Molly and I run through the script again, this time with her saying her parts. She doesn’t get every word exact, but the gist is close and I hope that’s good enough.
“Should we go over it one more time?” I ask, knowing we should, since every other pair in the room is huddled in deep concentration, rehearsing again and again.
Molly shakes her head. “I got it.”
She bounces her legs and smiles at a girl a row away, and the girl returns the grin, giving me back some of my faith in humanity until her mom snaps at her, “Becka, focus. Now remember, you’re supposed to be scared. And on the last line make your eyes well up with tears. Don’t cry, but make them like you’re about to cry. Let’s go over it again.”
I pull Molly closer to me, and Molly doesn’t look at the girl again.
Marley walks out, and everyone in the room watches. Marley is very pretty, petite and fairylike. She has blue eyes and rosebud lips, and I could imagine her on television. I listened to her and her mom rehearsing, and she was very good. America would fall in love with her.
Bodies straighten and eyes study Marley’s and her mom’s faces for smirks of triumph or frowns of defeat, but as they walk through the room, their faces reveal nothing, not giving hide nor hair as to whether the rest of us still have a chance.
Another girl is called, then another, and another, and with each audition, the nervous energy builds—nails are chewed, wedding bands are twisted, and the air grows thick like a pressurized chamber. At one point, laughter drifts through the door and everyone freezes—a good sign for whoever’s inside, a bad one for those of us still waiting our turn.
I don’t want to get caught up in it, but as the moments tick by, it’s impossible not to. Like being in a race or a tug of war, you can’t help but want to win. And the longer we wait, the more the desire builds.
“Maybe we should practice again,” I blurt.
Molly glances at me like I’ve lost my marbles. Which I have. I feel like my brain is going to explode.
“Say it with more urgency,” one of the remaining moms snaps at her daughter.
We should practice. Everyone else is practicing.
Another pair walk from the room.
“You did so good,” the mom beams. “You were the best.”
The girl gives a weak smile, betraying the mom’s attempt to make it seem better than it was and completely undermining her mom’s lame attempt to deflate the hopes of those of us who remain.
“You’re my special girl. I love you so much. You’re such a star.” She swings the girl’s hand back and forth between them. “How about ribs for dinner? Your favorite.”
The group has been winnowed from thirty pairs down to six, the two women beside the door still among the remaining few. A willowy blonde wearing a too-small sundress over her too-large breasts walks from the casting room, pushing her little girl forward, her disappointment and irritation barely concealed, and the moms beside the door perk up. It’s obvious the little girl was a front-runner and that she failed.
“Molly Martin.”
16
I leap from my seat, and Molly slides off beside me.
Suddenly I’m nothing but nerves, and I realize this was a terrible idea. Molly’s not an actress. She doesn’t…We don’t belong here. We’re not prepared for this. She’s going to make a fool of herself, and I’m setting her up to do just that.
What was I thinking? I wasn’t thinking. I was blinded by the idea of my daughter being a star. Insanity, temporary insanity caused by staring into the bright light of possibility too long.
I consider grabbing Molly’s hand and fleeing, but I can’t because Molly has already grabbed my hand and is pulling me toward the door. I stagger behind her, and to my baffled amazement, as we pass the remaining contenders, the resentment around us grows, those that remain glaring at us. And I realize when we reach the door, it’s because Molly is the real deal and they know it. Unlike the others who went before us, Molly is the genuine article—a precocious four-year-old who prefers to wear overalls and who hates to brush her curly hair—something no amount of hot curlers, rouge, hissing, or bribing can transform their little darlings into.
We step into the room, and the woman with the clipboard directs me to a seat against the wall. Molly is told to go to the middle of the room and stand on a red X. Already standing on a blue X is a boy a few years older. Skinny as a beanpole and dark-skinned, he looks like he might be African American but could also be Indian.
Across from me, on the other side of the room, a woman with the same color skin and waist-length black hair sits in a chair identical to mine. She looks nervous, and I assume she’s the boy’s mother.
Molly and the boy face a table of three people, a woman and two men. Behind them is a camera and a cameraman. Other than that, the room is empty.
The woman at the table is petite and has hair so blond that it is nearly white. In front of her is a stack of files, and I take her for the casting director. From the top folder, she removes two copies of Molly’s resume and hands one to each of the men. The page is nearly blank—Molly’s photo in the upper-left corner, a few lines beneath. A very sparse, single-commercial resume.
The man in the middle has an intensity that makes me nervous, his dark eyes boring into Molly and the boy. The man on the right is heavyset and bald, his eyes small and squinty. He wears a shiny black button-down shirt with gold cuff links and looks slightly bored.
“Hello,” the woman says.
The boy mutters hello, and Molly waves.
“Okay, Shariq, you go first,” the woman says, looking at her notes for the boy’s name. “Tell us your name, how old you are, and who your agent is.”
“My name is Shariq Jobe. I am eight. And my agent is Monique Braxton,” he recites stiffly, the words memorized.
“Hey, that’s my agent too,” Molly says, holding up her hand for Shariq to give her a high-five. He hesitates then reluctantly raises his hand, and Molly smacks it.
“Your turn,” the woman says to Molly.
“I’m Mowlly Mawrtin, and I’m fouwr.”
“Very good,” the woman says sweetly. “Ready to read?”
Shariq nods, and Molly looks at me confused.
“She’s asking if you’re ready to say your lines,” I clarify.
Molly’s face breaks into a grin, and she nods.
“Does she read?” the woman asks, Molly’s reaction concerning her.
“A little,” I say. “She’s only four, so it’s limited, but she has a real good memory.” I’m horribly aware that I sound like a street vendor hawking my wares and want to stop, but for some inexplicable reason, I keep right on going. “Her brother’s in second grade, and she does his homework with him and gets most of it right.”
When I stop, I’m so mortified that I wish I could tap my heels three times and magically disappear to Kansas.
“Okay,” the woman says, seemingly immune to stage moms’ puffed-up elucidations. She turns back to the kids. “Ready, kids. And action.”
Shariq has the first line. It’s simple: We need to go now. That’s all he needs to say, but his eyes grow large and flick back and forth, his expression frozen as he searches his brain for the words lost somewhere in its coils.
“We need to go now,” Molly whispers.
“We need to go now,” Shariq repeats a little too loud.
Molly looks down at the ground. “I can’t,” she says. “What if he comes back?”
I nearly cheer with how perfect she did it, the line delivered with genuine reluctance and fear.
“He left,” Shariq says. “I saw him get in his car. He’s not going to be back for a while.”
The line is supposed to be: He’s gone. We need to do it now before he gets back.
Molly hesitates but barely. “But what if he comes back soonewr than you think?”
She added the “sooner than you think” part, causing Shariq to realize he made a mistake.
His eyes bulge again
, and his lip trembles. Across from me, his mom sits rigid, her hands clenched in her lap. The room has grown deathly quiet, all of us holding our breath, a united willing for Shariq to remember his next line.
“Then we’ll hide behind the shed!” he blurts, his face lit up with relief as all of us let out a collective sigh.
“That’s fine,” the woman at the table announces, stopping them from continuing. “Thank you, Shariq. We’ll be in touch.”
Shariq walks away, his eyes averted as his mom falls in behind him and nearly pushes him out the door.
“Behind the garden shed, baby,” she says before the door closes, her voice shrill. “You forgot the word ‘garden.’”
He forgot more than that, but perhaps her memory is as bad as her son’s.
When the door closes, the man in the center leans back in his chair and peers at Molly over steepled fingers. “Do you sing?” he asks.
The man is not particularly handsome, his nose slightly large for his face, his chin slightly small, but he has a magnetism that causes the room to swirl around him. The others are glued to his words, and I find myself drawn to him as well. Even the heavy man beside him pays attention, looking up from his boredom as if suddenly Molly is interesting.
“Evewryone sings,” Molly answers.
“Will you sing something for us?” the woman says. “Anything you like.”
Molly tilts her head, and her mouth skews to the side, then she starts tapping her foot, and I know what’s coming, and it’s all I can do to control my snicker.
“Hey…ey…ey. Uh. Yeah, hey…ey…”
The three at the table blink rapidly, unsure what Molly’s singing, and even the heavy man smiles when Molly breaks into the chorus for “Play That Funky Music.”
When she finishes the chorus, the man in the center holds up his hand to stop her, a smile still on his face.
My heart bursts with joy and panic in equal measure. The competitive spirit in me applauds because I know Molly nailed it, while the annoying buzz from this morning returns, blaring at full volume because I’m uncertain what exactly it is we’ve won.
“Thank you, Molly,” the woman says. “We’ll be in touch.”
“You’wre wewlcome,” Molly says with a small bow like Bo taught her to do after a performance.
I take her by the hand to lead her from the room.
“One more question,” the man in the center says, stopping us. He is looking at Molly’s sheet. “It says here you’re 53 inches, but that can’t be right. How tall are you?”
I swallow, frozen by the question. I have no idea how tall Molly is. I’m five-two, that’s sixty-two inches. Molly’s at least two feet shorter. Sixty-two minus twenty-four…I try to do the math in my head, but my brain won’t function. A mother should know this. What mother doesn’t know how tall her child is?
Molly saves me. She puts her hand on top of her head and drags it out to the air in front of her. “This tawll,” she says, then she turns and pulls me out the door.
The man’s voice reaches my ears before it closes. “We just found ourselves a star.”
17
My certainty that Molly got the part has ebbed.
It’s been three days without a word.
I try not to be disappointed, reminding myself that it was a long shot.
The other little girl, the adorable one with the blue eyes and rosebud lips, probably got it. Perhaps they found her cuter or maybe she sang better than Molly.
C’est la vie, it wasn’t meant to be. Everything happens for a reason.
But no matter how many clichés I recite, I’m horribly disappointed, the future I dreamed of since we left the audition dissolved into the dismal reality of the present—no car, no job, a daughter who hates me, a son who doesn’t speak and whose therapy I can’t afford.
Though the Gap commercial is doing well, we won’t see any royalties for months, and the money from the shoot is nearly gone. So it’s time to face the facts: I need to get another job.
Walking distance from my mom’s condo are a handful of restaurants. I decide to start with those.
Tying on my sneakers, I tell the kids to do the same.
“No,” Emily says.
“Em, come on, get your shoes on.”
“No. I don’t want you to get another stupid job in this stupid place.”
“Yeah, well, tough. I don’t want to get another stupid job in this stupid place either, but there’s no choice. We need money to eat, to live, to pay for your iPhone.”
She throws her iPhone at me, and it lands on the carpet at my feet. “Take the stupid iPhone. You do have a choice. You can send me back to Yucaipa.”
I sigh through my nose to rein in my anger. “Em, we’re a family. And like it or not, you’re my daughter, and that means you’re stuck with me as your mom. So get your shoes on so I can get a job and earn enough money so eventually we can go back to Yucaipa.”
“Pwlease, Em,” Molly says, her lip trembling.
Emily closes her eyes tight, inhales the tears that are on the brink of eruption, then reluctantly slides on her Cons. She stands, arms crossed, eyes on the ground, then shuffles past me out the door.
“Hewre, Em,” Molly says, handing Emily her iPhone.
“Thanks, Itch,” Emily says.
We are waiting for the elevator when my phone buzzes. I answer it, expecting it to be the mechanic asking again for payment for the towing service of the van to the junkyard, a bill at the bottom of my priorities.
“She got it.”
It takes a minute for the voice to register.
“Ms. Braxton?”
“Yeah,” Monique Braxton says, then repeats, “She got it.”
“She got it?” I say dumbly, not trusting my ears.
The elevator opens, but I signal to the kids to let it go.
“Yeah, they loved her.”
“They loved her?” I repeat, my disbelief reducing me to a parrot.
I stumble back into the condo, and the kids follow, Emily rolling her eyes in annoyance as she herds Molly and Tom back through the door.
“Belinda, the casting director, said Chris was so over the moon about Molly that he didn’t even audition the remaining girls. After Molly left, he sent them all home.”
I think of the two women beside the door, and gloating satisfaction washes over me. Then I remember their little girls, one blonde, the other a redhead, and I think they didn’t deserve to not even be given a chance.
“Chris is who?” I ask, knowing he was the man sitting in the middle but unsure of his role.
“Chris Cantor, the executive producer of the show, the boss.”
I smile at the idea of Molly working for him.
“Molly did her part,” Monique Braxton says. “Now it’s my turn. Give me a few days and let me see what I can get. You’ll be designated as her manager, standard fee of fifteen percent. Good?”
“Yeah, great.”
“Perfect. Molly won’t start until the details are ironed out, but I told them you’d go in for a fitting so they can get started on her wardrobe. So you need to be there tomorrow.”
She rattles off the details, and I scrawl them with a crayon into a coloring book Molly left on the table, my hand shaking with excitement.
“Get ready,” Monique Braxton says. “It’s going to be a wild ride.”
18
The disturbing buzz in my head won’t go away. I clean the refrigerator and the oven. I dust. I do laundry. I go to the grocery store. I make a nice dinner.
I’m excited, euphoric, thrilled, “over the moon,” as Monique Braxton says, except for the damn buzz that relentlessly vibrates in the frontal lobe of my brain and which is giving me a pounding headache, making it impossible for me to fully enjoy the moment.
Our execution has been stayed; we’ve been spared. In the eleventh hour, an angel of mercy (Monique Braxton) has swooped down from heaven and lifted us on her golden wings from the gallows of wretchedness. Okay, it wasn’t quite
that dramatic, but almost.
Fame, money, prestige, excitement. Molly’s going to be on The Foster Band!
This is the greatest moment of my…of our lives.
Everyone should be celebrating, popping the champagne, dancing and singing. But that’s the problem. In our little world, other than my mom, who is out tonight with friends, I’m the only one excited.
The issue is Emily. Her response to the news was an eager, So now we can go home? And when I explained it actually meant the opposite, that making a television show was full-time work, so we would need to live near the studio, it sucked all the happiness from the moment, and Emily stormed away, locked herself in her room, and hasn’t come out since. Then Molly started to cry and said she didn’t want to be on the show. And Tom, sensitive to both sides, showed no emotion at all.
I finish washing the dishes, dry them, and put them in the cupboards, then sit beside Molly on the couch, where she is blankly staring at an episode of The Backyardigans, a show I loathe but that seems utterly mesmerizing to four-year-olds.
Tom is in my mom’s room practicing the exercises he’s supposed to do daily to help with his anxiety. Through the door I hear him speaking into a recorder then playing the recording back so he can get used to hearing his voice. It seems like a ridiculous exercise, but Tom has done everything the counselors and books suggest, his desire to get better fueling his dedication.
“Hello, I’m Tom,” he says. “It’s nice to meet you. Do you want to play handball?”
My heart aches. Tom loves handball. He and Emily used to play it for hours against the garage door. The second time I was called to the school, it was recess, and I saw him sitting on the bench enviously watching the other kids playing on the handball court.
“Hey, what’s up? How about a game of handball?” he tries, going for a cooler approach.
No Ordinary Life Page 7
