Over my dead body.
99
Griff looks in on us, his face worn with worry. We are in the same room Molly slept in after the airport fiasco. I sit beside Emily on the bed, stroking her hair. She is showered now, but soap and water could not wash away the redness around her mouth or the sausage-size finger marks on her arms from where she was held down, and each time I look at them, sickness like a fist rises in my throat. Twelve years spent protecting her dissolved in this single night of failure, and my hatred for myself—my selfishness, my cowardice, my weakness—is so overwhelming it’s a struggle to draw breath.
When she was a baby, I used to watch her sleep like I am doing now. I would lie beside her and breathe her in, dewy and pink, marveling that this tiny person was mine. I could not believe how much I loved her, and at the same time how much a stranger she was, this small alien being with emerald-green eyes not at all like my own—the mystical oneness of pregnancy cleaved into two separate beings the moment she took her first breath, a new bond forged by her utter dependence on me to care for her and my overwhelming desire to do just that, knowing I would give her my last breath.
Kissing her gently on the temple, I walk into the living room and fall into Griff’s arms.
“We need to leave,” I say.
“Not tonight,” he says, pulling me close.
“LA,” I clarify. “We need to leave LA.”
His muscles tense, his arms wrapping a little tighter, holding me in place.
“You can’t leave, that will only make things worse.”
“Worse? How can it be worse? Did you see my little girl?”
He kisses the side of my head and rubs my shoulder. “We’ll figure it out. Somehow we’ll get through this, but leaving isn’t the answer. I know you’re upset, I’m upset too, but what happened isn’t the show’s fault…”
“How can you say that?” I pull away, putting space between us. “She was with Caleb and Gabby. Caleb invited her, and Gabby got them into the club.”
His nose flares slightly though his voice remains calm. “They forced her at gunpoint to dress the way she did and sneak out to go with them? They poured alcohol down her throat?”
“You’re saying this was her fault?” I hiss, my skin burning.
“I’m saying you can’t blame the show.”
“Maybe not directly but indirectly. If we weren’t on the show, none of this would have happened. She would have never even gotten into that club. She’s twelve. Caleb is only thirteen. Gabby sixteen. But because they’re famous, no one blinked an eye at the three of them hanging out and drinking at a club that’s supposed to be for people over twenty-one. This world is warped, don’t you see that?” But even as the words leave my mouth, I know he doesn’t, and I soften my tone. “I need to save them.”
“Then save them, but not by quitting the show. That’s not the answer.”
“Tell me another way.”
He holds out his arms for me to return his embrace, but instead I stand. “I need to go.”
“Please, Faye, don’t.”
“I mean I need to go for a walk, clear my head.”
He stands. “I’ll go with you.”
“No, you stay. One of us needs to be here in case Em wakes up.”
He pulls me into a gentle kiss then releases me. “I’ll be here. I’m always going to be here.”
* * *
The night is cool and clear, my steps certain. I open the mailbox and drop the envelope inside.
100
Sean called this morning frantic, entirely unaware that Emily had been missing from her bed since last night.
I told him what happened then told him to go to hell.
He called again. I didn’t answer.
Last night was one of the hardest of my life, guilt and worry making sleep impossible, my exhausted brain plagued with so much regret that nothing else existed. Several times during the night, Emily startled awake beside me, bolting upright with a cry before looking around, realizing where she was, then curling back into a ball, shivering until she slipped back into unconsciousness. I tried to comfort her, but each time she pulled away from my touch and my words, making it clear that, through it all, she still hates me.
This morning she agreed to let me take her back to the condo under the condition that we didn’t tell Molly and Tom the truth. Our story was that Emily’s mouth was bruised from getting hit with a soccer ball. Molly believed the story but Tom didn’t, and throughout the day, his eyes have repeatedly slid to the closed door of the bedroom where Emily hides.
It is evening now, and we are having dinner. Emily didn’t want to come out, so I brought her a plate and set it on the table beside her. She did not look at me or the food. She lay curled on her side, her eyes staring at the wall. I did not force her. Nothing will be forced on her.
The door pounds, causing all of us to look up from our meal.
“Damn it, Faye, open up,” Sean bellows through the wood.
“Daddy,” Molly says, climbing from her chair.
I leap up and pull her back.
“Mom, please take them to your room.”
My mom herds Molly and Tom away, and with a deep breath, I go to face their father.
His eyes are wild, the stench of alcohol and sweat rising from his skin, his jaw clenched and his nose flared. I watch him inhale—pot roast and potatoes, one of his favorites—and for a flicker, I wonder if the girlfriend he was out with last night while Emily’s life was being destroyed cooks, and I decide, based on his pained expression, that she doesn’t.
Stepping toward him, I force him back into the hallway, then close the door.
“I’m here for the kids,” he says. “The weekends are mine.”
I shake my head.
“Get the hell out of my way, Faye.”
My pulse kicks up a notch. Sean’s never hit me, but impulse control has never been his strong suit, and considering the state he’s in, I don’t put it past him to lash out now.
“Sean, please,” I say, forcing my voice to stay calm, needing him to hear my words, not my emotions. “You don’t have to do this. You want the money, that’s fine. I’ll send you half each month, no strings attached. I’ll even pay the taxes. I don’t care about any of that anymore.”
“What the hell are you talking about? You think this is about money? They’re my fucking kids, Faye. What happened to Em isn’t my fault.”
I feel his desperation to believe it, the same desperation I feel when I think about what happened, an intense need to off-load the guilt to Caleb or Gabby or rotten luck or bad circumstances. But regardless of how hard we wish it, the fault is ours—she’s our baby, it was our job to protect her, and last night we failed.
“Sean, you need to go. The kids aren’t going with you tonight.” Or any other night. I don’t add the last part.
“Bullshit. You can’t put this on me. I should be able to leave a goddamn twelve-year-old to watch out for herself without thinking she’s going to go to a bar to get laid.”
My fury hits like a cyclone, my hand flying toward his face.
He catches it, his grip clenching my wrist so tight that it hurts. “Watch it, Faye.”
Emily walks from the condo. “Daddy?” she says, her voice small.
He releases me. “Hey, baby,” he says, his expression transforming from rabid to devoted in a heartbeat. “You ready to come home?”
She nods.
“Em, no,” I say.
“I just need to grab my things,” she says, her eyes on the ground as she pretends she doesn’t see me.
“Get your brother and sister too,” Sean says.
With her shoulders rolled forward, her body curved protectively around her heart, she shuffles back into the condo.
“Please, Sean, don’t do this,” I plead, my anger wiped out by my desperation to stop what is happening. “She needs to stay here. She needs to heal. You know that. I know you do. You’re her father, a good father.”
His eyes flick
er, the smallest glimmer of the man I used to love flashing for an instant until he shakes it away. “That’s right, Faye. I am their father, and it would be best if you remember that.”
“This is ruining her.”
“She’s already ruined.”
My temper flares again. “She’s not. Don’t you dare give up on her. A single mistake does not define a person.”
“It defined me,” he shoots back, his eyes locking on mine.
“You didn’t have to marry me.”
He blinks rapidly like I’ve stunned him. “My mistake was leaving,” he says. “That was my mistake. The best thing I ever did was marry you.”
And like a pin puncturing a balloon, his words destroy me. So much has been lost so quickly. A year ago, we were together living in Yucaipa, struggling but getting by, our kids healthy, our family whole, Emily unharmed.
Our broken dreams between us, the tears I’ve held for the past twenty-four hours flood from my eyes and my chin drops to my chest. Too much. It’s all too much. Everything Emily was, everything I was, everything we were…gone, the loss overwhelming.
“I’m ready,” Emily says, appearing with a shopping bag of her things over her shoulder, her eyes still cast on the floor. “Grandma won’t let Molly and Tom go with us.”
Sean’s voice cracks, a hitch in his words as he says, “Yeah, change of plans, M&M. I need to cut out of town for a while, so you need to stay with your mom.”
My face snaps up to look at him, but it’s too late. Already he’s walking toward the stairwell, his posture relaxed except for his hands, which are clenched in fists at his side, revealing the courage it is taking for him to walk away. And in this moment, he is the man I loved, the man I knew that no one else saw.
101
We are on the red carpet, walking toward the theater where the premiere of Jeremy’s new movie is about to be shown. I take comfort in the fact that Jeremy’s career is soaring, knowing that, like Helen, Kira, and Jules, if The Foster Band fails, he will be fine.
Molly walks on my left and Tom on my right. We smile politely at the cameras and wave to the reporters we recognize. When we reach the middle of the walkway, Tom and I step aside so the photographers can get a few shots of Molly alone.
Molly looks adorable. She wears a yellow satin dress with small daisies embroidered at the waist. She still prefers overalls, but on big nights out, her girly side has started to emerge, and already I can see the last remnants of baby leaving her.
As I watch, I think about the headline in this morning’s paper, Gabby Rodriguez Joins Sexual Harassment Class Action Lawsuit Against Fox. The headline was printed above the photo of Gabby lifting her shirt as Mitten touched her arm. It is a very incriminating shot. It looks as though Mitten is encouraging her, and his smile, that only I know is consoling, appears lecherous.
It’s been a week since the story broke. The first headline, which was printed over the photo of Gabby and Mitten kissing, read, Sex Scandal on the Set of The Foster Band. A day after the story ran, four young actresses came forward accusing Mitten of sexual harassment, claiming he threatened to have them fired if they refused his advances. Mitten adamantly denied the allegations, but Fox terminated his contract anyway, and his wife, stalwartly loyal, left with him.
I feel bad for what I’ve done to him but do not care as much as I should. Helen is right. This business changes you. It makes you stronger or weaker, better or worse, but it doesn’t leave you the same. I am not the same. I am one of them now, as ruthless as Kira, Chris, or Beth. My only concern is for my family. Emily is not doing well. She has not returned to school, rarely comes out of her room, and refuses to talk about what happened.
Life has been cruel to her, and we need to return to Yucaipa where she can heal. Along with what happened to her physically, she has been battered emotionally. Since that fateful night, Caleb has cut off contact with her. Either out of shame or anger, he refuses to talk to her and has blocked her number. He avoids us on the set and is rarely seen outside his dressing room. More than one kid was destroyed that night, and there is little to be done but hope that both can find a way to move past it.
Sean’s absence is also destroying her. She feels like she has been abandoned. Perhaps someday I will be able to explain it to her and she will find a way to forgive him, but at the moment, his desertion cuts like a knife, and she feels betrayed, helpless, and alone.
In six months after, I have filed for sole parental control based on legal abandonment, I might contact him, see if he would like to have a role in the kids’ lives, but it will be on my terms and he will never again be in charge of their welfare or the decisions that dictate their lives.
One of the reporters asks Molly to spin for them to show how her dress flares, and she does a ballerina pirouette that causes a united “aw” from the audience at her adorableness. I suppress a yawn, and beside me, Tom sighs. It’s the same pirouette she’s done to the same “aw” a thousand times before.
I hope Chris is right, that the public has a short attention span and that, in time, they will forget what Mitten has been accused of. I will always regret that I was the one who did this to him. But it was the only way. Just as Bo said, the cast and crew know that without the Mittens the show won’t be the same. The remaining shows for this season have already been written and the junior writers can manage the rewrites. It’s next year people are worried about. The number one show on television is no longer a sure bet, possibly even a sinking ship, depending on who you talk to. The lead sound tech quit this morning. He’s the fourth crew member to leave this week. More are certain to follow. Panic has set in and paranoia is spreading, eyes furtively slide to one another throughout the day and hushed whispers fill the corridors between takes, each cast and crew member attempting to divine what the others are thinking.
Despite the exodus, the lawsuit, the bad press, and losing the Mittens, Griff, Chris, and Beth are doing a remarkable job forging forward, each day somehow managing to get it all done. Griff holds the crew together, Chris, the cast, and Beth juggles it all with superhuman strength, efficiency, and stamina that boggles my mind.
Molly curtsies, and I step forward and take her by the hand, smiling sweetly for the cameras as we walk toward the theater and as I contemplate my next move.
102
I glance over the top of the script I’m studying at the woman about to be destroyed and offer a smile. As always, my friendly greeting isn’t returned, Beth’s beady eyes blinking once before returning to her phone.
She never apologized for lying to the judge, for unjustly sabotaging me and nearly causing me to lose my kids, never felt me worthy of that sort of consideration. Yet I am the one who will cause her ruin.
Of all the things I feel bad about, this isn’t one of them. She thinks she is immune. While everyone else scurries around in panic, Beth studies the day’s schedule unconcerned. I watch as she unwraps another Werther’s, then pops the candy in her mouth, and I am fascinated by how oblivious she is to the fact that her day of reckoning is upon her.
“Beth, I need to speak with you,” Chris says, appearing from the hallway that leads to the executive offices.
Beth looks up, her face tilting in surprise at Chris’s civil tone. Then she stands and follows him toward his office, and when I’m certain they can’t see me, I smile.
My comment to Henry was offhand and casual, a simple, “Who do you think set Mitten and Gabby up to take those photos?”
And for the rest of the day, Henry was off to his beloved gossip races, speculating with everyone who sat in his chair about the whodunit. It had to be an inside job. It was definitely the sound lab. They must have been lying in wait. Someone who hated Mitten. Gabby was just an innocent victim.
I’m not certain how they figured it out, perhaps someone called Mitten and asked him, perhaps someone called Gabby, but by the time lunch rolled around, eyes were sliding toward Beth and jetting away when she returned the glances, and I knew she had been nailed
to the cross. This is my kill move, planned over a month ago and set up bit by bit so, when I used it, the show would be at its most vulnerable.
Beth returns, and my pulse quickens. Her face is ghostly pale like she might be sick, her eyes darting side to side.
Gathering up her belongings, she turns to leave then pauses. Turning back, she looks at me then down at her phone, and I watch as she pieces it together, her expression changing from question to shock to fury.
“You goddamn bitch.”
* * *
When I walk into Chris’s office, his head is in his hands. He looks up, his eyes weary as a field surgeon’s.
“Hi, Faye.” He musters a small smile. “What’s up?”
“We quit.”
He blinks once but says nothing, already the conversation so different from the one we had two months ago, the day we returned from Thanksgiving break, when I explained I wanted Molly to have a normal life, when I knew Emily was in trouble, when I told him I wanted to quit, and when he told me it wasn’t up to me.
“When we quit is up to you,” I say. “The choices are simple. One, you can release Molly and Tom from their contracts, and we stay to shoot the last three episodes of the season, allowing the show to become syndicated and getting you to the dark season, which will allow you to regroup, get a new writing team, hire a new AD, and resume next year. Or two, you can refuse, and I will leave with Molly and Tom tonight, and you’ll never see us again.”
His eyes narrow as he assimilates the threat, and as I look at him, I think, Rumpelstiltskin, I know your name. The balance of powers has shifted, the show no longer invincible. Losing Mitten was crippling, losing Beth a near-fatal blow. Losing Molly at this point, with three episodes to go and no one to rewrite them, would be the proverbial last straw that breaks the camel’s back.
He leans forward like he’d like to tear my throat out but continues to hold his tongue.
No Ordinary Life Page 33
