Everybody Knows Your Name

by Andrea Seigel

  I’m not in the mood to be singing about feeling close to people. Only Mila saw me ducking out, and she jerked her head toward the stairs, meaning, Get away while you can.

  Ford has been taken over to the Venice hotel, where his family is staying, to shoot footage of them being a family together. The show is trying to spin this new development into some kind of amazing reunion story, instead of what it really is, which is that Ford just bullshitted everyone.

  When I was looking into his eyes and telling him stories about my dad, how could he not have cracked? When I was telling him about this hole in my life? When I was telling him about what it was like to have a dad gone, how you feel like one of your very earliest signposts in the world just went and evaporated, and he was saying that he knew? When he was looking right at me? Even just some unconscious part of him. I mean, even if his eye had twitched. Then I could look back and say I’d seen the real him.

  For a minute there it seemed like we’d magically found each other. With Scott, it was more like we formed a balance. He had what I didn’t emotionally, and the other way around. But with Ford, the pull felt more like we were somehow the same underneath, despite having almost nothing in common besides that. I mean, you think you’ve lucked into a connection. You think, Wow, it’s easier than I thought to talk to someone for hours and get the hell out of my own head. You think, I can’t believe how great this feels; no wonder other people work so hard to find this in each other all the time. And also, you think, Oh my God, it’s addictive to be this happy in the presence of another person.

  But you don’t care that it’s addictive. Until you find out that the person was running scenes with you and you just didn’t know it.

  The sliding door to the closet opens. My mom is standing there. “Found you,” she says.

  I’ve felt like I could cry since about five seconds after I saw the tattoos on Ford’s dad’s knuckles, but I’ve been keeping it together. When my mom finds me, though, the tears start pressing uncomfortably against my eyes. It’s not because I feel like it’s okay for me to cry in front of her. She makes the tears come to the surface because I know she’s not going to be what I need.

  “I just want to be alone for a little while,” I say.

  “Come on, gloomy. Is it the Ford thing?”

  She invites herself into the closet and sits down across from me in a cubby that’s meant for lots of shoes. This closet has an intense organization system installed. It looks like a secret level of Donkey Kong. My dad loved arcade games. Once in a while he would come home from his investment firm early, which meant nine, and he’d take me to a pizza parlor for dinner, still wearing his suit. He’d play the old-school machines beside the kids in Little League uniforms and the dorky, hunched teenagers playing the fighting games.

  I always liked the game where the plastic chicken spins around clucking, and then drops out a prize in a bright egg. I know there’s no skill involved, but there was some weird stuff in those eggs. If my egg had a piece of cheap jewelry, I’d give it to my dad and he’d wear it for the night.

  “Mag?” my mom says. “You’re not talking to me.”

  “He could have at least told me before he told the audience. At least.”

  She shifts to tuck her knees underneath her, and the shiny discs covering her minidress make a crunching sound. “Yeah, the pair of you were supposed to have this insta-deep connection, right? Okay, I have an idea. You ask to tape a scene at the mansion where he’s trying to plead with you, and you’re walking away from him. And then he comes running after you and takes you into his arms. To an amazing song. People love that moment where the guy runs after the girl in movies. They love it! I love it. I’ve heard you say you love it when we watch movies. You only need that kind of thing because I’ve been reading a lot of the feedback online, and there’s definitely interest in that story. If you could just build up the love aspect, it would really help you. People connect with you because the idea of you being a part of this emerging couple is definitely a softening thing.” She starts patting the back of the closet wall like it’s a false front. “But just in case, do you think the hidden Superstar could be built into the house?” she asks.

  Right now I wish it were my dad sitting across from me. I speak slowly to my mom, like she’s a kid. Which I guess in some ways, sometimes, I feel like she is. “I didn’t mean that I’m worried about how tonight came off to the audience. I meant that I’m hurt.”

  My mom stops her patting, and makes a sad smile. “Oh, Mag, my supersensitive girl.”

  “I don’t think this is a crazy thing to get sensitive about.”

  “He’s embarrassed by his family, it’s obvious. Don’t take it personally.”

  The tears really push at my eyes. “But when you found out that dad was dying—not just dying, but pretty much almost dead—and he hadn’t said a thing to you all those times that you guys talked about who was getting me for the first night of Hanukkah, or school supplies I needed or whatever, didn’t that hurt you? That he was lying to you that whole time? That he could have said something to clue you in so you didn’t have to feel so far from him when you found out? I mean, I know why dad didn’t tell me. Because I was just a kid. He didn’t want me to worry. But he could have told you. And didn’t knowing that make you feel lonely and hollow and terrible?”

  Nightmarish butterflies hit my stomach as soon as I’ve asked this. I talk about my dad, but I never ask my mom to talk about him. Her expression is so panicked that I’m definitely finally going to cry if I look at her anymore. So I avoid her eyes.

  After a couple of seconds, she says, “I wasn’t involved with your dad when he got sick.” Her voice is hard for me to take.

  “But still, you were connected,” I mumble.

  “The relationship was over.” My mom is already getting onto her knees so she can step up and walk out. She’s the one not looking at me now. “I’m going to go call Lucien and talk to him about writing that scene for you. The Ford make-up scene.”

  “Please don’t.”

  I don’t know if she doesn’t hear me over the rustling discs of her dress, but she doesn’t answer as she opens the door to the closet and leaves. I just sit there for another couple of hours, thinking. I don’t try to work on Ships or anything. It’s more like a meditative state, except I don’t think you’re supposed to be extremely upset while you’re meditating.

  33

  Lucien finds me during vocal coaching at Stacy’s the next morning. I ended up missing the entire group number rehearsal, so she’s teaching me my part. (Since the first time here, I’ve learned that this is actually Stacy’s house. She’s just continually surprised by the objects in it because she had an interior decorator choose them.)

  “Dig in, reach for the note,” Stacy commands as she hits a key on the high end of the piano. “You’ve got to put more heart into it or you’re not going to get there.”

  “Noooooowwwww,” I try, not hitting it.

  Lucien leans against the doorway. “Can I borrow Magnolia?”

  Stacy sighs. “Is this show even about singing?”

  It’s definitely not. But I’m not going to be the one to tell her.

  I join Lucien and we go out and sit at a table on the patio. He’s got his hair in a low pony, a very thick pony, and baby spit on the shoulder of the usual football jersey he wears.

  It’s bright out. I put on a pair of Gucci sunglasses we got in one of the twenty gift baskets we’ve been sent since last week. The Guccis would be good for hiding puffy eyes if I had puffy eyes. I’m not even close to being in the mood to cry today. When I woke up this morning, I had shifted into mostly being really, really angry. I saw Ford only once, in the kitchen grabbing breakfast. His back was to me. Anger surged through my chest, once again keeping away sadness. I walked straight out.

  “So your mom called me last night about this Ford development,” Lucien s
ays.

  “I don’t want to have to go running to him on camera. And I don’t want him to run to me either.”

  Lucien leans back and basks in the sun. “Yeah, I hear you.”

  I wait another second for him to argue with me, but that’s all he says. I’m surprised because I figured he would definitely push for a more dramatic action than ignoring Ford.

  “That’s all?”

  “I’d be pissed if I were you too.”

  “And?”

  “Where do you want to go next with your story line? Do you want to do a variation on a young-woman-scorned thing? There’s always a ready audience for that.” He’s looking up at the sky, speaking in that kind of back-of-the-throat voice you try out when you’re a kid and you want to annoy your parents. But he’s not trying to annoy me. He’s bored, I’m realizing. “Or you don’t have to do anything at all.”

  “Hey, are you bored by this job?” I ask.

  He looks down. “Well, yeah. It’s not my ideal project. It’s not my Moby-Dick.”

  “What don’t you like about it?”

  “This job isn’t writing. On a good day, it comes close to bordering on storytelling. If I get to structure a scene around something going on in the mansion or feed a good line, I go home feeling better about it. But I’m not creating you guys out of my head. I’m not getting to pursue the themes that most interest me.”

  “What are those themes?”

  He makes a cross with his fingers and holds it in front of him like I’m a vampire trying to suck out information. “I don’t think my job is to sit here and answer the big questions of my existence.”

  “Fine, the questions can be smaller,” I say. “How old are you?”

  “Thirty-seven.”

  “What’s your baby’s name?”

  He looks at me sideways. “No, seriously, what’s with all the questions? I’m not the one who does interviews. I’m the invisible one.”

  “I don’t know. I just got curious about your life.”

  “Her name is Scottie.”

  It rings a bell. “Wasn’t that also F. Scott Fitzgerald’s daughter’s name? We read Gatsby last year in English. Mrs. Corinthos turned it into a book about how Daisy should have focused on herself. She says Daisy got in that trouble by letting herself just be a pretty face.”

  Lucien shakes a finger in the air. “Mrs. Corinthos! Very reductionist, Mrs. Corinthos!” He switches over to pointing at me. “And, yes, that was Fitzgerald’s daughter’s nickname and the reason why my daughter also has it. He’s probably my favorite author, depending which mood you catch me in.”

  “I like it for a girl. But my ex-boyfriend’s name is Scott, so it makes me imagine him as a girl and as a baby.” I haven’t heard from Scott since I left him outside the gate. My anger toward Ford has pushed that night way into the background. It’s become like a continually dimming star somewhere in the back of my heart.

  “Do you like English class?” Lucien asks.

  “I think it’s the only class I genuinely do like,” I say.

  Lucien and I end up talking, as real people, for the first time since we’ve met. Usually our conversations consist of how Lucien wants me to come off on the show. The last time I talked to him, on Tuesday, the cameramen were at the house getting extra footage for the performance show. Catherine wanted what she called some “ambient stuff” to make a “pondering montage,” which I came to understand was just us contestants in quiet moments alone thinking about whatever the show wanted to make it look like we were thinking about. My thinking face got intercut with Ford’s thinking face.

  Lucien wanted me to walk around the garden in (pretend) rain because that would convey a Wuthering Heights kind of romantic sensibility, and we had a small argument because I thought that would just bring up the tortured and depressed stuff all over again.

  But now I tell him about Mrs. Corinthos and what school was like and all the semi-ironic roller rink skating trips that went down in middle school and how I socially cracked when I got to high school. I say I don’t want to talk about Ford. Lucien says he doesn’t blame me.

  Lucien tells me about how he met his wife in the dorms at UCLA and how she made him like himself for once and how they actually used to live in the apartment where F. Scott Fitzgerald died in Hollywood. Lucien tells me that F. Scott died clutching the mantel of his fireplace, so Lucien used to knock on it for good luck every morning before he left for a meeting. I tell him that knocking on a man’s death mantel seems like it might not be the best good luck charm. He tells me that yeah, it didn’t seem to work because here he is, consulting on this show instead of getting his movies made.

  I guess we talk for a really long time because eventually Stacy comes out, holding a fresh Frappuccino, exasperated. “I’ve got an hour before I have to send you off to that movie premiere. Are you going to come work on this note or what?”

  “Be there in a second,” I say.

  “I wish your momma was here to help me wrangle you,” Stacy mutters before she steps back inside. My mom is at a salon getting her hair blown out for the premiere. It’s a Pat Graves movie, and he’s been her favorite star since I was a baby.

  I push my chair back from the patio table with my legs. “Hey, why haven’t we talked before?” I wonder.

  “Context,” Lucien says.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “We were approaching each other from a standoffish context. I was the guy working for the show, making you portray yourself in annoying ways, and you were just another kid I had to convince to take a walk in the rain before I could go home to my own kid. Neither one of us considered trying to talk to each other in a real way. It was all Spotlight.”

  He opens his arms. “That’s how the world works. It’s hard to have the personal conversation because you get tripped up by the surface conversation you’re supposed to be having. Not the one you’d get more out of. That’s why you cracked in high school. You didn’t know how to change the context. So you gave up.”

  I definitely know what he’s saying. It connects back to everything I’ve been trying to reverse in myself. I get up and start back toward the house.

  “So any feelings about your story line this coming week?” Lucien calls after me.

  “I don’t know if we have to worry that much about it. I think I might be going home.”

  “Nah, it’s looking worse for Dillon. Even worse for Ford. The girls on the message boards are unhappy with him. They liked the orphan spiel. They wanted to save him.”

  “Let me get back to you.”

  I head inside, and Lucien goes over to use the hose. He holds his shirt away from his chest to dribble water on the spit-up. I stop and watch him for a second. I feel like I’ve gotten more out of this talk than I have from actually being on the show.

  I have this feeling like I should be thinking more about my performance than I am.

  I should probably be running it over in my head.

  I mean, it should probably pop into my thoughts at least ten times a day?

  Twenty?

  It kind of feels like there’s homework I’m ignoring, but I’m one of those burnout kids who’s completely content not doing it.

  It was different for the second performance. During the first show, I went out there and hoped I’d become this whole new person. I was so discouraged when nobody else saw the new thing in me.

  But last night, I don’t know, I just wasn’t concerned about starting over. I sang before Ford’s family reveal, so it’s not like I was distracted. The theme was “songs that we felt represented ourselves.” I picked “Every Single Night” by Fiona Apple. I love that song. In rehearsal, Stacy had been pretty unhappy with me.

  “You can’t find the melody unless you listen to it five times,” she said. “This is not an instantly enjoyable song. And the lyrics—no, n
o, no, no! You’re going to sing about your breast busting open?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “No. No, no, no.”

  I said, “It’s about how her brain won’t ever let up. So she’s caught in a constant struggle between being sensitive to everything around her and then also being tortured by all that activity.” It really spoke to me.

  Stacy just stared for a good few seconds. Then she asked, “Do you want to go home?”

  I just wasn’t worried up there. I don’t know why.

  34

  It’s my turn to walk the step-and-repeat red carpet at the Thursday night premiere. We’re all here, judges included, because one, Jazz has a part in the film (as herself), and two, Catherine is thrilled about the free additional promotion for the show. The camera guys taped us getting ready because a story line for next week follows the disappearance of Nikki’s curling iron and how she thinks Felicia hid it after Nikki used up her Moroccan oil. You’d think the two of them wouldn’t want to play this out for the cameras, but each girl just thinks it makes the other girl look bad.

  Anyway, the red carpet. All I have to do is smile, take a step, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat. Then I can go into the theater and watch a movie.

  This should be as simple as jumping rope in PE or like last year, in Mrs. Corinthos’s class, when she made us repeat vocab words and definitions over and over in our vocab journals. She told us that’s how she remembers names at a party. She mentally says a person’s name and a defining characteristic a bunch of times, and then she’s like, “Heyyyyyy, Jennifer!” when she sees Jennifer in line for the bathroom. After that I’m sure she’s like, “Jennifer, honey, listen, I’d like to talk to you about the way you’ve been sticking to your husband’s side this whole evening and how you could be better at partying if you just focused on yourself.”