Likely Story!

by David Levithan

  In other words, my mother had gotten her way yet again.

  After bailing Keith out, and trying to defuse his understandable rage, I headed for my computer, hoping I could get back into my writing world and shrug everything off. But I couldn’t. There was no way. My characters seemed fake to me—I had to deal with the real people in my life first. I was angry, and anger makes you do stupid things. Like create a new e-mail address called SetSideSource. And use it to shoot off a message to www.likelywhorey.com. I should have been yelling at the mysterious person who ran the site, blaming him or her for ruining my life. But really, he or she was just a mosquito in my ear, compared to my mother, who was a tapeworm in my gut. And that tapeworm had to be destroyed. I went to her safe, the one hidden behind her Roy Lichtenstein painting. My mother could memorize ninety pages of script, no problem, but when it came to numbers, she became a goldfish. So all of her combinations were the same—our home phone number. I got the document I needed, scanned it in, replaced it, then added the scan as an attachment to my e-mail. Did I hesitate a second before hitting send? Yes—but only a second.

  This was, after all, war.

  Not twenty minutes later, a post was splattered across the LikelyWhorey site.

  Old As Gold!

  BREAKING! According to a copy of the diva’s birth certificate (SEE below) just now forwarded to us by a trusty anonymous informant, the veteran star of Good As Gold and Likely Story could be eligible for the senior discount at The Ivy. It’s widely known that she’s long claimed to be forty years old, but by our calculations, she actually weighs in at a whopping SIXTY! HOW on earth did no one know this?! WHY isn’t this sexy sexagenarian owning up to her age?! WILL this shameless lie blow her chances for an Emmy?! And perhaps most importantly, enquiring minds need to know: Just WHO is your plastic surgeon, Ms. Hayden?! DEVELOPING …

  Someone from the network must have been monitoring the site at all hours, because it wasn’t ten minutes before Mom’s phone rang. I wasn’t close enough to hear her answer. But when she found out, her bloodcurdling screams filled the house.

  They would ring in my ears for hours.

  When news of Mom’s sudden-onset Soap Opera Rapid Aging Syndrome hit the public, she hit the wall and everything else hit the fan.

  It was practically still dark the next morning when the network’s publicity heads darkened our door. Mom’s rivals hadn’t wasted time. Georgina Devereaux, Anastasia Driscoll, and Westerly Easton had all gotten together and drafted a press release saying that the “fabrication about her age constitutes a fraud against the Academy’s electorate, who cannot be expected to make an informed choice without such vital information.”

  “Those jealous harpies. They’re just afraid of losing to their better,” she swore, more to herself than to anyone else.

  “Anastasia’s had it out for you ever since you faced off on Celebrity Family Feud, remember?” soothed Richard. “When you made mincemeat out of her during the Name Something Oprah Winfrey Can’t Live Without category.”

  “Survey says … Gayle King,” said Mom, smiling softly.

  “And then there’s your looks,” Network Publicist #1 chimed in. “We intend to let your face do most of the talking.”

  “The best thing would be if we could prove the Web site’s copy of your birth certificate is a forgery,” mused Network Publicist #3.

  “Well, that shouldn’t be too difficult,” said Richard, turning to Mom. “Don’t you have a copy?”

  Mom stood staring out the bay window, apparently deaf.

  “Hon?”

  Mom didn’t move. “I do have one,” she murmured. “In the safe. Behind the Lichtenstein. I checked. It’s still there.”

  “Of course it’s still there, darling. It isn’t as if someone broke in and stole it.”

  Now seemed to be a good time to excuse myself.

  “And it’s not like anybody’s going to walk out of the Hall of Records with the original, right?”

  For a moment Mom said nothing, just leveled her thousand-yard stare out past the swan pond.

  “Of course not. You don’t really think I’d be stupid enough to leave evidence like that lying around, do you?”

  Richard and the publicists froze. “Do you mean to say …?” Richard began.

  “You might as well know,” she said. “The truth seems bound and determined to come out, anyway. I’m just the age they say I am.”

  Publicist #2 coughed.

  “Does anyone have a cigarette?” asked Mom.

  The publicists didn’t hang around much longer. Their entire angle hinged on my mother actually being the forty-year-old she’d claimed to be. Now it was back to square one. Not long after that came the second blow of the day: Richard bailed. I hunkered down behind the banister, the best spot in the house from which to watch my mother’s relationships eat themselves alive.

  “What else are you hiding?!” Richard screamed, scraping a layer of vocal chord from his throat in the process. “Nazi gold?”

  “I don’t see what the big deal is,” she stammered to the tune of pouring vodka. “This is Hollywood. We’re Daytime. Everyone lies about their age.”

  “By twenty years??”

  “I have my reasons, none of which I need to explain to you. If you were so curious to know how old I am, all you had to do was ask.”

  “Let’s imagine that conversation, shall we?” he offered. “Me: Exactly how old are you? You: Old enough. Me: No, really. You: Sixty. Me: No, really. You: No dialogue, you just pick up a knife and gut me.”

  “If it’s a crime to look marvelous, then I’m guilty as charged! But since when has it been against the law to market oneself as one pleases? People will believe what they want to believe. I refuse to stand here and be judged for not getting in their way … and certainly not by a man with your past.” I had no idea what that meant, but I made a mental note to look into it later.

  Richard was quick to correct her. “I’ve been up-front about my past from the start. This is something else altogether. I don’t know how we come back from this.”

  “You mean you don’t know how you come back from this, don’t you? That’s what you’re worried about. You’re afraid no one will take you seriously now.”

  Richard leaned in close. “Do you think I’d have proposed to you in the first place if I was at all concerned about my reputation?”

  I noticed that the concept of love seemed to bear no relevance to the subject at hand.

  Mom leaned in closer still. “I’ve seen your Internet search history, Richard. I know you Google yourself every morning.”

  “You would, too, if you were me. Before our engagement, I could look myself up and the first ten links would be about my credits. But now I have to sift through pages of ‘cougar bait’ Web sites just to find a mention of my ACE Award!”

  “Believe me,” Mom responded in a low tone, “there are worse things in life than being thought of as sexy.”

  “Well, if you’re waiting for thanks, forget about it. You’ve got a better shot at winning an Emmy.”

  Mom actually recoiled.

  “I want you out of here,” she demanded.

  She’d tolerated his childishness, low blows, and self-centeredness with ease, mostly. But implying she’d come up empty at the Emmys was grounds for eviction. Richard was rattled.

  “Good,” he lied. “I don’t want to be here.”

  She saw him to the door. I scooched back a few feet, just out of sight. Even so, I heard his parting shot all too clearly.

  “I’ve done nothing but prop you up from day one,” he said. “With Trip, with Alexis, with Mallory. Good luck finding someone else to be your human crutch.” Then he was gone, disappearing behind a slammed door.

  She waited a moment. And then she started to cry. Real tears. And I sat on the stairs, paralyzed.

  All I’d wanted to do was teach my mom a lesson. Maybe put the fear of Mal into her. And if she lost out at the Emmys again, so be it. Wrecking her engagement to
my boss was not what I’d bargained for. At least not today.

  The studio could not shut up about the Hayden family dramas. From the moment I walked in Monday morning, it was one question after another. “Does your mother still have both her hips?” “Is she taking her calcium?” “Does she drink the blood of unicorns?”

  Yes.

  As far as I know.

  It wouldn’t surprise me.

  Tamika’s was the one question I didn’t have an answer ready for.

  “Are you happy now?”

  Ronald and Anna were already waiting for us in the writers’ room, so I dragged Tamika into the office supply closet and closed the door behind us.

  She went on. “Because you don’t look it. You ought to be doing a jig. A bright, holy light ought to be shooting out of your bottom. Didn’t you finally get what you wanted?”

  “Hard to say,” I replied. “Why? What have you heard?”

  “Just that your mother’s alienated the Academy. And that Richard’s sleeping in his office tonight, because the Mondrian’s booked solid. And that Keith has a court date for decking some paparazzo.”

  “That’s basically what I know.”

  “Then you hit the trifecta,” she said, arms crossed. “No way is your mom going to win now. Richard’s probably going to dump her. And you can dump Keith with clean hands. I mean, who wants a boyfriend with a record?” From anyone else, that last question might have been rhetorical. But Tamika wanted to hear what I had to say.

  “You think I’d dump Keith just because he got arrested? Again?”

  “I don’t know what you’d do or not do anymore.” She sighed. “I used to think trying to sneak a few sex jokes past the network censors was your limit. Now I’m beginning to think I was way off base.”

  This was the kind of comment that begged for follow-up. She’d probably spent a couple of hours crafting it. Tinkered with it some. Subbed a metaphor here, pared it down there. It was designed to elicit a response, and from that response a decision—maybe a really momentous decision—would be made about the future of our friendship. The same thing had happened more than once with Amelia as our friendship was circling the drain, only I was too chicken to admit it at the time. I might have been able to salvage things if I hadn’t made promises I couldn’t keep, and if I’d told her the truth about her chances of getting cast from the very start. But every time one of those moments arose, I shied away from confronting it head-on, instead preferring to delude myself that something neat and clean was bound to happen, some way out would avail itself, something that would give everybody the happy ending they wanted.

  It was becoming clear that there was no ending anywhere in sight, happy or otherwise.

  “You think I’ve gone too far,” I said.

  “Haven’t you?”

  “What else was I supposed to do, roll over and let Mom and Richard run me into the ground? If I’d played ball with them, Vienna would be Likely Story’s main character, Richard would have the power to ground me, and I’d be going to the Emmys alone! Why should I have to apologize for defending myself?”

  “You shouldn’t,” Tamika sniffed. “But all you needed to do was disarm them. Instead, you ripped their arms off. The two people who are arguably your biggest fans. Like it or not, Likely Story wouldn’t have been made without them. Now you’re in a position to return the favor and help make your mom’s dream come true. She’s nominated for an Emmy. The thing she wants most in life. But instead of getting out there and stumping for her, you do everything you can to ruin her chances.”

  “But can’t you see—it shouldn’t be the thing she wants most in life!”

  Tamika sighed. “I know, I know. Still—why take it so far?”

  “How else was I going to get my point across?” I pleaded.

  “Have you really gotten it across? The only way for them to know not to mess with you is for them to know you’re the one messing with them! So when exactly are you going to take credit for airing your mom’s dirty laundry on the Internet?”

  I hadn’t thought of that. Somehow I just figured they’d know instinctively that I was the evil mastermind.

  “I thought so,” Tamika said sadly before brushing past me to walk out.

  “Wait a second, where are you going? I need your help to figure this out. I can’t talk to anyone else about this!”

  “Exactly. I’m hardly your friend anymore, am I? I’m your talk-to. I get the brunt of all your crazy scheming because you can’t unload on anyone else. Which means there’s no time in our conversations for anyone but you. Do you even know that I’m going stag to the Emmys? Or that I moved to Santa Monica?”

  All I could do in response was stare at her dumbly.

  “I didn’t think so. If you need advice on how to deal with your mother and Richard, you’re going to have to look elsewhere. That subject is officially off-limits. It’s the only way this thing we call our friendship will survive.”

  A few hours later, I took a break, leaving Ronald, Anna, and Tamika to wrestle with the network’s latest challenge, an “opportunity” to situate bathroom cleanser in a teenage milieu. I wasn’t in a product placement kind of mood. The head honchos suggested we feature the soap scum remover by having Ryan get a job as a nude maid. I suggested instead that Jacqueline could use it to spike Sarah’s shampoo.

  It was more Tamika’s idea than mine that I take a break. “Vengeance is not conducive to storytelling,” she told me.

  So I wandered the studio looking for a friendly face, but was met with mistrust everywhere I went. Department heads scattered as I drifted near, obviously true believers of Richard’s tales that I was a teenage micromanager, a rare and fearsome beast of the Hollywood veldt. He’d spread that rumor early on, just as the shared euphoria of the show’s first episodes began to wear off. I wasn’t savvy enough at the time to understand the rumor’s meaning and undo the damage. So everyone shunned me and looked to him. If there was ever a guy who knew how to consolidate power, it was Richard.

  This wasn’t the way I’d remembered it being on Good As Gold. I’d had the run of the studio when I was little. Gina would send me on errands that took me all over the building, and sometimes the lot. In the process, I got to know everyone, and they got to know me. I wound cord for the electricians (and was given honorary union membership) and forged autographed head shots for the drunker actors, and no one treated me like I was a kid. I was part of the team. But now I wondered if I’d been wrong from the start. Maybe there’d never been a “team” in the first place. Maybe I’d just been too young to see it. Maybe nobody did things for the good of the show. Maybe they just did things for the good of themselves. Maybe I’d become one of those people.

  And then, standing in the middle of the studio floor, deserted for the lunch break, I saw it.

  Sitting in Ryan’s bedroom set, at the foot of the bed.

  The trunk.

  I’d last seen it in Geneva’s mayoral office on Good As Gold. I knew our set designer had swiped some furniture pieces from Mom’s old show when it was going under, but I had no idea that my favorite hiding place had been saved from a life sentence in the back of a prop house.

  I kneeled in front of the trunk, hooked my fingers under the lid, and lifted it open, its familiar creak music to my ears. The My Little Pony stickers with which I’d decorated the interior were still there, plastered to the inside until the end of time.

  I climbed in. Incredibly, I still fit, although it was much more cramped than it used to be. I let the lid close on top of me and inhaled the dark and musty scent. Move over, New Car Smell; Old Trunk has got you beat, hands down.

  I closed my eyes and a trunkful of memories hit me. Flashlights and spiral-bound notebooks. Scribbled plans and diary entries. The things I’d heard from within: whispered secrets, stilted performances, bad dialogue, thrown punches, torn clothes, cries of passion, cries of torment, cries of mercy, cries of joy …

  I could have stayed like that, lost in the past, for hou
rs. I drifted off into that blurry zone between sleeping and remembering. Then two muffled voices brought me back.

  “I heard she threatened to quit,” said Voice #1.

  “I heard she threatened to have Richard fired,” said Voice #2.

  The first thing I thought was: There are two people sitting on your trunk.

  “Come on. Not even she can pull something like that. There are limits to her powers,” said Voice #1.

  “You just don’t have any imagination,” declared Voice #2.

  The second thing I thought was: You know these voices.

  #2: “Here’s what I call power…. She single-handedly shot to hell Alexis’s chance at getting an Emmy nomination. You do know that, right?”

  #1 blew a raspberry. “Soap legend and sour grapes. Don’t believe what you read on the Internet.”

  The third thing I thought: I should join this conversation.

  #2 was positive: “Everything that’s happening to Old Lady Hayden now is chickens coming home to roost. Karma’s a bitch.”

  #1: “She’s totally going to hunt down whoever leaked her birth certificate to those LikelyWhorey lunatics.”

  #2: “Woe betide those who cross an aging soap star. Or her daughter.”

  Fourth thought: Don’t do anything hasty, Mallory.

  #1, after a silence: “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  I imagined #2 shrugging all innocent-like: “I wouldn’t want to mess with Mallory. Would you?”

  #1: “I already have, and I lived to tell the tale.”

  #2 snorted: “Mallory Hayden would spare you if you set a puppy mill on fire.”

  #1: “Don’t go there, Francesca.”

  Fifth: The identity of #2 has been confirmed. And given that there was just one person in the entire studio with whom Francesca thought she could be herself with, that meant #1 was almost certainly …

  Francesca: “Whatever you say, Dallas.”

  “I hope she’s okay.”

  “She’ll turn up.”

  “Greg says she’s been missing for hours. She left her cell phone and her bag in the office.”