No Ordinary Life (30 page)

70

M
y eyes fly open, my breath heaving, the dream dissolving before I can catch it. My dad…no, Tom…one or the other, one first that became the other. Muddled the way lost dreams are. Panic. Something to do with water. Them, but I was the one drowning. I sit up and look at the clock. Five thirty. I rub Molly's shoulder. “Come on, Bug, time to wake up.”

“Don't want to.”

“I know, baby, but people are waiting.”

At six, we're on the move again, our paparazzi tail still in place, making me wonder if they work in shifts or simply don't sleep.

First stop is the St. Regis Hotel where we do a press circuit, which is kind of like media musical chairs—six consecutive interviews in six different luxury suites with six different publications—same questions, different faces.

When we're done, so is Molly. She needs sleep and so do I. No such luck. Lunch is with a mucky-muck from Mattel who wants to discuss the possibility of an exclusive endorsement deal for their Little Mommy line.

Molly practically falls asleep in her soup. She doesn't even like dolls, but the deal is for a lot of money and Fox loves the idea of a Molly/Mattel partnership that will generate advertising dollars for the studio.

“Now can we go to the piano?” she asks when we climb back in the limo.

Patrick shakes his head, and my heart pounds. We need to make it back to FAO Schwarz. I promised. On the limo drive to lunch, Molly and I devised a plan. If I tightly braid Molly's hair and we wear hats and glasses, and if we don't stay too long, and if Molly is careful not to laugh her signature gravelly giggle, and if we don't pull up in the limo, we might just get away with dancing on the piano undetected. All the supplies for the ruse are in the limo and ready to go; now we just need the time.

At two o'clock, we're on the set for a taped segment of
The Today Show
. Molly tries, but the enthusiasm just isn't there. She perks up when she sings but then barely responds when Matt Lauer high-fives her after.

“When do I get to dance on the piano?” she asks when we're done.

I turn to Patrick. “We
need
to get to FAO Schwarz.”

He nods. The man is a wheeler-dealer without a paternal bone in his body, but even he realizes how important dancing on the piano has become to Molly.

“Three more interviews and there might be time,” he says.

“No,” I say. “Cancel one if you have to or cancel them all.”

“Cancel? We can't cancel. It's
Teen Vogue
,
Rolling Stone
, and
Highlights
.”

“Then combine them or shorten them. Molly's done her part, and she needs to dance on that piano.”

He nods and scurries away to figure out how to condense the next three hours into two, and Molly hugs me around the waist, as pleased with me as I am with myself for standing up to him.

The interviews fly by thanks to Patrick telling each reporter precisely how much time they have, and by setting his phone on the table with the stopwatch displaying a countdown to detonation.

We're halfway through the final interview with
Rolling Stone
, and I'm getting excited because it looks like we'll not only have enough time to dance on the piano but also be able to visit the giant candy shop and enjoy our treat across the street in Central Park.

“How do you feel about the accusations that your costar Gabby has a drug problem?”

I step forward, but Patrick is already there. “This interview is over,” he says, literally pulling the plug on the microphone that is connected to the man's recorder.

His severity surprises and pleases me, though I'm uncertain if his fierceness is out of loyalty to Molly or the show. Boundaries for interviews are set ahead of time—what can be asked and what's off-limits—but it doesn't stop some reporters from crossing the line. They usually wait until the end of the interview, when they know they have their story locked up, then they throw in a zinger, hoping to catch Molly off-guard and to incite a reaction that will score a “hot” interview. In the past two months, Molly's been asked about sex, drugs, alcohol, gay rights, and abortion—things she knows nothing about.

“That's not fair,” the reporter whines. “It's a legit question.”

Patrick rolls his eyes. “Molly, you're done. Stomp on a few of those piano keys for me.”

And I decide Patrick's not so bad after all, and that maybe he has more of a paternal gene than I gave him credit for. Molly high-fives him, and we skip out of the hotel suite and down to the limo. Patrick will be staying in New York to spend Thanksgiving with family, so finally, for the first time in two days, Molly and I are on our own.

“FAO Schwarz,” I say to the limo driver. “And step on it.”

We're thrown back against the seat as the driver guns it out of the hotel's driveway. Thirty seconds later, he slams on the brakes. Half an hour after that, we've only traveled five blocks in the halting afternoon traffic, and Molly has conked out on my lap.

I keep looking at my watch as the limo continues to inch along at a crawl. Our candy store/Central Park time is gone, and our piano time is dwindling. I will the traffic to move faster. I close my eyes and pray. I make promises to God that I will be a better person if He will just part the sea of cars and let us get to FAO Schwarz.

When the driver's phone rings, my heart sinks. Though I can't hear the conversation, I hear the turn signal go on at the next intersection, and I realize what's been said. The driver has been told to take us to the airport so we don't miss our flight.

71

Y
ou pwromised.”

Molly and I stand on the sidewalk of the departures terminal. Our limo driver pulls our bags from the trunk and sets them beside us. I hand him a tip, and he climbs back into the car and pulls away.

“I know, Bug, but we ran out of time.”

In my peripheral vision, I see a flash, and suddenly I'm painfully aware that we are being watched. I turn my head to see at least a dozen paparazzi with their lenses trained on us.

“You said,” Molly says. “You said aftewr we did evewrything we had to do, we would go back.”

“I know and I tried, Bug, I really did, but it wasn't up to me.”

“Molly, over here,” a reporter says.

Another calls, “Molly, look this way.”

“Molly, tell us how you liked New York?”

Molly sticks her tongue out at the reporter.

“Molly,” I gasp.

“Molly, give us a wave.”

“How about a smile?”

“Molly, look this way.”

Molly sinks to the ground and puts her face in her hands.

I signal to a skycap, who hustles over, scans our tickets, and puts tags on our bags. Cameras continue to flash, each flare like a grenade exploding in my brain.

“Come on, Bug, let's go,” I say, holding out my hand.

She ignores me. She's done, her disappointment on top of the exhaustion too much to take, and I feel the meltdown mounting.

“Baby, we have to.”

Her head shakes side to side, and suddenly the reporters are very quiet, all of them captivated by my predicament, salivating at being present to witness how I deal with my famous four-year-old refusing to budge.

I handle it the only way I can. I trigger the explosion. Molly writhes and kicks and screams as I pick her up from the pavement, her fists pounding my back, her feet leaving welts on my thighs. “You pwromised,” she screams. “You said we'd go back to the piano.”

Our carry-on bag dangles from my arm and drags behind me as I wrestle her into the terminal, the reporters following us, their cameras blazing.

“She didn't tip the skycap,” one of them says with glee. A dozen pens scrawl the juicy oversight in their notebooks, and I feel my tears threatening. Molly is now in full hysteric mode, her face red with fury, her back arching as she pushes with all her might to break my hold.

“You pwromised. You said. You pwromised,” she screams.

Every person we pass watches, half of them pulling out their phones to record the spectacle.

I run to the restroom and into the handicap stall then collapse on the toilet with my sobbing bundle, my whole body convulsing as my tears escape.

People have followed us in, and I need to bite my knuckle to keep my sobs from being heard through the thin barrier that protects us.

“Which one is she in?” a nasally voice says.

A moment later, a woman's frizzy head pops over the wall of the stall beside us. Ruthlessly she snaps photo after photo of Molly and I clinging to each other, and I don't think I've ever hated a person so much.

“I'm sorry, baby,” I whisper as I kiss Molly's head, my eyes glaring at the woman.

Molly sniffles, her tantrum spent as the woman continues to take photos.

“Out,” a man's voice bellows, causing the woman to disappear. “Now,” he barks again.

“I'm going,” her nasally voice says.

A moment later, the man says gently, “Ma'am.”

I pinch my nose, unable to respond, Molly and I trembling, though both of us are hot and sweating.

“Ma'am,” he says again. “I'm with airport security.”

I do not trust him. I no longer trust anyone. He could be an imposter. He is an imposter, I'm sure of it. We are in hell surrounded by devils. Me and my baby, alone.

My hand shakes as I pull out my cell phone.

“Griff,” I whimper, my voice a strangled whisper.

“Faye? Faye, is that you? Where are you?”

I hold the phone beneath the door, and a cocoa-colored hand takes it from me.

“Hello, who am I speaking with?” the man says, then I listen as he tries to explain to Griff as best he can what happened and why Molly and I are hiding in a stall in the restroom of the airport. He doesn't get the story completely right—he misses the part about Molly sticking her tongue out at the reporter and having a tantrum—but he gets across the basic gist that something happened outside the terminal that caused us to be pursued by a pack of paparazzi, and that we are now huddled in a stall extremely distressed.

“Ms. Martin,” he says when the explanation is finished, “Griff says you can trust me. I'm here to escort you to your gate.”

And I have no idea if it's true, but just hearing the man use Griff's name gives me faith, and I lift Molly in my arms and open the door.

The man is short and round with a kind face and a badge that says Gomez. He hands me back my phone, which is still lit up with Griff's name.

“Griff,” I croak into it.

“Yeah, I'm here.”

My lungs release, and air seeps in.

“Hang in there, Squid,” he says. “Officer Gomez is going to get you on your plane.”

“Stay on the line, please,” I say.

“I'm not going anywhere.”

72

W
e'll be landing in LA in approximately thirty minutes,” the pilot announces. “Los Angeles has partly cloudy skies, and it's an unseasonably warm eighty-two degrees…”

I open the shade to look at the world below, midnight black except the weak starlight casting shadows on the miles of tract homes, farmland, and mountains below—a place like Yucaipa, maybe Simi Valley or Thousand Oaks. How I want to strap on a parachute, take Molly in my arms, leap from the plane, and float back to that place.

We are escorted off the plane before the other passengers, and a security guard meets us at the gate. He ushers us to a private waiting room, where we're told we will stay until our bags have been retrieved and loaded into the car that's been sent to pick us up.

“Hey,” Molly says from the couch beside me. “That's us.”

She points to the television mounted in the corner of the room, and my blood freezes, then I scramble frantically to shut it off, hitting every button until finally the horrible report that shows Molly sticking her tongue at a reporter then having a fit as I carry her off is silenced.

Molly's face is gaunt and horrified. “They show that on tewlevision?” she says. “That woman said you hit me. You hit me?”

“She said I hit you?” I say, trying to recall what I saw as I was trying to turn it off, and like instant replay, the report spirals in slow motion through my mind.

Pretty blond reporter, impossible white teeth.
Superstar Molly Martin and her mother, Faye Martin, were spotted earlier this evening at JFK Airport, where it appears there was an
altercation that led Faye Martin to slap the four-year-old for sticking her tongue out at a reporter…

“No, Bug, I didn't hit you. You know I didn't. You were there.”

“Why they show that?”

At that moment, the door opens and Griff steps in. I blink several times to make sure I'm not imagining it then leap into his arms, my head buried against his chest as he wraps his arms around me.

“Trouble,” he says. “With a capital ‘T.' That's what the two of you are.”

I nod against him, never so happy to see anyone in my life.

“Hey, Squidoo,” he says over my head.

“Hey, Gwriff,” Molly says. “Did you see the tewlevision? They say Mom hit me.”

He lets go of me and sits beside Molly. “First of all, Squidoo, as an actress you should know that what they show on television isn't real, and second, you should know that you should never watch anything about yourself on television.”

“But they showed me cwrying.”

“You're a little girl. Sometimes little girls cry.”

She still looks sad.

“Come on, time to get you girls out of here.” He stands, puts on a baseball hat and a pair of sunglasses, then turns his back to Molly. “Walk or piggyback ride?”

She leaps on board.

“What's with the disguise?” I ask, stung by the idea that he's embarrassed to be seen with us in light of our recent headlines.

“Best to keep a low profile when you're around trouble,” he says.

“I didn't hit her.”

“I know. There are like seventeen other shots of what happened on the internet, and all of them show that your hand never came close to Molly, that you were just trying to keep your bag from slipping off your arm.”

“So why are they showing that one?”

“Better story,” he says as he gallops out the door with Molly on his back.

I trail behind, mortified, angry, and stunned that the press can be so ruthless.

“Shit,” Griff says.

Through the exit doors, a horde of paparazzi press up against the glass, a crush of people with their cameras and microphones ready. It looks like hundreds, and I can't believe it's worth it for them to stand out there waiting for hours just to get a photo and a sound bite of me and Molly. Aren't there more important stories to cover than a kid having a tantrum and her mother carting her away?

Griff hesitates, gauging the situation, then swings Molly around in front of him so he's holding her like a football. “We need to rush them. Faye, you go first, and I'll follow with Molly. The limo is straight through the second door.”

My heart pounds like a cattle stampede in my chest as the doors open and I charge through the crowd. Mack sees us, runs forward, and hunches over me, pushing me toward the limo as arms and phones and cameras and words are slung at us. I turn my head to look for Molly and see Griff right behind me, Molly tight against him.

The reporters press in on us more and more until finally we reach the car and Mack is pushing me into the backseat, then Molly is being thrown into my arms and the door is being slammed. The limo lurches forward, and I crane my head over my shoulder, watching in horror as Griff holds back the crowd so we can move forward, his hat and glasses gone.

Reporters run after us, risking life and limb to sprint through the airport traffic with their cameras raised like swords, flashes erupting on either side of us, until finally, one by one, they give up, several of them flipping us off. Mack keeps an almost constant hand on the horn as he bulldozes his way forward, his message clear—get out of our damn way or I'll run you over.

Griff is still on the sidewalk. A lone reporter, a woman with red hair, stands beside him, her lens not following us but instead trained on Griff, and something about the way she's smiling sends a chill down my spine.

“What about Griff?” I croak.

“He'll find his way,” Mack says.

“That was fun!” Molly says.