Diary of a Stage Mother's Daughter

by Melissa Francis

  What Mom didn’t know was that crying on demand wasn’t a new trick for me. I’d discovered that talent years earlier when Tiffany and I were playing Atari upstairs at home. We each had a hard black plastic joystick that we used to play Pong. We sat in front of the TV, glued to the game, which had evolved into a death match.

  Tiffany scored on me one last time and celebrated with a whoop. In a fit of rage, I raised the joystick high over my head and decided I would use the square base to crush her skull.

  I brought the joystick down as hard as I could, and then both of us staggered back in surprise. Neither of us could believe I’d done it. She began to wail in pain, and within seconds, her screams brought the pounding footsteps of Mom rushing to see who had been maimed.

  I knew I was dead. I had to think fast.

  So I burst into tears, just like Tiffany.

  I gambled that when Mom got there, she wouldn’t be able to tell what had happened if we were both hysterical. Throwing a distraction into the mix was my only shot at avoiding an instant death sentence.

  Mom walked in and saw us both screaming and crying and couldn’t make sense of what had happened, much as I had bet. So she picked up Tiffany by the arm and smacked her as hard as she could on her bottom and dragged her into her room, slamming the door with nearly as much force as I’d used in hitting Tiffany over the head with the joystick. Poor girl.

  She then returned and repeated the process on me.

  So I didn’t escape punishment, and poor Tiffany got hit twice. But, more importantly, I learned I could produce tears on demand.

  In acting, it didn’t count if you scrunched up your face and made crying noises but no water actually came out of your eyes. Directors hated that. They could always stop the cameras and dribble Visine down your cheeks, but that didn’t win you any points.

  Now I stood on my mark waiting to watch my imaginary parents get crushed to death. The pressure was on, and I knew it. So I thought about what it would be like to watch my real parents speed down the hill and I started to freak myself out. Then I pictured my cat in the wagon with them, and I was on the verge of a breakdown before they even got rolling.

  Michael yelled, “Action!”

  An AD motioned with his arms behind the camera to show us the imaginary wagon picking up speed. We looked scared. Then he mimed diving as if the wagon were diving off the side of the hill. For most kids, a mime routine would not provide sufficient motivation to show fear and panic, and shed real tears, but we were pros.

  Jason yelled, “Oh, no!” and I let loose. Tears flooded my cheeks. I wailed and cried, as if I’d just been cracked over the head with a joystick.

  “Cut and print!”

  From then on Michael called me the One Take Kid.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Butterflies fluttered in my stomach at the thought of walking back into the classroom. We had shot the two episodes of Little House that introduced Jason and me to the show and had gone on hiatus for the season. I returned to second grade, having missed about a month of school. Usually I enjoyed a bounce in popularity when I returned from an acting job because of the novelty of being an actress, but I never knew for sure what I’d encounter. My friends could all have new friends. Luckily, my first week back at school flew by without incident, friendships still intact.

  Then, as my premiere on the show approached, Mom buzzed around like a six-year-old who had downed a bag of sugar. Much to my horror, she told every person we encountered to watch me on the show. She was a one-woman TV Guide. Even at the cleaners: “Make sure you watch Missy tonight at eight PM! She’s the new star of Little House on the Prairie!” And also at the pharmacy: “She’s in every scene! She cries. I don’t want to spoil the end, but Michael Landon adopts her!”

  I shrank inside the collar of my polo shirt. Her promotional efforts were mortifying.

  Mom got her hair and nails done and invited the extended family over to watch, which included her parents, her sister, Marilyn, who was her closest friend, and her other, more bizarre sister, Gloria, whom we saw much less often because she tended to clash with Mom at every turn. Gloria was even louder and more opinionated than the rest of Mom’s family, which was really saying a lot. Plus, I never knew what color her hair was going to be when she walked in. This time, she didn’t fail to surprise me, showing up with hair the exact color and style of Ronald McDonald’s.

  The whole family crowded into the living room. Tiffany and I squeezed ourselves into one armchair, pushing each other for space. Mom was on the phone gathering viewers until the minute the show started. I could have been landing a space shuttle on Mars.

  The opening credits began to roll. The whole room cheered when my name appeared on the television screen. They screamed again the first time I was on camera.

  “There she is! What a doll,” Grandma clucked.

  In the second scene, Jason and I were sitting at a dining table with Michael and our about-to-be-dead TV parents, all having breakfast.

  “Look at her wolfing down the food. Didn’t they feed you? No wonder you can’t fit through the front door anymore,” Tiffany said with a laugh. I gave her a sharp elbow to the ribs.

  When we got to the scene where the wagon rolls down the hill, tears welled up in Marilyn’s eyes as she watched me wail. Slightly taller than Mom, Marilyn always quipped about being the naturally blonde sister. Her red T-shirt said, “Blondes have more fun,” in cursive writing, but it didn’t seem to be the case. She was a quieter, more rigid and reserved version of Mom. She always insisted we call her “Auntie M.” I didn’t understand the reference.

  Tiffany turned toward me and said in a low voice, “You look like a frog when you cry. Why didn’t anyone stop you from making that face?”

  I looked at the image of myself on the screen and realized she was right. I hopped down from the chair and left the room. No one noticed.

  I wandered into the kitchen and opened the fridge. It was empty as usual, except for a few leftovers and some expired milk. Mom liked to go to the grocery store once a month at best, and buy more than we could possibly eat before it all went bad. Then we’d scrape and scrounge and stop for takeout until she broke down and went food shopping again. Anytime I went to a food store I tried to stock up on emergency peanut butter and English muffins. They were like gold by week three.

  Tiffany followed me into the kitchen and took a seat at the counter near the fridge. I didn’t look at her.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “You did a good job. It’s just that you look funny when you cry. And you did eat a lot in that scene.”

  “No danger of that now,” I said with my head still in the fridge.

  “I know.” She sat down at the kitchen table. “When you and Mom were in Sonora, dad and I made hamburgers every night or went out to dinner. It was pretty cool. Or I ate at Tiffany’s house.”

  Tiffany’s best friend in her fifth-grade class was named Tiffany Peacock. She was petite and Hawaiian, with long dark hair and dark eyes and tan skin year-round. Mom said she had a promising future as a topless dancer, between her name and her early run at puberty.

  It occurred to me then that I had no idea how my sister got to and from school when I was working. Mom was with me from dawn until after dark when we limped home from the set exhausted.

  “What did you do after school while I was working?” I asked her. She was wearing Op short-shorts like the ones the other Tiffany liked to wear with white tank tops. I wondered when she got them.

  Her right hand brushed her long, dark hair behind her shoulder and she shrugged. “I hung out at Tiffany’s house until Dad picked me up. Or Auntie M came and got me.”

  “It’s like you don’t have a mom when I’m working,” I said sadly.

  “Exactly.” She smiled.

  I didn’t really buy it. “I wish you could come with us.”

  “Nah.” She slid off her chair and left the kitchen.

  The show ended and Mom got back on the phone in the kitchen so she coul
d be congratulated by everyone she knew, while Dad tucked me into my bed. He sat down next to me and paused, as if he were rehearsing his words in his head.

  “I want you to remember something.”

  “What?”

  “It’s a wonderful thing you are doing. Very special. And I’m so proud of you. Millions of people watched tonight. You did a great job. You should be very proud.”

  I smiled in the darkness of my bedroom.

  “But you don’t have to do it if you don’t want to.”

  “Why wouldn’t I want to?” I asked.

  “You may decide you don’t feel like working and just want to go to school. That’s okay too,” he said pointedly.

  “Why can’t I do both? I went back to school after we did the show this time. Mom says I’m going back to work after the summer. Why can’t I do both?”

  Dad patted my arm. “You can do both. But school is the most important thing. Someday you will go to college. So you can’t forget about doing your schoolwork. I know you won’t.”

  “Of course I won’t,” I said.

  “Listen to me.” He paused again to make sure I stayed silent. “You can act when you grow up, but you also might want to do something else.”

  “I’m going to be the first lady president.”

  “Yes, you can be the first lady president. Or whatever you want. Whatever makes you happy. That’s what is so great about our country. It’s a free society with a free market.”

  “What’s a free market?” I asked.

  “It’s the reason why President Reagan stands up to the Soviets. So everyone in America can go to college and work hard and become whatever they want to be. You can work hard and move up in the world. Just because someone is born into a poor family, there’s no reason they can’t end up wealthy. It’s not the same in the Soviet Union. The people there don’t have the freedom to become anything they want if they work hard enough.”

  I tried to imagine what he meant.

  “My parents were very poor, okay? My shoes had holes in them.”

  Here we go with the shoes, I thought.

  “My dad bought one new car in his whole life. One. A four-hundred-dollar Chevy. He loved it. But my point is, we lived on the South Side of Chicago and we didn’t have a lot of stuff, like our family has now. My brother and I barely had any toys.” He paused for effect.

  “But my parents worked hard and told me that I could go to college and have a much better life, and they were right. I went to college and became an engineer and now I own my own business. It’s a small business, but I’m my own boss. And we own our own home and have cars and a nice life. I want you to know that you will go to college, no matter what. And then you can choose to stay in showbiz, or you can choose to be a doctor, or the first lady president. Or an astronaut.”

  “First lady president,” I repeated.

  He laughed. “Someday I will tell you about Adam Smith and The Wealth of Nations.”

  “Is that a book? Can you read it to me now?”

  “No. It’s too late.” I could hear the smile in his voice. “But I will tell you now that it’s about the Invisible Hand.”

  “Why is the hand invisible?” I was partly curious, partly stalling.

  “Because you don’t need to see it to know it’s working,” he said wistfully.

  “How do you know it’s there?”

  “Because there’s evidence everywhere you look. It’s another way of saying market forces work when they are left alone. And it makes sense. It’s logical. That’s enough for tonight. Time to close your eyes, and think of something nice but sort of boring, like baseball. And you’ll fall asleep.”

  He kissed my forehead gently, and I pictured this giant Invisible Hand throwing a baseball. I was watching the whole thing, as First Lady President.

  By the time the next season of Little House on the Prairie began airing, my life had changed in a very specific way. Everywhere I went, people recognized me from the show.

  I could feel the attention unfolding. A stranger would look in my direction, the way a person’s eyes naturally move over a face that passes in front of him. Then a flicker of recognition. The eyes dart back. They search my face, trying to place me. Then the shock of full recognition. A smile. Followed by a quick turn to the person next to them. A loud whisper, the other person looking confused. Their eyes find my face. The same process, the same jolt.

  At first, I enjoyed the novelty of being recognized by strangers. Then the attention made me terribly self-conscious. I started to hide my face or turn away when a stranger started to recognize me. If they got up the nerve to ask, “Are you Cassandra from Little House on the Prairie?” I liked to say no. But I felt guilty when I did this because I knew I was being rude. I didn’t want to be mean or lie, but all the attention was just too much even though I had recently turned nine years old. I was still a kid, and it was an invasion.

  In general, I could handle attention, but the kind that could be turned on and off like a light. This was a pulsating strobe I had no power to dim.

  When the filming of Little House resumed in the fall, one of the more pleasant changes on the set was the addition of the character Nancy. Her real name was Allison Balson. The writers were reincarnating the original show by positioning me as the New Laura and giving me a New Nellie, or archenemy. Naturally the script called for Allison and me to loathe each other on sight, and just like the first pair of girls on the show, we ended up rolling in the mud, trying to scratch each other’s eyes out.

  Allison had stunning pale blonde ringlets trimmed with bows and gorgeous dresses that I coveted. The wardrobe team decorated her each day like an exquisite, expensive doll. But playing the most elaborately bedecked character meant Allison got tortured in hair and makeup for two long hours every day, and she schlepped the heaviest ruffled petticoat around under her ornate dresses to keep them fluffed, even in the hundred-degree heat of the San Fernando Valley.

  I also found a friend in Rachel, one of the twins who played Carrie, my adopted sister. Rachel was easygoing and relaxed, always happy to hang out on one of the unlit sets that wasn’t being used, or court trouble around the property truck. I’d latch on to her and her twin sister. The twins’ professional names were Lindsay and Sidney. From the back, we looked like triplets, with our long brown braids and prairie dresses. We’d steal into the fake Mercantile Exchange and snag candy from the set. Then we’d bite into the candy only to find out it had been aging on the set since the show started eight years earlier. But in a few days, we’d go back for more, hoping some set designer had restocked the shelves, though they never did.

  Much to my dismay, Jason wanted to hang out with the older kids. But no matter what, a pack of kids, regulars or extras, roamed around the set when we weren’t in the schoolroom logging hours with our books. Still every grip, assistant director, and makeup artist looked out for the kids and doted on us.

  Michael expected us to work like adults, but he also engineered horseplay in between shots. On rare occasion, he even wasted film. One blazing hot day in the Valley, I said my line, and when he turned to answer, he opened his mouth and a live bullfrog jumped out. This was no prop or product of Hollywood special effects. It was a filthy toad he’d found on the ground in between takes. I screamed in terror, no doubt only slightly less afraid than the poor frog who thought he’d turned into Michael’s lunch.

  Another time Michael put a tarantula under his hat, then removed it and delivered his lines as if he didn’t know a huge furry black spider was perched on his head, slowly climbing through his bangs. When it stepped on his forehead with its long fuzzy creepy legs, we all screamed bloody murder. He was so pleased with the effect, he never seemed to consider the potential downside of recruiting a random desert tarantula to stroll on his face.

  During one of the last weeks of the season on Little House, Mom invited my Brownie troop to take a field trip to the set. “Every single one replied yes,” she’d said smugly.

  Eight
een third graders showed up with their moms. I ran to them excitedly when they arrived, but Jennifer and Marybeth stood a little stiffly as if they didn’t recognize me in my costume.

  “Hey, guys!” I boomed.

  Christy bounded over to me, but most of the others just stood silently, their heads swiveling as they tried to take in everything from the rafters to the blinding lights to the cable-covered floors.

  “This . . . is where they shoot the interior shots,” Mom explained authoritatively as she walked the group around the set, displaying impressive leadership skills, especially for someone who had flatly refused to ever host a Brownie troop meeting at our house.

  We’d been shooting a winter episode, and the set designers had stapled white foam sheets to all the wooden buildings and window frames to make it look like snow. The magic of the set, layered on top of the general wizardry of creating a television show, enchanted Brownie Troop 407.

  The Little House on the Prairie set was without question a magical place to work. Which was why the end of the run crushed Mom’s spirit. She went from being on top of the world, bragging loudly wherever she went, to housebound and brooding.

  The mini-Laura and mini-Nellie gambit had worked for a time to boost ratings and reignite the American heartland’s interest in a show that was getting long in the tooth, but then Michael decided the whole family had to go. The nineteenth-century well had finally run dry. His creative energies were turning to a new show, Highway to Heaven, in which he would play the role of an angel, no matter how improbable this might seem to television viewers who had read about his serial womanizing in the National Enquirer.

  In the spring of 1982, I was sad to leave my new friends, but happy enough to go back to school and have more time to ride my horse. Besides, every job I had ever had had come to an end. Why would this one be any different? But Mom reacted as if someone close to her had died. After receiving the phone call informing us that the show was over, she didn’t answer the phone for days. She didn’t want to talk to anyone, including me.