Seeing Stars (19 page)

R
UTH HAD STAYED IN THE TINY CUBICLE ON THE AWFUL
, rocklike couch for three full hours—she’d always been an eager, obedient person in the face of authority—but she couldn’t stand it anymore. She’d seen Bethy for only five minutes, tops, when Emily ran her to the dressing room for her work permit and school things, and then away again, bound for the classroom. “Mom, it was so fun,” Bethy had blurted, but the rest would have to wait. What Ruth had expected to be one of the best days of her life was turning out to be an incarceration. When she couldn’t take it for one more minute, she peeked out the dressing room door. No one was in sight, and she could only distantly hear activity, so she crept out and headed for the smell of coffee. She wound up in a small room stocked not only with coffee but black, green, and herbal teas; juices; energy drinks; healthy snacks; unhealthy snacks; and lots and lots of sugar. A Hispanic woman was consolidating bagels on a tray.

“
Hola,
” Ruth said, because she’d always felt it was polite to greet a member of another culture in their own language.

“Hey,” the woman said, with no accent whatsoever. “Are you hungry? No one’s eating this morning.”

“To tell you the truth, I don’t even know,” Ruth admitted, eyeing a tray of chocolate old-fashioneds longingly. “My daughter’s working here, and we were too excited to eat breakfast because it’s her first time on set ever. I probably shouldn’t, though.” She sucked in her stomach.

“Oh, go ahead.” The woman put a chocolate old-fashioned doughnut on a paper plate and handed it to her. Then she picked up an apple and gave that to Ruth, too. “See? The apple cancels out the doughnut. It’s a law of dietary physics.”

Ruth laughed.

“Anyway, it always works for me and my daughter.” The woman, who Ruth couldn’t help but notice was a little bit pudgy, dragged a wet dishtowel around the counter beneath the platters of cut fruit and granola and cold French toast, then swabbed the bottom of the syrup pitcher.

“How old is she?” Ruth asked.

“Twenty-four.”

“Oh, a big girl. Mine’s only thirteen. I can’t imagine what it’s going to be like when she’s grown up and out of the house.”

“I wouldn’t know. Mine’s grown, but she’s not out of the house. You must not be from here. No one can afford their own place in LA until they’re thirty-five and in a two-income marriage. Says me, anyway.”

“No, we’re from Seattle,” Ruth said.

“Then I guess things must cost a lot less in Seattle.”

“I wouldn’t have thought so until we came down here. It’s like there’s a hole in the bottom of my wallet.”

“You here because of her?”

Ruth nodded, biting into the doughnut and closing her eyes briefly. “Yum. Yes—this is her dream. We’ve been here for only a month and a half.”

“Husband?”

“He’s still in Seattle. It’s hard.”

The woman shook her head. “I wish my husband was in Seattle. Well, ex-husband. He’s only in Van Nuys. Once I was stuck on the 101 and he was in the car next to me for an hour and a half. What are the odds of that?”

“I miss mine,” Ruth said, but even as she said it, she knew it was more complicated than that. She
did
miss Hugh, missed sharing the responsibility of the big decisions, and right now everything seemed like a big decision. On the other hand, if he were really here with her, they’d be disagreeing about everything. “I guess I should go,” Ruth said reluctantly. “I’m Ruth, by the way.”

The woman smiled at her and held out her hand, then changed her mind at the last minute and gave Ruth a warm, one-armed hug. “Renata,” she said. “I’ll be here all week. Come see me sometimes.”

Ruth could feel mortifying tears building behind her eyes. She cleared her throat. “Thanks for talking to me.”

“Hey, no problem,” said Renata. “I’m probably the only one who will. Me and Emily.”

Ruth had learned enough already to know that she was probably right.

Instead of returning to the dressing room, Ruth walked back out to the area with picnic tables, now empty—the background players must have been dismissed already—and dialed Hugh. His office manager, Margaret, said he was with a patient doing a particularly nasty root canal and did she want her to interrupt him, and she said no, she’d try again later.

That took three and a half minutes.

For the first time in her life, she knew what it felt like to be invisible. If someone were to walk by her right now, they wouldn’t even know she was there. Certainly they wouldn’t care. She was in the belly of the beast, a parasite in the gut of Hollywood: she was the Mom. She had no other name. “Where’s the Mom, for God’s sake?” she’d heard one of the set teachers say to another one when they were at the Rialto. “Jesus Christ! It’s not our job to track them down.” Clearly, it was the Mom’s duty to anticipate and to serve. Household domestics were treated with greater respect.

Suddenly she thought of Vee Velman. Ruth could ask her stupid questions and not feel embarrassed, and it would be a relief to talk with someone who knew the ropes. Before she could think better of it, she found Vee in her cell phone’s contact list. Vee answered on the third ring.

“Am I interrupting?” Ruth asked.

“Nah. I’m sitting outside Buster’s school waiting to take him to the orthodontist for the first time. I’m thinking of just handing them all my charge cards up front and getting it over with. How are you? How’s Bethy?”

“We’re good, I think,” Ruth said. “We’re on the set of
California Dreamers
. It’s been a whirlwind.”

“Hey, that’s great! I’ve heard the director’s a dick, though.”

“I don’t know. I haven’t met him.”

“Yeah, and you won’t. He hates parents. Well, I mean, everyone hates parents, but he
really
hates ’em. He doesn’t like kids much, either. Why they let him get his hands on this program is completely beyond me. But completely. So do you guys have a trailer or a dressing room? Clara had a friend who was on episode two, and they put her in a trailer all the way out behind the soundstage. No air-conditioning, nada. She complained to the set teacher, who complained to the
AD
—”

“
AD
?”

“—assistant director, who complained to the PA, poor thing, and the upshot was, they ended up in a little closet behind craft services. At least they were in the building, though.”

“No, we have a room—well, a cubicle. We’re supposed to share it, I think, but so far no one else has come in. It’s just me.”

Vee snorted. “Poor you. I’d rather be at the gynecologist than on set.”

Ruth heard a loud buzzer go off. She held the phone away from her ear. “Did you hear that? I keep hearing this loud buzzer.”

“It means the cameras are rolling. And let me tell you, some directors will have you hunted down and shot if you so much as
cough
when the cameras are rolling. I kid you not. If you haven’t turned your cell phone ringer off, do it right now, because if you get a cell phone call while they’re taping and they can hear it, which they always can—I swear to God, it’s
unnatural
—you’ll be out of there so fast you won’t know what hit you.”

Ruth felt herself pale. “I never even thought about that. Hold on.” She took the phone away from her ear and quickly switched it to vibrate.

“So what’s she playing?”

“Lucy, who’s someone named Tina’s younger sister.”

“Ah, yes, the Little Sister. Bratty or heroic?”

“Heroic, I think. Plucky.”

“Yeah,” Vee said. “Clara always likes the bratty parts better, but then she’s a redhead. Thank God Buster’s a brunet, because if he’d been a redhead, too, I’d have been calling Family Services
myself
and asking them to come take me into custody. He’s
AD
HD, and let me tell you,
there’s
a nightmare.”

Ruth made a sympathetic noise.

“That which does not kill me…” Vee intoned.

“You do seem very strong.”

“Nah, I just scare ’em with talk. Their mistake is, so far they believe me. The minute they catch on, I’m a dead man.”

Ruth sat down at one of the waiting area’s picnic tables. “Do you know an acting coach named Greta Groban?”

“Uh-uh. Is she good?”

“Mimi seems to think so. She’s peculiar, though. I’m respectful when we talk about her because I’m trying to set an example for Bethy, but in my heart I’m sure she’s a fascist. Is that bad?”

“Nah. Whoops, here comes Buster. Listen, has anyone mentioned the lunch line to you yet?”

“The lunch line?”

“Obviously not. Here’s how it works. Actors and directors eat first, then Production, then Hair and Makeup and Wardrobe, and
then
parents. Depending on how good craft services is, you could end up licking the bottoms of the steam trays. Probably not, though—there’s usually enough food.”

“I had no idea,” Ruth said. “Thank you for mentioning it.”

“No prob. Look, just say, ‘
Yez, boss,
’ and shuck and jive a lot, and you won’t get into any trouble. When in doubt, always remember: the PA’s the most important person on the set, bar none. Do whatever you can to please her.”

“I keep hearing that.”

“Yeah, because it’s true.” Ruth heard a scuffling noise and then Vee said, “Okay, hon, I better go. The fruit of my loins has returned. Call me later and let me know how it went.”

Ruth returned to her plywood cell.

W
HEN
B
ETHANY WAS FIVE
H
ELENE
R
ABINOWITZ, WHO
was a hoarder, gave her a dress-up kit called
Make Me Beautiful
that she’d been saving since the 1950s. It was in pristine condition, the size of a steamer trunk, and filled with dozens of chiffon scarves, slippery satin sheaths, and petticoats as stiff as ballet tutus, as well as felt cloches, picture hats, and a tiny wool pancake topped with three artificial cherries and held in place with an elastic chin strap. A swing-out tray held enough makeup to last Bethany’s entire life—possibly several lives—and below that she found a second tray holding different-colored, high-heeled plastic mules that
smick-smack
ed as she walked.

Bethany had been in ecstasy, though she’d heard Ruth hiss to Hugh, “Is she crazy?” when she saw what was in the trunk. “What kinds of values are these to teach to a girl? What about a scientist’s lab coat maybe, or a hard hat?”

“It’s just dress-up,” Hugh had said. “It’s just make-believe. If she wants to become a princess, who are we to stop her?” Apparently Ruth hadn’t come up with a good argument, because the trunk was still in place in Bethy’s room, though she used it as a table now. She’d always loved wearing costumes. Drape a simple scarf around her shoulders like a shawl and she was an old woman from Romania. Add a hat and she became a beautiful woman on her way to a ball. She clicked around the house in the mules—which were really only a little too big if she stuffed the toes with tissue—until she’d worn a scratch pattern in the kitchen floor and Ruth had relegated them to the closet in the guest bedroom. She still looked in on them sometimes, even though she’d outgrown them a long time ago.

Bethy knew Ruth worried about the day when she realized she wasn’t beautiful, but she’d always known that. She knew she wasn’t even pretty. She had something else, though, even if she didn’t have a name for it. She could be all kinds of characters—kid sister and villainous bully, screechy hysteric and classroom brain—and with each one, she not only was different, she actually
looked
different. After lunch when he was prepping Bethy for her second scene (though she didn’t have lines in that one), Elliot confirmed it when he told her she had a face like a perfect canvas.

“Honey, what you’ve got is better than beauty. You’re an Egyptian Spanish Jewish Gypsy Girl.”

“But
you’re
beautiful,” Bethy pointed out, because he was: he had the darkest brown eyes and the squarest jaw and the most perfect nose she’d ever seen.

He sighed, twirling his brush in a pot of powder. “Looks fade, honey, and trust me, once they do, they never come back. In twenty years—less, if I stop moisturizing—I’ll look exactly like Joel Grey, and let me tell you, that’s not a good thing. What you’ve got is going to last.”

“I don’t know,” Bethy said.

“Close ’em,” said Elliot. Obediently she closed her eyes and he smoothed her hair back and powdered her face, running the soft badger brush over her eyelids as lightly as a kiss.

“I mean, I’d like to be beautiful like you and my friend Allison, but maybe this is better,” she said. “Look at Hilary Swank. She’s not beautiful but she’s an awesome actor. You saw
Million Dollar Baby
, right? Plus she’s from Seattle, too.”

“Lips,” he said, and she opened her mouth and stretched her lips so he could stroke on lip gloss. “There. Now you’re perfect.”

“Thank you.”

“My pleasure, honey.”

Emily popped her head in. “Lucy? They’re ready for you.”

Elliot whisked the nylon cape from around her shoulders with a flourish. “You go, girlfriend. Strut your stuff.”

W
HEN THE SHOW WRAPPED FOR THE DAY
, B
ETHY AND
Ruth went to Bob’s for dinner, of course. Unlike Ruth, who said she was wiped out, Bethany was exhausted but flying. “And the thing is,” she was explaining to Ruth about Peter, having been on a nonstop talking jag since they’d left the set an hour ago, “he might be a jerk and everything—I mean, he
is
a jerk, he yells at everybody and he’s really mean to Emily—but when we finally taped the scene in the living room with Stuart and Tina, they were really, really good. And maybe they wouldn’t have been as good if he hadn’t been mean to them. Like, maybe they wouldn’t have tried so hard.”

The Hispanic waiter slid their check under Ruth’s plate. Noisily, Bethy sucked up the very last dregs of her shake through her straw. “And there’s this guy named Hal—I think he said his real name is Halbert, isn’t that
weird
?—and he’d keep track of where we were in the script, and time everything, and also keep track of props and stuff so there’s continuity, because you wouldn’t want there to be a clock in one take and then have it gone in another one. You see that, though. He was telling me about some of the scenes where people have screwed up, how an actress would have a purse and then it’d be gone. What?”