Seeing Stars

by Diane Hammond

  Quinn bridled.

  The stylist said, “Don’t listen to them. Look, are you hungry at all?”

  “No,” Quinn lied.

  “Okay. If you change your mind, though, come on over. There’s plenty of food.”

  Quinn nodded. The stylist went back to the group at the folding table. A few of the men elbowed him, but he shook it off. “He’s a kid. Leave it alone,” Quinn could hear him snap.

  Quinn wanted him to come back and talk, but the stylist had been absorbed by the group at the folding-table buffet, so Quinn pulled a batch of papers from his back pocket. It was the sides for a scene he was auditioning for on Monday. He jumped up to sit on the washing machine. You weren’t supposed to sit on the machines, but screw it; the machine was walking, just the way the stylist had warned.

  He straightened out the pages. First he read the breakdown Mimi had given him at the showcase.

  Friday, November 2, 2006, 6:30 P.M. Pacific

  AFTER

  Miramax Films

  UNION

  Producer

  Writer-Director: Gus Van Sant

  Casting Director: Sharon Shue

  Shoot/Start Date: TBD

  Location: Portland, OR / LA

  8899 Beverly Blvd.

  LOS ANGELES, CA 90048

  SUBMIT ELECTRONICALLY

  SUBMISSIONS BY 11 P.M. FRI Nov. 9

  SEEKING:

  [BUDDY DONNER]

  Lead / MALE / 15 / Caucasian

  A tall, skinny kid with anger issues. He is, by turns, defiant, sullen, fiercely protective of his little sister, and almost always on the brink of rage. Actor must have an extremely wide spoken and nonspoken emotional range.

  STORY LINE: Buddy Donner and his 13-year-old sister Carlyle are living with their mother’s younger brother Wayne, who is almost never home. Their mother has just died. Buddy, Carlyle, and Wayne are doing as well as possible, considering that they’re in almost unsustainable pain. When a run-down motel goes up for sale, Buddy and Carlyle decide to buy it with their mother’s life insurance money. With Wayne to help, they find themselves surrounded by eccentric long-term guests with whom they slowly forge relationships and begin a new life.

  Quinn knew—every actor knew—that Gus Van Sant was one of the most respected directors in the movie industry. Almost as important, to Quinn, was the fact that he was known for working with unknown actors, sometimes even pulling kids off the street and casting them. Mimi had told Quinn that Van Sant wasn’t auditioning for After anywhere outside LA. The production schedule was tight, and word on the street was that he would open the call beyond Hollywood only as a last resort. The part of Buddy—one of the leads—had just been released, and Mimi wanted Quinn to be ready, even though he didn’t have an audition scheduled yet. Quinn knew as well as anyone what a break this role could be. He frowned and turned to the sides.

  BUDDY and CARLYLE are sitting in the living room.

  BUDDY

  I’m not buyin’ it.

  CARLYLE

  What do you mean, you’re not buying it? It’s the truth!

  BUDDY

  Yeah? So where’s your wand?

  CARLYLE

  (with infinite weariness)

  Buddy. That’s only in Harry Potter. Harry Potter is a book.

  BUDDY

  So show me something. If you were a real witch you’d be making something happen!

  CARLYLE

  (sweetly)

  I am. I’m making us argue.

  Raucous laughter broke out across the Laundromat. Quinn told himself he wouldn’t look over—he didn’t want the stylist to think he was paying attention to anything going on over there—but at the last minute he couldn’t stop himself. He was hungry and his ass was getting sore from sitting on the hard metal of the washing machine, which had just finished its final spin cycle. He couldn’t concentrate anyway, so he folded the pages, hopped off the washing machine, and stuck the sides back in his pocket. The laundry club was done, apparently: food was being wrapped and put back into coolers and sacks, and everyone had neatly folded baskets and hampers and duffel bags full of freshly clean clothes. Quinn saw Quatro bending over a wicker basket, tucking in a stack of blue towels. So he’d be leaving now, too. Quinn told himself it didn’t matter, that they didn’t even know each other except in a professional way.

  Anyway, he’d need a haircut in a month. A month was nothing.

  ACROSS TOWN AT 200 LA BREA, LAUREL BUEHL WAS CONFIDING to the camera as though to a close girlfriend why she wouldn’t be able to play in the final and most important water polo game of the season: her “friend” was visiting, and she didn’t feel she could rely on her tampons.

  Then she and three other girls who were auditioning for the same commercial were asked to tell one another, on camera, about their greatest personal hygiene fears: leakage, bloating, cramping, or moodiness. They were to talk about these problems as though they were monsters in the room, and the girls were defending themselves against them as if their lives depended on it. Over the top, girls, said the dweeby casting director. Waaay over the top, now. Good. Excellent. Thank you.

  Angie was waiting for Laurel outside in the bull-pen waiting room, sitting on the gray carpeted benches. Across from her a young woman held a baby on her lap and bounced her, trying to keep her quiet while they waited for the baby’s big sister, who was evidently auditioning for a soup commercial. The baby was fidgety—it was three o’clock in the afternoon, which Angie well remembered as Laurel’s worst time of day when she’d been tiny—and Angie watched the mom fishing, with growing desperation, object after object out of a string bag inside her enormous tote: a set of plastic keys, her set of real keys, a pen flashlight, a travel-pack of tissues, a set of plastic teething rings that made a nice clattering sound, a binky; and one after another, the baby threw the objects down in growing agitation.

  “Will she let me hold her, do you think?” Angie asked the mom. “You look like you could use a break.”

  The woman looked at Angie with tears welling up in her eyes. “God, would you mind? She’s got a double ear infection, we got about two hours of sleep last night, she hasn’t napped at all, and I’m at my wit’s end.”

  Angie took the baby gently under the arms and lifted her onto her lap. The baby was astonished into silence. “Boo!” Angie said softly. “Who’s a pretty girl? Who’s a beautiful girl?”

  The baby blew a spit bubble, farted into her diaper. Angie laughed.

  The mom stood up, wiped her eyes, did a side bend or two as though she were warming up for a marathon. “I’ve told my husband this is too much,” she said, “but Lily—that’s this one’s big sister—had a second callback, and it’s a national commercial, which could help us get her a better agent, so here we are.”

  “How old is Lily?”

  “Three.”

  “Oh, a big girl,” Angie said, smiling. The baby began to fidget in Angie’s arms. Angie turned her around, holding her under her armpits, and murmured, “See? Mama’s right there. Is that better? Yes, that’s better.”

  “You’re great with her.”

  “She’s just being good because she’s startled,” Angie said. “Her diaper feels pretty heavy. Do you have a clean one? We can change her right here, if you do.”

  “Oh, God, you’re wonderful,” the woman said. “I’ll change her, but if you can watch her so she doesn’t wriggle off the bench—”

  “Oh, sure,” said Angie, gently laying the baby down on her back. “Let’s just get these snaps undone. You are such a good girl!”

  By the time the baby was changed and back in her clothes, a small girl came dawdling out of the casting room. “All done, pumpkin?” said the mom. The little girl was one of the most beautiful children Angie had ever seen, of mixed race, with truly green eyes, a cleft chin, and wild curls dancing around her face. No wonder she was here.

  “See?” said the woman to the baby. “Here’s Big Sister. Okay? What did they say, honey?”

 
The little girl looked at her solemnly and popped her thumb into her mouth.

  “Did the man say anything to you?”

  The girl shook her head.

  “Oh. Okay,” said the mom, clearly disappointed. “I know you did a wonderful job, though. Okay? We have a juice box and snack in the car. Then you can watch a DVD on the way home.”

  Angie helped the young woman gather up the dirty diaper, the extra clothes she’d dumped out of the diaper bag, the scattered keys, both real and plastic, and the other objects the baby had discarded.

  “You’ve been a godsend,” the woman said. “This is just so, so hard. I’ve told my husband if it’s so easy, why doesn’t he try it one day, but he just laughs, like I’m kidding. I’m not kidding, though.”

  “No,” Angie said. “No, I can see that.”

  “Well, thank you. And tell your daughter good luck.”

  “I will.” Angie watched them disappear down the stairs and wondered if she’d ever had the stamina to do what that young woman was doing. She was so tired all the time now—she spent more and more of her energy fighting, or at least masking, a crushing fatigue. She remembered being that age, though. You came up with the energy when you had to. Not that Laurel had ever been hard to take care of. They’d wanted another child or even two more, but God hadn’t seen fit. And that was all right, too. Laurel was everything Angie could have ever wanted in a child, and more. People said you shouldn’t look upon your children as friends, but Angie didn’t see what was wrong with that. Laurel and she were even closer than most friends. They had never kept anything hidden, and Angie wouldn’t have wanted it any other way. Dillard loved them—Dillard adored them—but he wasn’t much for girl talk, as he’d put it to her on their honeymoon. Laurel was the one Angie told things to. Until now. Now she was determined to keep her sickness to herself for as long as possible. That was her work. Laurel had her own work to do, and Angie didn’t want anything to get in the way of that, even though she missed her quiet strength and unfailing support.

  Laurel came up, breaking Angie’s train of thought. “Done?” Angie said.

  “Done.”

  “Scale of one to ten?” This was their system—to rate auditions on a scale of one to ten, with ten being an absolute certainty of booking the commercial, one being no chance at all.

  “Eight,” said Laurel. “Eight and a half.”

  “Oh, good.”

  “You okay?” Laurel said, peering at her.

  Angie turned away. It was getting harder and harder to mask her deterioration. “Of course.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  MOST OF MIMI’S OUT-OF-TOWN CLIENTS WENT HOME FOR Thanksgiving, but there were always some who got trapped in LA because last-minute auditions or callbacks trumped any holiday. Mimi had a long-standing tradition of rounding up the strays and newly relocated clients and hosting a Thanksgiving potluck dinner. This year both Hillary and Reba had flown home, but Allison had landed a last-minute callback on the following Monday morning for a guest-star role on House, and she convinced her mother to let her stay. Dillard, Angie, and Laurel Buehl, as well as Hugh, Bethany, and Ruth Rabinowitz, would also be there. Even Quinn Reilly would be coming; like Allison, he’d been stranded in LA by a last-minute callback. Though he was less than enthusiastic, he was still enough of a child to need a holiday observance someplace, and Mimi’s was the only port, Baby-Sue and Jasper apparently having been invited to a gathering that had not included him.

  The one thing Mimi could cook, for reasons that were inexplicable even to her, was a tender, juicy, golden Thanksgiving turkey. Allison was making homemade cranberry sauce, so the two of them were out of bed and in the kitchen at the ungodly hour of seven o’clock Thanksgiving morning. They worked side by side, taking up, between them, every available bit of grimy counter space. Tina Marie lurked underfoot, snapping at scraps of dressing that fell like manna from above, while Allison sang an impromptu Thanksgiving carol to the tune of “Deck the Halls”: Stuff the bird with mounds of stuffing, fa la la la la la la la la. / Tis the season to be hungry, fa la la la la la la la la. If she minded missing Thanksgiving with her mother and stepfather, Mimi thought, she certainly didn’t let on.

  Mimi shoved stuffing into the back-end cavity of the turkey, a twenty-pounder she’d been thawing since Monday. Allison seized the bird for a minute to murmur into its neck cavity, “You’re going to be yummy, aren’t you, because you like us and you chose our table from all the tables in all the houses in LA.” Then she turned back to the stove and transferred her cranberry sauce into a turkey-shaped copper mold Mimi had picked up at a swap meet however many years ago. Already assembled and in the refrigerator were a green bean casserole; a small pumpkin pie (as an emergency backup—the Buehls had signed up to bring two others as well as a cherry pie); and cornbread muffins Allison had baked last night in a fit of holiday zeal.

  “Don’t you just love Thanksgiving?” she asked Mimi now, across the countertop. “I didn’t use to, but now I do.”

  “Does your mom cook?”

  Allison just gave her a look. “We always went to the Holiday Inn. This year she said they’re going to this fancy hotel downtown for like a twenty-course meal or something. They’re not even having turkey, they’re having goose. Who’d want to eat a goose?”

  “Lots of people like goose,” Mimi said, dipping up a handful of Crisco to rub on the turkey. In the old days her mother had used lard, but she’d never been able to bring herself to try it.

  “Well, I’d rather eat a pheasant than a goose. At least I’ve never seen a pheasant.” Allison ran the back of her wooden spoon over the glossy surface of her cranberry sauce, making it perfectly smooth and evenly distributed in the mold. Then she leaned down and kissed it, leaving the faintest lip print in the sauce. “Don’t tell anyone I did that,” she told Mimi.

  AT NOON THEIR GUESTS BEGAN TO ARRIVE. RUTH, HUGH, and Bethany came first, and Allison gave each of them an impulsive hug. She wore a filmy skirt, tiny sweater, and high-heeled pumps. Mimi herself wore a sweatshirt and baggy pants, plus a pair of Dearfoam slippers that Allison had given her last Christmas. The Rabinowitzes held a middle ground in Dockers and button-down collared shirt (Hugh); knit pants and a Thanksgiving-themed sweater (Ruth); and jeans and a tight-fitting T-shirt (Bethany), which showed she was finally beginning to develop breasts. The three of them hovered around the kitchen—Ruth had made a fruit salad and a yam casserole with marshmallows—until the casserole had been stowed in the refrigerator and Mimi shooed them all into the living room. The girls headed for Allison’s bedroom, where Hugh saw Allison kicking off her high heels in favor of a pair of pale pink rubber flip-flops. Hugh and Ruth sat side by side. Ruth said to Hugh in a stage whisper, “They’ve cleaned.”

  Tina Marie hopped up beside them, kissed Ruth repeatedly on the lips, and then heaved herself, with a deep sigh, against the sofa’s throw pillows. Ruth brushed dog hair from her holiday sweater as the Buehls arrived, bearing the promised pies and an assortment of microbrew beers, Dillard apparently not being much of a wine man. Under his arm he carried a photo album as hefty as a family Bible, which he brought straight into the living room and laid lovingly on the altar of the coffee table in front of Hugh and Ruth. While Laurel and Angie were dealing with the pies in the kitchen, Dillard hitched up a ladder-back chair and opened the photo album to the very beginning, adjusting its position so Hugh and Ruth could see better.

  “You must be very proud,” said Hugh, dutifully examining the first two pages and gathering that Ruth intended to stay mum.

  Dillard blew his nose on a red bandana and shoved it back in his pocket. “Yes, sir, I’m real proud of my girls. Best couple of women the South has ever produced, if you ask me, but then I guess you could call me partial.” Page after page revealed pictures of Laurel and Angie at pageants all over the South: little Laurel in spangly boots and a patriotic stars-and-stripes ensemble; Angie in a makeshift dressing room, curling Laurel’s hair with a curling iron and laughingl
y waving Dillard and his camera away; a preteen Laurel holding a microphone with the ease of Sinatra during the talent portion of some long-ago extravaganza; Angie and Laurel in matching mother-daughter outfits, which Dillard explained they’d worn at the one pageant in which Angie had also participated, taking second place. There were no photographs that included either Dillard—who was, presumably, the photographer—or other children, except incidentally in the background.

  “She’s lovely,” said Hugh, because she was; and tragic, too, he thought, because whose only friend was her mother? He had read about pageant moms—close kin to stage moms, evidently—who made their daughters’ lives a living hell of never-ending pressure and competition, but he didn’t see any signs of that here. Both Laurel and Angie looked relaxed and exuberant, and it was clear where Laurel’s looks had come from, though Hugh thought Angie was now thin to the point of gauntness. A late-life eating disorder? He gathered that was a growing problem. Whatever the current trouble was, in almost every photograph they seemed completely at one with their surroundings, so perhaps theirs was a perfect harmony, a pageantry world yin and yang.