She’d felt certain, given all she had done, that He would hear her.
But in the last month she’d watched Angie become more and more exhausted, and though her mother thought she was keeping the terrible bruises on her arms and legs covered, Laurel saw them every night after Angie fell asleep, because she checked on Angie at midnight—set an alarm for that express purpose—and pulled up the covers, smoothed a pillow, listened to her mother’s breathing. And the bruises leaked from beneath sleeves or pant legs until they began to run together. Still, Laurel had hung on to hope, had tried to convince herself that this didn’t necessarily mean that Angie was dying.
Except, of course, she was dying, and it mattered not at all that they weren’t nearly ready.
And that was a bitter, bitter pill. That was the Lord’s slap, His disapproving judgment, not only of Laurel but at Angie’s expense. Angie was dying because Laurel didn’t know how to do the Lord’s bidding. Trying, evidently, didn’t count.
So when Mimi Roberts called and told Angie that Laurel had booked a small role in After—as a pious girl whose sole contribution to the movie was to tell Buddy that at least his mother was joyful because she was in heaven—Laurel began to scream. She screamed and screamed until Angie called 911 and they gave Laurel massive doses of Valium and when she finally stopped screaming, she told Angie she was done. And nothing Angie could do or say would change her mind.
BETHY’S AUDITION WAS ALL THE WAY DOWN IN SANTA Monica at Westside Casting Studios, which Ruth hated because it meant they had to take the 405, highway to hell. Ruth and Bethy arrived twenty minutes late because they’d been hungry, said screw it, and stopped to grab a burger at a McDonald’s a couple of blocks away. The studio waiting room was full to bursting with African American girls. Something was up. They were trying to decide whether Bethy should even bother to sign in or just call Mimi, when a casting assistant with ear gauges and crazy, shoe-polish-black hair hurried over shaking his head.
“Wait, wait, wait. Please don’t tell me you’re here for Charmin, because the ad agency’s going in a different direction. Didn’t your agent tell you? We called everyone this morning.”
“Crap,” said Ruth.
But the casting assistant was already rushing away. “Next group, please, where are you?” From across the room Ruth watched him say to some of the girls. “No, there should be only four of you. No, four. You’re five. One of you is in the wrong place.” He culled a girl from the group and ushered the rest into the audition room, where, from the sound of it, they were being asked to burst into song. Ruth looked at Bethy and Bethy looked back and they shrugged their shoulders and walked out.
Ruth called Mimi from the car. “So did Holly call to tell you the toilet paper commercial call was for black girls? Because we just got down here and unless Bethy can suddenly pass, we’re fucked.”
“Let me call Big Talent,” said Mimi.
Ruth sighed. “What’s the point? Crap, crap, crap! It just took us two hours to get here, and it’s going to take us three hours to get back because it’s rush hour.”
“C’est la vie,” said Mimi.
“Whatever,” said Ruth. Normally she’d have been livid, but at least they’d had something to do while Ruth waited for her cell phone to bring them more bad news from the north.
AN HOUR AND THREE QUARTERS LATER, THE CALL CAME.
“She has a mass,” Hugh told her. She and Bethy had ground to an absolute standstill eight miles short of the 101.
Ruth felt her chest get heavy. “What does that mean? Does it mean cancer?”
“We won’t know until they go in.”
“So they’re going to operate.”
“They already are. They took her into surgery half an hour ago.”
“Oh, honey,” Ruth said.
“What’s going on?” said Bethy.
“Hush,” said Ruth.
“We should know more in a couple of hours.”
“Damn it. All right, well, let me know as soon as you do.”
“Mom, what’s going on? Is Daddy all right?”
So while they crept toward the 101 at two miles an hour in heat so high that it could take your breath away if you didn’t have air-conditioning, Ruth told Bethy about Helene. She tried to sound chipper and hopeful but Bethy, who had always been able to sniff out a rat, burst into tears and refused to be consoled. Ruth let her cry it out. Then she started to talk, and she didn’t stop until they’d reached the 101 about half an hour later. She talked about how hard it was on Hugh to have them here; and how, even though he loved them and missed them, he didn’t see any way that selling his Seattle practice and coming to LA made financial sense; and how there was Helene to think of now, too. She talked about how much it was costing them to live in LA, and how much harder it was to book things than they’d ever imagined, even though Bethany was an astonishingly good actor whom Hugh and Ruth were so proud of there weren’t even words. She talked about what diabetes really entailed, and how a diabetic’s outlook was as important as his medical care, and how Hugh was trying very hard to take good care of himself, but still. She talked about how Bethy was missing a lot of what being a teenager was all about—school plays and pep rallies and going with friends to the mall and, later on, proms and dances. By the time Ruth merged onto the 101, she realized what she’d just done with no forethought whatsoever: she’d made a case—a well-thought-out, articulate, compelling case—for leaving this place behind and going home. Really going home. And the more she talked, the calmer Bethy became, and that was the first thing that had really surprised Ruth in days.
“Talk to me,” she said.
“About what?”
“What do you mean, about what? About everything I just said. About the idea of going home. Does it upset you?”
Bethy nibbled on the end of a lock of hair. “Not really.”
“No?”
“No. I mean, not if Daddy needs us. And Nana.”
“But this is your dream, honey. I know that.”
Bethany shrugged. Shrugged.
“No?” said Ruth.
“No. I mean, yes. Yes, it’s my dream. But if Daddy and Nana need us at home, we should do that.”
“Don’t you want to think about this? It’s a huge decision.”
“That’s okay,” said Bethy, and Ruth could tell she meant it. “I mean, I know this was exciting and stuff, especially at first, but it’s not like I thought it would be. I thought I’d be working all the time. And I miss, like, everything. I mean, I miss having real friends and stuff. School.”
“Honey, if we go home now, we might never come back.”
“Yeah.” Bethy shrugged again, looking out the window. “That’s okay, though. Hey, can we do Bob’s for dinner?”
And just like that, with exactly that little anguish, it was over—Hollywood, LA, everything. Damned if they hadn’t hit the psychic’s fork in the road and known all along which way to go.
THE ONLY CAR IN THE STUDIO LOT WAS MIMI’S. BETHY folded her arms across her chest and said she’d wait in the car. Ruth started to argue with her and then, abruptly, she gave up, putting all the windows down and saying, “If you stop sweating or you get light-headed, honk the horn immediately, and I mean immediately, because it’ll mean you’re getting heatstroke.”
“I won’t get heatstroke,” Bethy said.
Inside, Ruth was greeted by Tina Marie and then by Allison. The little dog, apparently unmoved by the smell of Ruth’s shoes, returned to Mimi’s office leaving a trail of piddle behind. “Tina Marie!” Allison called after her. “You come back and clean that up!”
She looked at Ruth, looked away, took a deep breath, and said, “I miss you and Bethy. Like, a lot. I know I did a bad thing. I don’t even know why I took it, and then I lied about it. I’m really, really, really sorry.”
“The spoon? Oh, honey,” Ruth said. She pulled Allison into a hug. “Thank you. I know this was a hard thing to do. We’ve missed you, too.” And to her surprise, Ruth
meant it.
“I know,” said Allison.
Ruth coaxed her into going out to the parking lot and talking to Bethany while Ruth poked her head in to see Mimi—who was, of course, on the telephone. She signaled for Ruth to sit in the visitor’s chair and hung up a minute later. “Is she still going back to live with her mother?” Ruth said, gesturing vaguely over her shoulder to indicate Allison.
“No,” said Mimi. “She’ll be staying here.”
“Oh! Well, that’s good, then,” Ruth said. “Listen, I’m probably going to have to go back to Seattle again. My mother-in-law’s having some kind of medical crisis. We don’t know much right now, but whatever it is, it’s not good.”
“You’ve been having a tough time,” Mimi said, which was the closest thing to kindness she’d ever shown Ruth.
For a minute, Ruth felt incipient tears. She concentrated on breathing through her nose until the feeling passed. “It’s being so far away—it makes everything turn into such a bigger deal. Anyway, here’s what I wanted to ask you. If we went home—I mean Bethy, too—would it be that bad?”
“What do you mean, if you go home? You mean for the summer?”
Ruth nodded vaguely. “Well, or for, you know, a break. To reevaluate.”
“That’s up to you. Bethany’s turning, what, fourteen?”
“In June.”
“Yeah. If you’re going to take a break, this is probably a good time to do it, with summer coming up. Episodic season’s over, and feature films are pretty much cast already.”
“So it wouldn’t hurt her chances.”
“I can’t tell you that.”
“Okay,” said Ruth, standing.
“Just let me know what you decide,” Mimi said, already turned back to her computer. “Let me know and let Holly know, so we can book her out.”
“Yes, ma’am,” said Ruth.
Out in the parking lot, Allison was leaning way in their car window, talking to Bethany. By Allison’s body language Ruth gathered that things had gone well between them. When the girls saw her, they talked her into taking Allison with them to Bob’s for dinner, where they chattered like magpies right through dessert, giving Ruth a racking headache. The shy waiter was nowhere to be found, which was probably just as well since Ruth had a consuming desire to tell him about Helene and the decision she and Bethy had just made to go home. Like he’d miss them. Like he even recognized them. Would anyone miss them? Yes—Vee Velman. After dinner Ruth dropped the girls off at CityWalk for a movie, pulled up a rickety patio chair by the apartment’s scummy pool, and dug out her phone.
“Okay, here’s the thing, and it’s creepy,” she told Vee. “Your Viking psychic got it right. My mother-in-law’s in the hospital with some kind of brain tumor. I’m going to have to go home again.” She watched leaf debris, a plastic water bottle, and half a potato chip bag scud across the pool in a light breeze.
“See, I told you,” Vee said. “I told you she’d have something for you.”
“I don’t see that it’s done me any good, though. I mean, it’s not like I could warn Hugh or Helene. All it did was make me crazy, and now this.”
“Sure,” said Vee. “That’s a bummer. So do you want Bethany to stay with us this time? When are you leaving?”
“Tomorrow,” said Ruth. “But here’s the thing: we might not come back.”
“Really?”
“Really.” And as Ruth said it, she realized she meant it. “It’s just too hard. We thought she’d be working a lot more. I mean, she’s only booked the one costar role. Not even a commercial. In eight months. Hugh’s sick and he misses us, and now there’s this thing with his mother….”
“But it can go like that,” Vee argued. “Hell, they can go years with nothing, and then, bam! They book something huge.”
“Or they can just go for years with nothing.”
“There is that.”
“No, I think we’re done. Helene needs Hugh, and Hugh needs me.”
Vee was silent for a minute. “So does Bethany know?”
“Yes.”
“Was she okay with it?”
“You know, to tell you the truth I think she might be secretly relieved. There’s been a lot of tension at the studio with one of her friends, even though that seems to be over for now. And some of the other families are starting to leave for the summer, so it’ll just get lonelier and lonelier.”
“Don’t forget Clara.”
“I know, but you guys are too far away to see often, plus Clara has her own life. She doesn’t need Bethy dropped on her.” Ruth picked a piece of hair off her pants. “This is so not what I expected.”
“LA never is,” said Vee.
“I don’t know—we might end up coming back when Bethy’s legal eighteen. Then maybe she’ll have more of a chance.”
“Sure,” said Vee, but they both knew they didn’t believe it. “So anyway, call me sometimes. I’ll call you.”
“I will,” said Ruth. “I’m going to miss you.”
“Are you crying? Why are you crying?”
“It was such a nice dream,” said Ruth, and then she was sobbing. “I was so sure it was going to be—I don’t know what. Phenomenal. And all we’ve really done was press our noses against the glass.”
Vee made a sympathetic noise.
“I’m going to hang up now,” Ruth said. “I’m embarrassing myself.”
“Okay,” said Vee. “Love you, babe. Safe travels.”
“Yeah,” said Ruth. “I love you, too.”
To herself, once she’d gotten off the phone, she muttered, “Well, that was god-awful,” because it had been—unexpectedly so. She’d had no idea she would be so emotional about pulling up stakes and going home—far more emotional than Bethany was, when it should have been the other way around. Could this have been Ruth’s dream, all this time? Might Bethy have just been going along with it? Maybe Ruth had wanted it for herself, recognition by proxy; maybe she was no better than every other stage mom who was compensating for a hollow core by filling it up with someone else’s prospects.
Or maybe that was all just so much crap.
She went back to the apartment and finished packing, then ran a load of food, laundry detergent, and odds and ends to the studio for anyone to take home who could use them. She was relieved that Mimi wasn’t there. Mimi hadn’t seemed either disappointed or surprised that they were going. Maybe what she’d been surprised about was that they’d lasted this long. Ruth knew she’d had unrealistic expectations, and that Mimi was leery of that because it had a tendency to blow up in her face. It hadn’t seemed to matter that they’d been earnest and done everything she’d asked them to do. In fact, it was possible that their earnestness—which really amounted to colossal naïveté—had worked against them. Mimi tended to lean toward the realistic ones, the ones who were bracing for the long haul, the ones who were settling in, making lives here as well as careers. They’d never done that. They’d never even made the distinction, until now.
Chapter Twenty-five
CASSIE WAS THE ONE WHO DELIVERED THE NEWS. SHE TOLD Quinn that when she couldn’t reach him by phone she asked her mother to drive her to his apartment building, and then wait for him to come back from wherever he’d been—which was Hazlitt & Company, getting his hair trimmed. When he saw her on the steps his heart began to pound. Why would Cassie be there with bad news? She wouldn’t be.
“Guess what?” she said, and then she actually waited for him to say, “I don’t know—what?”
“We booked it,” she screamed, and jumped straight up into his arms. He hugged her tightly and spun her around in midair. “We both did!” she screamed. “You’re Buddy and I’m Carlyle!”
He couldn’t imagine that anything would ever again feel as good as this moment did, right now. He’d booked the lead in a feature film being directed by Gus Van Sant. Gus Van Sant!
Cassie’s mom got out of her car and gave him a big hug. “Congratulations, honey,” she said. “You two are abo
ut to blast off for the moon.”
EVELYN DROVE UP TO THE CURB AS CASSIE AND HER MOM drove away. She got out without even turning off the ignition, and she was grinning.
“Son of a bitch,” she said.
AN HOUR AND A HALF LATER JASPER WAS LOADING UP THE bong again, but Quinn could still tell he was majorly pissed off that Quinn had booked the movie. Lightning doesn’t strike twice. Not that Jasper had been in the running for After; it was more of a cosmic thing. Statistically hardly any unknown actors landed leads, never mind in a major film. Maybe one out of the zillion actors in LA. Since Quinn was that one, Jasper was fucked. It made sense.
And it was Gus Van Sant!
Oh, man.
They’d smoked a ton of weed in twenty minutes and you’d think that would have mellowed him out, but Quinn couldn’t sit still. He wasn’t ready to tell Mimi his news yet—she wasn’t his manager anymore anyway; fuck her—and Evelyn Flynn already knew. He tried to think about who else to tell who’d give a shit. Not his family; not Nelson. Rory, probably, but that meant calling the house and he wasn’t up for that. He grabbed his wallet and told Jasper he was going out, and when he found himself on the street—and it was a great street, he was suddenly in love with it—he turned right. Toward Hazlitt & Company. Quatro would be happy for him. Quatro wasn’t an actor.
THE PLACE WAS PACKED—CLIENTS WERE SITTING AT EVERY single station. Quinn stood in the reception area for a minute or two, watching Quatro work with a client who looked vaguely familiar—a character actor? Someone Quinn had auditioned with once? Then Quatro spotted him in the mirror, said something to the client, and came up to the front.
“Hey, buddy. Everything okay?”
Quinn just looked at him with an uncontrollable grin.
“You got it, didn’t you? You fucking got it?” Quatro gave a huge war whoop and grabbed Quinn’s arm. “Holy shit, man! It’s Gus Van Sant!” He started laughing and Quinn started laughing and they couldn’t stop.
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