No Ordinary Life (29 page)

68

M
olly and I are at the airport, both of us nervous and excited. Neither of us has ever been on an airplane. Molly's nose is pressed against the glass as she watches the planes taxi and land in the darkness.

The audition fiasco with Monique Braxton is a hazy memory, like the lingering aftertaste of an early breakfast of garlic bagels, salmon, and red onions. Emily hates me, and she hates Monique Braxton, and as soon as we left Monique Braxton's office, she called Sean and asked if she could stay with him instead of my mom while Molly and I were in New York. As I predicted, she blames me. She thinks I sabotaged her by telling Monique Braxton I didn't want her to act. I didn't sabotage her, but I am relieved.

Accompanying us on the trip is our publicist, Patrick. Patrick's okay, a bit annoying but efficient. At the moment, he stands a few feet away pecking on his phone.

Publicists are sort of like babysitters. They schedule interviews and appearances, make sure you show up to them on time, and make sure all the parties behave themselves.

Patrick is what my dad would call a glad-hander, one of those guys who slaps backs and throws his head back when he laughs. His face is ruddy and round like a slab of bologna and he talks a lot, which is why he's a bit irritating. But the thing I like least about him is that, though he's on our “team,” I trust him about as far as I can throw him, which, considering how beefy he is, isn't an inch. When he's around, I feel like it's half to watch out for us and half to watch us, like the studio is keeping tabs on us, afraid of something, though I'm not certain exactly what that something is.

As we wait, a few people ask for Molly's autograph, and she obliges, scrawling a curly “M” that has become her signature, but then a crowd starts to form causing Patrick to grow concerned, and he shuttles us from the waiting area to a private lounge.

Three minutes before our boarding time, a flight attendant arrives and escorts us onto the plane before the other passengers. We stop at the cockpit to be introduced to the pilots who also ask for Molly's autograph.

The plane takes off with Molly and me gripping each other's hands, my heart in my throat. It feels so unnatural for a giant machine of steel to be flying through the air, and it takes a while for my brain to get used to the idea and to convince my pulse that we are not going to fall out of the sky.

Molly and I should sleep. We need to be on the set at six for hair and makeup, which won't allow any time for us to stop at the hotel and rest. But we're both far too excited to close our eyes.

In the seat in front of us is a little girl perhaps a year older than Molly, and before you know it, the dad has traded rows, and Molly and the girl are lost in endless games of Crazy Eights and Go Fish.

I now have Molly's window seat, and I stare through the tiny pane of glass at the kazillion lights of LA spread out like a Christmas blanket below. An hour later we are floating over rural countryside, the moon reflecting off a patchwork of farms sliced with roads and rivers and spotted with houses and barns.

There's so much and so little to see. Living in LA makes you believe the world is a crowded place, but flying across the country makes me realize how empty it actually is. There's so much land, space, and sky that I feel utterly small, while at the same time, when we fly over a city, I'm struck by how much has been created—both the crammed and the empty resonating overwhelming greatness—man's and God's. At certain moments, I'm inspired, and at others, I'm struck with a profound sadness, a sense of irrelevance that leaves me feeling fragile and empty and anxious for the trip to be over so I can feel grounded again.

An hour before we're scheduled to land, Molly returns to her seat and falls asleep on my lap, and when the plane stops outside the gate and I wake her, she's not ready to be woken.

“Come on, Bug, we're here. You need to get up.”

“Don't want to.”

“I know, baby, but you've got to. We're in New York.”

“Don't want to.”

Patrick relieves me of my carry-on bag so I can lift Molly in my arms. Her head flops onto my shoulder, and she falls back to sleep. I carry her through the airport to the baggage claim area as dozens of people pursue us with their phones, documenting the momentous occasion of Molly snoring on my shoulder.

By the time we get in our limo, it's four in the morning and already I regret my decision not to spend the trip sleeping, my eyes so heavy that I feel them closing as we drive into the city.

Molly continues to sleep, missing the entire amazing journey. LA has a few tall buildings but nothing like the skyscrapers of New York. My neck hurts, and my head is dizzy from looking up at them.

We pull up to Times Square Studios at 5:45 and step onto the busy street. It's not yet dawn, but already the sidewalk is bustling with businesspeople dressed in beautiful wool suits and furs and vendors bundled in parkas and sweatshirts selling pretzels, knishes, hot dogs, and handbags.

Molly is scheduled as the fourth guest. She gets her hair and makeup done, and we are waiting backstage for her turn when the show cuts to a commercial and George Stephanopoulos walks off the set to greet us.

The sight of him coming toward us causes my pulse rate to triple. George. Freaking. Stephanopoulos!

He shakes my hand then turns from my mouth-gaping starstruckedness to Molly.

“It's a pleasure to meet you, Molly. I watch your show every week.”

“My mom watches youwr show awll the time too,” Molly says. “And she has a huge cwrush on you, and befowre she and my dad got a divowrce, she said that, if she wasn't mawrried to my dad, she'd mawrry you.”

I nearly drop my coffee, unable to believe she just said that. I want to die. Seriously. Curl up into a little ball and disintegrate.

“Did she now?” George Stephanopoulos says with a wry smile as he turns to face me and my mortification.

“Hey,” Molly says, causing him to turn back. “She's not mawrried now. So now she can mawrry you.”

George Stephanopoulos raises his left hand. “Except I'm already married.”

“Oh. Okay.” Molly looks past him to me. “Sowrry, Mom, he's awlwready mawrried, so you need to mawrry Gwriff instead.”

This time the coffee does drop from my hand; luckily the lid is on and there's only a sip left, so it doesn't spill, but it clunks to the floor, and I need to scramble to my knees to retrieve it.

It always amazes me how much more attuned my kids are than I give them credit for. I think they're oblivious, lost in their egocentric worlds, then they go and say something like that, and I realize they're paying a lot more attention than I imagined.

“See you on the set in a few minutes,” George Stephanopoulos says as the AD signals to him that the commercial is about to end.

“In a few, good as new,” Molly yells after him.

69

M
olly does a marvelous job answering George Stephanopoulos's questions, the same rote questions she's grown accustomed to.

“Have you always known you wanted to be a singer?”

“I'm onwly fouwr, so I haven't had a wlot of time to think about it.”

Audience laughter.

“Who is your favorite Foster sibling?”

“It depends. Mostwly Jewremy, but sometimes Miwles. Evewryone's wreawlly nice to me.”

On and on the questions go until finally, “Will you sing for us?”

Molly slides from her chair and walks to the stage beside the interview set where a band is already set up and waiting. She sings her hit single, “Moonbeams to Heaven,” and the audience goes wild with applause, then the show cuts to a commercial and Molly is shuttled from the stage.

A quick shower for me and a bath for Molly at our hotel and we're back in the limo and on our way to FAO Schwarz for the unveiling of a new line of gourmet lollypops being introduced by Hershey called Molly Pops. Huge posters of Molly holding a Molly Pop wallpaper the windows, and a horde of hundreds stand behind ropes as the limo drops us in front of the giant toy store.

“That me?” Molly asks, her brow pinched as she studies the larger-than-life photos of herself.

I can understand her confusion. Between the makeup and the Photoshopping, the posters barely look like her. She looks like a smoothed-out version of herself without a mole, a vein, or a flyaway hair.

Girls squeal and mothers and fathers press forward against the three police officers who part the crowd so we can pass. I hold Molly tight as Patrick shuttles us into the store. Though we've grown accustomed to fans swarming around us, it's still disconcerting, especially at moments like these, when the line that protects us is so thin and the crowd is so large, when the smallest fissure would crumble our defenses and leave us at the mercy of a stampede.

Dealing with this kind of fanfare is the most difficult part of Molly's success. It's so frenetic and at times so desperate. Hands reach to touch us, and voices clamor for our attention. People throw things at us—flowers, stuffed animals, chocolate, compliments, overtures of love. Girls scream Molly's name and hold out pens and paper and skin for her autograph. Many have their hair curled like Molly's and a lot wear overalls. Sometimes the excitement overtakes one of them, and they will faint or break down and cry.

It's strangely surreal and slightly disturbing, and when we are in the moment, like now, it's as if I am viewing it through a lens, my brain disconnecting from what's going on so it feels as if I'm not actually experiencing it but rather observing it from outside my body.

A Hershey's representative escorts us to a spot between the two escalators, and after a brief introduction and lots of applause, Molly cuts a large red ribbon with a pair of scissors nearly as large as she is, and a twenty-foot-tall acrylic display with a molded image of Molly holding a Molly Pop is unveiled. The bubble over Molly's acrylic face reads, “Molly Pop, Molly Pop, Oh Molly, Molly Pop.”

For the next two hours, we sign autographs for the fans with a wristband, how or why they are the ones with the privilege to meet Molly a mystery. A crowd of others press forward against the velvet ropes to take photos of us.

Above us, on the second floor, is the famous floor piano—a giant electronic keyboard that kids can dance on to make music. As we work, the laughter and discordant notes of the kids playing float down to us.

“Can I do that?” Molly asks at one point, looking up from her autographing.

“Sure, baby,” I say, though I can't imagine that she can, since the moment she steps on the platform, the world will stop, and everyone will be watching, and she'll be left alone to play the music by herself, and it will no longer be fun.

It's after three when we finish.

“Now can I pwlay the piano?” she asks.

I look at Patrick, who looks at his watch and shakes his head. “We're fifteen minutes behind schedule already, and we can't be late.”

I squat down to Molly's level and look her in the eye. “How about you and I come back tomorrow and we wear disguises so no one will recognize us and we dance on the piano then?”

Molly's mouth curls into a knowing grin as she nods. She also knows it will be more fun if no one knows who she is.

“Pwromise?” she asks.

“Promise,” I say, and already I'm thinking of ways to disguise her trademark curls.

Patrick herds us into the limousine where a lunch of burgers and fries awaits, and we pull away with a tail of paparazzi behind us—a few scooters and half a dozen beat-up, colorful little cars with their windows down and cameras balanced on the door frames. They weave in and out of the thick New York traffic, sticking dangerously close as we race to Yankee stadium.

Patrick lights up at the sight of them, and I have the feeling that our itinerary was sent to the media ahead of time by our delighted publicist. It is not unusual for the pack to be tipped off by a publicist, an agent, or the star themselves. All press is good press, and free press is the best press.

The mayor and his family meet us in front of the statue of Mickey Mantle for a photo shoot, then we are ushered onto the field for Molly to sing the national anthem, a song she fortunately has memorized because
The Foster Band
performed it in one of the episodes.

We watch the ball game until the seventh inning, then Molly sings “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” and almost gets the words right. The crowd roars in laughter when she bumbles a few of them, then they help her out on the final verse.

We leave before the applause has even settled to race back across town for a dreary dinner at a fancy French restaurant called Jean-Georges. The Hershey executives are attempting to show us a good time but fall short, partly because we're exhausted and partly because caviar and escargots prepared by a top-notch French chef don't do much for a four-year-old.

We arrive back at the hotel at ten, Molly falling asleep before her head even hits the pillow.

I long to collapse as well, but first I need to attend to the dozen urgent emails and texts that arrived during the day. Most are requests for Molly to do this or that, and the others have to do with real-life issues like overdue dental cleanings and the dry cleaning that needs to be picked up.

I save the message from Sean for last then, with a deep sigh, press play.

“Hey, Faye, great news. I called Chris, and he got Emily an audition. I guess the writer for the show, Bradley Mitten, has been looking for a new love interest for Caleb and Emily's the perfect age. So I need you to call your mom because she's being a bitch and telling me we can't stop by to pick up the jeans Emily wants to wear for the audition.”

My hair sticks up all over my body, my fingers fumbling to hit the callback button.

“You can't take her to see Mitten,” I say when he answers.

“Christ, Faye, calm down. What the hell's wrong with you? It's all set.”

“Well, unset it. Mitten's a sick son of a bitch.”

“Maybe, but he's a sick son of a bitch with a lot of power. Did you know that he's the one who discovered Gabby?”

“Yes, I know that! And I know why he chose her. The guy's a pedophile.”

Sean laughs. “You always have had a flair for the dramatic.”

“I'm not being dramatic. I'm telling you how it is.”

“Yeah, right. And you, Faye Martin, are the only one who knows.”

“Everyone knows.”

“Everyone knows that the writer of
The Foster Band
is a pedophile, and yet no one has said a word about it? Faye, I get that you feel high and mighty in your new role, but you're not the only one with connections anymore. Face it, I succeeded where you failed. Em's stoked about this. So I know I'm stealing your thunder, but you need to get over it.”

“Sean, this isn't about me…”

“You're right, it's about Em. Do you realize how hard this has been on her? Tom and Molly being stars and her being a nobody?”

“She's not a nobody.”

“That's how she feels.”

“Sean, please, listen to me. I know Em wants to be an actress, but it's really not her thing. She's good at other things…”

“She's going to be good at this,” he says. “Christ, Faye, Em is right, you really do play favorites. I know Molly's cute, but Christ, you should hear yourself. Em's your daughter too, you know.”

My jaw clenches, and my nose pinches against his hurtful words. “It's not about favorites. Em can't act.”

“You memorize your lines and say them when it's your turn. It's not rocket science.”

I rub my temple, my head throbbing. “Okay, fine. If she really wants to do this, I'll look into other agents…”

“She doesn't need another goddamn agent. I told you, I got her a private audition. I thought you'd be happy. The three of them can be on the same show, and you and me, we can manage them, be a team again, like we used to be.”

My breath catches with his suggestion of reconciliation, time slowing as the silence pulses, percolating then sizzling across the three thousand miles between us.

“Sean,” I say finally, with as much compassion as I can muster, “it's not going to happen. There's no new role for a love interest for Caleb. Mitten just uses that as bait. You need to believe me. This isn't real.”

“Go to hell, Faye. Go to fucking hell!”

The line goes dead and I turn off my phone, feeling like I'm already there, the fires of damnation burning a hole in my exhausted brain.