Movie Star By Lizzie Pepper (28 page)

In truth, I had no idea what to expect. Maybe I was completely wrong and this was all a wild-goose chase. Maybe, after all these years, Allison would turn me away. Maybe she hated me. I was a little scared, and not just because I didn’t know the company Allison kept, but because Cap and I were—there’s no other way to say it—we were commodities. Our photographs, our words, our
beings
had value, and drug addicts will do anything for money. I steeled myself, channeling my heroes, the explorers who braved the worst nature had to offer, determined to conquer the unknown. Compared to them, my situation was a joke. If Shackleton could cross the infamously treacherous Drake Passage in an open boat, I could damn well knock on this door.

When I knocked, Allison opened the door. I was stunned, especially by the ease of it. My long-lost sister was a three-dimensional person who walked and talked and opened doors when people knocked on them. For all these years, she’d been accessible, here, somewhere, waiting, if I’d only had the wherewithal to look.

On the shelf behind her were the empty pitchers I’d seen in the photos. They’d always been here, and always lodged in my memory.

This had been my uncle Nick’s hunting cabin, the last place I’d seen Allison. We hadn’t spent much time with my uncle Nick when I was a child, and when we did, he usually came to us. My mother tended to develop shortcut descriptions of everyone she met (my father was “a tough cookie but a straight shooter”; her friend Eloise Van, who had kicked her husband out decades ago but refused to divorce him, had “a wall around her heart”). Of my uncle Nick—the younger brother who’d never settled down, had a fondness for hunting and survival gear, played a mean banjo, and was prone to raving about “the Man”—my mother would say, “He’s too smart for his own good.”

But the few times we’d visited Uncle Nick at this cabin, he’d always done the same thing. He’d say to my parents, “Can I borrow the girl?” Then he’d follow me out into the woods and let me explore. If I wanted to build a fort, he was my willing assistant. If I was on a fairy hunt, he discovered glittery necklaces in hollow trees and under tangles of root. If I came close to falling in the stream, he never let out a word of warning. If anyone made me feel like I could one day be an explorer, it was Uncle Nick.

One summer there had been a girlfriend, Gracie, who filled the empty kitchen shelves with dishes and the bread box with fresh-baked muffins. She scattered wildflower seeds across the front lawn, and filled pitchers with the flowers that sprung up: blue and yellow violets, buttercups, larkspur, and bluebells. But by winter Gracie had gone (my mother always said, “Your uncle Nick missed the boat on that one”), and apparently since then the pitchers had sat empty on the wooden shelves, their various pastel colors seeming to fade into the same pale green.

Now Allison stood before that wall of lost opportunity, still in place despite the cabin’s disrepair. I would have recognized her even if I’d never seen the pictures. In person, she looked like she had as a teenager, but even thinner in an unseasonable summer dress. An evil Hollywood voice in my head whispered that skinnier was always better, even if it was drug
induced. But now, at least, her eyes were calm and sad. I was pretty sure she wasn’t high.

“I missed you,” I said, gulping down emotion.

She knew me right away. Unless she’d been under a log all these years, of course she knew that she had a famous, rich sister. Yet she’d never come to me for money or help.

“Baby girl,” Allison said. She took a step back and smiled. “You look just like the magazines.”

I rolled my eyes. “Crazy, isn’t it?” I hadn’t planned this far ahead. Should I hug her? Apologize for abandoning her? Was I going to help her? How? “I’m so glad I found you,” I said.

“I didn’t know I was lost.”

“No, I’m sorry—what I meant—” I was at a loss. Cap bounced at my side like a golden retriever tugging on its leash, alive with innocence. “This is your auntie,” I said. “Allison, this is Cap.”

“You have your mama’s eyes,” Allison said, kneeling down to Cap’s level. “Would you like some hot chocolate?”

“I’m four years old plus nine months old,” Cap said. “Actually, my eyes are the same color as Daddy’s. And I have really, really been asking for hot chocolate every day so far.”

After he guzzled her hot chocolate, Cap got up to walk his favorite toy turtle, a small hard one that fit in his fist, along the wooden shelves. I sat at the kitchen table while Allison put on hot water, chatting emptily about the snowstorm, telling Cap about a deer that liked to come right up to the back door. Allison’s movements were nervous and her fingers played in midair, tapping out some music only she could hear. When she put our teacups on the table, the smile left her face. “I fucked up, Liz.”

Glancing at Cap, I winced at the profanity. “It’s okay, don’t worry. We can get you help.”

“No,” she said. “I’m weak. I’m so fu—so bloody weak. They gave me—”

She kept one eye on Cap, who was making conversation with his turtle. “I’d been doing so well. Five months totally clean. But he started me off again. A total stranger. Just showing up like it was Christmas morning. It was more cash than I’ve seen all at once in my life. Said he wanted to help me get a whole new start. Empower me to control my destiny. But all that money in my pocket and I was hooked again. So much for Santa Claus. Why would someone do that? I thought he was in it for my future business, you know? But he never came back and my guy—Sanjo—he says he had nothing to do with it.”

“When did this happen?”

Allison grunted apologetically. “I can’t exactly say the old calendar’s up-to-date, sis.” She tapped a finger on her forehead. “I’ve been a little, you know, out of it ever since.” Something in that gesture of hers took me straight back to when I was four and we were sitting on the stairs, and she was singing some pop song to me and explaining the bubblegum lyrics. This was my
sister
. How many years had we lost? Why had it taken me so long to come looking for her?

I took out a printout of the Rounder.com piece with the photos of Allison and put it on the kitchen table. “Do you think this was it? Was this the day he came over?”

“Oh man,” Allison said. “Dude definitely had a camera. I didn’t remember that until right this minute. But he was definitely a photographer. He said something about modeling and a real income for once. I know it was bullshit.”

Holding the paper at a bit of a distance, she started to read and sucked in air. “Oh, no. I see what they did here. I screwed things up for you. Dragging the Pepper name through the gutter. Exactly why I’ve left you all alone.”

Her face crumpled and she covered it with her hands. “There’s more. Oh God, I’m remembering more. Mom and Dad protected you from me and they were right.”

“Don’t cry, Auntie,” Cap said. “If you hold Walker, it will feel better faster.” He stopped his game, went to Allison, and put the toy turtle in his aunt’s hand.

Though Allison was obviously upset by it, to me my sister’s relapse was part of a cycle that I assumed had been recurring ever since she’d left home. I had expected to find her high or sober, having recently been the other. It was no shock that the tabloids had tracked her down. If anything, the remarkable part was that it hadn’t happened before. And so in that moment I missed my chance to ask what the man had looked like, or what “more” Allison was remembering.

“Look,” I said. “Those pictures helped me find you. I should have come here a long time ago. You don’t have to be perfect for me to love you.”

“Dad doesn’t know you’re here,” she said.

My ambition had carried me a long way. It had carried me to the pinnacle of fame and success. It had carried me into Rob’s arms, where I was everything my father wanted me to be. But in that dark, cold house, with its sour smell and wistful memory of unspoiled summer days, I was, at last, who and where I wanted to be. Not an only child in a flawless family—the sister of an addict. Not a star—an actor. I was myself again.

“It doesn’t matter what Dad thinks,” I said. “You’re my sister.”

I wanted to tell Allison about LifeHeartTruth—that I’d supported that charity because I hadn’t forgotten her, that they had a place for her to go if and when she was ready. But before I could speak there was a knock at the door. Allison sprang to her feet, suddenly on edge. “I’m sorry, sweetie, but I think you’d better leave.” She glanced at Cap. “It’s my guy. Sanjo.” Her dealer. “Here, why don’t you go out this way.”

Cap was sliding his turtle down the spout of a ceramic teapot.

“Come on, little man. Time for us to go.” I started to lead him through the kitchen.

“Yummy. Uncle Geoff’s mints. Can I have one?” I stopped cold and looked over to where Cap was pointing. There on a shelf sat a tin of Curiously Strong Altoids. I stared at it. Cap’s child logic sent a wave of nausea through my body. There was absolutely no way Geoff had been here, no chance he was the one who took those photos.
Right?
I showed the tin to my sister. “Allison, are these mints yours?”

Allison was distracted. “What? No, I don’t think so. I don’t know. You can have them.”

“Please?” Cap begged. “Uncle Geoff let me have one after we did the pictures.”

It was just a tin of peppermints. They were sold at the counter of every grocery. I refused to let my imagination run away with me. Besides, there wasn’t time for that. Allison opened the kitchen door and ushered us out. The seed of paranoia was whisked away into the chilly night air.

Out on the quiet street a blue SUV idled behind our car. The snow was deeper now. I picked Cap up again. As we left, I heard Allison opening the front door and greeting her guest.

Cap and I got in the backseat of our car.

“Please can I have a mint right now, Mommy? Please? Please?”

“No.”

“Later?”

“Tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow,” Cap said. “I’ll remember.” And I knew he would.

I didn’t put it together at the time, but when I decided I wanted Allison in my life, despite the pain and strife that might bring, I was parting ways with the Whole Body Principles. My experience on
The Safe House
, playing Abigail Warren, had changed me. It woke me up to the deep importance of the everyday decisions that comprise a life. I couldn’t live by
the philosophy that drove my husband’s every move. It worked for him. I saw how it worked. But that wasn’t a deal I was willing to make.

I had to follow my heart—in my acting and in my relationships. My need to find Allison wasn’t practical or logical. It came from emotion, instinct, a sense of what was right. Emotions were real, and Abigail Warren had taught me to live by mine, no matter the cost.

The snowstorm had shut down the Kalamazoo airport, our driver reported, but our pilot had flown ahead of it to O’Hare. We drove straight to Chicago, but streets were icy and treacherous, and by the time we got to O’Hare, that airport had also been shut down.

“Six twenty-four South Greenway,” I said, without thinking it through. Where would I go from O’Hare but home?

Fifteen minutes later, almost five years after I had sworn never to return, I was in the driveway of my parents’ house.

Cap had fallen asleep on the drive, Walker the turtle clutched tightly to his chest. If he’d been awake, maybe we would have gone in, and, for his sake, everyone would have pretended the past five years hadn’t happened. What a joyful reunion—my mother hurrying to feed Cap, my father showing me his latest home improvement project. But I couldn’t bear to wake him, instead staring at the house. It was a steel blue clapboard, white trim around the windows, black shutters, a great pine out front lending a perpetual Christmas charm. The quaint lines of this house were often pictured in magazine profiles of me, rose-tinting my youth into an American Girl storybook.

In the warm light of the kitchen I spotted a movement—it could only be my mother, setting the table for tomorrow’s breakfast as she liked to do. What would she think of it all—the revelation I’d had during
The Safe House
, and how it pulled me toward the sister I’d never known? Back in
the den, watching a sports game or an action movie bought on discount at Costco, my father would have none of it. All his work, all his sacrifice, all for me. Just then the front door opened. I ducked down with a little yelp, then watched as my father’s arm reached out to flick on the porch light, as he did en route to fixing himself a scotch every night. He’d wired that light himself, the day Aurora got her driver’s license and she and I went to a movie by ourselves for the first time.