Seeing Stars

by Diane Hammond

  “Bet?” Clara offered cheerfully.

  “Some kids, like David Henrie, just go back home for a year,” Allison told her, “and go to high school like normal kids until they’re legal eighteen.”

  “Who’s David Henrie?” Bethany said.

  “You guys are going to have to watch more TV,” said Allison. “He’s been on That’s So Raven and How I Met Your Mother and a bunch of other stuff since forever. He’s friends with some kids I know.”

  “He’s really cute,” Hillary offered. “I mean, he’s pretty old and stuff now, but he was cute when he was younger, and he’s still kind of hot.”

  “What did you mean about being legal?” Ruth asked.

  “Legal eighteen? It means once you’re sixteen and you either have a high school diploma or you’ve passed this killer proficiency test, you can work as a legal eighteen.”

  Ruth frowned. “But why does that matter?”

  “Because if you’re a legal eighteen they don’t have to give you three hours of school every day on set. So producers like you, because they save money on the set teacher and make you work for those three hours, plus you can stay on the set for twelve hours instead of only eight. So of course if it’s between taking a regular kid and a legal eighteen, they’re going to book the legal eighteen.”

  “Or they could Taft-Hartley you,” Reba piped up.

  “Taft-Hartley?”

  “If you’re nonunion, sometimes a producer will like you so much he’ll tell the union there’s no union actor who can possibly play that role, only you, and if the union gives them permission, then they can hire you.”

  “But that has nothing to do with being legal eighteen or not,” Hillary pointed out. “That’s if you’re nonunion and the show is SAG.”

  “Or AFTRA,” Clara said. “I think.”

  “The American Federation of Television and Radio Actors,” Reba told Ruth.

  “Artists,” Hillary corrected her.

  “God, you guys,” said Allison. “It’s not like she’s going to remember it anyway. Whatever.”

  Ruth assumed that she was the she in question, but it was hard to be offended because Allison was right.

  “You’ll probably figure it out soon,” Hillary reassured her. “I mean, everyone thinks it’s kind of confusing when they first get here. The first couple of months, my mom used to lock herself in the bathroom every night and cry after she thought I was asleep. Plus she’d sneak in shots of vodka. That was when we were staying at the Oakwood, before she went back to Columbus and I went to Mimi’s.”

  “The Oakwood,” Bethany said reverently. “You stayed there? You’re so lucky.”

  “Yeah. I never told her I could hear her. Then my dad came down for a couple of weeks before she went back home, so that was better. He’s really good with directions and stuff. My mom just got us lost every time. I never made it to a single audition when I was supposed to the whole time she was here.”

  “Yeah,” Bethany said pointedly to Ruth.

  “Ten minutes!” A PA walked through the crowd, shouting. “You’ve got ten minutes, people! Use the restroom, tidy up, and be ready.”

  Ruth sighed. “Did everyone get enough to eat?”

  “Yes,” Bethany, Clara, Allison, and Hillary shouted in a chorus.

  “No,” said Reba.

  THE CAR RIDE HOME AT THE END OF THE DAY WAS CONSIDERABLY more subdued than the outbound journey. By the time they were dismissed, Ruth had gas and the girls were in advanced states of nervous exhaustion. They’d booed and cheered and mugged and held their breath over and over and over, and by four o’clock, when they were released, they were done, despite a mid-afternoon sugar extravaganza of nondiet sodas, fruit juices, energy drinks, Hershey bars, Three Musketeers, Snickers, Milky Ways, Paydays, Rolos, Baby Ruths, and chocolate chip cookies the size of hubcaps. Not only had the girls not seen Zac Efron or Ashley Tisdale, they hadn’t been included in a single close-up or offered the chance to deliver a line, a privilege that had gone to a dweeby little black kid who, in their estimation, in no way deserved it. Worse, both Hillary and Reba had been completely hidden behind columns for the entire afternoon. Ruth kept an eye out for Vee, but when she came back she was talking to another woman, and Ruth decided to keep to herself. Ominous deep disturbances in her upper colon announced that the evening was likely to be unpleasant. On the bright side, Bethy got a SAG voucher and $150, which meant that her brand-new Coogan account was worth $22.50.

  “So much for glamour, huh?” Allison said to Bethany once the girls had collected all their stuff and Ruth had loaded them into the SUV.

  “It was okay,” Bethany said loyally.

  Hillary did a perfect impression of Dick Fiori. “Okay, guys, we’re going to make this one a big cheer, biggest of the day!” Even Ruth had to admit that what had seemed chummy and hip early in the day had become, by the end, almost unendurable.

  “Well, he was a little smarmy,” Bethany allowed.

  “A little?”

  Bethany settled lower in her seat and stared out the window. The traffic was crawling up Highland toward the 101.

  “I don’t know,” Allison said. “He was actually kind of cute, in a way.”

  “Oh, ick,” said Hillary. “In an old way.”

  “He wasn’t that old.”

  “What do you consider old?” Ruth asked.

  “I don’t know—forty, maybe. I mean, he was probably only thirty-one or something.”

  “Only?” At Allison’s age, Ruth had thought nineteen was old.

  In the rearview mirror Allison just shrugged.

  AFTER THEY’D DROPPED OFF THE ORPHANS AT THE STUDIO, Ruth and Bethany went back to their apartment. “Let’s just rest,” Ruth suggested hopefully. “I’m exhausted. Aren’t you?”

  “No. I was for a little while, but now I’m okay.”

  “Why don’t you go for a swim?”

  Bethany gave her a look. “I wish I had my bike.”

  Ruth wasn’t sure she’d want Bethy biking by herself around Burbank, though there were some excellent neighborhoods relatively nearby. At home in Seattle she never worried about her being out alone even though Ruth realized, intellectually, that her daughter was every bit as much at risk there as here. But somehow the children she’d met in LA seemed more vulnerable to the madness of adults, and not just child molesters and deviants. Just look at poor dumpy Reba, who was about as likely to land an acting career as Ruth was. God only knew Hillary’s story, or those of Orphans Past. There was Quinn Reilly, too, a sixteen-year-old boy who was, evidently, a brilliant actor, but had gotten into some kind of trouble at Mimi’s and didn’t live there anymore. No one seemed willing to talk about exactly what he’d done, only that it was very distasteful and possibly sexual in nature, though not, in itself, overly serious.

  “My head is just pounding,” Ruth said, though it was actually her gut that was roiling. “I need to lie down for a little while before dinner. I thought I’d cook the ravioli.” Knowing they’d have a long day today, they’d picked up some fresh pasta and marinara sauce at a Pavilions yesterday afternoon, and a loaf of crusty bread to go with it.

  “That sounds good.”

  “Why don’t you give Daddy a call? He should be home by now, and you know how much he likes hearing from you. He’s lonely up there without us.”

  Bethany suddenly brightened. “Can I call Rianne?”

  “Right after Daddy. Tell him I miss him,” Ruth said, and for the first time in days, she actually did. It would have been lovely to send Bethy out on an exploratory walk with him while she dropped dead for a little while. Hugh always liked seeing new places. It was yet another irony of Ruth’s being here that he was the intrepid one. How many times had Ruth joked, in the course of their marriage, that she’d be perfectly happy spending the rest of their days in the same little starter house they’d bought in Queen Anne when they were in their late twenties? That’s how far out of water she was down here. And yet she’d been driving, she’d been
coping, without help from Hugh or anyone. She was proud of that. She’d often worried, in past years, about how she’d fare if Hugh were to die before her. Now she knew.

  “Tell him I’ll give him a call myself this evening,” she instructed Bethy, lying back on her lumpy bed and closing her eyes. “And take the phone out into the courtyard, honey.”

  If only she could sleep for a little while, she’d rise again refreshed and ready for whatever astonishing thing might next come their way.

  Chapter Four

  IN FACT, WHAT CAME NEXT WAS A CHECK FOR $995, WHICH Ruth made payable to Mimi. The check was payment for Ruth’s share of the cost of producing the industrial that would make Bethy, Hillary, and Reba all able to join the Screen Actors Guild. Laurel Buehl was already SAG because of all her commercials, but she and her mother, Angie, were helping with the industrial just to be nice. Angie and Laurel had evidently devoted hours to writing a script.

  When Ruth first heard the term industrial, she’d pictured training films for factory workers, old black-and-white news-reel footage of Rosie the Riveter, that sort of thing, but Mimi had set her straight: in Hollywood parlance, an industrial was anything produced on film or video that was used to sell, train, or inform. It could be anything from an infomercial to a DVD training program on how to conduct business on eBay. Then there were commercials, which included network promotions and which everyone knew about, and PSAs, or public service announcements, which were really just commercials except that they paid squat and television stations ran them for free. “Movies,” at least as Ruth had always thought of them, were classified as “shorts,” “feature-length films,” or “documentaries.” Indies were a subset of all the above, made without the endorsement or marketing commitment of a movie studio like Disney or Paramount.

  Mimi had made it very clear that the industrial they’d be making had to meet all the criteria of a legitimate production, which included hiring a couple of nonstudio child actors who would be selected by auditioning for Mimi. It would be directed by one of Mimi’s young adult clients who had ambitions beyond acting.

  And so Ruth and Bethany had spent the last several evenings prepping for I Survived Middle School, and So Can You. Bethy would be playing a smart, bookish, yet socially capable student named Rita. Her contribution to the film would be to describe in an inspiring way her ultimate success in Phys Ed after a rocky start, both athletically and fraternally. I even made friends with the class bully, TaNiqua, her monologue went. She thought I’d be prejudiced against her because she’s African American, so she made fun of me, but I told her I think everyone is just the same and we ended up laughing about how goofy we looked in our gym uniforms. We’re really good friends now.

  The cast had assembled on a Saturday morning at Laurel and Angie’s apartment, a two-bedroom at an upscale complex just blocks from Beverly Hills that bore no resemblance whatsoever to Ruth and Bethy’s squalid little efficiency. In order to stay at a seemly remove from the filming, Mimi had sent Allison in her place. Allison was already a SAG member, so she was to keep an eye on things and help as production assistant. The director was an intense young man named Stafford Hahn, who traveled everywhere wearing a flash drive on a lanyard around his neck. As he’d explained to Ruth when they first arrived, it held his latest screenplay. “Keep an eye on me,” he’d advised Ruth, “because in a year a lot of people are going to know my name.”

  Now Allison was bossing around the two “real” girls among the cast: a creamy-skinned blonde with dull blue eyes and an on-the-young-side redhead with dimples.

  “You know, nobody wears their hair like that anymore,” Allison was saying to the redhead, whose hair was wildly curly and held back by a bandana knotted at the top. “It’s very eighties.” The girl flushed and pulled off the bandana. Ruth saw Allison peer closer. “That’s not a perm, is it?”

  The girls had left their things in Laurel’s bedroom, which Ruth noticed was expensively appointed with nicer furniture than anything Ruth owned. In the living room Laurel was helping the actors with their hair and makeup, dipping into a professional-looking cosmetic kit she said had gone with her to every pageant she’d ever entered. Ruth gathered there’d been a lot of them, which probably explained her poise and ready smile. But no, that wasn’t fair; she was a sweet girl, both in her obvious devotion to her mother, on whom she doted, and in her gentle manner with the younger actors at the studio. Ruth watched her lead the devastated red-haired girl into her bedroom, gently brush out and French-braid her hair, and whisper in her ear something Ruth was sure was reassuring. The child smiled tremulously and rejoined the other actors in the living room.

  “That was a sweet thing to do, honey,” the redhead’s mother told Laurel as she drifted by. “She’s always been self-conscious.”

  “She shouldn’t be,” said Laurel. “She’s beautiful, and it’s a different kind of beauty than blondes or brunettes ever have. You tell her I said so.”

  “I will,” the mom said gratefully. “She’ll be so proud.”

  And then it was time to begin. Stafford had the camera and lights positioned, and the camera-and-sound guy—another actor who moonlighted on the side—had given a thumbs-up. The mothers and Laurel were relegated to the balcony and the shoot began. The top-of-the-line sliding glass doors blocked all the sound from within, so Ruth found herself completely cut off from watching Bethany at work, something she liked more than almost anything else.

  The blond girl’s mother was saying to Angie, “I think you did a really good job on this script, by the way. And your apartment is lovely.” Ruth had seen this kind of earnest pandering before, had even been guilty of it herself on more than one occasion. You never knew when you might meet someone useful to your child’s career, so it was always best to treat everyone as though they were important, at least until you knew better.

  “Actually, Laurel wrote most of the script,” Angie said. “She’s always been a good writer.”

  “Well, you did a great job,” the mom said to Laurel. “I really mean it.” The redhead’s mom nodded in agreement.

  “How was your audition yesterday?” Ruth asked her. Laurel had gone to producers for a Nickelodeon sitcom. It was just a costar role but it could be a stepping stone to something larger, if she booked it. Everyone at the studio knew how badly Laurel wanted to break into theatrical work and leave commercials behind. Now, though, she just shook her head.

  “I thought I did a good job, but we haven’t heard anything, so I’m guessing I didn’t book it. I think I was probably too old.”

  Ruth thought there was an air of sadness about the girl that wasn’t normal in a teenager. During Ruth and Bethy’s first week in LA, Laurel and Angie had invited them to lunch as a gesture of welcome. They’d lingered over their meal for hours, telling stories about the girls’ respective acting experiences and the circuitous routes that had brought them to Hollywood. (“My husband thought we had lost our minds at first,” Angie had said. “Oh!” Ruth had said. “Hugh, too!”) To Ruth’s lasting gratitude, Laurel had been very good with Bethy, very attentive despite the age difference between them. Ruth wasn’t sure why they hadn’t gotten together again except by happenstance in Mimi’s greenroom, though it was true that Angie’s perky Southern accent and impeccable grooming were somewhat daunting. And everybody was just so busy. But more than any of those things, Angie and Laurel tended to hold themselves apart, and it wasn’t just Ruth’s perception; other families had noted it, too. In Ruth’s opinion, much as she valued her own excellent relationship with Bethy, there was such a thing as too much closeness.

  The women were murmuring sympathetically. “I heard Hillary is auditioning for Chrissy in Through the Window,” Angie was saying. Through the Window, Ruth had heard, was a suspense movie about a blind girl and her superdog, Theo. “I can’t see it, myself—oh, no pun intended—but you never know what these casting directors are looking for.”

  The other moms nodded vigorously, and then the redhead’s mother said, �
��By the way, for what it’s worth, I found a dental practice that’s running a tooth-whitening special, if anyone’s looking. Fifty-nine bucks.”

  Nowhere in the world were teeth more brilliant than in LA. Ruth thought that if any of these women knew the enormous profit margin for whitening teeth they’d never have it done again. It was the come-on dentists used to attract new patients. That was true even in Seattle, though nothing like here, where there was a dental practice in every strip mall. But she kept her mouth shut for once, and the other women dutifully wrote down the name and location of the dental practice.

  It was getting hot out on the balcony. Ruth could feel beads of sweat on her upper lip, and blotted them on her sleeve. She couldn’t tell if the camera inside was rolling yet or not, but Allison was standing nearby, holding a clapboard to record the scene and take number. Ruth hadn’t even known what the device was called until a week ago, when Hillary had told her.

  “Please sit,” Angie was urging the women when Ruth turned back. “I get the feeling we’re going to be out here for a while. I’m sorry I don’t have more chairs, but you can double up on the chaise longues.”

  Ruth obediently perched on the lower half of one of the teak chairs, sharing it with the redhead’s mother. Angie flipped open a cooler the size of a child’s coffin. Inside, prettily nested in ice, were diet sodas and wine coolers. Even though it was just noon, one of the women took a wine cooler. Ruth popped the top on a Diet Pepsi. She was drinking a lot of soda down here. Hugh would be disappointed. Soda and dental health didn’t go together, he believed, even if it was sugar-free. Sure, it wasn’t cavity-causing, but there was the enamel to think about, never mind the stains. She should have asked one of Hugh’s hygienists to do a cleaning before they came down here. God only knew when she’d get the chance now.

  The glass door slid open and the blond girl came out, clearly sulking. Her mother stood up and said with surprise, “All done already?”