Seeing Stars (33 page)

“I cannot
believe
you’re so hard-hearted,” Denise snapped. “You’re no help.”

“You don’t
need
help. You get people to dump you all by yourself,” Allison pointed out. “Plus I’m like a thousand miles away.”

“Yeah, and about that,” Denise said.

“About what?”

“Being a thousand miles away. You need to come home. A mother needs her daughter at a time like this.”

Allison snapped to. “What?”

“I need you at home.”

“I can’t hear you.” Allison flapped her fingers between her lips and the phone as she talked, to make the transmission sound weird. “I think this connection is breaking up.”

“Other girls would fly to their mothers’ sides,” Denise huffed.

“Get Shelley. You guys can drink and stuff and then you’ll feel better.”

“She’s out of town. She has this fabulous new boyfriend.
Her
daughter would come, I’ll tell you that.”

“Then ask her. I’ve got to go.”

“Why? Go where?”

“To class,” Allison lied.

“Well, we’ll talk about this later.”

But they wouldn’t, not if Allison could help it. The minute she hung up, she programmed her cell phone with a special ring tone for Denise. That way, she’d know not to answer it. Then she recorded a message that said her voice mail wasn’t working and the caller would just have to call back later, so her mom couldn’t leave a message and then accuse her of not returning the call. The strategy would keep Denise at bay until Allison could figure out what to do. The one thing she was certain of was that she wouldn’t go back to live in Houston. Allison and Mimi might shout and scream at each other and have their fallings-out, but Allison loved Mimi deeply and genuinely, and she was pretty sure that Mimi loved her back. Nevertheless, she was also pretty sure that Mimi would deport her to Houston anyway, if that’s what Denise told her to do. Denise had legal custody, after all. And Mimi had tried to send Quinn home, which would have worked if his family had wanted him. Allison had listened in on the conversation from the living room phone.

“Yes, he’s extremely talented,” Mimi had told them, “but it’s not always about talent. I’m just his manager. I’m not the one who needs to get to the bottom of whatever issues he’s having. You are.” Quinn’s mother had just said, in this very smooth, very professional voice, “Thank you for filling us in, but we really do think the best place for him is down there.” And Mimi, who was never at a loss for something to say, had simply hung up the phone, come out into the kitchen where Allison was nonchalantly pretending to read a Thai takeout menu, and said, “That boy deserves better.” That’s how Quinn had ended up staying in LA with Jasper or whatever his name was and nasty Baby-Sue.

And Allison knew that, if given half a chance, Denise would book her on the first flight out of LAX, and she would be mixing drinks for Denise by morning. So Allison would have to keep Mimi and Denise as far apart as she could, and for as long as she could, until she could put a more permanent solution in place. So in addition to armoring her own phone and voice-mail message, she sent her mother a text message, immediately followed by an e-mail, informing her that Mimi’s phone number and e-mail addresses had just been changed because of a stalker—of course, no one in their right mind would stalk Mimi, but it was the best story Allison could come up with on short notice—and, at least for now, any and all new contact information was being kept strictly confidential. In the meantime, the only way to contact either Mimi or her was by calling Allison’s cell.

But these were, at best, stopgap measures. Allison knew there was really only one thing that was guaranteed to let her stay in LA, and that was booking something big, something
really
big.

Something like Carlyle.

Q
UINN WAS SITTING AT
L
OS
B
URRITOS EATING FISH TACOS
when Allison called him. It was the little Hispanic girl’s regular day off, but he’d come anyway in case she was covering someone else’s shift or something. She wasn’t, but once he was there he realized he hadn’t eaten in a while, maybe not since yesterday; he didn’t keep track. The little chili pepper charm was in his pocket, putting out positive juju, when his phone rang and Allison was on the other end of the line. She sounded weird. Not that he cared.

She needed to book Carlyle, she said.

Like that had anything to do with him, he told her. Like he gave a single shit.

He’d gotten a callback for Buddy, hadn’t he?

So?

So, she said, she needed to work on the scene with him. “C’mon,” she wheedled, but there was an edge of desperation in her voice. “I figure we can help each other.” And there was some merit to that. Before he’d moved out, they’d been each other’s best scene partner. She told him to meet her at the 7-Eleven down the street from the studio the next day at one o’clock, and to bring his sides.

And even though he was fairly certain it was the wrong thing to do, he showed up. What the hell—he didn’t have anything else to do and Jasper had already been headed over the hill.

Just as Quinn approached her, a taxi pulled up to the curb. “Come on,” she said.

“What?”

“Come
on
.” She took his arm and pulled him toward the taxi. “What, you didn’t think we were going to work here, did you?”

She pushed him into the cab, gave the cabdriver Mimi’s address, and then settled her tote on her lap, satisfied. “You brought your sides, right?”

“Yeah.” He pulled them out of his jeans pocket. He’d folded and folded them into a small, tight square.

“Good.”

They didn’t say anything else. The taxi pulled up to Mimi’s house and Allison handed the driver the fare plus a tip and then led the way up the walk.

“Okay,” she said once they were inside, kicking off her shoes. “Do you want a Fresca or anything?”

“No.”

“Well, I do.” She disappeared into the kitchen and reappeared loudly slurping a can of soda. “Come on.” She pulled him into the living room by his wrist and sat on the arm of the shabby sofa in the living room and gave him Carlyle’s first line: “
What do you mean, you’re not buying it? It’s the truth!
”

Quinn moved into the scene self-consciously at first, but then fluidly, channeling Buddy. “
So show me something. If you were a real witch you’d be making something happen!
”

The scene unspooled and filled the room. Quinn hadn’t run it in weeks of working with Evelyn. She’d had him working on Buddy unceasingly, but not with the script. She had him doing improv as Buddy, talking as Buddy, reacting as Buddy, and creating situations only Buddy would get himself into and then out of. When Quinn got stuck she’d say, “You should be able to be this character in your sleep, and if you can’t do that, we’re not done.” He could see where she was taking him, too. If he got the chance to audition for Gus Van Sant, he’d know everything there was to know; he’d be able to respond as naturally and automatically and completely as if Quinn had never existed, just Buddy.

Now, as Buddy, Quinn took wing. And though it took her longer, Allison’s Carlyle also moved out of her head and into her gut, and they ran the scene over and over and over, working so intently, so in tandem, that an hour seemed like only a few minutes. By the end, the scene had reached such a point of near perfection that they agreed to stop. Overworking a scene could be like putting a hammer to a gemstone. Once you blew it apart, it could be almost impossible to put back together again.

March–April 2007

T
alent is redemptive. A master glassblower is only incidentally an asshole when his work appears in celebrated installations. Deviant men are declared artists when they write eloquently about perversion; women who smoke cigars are called refreshingly eccentric if they are also celebrated poets. We pardon those with habits, and the better the artist, the more we’re willing to forgive.

—
VEE VELMAN

Chapter Twenty

E
VERYONE AGREED THAT SOMETHING WAS GOING ON WITH
Allison. For one thing, Hillary had told Bethy she’d turned off her cell phone, which was previously unheard of. In a spirit of helpfulness, she said, Hillary had turned it on for her once, but Allison had snatched it back and slapped her hand hard and Hillary hadn’t touched it again, even though she’d seen on the screen that Allison had twelve new voice-mail messages.

By midweek, when she hadn’t been invited to Mimi’s house for five days, Bethy hinted after Dee’s class that she’d like to come over. Allison shrugged and said she could if she wanted to, which she did, even though Allison disappeared immediately into the bathroom. Bethy went into her bedroom and sat on the bed for a few minutes, but when Allison didn’t come out she decided to look at her clothes, which Bethy loved. They were always feminine and made of soft fabrics and pretty colors. Allison hardly ever even wore jeans; a lot of the time she wore floaty skirts and little minis that showed off her legs. Sometimes she let Bethany try on the clothes she liked least, so today, while Allison was in the bathroom—Hillary and Reba were playing a video game in the living room—Bethy opened Allison’s bureau drawer and touched her shirts and sweaters. She was about to yell into the bathroom to ask if she could try on a couple of tops when she felt something hard at the bottom of the drawer. Curious, she brought it up: a sock with something inside it—a silver spoon. Allison came out of the bathroom while Bethy was staring at it, and she grabbed the spoon out of her hand.

“That’s just like ours!” Bethy said.

Allison quickly put the spoon in her pocket. “No, it isn’t.”

Bethy looked at Allison in confusion. “Yes, it is, it has the
R
on the bottom. Why do you have one of our spoons?”

“It’s
not
your spoon,” Allison said again, with the slightest quaver in her voice. “It’s from my house in Houston.
R
is for my mom’s maiden name.”

“You said she’d never been married before, and your name is Addison, so it would have an
A
on it, not an
R
,” Bethy pointed out.

“No, I mean it’s for her
new
name. Reinhard. That’s her new name: Reinhard.”

But Bethy could tell Allison was lying. Crushed, she said, “Why would you steal something from us?”

“It’s
not
. I
didn’t
,” Allison said shrilly. “I don’t even know what you’re talking about. I mean, why would you say something like that? I’d never steal anything. Ever.”

“Maybe you didn’t mean to,” Bethy said helpfully. “I mean, maybe it fell into your purse by accident at dinner or something. That could happen.”

“Why were you going through my stuff, anyway? You didn’t even ask permission. You’re not supposed to just go through someone else’s stuff without asking permission.”

Bethany was stricken. “I was just looking at your tops, because you always have pretty clothes. I was going to ask if it was okay as soon as you came out of the bathroom. I was going to see if I could try this on.” She held up a gauzy blouse.

“No,” Allison said, grabbing it out of Bethany’s hands. “You can’t. You wouldn’t even fit in it anyway because you’re way too big. You’re probably like, what, a size nine? I mean, you’d ruin it.” Allison folded the top in elaborate motions and put it back in her drawer. Then she thrust the spoon at Bethany. Bethy didn’t reach for it, so it fell and bounced off the floor between them. “Go ahead—take it if you’re so sure it’s yours. Why would I even want it?”

Bethy stared at her for a minute and then picked the spoon up off the floor and tried to give it back to Allison. “Keep it. I don’t even care if it’s ours. It’s just a spoon.”

“I don’t want it,” Allison said coldly. “I mean, I don’t even like it. I bet it’s not even silver. I bet it’s plate.” She pushed Bethy out of the room and closed the door. She must have been standing right there on the other side, though, because Bethy didn’t hear any footsteps moving away across the bedroom floor.

Not knowing what else to do, Bethy stuffed the spoon in her pocket and called Ruth and asked to be picked up. While she waited, she sat on the sofa in the living room watching Hillary and Reba playing Halo 2. Allison didn’t even come out of her room. When Ruth arrived, Bethy got up and walked out in tears.

“I
DON’T KNOW WHAT SHE WAS DOING WITH IT, HONEY,
but it’s definitely ours,” Ruth said, once they were in the apartment and she’d had a chance to take a good look at the spoon. “I noticed it was missing when I washed the dishes and put all the silver back in the box, but I didn’t really think anything of it. I figured it had probably been missing for years but we’d never noticed.”

Bethy’s face was puffy from crying. “Why would she want a spoon? I mean, Mimi has lots of spoons.”

“Maybe it reminded her of us.”

“But we’re
here
.”

Ruth sighed, feeling a little sick. “Honey, do you remember that time you took the Lifesavers from Albertsons when you were little?”

Bethy nodded.

“You didn’t mean to do anything wrong, you just wanted the candy. So you took it. On impulse. Remember?”

Bethy nodded again.

“Well, I think Allison just took some Lifesavers.”

“I didn’t see any. I just saw the spoon.”

“I know, honey. I’m speaking figuratively. The spoon was
like
those Lifesavers.”

“Oh.”

Clearly, Ruth wasn’t getting through. “You know, if you look at it a certain way, it was a compliment. I know Allison had a really good time with us. I got the feeling that it might have been the first time she’d ever been around a normal family.”

“We’re not normal.”

Ruth smiled. “You know what I mean. We love each other and we like being together and especially now that we
aren’t
together that much, we’re all really happy when we are. We’re a family. I’m not sure Allison has ever had a family.”

“That’s sad, though.”

“Sure it’s sad. Not everyone’s as lucky as we are.”

“Rianne is. She has a nice family.”

“She does. But from what you and Allison have told me, not only do I think Allison’s not loved the way you are, I don’t even think she’s welcome. How awful would that be?”

Bethy thought for a minute and then, stricken, said, “Do you think maybe we should adopt her or something?”

Ruth smiled. “Oh, honey.”

“No, I mean it. Maybe we should.”

“I know you mean it, but life doesn’t work that way. And she already has a mother, even though she might not be a very good one. Plus she has Mimi.”

Bethany thought for a minute before agreeing. “I think Mimi loves her.”

“Do you?” Ruth had her doubts. In LA, she’d begun to think, the difference between love and opportunism was often academic.

“I just hope she won’t stay mad at me. I mean, I didn’t even do anything—I even told her to
keep
it if she wanted. She’s my best friend.”

“She’ll come around, honey,” Ruth said. “Just give her time.”

But privately, Ruth wasn’t so sure. There had been times in the past when she’d seen in Allison a glint of cold, hard steel that Bethy completely lacked. But before Ruth could get too worked up, Mimi called and turned things upside down.

Like Allison, Bethy had a callback for Carlyle.

They weren’t to read too much into this, Mimi strongly cautioned. Joel Sherman was still seeing girls for the first time—including, for example, Laurel Buehl, which was a surprise since Laurel was so old. Nevertheless, Ruth could see that this was extraordinary news. A major feature film by a world-class director! She could feel her heart begin to pound. This was the opportunity of a lifetime, and it might be within Bethy’s grasp. That was the thing about Hollywood, Ruth thought, suddenly magnanimous—what seemed like bad luck could change on a dime: you woke up in the dumps and by bedtime you smelled like roses. And Bethy had thought she’d blown the audition! It just went to show that these casting directors were people like everybody else; they saw right through a blown performance to the potential that lay within. And after all, Joel E. Sherman had already cast Bethy once; he’d no doubt heard from the
California Dreamers
set that she was a hard worker, and that she was capable of delivering the goods on cue.

But Mimi was still talking. The callback was three days away, she said; they had some time, so she wanted Bethy thoroughly coached, to which Ruth said, “Well, sure.” Mimi warned Ruth one more time that Ruth shouldn’t read too much into the callback; sometimes there were three or four rounds before a major role like Carlyle was cast. “We completely understand,” Ruth assured her, but from that moment on, with every beat of her heart, she repeated like a mantra,
Oh please, oh please, oh please.

I
N
B
EVERLY
H
ILLS
, A
LLISON WALKED INTO
G
RETA
G
ROBAN’S
horrible apartment. The walls were damaged and dirty, like a troupe of little girls had been locked up there and tried to claw their way free. The carpet was grimy—even compared with Mimi’s carpets—and a grayish ficus strangled in a pot in the corner. Allison thought that if she had to look like Greta, with her man’s haircut and scary eyes, she’d probably just slit her wrists and get it over with.

“Ah,” the acting coach said from her seat on the living room’s single gray leather couch. “I hope you’ve arrived ready to work, because you’re late. Tell Mimi the next time one of her students is late, I will charge double for the squandered time. Repeat that.”

Allison dutifully repeated, “I’ll tell Mimi you’ll charge double for the squandered time. Whatever
that
means.”

“Wasted. It means my time has been wasted.”

Allison just shrugged and dug her sides out of her tote. One of the corners was still damp from where Tina Marie had slept on it and drooled. Allison smoothed the pages against her thigh and then straightened her back and shoulders. “Posture!” Dee was always reminding her. “Imagine a string pulling you up from the top of your head!”

“So,” Greta said, holding out her hand for Allison’s sides. “We begin.”

Normally Allison didn’t work that hard. She was a quick memorizer and characters came easily to her, plus she didn’t really care all that much what some coach or teacher had to tell her. Dee and Mimi and everyone else wanted her to do things in a certain way, but she liked to just do what came to her, instead of planning it all out and having it seem inauthentic and overrehearsed. But today was different, because everything she cared about was riding on booking Carlyle. So when Greta told her to be more vulnerable, be younger, sadder, sweeter, more subtle, Allison did her best. After a half hour, though, Greta abruptly said, “Stop!”

Allison stopped.

“I’m hearing lines from you.”

“Well, yeah.”

“I don’t give a damn about lines. I want to hear
you
—Carlyle. Lines are crap.”

“Well, if we didn’t do them like a million times, it would probably be better.”

“
It.
You see? That’s your trouble. You’re performing. I don’t want performing. I want
being
. Take a moment.”

Allison stood there trying to look like she understood at least some of what Greta was talking about, but really it all sounded like the same old garbage. Then she heard Denise’s voice in her head, saying in a voice-mail message, “I made him rent me an apartment with a big bedroom, honey, so you could have friends over. See? I’m looking out for my little girl.” Like Allison had ever had a friend sleep over at her mom’s. Like anyone nice would
want
to stay over with a friend whose mother was a drunk and a stripper. Or with a man who was okay with raping his stepdaughter and then paying her off.

“Okay, I’m ready now,” she told Greta with resolve.

“Yes?” Then she noticed that the acting coach was watching her strangely, almost tenderly.

“What?” Allison said.

“You’re quite beautiful, you know.”

Allison nodded: she knew.

“It is not always an asset. For you, it will be lead roles or nothing, because otherwise you will upstage the actress playing the big one. If you truly want a career—”

“I want a career.”

“—then you’re going to have to step up. What you’ve been doing here today is really just so much bullshit. Am I being clear? Yes? Then let’s start over. And this time, I want you to break my heart.”

A
N HOUR AND A HALF LATER
A
LLISON WAS IN A FULL-BODY
sweat and Mimi had been circling the Beverly Center for what seemed like eternity. Allison paid Greta two hundred dollars in cash—all she had—and poured herself into the car while Mimi was stopped at a traffic light a block away. Tina Marie vacated the passenger seat only long enough for Allison to fasten her seat belt and then leaped nimbly over the gear shift knob—in honor of Allison’s homecoming, they’d dispensed with the hated booster seat—and into Allison’s lap. Allison fooled with the dog’s ears absently.

Mimi looked over:
So?

Allison slumped, resettling Tina Marie’s narrow hips. “I don’t know. I’m tired. You know what she’s like? She’s like pinball, where I’m the ball and she’s all those things that light up and boop and spring out at you and stuff and you still end up falling into the trap at the bottom.”

Mimi arched an eyebrow.

“Stop. She’s
weird
. You know what she kept telling me? She kept saying, ‘More from your gut—give me more!’ So I’d try that, and she’d say, ‘What are you, a parody now?’ I don’t even know what a parody is. It’s some kind of bird, right? What the hell does that have to do with Carlyle, anyway?” Mimi pulled up to a red light and Allison fell against the seat back, nibbling a nail. “See that woman over there?” She took Mimi’s face in her hand and turned it toward the far street corner. “She’s a man, and she’s more feminine than Greta. She’s creepy.”