No Ordinary Life (9 page)

18

T
he disturbing buzz in my head won't go away. I clean the refrigerator and the oven. I dust. I do laundry. I go to the grocery store. I make a nice dinner.

I'm excited, euphoric, thrilled, “over the moon,” as Monique Braxton says, except for the damn buzz that relentlessly vibrates in the frontal lobe of my brain and which is giving me a pounding headache, making it impossible for me to fully enjoy the moment.

Our execution has been stayed; we've been spared. In the eleventh hour, an angel of mercy (Monique Braxton) has swooped down from heaven and lifted us on her golden wings from the gallows of wretchedness. Okay, it wasn't quite that dramatic, but almost.

Fame, money, prestige, excitement. Molly's going to be on
The Foster Band
!

This is the greatest moment of my…of
our
lives.

Everyone should be celebrating, popping the champagne, dancing and singing. But that's the problem. In our little world, other than my mom, who is out tonight with friends, I'm the only one excited.

The issue is Emily. Her response to the news was an eager,
So now we can go home?
And when I explained it actually meant the opposite, that making a television show was full-time work, so we would need to live near the studio, it sucked all the happiness from the moment, and Emily stormed away, locked herself in her room, and hasn't come out since. Then Molly started to cry and said she didn't want to be on the show. And Tom, sensitive to both sides, showed no emotion at all.

I finish washing the dishes, dry them, and put them in the cupboards, then sit beside Molly on the couch, where she is blankly staring at an episode of
The Backyardigans
, a show I loathe but that seems utterly mesmerizing to four-year-olds.

Tom is in my mom's room practicing the exercises he's supposed to do daily to help with his anxiety. Through the door I hear him speaking into a recorder then playing the recording back so he can get used to hearing his voice. It seems like a ridiculous exercise, but Tom has done everything the counselors and books suggest, his desire to get better fueling his dedication.

“Hello, I'm Tom,” he says. “It's nice to meet you. Do you want to play handball?”

My heart aches. Tom loves handball. He and Emily used to play it for hours against the garage door. The second time I was called to the school, it was recess, and I saw him sitting on the bench enviously watching the other kids playing on the handball court.

“Hey, what's up? How about a game of handball?” he tries, going for a cooler approach.

“Love Bug,” I say, turning my attention to my youngest.

She ignores me, her attention fixed on the odd-shaped animal characters on the screen.

I click off the television, breaking her
Backyardigan
-induced trance.

“I watching,” she says.

“I know, but I need to talk to you about something important.”

She sighs and frowns.

“Bug, did you mean what you said about not wanting to be on the show?”

She shrugs.

“Sweetie, Em's just upset right now. You know that, right? Once things settle down, and we get a new car, and she makes some friends, she'll be just as happy as she was in Yucaipa.”

“What about the howrses?”

“Maybe I can get her riding lessons? Do you think she'd like that?”

Another shrug, her focus still on the screen.

“So, what do you say? Do you want to be on television and play the part of Annie?”

“Sure,” she says with no great enthusiasm. “Now can I watch?”

I turn the television back on, give her a peck on her curly head, and pretend I feel better. Decision made.

I look at Emily's closed door. She'll get over it. Kids adapt. She'll learn to adapt. Emily can't see it, but things will be different now. We'll have money, and she'll have nice clothes and be able to go to concerts and movies and amusement parks, do all the things we couldn't afford to do before. This is the right choice. It promises us a better present and a brighter future. Therapy for Tom, a new car, and at some point down the road, a house of our own and money for college.

I open the issue of
Star Gazer
and absently page through it, glancing at the faces to see if I spot the couple Molly and I passed in the parking lot. On page twenty is an article about Jeremy, the oldest child on
The Foster Band
, and his new romance with Maya Chin, the star of the show
Mainland
. Someday soon, Molly might be in these pages. Maybe they'll ask her about ice cream or rhyming.

This is going to be amazing. Emily doesn't realize it, but it will be.

She'll be happy. We all will.

19

T
he studio is less than ten miles away, but nervous about being late, I allow an hour to get there. We turn from the parking garage onto the street, and my eyes slide to a man standing on the corner. Young twenties and average in every way, he is not tall or short, heavy or thin, his hair is brown, his skin medium, his eyes concealed behind wire-rim glasses—he is entirely unremarkable except for the way he watches us and the disturbing notion that he has watched us before. Molly waves, and his face lights up as he waves back.

“Do you know that man?” I ask.

“No, but he's awlays sweet and nevewr souwr.”

“He's waved to you before?”

“Uh-huh. He wlikes to stand on that cowrner and sometimes waves at me when I wlook out the window in Gwrandma's wroom. When he's wreawlly being funny, he'wll do the dance wlike Lewroy, not the whowle thing, just the fiwrst pawrt.”

The hair on the back of my neck bristles. “Baby, maybe you shouldn't wave at him anymore.”

“Why?”

I consider this.
Why?

Because it's creepy.

But not really. The guy looks harmless. Molly's going to be a star, which means she's going to have fans. My blood warms with the thought. We are going to need to get used to this, people getting excited when they see us.

Traffic moves at a slug's pace, and I'm glad I allowed extra time for the commute. We park in the same lot we did for the audition, then carrying our crayon note, make our way toward Soundstage 19, which it turns out is on the other side of the lot.

Fox Studios is huge, a labyrinth of buildings and streets and sidewalks teeming with people and golf carts and Segways. There are actors dressed in costumes walking from set to set; crew members hanging out, smoking, and eating; construction crews working on sets; and tour groups shuffling along in small herds, snapping photos, and gaping.

I pull Molly along as she staggers wide-eyed behind me. Two gladiators with swords slung from their waists walk past followed by a woman made up like an alien. I'd like to stop and stare as well, but where I thought I had allowed plenty of time, now the minutes are ticking down quickly, and we are dangerously close to being late.

I get turned around and stop a woman with a lanyard around her neck that holds an ID. “Excuse me, we're looking for Soundstage 19.”

The woman is in her forties and has the confident look of a person in charge. “
The Foster Band
set?”

“Yes,” I say, relieved to have stopped someone who knows the lot. “My daughter is the new Foster kid,” I boast.

She glances at Molly then back at me, and instead of the impressed expression I was expecting, her face softens to one that seems to say,
Oh, I'm sorry to hear that.

Perhaps she heard me wrong. Perhaps she thought I said, “My daughter is a foster kid.”

With a thin smile, she directs us to keep going. The soundstage is half a block farther.

“Good luck,” she says, and again I sense sympathy in the tone.

I shake off the strange encounter, and we hustle on to our destination, bursting through the door then stopping.

Despite the swelter outside, inside the building it is cool to the point of cold, and the drop in temperature combined with the stark emptiness causes goose bumps to rise on my arms. There's not a soul in sight, and other than the buzz of the fluorescent lights, not a sound.

Taking Molly's hand, we walk forward, unsure where we're going or even if this is the right place, and I wonder if perhaps there was another entrance.

Halfway down the corridor, a sliver of light glows from beneath one of the doors.

I look at my watch. 9:02. We are late and getting later, so with a deep breath, I kick my timidity to the curb and knock.

“Come in.”

“It's the guy,” Molly says, her face lighting up as she throws open the door to reveal Chris Cantor sitting behind a paper-strewn desk.

“Well, well,” he says, leaning back in his chair. “Look who it is, the two loveliest women in the show.”

“Hey, mistewr,” Molly says. “We'wre hewre 'cause I need to get measuwred.”

He smiles, and I can't believe I didn't think he was good-looking. Perhaps not in a
GQ
model way, but undeniably sexy in a Sean Penn or Al Pacino kind of way. Dressed more casually today than he was at the audition, he wears jeans and a surfer T-shirt, and his hair is mussed and his face unshaven.

“Well, I'm not the one who does the measuring, but I know who does. Follow me.” He stands and extends his hand. “Hello, Molly's mom. I'm Chris.”

“Faye.”

“Please tell me you're not as much of a diva as the infamous Ms. Dunaway.”

“Just don't piss me off and you'll never have to find out,” I say, shocked and a little embarrassed by the flirt in my voice.

The right side of his mouth lifts. “Then I'll try to stay on your good side.”

I realize he's still holding my hand, and I pull it away, my skin so warm that the building is no longer cold.

“We're late,” I manage.

“Well then, right this way.” He leads us back into the hall. “Is Molly your only one?”

I hesitate a flicker before answering, “No, I have two others,” my answer instantly deflating the moment.

“Triple the fun,” he says, not missing a beat.

His response nearly brings back my hope but not entirely. Chris Cantor, producer of
The Foster Band
, is not looking for a three-kid single mom. I might as well hang an “Undesirable” sign on my forehead.

“Hey, Two-Bits, you passed it,” he says to Molly, whose idea of following is to skip ahead.

She pivots and dodges ahead of us through the door Chris is holding open.

I walk into what looks like a massive closet—racks and racks of clothes and dozens of shelves of shoes and accessories stacked to the ceiling. In the center of it all is a massive woman, her forearms crossed over her very large bosom.

“You're late,” she bellows in an accent I think is German, adding to her formidableness.

“Go easy on them, Ingrid,” Chris says from the doorway. “It's their first day, and I found them lost and wandering the hallways.”

“You.” She points to Molly. “Come here.” She points to Chris. “You. Leave.”

“You love me,” Chris says. “Admit you love me and I'll go.”

She grabs a shoe from a shelf beside her and flings it at him. He pulls the door in front of him as a shield. “You love me,” he says as the door continues to close. “You know you do.”

He's so darn cute.
Was he wearing a ring?
No, he wasn't. If he was, I would have noticed. No ring and no photos of family on his desk. No silver-framed portrait of a wife, two kids, and a golden retriever sitting on rocks at the beach—the kind of picture designed to make those of us without that silver-framed life miserable with envy.

Ingrid harrumphs with disapproval, knowing my thoughts, which are easy to figure out since my eyes still linger on the door through which Chris just left.

I give an innocent smile that she doesn't return.

“Mom, make yourself useful,” she says.

I perk up, excited to start my job as Molly's manager.

“The coffee station is down the hall. Decaf, two creams, one sugar.”

If I had the guts, I would harrumph back, but I don't, so instead I walk from the room to fetch her coffee, my mind filled with the image of me and the kids sitting on an outcropping of rocks at the beach, Chris's arm around my waist, Gus in front of us. Gus is a bit mangy for the dream, but we come as a package deal, all or nothing. Plus, I kind of like it. Gus adds a bit of personality.