I handle it the only way I can. I trigger the explosion. Molly writhes and kicks and screams as I pick her up from the pavement, her fists pounding my back, her feet leaving welts on my thighs. “You pwromised,” she screams. “You said we’d go back to the piano.”
Our carry-on bag dangles from my arm and drags behind me as I wrestle her into the terminal, the reporters following us, their cameras blazing.
“She didn’t tip the skycap,” one of them says with glee. A dozen pens scrawl the juicy oversight in their notebooks, and I feel my tears threatening. Molly is now in full hysteric mode, her face red with fury, her back arching as she pushes with all her might to break my hold.
“You pwromised. You said. You pwromised,” she screams.
Every person we pass watches, half of them pulling out their phones to record the spectacle.
I run to the restroom and into the handicap stall then collapse on the toilet with my sobbing bundle, my whole body convulsing as my tears escape.
People have followed us in, and I need to bite my knuckle to keep my sobs from being heard through the thin barrier that protects us.
“Which one is she in?” a nasally voice says.
A moment later, a woman’s frizzy head pops over the wall of the stall beside us. Ruthlessly she snaps photo after photo of Molly and I clinging to each other, and I don’t think I’ve ever hated a person so much.
“I’m sorry, baby,” I whisper as I kiss Molly’s head, my eyes glaring at the woman.
Molly sniffles, her tantrum spent as the woman continues to take photos.
“Out,” a man’s voice bellows, causing the woman to disappear. “Now,” he barks again.
“I’m going,” her nasally voice says.
A moment later, the man says gently, “Ma’am.”
I pinch my nose, unable to respond, Molly and I trembling, though both of us are hot and sweating.
“Ma’am,” he says again. “I’m with airport security.”
I do not trust him. I no longer trust anyone. He could be an imposter. He is an imposter, I’m sure of it. We are in hell surrounded by devils. Me and my baby, alone.
My hand shakes as I pull out my cell phone.
“Griff,” I whimper, my voice a strangled whisper.
“Faye? Faye, is that you? Where are you?”
I hold the phone beneath the door, and a cocoa-colored hand takes it from me.
“Hello, who am I speaking with?” the man says, then I listen as he tries to explain to Griff as best he can what happened and why Molly and I are hiding in a stall in the restroom of the airport. He doesn’t get the story completely right—he misses the part about Molly sticking her tongue out at the reporter and having a tantrum—but he gets across the basic gist that something happened outside the terminal that caused us to be pursued by a pack of paparazzi, and that we are now huddled in a stall extremely distressed.
“Ms. Martin,” he says when the explanation is finished, “Griff says you can trust me. I’m here to escort you to your gate.”
And I have no idea if it’s true, but just hearing the man use Griff’s name gives me faith, and I lift Molly in my arms and open the door.
The man is short and round with a kind face and a badge that says Gomez. He hands me back my phone, which is still lit up with Griff’s name.
“Griff,” I croak into it.
“Yeah, I’m here.”
My lungs release, and air seeps in.
“Hang in there, Squid,” he says. “Officer Gomez is going to get you on your plane.”
“Stay on the line, please,” I say.
“I’m not going anywhere.”
72
We’ll be landing in LA in approximately thirty minutes,” the pilot announces. “Los Angeles has partly cloudy skies, and it’s an unseasonably warm eighty-two degrees…”
I open the shade to look at the world below, midnight black except the weak starlight casting shadows on the miles of tract homes, farmland, and mountains below—a place like Yucaipa, maybe Simi Valley or Thousand Oaks. How I want to strap on a parachute, take Molly in my arms, leap from the plane, and float back to that place.
We are escorted off the plane before the other passengers, and a security guard meets us at the gate. He ushers us to a private waiting room, where we’re told we will stay until our bags have been retrieved and loaded into the car that’s been sent to pick us up.
“Hey,” Molly says from the couch beside me. “That’s us.”
She points to the television mounted in the corner of the room, and my blood freezes, then I scramble frantically to shut it off, hitting every button until finally the horrible report that shows Molly sticking her tongue at a reporter then having a fit as I carry her off is silenced.
Molly’s face is gaunt and horrified. “They show that on tewlevision?” she says. “That woman said you hit me. You hit me?”
“She said I hit you?” I say, trying to recall what I saw as I was trying to turn it off, and like instant replay, the report spirals in slow motion through my mind.
Pretty blond reporter, impossible white teeth. Superstar Molly Martin and her mother, Faye Martin, were spotted earlier this evening at JFK Airport, where it appears there was an altercation that led Faye Martin to slap the four-year-old for sticking her tongue out at a reporter…
“No, Bug, I didn’t hit you. You know I didn’t. You were there.”
“Why they show that?”
At that moment, the door opens and Griff steps in. I blink several times to make sure I’m not imagining it then leap into his arms, my head buried against his chest as he wraps his arms around me.
“Trouble,” he says. “With a capital ‘T.’ That’s what the two of you are.”
I nod against him, never so happy to see anyone in my life.
“Hey, Squidoo,” he says over my head.
“Hey, Gwriff,” Molly says. “Did you see the tewlevision? They say Mom hit me.”
He lets go of me and sits beside Molly. “First of all, Squidoo, as an actress you should know that what they show on television isn’t real, and second, you should know that you should never watch anything about yourself on television.”
“But they showed me cwrying.”
“You’re a little girl. Sometimes little girls cry.”
She still looks sad.
“Come on, time to get you girls out of here.” He stands, puts on a baseball hat and a pair of sunglasses, then turns his back to Molly. “Walk or piggyback ride?”
She leaps on board.
“What’s with the disguise?” I ask, stung by the idea that he’s embarrassed to be seen with us in light of our recent headlines.
“Best to keep a low profile when you’re around trouble,” he says.
“I didn’t hit her.”
“I know. There are like seventeen other shots of what happened on the internet, and all of them show that your hand never came close to Molly, that you were just trying to keep your bag from slipping off your arm.”
“So why are they showing that one?”
“Better story,” he says as he gallops out the door with Molly on his back.
I trail behind, mortified, angry, and stunned that the press can be so ruthless.
“Shit,” Griff says.
Through the exit doors, a horde of paparazzi press up against the glass, a crush of people with their cameras and microphones ready. It looks like hundreds, and I can’t believe it’s worth it for them to stand out there waiting for hours just to get a photo and a sound bite of me and Molly. Aren’t there more important stories to cover than a kid having a tantrum and her mother carting her away?
Griff hesitates, gauging the situation, then swings Molly around in front of him so he’s holding her like a football. “We need to rush them. Faye, you go first, and I’ll follow with Molly. The limo is straight through the second door.”
My heart pounds like a cattle stampede in my chest as the doors open and I charge through the crowd. Mack sees
us, runs forward, and hunches over me, pushing me toward the limo as arms and phones and cameras and words are slung at us. I turn my head to look for Molly and see Griff right behind me, Molly tight against him.
The reporters press in on us more and more until finally we reach the car and Mack is pushing me into the backseat, then Molly is being thrown into my arms and the door is being slammed. The limo lurches forward, and I crane my head over my shoulder, watching in horror as Griff holds back the crowd so we can move forward, his hat and glasses gone.
Reporters run after us, risking life and limb to sprint through the airport traffic with their cameras raised like swords, flashes erupting on either side of us, until finally, one by one, they give up, several of them flipping us off. Mack keeps an almost constant hand on the horn as he bulldozes his way forward, his message clear—get out of our damn way or I’ll run you over.
Griff is still on the sidewalk. A lone reporter, a woman with red hair, stands beside him, her lens not following us but instead trained on Griff, and something about the way she’s smiling sends a chill down my spine.
“What about Griff?” I croak.
“He’ll find his way,” Mack says.
“That was fun!” Molly says.
73
When we reach the freeway, my phone buzzes, and I pull it from my back pocket, consider not answering when I see who is calling, then reluctantly press the answer button. “Hey, Sean.”
“Faye, the phone is ringing off the hook,” he says excitedly.
“We’re fine.”
“Yeah, I know you’re fine. So Extra is offering the most…”
“I didn’t hit her.”
“Really? Looks like you did. Not that anyone can blame you—looks like she was being a little shit. But I’m thinking if we don’t do an exclusive…”
I hang up.
“Was that Daddy?” Molly asks.
“Yes, baby. He wanted to make sure you were all right.”
“Is he coming to see me?”
“No, baby. He’s taking care of Em.”
My phone buzzes again and I ignore it, but when it continues to buzz, I pull it from my pocket to turn it off and am shocked when I see it is Chris who is calling.
“Chris?”
“Faye, you okay? How’s Molly?”
Tears spring to my eyes with his concern.
“We’re okay. Griff came and got us. We’re in the limo and on our way home.”
“Thank God. Damn buzzards. Where the hell was Patrick?”
“He stayed in New York to spend the holiday with family.”
“He left you on your own? Are you kidding me? Well, rest assured, he’s done for. I’ll make sure of it.”
Patrick sending us off to the piano with a high-five flashes in my mind. “No, Chris, that’s not necessary. It wasn’t his fault. It was all…It was just too much. I didn’t hit her. You know that, don’t you? I didn’t hit Molly. My bag slipped. I was just reaching up to catch it. They made it look like I hit her, but I didn’t.”
“I know you didn’t hit her, but that’s irrelevant.”
“Irrelevant? It’s not irrelevant. You need to tell them. We need to have a press conference or something and tell them I didn’t hit her.”
“Faye, calm down. The last thing we need to do is call more attention to this. What we need is for you to lay low for a few days and let this all blow over.”
“But everyone’s going to think I’m a horrible mother, that I hit my kids.”
He laughs. “Yeah, you look like a real bruiser.”
“Chris, it’s not funny. I don’t hit my kids, and I didn’t hit Molly.”
“Welcome to the crazy world of celebrity, where fiction becomes fact. You don’t hit your kids and Helen isn’t sleeping with Jeremy and Jules isn’t Gabby’s father. It’s all part of the game. You just need to go with it.”
“But there’s a limit.”
“There’s not.”
“There should be.”
“Faye, you chose this life and the exposure that goes with it. Fortunately Americans have a very short attention span. Take the rest of the week off, and by the time you come back to work, another story about another famous somebody will be in the news, and everyone will have forgotten all about this. Now can I talk to Molly? I want to make sure she’s okay.”
I hand the phone to Molly, who lights up when she finds out it’s Chris. “Hey, Chwrissy Cwrossy,” she says, and my heart swells with gratitude at how much Chris cares.
74
Where are we going?” I ask when I realize we’re not heading in the direction of my mom’s condo.
“Can’t take you home,” Mack says. “There’s a media mob waiting there worse than the one at the airport. Griff says to take you to his place.”
The words send a new tremor down my spine with the thought of my mom and Tom being at the condo alone with the piranhas below.
My mom picks up on the first ring. “We’re fine,” she says, knowing my panic before I can even ask. “We have plenty of supplies and plan on just holing up until the reporters get tired or bored.”
“Griff called you?” I ask.
“Yeah. A good guy that one. Why can’t you date a nice guy like that?”
I nearly groan in annoyance. I’ve avoided telling my mom about my unkissable status with Griff, not able to bear her nodding along in agreement.
“We’re just friends,” I say, the statement sounding as adolescent and lame as it is.
“Yeah, I know you’re just friends. That’s the problem. The nice guy is who you decide to make your friend; the jerk, you marry.”
* * *
An hour later, we’re in the city of Pasadena, a hillside community of rolling hills, old orange orchards, and quaint neighborhoods. We thread our way through the town and onto a quiet street with ranch-style homes like the ones I used to dream of living in when we lived in Yucaipa.
I press my head against the glass and let the coolness seep into my head. Anonymous people living anonymous, worthwhile lives. I wouldn’t mind being anonymous again. As a matter of fact, the idea is beginning to appeal to me greatly.
The limo pulls to a stop in front of a gable-roofed bungalow with natural wood shingles and dark green trim. A taxi pulls up behind us. Griff pays the driver and steps from the backseat, his jaw clenched, his face blanched white.
“You okay?” I ask.
He ignores the question, marches to the stoop where Mack has set our bags, and leads us inside.
Whoa! Appearances can be deceiving. What looked modest on the outside is mind-blowing on the inside. The house is a sprawling chalet with leather couches, a grand piano, and an expanse of glass that looks out on a courtyard flanked by two wings.
“Come on, Squidoo, I’ll show you your room.”
Molly shuffles after him.
Through the window of one of the bedrooms, I watch Griff help Molly into her pajamas then tuck her beneath the covers. He sits beside her, and by the way she’s smiling and the way his hands are moving, I’m guessing she asked him to tell her a story.
I wander the living room, admiring the beautiful furniture and Griff’s amazing collection of artifacts from around the world. I don’t know where the masks, strange wooden board games, and terra-cotta bowls came from, but I know they didn’t come from anywhere nearby. There’s nothing Ikea or Target about anything in the room.
I stop beside the piano. On the wall above it is a collage of at least forty photographs that chronicle a remarkable life. Griff can’t be more than five years older than me, but he’s done so much more with his time on this earth. There are photos of him holding snakes, riding elephants, and standing atop mountains. He’s been to places where there’s only snow and places where there’s only sand. He’s hauled in swordfish from the ocean and trout from jungle-laden streams. He’s ridden rapids and jumped from airplanes. The man’s lived more adventures in a third of his life than I could imagine living in all of mine. In a few photos, he p
oses alone, but in most he is surrounded by others—friends, foreigners, women—all of them grinning at the lens, sharing the amazing moment.
I’m filled with envy. I can only dream of having a life so full and am jealous that so many have already laid claim to his heart.
Griff is back.
“You didn’t have to do that,” I say.
“Which part, tuck Molly into bed or rescue you at the airport?”
“Well, you kind of had to rescue us. After all, the show must go on.”
His face loses its humor. “That’s not why I did it.”
I look away.
“Come on,” he says. “I need a drink.”
I follow him into the kitchen, and he pulls two Heinekens from the fridge.
“Glass?” he asks.
I shake my head.
“A low-maintenance girl. I like that.”
“Yeah, real low maintenance—you only need to leap into a pond of poisonous snakes and fight them off so my daughter and I can get to our limousine, and I won’t demand that you provide me with a chilled glass for my beer.”
He smirks, but it’s low wattage, and again I wonder what’s wrong, but this time I don’t ask. Silently I drink my beer, waiting for the alcohol to seep into my bloodstream and take the edge off. Over and over my mind catches on the reporter’s bright white teeth and her pink lips telling the world I slapped Molly, my memory replaying the fuzzy video that showed my carry-on bag falling from my shoulder as I reached to lift Molly from the sidewalk, my hand flying up to keep it on my arm and the vague appearance it gave of me hitting her.
“People are so cruel,” I say. “At the airport, no one helped us. Everyone just gaped and took pictures, like seeing Molly break down and me struggling to get her away from the reporters was entertainment.”
“It was,” Griff says with a sigh, then he drains the rest of his beer and grabs another. “The public is used to seeing headlines about celebrity meltdowns. Personal issues are fair game.”
No Ordinary Life Page 26
