My Hollywood (24 page)

I was still thinking about the tiny triangular face like a fox. I felt nude in my underwear. The air glittered when we stepped outside. A breeze cut through my skirt.

I had a melody all of a sudden. For clarinets.

My grandmother had gone to the beauty shop Friday mornings. A woman tended her white curls, rolling each one, drying her under a steel helmet. Conversation about the hairdresser’s truant daughter gave these ministrations a serious air, which ended with my grandmother counting out the tip in cash. This was the only ritual related to her appearance that my grandmother paid for. She did her own nails every week. She set up the whole business on the kitchen table using glass condiment dishes the filling station gave away that, later in the day, would be filled with mustard and pickle relish.

“You change your hair!” Lucy said, when I dropped off Helen. “It is too short!”

Home, I bounded upstairs to dress while Lola fluffed Will. She left in Danny’s green Mercedes; she’d asked for five tickets to bring a group of nannies. I drove Will, suspendered in his car seat, to the Lot. We walked under huge painted signs
—THE SIMPSONS. STAR WARS—
to soundstage 6, where Paul stood in his billowing white shirt. The guard gave us wristbands, like the ones Will and I had worn in the hospital. Inside, lights caught us in the noise of a thousand people. They sat in bleachers on our right. Why hadn’t I known they’d all be here?

On the left, PAs milled, looking miniature in the sets, open on one side, like the rooms of an enormous dollhouse.

We had gifts for Paul. Willie had painted a mug at Color Me Mine, and I’d bought a silver fountain pen he’d probably return. Will handed him the decorated bag.

“Oh, thanks, can you keep it for me?” People circled him, waiting for us to get out of the way. He tapped a clipboard with a Bic.

“I’m going to assign Molly to you for tonight. You guys’ll sit with the writers.”

Molly installed us on director’s chairs in front of eight TV screens. She fitted earphones on our heads. I felt privileged. Jeff and Paul wore them but the writers behind us didn’t get any. I turned around. “Thank you for coming. It means so much to Paul.”
First Lady manners
, my mother called them. She and Tom were somewhere in the audience too.

Jeff stood watching Molly walk off. “Helen wouldn’t put up with that.”

“We like Molly,” I said, glancing at Will.

“Sorry.”

“Mommy.” Willie slid down his chair. “I know where Craft Catering is.” Last week, Paul had given Molly his keys to drive Will to the set and then home again.

Bags of chips, cookies, and candy lay open on the counter, a child’s treasure, all the things I kept him from. I let him fill a plate while I poured coffee, already bitter.

He walked back balancing his feast.

Among the throng—men moving lights, cinematographers pushing Panavision cameras on trolleys, a studio executive leaning against a pillar—I watched Paul, a nucleus, in his baggy white shirt. Actresses sat in chairs, getting made up in plain view. I would have thought that was private. A comedian walked to the center of the stands and began juggling. “Warm-up guy,” Jeff said, walking past.

I heard a soft flurry of scribbling behind us. Paul
was
grateful. At breakfast, he’d tallied their fees. “The writers are essentially
giving
me a million dollars. When you figure their episode quotes.”

“Wants us to work on the blow,” Jack said. He came tonight as a favor to Paul. Within the comedy world, Jack was famous, though no one had ever heard him say anything funny outside the Room. I’d hardly heard him say anything at all. He drove a Civic with a bumper sticker that said
KILL YOUR TV
. I saw Paul in the distance, one hand on Jeff’s shoulder. The younger guys here hoped he’d hire them when he got his pickup order. “Never seen so many writers at a pilot shoot,” Jack said. “It’s a testament to Paul. The perfunctory presents alone are going to bankrupt you.”

He was right. Paul had spent more than a thousand dollars. Paul’s mother had sent ten Ralph Lauren blankets she’d found in an outlet, but this time, he decided to buy retail. We bought those noise-canceling headphones Jeff had given me.

A young writer sighed. “Got to be an easier way to make six hundred thousand.”

Molly handed Bing a napkin with two Hostess CupCakes, then sauntered off.

The eight TV screens blinked on and I gathered that the shoot had begun. I thought they’d have clackers.

The actress whined. I wanted to tell Paul, but I couldn’t get his attention. This felt urgent. Her voice was ruining his lines. Paul had once missed a whole dinner party, pacing outside, begging her agent.

After every scene—which went like a volley—there was a mangled shout and applause. Paul moved, clipboard in hand, between milling camera people in the lit sets, where he looked more at home than he did in our house. All those nights I’d put down the phone, feeling socked, when he said it’d be another late one, this had always been here—PAs pressed around him offering food, Diet Coke—another fuller world. At home, it was just Will and me. And Lola, who right now sat somewhere in the bleachers.

Will pulled me over to see the warm-up guy hold a ladder in his teeth. Jeff bumped into me, his arm on my arm.

“Wonder what he’s getting paid,” I said.

“Maybe nothing. Probably sees this as his big chance.” His hand arabesqued around my ear. “You do something to your hair?”

“Helen took me.”

“I like your regular hair.”

The clown’s roommates probably knew about this showcase. Maybe they’d planned a party for him at home. But the studio guys stood, arms crossed, talking to one another. Paul wouldn’t notice him either, though for his son, he made the whole show.

Between wonders, Will ran back to Craft Services, returning with a new flimsy paper plate. So far, by my count, he’d eaten:

Two Hostess CupCakes
One Twinkie
Two cheesecakes
A brownie
Two Ho Hos
Four Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups
Another candy bar I didn’t know the name of

He now carefully balanced a 7UP can on the thin arm of the director’s chair. I didn’t allow sodas at home. Paul hid Diet Coke in Lola’s square refrigerator. He’d go out at night, knock, and grab one.

Paul walked over, picked up Will, and guided me to another region behind a curtain. A guard sat at a wooden desk in the middle of the adjacent hangar, a ledger open. He let us in. In another room, walled with black curtains, there were overstuffed chairs, couches, a long table of food, and, on a high cart, one small TV monitor.

“The network people,” Paul whispered.
“Their
caterer.” The network would decide whether or not to buy Paul’s show. All this time they’d been back here deliberating. Men in chef’s hats served. “You’re going to like this, bud.” Paul handed Will a square of tiramisu.

We fell into a hard-whispered fight.

“Claire, we auditioned forty actresses, and she was far and away the best.”

“Couldn’t Jeff direct her to tone it down?”

“I can’t be taking notes from my wife.” Just then Molly came over with a clipboard. Paul lifted a piece of my hair, hooked it behind my ear. “Hair looks nice.”

A tall camerawoman bent down. “Does he want to ride?”

So Will rode the Panavision, shaped like a huge whistle, scooting on tracks toward the underground cave of a false living room. Paul sprinted across stage. “Whoa. Hey, you bring a camera?” Before I mumbled no, he assumed my failure and began asking, “You have a camera? You have one?”

We had a picture of Will riding the Paramount golf cart. We should have had this too—Little Him on the Panavision, night of the pilot shoot.

When the camerawoman returned him, Will bit down on a Milky Way.

I grabbed Jeff’s elbow. “The way Marly’s playing Ellen, she sounds a little dumb.”

“You say that as if it were a bad thing!” He walked off, shaking with little explosions.

People stamped on the metal bleachers. Then they walked out in bunches, laughing. The studio president stretched, in soft long sleeves. A hand on Will, I lingered near the executives coming out of their cave, hoping to overhear. But they were talking about an actor.

“Two years ago he was eating dog food from a can.”

The camerawoman who’d given Will a ride squatted to lift cable, looping it around her elbow.
Pretty underwear
. She looked past forty, wearing work boots. I never would have guessed. Magenta.

She opened a hand spread with gum sticks and offered them to Will.

The warm-up guy heaved two duffels over his shoulder.

“Excuse,” I said. “Could I have your name?”

“Sure!” He set the bags down and carefully printed his name and three phone numbers on a torn envelope corner; oh, no, he thought I was somebody. I was just Paul’s wife. All I could do was send him a basket, next Christmas.

My mother and Tom came over, smiling, her arm on his arm. She wore all black with her good scarf, draped.

I reminded her about Grandmothers’ Day at the school. Grandfathers’ Day was a week later.

“I thought we could invite Tom,” I said.

“Let’s wait on that,” she whispered, pulling me aside.

“Why? Will thinks of him as a grandfather.”

“Well, he’s not. He’s just a friend. I don’t really even like him.”

Finally Paul tore open his presents. I could tell the way he turned the pen in his hand that he thought it was extravagant. But he clipped it to his pocket.

“We can discuss returning it in the morning,” I said.

He laughed. “I
love
the mug.” He twirled Will in the air.

I hoped Paul would drive. He could leave his car; I’d bring him back tomorrow. Will by now had gum plastered on his face and hung, a crooked star, over his father’s chest. I’d taken him to the bathroom and tried to scrub the gum off, but little bumps lingered like a rash. When Paul set him down again, I saw the mess on his white shirt. “You go,” Paul said. “I have to stay for pickup shots and retakes.”

Will spread over me now, head on my shoulder. It was one-thirty, a spring night. Palms on the Lot, embedded not in dirt but cement, soared thirty feet. They looked like props too, but they were alive. I braced one hand on the smooth bark and held Will’s forehead with the other when he bent over and threw up, again and again.

I carried him into the house and laid him on the bath mat while I ran water, with bubbles. I lifted him into the white mounds, holding him between my knees. Drying him, on a pile of towels, I saw his nails were too long, and as he slipped into the faint reassuring hum of a dream, I got out the clippers and, one by one, took his sleeping feet and hands to trim.

Paul walked in the door at four o’clock Monday, palms up. “Got the pickup order. Thirteen shows. They usually buy six or seven, this’s the whole season.” He never minded having to explain to me. Helen understood the business better than Jeff did. But Paul didn’t even expect me to watch TV.

“Let’s go out tonight. Celebrate,” I added.

I waited on hold with our favorite restaurant; I believed in the rituals. Lil and I had had theories, but they didn’t seem to be working on me. Some living fabric, slightly denser than air, held Lola, Willie, and me together. When Paul stepped into the house, something vibrated—a high string—with the twang of a stranger.

“I’ve got to scramble to hire. So far the only writer we have is Buddy G., and even he’s telling his agent to play hardball.” He sighed. “And we’re late.”

“Buddy? Really?” This kid, two years out of college, who rarely bathed, had a marketable skill. Thirty years of practice practice practice; why didn’t I?

“Isn’t that incredible? But I’ve got to make calls. So eight o’clock?”

I stepped outside, pulling the extension cord into the small courtyard I’d planted with Tom and my mother. The Boston ivy we’d staked was halfway up the wall now, the leaves red. The day Tom took me to the nursery to buy plants, he’d introduced me to the owner. I was curious as to what he’d call me. “This is Claire,” he said. “I’ve been going with her mother for thirty-some years.” When I told Paul, he said, “And that’s exactly what he’s been doing. He’s been
going
with her.” Fog blew in. My upper lip stung, and I fumbled in my pocket for a Kleenex. Will picked up colds from the other kids in school. “Two, please. Could we have a booth?” I’d stood here when I ripped open the envelope from the preschool, offering Will a place.
Yes!
I’d said then, making a fist. Now, passing through the kitchen, I grabbed a paper towel to blow my nose.

I needed my own triumph. But lately, I hadn’t sent out any entries to the world.

I felt like the child I’d been, holding my knees, waiting. To be chosen.

In our room, after dinner, Paul said, “Oh, no. I feel that ball in my throat. I
can’t
get sick now.” He reached the spare comforter from the high shelf in the closet and took his pillow from the bed to sleep in his study.

“I’m getting it too,” I said.

“At least you don’t have a table read on Friday.”

I was the one in the house with the insignificant cold.

Lola never caught any of our viruses at all.

I’d received a call from the Class Community Service and Events Mother asking if we would host the end-of-the year party. He had to be a little popular, I told myself, or they wouldn’t want the party at our house. I held that all week like an unexpected check in my pocket: I went in for his teacher conference glad I had it.

The door swung open. “Shall we start?” Janet. The head teacher.

“Paul’s coming too. He must be stuck in traffic.”

Then, to my surprise, the school director entered, holding a folder. “Janet and Heidi have some concerns,” she said. “That Will sometimes seems unhappy.”

Unhappy? They appeared to be waiting for me to say something. Just then, Paul burst in. “Sorry I’m late, the 10 was jammed from Bundy on.”

The director turned to him. “We called this conference because we want to help William.”