Starlight Nights

by Stacey Kade

  She stiffens. “It’s not funny, Calista. Do you have any idea of the number of jobs you’re going to miss out on because of those?”

  I want to tell her, right then and there, that the jobs I want won’t involve me removing my top for a love scene or bouncing along a beach in a swimsuit. That would cause quite a stir in the accounting department.

  But I keep my mouth shut for now. There will be a time and place for that conversation, and while I’m mostly naked and vulnerable-feeling is not it.

  “What’s going on with the house?” I ask instead, trying to ignore the cold pinch of the calipers against my skin.

  “What do you mean?” she asks, frowning, taking measurements and entering them into an app on her phone.

  I raise my eyebrows. “The FOR SALE sign in the front yard?”

  “This neighborhood.” She waves dismissively.

  “Mom, it’s Valencia,” I say. People give side eye to less-than-perfect lawns and compete to have the best stroller in neighborhoods like this. It’s not exactly gangland territory.

  “I just think it’s time that we looked into moving into something that fits our needs better. We’re jammed in here like sardines.” She frowns at me. “Don’t suck in. This is important. I need to know what we’re working with here.”

  I swallow the urge to sigh. This house was purchased during the height of my—and therefore my mother’s—earnings; I’m not sure they could even afford it today. But that’s my mom: so focused on future golden days that she’s willing to bet what she has now against something better rolling in at the last minute. Her philosophy has always been: Act like you already have the success you’re after. Which is great, unless you’re spending like you already have that success. “Mom, I don’t think that’s a—”

  “Besides,” she points out. “It’s not like we can get by with only four bedrooms now that you’re back. Zinnia deserves to have her own space, too, you know.”

  Living here again? For the foreseeable future? When I was fresh out of rehab and finding my balance again, it made sense. But as a permanent solution? No way.

  “No, Mom. We talked about this. I’m taking a couple years to focus on my education. That was the plan, that’s what we told everyone, and this one-time job doesn’t change anything. Besides, I think it’ll really help if I have the degree. Then I could even bring in income as an—”

  “Oh, Calista, you have no idea.” She shakes her head. “It’s changed so much. People’s memories are even shorter than what we thought. You’ll be completely forgotten by the time you come back.”

  Exactly.

  Then the implication of her words sinks in. “Wait, were you trying to get me work? I thought we agreed—”

  “Exploratory conversations only,” she says, tsking at me. “I just wanted to see what might be available to you if you were interested, and trust me, my darling girl, it’s not good. Nothing like what you had in the past. Nothing like what you deserve.”

  The next thing you know, she’ll be signing you up to audition for a local car dealership commercial or one of those TV movies where you get eaten by an ant-octopus-shark creature in the second act. All for her percentage.

  That’s what Eric said. I thought he was just speculating. But maybe it was more than that. Maybe he knows more than I do. A cold stab of fear pierces my stomach. If he hadn’t offered me this job—okay, blackmailed me into it—what would I be doing instead? It sounds like I wouldn’t have been at Blake much longer.

  Lori frowns at the app on her phone and whatever calculations it’s spitting back at her. “Though it looks like we have our work cut out for us.”

  I drop my arms to my sides, the right shaking and aching. Boundaries, my rehab counselor’s voice sounds in my head. You need to set them and keep them, even if it makes other people unhappy.

  According to Bonnie, my addiction came not just from the pain from my injury but also from my inability to deal with discomfort of any kind. Especially when it came to standing up for myself. I’d spent too many years trying desperately to keep my mom, agents, producers and directors happy. Add to that my inability to ask for help, even when I needed it, and I was a disaster waiting for a time and place to happen.

  I take a deep breath. “Mom, this isn’t what I want.”

  “Well, of course not. Getting back in shape is never easy. Fortunately, the advance from Mr. Fancy Pants will help with that.” She rolls her eyes.

  “Mom—”

  “We’ll start training twice a day, and by the time this little project is over, you’ll be back to your—”

  “Lori!”

  She looks up at me, startled. “What?”

  “I don’t want this! I don’t want to act again.” The words echo in the sudden stillness between us, like a vast canyon has sprung up from between the floorboards. And the worst part is I can taste the hint of lie. It’s not the acting that’s the problem. Eric is right about that.

  She takes a step back, her hands falling to her sides. “Well,” she says, in a voice breathy with hurt and offense.

  It’s difficult, but I manage to resist the urge—and long-engrained habit—to apologize. “It’s just that I don’t think it’s good for me to be here, doing this again. I mean, we saw what happened the last time—”

  “Calista, I recognize that you’re an adult and that, as such, you can make your own decisions,” Lori says, setting down the calipers carefully on the nightstand. “But I want you to remember what happened the last time you went off on your own.”

  I flinch.

  She steps closer to me, touches my cheek, though the cynical part of me registers it more as an evaluation of my cheekbones than a loving caress. “You just don’t have the world experience to make good decisions for yourself, love. You need me.”

  I clench my teeth, even as tears sting my eyes. “But how am I supposed to get that experience unless you let me—”

  “Let you make mistakes that break your heart? Destroy your future? End with you dead in a gutter?” She shakes her head. “I should have known. Every time Eric Stone is involved, you get all turned around and—”

  “Eric has nothing to do with it,” I snap. Actually, if anything, he and my mother were, for the first time, on the same page about my career and its need for continued existence, even if they disagreed about why and how.

  “Oh, no?” Lori gives a bitter laugh. “Calista, darling, from the moment you fired me to stay for that third season, when everyone could see that the show was going downhill, it’s always been about him.”

  My face feels like it’s on fire. “I wasn’t ready to leave,” I mumble. “And it wasn’t just because of Eric.” True. I needed my version of family, and Eric was part of that, along with Chase. But if Eric happened to fall in love with me during that season somehow, too, well then all the better.

  “Everything that followed that decision has been nothing but disaster for you. For us.” She tucks my hair gently behind my ear. “The accident, surgeries, the pills. Getting arrested. You can see that, can’t you?”

  “Yes,” I say. “But—”

  “Just please, trust me this time.” Lori took my hands in hers. “I only want what’s best for you. Eric Stone is a necessary evil right now, but after this project is done, you never have to see him again.”

  The thought of the rest of my life passing without Eric in it sends a flurry of confusing and conflicting emotions through me: relief, despair and gut-deep longing. Like the desire for him is imprinted on my every chromosome.

  I focus on my breathing, working to keep calm and ignore the thrumming desire to escape this conversation by any means necessary. I catch myself longing for the dry bitterness of a pill on my tongue. “You’re right. I made some mistakes. Big ones. And that’s what I’m trying to say. I think my path is somewhere else now. Not as an actress.” Before she can protest, I hurry to continue. “I’ve been doing really well in my classes, and I think I could—”

  “What? Become an acco
untant?” she asks. At least she’s been somewhat listening. “Get a job in an office? Calista, please. You have a gift. It would be selfish to waste that, to hide behind an ordinary life.” She turns away and heads for the door.

  “Mom.”

  “Do you have any idea how many girls struggle to get where you are?” she asks quietly, her hand on the doorknob. “How many girls would kill to have the connections and opportunities that you have?”

  Shame creeps up in me. “I know, but—”

  She faces me, her eyes bright with tears. “I was one of those girls, a long time ago. Knocking on doors, auditioning for everything, trying to make my way to the top. But I gave up everything. For you. I was nineteen and pregnant and completely alone. My life was over.”

  I wince, even though I’ve heard this story before.

  “Even your father wanted no part of you, and no part of me after I told him I wouldn’t get an abortion.” She dabs at the corner of her eye carefully with the tip of her finger. According to my mother, my father, whose name she refused to give me even now, took off immediately for New York and whatever acting opportunities he could find there, promising to send money that never arrived. “So there I was, a teenager in Los Angeles, single and with a baby on the way. My parents wouldn’t even speak to me. I couldn’t go to them for help. I had no one.”

  “Mom—”

  “I could have been someone. I could have been a star. You’ve seen my reel.”

  I nod, my jaw clenched. She was good in the few parts she’d landed back in the late 90s before I was born. With a little more time, she might well have been able to accomplish everything she wanted.

  “But instead, I worked three jobs, gave up on my acting dreams and did everything I could to provide you with the best life,” she says in a trembling voice. “To give you the chance to make the most of the opportunities you were given.”

  Guilt settles on me like one of those lead vests at the dentist’s office. “I know,” I say in a small voice. “But those opportunities aren’t…”

  What I want anymore? Maybe, but how selfish does that sound under the circumstances?

  She waits with her eyebrows raised.

  I shut my mouth.

  “You owe me. You owe us,” she says simply. “I’ll be blunt: Your sisters haven’t been as fortunate as you in either looks or talent.”

  I wince, hoping none of them are listening.

  “But they deserve to have whatever benefits can be afforded them. That is your responsibility as a member of a family that has done nothing but love and support and pay for you during your worst times.” Her voice breaks. “Do you know how much that Safe Harbor cost? Do you realize what we could have done for Dahlia or Zinnia with that kind of—”

  “I told you to use my money!” I protest.

  Lori clucks at me. “Oh, sweetheart. Did you honestly think you had enough left for that? It’s sixty thousand dollars a month. You stayed for three months. Both times. And that, combined with your—”

  “Wait.” I straighten, ignoring, for the moment, her jab at my relapse. “Are you saying there’s nothing left?” Panic throbs in me. Lori has been in control of my finances since before rehab, as ordered by the judge. Once I finished rehab, the accounts were supposed to be mine again, but it had just been easier to leave them with her. She said she didn’t trust me with them, and honestly, at the time, I wasn’t sure I did either.

  “Enough to pay your tuition this semester, that’s about it,” she says, sounding mournful.

  I feel vaguely dizzy. “How is that even possible?” I thought I had a least a couple hundred thousand left, even after Safe Harbor. But it’s been years, literally, since I’ve seen a bank statement. And as Eric pointed out yesterday, I haven’t worked except for a few small jobs here and there since the end of Starlight.

  “It doesn’t matter.” Lori smooths my hair, and I’m too stunned to jerk away. “The past is the past. But there’s still time to fix it, for all of us. Starting now.”

  My throat aches with the desire to scream. How am I supposed to fight back against this? What boundaries am I supposed to set here? I don’t have any money. I don’t have a degree. I don’t have any skills or experience in anything other than acting. It’s not like I have anywhere else to go, someone else who will put me up.

  “Be ready tomorrow morning for Tim at four-thirty,” she says, turning and walking out, shutting the door on the conversation.

  I drop onto the nearest bed, the one closest to the wall. I’m not sure which one’s supposed to be mine, but the other bed has more of a stuffed animal collection, including Mr. Bug, a stuffed ladybug missing an antenna that used to be mine. Zinn appropriated it when she was four.

  I’m trapped. After this project, it’ll be another one, each slightly declining in quality or value until it’s local only, the cheesy car dealership commercials Eric mentioned, if that. Whatever brings in the money.

  And then what?

  Whatever my mother tells me.

  Suddenly I can’t breathe. I can’t do this. I have to find another way.

  The money I’ll earn from Fly Girl will be something. A start, maybe. Assuming I can get control of it. That has to be step one. But I’ve never opened a bank account in my life, never even thought about it. How pathetic is that? My mom has always taken care of that kind of stuff, including for the portion of money that was legally mine, that she couldn’t officially touch. Money was an electronic umbilical cord between us, even after I fired her. The judge’s ruling after my arrest just made it official.

  Eric. I sit up straighter. He said my money would be mine. If he hasn’t already set up an account in my name—Is that even possible? I have no idea—I bet he knows how to.

  Of course, that’s going to mean asking him for help, listening to his “I told you so”s.

  The doorknob rattles suddenly, and the door starts to open. I brace myself, expecting round two with my mom. But instead, Zinnia slips in, dressed for her bed in a faded pink nightshirt, her damp hair hanging down her back. “Hey.”

  I clear my throat. “Hey.” I frown at her. “Were you in the bathroom this whole time?”

  “Better than in here with Mom,” Zinn says, flopping on the other bed, her head disappearing in the menagerie of stuffed animals.

  True enough. “Sorry for taking over,” I say. “I really didn’t think this would happen.”

  She shrugs. “It’s okay. I’d rather share with you than Poppy. She snores.”

  I sigh. Poor Poppy. “It’s her asthma, I think.” Something else my mother refused to acknowledge except when absolutely necessary. A wheezy and nearsighted book nerd did not fit with her glamorous Beckett family image. Beckett wasn’t even Wade’s last name. It was my mom’s stage name, passed down to us.

  Zinn rolls onto her side to face me, propping her head on her elbow. “Are you going to stay?”

  She seems so much older now, since I’ve been gone, not a little girl anymore but a teenager: all long legs, skinny elbows and a far-too-serious expression. I never saw her much when I was working. And she was ten when I moved out for the first time. After I finished rehab, we didn’t cross paths much. She went to school, followed by some combination of dancing, singing and acting lessons. I was busy trying to keep my head on straight with NA meetings. But now that I think about it, I’m not sure if that’s it or if there’s just always been this distance.

  “I don’t know,” I admit. “Mom wants me to.”

  “Did you like college?” Zinn asks.

  I’m not sure how to answer that. “Some parts of it,” I say cautiously. “I think it would have been different if I … hadn’t been me.” I make a face, but Zinn nods, seeming to understand.

  “Did Mom tell you we’re moving?” she asks.

  “She said the house was for sale,” I say. “It doesn’t mean we … you’re going to have to move.”

  “No, I’m pretty sure we are,” she says. “I heard them fighting about it.”

/>   Fighting? Wade and my mom? I couldn’t picture that. Wade would pretty much have to be on fire before he would even speak voluntarily.

  “Dad lost his disability check, and now they can’t afford it.”

  Disability? Wade owned some kind of shipping company, and he retired, as far as I knew, after selling the company years ago—not long after my mom married him and pressed him into chauffeur service, driving us into the city two or three times a week for auditions or work. I didn’t know anything about a disability check.

  I shake my head. “The house should be paid for, or mostly, by now.”

  “The bank is going to foreclose,” Zinn says quietly.

  Hearing those words, in that order, from Zinn sends a chill across my skin. She’s obviously overheard something. “I’m sure that’s not true.”

  Really, Calista? It’s Lori. The voice in my head sounds a lot like Eric.

  And it would explain the urgency behind my return and why she’d jumped all over this offer, even though it was from Eric.

  A heavy feeling settles in my stomach.

  “I’ll talk to Mom,” I say.

  After a moment, Zinn says, “I’m glad you’re back.”

  The guilt and shame from earlier returns, making me wish I could sink through the mattress to the floor. Has it been that bad here that she actually thinks I can make a difference? We’re both in trouble, then.

  She rolls onto her back, staring up at the ceiling, and her stomach gives a loud rumble.

  “Zinn, you need to eat more.” At least I was grown, relatively. Who knew what that kind of deprivation did to someone her age? For the first eight, maybe ten years of my life, Lori was more focused on making sure we had enough to eat. But once she married Wade, and I started getting bigger parts, she developed this bizarre obsession with what we were eating. “Just keep it healthy” morphed into “document every calorie you consume,” then got worse. There had been arguments about measuring intake versus output. No. Just … no.

  “Can’t,” Zinn says matter-of-factly. “I’ll get fat, and no one will want to hire me.”