words started to haunt me; I had to remember that my mother needed this as much as the show did. It was a hard adjustment to make—I had always thought of my mother as the biggest star in the galaxy. What kid doesn’t, whether her mother is a flight attendant or a nurse or a librarian or a soap actress? As much as I hated it when she threw her invulnerability at me, it was even worse to think of her as vulnerable. I had never gotten used to the fact that I had to rely on her. And now, to be told she was relying in some way on me … that made me feel much more like a grown-up than any outfit ever would.

  We pulled up to The Ivy, and suddenly the sidewalk and street were swarming with locusts. Dressed in various flannels and denims, these shutterbugs were outside every window of the car. Thankfully, the windows were tinted.

  “This is insane!” I said as my heartbeat quickened. “I’ve never seen anything like this before. I mean, from the inside.” The network publicists must have pulled a lot of favors—or spent a lot of money—on this.

  My mother coiffed her hair in the window reflection. She opened her purse and put on her favorite pair of Chanel sunglasses. Then she took out a small box decorated with a bow and handed it to me.

  “Welcome to Hollywood, dear. I think you’ll be needing these.”

  I unwrapped the present. It was a gorgeous pair of Chrome Hearts sunglasses. Tortoiseshell with wood inlay. This local brand (i.e., based in LA rather than Milan, Paris, New York, or Taiwan) was all that and a bottle of Dom Pérignon.

  “These are beautiful, Mom, but they must have cost a fortune.”

  She grinned wickedly. “Of course, and all the paparazzi out there know it. They couldn’t even afford the valet parking fees at Sunset Plaza, where I got them.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Now put them on—the siren call of fame and fortune is beckoning!”

  The driver opened the car door and my mother emerged. She posed and waved and smiled and turned to this side and that, all the while trying to look like the entire brouhaha was a complete surprise and that she had absolutely no idea anyone would be taking photos that day. Then she stuck her hand back into the car and pulled me out. A sudden lightning storm of flashbulbs went off all around us.

  My mother yelled out over the din, “This is my gorgeous and completely genius daughter, Mallory, with whom I’ll be working on the greatest new program daytime television has seen in decades: Likely Story!”

  I hate to be so banal as to say I was like a deer in the headlights, but it was totally like that at first. Then, after just a moment in which my eyes adjusted, I realized I didn’t mind the attention. I grinned, I waved, and I tried to look thin. Then I took my mother’s hand—something I don’t think I’d done since I needed help crossing the street. For a moment, her face turned from Hollywood to human; her smile seemed a little more genuine. She squeezed my hand a second, then led me forward.

  The driver started tossing paparazzi out of the way as if they were the defensive line of the New York Giants. My mother tugged me along behind her in the narrow path the driver was creating toward The Ivy’s entrance. Behind us the photographers closed back in around us. Then, before I could really get used to what was happening, we were inside the restaurant and it was calm again. A piano tinkled somewhere in the background. Mom let go of my hand.

  The room was full of the dull drone of lunchtime chatter. A few heads turned to check us out, but not many. Those who did certainly didn’t register any recognition. Even if they did know who my mother was, it was considered a faux pas in LA to ever acknowledge a celebrity’s presence.

  My mother and I were seated at a small table for two. It wasn’t in the best part of the restaurant—it was a bit too close to the kitchen for my mother’s taste—but it wasn’t the boondocks, either. I had a lobster salad and my mother mostly sipped whiskey sours while she picked at her rib-eye steak, placed delicately on a b
ed of arugula with feta cheese and cherry tomatoes.

  We didn’t say much. Though she had expertly maneuvered her way off Good As Gold and onto Likely Story, I think she was quite sad to see her legacy get canceled so abruptly. Laugh as I did at the horrific storylines and unbelievable situations she “acted” her way through, for the first time I was beginning to understand just how hard she had to work. My mom was on the job before 8 a.m. five days a week and usually worked at least twelve hours on the set. On television, it doesn’t look that hard to have a fabulous wardrobe and kiss gorgeous men, but the time it takes to get to those moments is grueling.

  By the time I’d sipped my way through my third bottle of Perrier, I suggested to my mother that we leave. She glanced at her Cartier watch, inlaid with emeralds for every hour. It had been a present from Trip, a memento of their short-lived marriage.

  “I guess you’re right.” She sighed, pushed around her lunch a couple more times for good measure, and then motioned to the waiter for the check. When he brought it over, she dropped a platinum credit card that the network paid for.

  The check came back and my mom tipped thirty percent—when it’s expensed to the network, why not look generous?

  As we approached the exit, my mother grabbed my hand—less spontaneous than before, almost a kind of desperate grab. I didn’t know if she was holding on to me for dear life or if she was trying to brace me for the onslaught of photographers outside. The nervous energy passing between us was palpable. My mom was an aging soap star desperately trying to hold on to her past. I was an out-of-my-league example of nepotism at its finest. But we wanted everyone “out there” to forget about those realities and buy the fantasy that our life was exactly that: a fantasy.

  Smartly, my mother had summoned the car so it was waiting for us when we stepped outside. Another barrage of flashbulbs exploded in our faces. This time Mom seemed to view it as a wake—a final chance for her spotlight. Rather than milk it, she moped through it, looking down at her Gucci boots as she pressed through the throng.

  Once she had climbed back into the Rolls, a reporter shouted out a question to me. I had no idea what he’d asked, so I smiled demurely and said loudly, “Find out on Likely Story.”

  Inside the car, I kicked off the torturous heels and slumped into the tan leather seat. Now it was time to face the second (or was it third? fourth?) gauntlet of the day. Because at that moment, my mother said, “Oh, yes—I almost forgot! We have to drop you off at school!”

  In Hollywood, there are strict limits on underage work. This prevents production of The Mickey Mouse Club from being a sweatshop. Children under eighteen are not allowed to work more than nine hours on a given day, and they must attend an average of three hours of school per day.

  Once a week, I had to stop by my real high school to pick up the week’s assignments. I either had to complete them on my own or ask Miss Julie for help.

  I glanced at my watch. It was almost three o’clock, right when school would be getting out. Ever since the fallout with Amelia, I usually scheduled these trips either in the morning, when I knew she’d be in class, or long after class had let out so the campus would be a ghost town. But today’s mixture of generic LA traffic and my hectic to-do list made such careful planning impossible. I was lucky I had the time to stop by school at all, let alone do the work.

  I texted Keith to see if he was still around. Seniors had a smaller class load and got to leave early. He texted back with a negative. CPK owned his soul for the afternoon. I next texted my soapfan friend Scooter, who said he’d come running to meet me as soon as class was over.

  I was a bit embarrassed to be pulling up to school in a Rolls. If word got back to Amelia—and I had no doubt it would—it would only confirm her viper view of me.

  “Back in a minute, Mom,” I said, slipping back into my shoes.

  She muttered something but was far too engrossed in her iPhone to form any real words.

  I ran tiptoe (the easiest way to negotiate asphalt and heels) across the quad toward the fey Spanish-style building that housed the school’s administration. The assistant principal’s secretary would have a packet of my assignments waiting for me. Every now and then I would run into one of the other four or five kids at our school who also worked in The Biz. Most of them were on second-rate sitcoms or Nickelodeon shows. Some of them looked superior when they walked the halls, and others looked guilty. I wondered which one I looked like.

  I was back on the quad when the final bell rang. A rushing stream of students poured from all the doors surrounding the green. I scanned them quickly to see if I knew any of them. I didn’t. They must have been from other grades. But I wondered if I would even recognize anyone in my grade anymore—it had been months since I’d been going to school like a normal person, and I’d only been at this school for a year before that.

  “Mallory!” was shouted out across the grass. I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw it was Scooter.

  “Hey, Scooter,” I said, smiling.

  He bounded up to me and enveloped me in a hug. “What are you doing here?”

  I waved the packet in my hand. “Just being a good little schoolgirl.”

  “I’m so jealous.” Scooter pouted. “You get to spend all day on a soap set and I’m stuck discussing the fire imagery in Fahrenheit 451.”

  “Trust me, Scoots, I’d trade places in a minute.”

  “Somehow I doubt that, Mal. Just let me fawn.”

  He was right, of course. I wouldn’t have traded places with him, but I wanted to believe that I could have. It always annoyed me when celebrities begged to be treated like normal people when they’d worked their whole lives to be anything but normal. Not that I was a celebrity by any stretch. Despite the events at The Ivy, I was a normal person, in abnormal circumstances. This opportunity had fallen into my lap and I had taken advantage of it. It would have been silly not to. But it was hardly as if I’d gone looking for such a chance. Sometimes you just have to say yes to the universe.

  “Daughter dearest!” came a shrill cry from the car. A chill ran down my spine. Does every daughter feel that when her mother calls? I doubt it.

  “Is that her? Geneva?” Scooter asked in the kind of hushed tone people use for the Dalai Lama or Barbra Streisand.

  “She’s only Geneva for one more week. Good As Gold goes off the air on Friday.”

  Scooter looked like one of the boys in those novels with dead dogs. “I know,” he said mournfully. “I’m totally devastated. I cry at the end of every episode.”

  I patted Scooter on the head as my mother called for me again. I turned around and yelled back, “Hold your horses! I’m coming!” Then I returned my gaze to Scooter. “Want to meet her?”

  “I couldn’t possibly,” Scooter said nervously, turning beet red.

  “Oh, come on, if I can live with her, you can meet her.” I grabbed his hand and pulled him along toward the Rolls.

  Inside the car, my mom was paging through the afternoon’s shooting script. I motioned for her to roll the window down.

  “Mom, I want you to meet my friend Scooter.”

  She smiled weakly, clearly disinterested. Forever gracious, though, she extended her hand through the window.

  Scooter gave it a light shake. “I’m a huge fan, ma’am.”

  My mother’s mood brightened visibly. “Oh, really?” she purred.

  “Oh, yes, I’ve been watching you for as long as I can remember. I couldn’t sleep for a week after you snuck onto the UFO to rescue Diamond. I must have been five. You were so brave.”

  “What a charmer this one is,” my mother said to me. “You always bring your sullen, morose friends over to the house. You never bring promising young gentlemen like this one.”

  I declined to tell her that Scooter had been to the house a handful of times. She’d just been at work. Or passed out.

  “I’ll try to remember that,” I said. “Anyway, we should get going.”

  “So soon?” my mother asked coy
ly. “Scooter and I were just getting acquainted.”

  I wanted to tell her it was pointless to flirt with the gay boys. But then I realized, no, it was actually the gay boys who loved the flirting the most.

  “It’s been very nice to meet you, ma’am,” Scooter said, his smile floating like a rainbow cloud.

  My mother returned the smile. “You know, I’m having a small garden get-together on Friday afternoon to celebrate the last episode of Good As Gold. Why don’t you stop by? It’ll be a magic moment.”

  Scooter shot me a glance and I shrugged. He stammered an affirmative.

  I didn’t even know we were having a party. But then, why would I? I suppose, in some ways, I was indirectly responsible for the cancellation of Good As Gold.

  I hugged Scooter goodbye and walked to the other side of the Rolls. And that’s when the phantom menace appeared: Amelia.

  I almost dove into the car and yelled, “Drive!” to the chauffeur like an action-movie reject, but instead I stiffened my back and stood up taller in my heels. Like an aristocratic peacock, I heard Richard say.

  “Hello, Amelia,” I offered.

  “Hello,” she replied.

  Was this going to be the start of a real conversation? Was that too much to hope for?

  Apparently, yes.

  “Slumming it at school, I see,” Amelia sneered, sipping coyly from a can of Welch’s grape soda.

  “How many times do I have to say I’m sorry?”

  “That can’t erase it, Mallory. This isn’t one of your scripts. You don’t have any control of the story.”

  “I know….”

  Amelia turned to the Rolls. “Nice car,” she said. Then she started to pour grape soda on it.

  “What is this, third grade?” I asked.

  “No,” Amelia said. “This is third grade.” And then she changed the direction of the can and threw grape soda all over me.

  “Oops,” she added.

  I was dumbfounded. I stood there silently, dripping purple, for what seemed like hours but was surely only seconds.