Seeing Stars

by Diane Hammond

  —VEE VELMAN

  Chapter Nineteen

  IN THE SPACE OF ONE WEEK, THE PACE OF THEATRICAL auditions accelerated wildly. Some of the Mimi Roberts studio kids—though not Bethany—were going out every day. Pilot season had arrived.

  “I don’t see why everyone comes from all over the country for this,” Ruth said petulantly to Vee on her cell phone one afternoon. She was walking briskly around and around Greta Groban’s shabby block while Bethy was being coached. She’d resolved to lose fifteen pounds by Easter, like that was going to happen. But still. “Yesterday I saw two cars from Rhode Island. Two. In the same hour. There are only, what, fifteen hundred cars in the whole state, and two of them were here.” She could feel little beads of sweat crawling through her hair. Once more around and she was done, or she’d have to find deodorant and a shower. And she and Bethy had an audition and an acting class to get through after this. “I know some of the kids are going nuts, but Bethy’s had only two auditions since we got back, and one was the one for Bradford Place. Straight to producers and then nothing—we haven’t heard a single word, so she obviously didn’t book it. I keep asking Mimi to get feedback from the casting director, but of course she hasn’t done it, and I don’t know how many more times I can nag her about it.”

  “We heard they canceled it.”

  “Canceled what?”

  “Bradford Place. Clara heard it was scrapped. Whoever played the female lead got a better offer so she backed out, and then one of the producers backed out, and the network just said screw it.”

  “You’re kidding,” said Ruth.

  “Happens all the time, babe,” Vee said cheerfully.

  “So do you think the whole pilot season thing is just a collective delusion?”

  Vee snorted into the phone. “For kids without credits, of course it is. No one is going to cast a kid with no experience as a potential series regular in a pilot for huge bucks. But the kids with credits have a chance. It’s not like they’re likely to book anything, but they have that glimmer of hope—at least the parents do—so they show up just like lemmings running to the cliffs or the sea or whatever that expression is.”

  “Yeah,” Ruth sighed. “Has Clara been going out much?”

  “Are you kidding? I keep telling you, honey—Clara’s a redhead. She’s even more of a niche actor than Bethany is. The last thing she went out for wasn’t even a pilot, it was a feature film. She was the weird kid in a middle school class. She booked it, worked for three days, and then hasta luego.”

  “But doesn’t she mind that? Don’t you?”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. Isn’t it like getting a sip of water when you’re dying of thirst?”

  “Well, sure. That’s what makes Hollywood go round. You always want more. More, more, more.”

  “Well, it seems cruel.”

  Even over the phone, Ruth could hear Vee shrug. “It is what it is.”

  “I hate that saying,” said Ruth peevishly. “You know what other one I hate? ‘Just sit down and shut up.’”

  “It does seem apt, though,” Vee agreed. “You know what your problem is? You want to be in control. No one’s in control down here—no one. You’d be much better off if you’d give up and stop fighting it.”

  “I know,” Ruth moaned. “But I can’t.”

  “Why don’t you go see a psychic? Maybe it would help if you knew the future.”

  “A psychic.”

  “You can scoff, but I have a great one.”

  “You’ve been to see a psychic?” Ruth said.

  “Babe, this is LA. Everybody has. There are more psychics in LA than any other city in the world.”

  “There are?”

  “I don’t know—I made that up. It’s possible, though. Do you have a pen?”

  “I will when I get to the car. Talk to me about something else, and I’ll tell you when I get there.”

  “How’s Hugh?”

  “He says he feels like a pincushion, pricking his fingers all the time. I think he’s resigning himself to the whole thing, though. My mother-in-law has read every diabetes pamphlet and magazine article there is. She sends me these diabetes-friendly recipes—like I’m there to cook, which of course is her point. She keeps hinting that if we get divorced it’s okay with her. I don’t know how people do this. I mean, I’m not there, but I’m not really here, either. No matter where I am, I feel like I’m supposed to be in the other place. Am I whining?”

  “Sure. But people who live in two places live in neither. I got that in a fortune cookie one time.”

  “You did not.”

  “I could have.”

  “God, finally!” Ruth had arrived at the car. She unlocked and opened the two curbside doors for some ventilation, then fished a pen and an old MapQuest printout out of the glove compartment. When she’d parked she’d been in the shade, but the sun had moved. She thought about sitting down on the grass strip between the curb and the sidewalk because it looked cooler, and then she remembered all the dogs that lived in the neighborhood and peed there, and changed her mind, sitting on the burning passenger seat with her legs out. “Okay, I’ve got a pen.”

  “Her name is Elva.” Vee rattled off a phone number.

  “Elva? You’re sure this isn’t a joke?”

  “No, I’m dead serious. Now tell me you’re going to call her.”

  “I’m going to call her,” Ruth said; and it was possible that she would, that’s how conflicted she felt about everything—Hugh, Hollywood, the wisdom of being here in the first place, of doing any of the crazy things they’d been doing. And that wasn’t even including the whole school charade. Ruth had found Bethy a math tutor for seventy-five dollars an hour and sent her to him twice a week with limited success, which was to say the child would graduate from high school mathematically illiterate if she continued the way she was going. Ruth unstuck one leg from the car seat ruminatively, and then the other one. “Do you really think this is good for our kids?”

  “Psychics?”

  “Acting,” said Ruth, and then, “No, not acting. Rejection.”

  “Sure. If they have the right expectations, it toughens ’em. You could hit Clara with a baseball bat and she wouldn’t even flinch. Figuratively speaking.”

  “And that’s good?”

  “Sure. She’s going to make her own way in the world, fuck what everyone else thinks.”

  “But did she ever really want the fame, the recognition, the whole star thing?”

  “Maybe not as much as you and Bethy, but remember, she was raised on this stuff. She didn’t just drop into it after years of actor worship. We always knew it was a crock of shit. It’s more lethal when you don’t find out until you’re older.”

  “You make it sound like chicken pox.”

  “Don’t you get shingles if you’re older when you get it? I remember a neighbor of ours once had shingles. It’s supposed to be very painful. I don’t even know what that means, though. I always picture these scaly patches, but isn’t that actually psoriasis?”

  “I have no idea,” said Ruth.

  “Yeah, well,” Vee said. “It took your mind off rejection for a minute, though, didn’t it?”

  Then Ruth’s call-waiting went off and it was time to go.

  “Remember,” Vee called down the line in closing. “They’re stronger than we are by a mile!”

  MIMI HAD AGREED TO ANGIE BUEHL’S ULTIMATUM TO push harder theatrically because otherwise she’d lose Laurel as a client and Laurel was worth a ton of money. And she had tried, she really had, she just hadn’t had much luck. Nevertheless, Angie was standing in Mimi’s cluttered office with her hands on her hips, saying, “You need to get Laurel in on After.” Laurel hovered anxiously just behind Angie’s right shoulder. “Everyone else is auditioning, so why isn’t she?”

  Mimi sighed. She had already, and at almost the last possible second, gotten the girl an audition for the re-released babysitter part in Bradford Place. Not that there’d b
een any chance of her booking it, even if it hadn’t been canceled. A reliable, precancellation rumor had had it that the part had belonged to another girl, a Hollywood insider, all along; the casting director had just been window-shopping so that the producer would feel he was earning his exorbitantly high fee. It happened all the time.

  Mimi turned from her computer with a lecture on her tongue about the wisdom of choosing your battles. Then she took a closer look at Angie. The woman, normally so bright and well turned out, looked like hell. It had been several weeks since Mimi had seen her. Had something happened? It had to have, for her to look like that. So Mimi toned down what she’d been about to say, but the bottom line was still the same: there was no way that Laurel would be considered for the part of Carlyle.

  “For one thing, the breakdown’s for thirteen, and there is no way that Laurel can play thirteen. Right now I doubt she can even play fifteen.” You could almost watch the child’s breasts grow. Dillard’s family must have a large helping of boobs in his genetic pie, because Angie was as flat as a board. And, Mimi couldn’t help noticing, incredibly, even alarmingly, thin. Something was going on there. It wasn’t unheard of here for a woman in her late thirties or early forties to develop an eating disorder.

  “The character could be older,” Angie was saying. “There’s nothing about her that’s specifically thirteen. I think it has a wider age range. She could just as easily be older than Buddy instead of younger, and it wouldn’t make any difference.”

  “Except to the director,” Mimi said drily.

  “Try,” said Angie.

  “Please?” said Laurel.

  Mimi sighed. She could either make the phone call and piss off Joel E. Sherman—who, let’s face it, wasn’t one of Mimi’s fans to begin with—or she could lie, not make the call, and risk having Angie call Joel herself, which would not only call Mimi’s bluff but also be certain death for Laurel forever. Angie Buehl was exactly the kind of mother who crashed auditions in the honest but fatal belief that if the casting director caught even one glimpse of her child, he would book her on the spot.

  “Look,” Mimi said. “There’s another part, for a sixteen-year-old neighbor who has a crush on Buddy. I can get her in on that. They haven’t even started casting it yet.”

  “It’s not the lead, though,” Angie pointed out.

  “Which is why she’s got at least a shot at it. I know you don’t want to believe me, but no director anywhere ever is going to cast a kid who has never done anything but commercials as the lead in a feature film.”

  “But she has years of pageant experience,” Angie cried. “I don’t know why you never count that.”

  “And if they were looking for someone to wear a swimsuit, she’d be in like Flynn,” Mimi said. “After is set in Portland, Oregon, in the dead of winter.”

  Laurel pulled on Angie’s arm. Angie gently shook her off. “Just wait a minute!” Then, to Mimi, “Get her in. If they won’t see her for Carlyle, then get her in for the other girl. I know there’s a place for her in this movie. I think you should be able to see that, too.”

  OUTSIDE, IN THE STUDIO PARKING LOT, ANGIE SAID TO Laurel, “Because you’re good enough, that’s why.”

  “But if Mimi doesn’t think I can—”

  “Mimi isn’t God, honey. And we don’t have time for negativity. I’m not saying you’ll book the part, I’m just saying let’s get you in there so they can at least see you. If you don’t audition for this man, he’ll never be able to consider you for other roles. I’m right about this, honey.”

  “Maybe,” said Laurel. “All right.”

  ALLISON THOUGHT THE EARLY EVENING WAS THE MOST depressing time of day. Mimi wasn’t home yet and Hillary and Reba were cranky and hopped up on junk food and energy drinks. When Quinn still lived with them, they’d played Game Boy together or fooled around with Tina Marie. Now Allison devoted the time to personal grooming. Her dark leg hair was fast-growing and inclined to be stubbly—she’d been shaving her legs since she was twelve—so she’d picked up a bottle of Nair hair depilatory the last time Mimi had taken her to a drugstore, and now seemed like a good time to try it. When her phone rang she was in the bathroom, standing on one leg with the other propped up on the vanity, her left leg and most of her right one slathered in stinky cream. She answered without looking to see who was calling.

  On the other end of the line she heard a long, thin wail and knew immediately it was her mother, Denise. “Honey, Chet’s dumping me.”

  Allison narrowed her eyes warily. “What do you mean?”

  Denise snuffled. “He’s kicking me out of the house. He said this weekend he’s bringing Eddie and Virgil and Julio over and they’re going to load up my stuff and take it to some apartment the bastard’s rented for me.”

  “Good,” said Allison, lowering her finished right leg and holding the phone with her chin and shoulder so she could put the cap on the bottle. “He’s a douche. Make sure he’s paid like a year’s rent in advance.” Allison could hear ice cubes clinking in a glass. From the slightly off-kilter sound of her, Denise had probably been drinking since noon. “Manhattan?”

  “Just a little one, honey. You can understand that.”

  And Allison could, because whenever Denise’s men dumped her—and a lot of them had dumped her—Denise mixed up a pitcher of Manhattans along with the morning coffee. “Well, I say good riddance. He’s a fucking douche.” Allison wiped her hands on a length of toilet paper and sat down on about one inch of the closed toilet so she wouldn’t mess up the Nair.

  “How can you say that to me? He’s my husband!”

  “Yeah, for like fifteen months or something. I mean, I was surprised he even married you. You lived with him for, what, a couple of years? It wasn’t like you weren’t going to have sex with him or something unless he married you.”

  “I don’t know how you can be so hateful,” Denise said. “He’s everything to me.”

  Allison squinted, looked into the middle distance. “Who sings that?”

  “What?”

  “Isn’t that a song? ‘You’re Everything to Me’? Do you think somebody sang it on Idol?”

  “I cannot believe you’re so hard-hearted,” Denise snapped. “You’re no help.”

  “You don’t need help. You get people to dump you all by yourself,” Allison pointed out. “Plus I’m like a thousand miles away.”

  “Yeah, and about that,” Denise said.

  “About what?”

  “Being a thousand miles away. You need to come home. A mother needs her daughter at a time like this.”

  Allison snapped to. “What?”

  “I need you at home.”

  “I can’t hear you.” Allison flapped her fingers between her lips and the phone as she talked, to make the transmission sound weird. “I think this connection is breaking up.”

  “Other girls would fly to their mothers’ sides,” Denise huffed.

  “Get Shelley. You guys can drink and stuff and then you’ll feel better.”

  “She’s out of town. She has this fabulous new boyfriend. Her daughter would come, I’ll tell you that.”

  “Then ask her. I’ve got to go.”

  “Why? Go where?”

  “To class,” Allison lied.

  “Well, we’ll talk about this later.”

  But they wouldn’t, not if Allison could help it. The minute she hung up, she programmed her cell phone with a special ring tone for Denise. That way, she’d know not to answer it. Then she recorded a message that said her voice mail wasn’t working and the caller would just have to call back later, so her mom couldn’t leave a message and then accuse her of not returning the call. The strategy would keep Denise at bay until Allison could figure out what to do. The one thing she was certain of was that she wouldn’t go back to live in Houston. Allison and Mimi might shout and scream at each other and have their fallings-out, but Allison loved Mimi deeply and genuinely, and she was pretty sure that Mimi loved her back. Nevertheless, she w
as also pretty sure that Mimi would deport her to Houston anyway, if that’s what Denise told her to do. Denise had legal custody, after all. And Mimi had tried to send Quinn home, which would have worked if his family had wanted him. Allison had listened in on the conversation from the living room phone.

  “Yes, he’s extremely talented,” Mimi had told them, “but it’s not always about talent. I’m just his manager. I’m not the one who needs to get to the bottom of whatever issues he’s having. You are.” Quinn’s mother had just said, in this very smooth, very professional voice, “Thank you for filling us in, but we really do think the best place for him is down there.” And Mimi, who was never at a loss for something to say, had simply hung up the phone, come out into the kitchen where Allison was nonchalantly pretending to read a Thai takeout menu, and said, “That boy deserves better.” That’s how Quinn had ended up staying in LA with Jasper or whatever his name was and nasty Baby-Sue.

  And Allison knew that, if given half a chance, Denise would book her on the first flight out of LAX, and she would be mixing drinks for Denise by morning. So Allison would have to keep Mimi and Denise as far apart as she could, and for as long as she could, until she could put a more permanent solution in place. So in addition to armoring her own phone and voice-mail message, she sent her mother a text message, immediately followed by an e-mail, informing her that Mimi’s phone number and e-mail addresses had just been changed because of a stalker—of course, no one in their right mind would stalk Mimi, but it was the best story Allison could come up with on short notice—and, at least for now, any and all new contact information was being kept strictly confidential. In the meantime, the only way to contact either Mimi or her was by calling Allison’s cell.

  But these were, at best, stopgap measures. Allison knew there was really only one thing that was guaranteed to let her stay in LA, and that was booking something big, something really big.