The Daddy Audition

by Cindi Myers

  “He sounds like a real fun guy.” How had Tanya ended up with a jerk like him?

  “He was really good at reading people and giving them what they wanted,” she said, as if she’d anticipated his unspoken question. “When I met him, I was still a starstruck young actress. The thing I wanted most in the world was to make it big. He was a little better known and played the part of someone who was on the cusp of greatness. He made me think he wanted to take me with him—that he saw my true talent and together no one could stop us. We’d be the next Hepburn and Tracy, the next Brad and Angelina.” Her laughter was bitter.

  “When I got pregnant, he was horrified. A baby wasn’t part of the script he’d written for his life. Then, when our show was canceled and I told him I wanted to focus on raising Annie instead of rushing on to the next big thing, that was the beginning of the end.”

  She glanced at him. “After we split up, I moved into a little place not much better than the one I’d started out in, only this time my roommate was Annie, not another actress.”

  “And then you decided to come home,” he said.

  “And then I decided to come home.” She glanced at him. “But somehow I never pictured that would mean Annie and I would be living in the house I grew up in with my parents. It’s as if I’ve gone backward in life, and now I’m stuck. Having my own place would help me feel I’m making some progress, getting on with my life.”

  He hated that the one thing she wanted was out of his power to give her. Some women demanded diamonds or fancy cars. All Tanya longed for was a home to live in with her little girl. If he’d thought he could get away with it, he’d find some great house for her and pay the difference between what she could afford and the actual rental price. But Tanya was too smart to be fooled by such a maneuver and too proud to accept that kind of favor, even if he could convince her there would be no strings attached.

  The cabin was as charming and cozy as he remembered it. But now he saw it filtered through her descriptions of the other places she’d lived and her hopes for the future. The place was small, only four rooms and a tiny bathroom. The woods were close around it, so that even at midday it was bathed in a greenish light. Worst of all, it was remote, half a mile down a gravel road that would have to be plowed almost every day come winter. The possibility of her and Annie being stranded out here by a big snowstorm was very real. “This isn’t going to work,” he said after they’d walked through the whole place. “Not in winter when it starts to snow.”

  She trailed a hand along the carved mantel above the squat black wood-burning heater. “I’d love it out here in the summer and fall, but you’re right—winters would be hard.” She sighed. “If it was just me, I might give it a try, but I have to think of Annie.”

  “You know you could come and live with me.” The invitation had been in his mind since the first night they’d spent together, but he hadn’t intended to issue it until she gave some indication that she was open to the idea. Frustrated by his inability to help her, he’d blurted it out and held his breath, awaiting her response.

  She stared at him. “Are you serious?”

  He nodded, then found his voice. “Yes. Annie, too, of course. You said it yourself—it’s a home built for a family.”

  She folded her arms and rubbed her shoulders, as if she was cold, and turned away. “That’s a very generous offer,” she said. “But that’s a big step. One I’m not ready to take.”

  “Of course. I understand. Forget I said it.” He felt sick to his stomach, and wished he’d never spoken. No matter what kind words she used to couch it, her answer was still no. She dated him, she even slept with him, but there was this distance between them and a feeling of impermanence that drove him crazy. How could he get past that? And what if he couldn’t? He felt as clueless as he had in high school. And he still didn’t know what Tanya was thinking. He didn’t know if she was in love with him, or merely playing the part until a better role came along.

  Chapter Twelve

  “This is my classroom over here.” Annie pulled at Tanya’s hand and determinedly forged her way through the crowded hallways of Crested Butte Community School. Parents’ Night was a tradition Tanya remembered well from her own school days. The scent of pencil shavings and chalk brought back memories of hours spent decorating the classroom with student artwork and examples of what everyone was learning. Even the most jaded high school senior was apt to be caught up in the spirit of things on this night when it seemed the whole community converged on the classrooms.

  As Tanya and Annie snaked their way past the auditorium and the science labs toward the elementary classrooms, Tanya spotted more than one upperclassman’s locker decorated with ribbons and signs welcoming Mom or Dad. She smiled at the sweetness of the sentiments, even when invoked in bold black-and-purple graffiti-style script.

  “My teacher, Mrs. Edison, sits up there.” Annie proudly pointed out Mrs. Edison’s desk, then led her mother to a smaller desk in the third row. “And this is where I sit, next to my friend Shay. This is my spelling test from last week. See, I got an A.”

  “That’s terrific, honey.” Tanya slid into the child-size desk, her knees bumping painfully against the underside as she did so. She hid her grimace and looked through the drawings and papers Annie gleefully showed her, a lump rising in Tanya’s throat that had nothing to do with the ache in her knees. How had she been so lucky as to end up with such a smart, beautiful child? After all she’d been through—the divorce and the move and starting over in a new school—Annie remained sunny and cheerful, the greatest joy in Tanya’s life.

  “What’s wrong, Mama?” Annie’s voice pulled Tanya from her reverie.

  “Nothing’s wrong, honey. Why would you think that?”

  “You’re looking at me all funny.”

  “I’m just really proud of you.” Tanya pulled Annie close. “I love you very much.”

  “I love you, too, Mom.” Annie squirmed out of her grasp. “But I don’t want any of the big kids thinking I’m a little baby,” she added in a whisper.

  Tanya laughed. “Of course not. I promise to behave myself.”

  “Ms. Bledso! It’s such a pleasure to meet you.” A short middle-aged woman in a red jumper bustled to the desk where Tanya sat. “Annie is a delight to have in class.” She lowered her voice, but not the wattage of her smile. “And I’ve been a big fan of yours since the first season of Penrose Valley. I never dreamed I’d get to meet you in person.”

  “It’s a pleasure to meet you, too,” Tanya said. “Annie really enjoys having you as her teacher. And judging by the papers she’s shown me, she’s really doing well.”

  “Oh, she is. Annie is a wonderful student. You know, I used to tape Penrose Valley every day so I could watch it when I got home. I didn’t miss a single episode for four years.”

  “Is this her?” Another taller woman with short blond hair and a bright pink blouse over black slacks joined them.

  “This is my friend Sandy Carson,” Mrs. Edison said. “She’s a fan of yours, too.”

  “It’s not every day we get a real celebrity here in Crested Butte,” Ms. Carson said. “Well, they sometimes come to ski, but I don’t think we’ve had one right here in the school before.”

  “It’s nice to meet you.” Tanya shook her hand. Her life now seemed so far away from Hollywood and celebrity, this sudden adulation caught her off guard. She was a working single mom like many of the other women here in this room. The fact that she’d had a role in a soap opera a few years ago didn’t make her or her life any different from theirs.

  She was saved from the awkwardness of the situation by Annie’s announcement that she was hungry. “Can we go check out the refreshments in the cafeteria?” she pleaded.

  “That’s a great idea,” Tanya said. She slid out from the desk, careful not to bang her knee this time, and shook hands once more with Mrs. Edison, Ms. Carter and a third woman who had shown up to see what the fuss was about, and made her escape down the hallway.<
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  But Annie dawdled on the way to the cafeteria. “I almost forgot,” she said. “There’s something else I want to show you.” She halted in front of a glass case outside the principal’s office.

  Tanya recognized the school’s Wall of Fame, as it had been dubbed decades ago. The case contained the basketball and volleyball trophies of past high school teams, medals awarded at debate meets and band competitions, and citations given to students for community service.

  She found the Regional Championship trophy the basketball team had won her senior year. Jack had been a team captain and the leading scorer. And there he was in the photograph next to the trophy, smiling at her from the middle of the second row. Her breath caught and for the briefest instant, she was thrust back in time, grinning back at the boy who meant so much to her.

  “Look, Mom, it’s you!” Annie stood on tiptoe and pointed to a pair of photographs in the top middle of the case. The first showed Tanya in costume as Laurey in Oklahoma! her senior year, alongside the article from the local paper in which the reporter declared that “Big things are in store for Crested Butte’s own Tanya Bledso.”

  The second picture was an eight-by-ten publicity shot from her stint as Caroline on Penrose Valley. It was autographed “With much love to the folks back home, from Tanya Bledso.” Accompanying it were two articles—one a profile of her from Redbook magazine, dated six years previous, the second an article about her Daytime Emmy nomination the following year. Letters tacked on the wall beneath the photos proclaimed “Tanya Bledso, our own Hollywood Star.”

  She stared at the picture with a disorienting sensation of déjà vu. This was the sort of thing she’d fantasized about when she was a girl. She’d whiled away hours imagining her return to the school in a black stretch limo, a fur coat thrown casually about her shoulders, diamonds wreathing her neck. The whole town would turn out to greet her and cheer for the local girl who was now a Hollywood legend.

  But tonight there was no limo and furs, only jeans and a cardigan, and an excited Annie, clinging to her hand. “You’re famous, Mama!” Annie said, nose pressed to the glass to study the photographs.

  “No, I’m not, honey,” Tanya said. “I’m not famous.”

  Annie leaned back from the glass and looked up at her mother. “What about Daddy? Is he famous?”

  Stuart wanted to be famous. The last she’d heard, he was on location in Africa, shooting a film he was sure would be his ticket straight to the top. And maybe he was right. He certainly had the drive to realize his dream, and he had a Daytime Emmy as proof of his talent.

  Tanya had received an Emmy nomination, but Stuart had the actual award, something he liked to point out when he’d been drinking too much and was feeling nasty.

  “You don’t have talent,” he told her one evening when they’d been battling—and he’d been drinking—all day. “The only reason you even got that part on Penrose Valley was because I saw your audition and asked the producer to hire you. He owed me a favor, so he gave you the part. You got the role because I thought you had a cute body, not because you had any talent, so don’t kid yourself.”

  She still felt the impact of those ugly words, like a sucker punch to the gut. She’d told herself he was lying—of course she had talent. A critic had called her “a luminous talent” once, and while the show was on the air, she got bags of fan mail every week.

  But then the show was canceled and the mail stopped. And Tanya had a hard time getting even enough commercial work to pay the bills. What if Stuart was right and she didn’t have talent? What if she’d been deluding herself all along?

  That’s when she’d decided to return to Crested Butte. She needed time away from the Hollywood madness to process the past and think about the future. She’d felt like a coward running away, but standing here in the school hallway, staring at this homage to the girl she’d been, she felt a flutter of pride and yes…relief. Maybe she hadn’t made a big splash in Tinseltown. But here in the mountains, among the people she loved, she was still their shining star.

  BY MID-SEPTEMBER, frost decorated car windshields each morning and preparations for Vinotok were well under way in downtown Crested Butte. Schoolchildren decorated boxes with illustrations of dragons and fairies and the earth and distributed them among the town’s businesses, along with placards which invited people to write down all their grumps, complaints and anything they wanted out of their lives and deposit the slips of paper in the boxes. On the final day of the Vinotok celebration, the boxes would be collected and paraded to the crossroads to be burned in a ritual to clear the air and welcome fall.

  Jack’s only gripe these days was that he felt stuck in his relationship with Tanya. They saw each other often and she had even spent a few more evenings at his home, but there was no talk of the future. She avoided the topic and any conversation that hinted at any kind of commitment between them. He’d tried to discover what it was that held her back to no avail. He told himself he needed to be patient, to give her time to learn that she could trust him with her heart.

  But after ten years of waiting, his patience had deserted him. He loved her; he wanted to know she loved him, too, and wanted to be with him forever.

  “Jack, wait up. You’re just the man we’re looking for.”

  Jack was contemplating a gripe box one afternoon when Max and Zephyr hailed him. “What’s up?” Jack asked.

  “You’ve been drafted.” Max clapped a hand on Jack’s shoulder.

  “Drafted? Who’s drafting me and why?”

  “You’ve been called into service for Vinotok,” Zephyr said.

  “My wife is drafting you to build the Grump,” Max explained.

  The Grump was the only character in the Vinotok play who wasn’t portrayed by an actual person.

  “I can supply some scrap lumber and stuff, but somebody more artistic than me will need to paint and dress the thing,” Jack said.

  “We’ll help you,” Zephyr said. “Bryan will pitch in, too.”

  “Can either of you draw?” Jack asked. “I only took architecture in college, not art.”

  “Art is art,” Zephyr said. “I can sing and play guitar, so why not draw and paint, too?”

  “Besides,” Max said, “the Grump is supposed to be a monster. He’s supposed to look scary.”

  “We can give him flaming eyeballs and big, nasty teeth.” Zephyr twisted his face into a grotesque leer.

  “Then how will the crowd tell the two of you apart?” Max deadpanned.

  “Very funny.” Zephyr punched his friend in the shoulder. “At least I won’t be wearing green tights.”

  Max groaned.

  “How is the Green Man working out for you?” Jack asked.

  Max grimaced. “Dude, I just want to get it over with. I told Casey she owes me big-time. But Tanya is amazing—she blows the rest of us away.”

  “Yeah, and she came up with a great way to get around the tradition that says the Earth Mother is supposed to be pregnant,” Zephyr said.

  “What is that?”

  “It’s supposed to be a surprise.” Max frowned at Zephyr.

  “Oh, yeah, I forgot.” Zephyr pantomimed buttoning his lip. “But everyone will love it.”

  Of course they would. Everyone loved Tanya.

  “So will you help us build the Grump?” Max asked.

  “Sure.”

  “We’re meeting at the theater Sunday afternoon to rehearse the play,” Max said. “Stop by then and we can throw around some ideas.”

  TANYA SPENT most of Friday morning working on a grant proposal. Finding funding for the town’s various arts programs was a constant challenge and one to which she devoted a significant amount of time. When she’d aspired to be an actress so many years ago, she hadn’t pictured spending this many hours chained to a desk.

  So she welcomed even the brief break a phone call brought. “Tanya Bledso, Crested Butte Center for the Arts.”

  “Tanya, it’s Rudy. How are you?”

  “I’m fin
e. How nice to hear from you.” She’d hired Rudy Arledge as her agent when she decided to go back to work after the divorce, thinking new representation would help pull her career out of the doldrums. But though he’d worked hard for her, even Rudy hadn’t been able to find work for an actress who’d been out of the public eye for several years.

  “I called because I’ve got a great opportunity for you,” Rudy said. “A new production company is casting for a prime-time drama and they’ve got a part that would be perfect for you.”

  She opened her mouth to tell him “thanks, but no thanks,” that she was perfectly happy here in her hometown, raising her daughter and living a quiet life, but the words wouldn’t come. Instead, she felt the old familiar excitement building in her belly, rising up within her. “It’s been a long time,” she said.

  “I know. And I know you told me you were retiring, but these people came to me looking for you. This could be a terrific break for you.”

  “I don’t know, Rudy.” Butterflies beat frantically in her stomach now, and she clung to the edge of the desk to steady herself.

  “I’ve seen the script and it’s perfect for you.” He spoke in a rush, excitement elevating his voice. “The drama is about four sisters. You’d play the youngest—smart, beautiful and scheming, but with a heart. Lots of range. This is the kind of show that has hit written all over it. It’s the sort of role that could win you an Emmy.”

  How many times over the years had she longed for just such a call from Rudy? How many times had she dreamed of this kind of chance? She stared out her office window at the mountain peaks dusted with the first high country snows. Hollywood, with its palm trees and bustling traffic, seemed a million miles away.

  “You owe it to yourself to at least come and talk to these people,” Rudy said. “Read for them. See what they’re offering.”