Unscripted

by Jayne Denker

  “Oh, you heard, then.”

  “I heard quite a bit,” he said in a tight voice. “Especially the part about how you almost made some of the students cry.”

  “Whaaat!” I gave him a goofy look to jolly him out of his funk. “That’s a little exaggerated—”

  “Ms. Sinclair,” he began, and I knew my attempt at jollying had fallen flat. I was in for a lecture. “I told you I didn’t want you teaching the class just yet. I told you I wanted youto—”

  “Yeah, yeah, ‘observe.’ I heard you the first hundred times. Look, you asked me to help you teach the class. Be a guest lecturer. Teach the kids about the real world. So I did. And now you’re going to tell me I did it wrong?”

  “Yes, you very much ‘did it wrong.’”

  “But—”

  “You don’t speak so bluntly. You don’t destroy their ambitions and dreams with a couple of careless, harsh words. And you don’t—”

  “—Tell them what it’s really like out there? God forbid. So you’d rather keep them in a little academic bubble, then send them out into the real world without any preparation?”

  “There are certain ways you do that, and your method wasn’t—”

  “Look,” I said sharply, cutting him off, “don’t try to keep these kids from finding out the truth early. If I can clue them in and give them an edge, I will. My advice is worth way more than hours of touchy-feely hand-holding in a classroom miles away from the industry.”

  Mason looked away, his jaw working. Eventually he said, “Were you planning on attending Advanced Acting today, Ms. Sinclair?”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t think you should.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I said, I don’t think you should observe the class. Go home, Ms. Sinclair. I’ve had enough of your L.A. cynicism for one day.”

  I started to protest, but he looked me in the eye again, and I could tell he was deadly serious. Instead of pushing it, I quietly turned on my heel and left the building. I got the feeling that he was watching me the whole time, but I didn’t dare turn around to find out.

  * * *

  That argument with Mason haunted me that night and all the next day. I was home alone—Jamie was God knew where. Not that I cared; I relished the peace and quiet. Until it got too peaceful and too quiet. Then my mind started replaying our strained conversation outside the theater over and over again. I had seen Mason in a bad mood before—often because of me—but never had I seen him that upset. I kept picturing his furious, but still handsome, face in front of me as I tried to clean the oven, mop the floor, throw out the moldy food in the back of the fridge, anything to stop thinking. I couldn’t get him out of my head.

  I flung a lump of something that was more mold than cheese into the garbage can, where it landed with a thud. Ugh, this Mason thing was ridiculous. I shouldn’t have been obsessing over it.

  The silent house was closing in on me. It was time to get moving, I decided. Maybe I’d go for a hike—I hadn’t done that in a while. A little physical exertion was just what I needed. I decided to head over to Fryman Canyon, not the more famous Runyon. Runyon was for posers who wanted to be seen. I just wanted to stop thinking for an hour or two, not worry about who I might run into. Plus I didn’t want to have to put on any makeup.

  And my plan worked. After my hike, my head was clear, I was energized for the next day, I was in a good enough mood that I decided I could handle being relegated to observing in the scriptwriting class, I could deal with Mason, I could even charm Alex back onto the show. Unfortunately, my good mood lasted only till I got home to find a very posh Bentley in my driveway.

  “What now?” I groaned out loud.

  Two possibilities came to mind: Jaya got a raise and she came to show me her new wheels, or it was Randy B.’s car. I doubted both options. Bentleys weren’t Jaya’s style, and although I still nurtured a crazy fantasy that Randy would come crawling to me, offering me my job back, I knew that was about as likely as him driving up in a giant pomegranate coach drawn by unicorns, playing me love songs on a keytar. I wracked my brain to think of anyone who would drive a Bentley and came up empty. Except maybe . . . Oh no.

  I tripped in my rush to get up the front walk, so I lurched through the half-open door like I was shot out of a cannon, desperately grasping at the handle for balance—and rammed right into something unyielding, at thigh height. For some reason my sofa was now positioned across the doorway to the front hall.

  “What the . . . Jamie!” I bellowed. “What the hell are you doing rearranging my furniture? I thought I told you no filming porn—”

  “Rosemary.”

  Oh God, I hated it when I was right.

  Nobody called me Rosemary, ever, except . . . “Mom.”

  Chapter 12

  Yep, there she was, in all her glory: my mother. I bit back my first comment, which would have been “What are you doing here?” It was what I wanted to know the most, but she would have lectured me for a good ten minutes on my rudeness. Instead, I inched my way around the sofa and into the living room.

  I dutifully gave her a peck on the cheek, inhaling the scent of her face powder and hairspray, as she murmured, “It’s nice to see you, dear.”

  “You too, Mona. Er, nice car.”

  My mother fluffed her still lush, Faye Dunaway hair. “You think so? I was afraid it was too gangsta, but your stepfather insisted.”

  She had really said “gangsta.” I fought back a guffaw. “Um, you know what ‘gangsta’ is, Mona?”

  Wide-eyed, she said, her words clipped, “Well, yes, dear. I don’t live under a rock, you know.”

  I looked around. “Where is Dominic, anyway?”

  “He’s in Australia. He wanted to learn how to surf.”

  “El Segundo not good enough for him?”

  Jamie came in from the kitchen, carrying a glass of sparkling water. “Here you are, Mona—your, er, rainwater . . .”

  “Reen Water, dear. It’s oxygen-infused prehistoric glacier water. Created before there were any impurities on the earth.”

  Except for wooly mammoth poop, I didn’t say. Instead, I gave Jamie the hairy eyeball—there was usually no such extravagance within a mile of my fridge. “She brought it with her,” he said, reading my raised eyebrow right.

  As Mona sipped her mammoth-poop water, I decided to address the issue of my randomly moving furniture. “Jamie, what have you been doing in my living room?” All my furniture, not just the sofa, had been relegated to the far corners of the room.

  “Oh, I rather like what he’s done with the place,” Mona interjected. In true Mona style, she used very few words to tacitly side with her stepson.

  I decided I’d get it out of him later, without her in the mix, and changed the subject. “Er, what brings you to L.A., Mona?”

  “Mm.” She nodded, swallowing a sip of water. “Yes, we need to talk.”

  I didn’t like the sound of that.

  She held out her glass, expecting someone to take it away for her. Jamie jumped to the task. When her hands were free, Mona clasped them in front of her as though she were addressing an audience attending a retrospective on one of her films. “Well, dear, I should tell you that I’ve come to Los Angeles to have . . . a procedure.”

  I’ve never made a secret of the fact that my mom and I have never been close, but I had to admit that her statement, even so baldly presented—or maybe because it was so baldly presented—struck fear into my heart. After all, she was getting up there in years. It wouldn’t have been realistic to think that she’d made it into her seventies without some health problems.

  “Oh! I—I’m . . . sorry. Is it—”

  “And I’ll need your help.”

  “Well, sure! Of course! Whatever you need. But what—”

  “Thank you. I’ll need you to be available at all times.” She eyed me shrewdly. “That shouldn’t be a problem for you at the moment.”

  I winced. “Oh. You’ve heard.”

&
nbsp; “It’s hardly a secret, now, is it?”

  “I guess not.”

  She shook her head, and her ropy, tiered necklace of pearls clacked. “How did you let it get to that point, Rosemary?”

  I ignored her use of my real name—she was always so stubborn; she never paid attention when I asked, teased, joked, begged, or even ordered her to use my middle name. Everyone in the world had called me “Faith” for decades. Except for my mother. “Randy—”

  “Oh, Randy,” she scoffed, fluttering her hand at her throat. “Such a character. You just have to know how to handle him.”

  I had “handled” him, all right. I wondered if my mother knew just how literally. But if she wasn’t going to mention it, I sure wasn’t. “Mona, it happened months ago. How come you didn’t track me down then?”

  “I have been busy, you know.”

  Oh, right. Her procedure. Better get back to that. It felt like a safer topic than my career. “Er, how long will you be in the hospital?”

  Mona shrugged. “No longer than a day, I shouldn’t think.”

  That didn’t sound right. “Are you sure?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “Look . . . what exactly is . . . the issue? What’s wrong?” If we’d had a normal mother–daughter relationship, we would have been sitting on the couch by now, holding hands. The operative word being “normal.” Instead, we stood by my fireplace, Jamie in attendance but silent (he always was permanently in awe of my mother), speaking formally, politely, delicately.

  “Well, dear,” she began, as though she were starting a long, fantastic tale, “there comes a time in every woman’s life that she has to take stock of certain issues . . .”

  I couldn’t wait for her to spit it out. “Is it breast cancer?”

  She blinked. “What? No!”

  “Ovarian? Uterine? You can tell me.”

  “Rosemary! Really!”

  “Well, what, then? Do you want Jamie to leave the room?”

  I bugged my eyes at him and hitched my head toward the bedrooms, but Mona said, “Of course not. Unless the thought of a face-lift and chin tuck makes him squeamish.”

  “I’m all right, Mona.”

  “I knew you would be, dear.”

  “Hold on,” I interrupted again. My mouth opened and closed several times as I processed what I’d just heard. “You’re . . . here for a . . . face-lift?”

  “And a chin tuck.”

  Unbelievable. The woman was talking plastic surgery, and there I was, thinking she was at death’s door. My insides pooled as the adrenaline rushed out of me. “That’s it?Why . . . why are you making such a big deal out of it?”

  “I’m not making a big deal out of it, dear. It seems you are, though.”

  “Why couldn’t you have this done in Palm Springs, so you could be at home?”

  “And trust my health to those quacks out there? I should think not.”

  “Palm Springs is hardly an Old West frontier town, Mona. The barber isn’t doubling as a dentist, and the vet doesn’t do face-lifts in his spare time.”

  “It’s just not sensible, Rosemary. First of all, your dear stepfather would faint if he saw me swathed in bandages. I couldn’t possibly subject him to that. That was the reason I encouraged him to go to Australia, in fact. It’s best if he’s out of the country for a few weeks. If I’m going to have my face done, I want the best plastic surgeons in the world. And, as everyone knows, they are in Beverly Hills.”

  I couldn’t argue with that. “So you want to stay here and recuperate?”

  “I wouldn’t dream of it. I’ve rented a beach house at Malibu. The sound of the surf soothes me; I’ve missed it. I’ll be able to sleep better there. Now, I’ve also engaged a full-time nurse, but of course I’ll need you as well.”

  “For . . . ?” I couldn’t imagine what she needed me to do that wasn’t in the nurse’s job description.

  My mother looked at me as though I had completely lost my mind. “Plenty of things. I’ll need you to run errands for me, manage my correspondence, send and receive packages, pick up my prescriptions . . . oh, and get me those wonderful organic meals from Leafy Leaf. I’ve missed those desperately.”

  She wanted me to be her errand girl? What the—why me? Why couldn’t she hire another person? She could find an assistant just as easily as she did a beach house and a nurse, if not more so. Mona was staring at me expectantly, and suddenly I felt trapped. My stomach churned. There was no saying “no” to Mona—not ever. If she’d decided that she wanted me to wait on her, for whatever reason, there was no talking her out of it. Still, I cast around desperately for a good excuse to turn her down.

  Jamie glanced at me furtively, then offered, “I’ll do it, Mona. Be happy to.”

  “Oh, no, dear, I couldn’t,” Mona said kindly, patting his arm.

  “No, really—’s no trouble—”

  Suckup, I mouthed at him.

  “No, I wouldn’t hear of it. I’m sure you have lots of plans to . . . how do you Brits put it? . . . ‘be getting on with’?” She smiled indulgently, and Jamie beamed back at her. “Rosemary will do just fine.” Then she turned to me. “My procedure is scheduled for Monday morning. It shouldn’t take long; I don’t need all that much work, Dr. Rajneesh says,” she tacked on proudly. “You won’t have to wait at the hospital—I’ve hired a limousine, which will drive me to the beach house after I come out of anesthesia, sometime mid- to late afternoon. Just meet me there—”

  Apparently I wasn’t being given a choice in the matter. I was astounded that my mother and I could live our separate lives for months, years, without even bothering to think about it, but then she could appear out of thin air and expect me to be at her beck and call for weeks on end. My heart started thudding. I had to get out of this—I just had to.

  Then I latched onto an idea. “I can’t!” I exclaimed.

  Mona blinked. “I’m sorry—you ‘can’t’?” She made it sound like I was speaking in tongues.

  “Nope. Can’t. Sorry. I’m tied up. Teaching. A course. A college course.”

  “Really!” My mother looked delighted. “USC?”

  “Uh, no . . .”

  “UCLA, then.” I shook my head. “Santa Barbara?” Another shake. “San Diego.” Shake. Now Mona had to think for a minute. “AFI? Irvine? Pepperdine?”

  “Nnnooo . . .”

  “Oh, Rosemary, not one of those fly-by-night acting schools off Hollywood Boulevard.”

  “Er, no. IECC.”

  “What is ‘IECC’ . . . exactly?” she asked delicately.

  “Um, Inland Empire . . . uh . . . Community College,” I mumbled.

  Unsure what to make of this information, my mom went for the polite query. “And where is that?”

  “Er . . . inland?”

  “Inlandinland?”

  “The same.”

  “Why . . .” And she stopped, at a loss for words, completely befuddled.

  “It’s a great program,” I said. “Very . . . exclusive. Boutique, you could say. Of course, it’s a little far away, so I’m going to be staying out there for the semester. I just came home to grab some clothes.”

  “But . . .”

  “Sorry. I’ll call, though, to check up on you. I really want to know how it went and . . . everything,” I finished lamely. “You understand, right?”

  Mona frowned, obviously trying to wrap her mind around the notion that her plans had gone awry. That didn’t usually happen in her world. “I suppose. But I must say I’m desperately disappointed.”

  “I really am sorry, Mona.”

  “Well, it can’t be helped. You have students to teach, after all.”

  I smiled gamely. “Yep. So I guess I’d better pack . . .”

  “Of course. I don’t mean to keep you.” I moved to go, but Mona added, “Rosemary?” When I turned back around, she said, “It’s good that you’re keeping busy. But . . . this is temporary, isn’t it?”

  “Very, Mona.”

  I hurri
ed down the hall to my bedroom. Now what? Was I really going to stay in Moreno Valley as Mr. Professor Mason Mitchell had suggested? Ew, what a thought. And I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of being right, either. Maybe I could hole up at the Chateau Marmont instead . . . if I wasn’t afraid that I’d run into one of my mom’s thousand and one friends who’d rat me out. Mona may have been retired, but she retained all her ties to Hollywood, and she would definitely find out if I were still around. I knew I finally had to take Bea’s advice and get out of town for a while.

  While I was mulling over the mind-boggling possibility that Bea was psychic—and trying to figure out how many suitcases to pack—Jamie came into my bedroom.

  “And I definitely want a word with you,” I snapped.

  “Yeah, sorry about the furniture and all.”

  “What are you doing to my house?”

  “Nothing . . . permanent.”

  I flung a fistful of underwear into an open bag. “Oh, that’s reassuring. What are you up to, Tompkins? Do I need to have the police put the place on their routine drive-by schedule?”

  “They do that?”

  “Are you sure you’ve spent any time at all in L.A.?” I stopped packing and demanded, “Is it illegal?”

  He gave me his best innocent look in return. “Is what illegal?”

  “Oh God, it’s worse than I thought.”

  “Are you really leaving?”

  “I am indeed. Mona’s in the area, I leave the area. You know how it is.”

  “Mona’s not so bad—”

  I came up out of the depths of my closet with several pairs of shoes. They were all essentials, I was pretty sure. Including the jewel-accented gladiator sandals. “Oh yes, she is.”

  “Only in your eyes.”

  “Ask the masses of cast and crew members she tormented over the years. Not to mention all the household help she’s gone through in her lifetime. In fact, give me a call when the nurse at her beach house runs screaming. I estimate it’ll be about three hours from Mona’s arrival by limo.” I paused in my packing. Was that why she wanted me around? Because hired nurses could walk out, but I couldn’t?

  “That’s not fair . . .”

  “Look, just because you’re her favorite—”