I storm toward the table, determined to rip Monique Braxton’s card into a million little pieces and sprinkle them on my mom’s bed.
“How do I wlook?” Molly says before I get there. She stands in the bathroom door, fully dressed, her hair pulled into two sloppy pigtails. “Gwrandma says it’s bettewr if I weawr my haiwr up so I wlook pwrofessionawl.”
I suppress a snicker. “You look very professional.”
Sitting at one of the kitchen chairs, I pat my lap for her to climb aboard.
Heavy and solid, like a sack of potatoes she molds against me. I kiss her temple and breathe her in. The slightest trace of baby remains—pink flesh and Johnson’s baby shampoo. I hope she never stops using that shampoo, though I know she will. Already Tom and Emily have switched to using my Suave, still sweet but not as soft.
“Love Bug, you want to do this? Act in a commercial?”
She tilts her head. “Ms. Bwraxton says she wants me to dance.”
“Oh, she did, did she? What else did Ms. Braxton say?”
“She asked if I wlike dancing, and when I towld hewr I did, she asked if I wanted to get paid to dance, and that’s when I wreawlly said yes.”
I smile because I know Molly is thinking about chocolate ice cream.
“Well, then,” I say, lifting her off my lap and standing, “I guess we’d better go see Ms. Braxton about getting you a job.”
* * *
The offices of Braxton Talent Agency are sprawled across the top floor of a modern glass and steel building on the corner of Wilshire and Western. Before we left the condo, I Googled Monique Braxton and was duly impressed. She’s exactly as my mom said, a mega-mogul showbiz giant who represents hundreds of famous child stars.
Molly and I wait in the lobby for the elevator. Standing beside us is a beefy man with no hair on his head and lots of hair everywhere else. Tufts of it sprout from his collar, his cuffs, and his ears. He wears a tool belt and a mechanic’s shirt with a patch on the pocket that says Hector.
“Headin’ up to the Braxton Agency?” he asks, sizing up Molly. “She’s a cute one all right.”
I give a polite smile.
“Pimpin’ out the pooty, that’s the way to do it. Wish my kids had an ounce of cutes. You bet I’d be cashin’ in on that action. Get me a big old house, a nice car, maybe a yacht, definitely a Harley.”
I say nothing, wishing for the elevator to hurry up.
“Ridin’ on easy street. Do me some of that. You should hear the kids that come in here, whinin’ and complainin’ ’cause they’re tired or ’cause the burger they needed to eat for some commercial was cold. If they was my kids, let me tell you, I’d tell them to stop their damn snivelin’ and suck it up, to eat the damn burger, imaginin’ it’s lettuce, green lettuce, the kind a cabbage that pays for a Mercedes and a house with a big-ass Jacuzzi and season seats to the Lakers.”
Finally the elevator dings and the doors open. We wait for it to unload, and Hector steps on and politely holds it open.
“We’ll take the next one,” I say, gripping Molly’s hand tighter than necessary.
“We’wre not going up?” Molly asks when the door closes.
“Yes, baby, we’re going up. We’re just going to wait for the next one.”
Ding. The next elevator arrives, and Molly pulls me on board.
“Which button?” she asks, clearly excited by so many bright white prospects.
“Twenty.”
“That’s the top one,” she squeals.
We fly upward so quickly that I’m certain we’re going to shoot right through the ceiling and be launched into the sky like in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. But remarkably, at the twentieth floor, we glide smoothly to a stop, and the doors swoosh open to reveal a gleaming reception area with a gleaming young receptionist.
“Hello, may I help you?” the woman singsongs.
Molly beats me to the response. “We’wre hewre to see Ms. Bwraxton. She wants me to dance in a commewrcial. My name is Mowlly Mawrtin.”
“Well, aren’t you the cutest? I’ll let Ms. Braxton know you’re here.”
She skips off, and Molly and I take a seat on the white suede sofa, both of us sitting on the edge, certain our very proximity will soil it. Surrounding us are dozens of posters for television shows and movies, past and present, all featuring megastar kids, so many that it’s hard to believe one agency is responsible for so much success.
“Hey, it’s Caleb,” Molly says, pointing to a poster for the hit show The Foster Band, our favorite show on television.
Caleb is a boy around Emily’s age, and both Molly and Emily have mad crushes on him. His larger-than-life face mischievously grins at us, his hands held out in a shrug. And I agree with my girls, he’s very cute.
The receptionist reappears. “Ms. Braxton will see you now.”
We follow her down a corridor lined with glass-walled offices filled with important-looking people who look like they just stepped out of a Hugo Boss or Anne Klein catalog, depending on whether they are men or women, and as we pass, each head lifts, sizing us up like we are sushi on a conveyor belt being judged for delectability and consumption.
The receptionist raps lightly on a mahogany door at the end of the hall then opens it to reveal a large office with a sweeping view of the city.
Monique Braxton stands from behind a marble topped desk, and I’m so taken by surprise that my nerves run out of me. Funny how the internet can distort things. She’s tiny, not a midget but certainly a head shorter than normal. Looking at her photos on the web, I thought she was tall, a formidable woman of substance, but seeing her now, it’s as though she’s been run through a Shrinky Dinks machine. She’s six inches shorter than me and only a foot taller than Molly.
Despite her diminutive size, she’s attractive—brown hair cropped precisely at her chin, almond eyes, skin stretched unnaturally smooth over high cheekbones, and an aerobicized body, thin everywhere except a slight bulge at her tummy.
“Mrs. Martin, it’s nice to meet you.” She extends a French-manicured hand. “And Molly, nice to see you again.”
“Faye,” I correct as Molly says, “Do you stiwll want me to dance in youwr commewrcial?”
“A gold mine,” Monique Braxton mumbles under her breath as her eyes roam over Molly, drinking in her adorableness. Then she smiles wide, showing a set of perfect veneers, and says, “Absolutely. But right now do you mind having a few photos taken?” She looks at me. “With your permission of course. Just a few headshots.”
I nod, then as if planned, the door opens and a gorgeous man enters. Six feet tall, day-old beard, chiseled body, ringless left hand.
“Miss Molly and Miss Molly’s mom, I presume,” he says with no shortage of flair, reaffirming the fact that all gorgeous men over the age of thirty are either married or gay.
When Molly and the photographer are gone, Monique Braxton and I get down to business. It’s not a negotiation, nor is she asking whether we want to do this. It is assumed, by the fact that we are here, that we are on board. Which I suppose we are. Now that it is actually happening, it is very exciting.
After explaining her role as an agent and that she gets ten percent of what Molly earns, she says, “The Gap wants her. It’s national and has the potential to run like crazy. They’ll offer five, but we’ll get ten.”
“Excuse me,” I say, interrupting. “Ten what?”
“Ten thousand for the shoot. It’s top end for a noncelebrity, but I’ll argue Molly’s worth it because of the video. They won’t blink. They’ll be glad I’m not hijacking them for more. I could, but it’s best to keep it friendly. Should pan out to fifty-plus over the year…”
She’s still talking, but I’m not listening. Fifty-plus, fifty thousand dollars or more for a commercial? One commercial?
That’s a lot of chocolate ice cream. My heart and brain pulse in equal measure as I attempt to calculate what that kind of money could do for our family. Therapy for Tom blazes in the forefront. Pa
y off our enormous debt. Repair the van’s cracked head.
“Are you married?” Monique Braxton says, breaking my distraction.
“Huh?”
“Married? Do you have a husband?”
It’s a simple question.
I nod, a simple answer. She smiles approvingly, and I reflect the grin back, the answer and my expression suggesting a loving partnership of stability and parenting and conjuring up images of white picket fences, family barbeques, and weekend trips to the zoo.
“How long?”
“Eleven…I mean, twelve years.”
She nods, impressed, and I wonder how many trips she’s taken down the aisle. There’s no evidence of a family—no ring, family portrait, or clay-coiled mug proclaiming World’s Greatest Mom. Her desk is stacked with papers, manila folders, a laptop, and a lipstick-stained Starbucks cup.
“Will he be involved?” she asks.
“Who?”
Her head tilts slightly, and her finely teased brow puckers. “Your husband.”
“No. Only me.” A more accurate summary of my twelve-year union to Sean.
“That’s fine. It’s better that way. Too many hands in the cookie jar complicates things.”
Her words are sharp and concise like the rest of her. Her clothes, her hair, her office—all of it direct and tidy. Monique Braxton is a woman in control of her life, the kind of woman I would like to be though know I never will. Like a beagle being envious of a fox, I can try, but at the end of the day, only one of us is going to end up dinner for the mountain lions, and chances are it’s not going to be the fox.
On the wall behind Monique are her claims to fame, over a hundred framed eight-by-ten black-and-white headshots of the children she’s discovered and turned into household names, everyone from the megahit band Colorwand to Lloyd Stevens, the actor who plays the adorable Axel on the hit series The Hamptons.
My eyes catch on a portrait toward the bottom left, a boy in a striped shirt, his dark bangs draped across slashed eyebrows and smoldering eyes. I stare at his lips, remembering how I used to fantasize about kissing them when I was eleven. Brian Raffo, my first crush. He played Mike Sloan in the movie The Inside Job—the tough, street-smart kid who gave a lawyer a dollar to defend him against the police who were trying to bully him into testifying against the mob.
For years, I kept that same photo pasted inside my closet door, until the day Brian got busted for drugs. When I heard the news, I took the picture down and threw it away. It pissed me off, like what he had done was personal. Which in a way it was, four years is a long time to love someone when you’re only fifteen.
“I miss him,” Monique Braxton says, following my stare to look with me at Brian’s immortalized eleven-year-old image. “He was one of my first clients.” Her voice cracks with emotion, and suddenly I remember he’s dead. Dead a long time. I don’t remember how long, but long enough that I read about it in the newspaper instead of online. I remember there were two photos beneath the headline, one of him from the movie and the other, a recent one of him as an adult.
Monique Braxton pulls her shoulders back to recompose her flawless veneer, but she does a poor job of it, a glassiness remains in her eyes that wasn’t there before, and I know I was right; Monique Braxton doesn’t have children of her own. Behind her are her children, a hundred of them, and she cares about them as much as any mother does.
I glance again at the picture of Brian and realize with a shudder that my tastes didn’t change much from when I was a girl to when I was a young woman. Sean looks a lot like Brian, same intense eyes and wiseass smirk. He ended up being a disappointment as well, and I wonder if I was predestined to be attracted to great-looking, sweet-talking losers who lie.
9
Molly is ready. We’re in nearly the exact spot where it all started, the Third Street Promenade, half a block from where Molly and the big man had their famous throwdown.
The sun has yet to rise, and though it’s the middle of June, it’s cold as winter, the air brittle, patent gusts from the ocean piercing my clothes and turning my skin blue.
I sit on a bench with Molly asleep in my arms. The big man, whose name is Leroy, sits beside us—six and a half feet of gentle, sweet teddy bear. He keeps thanking Molly and me for getting him this gig, and I keep telling him we had nothing to do with it, but no matter what I say, he won’t be convinced. Like a dog rescued from the pound, he hangs around us like a loyal mutt whose life has been spared.
In front of us, the crew dresses the set, dozens of people bustling around, hanging lights, positioning props, cleaning windows, readying the street for the big dance number. The promenade is taped off for the entire block, security guards posted at either end. It’s both thrilling and stressful. We have until nine to get the shots we need, then the promenade will be reopened.
The crew has been here since two this morning preparing, and nervous energy buzzes in the air. At least a hundred people mill around—grips, sound technicians, cameramen, dancers, choreographers, directors, producers, ad people, editors. It’s mind-boggling the amount of money, talent, and effort that goes into making a single thirty-second commercial. The Gap is going to need to sell a lot of overalls to pay for all this.
Though the sun has yet to rise, the set is noon bright, illuminated by a thousand lights shining on the hundred-foot strip of promenade, and you would never know it’s actually a sunless, chilly morning. I pull the beach towel I grabbed from the van tighter around Molly as I shudder away my own chills.
Molly has her part down, and I’m proud to the point of bursting. The days leading up to this have been both long and hard. Yesterday and the day before, we needed to be up at five to begin our workday at six, and we didn’t return home until after nine.
Officially we only worked four hours plus a half hour for lunch, which is the maximum allowed for a four-year-old. The rest of our day was logged as “dance lessons,” which were offsite and therefore didn’t count as “work.”
I asked Monique Braxton if I should be concerned about the rules being bent, and she encouraged me to be flexible, so that’s what I’ve been. But I understand why the rules are in place—four-year-olds aren’t built for endurance, and the long days have taken their toll.
The first day Molly was fine, adrenaline kept her awake. The second she faded in the afternoon, falling asleep in my arms during the breaks. And today she’s pooped. I could barely get her out of bed this morning, and she’s been out since her makeup and hair were finished an hour ago.
The commercial is a direct knockoff of the YouTube video. Molly and Leroy are the stars, and the dance starts off with Leroy dancing to “Johnny B. Goode,” then he and Molly get into a throwdown that evolves into an awesome routine with a dozen professional dancers around them.
From where I sit, I can see the yellow awning of Namaka. The manager fired me when I told him I needed a few days off, and I’ve never been so relieved to lose a job in my life. The next job I get won’t have cumin or curry or little men with big teeth who leer at me.
The only sour note of the experience is that Emily missed her soccer playoff. She was supposed to play the evening of our first day of rehearsals, and I was certain I’d be home in time to take her, but that was before I realized how flexible we needed to be.
I shudder at the memory of our conversation.
I’m sorry you missed the game, I said, as I sat on the bed beside her and smoothed her hair. She had been crying, her eyes red. You’ll make it to the next one.
She whirled and sat up so quickly that she sent me stumbling off the mattress. There won’t be a next one, she screamed, her hate lancing me. It was a playoff game, and we lost. You don’t even listen to me.
I opened my mouth to defend myself, but she was right. I had no idea that game was the last one if they lost. She might have told me, but the moment she starts talking soccer, my brain numbs over, detouring to all the other more important things I need to think about.
The AD, as
sistant director, walks toward us, and I tense. She’s a sweet woman unless you piss her off, then she’ll rip your head off and display it on a stake for the rest of the cast to see, and Molly and I have learned to be very careful around her.
“It’s time,” she says, and I feel her stress, her already short fuse nipped to a nub with the pressure of how important this morning is.
Leroy feels it too and shifts to sit up straighter.
“Love Bug,” I coo, “time to wake up.”
Molly snorts once then resumes snoring.
I jostle her and rub her shoulder. “Come on, Bugabaloo, ups-a-daisy.”
Molly flops over, her carefully made-up face swiping across my sweatshirt and leaving a peach smudge.
Makeup is not going to be happy. Neither is Molly. Molly despises primping in general—hates taking a bath, hates having her hair brushed—and she has not enjoyed the makeup and hair portion of this experience. Like a dog at the groomers, she moans and groans each time she’s forced into the chair.
The AD’s shoulders hitch, and I feel her instant impatience. Her fists clench and the vein on the side of her head pulses—Mount Fuji about to blow. Her mouth opens…
Leroy stands and slides between us and the woman. He lifts Molly from my arms, and she slumps against him, her head collapsing on his massive shoulder. “Hey, Lil’ Jive,” he whispers in her ear, “it’s time to dance.”
Molly nods her head against him then wiggles to get down.
Showtime.
10
It’s been two weeks since we finished the commercial, and life has never been better. The kids are off for summer break, and I’ve almost repaired things with Emily. I signed her up for a costly club soccer team that she desperately wanted to be a part of, and that has kept her busy and happy four mornings a week.
Rather than immediately looking for another job, I decided to take a couple of weeks off, and every day has been spent at the beach, except for the days we spent taking care of all the things we’ve put off taking care of for a year—doctor and dentist appointments, shoe shopping, clothes shopping, and best of all…present shopping.
No Ordinary Life Page 4
