Lucky Stars (2 page)

“Stacey Reiser?”

I heard someone calling my name, way back in the outer reaches of my consciousness, but I was still obsessing about my mother’s news and couldn’t quite focus.

“Stacey Reiser? Hello!”

I snapped back to reality. It was the assistant to the casting director who was calling my name. Apparently, it was my turn to read for the part of the strong, brave, utterly unflappable Angie.

I went into the casting director’s office and took my place opposite her and, after the obligatory pleasantries and a moment to collect myself, I launched into the part of Angie.

“Of course I believe in my sister’s innocence,” I began. “I’ve always believed in her, even during the trial, even with the awful things people have said about her, even after the guilty verdict. It’s all been a mistake and I hope and pray she’ll be granted a stay of execution.”

I paused, waited for the casting director to feed me
th
e next line. “You bet I’m standing by her. And yeah, I’m strong. In our family we don’t knuckle under when times get rough. We learned that from our mother.”

On the word “mother” I felt a catch in my throat.

Well, a sort of a gulp. A bubble. A glob of phlegm. I' soughed, said, “Excuse me.”

“Would you like some water, Stacey?” asked the casting director.

“No, thanks. I’m fine,” I said, the lump growing, taking on a life of its own.

“Why don’t you pick up with ‘we learned that from our mother,’ ” she instructed me.

“Oh. Sure.” I took a second, tried to ignore the jumble of emotions that were exploding inside of me, not to mention the tears that were pricking at my eyes. “We learned that from our mother,” I proceeded. “Mom taught us to believe in ourselves. She wasn’t, uh, like one of those mothers who tells her daughter what to do or cross-examines her about what she ate and who she went to the movies with and whether it was chilly when she got out of the movie theater and if she brought a jacket that was warm enough and if the neighborhood where she parked the car was safe or should she have stayed home and rented a movie and—”

“Stacey?”

“Yes?”

“None of that stuff about the movies and the weather and the neighborhood is in the script. And we’re not doing any improvising today. That’s not what the callback is about. It’s about reading the script as written.”

“Oh. Right Sorry.”

“Not only that, Angie is supposed to be unflappable and you’re playing her as if she’s on the verge of a breakdown. Want to try it again? Make an adjustment?”

I tried it again. I made an adjustment. But in die end I blew it. I couldn’t get Helen Reiser out of my mind during that audition, couldn’t get over that she was moving to town—my town.

By the time I left the casting director’s office, I was a basket case. On my way out, I walked over to the actress with the big attitude and the even bigger rack and said, “Do you have a mother?” She looked at me as if I’d lost it, which, of course, I had. “Because if you don’t,” I said, “I’ve got one I could lend you.”

The sad thing is, I wasn’t kidding. At that moment, I wanted to lend Mom to somebody, to drop her off on somebody’s doorstep, to sell her to somebody on eBay— anything to avoid having to deal with her. But she was mine, all mine, and, like it or not, my ability to function as an adult was about to be severely tested.

t
wo

M
y mother moved to L.A. two months later, having flown out to look at rentals the week after she’d sold her house and then finding one literally two blocks from mine. She had wanted to be close to me; now she was on top of me. I fortified myself by asking my internist for a prescription for Valium.

Her spacious, fully
furnished, three-bedroom town-
house, in contrast to my cramped, sparsely furnished, one-bedroom apartment, felt like a home, particularly after she unpacked her knickknacks and displayed them everywhere—photos of me, photos of my father, photos of her Mends in Cleveland, as well as her books and porcelain figurines and needlepoint pillows with little sayings on them like “A Girl’s Best Friend Is Her Mother.” While my place looked as if no one lived there,
mostly because I regarded it as just another pit stop on my journey to stardom, her place looked as if she’d lived there for years. It smelled like it, too; immediately after I’d helped her settle in, I’d taken her to the nearest supermarket, where she’d loaded up her shopping cart and come back and cooked, storing her creations in plastic
containers, labeling them “entré
e,” “vegetable,” and “starch,” and popping them into
the freezer. Conversely, there w
as nothing in my freezer except ice cubes—oh, and two packages of Lean Cuisine, in case I had somebody over for dinner. (I was not remotely domestic, in a subconscious stab, I suppose, at distancing myself from Mom.)

I tried to be supportive of her after her move, really I did. I familiarized her with the neighborhood, drove her to Loehmann’s, even went with her to the DMV so she
could get her California driver’s license. I also invited her along whenever I’d have dinner with my closest friend Maura, a makeup artist for
Days of Our Lives,
whom I’d met when I’d worked on the show. Maura thought my mother was funny as opposed to scary, and couldn’t understand why I was so tormented by her.

“Please. You weren’t raised by her,” I said one night while the three of us were at a restaurant and my mother was in the ladies’ room. “When I was in elementary school, she wouldn’t let me have sleepover dates at my friends’ houses unless she interrogated the other mothers first.”

“Interrogated the other mothers about what?” asked Maura.

“Oh, let’s see. She’d ask them if the batteries in their smoke detectors were working. She’d ask them if their basement had been
checked for radon. She’d ask th
em if their children ha
d recently come down with head li
ce.
It was as if I were the president of the United States and she were my Secret Service agent, my advance person. Only I wasn’t the president. I was a little girl with a mother who couldn’t let go. And her tendency to overscrutinize things and people only got worse. When I was in junior high, she actually made random visits to the cafeteria to sample the food and ensure that it wasn’t ‘too greasy for my Stacey.’ But the best was when I was in high school; she accompanied me on my shopping excursions so she could render an opinion about which clothes made me look fat and which clothes made me look thin and which clothes made me look like Marilyn
Ol
ander’s daughter, who had a ‘reputation.’ ”

“Okay, so I’m glad she’s not my mother,” Maura conceded, “but I still think she’s funny.”

“You can afford to think she’s funny,” I said. “She doesn’t call you at seven o’clock every morning with the weather report.”

“I know, but I love how she opens fire and gives it to people. Did you see the way she told the waiter how drafty it is in here? Most people would just say, ‘Could you bump up the thermostat on the air conditioning?’ Your mother goes, ‘A person could
freeze
to death in this meat locker!’ She’s a hoot, Stacey. A real pistol.” A pistol. Maybe that was the answer: get a gun and—

“Here I am, girls,” said Helen Reiser, returning to the table.

I regarded my mother as she sat back down, rested her napkin across her lap, and launched into a monologue about how two of the three toilets in the ladies’ room were out of service and how the faucets in the sinks were the kind where you have to hold them down in order for the water to come out and how she couldn’t tolerate—absolutely could not abide—those automatic hand dryers, not when good, old-fashioned paper towels did the job just fine.

Who is this person who yammers on and on about nothing? I thought, appraising my mother’s appearance as she continued to find fault with the rest room and other aspects of mode
rn
life. She was wearing a yellow dress with a floral pattern—she wore skirts and dresses religiously, never slacks, even when she was at home by herself—and sturdy, practical, low-heeled pumps, and her chin-length brown hair, with its strands of gray, was in its customary pageboy. She was hardly the essence of chic, but she was a pleasant-looking woman with solid, midwestem values and more energy than people half her age, and I often wondered why she hadn’t remarried in all the years since my father died, especially since she’d seemed to enjoy being a wife. She and Dad had been a perfect fit, probably because they were such opposites in temperament. She nattered constantly; he listened patiently. She was quick to become agitated; he hardly ever got angry. She was too stubborn to say she was sorry; he didn’t equate apologizing with weakness. He was quiet and gentle and accepting—-the type that’s mistaken for a doormat but was anything but. He appreciated Mom’s feistiness, got a kick out of her, the way Maura did. Yes, he was the ideal husband for her: he earned a comfortable living as a banker, was well-spoken and well-groomed, and didn’t flinch when, every single night of their marriage, she reminded him to floss before bed.

As for me, I never could warm to the notion of my mother marrying somebody else. Who needed a new guy barging in and trying to take my father’s place? I didn’t. I was happy with the memory of the decent, fair, easygoing man who’d raised me—the man who was a calming presence in my life. Whenever Mom would nag me,
he’d soothe me, whispering, “Don’t worry. I’ll have a talk with her.” His talks with her never changed anything, but his willingness to run interference for me made him a hero in my book.

“You’re too much the way you notice everything, Mrs. Reiser,” Maura was telling my mother while I was tripping down memory lane. “You totally crack me up.”

I had to agree with Maura there. My mother was cracking me up, too, only not in a good way.

T
he following week I had a date, a rare occurrence. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to meet a guy, fall in love, and get married. It was that I wanted to meet a guy, fall in love, and get married to someone whose expectations in a mate didn’t involve Julia Roberts. What I’m saying is that finding Mr. Right is tough everywhere, but finding him in L.A. is a near impossibility. If he has anything at all going for him—physical attractiveness, power job, engaging personality (not necessarily in that order)— he’s got a city full of bona fide movie stars to choose from, so why choose me? Not that I was a bowwow, as I’ve said. I just wasn’t glamorous, voluptuous, or any of those other adjectives that end in “ous.” Of course, the other reason I didn’t date very often was that I was focused on my career. When I wasn’t auditioning, I was spending time on my personal grooming, a must for an actress in Hollywood. You’ve got to show up at every meeting looking like a million bucks, which means facials and manicures and stints at the gym. I mean, there are only so many hours in a day.

Still, when Maura called to say she had a friend she wanted to fix me up with, I was delighted and made room in my busy schedule.

“His name is Ethan,” she said, “and he’s a hairdresser.
A straight hairdresser. Oh, and he’s Welsh.”

“How old is he?”

I asked this because while I had mother issues, Maura had father issues. She was always dating men who were old enough to have sired her. Her last boyfriend, a real estate developer, was a good thirty years older than she was, and they had nothing in common except his interest in her body and her interest in his money.

“He’s forty-four,” she said. “And he’s not only a genius with scissors, he’s fabulous with color. He’s been doing my hair for months now and I’ve never been happier.” Maura’s hair was cranberry, which is an okay color for a car but not for a person’s head. She wore it just below her ears in a style I’d call virtual cowlick. It was layered and spiky—a cranberry crossed with a cactus. Hopefully Ethan had other skills.

He and I made plans to do dinner and a movie. Except for the fact that he had seven studs in his right earlobe, he was very appealing, regaling me with tales of all the divas whose hair he’d cut and/or colored. I sort of liked him and he seemed to like me, so we decided to skip the movie and scoot back to my apartment for coffee.

Coffee led to conversation, which led to kissing on my sofa. As I said, I didn’t date often, so when I did— and was actually attracted to the guy—I tried to make the most of it.

Ethan and I were going at it—nothing serious, just lip action—when my doorbell rang.

“Let’s ignore it,” he said, as I nibbled on his earlobe, the one that wasn’t pierced in seven places.

I murmured my assent and caressed Ethan’s neck.

When the doorbell rang a second time, he broke away to check his watch. “It’s bloody ten o’clock,” he said. “Who’d be coming around at this hour?”

Well, there was only one person I could think of, and it was late, even for her. Something must have happened, I decided, disentangling myself from Ethan’s arms and jumping up to open the door. Something that couldn’t wait until morning.

“Mom? What is it?” I said, worried but relieved to see she was in one piece. She looked fine, in fact. More than fine. She was wearing a very fetching navy blue dress with the sales tag still hanging from the sleeve.

“Like it?” she said, hands on hips.

“Like what?”

“My new dress. I bought it at Loehmann’s this afternoon. It was marked down by fi
fty percent so I couldn’t resist.
”

“You came here at ten o’clock at night to model your new dress?” I said, itching to blast her but reining myself in. She was living down the street now, not staying in a hotel for a week. We were in this for the long haul, she and I. If I provoked a confrontation, she’d get all huffy and it would be uncomfortable and I couldn’t deal with that. Call me a wuss if you must, but I was overwhelmed with conflict. I was raised to be respectful to my mother, but I also needed to set limits with her, boundaries. If only she’d get a life, I kept telling myself over and over. Then I’d be off the hook.

“If I can’t share a terrific bargain with my daughter, who can I share it with?” she said, walking right past me into the living room, where she came upon Ethan, who was still stretched out on the sofa. “Oh, my. I had no idea you had company, Stacey.”

No idea I had company? I had told her I had a date only that morning! But she just had to see Ethan for herself, didn’t she? I was dying to remind her that I was
entitled to my privacy. Instead, I said, “Mom, this is Ethan. Ethan, this is my mother.”

“Helen Reiser,” she volunteered, planting herself on the sofa next to Ethan and pumping his hand.

“Pleasure,” said Ethan, who was polite but clearly put out. He had visions of us doing more than kissing, I guessed.

“So tell me, Ethan,” she said, peering up at him as if he were an exhibit in a museum. “What’s with all the earrings?’

“My mother’s a very direct person,” I explained to Ethan.

“As if that’s a bad thing,” she said with a shrug.

“Maybe Ethan doesn’t feel like discussing his personal life with someone he’s just met,” I said.

“What personal life?” she scoffed. “I was asking about his jewelry.”

“I had my ear pierced,” Ethan said tightly. “It’s no big deal.”

“It must have been a big deal because you did it seven times,” said my mother. “Stacey wanted to pierce her ears when she was in high school, but I put my foot down. She went and did it anyway, when she was away at college, and wouldn’t you know that she developed an infection. In her right ear, I think it was. Apparently, whoever did the piercing didn’t use a sterilized needle. The ear became inflamed and started oozing, and if it weren’t for the antibiotics they gave her in that infirmary, she would have been in real trouble. And speaking of antibiotics, there are strains of bacteria now that are resistant to the drugs, were you aware of that, Ethan?”

He shook his head helplessly.

“That’s right,” she went on. “And I don’t mind telling you that it infuriates me. The fact that the geniuses in
this country can’t care a common case of diarrhea
absolutely
infuriates me. A child eats a bad hamburger and the next thing you know that child is clinging to life in a hospital bed. It’s a national disgrace! We can send a man to the moon. We can clone sheep. We can invent computers that show every kind of X-rated trash known to man. So why in the world can’t we save a child who eats a bad hamburger? Why?”

Look, I’m as sympathetic as the next person when it comes to children or anyone else who contracts E. coli, but I was totally humiliated by my mother’s latest performance. There wasn’t a chance that Ethan would call me again. He sat there with this odd expression on his face. It was not one of bemusement or impatience or even hostility. It was one of fear—as if he were trapped in a train wreck.