Confessions of a Hollywood Star (8 page)

I eyed him coldly. Talk about going back to your boring little town with your dreams all turned to dust. “I’m sorry,” I said, “but I promised I wouldn’t talk about the movie tonight.”

My mother was in the living room reading a book when I got home. She glanced over as I hurtled into the room.

“Have a nice time, Mary?”

Despite my disappointment at the way Hal Minsky had treated me I was in a good mood. I’d got close. It was a sign from the gods of theatre that the next time I’d be successful.

“I had a great time.” I threw myself into the nearest chair. “Wait’ll you hear what happened. You won’t believe it. Lucy Rio was in the restaurant! Isn’t that incredible? She was practically at the next table.”

“Who?” asked my mother.

[Cue: look of endless suffering at the hands of philistines.] “Lucy Rio? The actor?”

Karen Kapok yawned. “Never heard of her.”

“Of course you’ve heard of her. She’s the one who was in—”

But I didn’t get a chance to tell her what movies Lucy Rio’d been in because at that moment my sisters charged into the room shrieking as if there were tigers after them.

“Calm down,” I ordered. “I can’t understand what you’re saying. Tell me slowly – and one at a time.”

They didn’t of course. They both shouted at once. “Guess what, Mary? Guess what, Mary? We’re going to be in a movie!”

This time I heard exactly what they said. I gazed at them as Lot must have gazed at the pillar of salt that had been his wife. Of what cruel ironies is life composed! Of what sad truths! The only talent either of my sisters has ever shown is for cheating at Monopoly, and the one time we took them to a real play (without singing and dancing) they both fell asleep. And here they were about to appear in
my
Hollywood film.

“
You’re
going to be in the movie? Are you sure you’re not deluding yourselves? I don’t know who told you that, but they could be wrong. You know what this hick town is like for rumours.” Like warm, moist lungs to a viral infection.

“But it’s true! Oona May at day camp said so.”

Karen Kapok was nodding.

I gave Pam and Paula a concerned, sisterly smile. “But you can’t act.”

“They don’t have to act,” said my mother. “All they have to do is sit.”

Apparently they were using all the kids in the day camp for a scene that called for a school bus full of children.

“Aren’t you happy for us?” asked Paula.

“Don’t you think it’s cool?” asked Pam.

“Of course I’m happy for you.” But how could my soul not wince at the bitter twists of Fate? “Of course I think it’s cool.” But how could my heart not sigh at the sad reality of a world where chance beats the stuffing out of genius? What with one thing and another I’d had a very frustrating and stressful day. I didn’t really want to spend the rest of it listening to them yammering on about their one-and-a-half seconds of fame. I clutched my forehead. “Unfortunately, I’m not really feeling too well. I’m going to bed. I think I’m getting a migraine.”

“You don’t get migraines,” said my mother.

I closed my eyes against the pain. “I do now.”

Giving Up Is Not In My Nature

I
n my experience (which is considerable considering my youth), spiritual exhaustion is just as debilitating as physical exhaustion, and my spirit was as limp as a rag. I couldn’t face going to work the next morning. My heart was scarred by the cruel twists of fate it had suffered and my soul was passed out cold. I rang Mrs Magnolia and told her that the washing machine had gone berserk and I had to help my mother so I’d be in late.

I stayed in bed, listening to my favourite CD and thinking spiritually nourishing thoughts. Time does really heal and music does really soothe the ravaged soul. After only a couple of hours my resilient nature rose up like a phoenix from the ashes of despair. (Being me is a little like being a mail person. You know, neither rain, nor snow, nor dark of night shall stop this courier from completing her appointed rounds – and neither surly costume designers, nor irritable producer, nor Carla Santini will make me give up.) After all, I realized, it is the most ordinary people who are often the most lucky. And I don’t think it’s something you can really begrudge them. It’s the gods’ way of balancing things out. You know, because these people aren’t gifted, their souls are as flightless as the dodo and their hearts are nourished on the spiritual equivalent of potato chips and diet soda, the gods let them win the lottery. What else do they have to look forward to, poor things? But those of us who are gifted, who have soaring souls and hearts that are nourished by the spiritual equivalent of lentil stew and greens, don’t have to rely on luck. We make our own.

By the time I got to work I was in my usual upbeat mood.

“Everything all right?” asked Mrs Magnolia as I came whistling into the store.

“Red alert over,” I cried. “The flood’s been staunched and all is well.”

“Thank heaven for that,” said Mrs Magnolia. “When mine overflowed we had to rip the whole floor up.”

“Gosh…” I shook my head in sympathy.

Mrs Magnolia smiled sadly over the rack she was hanging blouses on. I thought she was still thinking about her floor. “What a shame that you weren’t here this morning, though. You’ll never guess who came in.”

With hindsight I can see that a three-year-old with ADD would have been able to guess who it was, so surely I should have, but I was in such a positive, who-needs-luck kind of mood that I didn’t. I said, “The First Lady?” Like Carla Santini, she likes to keep in touch with the poor.

Mrs Magnolia giggled, which I have to say I don’t find attractive in anyone over ten, never mind forty. “Oh, no, no, no one like that. No one really important.” Hangers jangled as Mrs Magnolia hooked them onto the rack.

Personally, although I’m sure the First Lady’s a very nice woman, I don’t count her as really important. Mostly what she does is stand next to her husband, holding the dog and smiling.

“Mrs Carlucci?” I wheeled my bike to the back. Mrs Carlucci used to be one of our best customers, but she hadn’t been in since she bought a chenille robe that brought her out in a rash and blamed Mrs Magnolia, so I figured maybe she’d finally called a truce.

It wasn’t Mrs Carlucci.

“A very nice man who’s shooting a movie around here.”

I was in the storeroom when Mrs Magnolia uttered these words, but I came out faster than you can say “Cut!”

“What?”

“I think he said he was the director.” She held up a floral blouse, eyeing it dubiously. “Or was it the producer?” She shrugged in the way of a woman who is used to customers returning things. “One of those.”

A golden ray of hope rose up to warm my soul. Maybe the costume designers had told Charley Hottle about me after all. You know:
Don’t we need someone to be waiting at the stop for the school bus? Well, there’s this terrific girl who works in the secondhand store who’d be perfect
.

“What was his name? Was it Hottle?”

Mrs Magnolia blinked. “He didn’t say.”

“Well what did he want?” I was as casual as a T-shirt and a pair of jeans.

Mrs Magnolia slipped the floral blouse into the clump of patterned blouses. “Oh … just to chat about the town, find out where things are, that kind of thing. It seems they’ll be here for several weeks.”

“Really?” My heart was pounding away like a flamenco dancer. What other crucial pieces of information had Mrs Magnolia gleaned in her conversation with maybe the director or maybe the producer? I opened my eyes wide as though this was all news to me. “Geez… I wonder where they’ll stay.”

“Oh, I really don’t know. Not now the hotel’s closed down.” The Dellwood Hotel closed down due to lack of interest in the sixties and was finally converted into apartments in the eighties. She shrugged. “I suppose there are quite a few bed and breakfasts around.”

And I had the aching muscles to prove that I’d been to most of them.

I took up my position behind the counter. “Yeah, I suppose there are.”

It may have been the shocking-pink blouse she was holding now, but it almost looked as though Mrs Magnolia was blushing. “But guess what else?”

The way Fate was fighting against me I was almost afraid to. “He gave you a part?”

“Oh no. I wouldn’t want to be in a movie. It’s so public.” Unlike running a store. “It’s Betsy.”

“Excuse me?”

“Betsy,” repeated Mrs Magnolia. “You know. My husband’s car.” Mr Magnolia owns a 1956 baby-blue Chevy that he’s always fussing over. I once leaned on it really lightly and he acted as if I’d whacked it with an axe. “Mr Santini told him about it.”

Was everyone and everything going to get a part except me? I smiled as though this was exactly what I’d been hoping to hear. “Wasn’t that nice of him,” I said.

As soon as my mother and her other daughters retreated to the living room to be mindlessly entertained by the TV after supper I got out the local phone book and called every hotel that was listed. I used an English accent, which I’m good at since I was raised on the Public Broadcasting Service. (I read somewhere that Americans respond well to English accents. They think they sound educated and trustworthy.)

“Pardon me for troubling you,” I said, “but I understand a friend of mine is staying with you … Hottle … Charles Hottle…” Maybe he was using a different name. “Are you certain?” I persisted. “He’s from Hollywood. He’s making a film.”

I know I wasn’t born to be a loser – to live an unsung, mediocre existence and then die in some nursing home with drool down the corner of my mouth – but sometimes even I start to wonder. The only positive response I got was at the last hotel in the book, but that wasn’t because the film crew was staying there. It was because the desk clerk came from Manchester. He was so excited you’d think I was his long-lost sister. “Where are you from?” he demanded. I couldn’t very well say from a production of
Emma
so I hung up.

Paula came into the kitchen as I put down the receiver.

“Who are you calling?” Her eyes were on the phone book.

“No one you know.”

Paula’s spirit is not artistic, but she is observant and her eyesight’s perfect. “Why were you calling hotels? Are you and Sam going to have sex?”

I slammed the phone book shut. “No, Sam and I are not going to have sex. But you’ll be the first to know if we do.”

She opened the fridge and took out the jug of iced tea. “So why were you calling hotels? Were you trying to find the movie people?”

And although not blessed with any signs of brilliance, Paula does have a logical mind.

“And why would I want to do that?” I stuffed the book back into its home in the old school desk Karen Kapok uses as a phone table. “You know I have no interest in the tawdry glitter and tinsel that is Hollywood. My heart and soul belong to the theatre where the pain and joy of human life are given substance and flesh – not to the shadow puppet show of the celluloid world.”

“Oh.” She started filling three glasses with the tea. “Because Oona May says they’re starting to film on Friday and she knows where.”

I stared at the back of my sister’s head. “Oona May?”

Paula finished pouring iced tea all over the counter and returned the jug to the fridge. “Yeah, you know, because she’s in charge of the day camp so she knows stuff like that. You know, because we’re going to be in the movie.”

I ask you: how ironic is life? Oona May Paduski was in radio communication with planet Hollywood while I was lost in space.

“Really?” I went over to help her put the glasses on a tray. “So where are they shooting?”

“Why?” Paula slid the tray from the counter. “I thought you didn’t care.”

“I don’t care. But Ella would like to know.” The twins really like Ella. They think she’s normal.

“She would?” Paula eyed me silently for a few seconds. She looked just like Karen Kapok, only much shorter and there wasn’t any clay in her hair. “What’s it worth?”

The first day of shooting was taking place outside of town, at this dilapidated old house on Bluff Road. Because it was imperative that I be there, I called Mrs Magnolia as soon as my alarm went off that morning.

“I’m so sorry, Mrs Magnolia,” I fairly sobbed into the phone, “but I can’t come in today. I’ve got the most awful headache.”

“Lola?” Mrs Magnolia is obviously a slow riser like Ella.

“I wanted to be sure I got you before you left for the store.”

“Lola, do you know what time it is?”

It was seven. I needed at least an hour to get dressed for what I hoped was the first day of my Hollywood career. Of course I had to bend the truth just a little for Mrs Magnolia. “Not really…” My voice was soft and tight with pain. “I can hardly see. I think I must have a migraine, Mrs Magnolia. It feels like someone’s turning screws in my brain.”

As my mother pointed out, I don’t actually get migraines, but Mrs Magnolia does so I knew she’d be sympathetic.

“Oh, you poor thing…” Her voice sounded as if it was wincing in empathy. “Of course you can’t come in if you feel like that. Have you thrown up yet? You should feel better once you throw up.”

I thanked her for being so understanding.

It took me nearly the hour I’d allotted just to decide what I was wearing. I needed both to stand out from the good but hopelessly ordinary people of Dellwood – and look just like them at the same time. Fortunately, great actors enjoy a challenge, and I am no exception. In the end I chose a short, cotton, floral skirt that subtly evoked the exotic island of Hawaii, four-inch wedge sandals to subtly suggest I stood above the rest, and the Creek’s Auto Repairs promotional T-shirt Sam gave me for Christmas (he hates shopping) to subtly suggest that though tall and exotic I was very much a part of the town. Then I fastened my hair all over my head with brightly coloured butterfly clips for the final touch of funky sophistication that would let them know I wasn’t a hick.

For once I hadn’t had to use all my considerable powers of persuasion to get Ella to agree to go with me.

“Sure,” said Ella. “It’ll be more fun than lying around the pool all day.” How some of us have to suffer.