Diary of a Stage Mother's Daughter

by Melissa Francis

  Dad put the silver-blue Pontiac into reverse and backed down the driveway, then coasted out of the cul-de-sac. It was only a ten-minute drive to school, but at this rate, the trip would take three days. My father never hurried for anybody.

  “How long does it take you to get to the office after you drop me off?” I asked. I had been to his workplace before and played with the Xerox machine in the office area where a dozen or so people worked at desks. The office part, where they designed and sold sound and projection equipment, connected to a huge warehouse filled with inventory. The complex seemed very far away from our home. I figured that if he drove the whole way at this pace, he would just get to work every day and have to turn around.

  “Oh, it takes like an hour or so for me to get there, really depends on the traffic. It’s all the way in West Hollywood.”

  “Where I go for interviews?”

  “Yes, basically the same area.” He took a final drag of his cigarette and then flicked the stub out the window. I wondered if anyone’s grass would catch fire. “Are you excited to start work tomorrow?”

  I’d been cast in my first role as a series regular, which meant I had my first steady job, according to Mom. I’d done a few Movies of the Week for ABC, and even one real feature film that we saw in a movie theater, but this was really the big time, Mom said. I had a job that could go on and on, like Dad’s. She’d lavished me with toys and praise and love and attention since I’d been cast, so it had to be huge. I had a whole new team of stuffed animals in my room as evidence.

  NBC bought eleven episodes of the show and named it “Joe’s World.” The story centered on a midwestern working class family with five kids. The producers cast Christopher Knight, who had played Peter Brady on The Brady Bunch, as the oldest brother. I played the youngest kid.

  “I gather it’s a sitcom. Like that show with Gary Coleman. What’s it called? Mom says you’re the comic relief. You just walk in the room and deliver punch lines,” Dad said.

  He took a left on Rinaldi Street and picked up a little speed as the golf course disappeared behind us.

  “You and I are going to be heading to work together instead of school for a while. Did Mom tell you that? I’m going to take you to the lot at Metromedia, and your grandmother is going to stay with you on the set so Mom can take care of Tiffany.”

  He laughed to himself. “And I’m betting that arrangement will last about a day.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Because your mom is addicted to showbiz.”

  He was right. Grandma sat on the set for the first few days of table reads, and then, sure enough, she and Mom swapped positions. I was happier with this new arrangement. Grandma loved to talk and talk to everyone on the set, mostly just bragging about Tiffany and me. But she wasn’t as good at helping me as Mom. With her tight gray curls and ample build, she was a big soft pillow to run to during breaks in the action, but she knew very little about the mechanics of working, like when I was supposed to deliver a line.

  Herbert, the director, helped quite a bit and smiled and cued me, but I felt better when Mom was there, making sure I was doing my job properly. I hated to mess up a line or hold up the other actors, especially because they were all older and had been working even longer than I had. I didn’t want to be the worst or the least professional in the group, even if I was the baby. I had a standard to uphold.

  And when it came to work, so did Mom. When we weren’t working, she made running out of gas or crashing into the occasional fire hydrant seem like typical, unavoidable occurrences. But when we were working, she was careful and precise. We always arrived on set at least thirty minutes before my call time. And I checked in well rested and scrubbed clean, with my hair smelling like soap, my skin soft and sweet with baby powder.

  At home, the laundry might pile up for days. The cupboard stood bare for weeks before she broke down and hit the grocery store. But when it came to working, she was a machine. She made sure I knew every line, hit every mark. She’d nag, cajole, mentor, bribe, threaten. Whatever it took. I realized when Grandma stood in that I very much preferred the more intense support Mom provided.

  When we arrived home from work, Grandma generally sat yapping at my annoyed father, while Tiffany did her homework at the kitchen table. Tiffany seemed undercut by all the attention Mom lavished on me, but she was still the boss when we were alone.

  “Don’t touch,” Tiffany said when I entered her room after dinner in search of the new miniature horses she’d gotten as her consolation prize when Mom decided to switch jobs with Grandma.

  I ignored her warning and took the dapple gray with the English saddle.

  Tiffany grabbed my wrist and seized the horse, prying it loose from my fingers.

  “That’s mine!” she said through gritted teeth.

  “That doesn’t mean I can’t play with it,” I said.

  “Yes, that’s precisely what it means. You’re in my room and I make the rules here,” she said.

  Now that Tiffany was ten and nearly grown up, Mom had let her take down the childish fabric that had covered her walls for years. All that remained now was the stark white paint that had hidden underneath and few pictures of horses she’d put up with Scotch tape.

  “You can play with this one,” she offered, handing me a horse she’d had for a while and no longer played with. It was a small bay with a tall white sock and a chipped tail.

  “I will name this one Princess,” I said.

  “That’s a stupid name for a horse. And you already have a cat named Princess. Don’t be a moron.” She went back to reading a magazine at her desk, but she shifted in her chair so she could keep an eye on me.

  I put the horse in a stall in her play barn and went back for the gray.

  “Don’t be a pest!” she said as she smacked my hand away from her horse. “I don’t care what they give you on the set. In my room, these are my toys. Now get out!”

  “Why are you being such a jerk?” I asked, confused.

  Tiffany turned her back on me and said nothing. Then she faced me again. “Why don’t you just take all the horses and get out! They’re for babies anyway.” She put a tape in her tape deck and blasted the music before I could say anything.

  On the set of the new sitcom, I may have been the baby, but I felt like a real professional. We rehearsed for a few weeks to work out the kinks, and then taped the pilot. The network brought in a real audience off the street to sit in metal bleachers and watch us perform the show while three large cameras maneuvered around the studio floor recording the scenes.

  We’d do the whole show all the way through twice for two different audiences in one night, and then the producers sliced and diced the two versions together to make the final episode that would air a few weeks later. They called the genre “three camera live” because we performed for a live audience, but the show was actually taped.

  The applause and laughter and feedback overwhelmed and thrilled my senses. The warm-up comedian would call out the cast members one by one before the show started to introduce us to the audience. He saved me for last, and the crowd would laugh and cheer when I came out. So small in comparison to the six actors who had preceded me, I was like a tiny dot of punctuation at the end of the list of cast members.

  Nerves fluttered through my limbs before he shouted my name, but the crowd yelled and clapped so loud each time I got out there, I looked forward to it after the first try.

  I loved being part of a team with a goal to accomplish. We played our parts and put on our show, and soared on a cloud when the final scene ended. Mom wasn’t the only one addicted to showbiz.

  We finished the pilot near the end of December, just after my seventh birthday, and the network invited the whole cast to the NBC Christmas party. The celebration took place at a sprawling studio on the Metromedia lot in Hollywood that they’d turned into a winter wonderland. All the stars from all the NBC shows—early ’80s hits like Diff’rent Strokes and The Facts of Life—promised to sh
ow up. The network even sent a limo to our house to get us there and back in style.

  Mom dressed Tiffany and me in brand-new holiday dresses from Saks for the occasion. They were both hunter green velvet, though mine was shapeless and short with a round collar, and Tiffany’s was nipped at the waist and more grown-up. Mom had washed and curled our long locks and even put a little blush on our fair cheeks and mascara on our lashes.

  When Mom finished curling the last tendril of my hair, I looked in the mirror to admire the finished product, and saw two different-sized versions of the same doll looking back at me.

  “You look so cute,” Tiffany said, putting her arm around my shoulders and smiling at my image in the mirror. When her eyes shifted to her own appearance, her shoulders tensed and she grimaced a bit, even though I thought she looked perfect.

  “You look beautiful. I love your dress more,” I said wistfully.

  “Do I?” she asked.

  “You do,” I said, utterly convinced. She smiled.

  Mom and Dad pulled out all the stops too. Mom shimmered in a long black dress that glittered and danced when she walked, and Dad put on his most handsome navy suit with a red tie. They looked as perfect and happy as I’d ever seen them, like the newlyweds I imagined they’d been before we arrived.

  When we pulled up to the party, security and staff ushered us down a red carpet. Mindy Cohen and two other girls from The Facts of Life buzzed around a chocolate fountain inside and squeezed my cheeks and arms as they greeted me. They all worked on the set next to ours, and would allow me to come play with them during lunch, as if I were their mascot.

  Mom floated joyfully around the party with the three of us in tow. She stopped to talk to the other moms, and drifted toward the bubbling fountain of melted chocolate. Her eyes lit up when she saw the show’s writers; she was eager to pick their brains and see if the show had any hope of being picked up for another season. Tiffany hung a step behind me and eventually stopped making the rounds with us. She and Dad gravitated to a table, where they sat and talked and eventually looked bored. They’d both been excited to dress up and come to the party, but the glitz wore thin once they’d visited all the food stations and danced a few numbers.

  At the end of the night, we slowly coasted back out to the North Valley in our limo. Tiffany and I chose the novelty of riding backward, trying hard to fight off sleep.

  I opened the robin’s-egg-blue box with the red ribbon they’d handed me on the way out. The colorful packaging fell away to reveal a shiny silver box lined with red velvet. It was as heavy as lead. On the bottom, the box was stamped TIFFANY & CO. On the top, the inscription read NBC with a tiny peacock next to it. I ran the tip of my finger back and forth over the engraving and thought about what treasures I’d hide inside.

  That Christmas, Santa brought every toy I’d ever imagined, and a few I hadn’t thought to wish for. Tiffany and I awoke before dawn and crept to the top of the stairs, where we sat on the first step waiting for Mom and Marilyn to say it was time to go down and tear open the cornucopia of presents that spilled out around the base of our enormous white flocked tree. Marilyn always spent Christmas Eve at our house so she could see our faces in the morning when we greeted our haul.

  “Whoa,” I said to Tiffany as we stretched to see everything that waited below. The lights on the tree danced and bounced off the wrapping paper and walls, making the living room look more like a disco.

  “I know. They outdid themselves. They must have been up all night!” Tiffany said.

  “They?” I asked, suspicious but still wanting to believe in the red-suited god who delivered pure joy once a year.

  “The elves. That help Santa,” Tiffany reassured me with a smile.

  Mom and Marilyn strode out of the kitchen, bleary-eyed, hair disheveled. They were already sipping coffee in holiday mugs.

  “I thought I heard you two,” Mom said with a smile.

  “Should I wake Dad, or can we start?” I asked with a jolt of excitement.

  “Don’t wake him. Just come down and get started. But you have to open one at a time so Marilyn and I can see your faces. It will be hours before Dad stirs, but you still won’t be done. Look at everything Santa left!” she squealed.

  As we came down the stairs, I could see that the presents stretched all the way to the far walls of the sitting room. We weren’t normally allowed to play in the sitting room, with its white couches and chairs, too perfect for dirty little hands. But once a year, the room was transformed.

  This time there had to be nearly a hundred wrapped presents in every shape and size. Each one had a tag with an “M” or a “T” to tell us to whom the mystery delight belonged. Two new bikes with enormous bows sat in the middle of the room, a large blue ten-speed with white-walled tires for Tiffany, and a smaller, light blue two-wheeler for me.

  By the time Dad woke up, the sitting room looked like a wrapping paper bomb had exploded, spraying red and green shrapnel everywhere. I sat in the middle of the debris, exploring a Fisher Price doctor’s kit I’d been praying for.

  “Jesus,” Dad said in Mom’s general direction. “Think you overdid it?”

  “Santa, darling. Not me,” she smiled back.

  “Most of this was from Santa, Dad. It didn’t cost you anything,” I reassured him. “Although this was from Mom!” I said giving Tiffany a pretend shot in the arm with my toy needle. Next I planned to jump-start her heart.

  “I’m too tired to keep opening,” Tiffany said. She brushed me off and laid back on the ground in her holiday pj’s, admiring a new white leather purse she’d just unwrapped.

  “I’ll take everything that hasn’t been opened, in that case,” I said, eyeing the loot. Dad groaned and wandered into the kitchen for some coffee.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Mom placed her hand on my shoulder to wake me up. I jumped.

  “It’s okay. You just need to get up. It’s a special day. We need to go to school to get your assignments. Then we’re going on a plane to Sonora. Come on, sweetie,” she said.

  I’d landed what Mom called the role of a lifetime on Little House on the Prairie, a show that was already a hit. Being cast on a huge show that was already up and running was like being born on home plate with the crowd cheering. You’d done nothing to help the team win, but that didn’t mean you couldn’t bask in the glory. The victory was especially sweet for Mom since my last show, Joe’s World, hadn’t lasted more than a season.

  I plodded slowly down the hall to the bathroom I shared with my sister. She brushed her teeth at the far sink, which right now was hers. We each liked to claim ownership of one of the two sinks, but anytime we agreed on the division of territory, I got the sense I’d been had. I was eight years old, and she was nearly twelve. That was a lot more time to gather the skills of negotiation.

  “How long are you going for?” Tiffany asked with toothpaste foaming out of her mouth.

  “I don’t know. We’re shooting the first episode on location and then coming back for the rest of the season I think.”

  “Mom told me you’re going on an airplane that doesn’t have regular people on it,” she added, wiping her mouth.

  Who would be on it then? Aliens? I wanted to ask but she shut off the tap and left.

  An hour later Mom and I walked down the outdoor pathway to my second-grade classroom. My black and white saddle shoes scuffed the cement walkway as we hurried along, the leaves of late fall occasionally drifting into our path and crunching under our feet. The swings in the middle of the playground right next to the classes hung silent and motionless. All the other kids were in class.

  My mom opened the door to my classroom and I saw Mrs. Sandberg standing at the front by the chalk board, holding a piece of chalk. Her skirt flowed down to her ankles and her glasses were perched on the tip of her nose.

  All eyes, which had been fixed on her, moved quickly to me. I shifted uncomfortably. I was wearing the uniform Mom dressed me in for every single audition: OshKosh overalls rol
led at the knee, paired with a white blouse that had short puffed sleeves and a Peter Pan collar, white socks with eyelet trim folded over at the ankle, and saddle shoes. I wore the outfit so often that I hated every thread of it.

  Mrs. Sandberg put her fingers in her short, curly, blondish-gray hair and smiled as she looked me over.

  She liked me, and seemed to think highly of me, thanks to yet another tip on how to be first in the class, this time from Mom. At the beginning of the school year, Mom told me that when Mrs. Sandberg asked a question about something we read, I needed to repeat the question at the beginning of my answer. So if she asked, “Why did Mary buy an apple?” I was supposed to write, “Mary bought an apple because she was hungry.” Oddly enough, this tidbit came in handy on the first day of school during Reading Comprehension. I’d never heard of Reading Comprehension, but I was the first to raise my hand when Mrs. Sandberg asked, “Why did Billy bring his jacket?”

  I responded, “Billy brought his jacket because it was cold outside.”

  My answer dazzled Mrs. Sandberg, and just like that, I had started another year as the smart kid. That I had just learned this skill the day before was pure coincidence, but I’d take it. As a bonus, I knew that just across the room, Maryjane was fuming.

  Now Mrs. Sandberg walked over to her desk and picked up a folder. “I have Missy’s assignments right here.” She addressed Mom as if the other kids weren’t there.

  “Don’t you look adorable?” she said to me with a smile.