After Perfect (8 page)

There was a moment between us. I laughed, and he smiled at me. His cheeks were big and round when he smiled, I could see, still separating the boy from the man. And I got that feeling you get when you meet someone and you know they're going to make their way into the story of your life; it's just that you don't know how yet, only in hindsight could you see.

“Lauries over here, please!” Becky called out across the soundstage.

“Thanks for the blanket,” I said.

“Anytime. See you over there.”

E
mily stood next to me. “Watch out,” she whispered.

“What?” I asked.

“That guy over there.” She nodded toward Josh, who was setting up his camera equipment. “He's the executive producer's son. We're not allowed to fraternize with crew members—if ya know what I mean.”

I blushed. This girl was on it. How did she know this? I started to like how precocious she was.

Fraternizing with crew members was hardly the issue when rumors were floating around that David Cassidy was drunk, Danny Bonaduce was high, and Shirley Jones seemed oblivious to what was going on. Susan Dey refused to participate because fame from the show had screwed her up so badly she wanted nothing to do with the remake. Rumor was she suffered from anorexia, refusing to eat anything but carrots at one point and eventually turning her skin orange. I guess every family has its secrets, even the fake ones.

F
or the next few weeks, it was a world of make believe, with a strict schedule of singing with David Cassidy, acting with Danny Bonaduce, dance rehearsals, and photo shoots. One afternoon Shirley Jones taught all of us Lauries how to bake a homemade cake at a house in the Hollywood Hills. It felt more like summer camp than a reality television show. Emily and I had grown to become great friends. She nicknamed me Audrey, and I nicknamed her Gilda, for Audrey Hepburn and Gilda Radner, honoring our favorite actresses. She would have me on the floor in the green room, crying from laughing so hard over her Britney Spears impersonation. And whenever Josh walked in, it turned into a scene from
Napoleon Dynamite
.

Josh: “You stayed home and ate all the freakin' chips, Kip!”

Emily: “Don't be jealous that I've been chatting with online babes all day. Besides, we both know I'm training to become a cage fighter.”

Josh: “You're such an idiot! Uh!”

It was obvious that Josh and I had a crush on each other. Neither one of us cared to play by the rules, and he had opened up to me about his father being the executive producer. It was his first job after having just graduated from USC's film school. He kept finding excuses to sit next to me during meal breaks.

“Is it okay that we're sitting alone together? You know, since I'm not supposed to be fraternizing with crew members,” I said.

“Don't worry, my dad doesn't give a shit. It's Sony we have to watch out for.”

Josh looked around. We were sitting at a table underneath one of the tents in the parking lot behind the stage. “We're in the clear.”

“So what was it like growing up in LA?” I asked.

“Probably similar to growing up in DC, if you substitute movie stars for politicians . . . so what do your parents do?” Josh asked.

Suddenly utter panic consumed every fiber of my being. No one had asked me this since my father had been sentenced to prison and would be disbarred. I had no answer prepared. My father's attorneys had prepped me for everything else but this: what to say in the aftermath. I had managed to avoid any talk about my family on set. I didn't want anyone to know that once a week, late at night, I had been driving to the rental to give him my per diem money we received on set for food and gas. They needed it to put food on the table until more money was wired into the Wells Fargo bank account.

During my first week on set, after Chloe and my father had moved out to Los Angeles, and the house in Virginia was officially gone, I met them for dinner at the Pearl Dragon the night they flew in. It was a chic Asian fusion restaurant in Pacific Palisades, and my father tried to pay with the credit card, but it was declined. I watched from the other end of the table, the waitress kneeling next to him, whispering something and handing him back the card. So I got up and handed him the few hundred dollars that Becky had given me for the week. “Here, Dad, take my per diem money.” He took the cash and paid for dinner while I walked back to my seat. He didn't thank me or look me in the eye—the humiliation was unbearable. But I was happy to do it. I didn't want him to worry.

In the months before my father had to surrender to prison, every day felt heavy with anticipation. My father never left the house. He was nothing short of a recluse, staring at his computer screen all day. I walked by his open computer once when he wasn't in the room and saw he had been reading a document that a friend had sent him about how to survive prison. And all of the things he should be warned about. I didn't know anything about prison except that I believed he didn't belong there. I was too afraid to bring it up with him or ask him about it. No one wanted to talk about their feelings or talk about the truth: that he was leaving us and no one knew when he would be back. I casually walked away from the computer and tried not to think about it.

But as the days got closer, my father appeared either despondent or rageful. Suzanne had hired Chloe to do some work for her at the stationery store too, and when she came home one evening, my father demanded that she give him her paycheck like I had done. Because otherwise, we wouldn't have money for food until Gary pulled through for us with another wire transfer. But Chloe challenged him. I remember my father raising his voice, reeling from her unwillingness, his blood pressure through the roof as though he were some character out of
The Sopranos
, pointing his finger at her, lecturing her on family loyalty. Chloe went sobbing upstairs and into the attic, where she was sleeping.

I looked up at Josh. I decided that since my father hadn't been disbarred yet, it wouldn't be a lie entirely if I said he was a lawyer.

“Dad's a lawyer, Mom's a philanthropist.” I picked up a Red Vine and chewed it.

“Cool. What kind of lawyer?”

“IPOs—that kind of thing,” I said, shrugging it off and then changing the subject. “Are your parents still married?”

“They are. Been happily married for close to thirty years now. I'm lucky. What about you?”

“Yeah, mine too, really lucky.”

A few days before the final competition, I was sitting in the audience. It was the dress rehearsal for the guys competing for the role of Keith Partridge. Emily and I were clapping and singing along, watching our friend Dave belt out George Michael's “Faith” into the microphone, when I looked over and saw Josh's father and Becky standing in the shadows of the wings next to the stage. He had his arms around Becky's waist, his hands moving downward as he caressed her ass. She gave him little kisses on the cheek before they separated quickly.
Oh my God, Josh's dad is having an affair with
Becky.
I turned to Emily to see if she had noticed, but she was dancing along with Dave, who was as gorgeous as an Abercrombie & Fitch model, sliding back and forth onstage. I wondered if Josh knew. Thinking about it made my heart break for him. I wanted to be with him even more. I felt comfort in knowing I wasn't the only one with a family full of secrets.

I
t was the final performance, and I was standing in the spotlight on the enormous soundstage. The cameras were rolling, pink and blue neon lights spinning above and toward me. I walked forward with the microphone and with animated joy declared, “Hi, my name is Christina Grace, and I'd love to be Laurie Partridge. Not that I'm unhappy with myself, but, come on, Laurie Partridge is hot!” I felt numb. I sang the Mamas and the Papas' “California Dreamin',” strutting back and forth onstage, searching for my parents in the audience. But I couldn't find them against the blinding light, and when the judge read my scores—16.0, 16.5, 16.4, 16.2—I knew I had lost.

Todd Newton, one of the hosts of the live show, ran up and pointed his microphone at me. “How do you feel now that you've been cut, Christina?”

“I'm just glad I got the chance to perform; I feel great,” I lied. The role of Laurie Partridge would eventually go to Emily, and too much pride hid the pain of rejection I felt along with the other girls who didn't make it. I had always been an actress—acting my way through life depending on who it was standing before me, molding myself into whoever I thought that person wanted me to be. I had no identity of my own unless I had the right props to define me. I craved validation, I craved significance. I wanted to be somebody. But I was so worried about how others perceived me, and I was so worried about my father; I never once stopped to think about who that somebody was.

Before I knew it, David Cassidy was pulling me back onstage, where we would come together once more with our arms wrapped around one another like one big happy family, performing for the last time:

Hel-lo world, here's a song that we're singing

Come on, get happy!

The audience clapped and cheered as I searched for my father in the audience. He looked uncomfortable, loosening his tie, and my mother clapped along because she felt obligated to, and Chloe looked bored. Then I saw Josh sitting in the front row. Tussled brown hair in a Led Zeppelin T-shirt. He wasn't working during the final show, and I remember that, at the end, we locked eyes, and he smiled at me. He was sitting next to an elegant woman in the audience. She had white-streaked hair that reminded me of Cruella De Vil. It must have been his mother. I watched as she clapped and sang along to the music, and I wondered if she knew.

It was still dark outside. The rain was loud as it poured through the copper gutters along the bay window, creating a drumlike rhythm against the crying and dry heaving that woke me up. I stumbled out of bed and padded down the dark hallway toward the crack of light underneath the bathroom door. I stopped when I heard my mother throwing up, her hands gripping the porcelain toilet bowl. My heart was pounding at the thought of having to ask if she was all right.

I had wondered why, the night before, there was champagne and cake on the table.
Some sick good-bye party this is
. It felt more like a wake for the living dead. All night, my father stood in the kitchen wearing a Santa hat, holding a martini glass—shaken not stirred, the way he preferred it. He was acting abnormally happy, reminiscing about his days at William & Mary, while my mother kept dumping more Grey Goose into her glass, “to take the edge off,” she said. I noticed her lost in thought before she turned around and flashed her elegant smile—the smile that all of the mothers of Washington, DC, used to envy. “Honey,” they'd say to me, “your mother is so poised, so beautiful.”

The morning was January 7, 2005, and my father was leaving for prison.

“Mom, are you okay?” I cracked open the bathroom door. Her cheek was resting on the toilet seat, her eyes wet and closed.

“Diet Coke. Get me Diet Coke,” she whimpered before flinging herself back over the toilet with a loud groan. Gracie, her black-and-white papillon puppy, kept yelping and licking her ankles. Gracie had been a gift to fill Mom's empty nest when Mara and I had left for college. She took her everywhere: to the grocery store, to restaurants, and even to the movies, hiding her in her tote bag.

I pulled her red hair back into a ponytail as she spit and cried, unwanted vulnerability ripping her apart at the seams. When she leaned back, her eyes were bloodshot, and broken blood vessels had burst in her cheeks.
Your mother, she's so put together, so perfect, dear.

“Okay, Mom. Be right back.”

I entered the living room to the sound of an Olsen twin punch line. Chloe looked stoned watching an old episode of
Full House
surrounded by cardboard boxes; we hadn't yet unpacked everything. She had snuck out of the “good-bye party” to meet her new friend, Spencer, a sweet Jewish boy who sold marijuana plants out of the back of his pickup truck. Chloe and Spencer met in history class at the public charter school down the street. I went to pick her up one afternoon, and she introduced me to him. He brought me around to the back of his truck, pulled back what looked like a canvas pool cover to reveal hundreds of marijuana plants, and said, “My mom told me I have to be nice to you. Welcome to Cali.” Spencer's mother was a friend of Suzanne's and an active member of the Pacific Palisades community. I stood there looking at the odd resemblance between the marijuana plants and the pattern on Chloe's Lilly Pulitzer dress. My sister hadn't made many friends yet except for Spencer, who decided to take her under his wing.

“Is Mara still sleeping?” I asked. Mara was about to be leaving to finish her second semester of her junior year in a few days. It was her winter break, and she had flown out from Texas to say good-bye.

Chloe shrugged, her eyes glued to the television screen, taming her emotions. “Probably.”

Mara had informed everyone the night before that she wouldn't be waking up to say her good-bye; it would be too early in the morning for her. At the end of the night, she wrapped her arms around our father's neck, standing on her tiptoes to say good night as if it were just another night before bed.

When I walked into the kitchen, it was filled with an eerie combination of sitcom laugh tracks and my mother hyperventilating in the background as I searched for Diet Coke. Of course, we were out.

“Bambina!” My father, beaming, came walking into the kitchen. He was still wearing his Santa hat. “Mom's not feeling well this morning. What do you and Chloe think about taking your ol' dad to the airport?” I knew that “not feeling well” was a euphemism for “being incapable of operating a motor vehicle because your husband is going to prison
.
”