by Robin Palmer
No, I didn’t know what he was saying. I had never been in this position because I had been too busy spending my time holding mirrors up to my passed-out mother’s mouth to check for signs of life. “But what about that whole Rules thing?” I blurted out.
“Huh?”
“The thing about how you’re supposed to sit back and let the guy call the shots, and play a little hard to get, and not return their texts right away, and all that stuff?” I cringed as I listened to myself. When you said it out loud, it sounded even more stupid than it did when you read it.
“Aw, man,” he groaned. “Really, Annabelle? You’re one of those Rules girls?” He sounded disappointed. Like I had just announced that when I was old enough to vote it would be Republican.
“I have no idea what kind of girl I am!” I cried. “It’s not like this happens a lot for me!” Like, say, ever.
He shook his head. “That’s just game playing,” he said. “Pretending to be someone you’re not. Like those girls who have two bites of lettuce when you go out to dinner and then, once you’ve been together for a while, you walk out into the kitchen at two o’clock in the morning and find them scarfing down pickles and olives and maraschino cherries.” He shuddered. “That was intense. But back to you. Listen, look it from his point of view. Here you are, this hip and cool chick from L.A.—”
“I don’t think hip and cool are two words that immediately come to mind when people think of me—”
He held his hand up to shut me up. “—who’s just blown into this little town in upstate New York because her mother is filming a big Hollywood movie—”
“It’s not that big a movie,” I corrected. “I mean, if you weren’t in it, it would be more of an indie, and—”
“—and probably has a ton of guys falling at her feet back home.”
I rolled my eyes. “As if.”
“Guys with a lot more going on than he has.”
“He’s got a lot going on,” I said defensively. “He just won some award at Bard in the Art Department.”
“That’s great,” Billy said, “but I’m telling you, if he’s a creative type, he’s definitely insecure. Maybe not so much about his work, but about everything under the sun. Goes with the territory.” We stopped in front of a Mister Softee ice cream truck. “Chocolate or vanilla?” he asked.
“Chocolate,” I replied, too exhausted to fight him on letting me at least pay for my own ice cream.
He handed me my cone. “Add to that that he’s a guy—which means he’s already a little bit scared and somewhat clueless when it comes to reading people—and you’ve got yourself a situation where he’d rather chew off his arm before he makes a move when he’s not yet entirely sure you’re interested in him and risks being rejected by you.”
I looked at him. “Really? Is that true?”
As he took a bite of his cone, some chocolate ice cream plopped onto his shirt. “Totally.”
“So what am I supposed to do?”
“Well, you can start with asking him to go do something instead of wait for him to bring it up,” he replied.
“But what if he has a girlfriend? He might have a girlfriend.”
He shook his head. “He doesn’t have a girlfriend.”
“How do you know?”
“Have you asked him?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know. Because that’s . . . a really personal thing to ask someone.”
“Do you hear yourself right now?”
I thought about it. “Yes. And I sound ridiculous.”
“I’m glad we’re in agreement about that,” he said. “Why don’t you start with that? With asking him if he has a girlfriend?”
“But what if he says yes? Then I’ll feel beyond stupid, and it’ll be really awkward,” I replied. “If I do that, I’m going to have to have my own car so I can leave right away and get home—”
“And what if he says he doesn’t have a girlfriend?”
That was even scarier.
Maybe it was all the walking. Or all the food. Or the soothing rhythm of the train as it barreled north, and the glow of the sun as it set on the Hudson River. Or maybe it was because after so many years of keeping my distance from people, this new experience of letting people see bits and pieces of myself was becoming addictive, like the Play-Doh. Whatever it was, when Billy glanced up from making notes on his script and asked me what I was doing, I didn’t close my laptop and say “Nothing” before he could see.
“Uploading some photos,” I replied.
He looked interested. “Yeah? Can I see?”
This was a guy who collected art by people whose work hung in museums. Why on earth would I show him my stuff? He’d probably say it was good, because really, what else was he going to say, but he wouldn’t mean it.
I held the laptop out toward him. As he took it and settled back in his seat, I settled back into my own and gazed out the window, trying not to pick at my cuticles as I stared at the landscape as it whizzed by.
“What is this? Your blog?” he asked after a while.
“Tumblr. Yeah.”
He nodded and went back to going through the photos. Finally, he looked up. “Annabelle, these are terrific.”
I felt myself turn red. “No, they’re not.”
“They are. You have an amazing eye for composition. And you totally capture the absurdity of L.A.” He pointed to one. “Like with this one. The one with the bag lady going through the Dumpster next to all these beemers and Mercedes-Benzes.”
I had taken that near a parking lot where all the cars were valeted for Ivy at The Shore. It was one of my favorites.
“Have you taken a lot of classes?” he asked.
“I haven’t taken any.”
“Really?” he asked, surprised.
I nodded.
“How’d you learn?”
I shrugged. “Just started shooting.”
“Have you entered any contests or anything?”
“No. There’s this fellowship thing this summer at CalArts in a few weeks that sounded cool, but I didn’t apply.”
“How come?”
I shrugged. “Because I had to come here.”
He looked up again. “Your mom said you couldn’t go?”
“No, I mean, I didn’t even tell her about it.” I sighed. “I’ll apply next summer.”
“They just asked me to be on the board there.”
“CalArts? They did?”
He nodded. “Do you have other stuff? Other than this blog?”
I did. I had the photos of Mom. The ones I had started taking when she went to rehab and began getting well. The ones that showed all the stuff I had never been able to talk about before Alateen because I was too embarrassed and ashamed.
The ones I had never shown anyone.
I reached for the computer and clicked on a file called Negative Space. There it was—everything you ever wanted to know about Janie Jackson but were afraid to ask.
I wasn’t sure why, of all people, I was showing it to him. Was it a warning? This is the kind of baggage we at Casa del Jackson travel with. Or was it a dare? To see if, after knowing this, he would stick around.
I watched his face as he studied each photo in the folder.
A lipstick-stained crystal glass filled with vodka and melted-down ice cubes next to an amber-colored prescription bottle with one pill left.
An unmade bed with smudges of mascara on a pillowcase.
A bunch of feet in a circle—scuffed-up Nikes with frayed laces next to perfectly pedicured toes peeking out of Christian Louboutin sandals next to black patent-leather Mary Janes with white lace anklet socks—during Family Weekend at Oasis.
Mom’s hand clutching her thirty-day-clean-and-sober coin.
Mom signing an autograph outside our new apartment building as the movers unloaded a grand piano. (Which, by the way, neither of us knew how to play.)
The head of an Emmy Award peeking over a cardboard moving box.
Occasionally, he’d cringe. Or his eyes would widen. There was a sigh. And a few bittersweet smiles. If I had had some Play-Doh in my bag, I so would have gone into the bathroom. Instead, I just had to sit with the anxiety and not try to fix it, or make excuses for her.
When Billy was done, he handed the computer back to me. I waited for him to say something—anything—but instead he gazed out toward the river.
Finally, he turned to me and cleared his throat. “You know, my dad . . .” He cleared it again. “He drank.” He shrugged. “For all I know, probably still does.”
“But I thought . . . I mean, all the articles talk about how great your parents are,” I said, surprised. “How they’ve been together forever, and how your dad’s your best friend.”
“That’s my stepdad,” he replied. “My mom married him when I was seven, so he raised me. But my real dad?” He shook his head. “That’s another story. And my business manager has paid him a lot of money not to tell it.” He pushed his hair away from his forehead and leaned toward me. “See that?”
On his left temple was a thick white scar.
“That was courtesy of the remote control when I jumped in between my mom and him after he got on her for overcooking his steak.” He laughed ruefully. “I was lucky. My oldest sister’s got a scar from a cigarette burn on her forearm.”
I thought about what Walter once said about his grandmother. How she liked to say that if everyone were to put their problems in the middle of the table, we’d probably all take our own back. My mother may have been selfish, and self-centered, but other than smothering me to death with hugs, she had never laid a hand on me.
“I know your mom can be a little nuts sometimes,” he said quietly, “but I think it’s great for both of you that she’s not drinking anymore. You both get a real shot at things, you know?”
I nodded. I did know that. Just like I was starting to learn that—also like they said in meetings—you can’t judge a person’s insides by their outsides. All the articles and interviews made it seem as if Billy had had a perfect childhood. But I guess there was a reason he was paid so much money as an actor—he was excellent at pretending. “Is that why you pushed for her to get the movie?” I asked.
He looked out the window again. “I don’t know,” he finally said. “Maybe that was part of it. But I also thought—think—that she’s a great actress. And that now that she’s sober, she’ll be an even better one.”
In the past, hearing something like that would’ve pissed me off and made me all defensive, as if he were feeling sorry for us. But now I realized it was what kids in the meeting called a “God shot”—these moments of coincidence when you were given a gift. It didn’t matter how Mom had gotten the movie—it mattered what she did with the opportunity now that she had it. In the past, she used to pass out when she was studying her lines, but that wasn’t the case anymore. Now she was prepping for it like they were the SATs.
“Has your mom seen these photos?” he asked.
I shook my head. “No way. She’d kill me.”
“Why would you think that?”
I shrugged. “Because.”
“But it’s the truth,” he said. “How can you go wrong with the truth?”
That sounded good in theory, but when you were so used to living surrounded by lies, doing things differently sometimes felt impossible.
When Billy and I got home from New York and Mom saw that the trip had accomplished what I figured she had hoped it would do—i.e., we had bonded—her reaction was not what I expected. She got all quiet and weird and said things like “Well, that sounds like you had a lovely day” in a Downton Abbey kind of voice that was so polite that it came off as if, actually, she didn’t think it was so lovely. And that, actually, she seemed a little angry that it had gone so well. “What’s up with that?” Billy asked after she was done with her English countess performance.
“With what?” she replied innocently.
He cocked his head and looked at her, but all she did was give him the generic smile she gave to weird potential stalker-esque fans in order to not encourage them.
“With that.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she replied. She yawned. “And while I’m so glad you guys had fun today, some of us had to work, so some of us are pretty tired.”
“Okay, then I guess some of us should get going,” Billy said.
“Probably a good idea,” she agreed.
He looked over to me for help, but I was too busy giving her my patented seriously-you’re-doing-this-now? look.
He shrugged. “Okay.” He turned to me. “Thanks for hanging out today, Annabelle. It was fun.”
“Yeah. I . . . yeah.” I was confused. Like by saying too much, and admitting I had a good time, I was somehow dishonoring Mom.
“See you around,” he said, maybe to me, maybe to her, maybe to both of us.
“That’s it? You’re leaving?” Mom called after him as he started to walk toward the door.
He stopped and turned. “You just said it was probably a good idea if I left.”
“I know, but I didn’t mean for you to . . .” She stopped, her mouth set in a straight line. “Fine. Yeah. You should go.”
He stared at her for a second. “Here’s the thing, Janie. I’m a simple guy, you know?” he said. “So when someone says go, I go. I’m not smart enough to read minds or to figure out when ‘go’ really means ‘stay.’ You know what I’m saying?”
She stared at him. “Yeah, I know what you’re saying,” she finally replied.
“Good,” he said. “Good night, then.”
Whoa. In all the years, with all the boyfriends, I couldn’t remember any guy ever calling Mom on her shit before. Not even Ben. After Billy walked out, she turned to me.
“I can’t believe he just did that,” she said, all wounded. “Can you believe he did that?”
I shrugged as I walked toward the kitchen. “I think it’s cool.”
“You’re taking his side?!”
I thought about it. I guessed I was.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
REASONS NOT TO BE A RULES GIRL WHEN IT CAME TO MATT
I was in town for only six weeks. If this was going to be anything, it made sense that it would be an accelerated AP schedule.
If he came up with some lame excuse as to why he couldn’t get together, then I had my answer and could move on to obsessing about something else. Like what I was going to do in the fall when I went back to school and was faced with the fact that I had no friends other than Walter and half a friend in Maya. Or why I had just taken Billy’s side instead of Mom’s and whether that made me an awful daughter.
I was just about to add If it backfires I can blame Billy when I realized that these lists weren’t actually helping. I got a little bit of a relief for the time it took me to write them, but that was it. If anything, what they did was keep me in my head and out of life, a combination that was starting to feel more and more uncomfortable. Maybe it was because, as I had learned in meetings, while the alcoholic was powerless over alcohol, I was powerless over my thinking. But while it made sense that the reason I didn’t participate in life before was because so much of my time was spent watching over my mother, I didn’t have that excuse anymore. I couldn’t blame her for the fact that I was holed up in my room instead of being out with friends, or meeting boys. I could only blame myself.
I didn’t want to have to do that. I put down my red Pilot Razor Point (Was I proud of the fact that when Billy asked me if I had a pen he could use to sign an autograph, I had lied and said no because that would have meant the list-making p
en was being used for non-list-making purposes? No. But if I had lent it to him, then I would have had to throw it out afterward), tore the list out of the notebook, and ripped it in two. And then, because I wasn’t struck by lightning, I tore another one out and did the same thing. And then another. The whole thing was so invigorating that I reached for my iPhone and scrolled down to Matt’s number. Hey. It’s me. Annabelle, I started to type.
I stopped.
“Oh, come on. If you’re going to do this, then do it,” I said aloud. I clicked on his name and listened as it started to ring. Maybe I didn’t have to, like, do it do it. Maybe texting was good enough. Between that and ripping up the lists, I was—
“Hey,” he said just as I was going to hang up. He actually sounded excited to hear from me. Or did he? Other than Walter, I barely talked on the phone anymore, so I wasn’t sure.
“Oh, hey,” I said, pleasantly surprised, as if he had been the one who called me.
“What’s up?”
“Not much,” I replied. I waited for him to say something before remembering that in standard telephone etiquette, it was usually up to the person who had made the call to speak. “Actually, that’s not true,” I corrected. “What’s up is that I was wondering if you wanted to maybe do something at some point when you’re not busy. I mean, you probably are, because you live here, and you have friends, and a job, and stuff like that. . . . But if at some point you find yourself . . . not. Busy, I mean. And if you want to.”
“How about tomorrow?” he asked before I could keep going.
“Tomorrow,” I repeated.
“Yeah.”
“Oh. Tomorrow. Well, tomorrow is the first day of shooting, so I should probably go to set—” Mom hadn’t asked me to go with her, but it seemed like a good thing to do.
“Okay. Then how about—”
“But I don’t have to go all day!” I blurted out. “I could just go in the morning and then meet you in the afternoon. I mean, if the afternoon works for you, and you’re not busy.” I cringed.
