There’s a phenomenon among girls where we can be in awe of another girl’s gorgeousness without it being sexual; instead, it’s a deep understanding that in this world, largely ruled by the politics of physical beauty, she is a powerful being. It’s unfair but true, and in general, society does little to discourage it. Hair must be highlighted, lips must be glossed, jeans must be tight, all of which, to me, seems like it should be optional and personal rather than mandatory. I’d just met Heather; I didn’t know anything about her other than what I could see. But after months of searching every strange face for even the flicker of a threat, my ability to take the measure of a person was razor-sharp. What I saw looking back was someone who was aware of the power she possessed. It didn’t make her good or bad, but it did arm her with a strong weapon, which put me on guard. And then there was the fact that she was at least partly Rispoli. I wondered what she knew—what all of them knew—especially the man who’d grown up with Nunzio “Blue Eyes” for a father and Enzo “the Baker” as a brother.
That’s when Uncle Jack started talking.
A half hour later we moved to the kitchen, where I made coffee.
When he finished at midnight, it was clear that he’d forgotten more than he knew, and he was forgetting more each day.
For example, he recalled that he was eighty-one years old and had been born Giaccomo Rispoli, but he had forgotten his own mother’s maiden name. He realized that he was in the secondary stage of Alzheimer’s disease and took his medication (something called Remembra) regularly, trying to hold it off as long as possible, but he was aware that it was growing rapidly worse. What he hadn’t known, and what I broke to him gently, was that Grandpa Enzo had died, the surprise on his face shifting to grief. “We used to write regularly. I think I received a letter from him only last year. Or maybe the year before,” he said. “There are so many things I haven’t thought of in such a long time.” He described the function of his mind as a TV constantly changing channels; while his awareness of the present was fairly stable, words and images from the past appeared with crystal clarity for only minutes before flipping away, replaced by other distant scenes. Sometimes, even worse, it was all replaced by nothing but static.
Memories of his long career in show business were more intact than the rest.
He explained how he’d gone to Hollywood in 1956, trading his identity of Giaccomo Rispoli for Jack Richards.
His specialty was TV, where he was known as “the A Plus of B-List Actors.”
Over the years, in hundreds of shows, he played lawyers who lost the case, doctors who broke the bad news, and ex-husbands who saw the kids only on weekends. His were never the starring roles, but the smaller, forgettable ones necessary to a story. His big break came in the seventies on a show called City on the Make. It was set in an unnamed metropolis where a tough, squeaky-clean police lieutenant was dedicated to ridding the town of a criminal group called the Organization.
Uncle Jack didn’t play the lieutenant.
Instead, he played the lieutenant’s sidekick, Detective Ned Keegan, an alcoholic bookworm-cop with all the relevant data at his fingertips, along with a glass of whiskey. He supplied the facts, usually drunkenly, while the hero lieutenant kicked down doors. The old man scratched his lustrous head and said, “It’s all mixed up now. I can’t remember what’s real and what got stuck in my brain from that damn TV show.” I waited for him to at least hint at our family’s place in the Outfit, but instead he just sighed. “That’s why I came back to Chicago. I wanted to see Enzo once more before I’m completely unable to . . .” He paused as his eyes grew wet. “Most of my childhood memories are gone, wiped away by time and disease. Only my brother remained. It was Annabelle’s idea—my dear daughter, without whom I’d be lost—to make the trek from L.A. to see Enzo. I wanted to surprise him.” Annabelle drew his attention, speaking with her hands, and I could see he was having trouble following her.
“My mom’s wondering why the bakery is closed,” Heather said. She was sitting on a metal table, sipping coffee, and smiled brightly when I turned to her. “He’s starting to forget sign language. I’m the communication conduit between them sometimes. After all . . . being useful and engaged is vital to sustained inner strength,” she said, as if reciting a mantra. “It’s a rehab theory. And rehab is very L.A.”
Before I could ask what she meant, Uncle Jack massaged his forehead and said, “The oven there. I’d swear Enzo and I played inside it when we were boys. But who would play inside an oven? It must be from a TV show. I can’t recall . . .”
Annabelle moved her hands and then put her arm around him as Heather said, “Mom’s right, Grandpa. Don’t worry about it. It’s been a long day.” She lifted the coffee mug toward me. “So . . . fill us in on your family.”
They didn’t seem to know any more about my parents, Lou, and me than what Grandpa Enzo must’ve related in letters—generalities and anecdotes, but nothing about the Outfit. I wondered then if my dad had known that Uncle Jack and his family existed. Grandpa Enzo’s brother was mentioned in the notebook but maybe my dad never noticed it. Or maybe my grandpa brushed it off like one of those past-generation things, where people didn’t discuss sensitive matters; after all, burying secrets was a congenital trait in my family. I didn’t see the risk in telling the same old lie, but with a twist to explain my dad’s prolonged absence. I said he was ill but stable and that my mom had taken him to New York to be treated by specialists. After satisfying their concerned questions about him with a stream of bold-faced whoppers (my easy ability to BS amazed even me), I finished by saying that Lou was at boarding school and I was here, attending Fep Prep.
“Sixteen and home alone?” Heather asked, arching a perfect eyebrow.
“Mature for my age and staying with friends. We locked up our house and closed down the bakery until my parents return,” I said, telling the semi-truth.
“Wow,” Heather said dreamily. “I can’t even describe the party that would’ve happened if I’d ever been left alone for a month. Kids from the valley to the hills would still be wasted and still be talking about me.” Annabelle’s eyes narrowed and her fingers danced as Heather raised her hands. “Relax, Mom. I was talking about the past, not the sober present. No worries, no parties, okay?” She glanced at the wall clock. “By the way, Grandpa’s Remembra is overdue.” Annabelle made an “uh-oh” face, rummaging through a purse and coming up with a prescription bottle. Heather nodded at the back door. “Alley?”
“Yeah.”
“Smoke break,” she said. “He has to take three ginormous pills, baby-bird style. Gagging, snorting . . . it’s not pretty. Join me?”
I looked at Annabelle shaking out marble-sized capsules, at Uncle Jack’s fretful expression, and said, “Sure.” We pushed into the cool night air, the streetlights dropping puddles of illumination. The Lincoln was where I’d left it, and I said, “That’s mine.”
“Cool. When did you get your license?”
“Um, well, I’ve been driving for a while,” I said, wondering if I’d ever get one.
“Vintage ’65 Continental ragtop with those cool old doors that open out, like a barn . . . what are they called?”
“Suicide doors,” I said.
“Right, suicide,” she said, tapping a cigarette from a pack. “Very L.A.” She lit it, looking at the shredded top, at the bumps and dents I’d accumulated while chasing or being chased, and exhaled smoke. “DUI?” she asked.
“Who, me? No, I don’t drink. It was just, you know, an accident here and there.”
“Looks like my handiwork.”
“You’ve had one? A DUI?”
“I wish it were just one,” she said with a smirk. “I have what is known as a ‘chemical reliance issue.’ ‘Alcoholic’ or ‘junkie’ is probably more accurate, but negative terminology was prohibited at Rancho Salud.” She tapped an ash from the cigarette. “You want one?”
“I don’t smoke either,” I said, knowing it could kill me, but still feeli
ng like a total geek seeing how sultry she looked as a feathery plume leaked from her nostrils.
“Good for you. I’ll quit someday, and then I’ll never have another bad habit . . . well, never say never.” She winked and told me about her latest stint in rehab dealing with a coke habit that had gotten her arrested three times in three years. “DUIs—deweys—are very L.A. Angelenos live in their cars.” She’d missed the end of her senior year of high school and would have to re-enroll or get a GED, but it was worth it—at age seventeen, she was clean for the first time in years. When she was released from rehab, her mom and grandpa announced they were traveling to Chicago; Annabelle was determined to keep a constant eye on her. “My mom blames herself for my problems,” she said. “But really, it started with Two Cool for School.”
“You mean the TV show?”
“Yeah,” she said, flashing a smile that was both sweet and seductive. “I was the original Becky.”
“I knew I’d seen you somewhere!” I said, thinking of the show that had been a mainstay of my tween years. It chronicled the romantic middle school adventures of bubbly fraternal twins (the “two” in the title) Justin and Justine. The cast included every TV stereotype—skinny nerd, Asian brainiac, black rapper, cynic in a wheelchair, and of course, Becky, the evil blond temptress who constantly got between Justin and his girlfriend, or Justine and her boyfriend. Heather’s dad had been the ultimate stage parent, ushering her into commercials when she was tiny, accompanying her to auditions as she grew, with her mom reluctantly going along. “She was against show business?” I asked.
Heather nodded. “She grew up in it, with my grandpa playing Detective Keegan, and despised it. Her opinion is that being an actor gives a person free rein to slip inside other personalities and behave badly. But my dad won the argument because he was, like, super domineering. To quote the Rancho Salud handbook, he’s a ‘Self-First’ personality. Supposedly he was building my career, but really it was all about him,” she said with a weary grin. “Oh God, we just met . . . is this TMI?”
“What?” I said, fascinated. “Uh, no. Unless you don’t want to talk about it.”
“Addicts love to talk about themselves. Especially celebrity addicts. Daytime TV couldn’t exist without us,” she said, and she told me how her dad wrangled an audition that landed her the role of Becky. “The problem is that there’s no such thing as being a kid in show biz. You grow up too fast, learning stuff you shouldn’t.”
“Yeah. I know what you mean.”
“The more successful you are, the more you’re treated like an adult. But you’re not.” She sighed. “So anyway, there was this producer on the show, smart, good looking, in his twenties. And so nice to me in a way my dad wasn’t . . . complimentary, a little conspiratorial. We’d whisper together, making fun of the other actors. You can probably guess where this is going.”
“Um . . . I think so,” I said carefully.
“And it almost did . . . happen, I mean. I was terrified, with no idea what he was trying to do until the last minute, and then I screamed bloody murder. Seriously, I rattled the Hollywood sign. He ran in one direction, and I ran in the other. The perv quit the show a few days later, with no repercussions.”
“What did your parents do?”
“Parent, singular . . . of course I told my dad first, he was my manager. In typical father-of-the-year fashion, he responded with three commands. First, don’t rock the boat by making a big deal out of something that didn’t quite happen.” She smirked. “By that time, the show was huge, and I was its rising star . . . magazine covers, websites devoted to Becky’s bitchdom, amazing money. The second command . . . do not tell my mom because it would upset her, and if I did, he’d be super angry with me.”
“That sucks.”
“I know it now, but then?” she said, looking past me. “Then, I would do almost anything not to disappoint my dad. It wasn’t fear as much as, like, lowering my value in his eyes. It’s hard to describe. It seems like a long time ago.”
“What was the third thing?”
“Hmm?” Heather said, almost surprised to see me. “Oh. The third command was the worst. He told me, a fourteen-year-old, that instead of whining about what happened, I needed to find a way to deal with it. And, oh baby, did I. All the fan, media, and network attention lavished on a kid in a number one show . . . I dove into it headfirst. Adulation was my first, best drug. It’s pure freedom. You can do anything, and I did, drinking and smoking weed on the set because I could. So I went on this awards show completely loaded, barely able to stand, and as I was about to receive the best-little-bitch-on-TV trophy, I vomited on the entire front row of the audience. Until then, the network brushed off the drug gossip about me—the show biz rule is deny, deny, deny—but my puke-a-thon happened on live television. So that was it. Career over.”
“Do you miss it?”
“Any former star who says she doesn’t is a liar.” She blew smoke in the air and said, “It wasn’t losing my job that caused me to crash and burn, though. After I got fired, my dad totally lost interest in me. He said that from an industry standpoint, not only was I damaged goods but I was also past my prime.” She chuckled bitterly. “I’d just turned fifteen.”
It was beyond the realm of imagination that my own dad would ever do anything so hurtful and twisted, and before I could stop myself, I said, “He sounds like a total dick.”
“That’s an understatement. It wasn’t just me, either . . . he did a number on my mom too. The more he ignored me and the more I got wasted, the more she defended me. We’re very democratic about guilt in my family—we all blame each other for everything. That’s exactly what my parents did until it became a divorce. It was so sudden, like, one day he’s my manager and dad, and the next it was ‘See ya . . . marrying someone else, starting a new family . . . later!’ I’m sure he’s got big plans for my little half sister. She’s pretty and blond, perfect for TV. I should know.” She shrugged gorgeously and said, “Oh well. He’ll screw her life up too. Anyway, if I was a runaway drug train before the divorce, afterward I was a tornado of self-medicating destruction. If my mom hadn’t tossed me into rehab, I would’ve been a dead fifteen-year-old. Not that I didn’t try my best at sixteen and seventeen too.”
“All of a sudden a new Becky appeared on the show,” I said. “There was something in the news about the old Becky suffering from exhaustion.”
Heather snorted, shaking her head. “They didn’t even change the name. Just stuck in a new blond girl. Makes sense, I guess. There are millions of pretty little actresses in Hollywood programmed to be the new Becky. The producers picked one from the crowd, gave her my dressing room, and kicked me out the door. Oh well . . . if there’s one thing adults are good at, it’s screwing over kids.” She flicked away the cigarette, put on a diamondlike smile, and said, “So. What’s your tragedy?”
It was a small, amazing moment, as her chin tilted and her eyes scrunched, and I saw that within her blond sumptuousness, she really was a Rispoli. There was humor in her question, but also the empathy of a person who had endured trauma. Our life experiences could not have been more different, but Heather and I seemed to share a strong family trait—we were survivors—and I felt the tendrils of bond sprout between us. Quietly, I said, “It’s almost impossible to describe.”
“So you do have one, huh? I knew it. Not that you’re tragic by any means, but after being in and out of rehab”—she shrugged—“I can sense a vibe.”
“As stories go, mine’s pretty complicated.”
“The ones worth telling usually are.”
“Some other time.”
“Anytime.” She grinned. “I might seem like a talker, but I’m a better listener. Plus, it’s like my mom always says—sorry, signs—there’s nothing in the world that hasn’t happened to someone.”
I thought for a moment and then heard myself say, “Why can’t she speak?”
“My mom? It happened when she was a kid. Boring family anecdote.” Her
tone thickened a little with regret. “I’ve caused her a lot of grief. She’s never been as happy as she deserves to be. As they say at Rancho Salud, it’s time to make a deposit in the old love bank, rather than a withdrawal.”
“She seems really sweet.”
“That’s the perfect word for her, for a lot of reasons,” she said. “Like, for example, she possesses a trait that must be in Rispoli DNA.”
“She does?” I said warily.
Heather nodded. “She’s in the family business.”
“She is?”
“And she’s good at it too. She’s been a pastry chef for years. Weird, huh?”
“Weird,” I murmured, relieved but suspicious. “Can I ask you a question?”
“Okay.”
“Speaking of the family business, did you ever hear your grandpa talk about it? Before he got sick, I mean. What the bakery was like when he was young?”
She shook her head. “If he did, I wasn’t listening. Old stuff has never interested me very much. It doesn’t have a lot to do with the here and now, you know?”
“How about your mom? Did he ever talk to her about it?”
Heather arched her eyebrow again. “Why?”
“History,” I said. “I’m into it. Especially family history.”
Heather leaned in, speaking quietly. “Don’t tell her I told you because she’s embarrassed by it, but Detective Keegan’s alcoholism wasn’t all TV fiction. Back in the day, my grandpa had a substance abuse problem of his own . . . another family trait, I guess. She told me once that whenever she’d ask about the past, he’d refuse to discuss it and immediately start drinking. All he ever told her was about a brother in Chicago who ran the family bakery with a family of his own.”
On cue, the back door opened and Annabelle gestured us inside. She was excited about something, and while Heather watched her hands, Uncle Jack approached looking tired and old but hopeful. “We have a proposal, my dear,” he said.
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