My father called. I knew he would. I expected him to suggest that she’d done the photo shoot for drug money, because that had been her sole motivation for so long, but what he said completely threw me.
“Is everything okay with you and Rob?”
“Of course it is, Dad.” It wasn’t. But Rob didn’t know that. And my father certainly didn’t need to know it. And Allison had nothing to do with me and Rob, or so I thought.
Before I could stop him, my father continued, “Make no mistake. The person who did this isn’t interested in Allison. This is about you, and it won’t be the end.”
With my father, it was always about me. My image. My reputation. My career. What about my sister, who needed us? How long could he deny her existence? But still, after years of alienation, he was certain he knew better.
“Shouldn’t we be worrying about Allison right now?” I said. “Maybe this is a cry for help.”
“Listen to me, Elizabeth. Here is what comes next. They’re going to say, if you lied about this, what else might you have lied about? If you abandoned your sister, are you immoral? Your enemies can use this story to challenge your character.”
Did Geoff know I’d visited Lexy? It was possible, and he wouldn’t like it, but it was a stretch to believe there was any connection to the exposure of Allison.
“Dad, I don’t have enemies. This is just part of celebrity. There are no secrets. I’m used to it. I guess it was silly of me to think you might be calling so we could talk about actually finding Allison and getting her help. I shouldn’t have taken your call.”
“Elizabeth, I’m just trying to protect you.”
There it was again! Why did everyone think I was so helpless? Or in so much danger?
“Still not looking for protection, Dad. This conversation is over.”
My parents had their own experience with my sister, the layers of love, loss, resentment, hope, disappointment, and betrayal. But I was an adult, with infinite resources, and without the history that made it so hard for my parents. I wanted to know my sister. Not quite able to process my visit with Lexy, I focused on Allison. If Rounder could find her, why hadn’t my P.I.? He’d been scouring Chicago, looking in shelters, at hospitals, and on the streets. I was on the verge of offering Rounder an exclusive on my husband’s exercise regimen when, studying the Rounder photos of Allison for the millionth time, it hit me. I grabbed my phone and called the private detective.
“Mike,” I said, “I know where Allison is.”
A few hours later Cap and I were on a plane to Kalamazoo, Michigan. Leo refused to come with us. Rob was touching down in Malibu before going to New York for the East Coast premiere of The Search for Helen Grant at the Ziegfeld. Leo had been asking every day when his daddy would get home, counting down to Wednesday as if it were Christmas. Now it was Tuesday, and Leo was dead set on staying home. So we decided Leo would stay in Malibu with Jordan, then fly with Rob to meet us in New York.
Jordan hadn’t been able to find me a properly credentialed local driver, so one came up from Chicago to meet us. It drove home how close to my parents I was, and how easily Cap and I could have gone to see them. But if my father found out the reason for our visit, he would take it badly. He wouldn’t be able to see my efforts as anything but a condemnation of his treatment of Allison.
The lake cabin that had once belonged to my uncle was in Harbor Country, on Lake Michigan. By the time we landed, snow was starting to fall. A storm, the driver told us. They were expecting five inches in Chicago. We drove to Michiana, a little town on the eastern shore of the lake, a popular vacation destination that was nearly deserted in winter. Out my window, the trees were barren of leaves, their hungry limbs striving skyward. Skids of snow collected briefly on the steep slopes of the branches, then slid off. Cap was bouncing with excitement. “Snow!” He wanted to feel it, play with it, eat it, was dying to open the door and run in it. “Are we in Aspen?”
I whispered with him, hoping against hope that he didn’t inadvertently disclose our identities to the driver (who was, at least, pretending he didn’t recognize us).
We pulled up in front of Uncle Nick’s old cabin. As far as I knew, he’d sold it years before. From the outside it looked abandoned. Afraid of what I might find, I didn’t want Cap to come in with me, but I could hardly leave him out in the cold night with a strange man.
“Here’s what’s going to happen,” I said, reaching over to unbuckle his car seat. Cap turned to me, his eyes two dark circles—total focus. I continued, “We’re going to see some people. They’re doing a show, like Daddy’s movies. So don’t worry if they look or act funny. They’re just pretending.”
“I’m going to wear this coat,” Cap said cheerfully. “I’m buttoning it myself.” I’d brought wool coats for both of us, but, being L.A. wimps, we had already wrapped them around ourselves in the heated car. Cap got to work on the big job of fastening the four toggles that ran down the front of his. I waited until he said “Done!” and looked up proudly. I took off my scarf and wrapped it around and around Cap’s head and shoulders, bundling him until he could barely move. There were at least two inches already frosting the walk. Cap was wearing Crocs—he’d insisted that they were excellent in snow—so I picked him up and carried him to the door.
In truth, I had no idea what to expect. Maybe I was completely wrong and this was all a wild-goose chase. Maybe, after all these years, Allison would turn me away. Maybe she hated me. I was a little scared, and not just because I didn’t know the company Allison kept, but because Cap and I were—there’s no other way to say it—we were commodities. Our photographs, our words, our beings had value, and drug addicts will do anything for money. I steeled myself, channeling my heroes, the explorers who braved the worst nature had to offer, determined to conquer the unknown. Compared to them, my situation was a joke. If Shackleton could cross the infamously treacherous Drake Passage in an open boat, I could damn well knock on this door.
When I knocked, Allison opened the door. I was stunned, especially by the ease of it. My long-lost sister was a three-dimensional person who walked and talked and opened doors when people knocked on them. For all these years, she’d been accessible, here, somewhere, waiting, if I’d only had the wherewithal to look.
On the shelf behind her were the empty pitchers I’d seen in the photos. They’d always been here, and always lodged in my memory.
This had been my uncle Nick’s hunting cabin, the last place I’d seen Allison. We hadn’t spent much time with my uncle Nick when I was a child, and when we did, he usually came to us. My mother tended to develop shortcut descriptions of everyone she met (my father was “a tough cookie but a straight shooter”; her friend Eloise Van, who had kicked her husband out decades ago but refused to divorce him, had “a wall around her heart”). Of my uncle Nick—the younger brother who’d never settled down, had a fondness for hunting and survival gear, played a mean banjo, and was prone to raving about “the Man”—my mother would say, “He’s too smart for his own good.”
But the few times we’d visited Uncle Nick at this cabin, he’d always done the same thing. He’d say to my parents, “Can I borrow the girl?” Then he’d follow me out into the woods and let me explore. If I wanted to build a fort, he was my willing assistant. If I was on a fairy hunt, he discovered glittery necklaces in hollow trees and under tangles of root. If I came close to falling in the stream, he never let out a word of warning. If anyone made me feel like I could one day be an explorer, it was Uncle Nick.
One summer there had been a girlfriend, Gracie, who filled the empty kitchen shelves with dishes and the bread box with fresh-baked muffins. She scattered wildflower seeds across the front lawn, and filled pitchers with the flowers that sprung up: blue and yellow violets, buttercups, larkspur, and bluebells. But by winter Gracie had gone (my mother always said, “Your uncle Nick missed the boat on that one”), and apparently since then the
pitchers had sat empty on the wooden shelves, their various pastel colors seeming to fade into the same pale green.
Now Allison stood before that wall of lost opportunity, still in place despite the cabin’s disrepair. I would have recognized her even if I’d never seen the pictures. In person, she looked like she had as a teenager, but even thinner in an unseasonable summer dress. An evil Hollywood voice in my head whispered that skinnier was always better, even if it was drug induced. But now, at least, her eyes were calm and sad. I was pretty sure she wasn’t high.
“I missed you,” I said, gulping down emotion.
She knew me right away. Unless she’d been under a log all these years, of course she knew that she had a famous, rich sister. Yet she’d never come to me for money or help.
“Baby girl,” Allison said. She took a step back and smiled. “You look just like the magazines.”
I rolled my eyes. “Crazy, isn’t it?” I hadn’t planned this far ahead. Should I hug her? Apologize for abandoning her? Was I going to help her? How? “I’m so glad I found you,” I said.
“I didn’t know I was lost.”
“No, I’m sorry—what I meant—” I was at a loss. Cap bounced at my side like a golden retriever tugging on its leash, alive with innocence. “This is your auntie,” I said. “Allison, this is Cap.”
“You have your mama’s eyes,” Allison said, kneeling down to Cap’s level. “Would you like some hot chocolate?”
“I’m four years old plus nine months old,” Cap said. “Actually, my eyes are the same color as Daddy’s. And I have really, really been asking for hot chocolate every day so far.”
After he guzzled her hot chocolate, Cap got up to walk his favorite toy turtle, a small hard one that fit in his fist, along the wooden shelves. I sat at the kitchen table while Allison put on hot water, chatting emptily about the snowstorm, telling Cap about a deer that liked to come right up to the back door. Allison’s movements were nervous and her fingers played in midair, tapping out some music only she could hear. When she put our teacups on the table, the smile left her face. “I fucked up, Liz.”
Glancing at Cap, I winced at the profanity. “It’s okay, don’t worry. We can get you help.”
“No,” she said. “I’m weak. I’m so fu—so bloody weak. They gave me—”
She kept one eye on Cap, who was making conversation with his turtle. “I’d been doing so well. Five months totally clean. But he started me off again. A total stranger. Just showing up like it was Christmas morning. It was more cash than I’ve seen all at once in my life. Said he wanted to help me get a whole new start. Empower me to control my destiny. But all that money in my pocket and I was hooked again. So much for Santa Claus. Why would someone do that? I thought he was in it for my future business, you know? But he never came back and my guy—Sanjo—he says he had nothing to do with it.”
“When did this happen?”
Allison grunted apologetically. “I can’t exactly say the old calendar’s up-to-date, sis.” She tapped a finger on her forehead. “I’ve been a little, you know, out of it ever since.” Something in that gesture of hers took me straight back to when I was four and we were sitting on the stairs, and she was singing some pop song to me and explaining the bubblegum lyrics. This was my sister. How many years had we lost? Why had it taken me so long to come looking for her?
I took out a printout of the Rounder.com piece with the photos of Allison and put it on the kitchen table. “Do you think this was it? Was this the day he came over?”
“Oh man,” Allison said. “Dude definitely had a camera. I didn’t remember that until right this minute. But he was definitely a photographer. He said something about modeling and a real income for once. I know it was bullshit.”
Holding the paper at a bit of a distance, she started to read and sucked in air. “Oh, no. I see what they did here. I screwed things up for you. Dragging the Pepper name through the gutter. Exactly why I’ve left you all alone.”
Her face crumpled and she covered it with her hands. “There’s more. Oh God, I’m remembering more. Mom and Dad protected you from me and they were right.”
“Don’t cry, Auntie,” Cap said. “If you hold Walker, it will feel better faster.” He stopped his game, went to Allison, and put the toy turtle in his aunt’s hand.
Though Allison was obviously upset by it, to me my sister’s relapse was part of a cycle that I assumed had been recurring ever since she’d left home. I had expected to find her high or sober, having recently been the other. It was no shock that the tabloids had tracked her down. If anything, the remarkable part was that it hadn’t happened before. And so in that moment I missed my chance to ask what the man had looked like, or what “more” Allison was remembering.
“Look,” I said. “Those pictures helped me find you. I should have come here a long time ago. You don’t have to be perfect for me to love you.”
“Dad doesn’t know you’re here,” she said.
My ambition had carried me a long way. It had carried me to the pinnacle of fame and success. It had carried me into Rob’s arms, where I was everything my father wanted me to be. But in that dark, cold house, with its sour smell and wistful memory of unspoiled summer days, I was, at last, who and where I wanted to be. Not an only child in a flawless family—the sister of an addict. Not a star—an actor. I was myself again.
“It doesn’t matter what Dad thinks,” I said. “You’re my sister.”
I wanted to tell Allison about LifeHeartTruth—that I’d supported that charity because I hadn’t forgotten her, that they had a place for her to go if and when she was ready. But before I could speak there was a knock at the door. Allison sprang to her feet, suddenly on edge. “I’m sorry, sweetie, but I think you’d better leave.” She glanced at Cap. “It’s my guy. Sanjo.” Her dealer. “Here, why don’t you go out this way.”
Cap was sliding his turtle down the spout of a ceramic teapot.
“Come on, little man. Time for us to go.” I started to lead him through the kitchen.
“Yummy. Uncle Geoff’s mints. Can I have one?” I stopped cold and looked over to where Cap was pointing. There on a shelf sat a tin of Curiously Strong Altoids. I stared at it. Cap’s child logic sent a wave of nausea through my body. There was absolutely no way Geoff had been here, no chance he was the one who took those photos. Right? I showed the tin to my sister. “Allison, are these mints yours?”
Allison was distracted. “What? No, I don’t think so. I don’t know. You can have them.”
“Please?” Cap begged. “Uncle Geoff let me have one after we did the pictures.”
It was just a tin of peppermints. They were sold at the counter of every grocery. I refused to let my imagination run away with me. Besides, there wasn’t time for that. Allison opened the kitchen door and ushered us out. The seed of paranoia was whisked away into the chilly night air.
Out on the quiet street a blue SUV idled behind our car. The snow was deeper now. I picked Cap up again. As we left, I heard Allison opening the front door and greeting her guest.
Cap and I got in the backseat of our car.
“Please can I have a mint right now, Mommy? Please? Please?”
“No.”
“Later?”
“Tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow,” Cap said. “I’ll remember.” And I knew he would.
I didn’t put it together at the time, but when I decided I wanted Allison in my life, despite the pain and strife that might bring, I was parting ways with the Whole Body Principles. My experience on The Safe House, playing Abigail Warren, had changed me. It woke me up to the deep importance of the everyday decisions that comprise a life. I couldn’t live by the philosophy that drove my husband’s every move. It worked for him. I saw how it worked. But that wasn’t a deal I was willing to make.
I had to follow my heart—in my acting and in my relationships. My
need to find Allison wasn’t practical or logical. It came from emotion, instinct, a sense of what was right. Emotions were real, and Abigail Warren had taught me to live by mine, no matter the cost.
The snowstorm had shut down the Kalamazoo airport, our driver reported, but our pilot had flown ahead of it to O’Hare. We drove straight to Chicago, but streets were icy and treacherous, and by the time we got to O’Hare, that airport had also been shut down.
“Six twenty-four South Greenway,” I said, without thinking it through. Where would I go from O’Hare but home?
Fifteen minutes later, almost five years after I had sworn never to return, I was in the driveway of my parents’ house.
Cap had fallen asleep on the drive, Walker the turtle clutched tightly to his chest. If he’d been awake, maybe we would have gone in, and, for his sake, everyone would have pretended the past five years hadn’t happened. What a joyful reunion—my mother hurrying to feed Cap, my father showing me his latest home improvement project. But I couldn’t bear to wake him, instead staring at the house. It was a steel blue clapboard, white trim around the windows, black shutters, a great pine out front lending a perpetual Christmas charm. The quaint lines of this house were often pictured in magazine profiles of me, rose-tinting my youth into an American Girl storybook.
In the warm light of the kitchen I spotted a movement—it could only be my mother, setting the table for tomorrow’s breakfast as she liked to do. What would she think of it all—the revelation I’d had during The Safe House, and how it pulled me toward the sister I’d never known? Back in the den, watching a sports game or an action movie bought on discount at Costco, my father would have none of it. All his work, all his sacrifice, all for me. Just then the front door opened. I ducked down with a little yelp, then watched as my father’s arm reached out to flick on the porch light, as he did en route to fixing himself a scotch every night. He’d wired that light himself, the day Aurora got her driver’s license and she and I went to a movie by ourselves for the first time.
Movie Star By Lizzie Pepper Page 24
