Where did it all go wrong? It’s tough to say exactly when things went south for the Buckleys, but the fortunes of my hometown and the fortunes of the family have been declining hand in hand since before I was born. Not that we ever had a family crest or a grand estate somewhere, but things used to be better.
My grandparents owned a farm and a grocery store, but that’s all gone. The grocery store burned to its foundation, and the farms had to get big to survive. Ours was just regular size.
The town is vanishing anyway—banks are gone, the theater is gutted, you have to take a bus to another town to go to school now. The only things downtown that aren’t vacant are Leander’s music shop and the liquor store, and only one of those makes any money.
I see small American towns in movies sometimes, and they look all quaint and lively, but I’ve come to believe those towns must be a complete fiction. On my bike ride out west I did not see one small town that wasn’t peeling, rusted, and shrinking, that didn’t look like its best days were behind it.
There’s a lonely feeling that lives under your skin when you grow up in a town like that.
I can even feel it now, as I’m walking up to the booth. I take a breath and step in to find Catherine ripping into Jesse over a mix-up on her lunch order. Something about a missing salad. I try to help him out by lightening things up.
“Should I call the salad police?” I joke.
She spins around. “Try to imagine how you’d feel if your fried Twinkie sandwich didn’t show up, or whatever the hell it is you people eat in that mayonnaise-and-corn-dog state you’re from.”
Jesse takes the opportunity to sneak away. I have a pang of bad longing because it’s what I wish I could do too.
Instead I manage to go on with it. “I need to talk to you about something,” I say.
“Well, walk with me back to the office.” She sighs, already walking before she even knows if I’m coming along.
I follow her as she heads out through the elephant doors—the giant doors that stages have so they can fit big set pieces through—and out onto the asphalt of the lot.
So far there have been fewer actors walking around dressed like gladiators or superheroes at the studio than I thought there would be, but today we walk past a group of people in creature makeup out for a smoke break. The sight of them makes me happy, just for an instant.
“What is it, Ford?” Catherine asks as I catch up to her side. “You and Magnolia break up? I don’t have time to play summer camp counselor.”
You could tip me over. “What? No. I mean, we haven’t even actually discussed if we’re boyfriend-girlfriend.”
“Good, stay together. Hector was quick enough to get you guys kissing on his phone camera, which saved our asses because you two are way zzzzzzzz talking about the romance in the game room. The phone footage isn’t supersharp blown up, but we slowed it down and now it eats up twenty seconds of the package.”
I’m not sure how Magnolia’s going to feel about the clip, but what does it matter when my reveal is going to make her feel worse? “No, it’s nothing about that relationship. It’s about my family.”
“I think we’ll work that angle more as we get near the final vote. Don’t want to overplay the sympathy ‘little orphan Andy’ card too early. No offense.”
“None taken.” I feel an actual adrenaline rush when she talks about the final vote, like she thinks I’ll be around for it. “But that’s just it,” I say. Here goes. I loosen my shirt from my chest. “I don’t think people are going to be too sympathetic when they find out my family isn’t actually dead.”
“What?” Right away Catherine stops and makes certain eye contact with me. “How not dead are they?”
“They’re all the way alive. And they’re on their way here.” I wince at the thought of it. My stomach churns.
She puts her fingers to her eyebrows and stares at me, wide, out from under her hands. “You lied to me? When there’s been all this trust between us? Here I thought you were a sweet hillbilly, and instead it turns out you’re a cynical media manipulator!”
I take slight umbrage to the former description. “I’m not a hillbilly. I’m from the delta. Anyway, it’s complicated with my family. I wasn’t trying to make anyone feel sorry for me. The truth is, we’re estranged. I haven’t lived with them since I was sixteen.”
“You shouldn’t have lied to me. I don’t care if they abandoned you in diapers at a fire station doorstep and just came back the day before you left for LA! I could have helped you.” Catherine shakes her head. “Now, I don’t know. Maybe I should just go get a margarita, decide this isn’t my problem, and throw you to the wolves.”
I feel awful, I really do. She gave me that shot after I messed up in the beginning, and now I’ve just proved to her that she shouldn’t have. “I’m sorry I caused you trouble,” I say. I reach out and put my hand on her elbow because I want her to really hear this. I want her to know it’s true. “Thank you for everything you’ve done. Thank you. When you put me on the show, it felt like a chance. I only wanted to make a new start.”
Catherine still has that stare on me, but something about it is changing. She doesn’t say anything for a moment.
Then, “Impromptu life lesson for you, Ford: it’s not that easy. Your past will follow you whether you like it or not. The best thing you can do is learn to live with it.”
I wait for her to tell me to get lost while she goes for that margarita, but she stays.
“You’re going to need an angle on this reveal so everyone in the country doesn’t want to strangle you. Let’s go back to the office, and this time I want to hear everything about your screwed-up bumpkin childhood. After I fire the guy who did your background check.”
31
It’s an hour before show time, and my reflection in the dressing room mirror is as pale as a ghost. I try to shake out the nerves through the ends of my fingers. Catherine has decided that the best plan is for me to come clean about my family, live, on camera tonight, in front of millions. First I’ll sing, and then Lance will hold me onstage as he calls up the Buckleys. To make time, they’re going to trim my video package down to nothing much more than the kiss.
The mere thought of this event makes me want to disappear off the earth. Change my name, bleach my hair, hop on a train like a dust-bowl hobo and ride it to Timbuktu, or wherever is farthest away from here.
I’m supposed to say that I lied about my family being gone because they’re very private people from a quiet town, and I didn’t want anyone to come bothering them. That’s the story that Catherine has decided is most sympathetic.
The light bulbs around the mirror reflect off the lacquered surface of my guitar as I distractedly practice my song for tonight, “Home” by Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros. This show’s theme is a song that represents “who you really are.” The truth is, I have no idea.
But I like the country stomp of “Home,” and it seems right for what I’m feeling tonight. Maybe because it gives Arkansas a shout-out right in the first verse—Arkansas doesn’t get too many shout-outs. And maybe because the song is asking, Where is your home, really? Is it the place you were born? What if that place is fading right off the map—well, where is it, then?
The song is a duet, but we’re not allowed to sing with anyone else, so Stacy has coached me on doing both parts. Lately I feel like two people anyway. There’s the person I thought I had to be, and the new person I’m trying to become. Split right down the middle.
In my mind, as I picture it, home is where you feel like you belong. Like there’s an empty space in your exact shape already there, and you just fit right into it. In the song, home is when Edward’s with that one right person. I haven’t had that feeling with my family for a long time.
The truth is there are only two places I feel like that: one is onstage, playing music, and the other is new. It’s when I’m wit
h Magnolia.
Magnolia. Shit, shit, shit.
Magnolia.
A knock comes at the door. I stop playing. I get up and open it. Jesse is standing there carrying a bouquet of flowers.
“Came for you,” Jesse says, pushing it into my arms.
“For me? Who sent them?”
“Don’t know. A fan? I get fired if I read the cards. Good luck tonight.”
He hustles off, and I close the door. I open the card on the flowers. They’re from somewhere called the Children’s Relief Association. A brochure inside the envelope explains that they’re an orphan aid society. The card itself reads, You’ve been a great role model for orphaned kids everywhere. We’re all cheering for you!
My face goes all hot. Now I’m going to disappoint a bunch of orphans? I might as well grow a thin black mustache and tie a girl to a railroad track. The night ahead of me suddenly seems even more impossible than before, and it already seemed intolerable.
I think about all the people out there hearing my confession, the orphans and the associations and anybody who ever believed even a little bit in me. But mostly I think about Magnolia.
She’s going to find out on TV like everybody else.
I put down my guitar and pace the carpet. The dressing room has no windows, and it’s making me feel like I’m in some kind of mirrored trap. No matter where I look, I only see myself looking back. A sham. That’s the real me. I don’t know why everyone hasn’t seen it already.
I sit down in the chair and put my face in my hands. So what if it all falls apart now? Everything will return to normal, I guess, and I’ll go back to my proper place. Just go back where I really belong.
But there’s this other voice inside telling me if I can just talk to her first, explain everything, maybe then things could be okay.
Then I’m running down the hall, dodging between people in headsets and backup musicians on their way to the stage. At her dressing room door, I knock maybe a little too hard, waiting with my hands resting on the doorframe.
Maggie first looks surprised when she opens the door. She’s wearing a top with cut-out parts so I can see glimpses of her skin down the sides. Then she looks concerned.
“I needed to see you,” I say.
We’re kissing before we even have the door closed. I back her into her dressing room and we’re unsteady, our brains neglecting basic functions like balance. I just hold on to her to keep from kneeling to the floor. She picks up on my desperation, and we grab at each other like we have to stay tight or risk being pulled apart by the vacuum of space.
I take off my shirt with one arm bent around the back of my neck, and then I’m unzipping hers and pulling it up over her head. She doesn’t seem to care about being ready for the show. Then we’re falling down on her couch, me on top of her. Her warm skin against mine sends that electricity up my spine. I feel like we’re going to pull each other right through our skin.
I slide my hand down to her hip, the most beautiful hipbone I have ever had my hand on in my life. The silk type pants they’ve got her in dip underneath the bone. I look up at her.
There’s one knock at the door, but before we can tell whoever to get lost, it swings open.
Jesse averts his eyes to the floor, but he doesn’t leave. We all freeze in place, waiting for someone to make a move, like a Mexican standoff with no guns. I’m personally waiting for Jesse to get embarrassed and shut the door.
“Sorry, guys. I didn’t know, you were . . .” He trails off. “But, Ford, there’s someone named Cody here to see you. And he’s making a pretty big scene about it.”
Magnolia
32
Lance straightens his thin tie and puts his hand to his chest like this is a personal moment for him. Dramatically, he says into the mic, “Step on up here, Buckley family,” and I’m still thinking that this is some kind of really dark joke that’s gone on too long. Mila’s sitting on the stool next to me, and she looks over to see if I know what the deal is. I make a confused face to mean that this has got to be a dumb bit. Out of the corner of my eye, I can see my reaction on one of the camera’s screens on the side of the stage.
Ford is turned so I can’t see his face. But he wasn’t smiling when Lance said there was something that needed clearing up. I caught a miserable look in my direction before he stood and went over to the mic.
Ford leaned over and began talking about his parents, in present tense, like they’re still alive. Like they’re still up and around, and not in the ground. And he talked about a brother and sister I didn’t know he had. He said, “I made some stuff up about being alone because, you’ve got to understand, my family isn’t used to this kind of attention. I got worried it would be overwhelming for them.”
“But then they made it clear they want to come out and support you, right?” Lance prompted. He had his hand on Ford’s shoulder. In profile, Ford’s visible eye looked especially bruised underneath the blue overhead lights.
I thought, This is really terrible comedy. It had Catherine all over it. I couldn’t believe she would drag Ford into doing this kind of shitty bit. I thought Lance was going to say, “Well, let’s meet Ford’s family!” and then some bales of hay were going to come rolling out from the wings.
Except after Lance says, “Step on up here, Buckley family,” four people actually stand in the first row of the audience. They’re all in shirts and jeans except for the younger of the two women, who’s in a tank dress with pony beads hanging off the fringed bottom. They jog up the stairs on the side of the stage. They’ve all got both hands in the air, double waving hello to everybody out there. Two of them look like a mom and a dad, the right ages, I mean, and there’s even some resemblance to Ford. You can kind of understand how features from those two faces could combine to make up his. And the other two look like they really could be his older brother and sister. They feel like real people. They’ve got this comfort in their own bodies that says they’re not acting. Even the best actors, if you really watch them, give off something that says they’re acting.
And maybe these four people are a little animated in terms of where I set my personal energy levels, but I’m really watching them, and they don’t look like jokes.
When Lance passes the dad figure the mic, I can see from here that the guy has some prison-looking tattoos on his knuckles.
Those tattoos finally bring it home for me. That’s Ford’s real dad.
Ford’s dad says, “I just want to tell everybody that I’m nothin’ but proud of my boy. There’s no hard feelings.” Ford, facing away from this side of the stage, awkwardly hits his dad on the arm with an open hand. It’s like a theater slap. It makes a loud sound in the mic, but it seemed like his hand barely connected.
I just stare at Ford’s family, my scalp tingling like they’ve walked straight out of their graves. Graves marked by red ferns. (Look, I can’t help it, that’s just what I pictured.)
I stare at the side of Ford’s face, which has immediately become stranger to me than an actual stranger’s. In another couple of seconds, when I belatedly accept the obvious truth that’s right in front of me, that’s when the really hard feelings come rushing in. They’re such bad feelings. They’re so overwhelmingly bad. So that’s how I realize that I’ve fallen in love with Ford. Because it’s incredibly painful to realize at the exact same time that I’m in love with him and that being in love with him doesn’t even matter anymore, now that we’re done.
“Did you know anything about this Ford family intrigue?” a fluish-looking reporter on the press line asks me outside the studio after the show. She looks like she should have stayed home in bed. There’s a chill in the air, like cold weather is actually coming to Los Angeles.
“I don’t feel like answering questions,” I say. I wish I had a coat. I’m practically in a leotard.
Catherine is walking behind me at just this moment, a
nd she pulls me back from the reporter.
“Uh, yeah, answering questions isn’t an optional part of the night,” she says, looking at me like I’m crazy. “This is part of your job. People ask you things, and you tell them things.”
“I’m not a robot.” As soon as I’ve said it, I’m remembering the night I met Ford.
“It’s all been such a great opportunity,” I hear Nikki, standing next to us, answer a reporter. “Gets kind of gnarly sometimes back in the house, like, just accommodating different personalities, but yeah, still way cool.”
“I know you’re not a robot,” says Catherine. “Because I had a Teddy Ruxpin, this talking robot bear, as a kid, and he would be doing a better job on this press line.” She walks me back up toward the reporter. “Ask her again,” she commands the woman with the probable flu.
The reporter coughs and clears her throat. Then she goes back into the same tone of voice she had before, like we’re girlfriends dishing, like she hasn’t asked this already. “Did you know anything about this Ford family intrigue?”
“Nope,” I say.
“But aren’t the two of you close?”
“Nope.”
I’m sitting in the walk-in closet of what’s supposed to be the maid’s room. But we don’t have a maid living in the mansion. There’s a service that sends a different team of cleaning people every morning, and they seem like they’ve been instructed not to look anyone in the eye.
As soon as the vans dropped us off, I slipped away up here even though everybody’s supposed to be practicing the group number for tomorrow’s elimination in the living room. The song is a last-minute thing. Last week, when this was a show without high expectations, elimination night was mostly filler with performance clips and a ridiculously drawn-out reveal. But now that it turns out people are actually watching, Catherine suddenly has more money from the network. This week we’re singing “Feel So Close” live. And we’re supposed to dance too, kind of. It’s not full-on choreography, but there are moments when we’re supposed to be stepping side to side in time or looking at each other.
Everybody Knows Your Name Page 13