by Peggy Webb
If this is freedom, why am I wearing a ball and chain?
—Angie
Naturally, I knew I’d never get off to California without Mom. The only good thing I can say is that Dad bought me a cell phone before I left, and Gloria has let me drive the Ferrari.
Talk about a high. When I tell Sally, she’s going to flip. Of course, I’m not fixing to call her from the car while you-know-how is listening. Ditto, Jackson.
Fortunately Mom has a small bladder and she’s been drinking lots of coffee, so we’re taking plenty of rest stops. Which suits me fine.
I can call my friends and pretend everything is all right. I can pretend I didn’t leave my Daddy back home by himself looking like he was shipping me to off to the New World to become a mail-order bride. He even looked sad to see Mom go.
I swear. I’ll never understand adults, even if I live to be forty.
Armageddon, and that’s all I’m going to say.
—Gloria
“YOU’RE doing what? With who?”
Sitting in my car in the parking lot of a truck stop on the outskirts of Las Vegas, I hold my cell phone away from my ear so Roberta’s screech won’t damage my hearing.
“With whom, Roberta.”
“I don’t give a rat’s ears about who and whom. All I want to know is if you’ve lost your tiny mind?”
Roberta has a one-track mind, which is great if you want her to focus on a problem with the tenacity of a heat-seeking missile. But it’s a pain in the neck if you want her to understand why you’re bringing home a lovesick teenager and a heartbroken woman.
“You’re going to need every ounce of energy you can muster to make the producers eat crow for firing the goddess of daytime TV.”
“I can’t think about that right now, Roberta. Get over to the house and make sure everything is ready. We’ll be home tomorrow.”
“I didn’t sign on to babysit anybody except you.”
“Listen, Jenny’s going through a trial separation and dealing with a daughter with raging hormones. Besides, she took care of me as if I were family. I expect you to be nice.”
“You and what army are going to make me? I’m not even nice to you.”
“You’re all bark and no bite, Roberta. Make sure there are flowers in every room. Roses.”
“I don’t know how I’m going to have time for all that and keep up with your fan mail, too.”
“How much mail?”
“You’ve got a stack in your office about the size of a small elephant, and so much spilling into mine I don’t have room to turn around, let alone think.”
“And?”
“Your fans are clamoring for Jillian to come back.”
“Roberta, I could kiss you.”
“You do, and when I get through, you’ll be too marked-up to land a role as the bride of Frankenstein.”
“Thanks, Roberta. I love you, too.”
“Baloney.”
I call my agent next, only to hear the depressing news that there is no news. I toy with the idea of calling Tuck, then quickly discard that as the rash act of a desperate woman. Instead I go inside where Jenny is sitting at a corner booth nursing a cup of coffee.
“Where’s Angie?”
She nods toward the magazine rack. Her daughter’s standing there, hip slung, her new cell glued to her ear.
“Talking to Jackson. For the eighty-nine-thousandth time.”
“It’ll be all right.” I squeeze her hand. “Are you hungry?” She nods and I signal the waitress, who brings coffee and menus.
Jenny orders for Angie, too. “Maybe I should call Rick. I always do a load of towels on Monday. We’re running low on coffee, and he’s probably out of milk by now.”
She’s wadded her napkin and is now shredding it. A piece drifts, confetti-like, toward her coffee, and when she sees it floating in her cup she gives me an astonished look.
“I’m being ridiculous.”
“You’re entitled.”
“Thank you for not telling me to let him remember his own darned milk.”
“You’re welcome.”
She fishes the napkin out with her coffee spoon, starts to take a drink, then changes her mind and signals the waitress for a fresh cup.
“Let him remember his own darned milk.” She grins at me over the top of her cup.
Finally her spunk’s showing. For the first time since we left Mississippi, I see a spark of hope for Jenny.
I wish I could say the same for me. It will take more than a flood of fan mail to convince the powers that be that Love in the Fast Lane will perish without Jillian Rockwell.
And I don’t even want to think about Matt Tucker. After reporters stormed me at the barbecue, I saw him only once. Thank you for helping with the benefit, is all he said while I stood there trying to think of something witty and clever that would make him see me as he once had—not the result of studio hype, but a real woman.
In Mississippi, away from the daily grind of managing a household and a career while never letting down my guard, never letting anyone see my vulnerable side, it was easy to believe I might have it all. Easy to imagine I could regain status as TV’s goddess while maintaining a sizzling cross-country relationship with a man who rings every one of my chimes.
I guess it’s true you can’t really leave your problems behind. The closer I get to home, the more I feel their weight descending on my shoulders. Only hours away from Hollywood, I’m shedding my famous-guest-who-has-it-all skin and becoming the aging Gloria Hart, almost has-been.
Don’t count me out, though. In spite of the fact that I’m returning to a town that worships youth, I have brains and guts.
And I spit in the face of Botox.
As we leave the truck stop and approach the neon billboards of Las Vegas, Angie says, “Can we spend the night here? I’ve never seen a casino.”
“They won’t let you in,” I tell her. “And I don’t think lying about your age is a very good idea, do you?”
“Absolutely not,” Jenny says, but Angie just plugs in her iPod and tunes us out.
Maybe I could have been more subtle, but I think she got the point. If she’s too young to gamble, she’s certainly too young to settle for Jackson Tucker. No matter how good-looking he is.
No matter how much he makes me think of his daddy.
I know. I know. I’m losing my mind.
How can you long for plain apple pie when you’ve landed in the middle of à la mode?
—Jenny
GLORIA’S HOUSE is all glass and angles and decks set in the middle of citrus trees and exotic tropicals I’d give my eyeteeth to have. Not that I can’t grow mandevilla and bougainvillea in Mississippi, but I have to put them in pots and bring them inside during the winter. And I don’t have space. Nor a greenhouse, which Rick’s been promising to build but I’m not likely to get till hell freezes over, as they say.
As Gloria wheels her Ferrari into the curving driveway, the front door flies open and out pops a woman I can’t even begin to describe. She’s got this big red ponytail that looks like it’s fake but just might be real, and she’s wearing honest-to-goodness cat’s-eye glasses that she may or may not need, studded with rhinestones that could be diamonds. What do I know? This is Hollywood.
I have to pinch myself.
“Hello, Roberta.” Gloria waves and grins.
“Get your skinny butt out of the car and let me look at you.”
“Not so skinny anymore, thanks to Jenny’s Southern-fried chicken.”
“Girl, I’m going to give you a medal.” Roberta wraps me in a hug that nearly crushes bones, then stands back and looks me up and down like she’s holding a microscope and I’m the bug. A good bug, I’d say from her grin.
“I’ve been trying to get her to put some meat on her bones for fifteen years.” She whirls toward Angie. “And look what we got here. A real beauty. You’re going to set this town on its ear.”
“Thanks, but that’s not likely with Mother looking ov
er my shoulder every minute.”
“Let me see if you’ve got any teeth?” Roberta tilts my daughter’s head back and practically sticks her face down Angie’s throat. “Uh-huh. If I’d talked to my mama like that I’d have been picking my teeth up off the sidewalk.”
“Roberta.” Gloria tosses her a tote bag. “Mind your manners.”
“I don’t have any to mind. Not a speck.” Roberta chuckles as she marches into the house.
Gloria leads me into her house and I feel like one of those game-show contestants who has just won a fabulous week in Hollywood. Only this is a million times better. This is real. This is friendship.
“You’ll get used to her,” Gloria says.
“Get used to her? I love her.”
My bedroom overlooks the swimming pool, but then every bedroom in this house does. Gloria’s house must have been designed by an architect who loved the outdoors, because there’s a view from every room, trees and flowers and wide-open blue sky that make you think everything’s right with this world. Except you know it’s not. You know children are going hungry and man is lifting up arms against man and somewhere in Mooreville, Mississippi, your husband is wondering why he ever married you.
After supper, Gloria and I sit beside the pool and watch Angie swim.
“This is so lovely. Thank you, Gloria.”
“You’re more than welcome.”
“I want to help you while I’m here. Just tell me what I can do.”
“You can sit by the pool with a good book and a tall glass of lemonade and listen to the birds. You can forget about helping everybody else and do something for yourself, for a change. Just relax, Jenny.”
“I’m not sure I know how. Anyway, I feel I ought to be—oh, I don’t know. Making sure Angie’s not calling Jackson twenty million times a day and calling Rick to see if he’s okay. I even worry about Godzilla. Not the old battle-ax, herself. I worry she’s going to turn Rick against me. Permanently.”
“Jenny, did you ever read those wonderful Winnie the Pooh books to Angie?”
“Yes. She had a whole menagerie of animals from the Hundred Acre Wood.”
“What I love about Pooh is his ability to simply be in the moment.”
“Is that what you’re going to do, Gloria? Just be?”
“Heck, no. I can’t afford to sit back and relax. I’m going to fight like a wildcat to get my TV role back. But then, my producer doesn’t love me the way Rick loves you.”
“You think?”
“I know.”
Something about being on the west coast makes me believe her. Maybe it’s the scent of orange blossoms.
CHAPTER 11
Nothing falls harder than ego.
—Gloria
The only reason I feel safe leaving Jenny and Angie alone is that this morning Roberta showed up acting like they were her long-lost best friends and if anybody so much as looked at them cross-eyed, she’d snatch some heads bald. Or worse.
Plus, she practically pushed me out the door.
“Go on.” She handed me my hat, my briefcase, my sunglasses and my car keys. “Go see what your agent’s got for you. I can handle things around here with one hand tied behind my back.”
“I thought I’d take a day or two to rest, decompress.”
“Well, you thought wrong. I made the appointment the day you finally informed me of your plans. Now get out of here. Me and Jenny have stuff to do.”
“Jenny and I. Like what?”
“Like none of your business. Go on and let me take care of the entertainment aspect, Miss Perfect Grammar.”
Now I’m fighting freeway traffic and wondering why I ever thought getting back into the Hollywood flow of things was the perfect idea. Sighing, I glance out the window. Cars are lined bumper to bumper in both directions as far as I can see, and drivers are acting as if their lives depend on setting the world’s speed record in the next six blocks.
Mississippi never looked so good.
MORT LEVINGER greets me as if I’m his favorite client, which is part of Mort’s effectiveness as an agent. He makes everybody feel as if they are his personal favorite.
“You’re looking wonderful, Gloria. Sit down.” He motions me toward an overstuffed brown leather chair, and as I sink into the soft cushions I have a crazy urge to curl up and go to sleep. Where’s my focus? My never-give-up spirit?
“How are you feeling? No ill effects from your accident?”
“I’m perfectly fine. Good as new. Ready to work.”
“That’s my girl.” Mort flips through a stack of papers on his desk and extracts a fat script. “Take a look at this. One of Bert Bogan’s projects. He wants you for the role of Norma.”
The movie is a drama titled After the Rain. I skim down the list of characters and find Norma near the bottom. An aging, bitter next-door neighbor to Wayne and Linda.
I can’t believe this.
“A bit part?”
“I wouldn’t call it that, Gloria.”
“What would you call it?”
“An acting job. They’re not that easy to find.”
“You mean for a woman my age.”
“I’m just being realistic. The key is to keep you working, Gloria. And this is a feature film, not TV. It’s not unusual for an actress of your status to have to drop back a bit when she shifts to the larger screen.”
I scan the script, looking for Norma’s lines.
“Oh, here’s a great line. ‘Hello.’ And how about this one? ‘I don’t gossip.’” Flipping the pages, halfway between rage and panic, I discover that not only is Norma a bit part, but she has only two lines.
“Four words, Mort? Four words!”
“Look at it as keeping your foot in the door.”
“What’s the budget?”
“Low budget.”
“How low?”
“Two million.”
By Hollywood standards this is lower than a toad. I see my career vanishing while I sit in my chair, trying not to hyperventilate.
“You’ll get a different kind of exposure with feature film, Gloria.”
“What have I been for the last twenty years? Chopped liver?”
“Look, Gloria. Just give it some thought. That’s all I ask. Meanwhile, I’ll speak to Claude again about you returning to Love in the Fast Lane.”
“You’ve already spoken with him?”
“He’s looking to broaden the show’s appeal to the younger set.”
I promise to think about the deal, then tuck the script in my purse.
On the drive home I fight against defeat and humiliation, but emotions don’t need permission, don’t respond to logic.
They just are.
NOBODY’S HOME when I get there, which gives me a little time to regroup. I change into my swimsuit, then mix a pitcher of margaritas and take it along with the script poolside with the full intention of reading all the way through. Perhaps there’s some redeeming feature in this role. Maybe Norma has some pivotal scene where she doesn’t speak lines. Maybe she’s hiding in a closet, witnesses a murder and is rendered speechless the rest of the movie.
One can only hope.
Speaking of hope, I race back inside to check my messages. Two from telemarketers and none from Mississippi. None that pop up on my caller ID as Matt Tucker, heartthrob.
“AS I LIVE and breathe. What have we got here?”
Roberta’s loud bray nearly knocks me off my hammock. She grabs my towel off a deck chair and tosses it over me.
“Cover yourself up before you turn to a lobster.” Picking up the pitcher, she glares at the drink level. “Looks like we’ve had ourselves a little drunken brawl.”
“I am not drunk. I’ve had only…” I can’t remember how many drinks I’ve had. Enough to make me feel like the hammock is spinning. Enough to make me forget Norma, who hasn’t witnessed anything except her expanding waistline and her graying hair. Almost enough to forget Tuck. “You can’t have a brawl with only one person, Roberta.”
“My point, exactly.” She marches inside, comes back with a glass and pours herself a drink. “Now, how about you confess to Sister Roberta.”
“The next thing I know, you’ll be elevating yourself to sainthood. Where are Angie and Jenny?”
“Still shopping at Macy’s. Having a ball. I’m going back to pick them up later, but I thought I’d better check on you. Looks like I was right.”
“What tipped you off?”
“The only other times I’ve seen you looking like a hound dog who can’t smell a rabbit is when those two scoundrels you called husband left you. Our drink of choice then was tequila.” She lifts her glass. “I prefer margaritas. Congratulations on your improved taste.”
“I’ve just lost my career, Roberta. And Mort wants me to play a frumpy, surly woman who never heard of bleached blond. A bit part.”
“Oh yeah? You’ve had your ups and downs before. Remember that new director at Love in the Fast Lane who wanted you to get amnesia and turn into a bag lady?”
“By the time I finished with him, he was sending roses and chocolates to my dressing room, and on his knees apologizing.”
“See, that’s just what I mean. The only time you drink more than half a glass of anything is when you’ve got man troubles. So who is he?”
“There’s no use trying to fool you.”
“None whatsoever. Trouble brings out my dark side. Tell me who it is, and I’ll snuff him out for you.”
By the time I finish telling Roberta about Tuck—leaving out all the best parts, of course—she’s drooling into her margarita.
“So how come you’re sitting in that hammock instead of trying to capture Mr. Perfect? Wait. Don’t answer. Let me take a wild guess. You’ve lost your tiny mind.”
“Listen, Roberta. I’m not going to tuck my tail between my legs and run into the arms of the first man who looks twice at me just because I can’t get a decent acting job. I came back here to reclaim my career.”
“I saw a TV special where they talked about elective surgery. They lift your face right off. Just set it on the table somewhere then try to stitch it back in the right place. You could end up looking like Frankenstein.”