Born Under a Lucky Moon

by Dana Precious

  “I’m glad we didn’t call Elizabeth and Sammie,” I said. “They would have been on a plane by now.” Mom kept crushing Lucy in hugs. Lucy put up with it for a while and then finally shrugged her off.

  “Mom! I’m alive,” she said grouchily.

  Dad was sitting across from her looking drained but relieved. He reached out and rubbed her hand. “We are just so happy to see you, Velvet.”

  “Why is it that every time I come home there’s some big drama going on about me that I don’t know anything about?” Lucy demanded.

  I pushed her hat down over her eyes. She laughed and took it off. Then we watched a squirrel try out the new bird feeder. He went back and forth onto the perch several times. Off the perch, food available. On the perch, no food available. He continued trying to figure out this new complication for some time.

  Grandma got out her deck of cards. “Want me to read you, Lucy?” she asked helpfully.

  “No!” Mom and I said in unison.

  “Your mother never did like me,” Grandma huffed to me, as though Mom wasn’t two feet away.

  “You don’t like her either,” I volunteered. When Mom shot me a look that said, “Shut up,” I knew everything was back to normal. Evan and Anna finally left. Much later, I woke up and watched the shadows of the trees play against the bedroom wall, where cupcakes and sundaes abounded. I looked over to where, in the darkness, Lucy’s picture was back in its place on the mirror. Lucy had let me stay in her room so I wouldn’t have to move all of my stuff. I got up and tiptoed down the hall and opened the door to the guest room. “Lucy?”

  She rolled over sleepily. “What?”

  “I’ve got sparklers.”

  She rolled back over and punched her pillow. “Go away.”

  “I’ve got Roman candles, too.”

  She sat up. “The jumbo kind?”

  “Of course.”

  Lucy threw back the sheet and got out of bed. She grabbed a pair of shorts to go with her T-shirt nightie. Then we made our way out into the stillness of the night. The storm had passed over us by now but it had brought out the inevitable swarm of insects. “Damn mosquitoes,” Lucy whispered, and slapped her legs. We felt our way quietly down the stairs to the beach. When our feet hit sand, we began the ritual. We took the Roman candles and stuck them in the sand, loosely forming a square.

  “Ready?” I asked. In response, she scraped a match on a box and handed the little flame to me. Then she lit one for herself. On her nod, we bent to light them. Then we quickly lit the sparklers we each held in our hands. A piercing shriek split the night air as the first fireballs shot up and over Bear Lake. It was our signal to start. Lucy and I danced around and around the flaming candles, which shot off brightly colored comets at regular intervals. Matching arcs of color reflected on the dark water. We waved the sparklers and chanted, “Hail to the Fairy Gods! Hail to the Fairy Gods!” until the last pop came out of the rockets and the sparklers fizzled out. Then we collapsed on the beach, laughing.

  “Wow, I’d forgotten all about that,” Lucy said, out of breath.

  “I know the Fourth of July was a couple of days ago, but it still seemed appropriate.” Every Fourth of July since I was about five and she was seven, we had performed this ritual. We thought of it as a prayer, to whatever God might be listening, to grant us another good year. As we got older, we thought it was uncool. Somewhere along the line, the ritual died. Until tonight.

  We lay on the sand watching for shooting stars but didn’t see any. Finally, we walked back up to the house with our arms slung over each other’s shoulders. We weren’t very quiet with our giggling. Not that it mattered. We had probably woken up the entire town with the Roman candles. We went to our separate rooms and, finally, I could sleep.

  Chapter Twenty

  April 2006

  Aidan and I snuggled on the couch watching Antiques Roadshow to see who had hit it big with their grandmother’s ugly vase. I was always amazed that some expert was inevitably there who instantly knew that the vase was from the tenth century, worth four thousand dollars, and made by a guy named Furtzenhaagen or whatever.

  During a commercial break Aidan said, “Jeannie? I want to meet your family.”

  “Sure, all right.” My eyes never left the television. There was a really good ad on for a film from a rival studio.

  “Jeannie.” Aidan shook my arm. “I mean it.”

  My attention shifted away from the TV. “Have you been listening to this crazy story I’ve been telling you?”

  “Sure. You grew up in a zoo. So what?” Aidan gestured in impatience and somehow managed to knock over the glass of soda next to him on the low side table.

  I leapt to my feet, went to the kitchen, and found the paper towels and 409. Coming back, I got to my knees beside the table. “Aidan,” I said, while wiping away the soda, “I’ve already lost one husband partially because of my family. They do nutty things, and I do nutty things right along with them, and I can’t bear to bring someone home who doesn’t embrace that. It’s just too painful.” I sprayed the 409 on the table and wiped it down. Then I started scrubbing at the rug. “What if you can’t deal with them either?” Bits of paper towel were now ground into the rug by my ferocious cleaning.

  “Bring me home to Michigan and let’s find out. Or start with Sammie and Elizabeth. They live right here in Los Angeles. You talk to them practically every day.” Aidan had raised his voice because I had darted to the hallway closet to get the vacuum.

  “Come on, Jeannie. It’s time to get over this ridiculous fear.”

  I plugged in the vacuum, snapped it on, and started vacuuming under Aidan’s feet. The paper towel bits were stubbornly clinging to the threads in the rug. You’d think with all that suction they would have let go by now. I pushed back and forth harder.

  “Jeannie!” Aidan had raised his legs so I could get under them. “Jeannie!” I saw his lips move but the roar of the vacuum erased his words. “jeannie!”

  The vacuum went quiet. Aidan stood by the wall with the plug in his hand. “Leave it, Jeannie!”

  “But I’m not done yet!”

  “It’s done.” Aidan dropped the cord. Moments later I heard water running in the guest bathroom. When I got to bed, as I suspected, he wasn’t there. He was in the guest room, leaving me the master bedroom. I knocked gently at the guest room door. When there was no answer, I leaned my forehead against it and closed my eyes. After a long while, I gave up and crawled under the covers of a bed that was much too large.

  I had been awake for hours but when my cell phone rang I bolted up, scattering pillows. No one ever called quite this late unless something terrible had happened.

  “What’s wrong?” My voice sounded hysterical.

  “I see you know about it already and you’re upset too!” An equally hysterical voice came through the wire.

  “What happened?”

  “It’s horrible! Just horrible!”

  “What? Was there a car accident? Was anyone hurt?” My voice was rising.

  “What car? I’m talking about my hair! Are you on drugs or something?” Esperanza fairly screamed at me.

  I slumped over in relief that no family member was in jeopardy. “I was in bed.”

  “Are you home sick? Why are you sleeping in the afternoon?” The starlet’s voice changed to sugar in half a heartbeat—not because she was concerned about me but because she figured she should feign concern about me.

  “It’s three forty-two in the morning here. You must be mixed up with the time change to Bali.” I rubbed my eyes.

  “Time change? What are you talking about?” she demanded.

  “Bali is something like ten hours ahead of Los Angeles.” This conversation was becoming too technical for me at this hour.

  “It is?” She sounded surprised. “Is that why I was so tired when I got off the plane?”

  “Yes.” I pulled the covers over my head with my ear still pressed to my phone. “That would be why.”

 
She began to prattle that Bali was beautiful and I really should try and come, but to stay at the Four Seasons because anywhere else was just so third-world, and then, why bother?

  “Do you mind if we talk about this in a few hours?” I whispered.

  “I can’t. I have to get ready to go to dinner with the director. Have I told you about the director? He’s fabulous.”

  I knew about the director. A famous womanizer. Seemed as though Esperanza had moved on to greener pastures than Stripe. I also knew I was going to have to get up. “Hold on,” I said. I made my way out to the kitchen, where I scrambled for a pen and a piece of paper. I settled for the back of an old envelope. “Okay, tell me the problem with the hair.”

  She went on for ten minutes about how great the poster was but there was a “tiny little doohickey on the left, no the right, no the left, side of my hair—can it be removed?” she inquired. Practically sobbing, she said that it reminded her of her third grade class photo—a picture that she had never gotten over because her hair was sticking up and her classmates had teased her unmercifully. Now her hair was sticking up again and it brought back such bad memories that she was flying her therapist to Bali.

  My head was in my hands. “Yes, it can be removed.” I didn’t even need to take notes for this one. “I’ll send it to you for final approval in a day or so.”

  “That’s okay. I trust you. Just fix it and go ahead and print it,” Esperanza said now in a cheerful tone. Finally, I was able to extricate myself from the voluble star and make my way back to bed, turning off the lights as I went.

  In the morning Aidan was already gone when I finally dragged myself from bed. No note, no kiss good-bye. Checking the clock, I saw that I had overslept. Shit, today of all days. I had a meeting with Rachael and Stripe to discuss the disastrous TechnoCat trailer. With no time for a shower, I stuck my hair in a ponytail, pulled on the clothes I could find the fastest, and flew out the door. I could do my makeup while I was stopped at red lights.

  In the car, my cell phone rang and I pressed the button on the steering wheel to answer it hands free. It was Lucy. “I’m coming out to L.A. for a couple of days,” she said. “You still have that extra bedroom, right?” My hands tightened on the steering wheel as Lucy’s voice filled the car.

  “That’s not going to work out, Lucy. I’m going to be out of town.”

  “I haven’t even told you when I’m coming yet,” Lucy snipped. “And if you’re out of town, you won’t be using your house anyway.”

  Lucy had, for a long time, been a high-powered litigator at a major law firm in New York City. When her daughter was born, several years ago, she had given it up to be a part of a smaller company in Connecticut.

  “My client doesn’t have a lot of money, Jeannie. I’d like to save him a few dollars by not billing him for a hotel stay while I do the depositions for his case,” Lucy continued. “I’ll arrive on Sunday and will only stay for a couple of nights.”

  At a red light I grabbed my iPhone and checked my calendar. Aidan was going to be out of town Saturday through Wednesday.

  “Sounds great.” I was now sincere. I hadn’t seen Lucy in a few years and it would be good to catch up with her in person—especially since I now realized Aidan would be in Vancouver at the time. Lucy said good-bye and I merged onto the freeway, my eyes glazing over in the perpetual traffic jam called the 405 South.

  Ten miles and forty-five minutes later I arrived at the studio. Caitlin met me in the hallway outside my office, thrust a cup of coffee in my hand, and spun me around in the direction of Rachael’s office. “You’re late. Stripe is already in there with Rachael.”

  Balancing the coffee, I quickened my pace, all while disengaging my backpack and purse, then pushing them into Caitlin’s arms. As I was reaching for Rachael’s door, Caitlin said, “Jeannie, there’s one more thing. You need to know that . . .”

  I pushed through the door and didn’t hear the rest. I should have waited. In Rachael’s spacious office, seated in the plushy leather chairs, were Rachael, Stripe, and Katsu. They were just finishing laughing at something and turned to face me like I was an unwelcome interruption in their important day. Katsu, in his crisp Armani suit, looked me up and down and I became acutely aware of how I must look. Hair in a ponytail, jeans and white blouse, and oh God, had I forgotten to put on makeup in the car? I had. Lucy’s call had distracted me. Taking a deep breath, I strode into the room with a lot more confidence than I felt and sat down in the fourth chair.

  “I guess we can get started,” Rachael said, “now that Jeannie has finally decided to grace us with her presence.”

  I fumed inwardly. I was ten minutes late. How many days had I shown up here at 8 a.m. after working until midnight? Rachael gestured to Katsu. “Katsu, we’re looking forward to seeing the trailer you cut for TechnoCat. Jeannie has been having some problems with it, as you know.”

  I kept my face impassive but inwardly I was screaming, “Fuck you! I came up with a trailer that audiences loved. I did my job!” Aidan probably would have been proud of me, had I managed to say this aloud. Instead I finished up my silent ranting with another “Fuck you” for good measure.

  Katsu stood and strode to insert the dvCam into the deck beneath the giant monitor. As is custom, he stood to one side as the trailer played. I held my breath. Was it going to be any good? More importantly, was it going to be better than what I had done?

  One minute into the trailer, I exhaled. Not only was the trailer not any good, it phenomenally sucked. Instead of feeling like a blockbuster movie, it felt like a small indie movie about a young girl crying over the death of her mother. There was no mention of superpowers or cool gadgets or big explosions. With a trailer like this, TechnoCat would open to about four cents at the box office. I was delighted but kept my face carefully expressionless. When it was over, Katsu came and sat back down. Then he and I looked at Rachael and Stripe. Rachael spoke first.

  “Katsu, that was terrific. Really unusual thinking, which is what we need right now,” Rachael said. Katsu couldn’t quite hide his smile.

  “I loved it,” Stripe intoned solemnly. “I wouldn’t change one frame.” Katsu puffed up visibly.

  Looking from one to the other I wondered, Are these people crazy? They have hundreds of millions of dollars on the line. I felt like I was in upside-down land.

  Rachael stood and crossed the room to get herself some green tea. Her movements were slow and measured. When she returned I realized she had been buying time to think. Her words seemed carefully chosen. “This trailer is excellent. But, Stripe, I think we need your magic here.” Stripe might have been surprised at this turn but he was an old Hollywood player. His face gave nothing up. “You had an idea for a special shoot. I think we should do that shoot, look at the trailer that comes out of it, then decide between that one and the one Katsu has just cut.”

  Stripe sat back in his chair. “Seems like a waste of money. We have a trailer right here that works.”

  “But it’s such a brilliant idea.” Rachael stroked him with her words, then stuck in the knife. “And we need to explore every possibility with a film that is costing the studio this much money.” Ouch, I thought. She had just reminded Stripe about the cost overruns he had incurred while making the film. I watched them swat the political ball back and forth like a fast-paced tennis match.

  “Well, the marketing dollars are on your head,” Stripe said in a jovial tone. “It’s up to you if you want to spend money recklessly like that.” He paused and seemed to consider for a moment, glancing at Katsu. Then he stood up and began gathering his things. “Sure, I’ll do it. We’d better get cracking though. Katsu, you and I should meet today about getting this shoot together.”

  “Not Katsu,” Rachael said evenly. “Jeannie will handle the production. Katsu has no experience with this kind of thing. Jeannie has handled plenty of special shoots.”

  Stripe gazed at her a moment too long. Then with a nod of his head he exited. Katsu said good-bye and
strode out as well.

  I stood in the middle of Rachael’s office, not sure of what had just transpired.

  “Rachael?”

  “Yes?” She sat at her desk, studying the trade magazines and sipping her green tea.

  “What the hell is going on around here?”

  “I’ll let you know when I know.” She never looked up, not even as I quietly left her office.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  July 1986

  Mom immediately got down to business. “How do you want your eggs?” she asked Lucy.

  Lucy popped the top on a Tab. “I don’t want any eggs.”

  “So, tell me, what’s wrong?” Mom demanded from the stove.

  “Mooooommm.” Lucy stretched it out into a two-syllable word. “I haven’t even woken up yet.”

  Mom put a plate down in front of Lucy. “Here are your eggs.”

  “Does she not listen to me?” Lucy asked me.

  Mom pointed a spatula at her. “Eat. Then we’re going to shake this thing out.”

  “What ‘thing’? You don’t even know yet if there is a ‘thing,’ ” Lucy complained.

  “Is there a ‘thing’?” I asked.

  Lucy poked at her eggs. “Yes.” Then she made a face and pushed the plate away. Mom watched her for a second. “I knew it.” She sat down. “You’re pregnant.” She was careful not to show any expression until Lucy let her know how she should feel. Happy? Not happy?

  Lucy looked up at her, and tears ran down her face. Ah. Not happy. “I just don’t know how this could have happened,” she wailed.

  I opened my mouth to knock this easy ball out of the park, but Mom put her hand on my knee. Mom wisely didn’t say anything until Lucy had spit out the story as fast as a chipmunk on speed: she and Chuck weren’t getting along, but they got along once in a while, hence the baby, but she had been on birth control; she might have forgotten a couple of pills, but could you really get pregnant if you missed just a couple of pills, okay, it was two weeks worth of pills, but still, and she and Chuck fought a lot, but maybe everybody did, and if they lived together instead of apart maybe it would be easier. Lucy paused for breath and Mom patted her shoulder. Then Mom got up to get Lucy soda crackers and a can of flat Coke that was in the refrigerator. Lucy continued. What was she going to do with a baby? She wanted to go back to school and who could do that with a baby, but she knew that Mom went to school when she had a baby, but what was Chuck going to do for a job, and her whole life was over, and she was tired of everything being so hard. She stopped, made a twisted face, then raced out of the kitchen and threw up mightily in the bathroom.