by Jane Heller
“Peter said it should take about two weeks for the agency to do the storyboard and then maybe another few days for Fin’s to approve it, and then the storyboard goes out for bids to different production companies and then away we go. I think I’ll be on the air in six weeks, because they’re not flying me to some exotic location for the shoot. They’re just sticking me at a kitchen table and letting me speak my piece.”
“Very exciting, Mom,” I said, forcing the words out. “Very, very exciting.” I was excited for her. Excited and nauseous.
“What’s new with you, dear?” she asked. “Anything percolating?”
“Not right this second.” Not right this eternity. While Mom was gearing up for her big break, I was sliding further into obscurity. Mickey hadn’t sent me on an audition in days, so I’d been putting in extra time at Cornucopia!, which padded my bank account a bit but did nothing for my morale. It was hard to be chipper when those Brentwood babes sashayed into the store and hit you with: “Can you watch my kid while I drop a thousand dollars on a set of dishes?” I mean, was I supposed to sell merchandise and iron linens and vacuum carpet and be a day-care worker?
My absolute nadir at Cornucopia! came a few weeks after my mother’s hiring as Fin’s’ pitchwoman. Cameron, the owner, had just given the sales staff a refresher lecture about how we must never, under any circumstances, make reference to a celebrity customer’s movies or TV shows, in order that all the celebrities who frequented the store would feel comfortable, anonymous, under no obligation to be “on.” This lecture had been triggered by Arnold Schwarzenegger’s appearance in the store the previous day and the fact that Sarah, a part-timer like me, had fawned over him to the point of being pathological, and he’d fled without making a single purchase. “Treat them with courtesy, but allow them their space,” Cameron admonished us after explaining that Sarah had been fired. “Either that or find another job.”
So there I was, ears still ringing with Cameron’s threat, when who walked in, on the arm of a fetching redhead, but Jack Rawlins, God’s gift to film criticism— the little shit who’d labeled me Sledgehammer Stacey. He was his tweedy, oh-so-smug self, moving among the merchandise as if the very notion of commerce were beneath him. “Who would ever buy this?” I overheard him say to his lady friend, referring to a desk clock that provided the time on three continents. I wasn’t sure I disagreed about the clock, especially not at the outrageous price Cornucopia! wanted for it, but it was his attitude that was unbearable, the same attitude that had ruined my career.
“Stacey, go over and see if they need any help,” whispered Cameron, nodding at our illustrious customer and his gal. “And remember: no mention of his television show.”
“Couldn’t someone else help him?” I pleaded. “I was just about to take my lunch break.” Not mention his television show? It was all I could do not to grab him by the lapels and tell him what I thought of it—and him.
“Take your lunch break after you help him,” she said. “Everyone else on the floor is busy.”
Fine. Great. Done. I took a deep breath, fluffed my hair, smoothed my sweater, and strode over to the darling couple.
“Is there anything I can help you with or are you just looking today?” I asked, glaring at Jack Rawlins, daring him to remember me from Pet Peeve, daring him to atone for his sin.
“We’re just looking,” said the redhead, fondling a five-hundred-dollar chenille throw.
“How about you?” I said to Rawlins. “Are you just looking, too? Because we have a beautiful pair of sterling silver nose-hair clippers.”
Okay, so we didn’t carry sterling silver nose-hair clippers. I couldn’t resist baiting him, saying something that would get a rise out of him.
He looked at me for a long second or two, as if genuinely trying to place me. When he couldn’t, he said with a smirk, “I’m not in the market for the nose-hair clippers, but have you got any sterling silver nipple rings?”
“Jack!” The redhead pretended to be shocked by him and tousled his hair, as if he were a bad little boy. She turned to me. “He’s got a wicked sense of humor. Don’t mind him.”
“Oh, but I do mind him,” I said, because I couldn’t stop myself.
“Excuse me?” she said.
“I meant, I do mind that I can’t come up with the right item for him.”
Rawlins lowered his tortoiseshell eyeglasses so he could see me better. “The right item for me? What might that be, do you think?”
“Well,” I said, as the redhead wandered off. “What about a letter opener? You get mail, don’t you?” Hate mail, probably.
“I do,” he said, “but my assistant takes care of it.”
“Ah, then I should come up with something more personal,” I said. “What about a mirror?” Or is it too hard for you to look in the mirror after you rip peoples’ reputations to shreds?
“Nope. A mirror isn’t on my shopping list today,” he said. “But you’re extremely enterprising. Has anyone ever told you that?”
“No, but someone once said I had the subtlety of a sledgehammer.” I let the words hang there, just to see if there would be a glimmer of recognition. There wasn’t.
“Whoever said that must not have understood the demands of your job.”
“He didn’t.”
“Well, then to hell with him.”
“My sentiments exactly.”
At that moment, the redhead returned and indicated that she hadn’t found anything she wanted to purchase but was ravenously hungry. “How about the sushi place down the street?” she suggested to Jack.
“They’re doing construction,” he said. “I think they’re closed.”
“Speaking of construction,” I said, insinuating myself into their conversation but focusing my gaze exclusively on him. “You know how that obnoxious person told me I had the subtlety of a sledgehammer?”
Jack nodded absentmindedly.
“He also told me that I should think about going into the construction business. He said—well, why don’t I give you his direct quote—‘Stacey Reiser uses her precious few moments of screen time to pound us over the head with her lines. She has the subtlety of a sledgehammer and should consider applying for a job in construction.’ I’ll bet you’d never say anything as insensitive as that, would you?”
“What on earth is she talking about?” mused the redhead.
It took a few beats, but the remark finally registered with Jack Rawlins. I could see it on his face, which dropped the ha-ha-ha expression he’d worn during our banter and went serious. Yeah, he remembered me now. And he was ashamed. Or, if not ashamed, then a tiny bit chastened. It’s one thing to trash people from behind the safety of a camera; it’s another to have one of the trash-ees confront you face-to-face.
“Jack, I’m starving,” whined the redhead, as she tugged on his sleeve. “Can’t we go?”
He continued to look at me, trying, I think, to formulate a response—perhaps even an apology—but in the end he said nothing and slunk out of the store.
Way to go, Stacey, I complimented myself, loving that I had thrown the jerk’s malicious review right back at him without ever violating Cameron’s edict. I’d never so much as mentioned Jack’s stupid television show or even that I was aware that he hosted one.
Feeling in control of my life for the first time in months, I actually whistled as I walked into the stockroom to grab my sandwich out of the refrigerator.
“Stacey, I noticed that Jack Rawlins didn’t buy anything the whole time he was in here,” said Cameron, who was chomping on a baby spinach leaf. “Tell me you didn’t embarrass yourself with him, not after I just explained my policy toward our celebrity customers.”
I was dying to tell her that the piece of spinach between her teeth was a bigger turnoff to her celebrity customers than asking them for an autograph, but I decided against it. “I didn’t embarrass myself with Jack Rawlins,” I said instead. “As a matter of fact, Cameron, I gave Mr. Rawlins the treatment he richly deserved.”
/> eleven
The night before the Fin’s commercial was scheduled to be shot, I called my mother and asked, for the third time that week, if she wanted me to drive her to the studio.
“I know how nervous you are about the freeways here,” I said.
“That’s sweet of you, dear,” she said, “but, as I’ve already told you, the agency is sending a car and driver to pick me up.”
“Right,” I said. “But why don’t I come along for moral support? This is the first time you’ll be acting in a commercial and, let me tell you from experience, your stomach will be tied up in knots. I remember the first time I shot—”
“Both my agent and my manager will be there, remember?” She cut me off, the way I used to cut her off.
“And the agency people have promised me they’ll do everything they can to provide me with a safe environment, so I can get in touch with my creativity. Besides, they explained how I can use my fear to tap into my inner realness.”
I held the phone away from my ear and stared at it. Was this my mother speaking? Safe environment? Creativity? Inner realness? I mean, sure, okay. The acting thing was a novelty for her, and it was only natural that she’d start parroting the way everyone in the business talked. But to not want me along on her very first shoot? Perhaps she didn’t understand how daunting it is to have a director fire commands at you—where you should stand and how you should move and, most crucially, how you should deliver your lines. Perhaps she didn’t understand that lecturing a bunch of suits in a conference room is a far cry from performing in front of a camera. Yes, I should insist that I go with her, I thought.
“I’ll ride in the car with you, Mom,” I said. “You’re new to the business and you don’t realize how brutal it can be.”
“I won’t hear another word about it, Stacey. You’ve been telling me for years how you’re too busy to take a whole day off to spend with me, and now I finally understand. So listen to your mother: Go to work at your store or run off to your auditions, and don’t worry about me.”
Well, there was no point in arguing about it. “Fine, but I’ll have both my cell phone and my pager with me, so if you want some advice or words of encouragement, call me. Okay, Mom?”
“Yes, yes. I will,” she said. “And now I’d better go to bed. They told me to get a good night’s sleep because tomorrow is bound to be exhausting for me.”
“I was about to suggest the same thing,” I said. “Oh, and here’s a tip: you might want to lay off the dairy products in the morning. Skip the cereal and milk and have some toast and tea instead. Dairy can cause phlegm buildup in the throat, and your voice has to be perfectly clear tomorrow.”
“Actually, dear, the director already told me that. I haven’t had dairy for the past week.”
“I see. Did he tell you about the voice exercises? To limber up your vocal cords?”
“You mean, ‘ahhhh’ and ‘eeeee’ and ‘ooooo’?”
“Yes.” Gee, I couldn’t tell her anything she didn’t know. “And be careful when you get into makeup. Sometimes they use the same brushes on everybody and you can pick up bacteria, especially when it comes to mascara. Maura is the expert in that area, so if you want, I can have her call you tonight and—”
“What I want is to hang up and go to sleep, dear,” said my mother, the person who never—I mean, never— used to let me off the phone. It was I who had to invent stories (the UPS man is at the door, the water on the stove is boiling, the police have to question me about the robbery down the street) to extricate myself from our conversations, and now she was in a hurry to get off with me?
“Okay. Sleep tight,” I said, trying to adjust to this role reversal. “I’ll be thinking about you all day tomorrow, wishing you good luck. I love you, Mom.”
“I love you, too, Stacey. Nighty night.”
My mother did not call me the day of the shoot, because she did not need advice or words of encouragement or anything of the sort. When I finally reached her later that night, she explained that the shoot went without a hitch and that everyone involved was pleased with her performance.
“Tell me, tell me,” I said excitedly. “What did they have you do?”
“Basically, it was a problem-solution type of ad, just as they’d planned in the storyboard. I sat at a kitchen table wearing one of my nice dresses—the dark green one with the bow under the collar—and I looked straight into the camera and told the public what happened with the bone.”
“You’re kidding. I never thought they’d really go with that.”
“Oh, they went with it. They told me to be myself, so I was myself. I said how shocked I was about finding the bone. I lashed out at companies that don’t take their quality control seriously. I spoke up for all us faceless consumers, mothers in particular. But then I recounted how Fin’s invited me to inspect their cannery and how I met their employees and how I was so impressed with their operation that I agreed to come and work for them. The commercial ends with a close-up on me saying, ‘Fin’s is the name you can trust—for taste, for freshness, for honesty.’ And then I wag my finger at the camera and say, ‘And if they slip up, they’ll have me to answer to. Make no bones about it!’ ”
“Hey, that sounds very cute,” I enthused, remembering what Maura had said—that the commercial would probably air during times of the day when no one would see it and that life would return to normal. My mother would go back to being my mother, and I would go back to being the actress in the family.
“Cute? It’s a possible award-winner, according to Peter at W and W. Everybody’s so thrilled with it that they’re considering putting me in a whole series of commercials. They’re waiting for the focus groups to weigh in, then for the commercial to run. If there’s a big bump in sales, your mother could become a household name, Stacey. What do you think of that?”
“I think you shouldn’t get your hopes up,” I said gently. “I’m a veteran of this business, Mom. One day you’re hot. The next day you can’t get arrested. That’s just how it is.”
She laughed. “Such a pessimist, my daughter.”
Wait. She was always the pessimist. I was always the one who said anyone could be a star if they were persistent enough. “I’m only trying to protect you,” I said, as further evidence of how we appeared to have traded places.
The feedback on the commercial was overwhelmingly positive, according to my mother. Focus groups said they loved her authenticity, her credibility, her realness. They said she was a refreshing change from all the phonies on television. They even remarked about her Cleveland accent, how her wide vowels made her seem more trustworthy. They also responded to her age—that she wasn’t a kid but a straight-talking sixtysomething, nor was she a model on loan from a cosmetics commercial. And they got a kick out of the fact that she was grumpy. “Helen Reiser is Everywoman,” one of them wrote on her comment card. “Helen Reiser is Everymother,” wrote another. “Helen Reiser speaks for me,” wrote a third, who also wrote that she thought my mother should run for Congress.
The commercial aired in prime time as well as in day time, and the reaction was sensational. Sales of Fin’s Premium Tuna increased by some ridiculously high percentage, and W&W promptly ordered up three more spots starring my mother.
How did I feel about that? Proud, truly I did. After all, it’s not everyone’s mother who becomes a successful pitchwoman for a tuna fish company, right? Besides, I had pretty much come to terms with the jealousy I’d felt in the beginning, made peace with the fact that she had landed a terrific gig on television. It wasn’t as if we’d ever be competing for the same job, so what was the big deal, I decided.
And then it became a big deal. A huge deal. A monster deal that sent me running to Maura’s house on a Friday night—without calling first. Yup, I just showed up without an invitation, which was not the sort of thing I’d ever done before but was the sort of thing my mother used to do all the time. Without meaning to, I was turning into the very person whose behavior had driven m
e crazy.
“Oh. Stacey,” said Maura, looking startled. She was wearing a bathrobe and clutching it tightly around her, her cranberry hair sticking up in all directions, her lipstick smeared across her left cheek. Clearly, I had interrupted something.
“Whoops. You’re not alone,” I said. “I’ll go.”
“No, you will not.” She grabbed my arm and pulled me inside. “It’s just Rick. You know. The actor who plays Donald on Days. We see each other every once in a while.”
“But, Maura. That guy’s old enough to be your—”
“Shhh. He’s in the bedroom sleeping. One roll in the hay and it’s lights out for the Rickster.”
Whatever works, I thought. If she liked them old, that was her business, as long as they didn’t traumatize her by dying in the saddle. “You sure you don’t want me to leave?”
“Positive. Tell me why you’re so upset.”
We sat on her sofa. After I apologized over and over for barging in on her and Rick, I unburdened myself.
“It was one thing for her to invade my personal space by moving here,” I said, referring to my mother. “It was another for her to invade my professional space by acting in commercials. But now there’s a new plot twist. Apparently, Corbin Beasley, the PR director at Fin’s, isn’t the ineffectual doofus I thought he was when I met him at the cannery. Based on the favorable response to the commercial, he’s sending my mother on a publicity tour. Are you ready for this? He’s booked her on Leno. He’s booked her on Regis. He’s even booked her on— brace yourself— Oprah.”
Maura gasped, finally comprehending the enormity of what I was telling her. “Oprah?”
I nodded.
“But she only does segments about lifting your spirit.”
“Apparently, my mother is going to lift everyone’s spirit by chronicling her rise from obscurity to celebrity, thereby assuring women of all ages that they can ‘make it.’ ”
“But once she appears on Oprah, she’ll be insufferable.”
