Everybody Knows Your Name (20 page)

I take the outfit I bought out of my duffel and put it on. The shorts feel a little bit up my ass, but this is all going to be uncomfortable anyway, so who am I kidding?

I take a deep breath. I put the robe back on and tie it up so I can make it to the stage without anyone stopping me. I'll just say I'm cold.

Mila's waiting for me out in the hallway. She's wearing her show clothes, which are a yellow neoprene crop top and bronze harem pants. Shiny white eye shadow too. I'm looking at one of the few people in the world who can pull this off. Tonight she's going to be singing M.I.A.'s “Paper Planes” from the
Slumdog Millionaire
soundtrack.

“You're really going to do this?” she asks. She's the only person I've told about my winning idea. It came to me in a dream, and I woke up and told her because I knew she would laugh.

“Yeah.”

“I'm not going to stop you.”

“Thanks. I wouldn't want you to.”

The stage manager, Patty, is coming down the hallway for me. I'm up first tonight.

This look comes over Mila's eyes and it feels older than she is. Not that I'm getting all kooky with old soul and past life shit. I just mean that it's like I can actually see the show biz in her irises. “You can't want this as much as I want this”—and I know she means fame; she means something bigger than the show—“without also getting what's wrong about it. So I get you. I don't want to be you. But I get you.”

“I mean, also,” I say, “you'll have the room to yourself.”

Mila shuts her eyes. “I have an early memory that I don't know is true. I look in the crib next to me. My sister's lying there. I think to myself,
I wish I had my own room
.”

Patty reaches us and folds her arms over the top of her big headset. “What's this?” she asks me. “Why are you still in a robe? I had to get you in the wings a minute ago.”

“Brrrr.” I shiver. “I'm not wearing much under here. Trying to keep warm so I don't pull something.”

“Come on,” Patty says, and Mila makes the gesture of pretending to wave a tiny flag. I smile at her and go. Patty and I walk down the hallway and through the dimmed backstage, which is its usual crowded chaos. The show's audio comes over the backstage speakers. It's starting. The theme song kicks in, and the audience claps and whistles, and Lance comes on the mic and says, “Gooooood evening out there! It's time to turn on the spotlight!”

Liz from makeup puts more last-minute lipstick on me, and then Zara is behind me, sticking in one more bobby pin. Patty makes me hold her hand for support on the way to the wings because I'm wearing high heels and there are cables and wires all over the floor.

She gets me into position, and I can see Lance from the back, the lights over the stage, just the shapes of heads filling the audience.

He says, “Let's see what's been going on with Magnolia Anderson. . . .”

My video package launches on the screens in back of Lance. Ever since Lucien found out that I wanted to go home, he said I could do whatever the hell I wanted. He wasn't going to drag me through a performance.

When Skip came over to the mansion with his crew, I got into an inflatable tube in the pool. I brought a lemonade with me and floated around and drank my drink.

From the edge of the pool, Lucien asked questions so he could at least say he'd tried to do his job.

“How are you feeling this week, Magnolia?”

“That's personal,” I said.

“Anything on your mind?”

“This is good lemonade.”

“Anything upsetting you?”

“It's a little bright out. I wish it were raining. I really love the rain.”

While the video plays, a couple of stagehands wheel out low platforms loaded with the pillar candles that Catherine got me. They're in a race to light them.

The producers have cut together the footage to tell a story about how I've been pampering myself after the shock of Ford's reveal and betrayal. They've turned my wishing for rain into a melancholy moment, like it's a sign of my inner turmoil. But tonight I don't care if people see me as melancholy or moody or gloomy. Or tomorrow. I mean, every single one of the seven dwarves didn't need to be bouncing off the walls. There's a downbeat Care Bear. Why isn't there the same understanding of actual people?

“And here she is, singing ‘In Your Eyes!'” throws Lance as he exits left. The stage lights drop. The stagehands are gone. The hundred candles flicker. Patty says, “Go,” and I pull off the robe and hand it to her.

I walk to the middle of the stage. I can hear the floor creaking a little under my feet, but no one in the audience will.

The mic is waiting in the middle of the candles. I step behind it. The first notes of the song kick in. The house piano player and the drummer are somewhere below the stage. The lights lift, and the stage is cast in a kind of romantic, quivering blue green.

I'm wearing a red-white-and-blue stars-and-stripes bra bustier with red-white-and-blue stars-and-stripes jean shorts. I've cut some holes in the shorts. Around my shoulders I've tied on an American flag, making myself a shawl.

I take the mic off the stand and hold it so close that my lips just touch the metal. With one hand, I untie the knot in the flag.

I start singing. “Love.”

I take the flag from around my shoulders and let it drift down to the floor like I'm dropping an old silk scarf for drama. There's an audible gasp from someone in the wings, probably Patty since she's aware this wasn't in rehearsals. I sing that I want to run away.

I lower myself onto my knees until I can sit myself down on the American flag. And then I just repeat the line that I want to run away instead of moving on to the part about coming back to the place you are. I just sing it and sing it until I get to the chorus. Then I sing about being complete in their eyes. I'm being sarcastic and it's pretty obvious, but that's okay.

After my song, I walk down the hallway toward my dressing room as fast as I can. My heart feels like it's part of my pounding headache. It's a headache from the tension.

Gardener's gone up onstage; I can hear him over the sound system. He's singing Nine Inch Nails “The Perfect Drug” from the
Lost Highway
soundtrack. When Trent Reznor talk-sings, it's sexy, but Gardener doesn't have that kind of ache in his voice. He sounds like some guy from my high school reading a book report. He's singing the part that goes, “And I want you!” and it basically sounds like he might as well be singing, “By Herman Melville!”

“What did you do?” my mom cries out. I turn around.

She's standing there in her quilted stovepipes and her top that hangs off a shoulder. Both of her hands are up on her collarbone. She has multiple rings on every finger, even her thumbs. I know she's loved every moment of this show. It sounds dramatic to say that it's given her a reason to get dressed in the mornings, because it's not like she was hanging around the house in a robe, but it's given her that reason to do herself up the way she always wanted to.

“I don't want to be here, Mom,” I say, and the thing is, I mean it as an apology. I know from her perspective, this is coming out of nowhere. I never told her that this was only her dream because she never would have believed it.

Tears form in her eyes. I'm watching in horror as I make her cry. That's one of the major reasons she thought the
Real Housewives
wouldn't have her: because it's so hard to make her cry.

“What did you do?” my mom says again, but with a choke in her voice. “I don't get it at all. I don't get why you would do this to me. You have ruined
everything
.” She gives me a look that slices at my heart. “What's wrong with you?”

Something about that question flips a switch. I agreed to be on the show because I thought there was something wrong with me, because I thought I had to change myself. I didn't have a mom who told me that there was nothing that needed fixing. I had a mom who couldn't see me beyond herself.

Now, instead of asking why when I tell her I want to go home, she asks me what's wrong with me. Something has to be wrong because I don't want what she wants. So this question instantaneously binds my heart and makes it go faster than before, like it's anger that's pushing my blood around.

“Nothing's wrong with me!” I yell. “What's wrong with
you
?”

“Me?” She wipes her tears away with one hand, anger taking her over too. “What have I done to you except support you this whole way? What have I done except make this all possible?”

“You've made this all possible for yourself!” I shout. I can't stop myself now. “Who said I ever wanted this kind of stress? This level of attention? Do you even have any idea what I'm like? Have you
seen
me, Mom? Have you ever actually seen how I act in a roomful of people? Or have you just created some imaginary version of me in your head like you did for Dad after he disappointed you? In your head you just turned me into an extension of yourself. And turned Dad into someone who never existed after the divorce. You just totally wrote him off. Even when he was dying. And now, even after he's dead. And you've totally ignored how I might not want what you want, because I guess that's also been unpleasant for you to think about.” It must be a commercial break now because no one's singing, and people are starting to stream backstage.

“I have some questions for you too,” I go on. “I want to know if you've had any awareness of how shitty it's been for me to have you refuse to speak about Dad after he died, considering he was my parent? And considering whatever went down between the two of you didn't go down between him and me? And do you know how hard it is for a kid to feel responsible for her mom's feelings all the time? Like, to feel that she's got her mom's happiness in her hands, but also to feel that her mom is kind of clueless about how that might work in the other direction?”

Stagehands are looking around the corner to see what the fight in the hallway is about. I'm sure Catherine is on her way to rip me a new asshole any second.

“So please, Mom,” I say, “don't act like it's my problem here. Nothing's wrong with me because I'm not eating up being out there in front of millions of people every week. It's you who has the problem. Your problem is that this shit is more meaningful to you than your real life. Your problem is that you only see what you insist on seeing. I'm okay.”

While I've been confessing everything about how I feel, my mom's tears have stopped. I'm shaking. I've never come close to saying any of this out loud. I could never do it before, but the same thing that's churning in me to get off this show is making me feel incapable of being anything but confrontational and stark about it all. I don't know if she's going to rail back at me or cave or what. It seems like she's going to say something.

Her hands drop down to her sides. “You want to be miserable?” she asks, her face tightening into an unrecognizable mask. “You be miserable. But I'm not going to let you force me to be miserable with you. You're on your own.” She turns her back on me and walks away.

I'm given my own town car for the elimination show on Friday because Catherine held me back for a meeting with legal. I didn't realize it at the time, but when I left the stage after Wednesday's performance, I accidentally left my American flag cape too close to a pillar. It briefly caught on fire before the stagehands brought out extinguishers. Burning the flag was absolutely unintentional. But I'm hearing it wasn't really interpreted that way, considering I'd already used the flag as a rug.

Two of the show's lawyers came to the mansion to impress upon me the financial trouble I could be in if I disrupt the show tonight. The numbers sound unreal. I used to think seventy-five dollars for a night of babysitting was amazing.

These past two days Catherine has bounced back and forth between being personally furious at me for being ungrateful (and almost burning down the set), and then professionally happy about the media attention my performance brought the show. I've supposedly angered a lot of people out there and confused a lot of others, but the worst part is that I've also inspired this casually anarchist online group to start a campaign for keeping me. I heard they've been using computers to dial in and vote for me repeatedly.

I was right to worry that you can't reliably predict what will make an audience abandon or get behind you.

Now I'm nervous, sitting in the backseat of the Lincoln, being driven down Ventura to the studio lot. My mom, not speaking to me, is in another car with McKinley's mom. The fortysomething driver has been making eye contact with me in the rearview mirror every so often like there's something he wants to say.

“You hear any of that, my friend?” he finally says.

“Of what?”

He gestures to the dashboard radio. He's had it on low volume on the front speakers. I can hear DJ types talking, but I haven't locked on to anything they say.

“Story about Ford.”

From the way he says Ford's name, I can tell he watches the show. His pronunciation sort of has an eye roll in it.

Around the house I've tried not to pay attention to things having to do with Ford, and Mila is great at never mentioning news of him. I hang out with her, and it's like she's this editor who effortlessly chops him out of our lives. But now curiosity gets the best of me.

“What are they saying?”

The driver adjusts the mirror so we can see each other more fully. “You want the gossip? Look, I can't get enough of gossip, but I have enough self-control to be respectful if you're not into it.”

“Let's hear it.”

I see a happy flash in the driver's eyes. “Okay, so here's the deal. His mom gave a phone interview to KIIS FM Wednesday night after your performances. Told them Ford didn't hide his family because he was protecting them—she said he did it because he was an ungrateful kid and, quote, a bad seed, unquote. Said the family was just pretending like that was the story because they'd wanted to help him, but now she'd decided that Ford didn't deserve it because he was so awful to them. He wouldn't even let his family come stay with him when they ran out of money for their hotel. Did you know that? He turned them away like they were nothing. Said that's the kind of son he is. So she's finally had to come out with the truth.”

I'm not planning on having kids any time soon, but I'm sure that if/when I do have a kid, even if that kid were to majorly disappoint me, even if that kid were to crush my feelings, I still wouldn't want to destroy his chances at realizing his dream. I think only a bad mom would throw her kid under the bus like that, and that's even if he was the person she said he was.

“Why would she do that?” I wonder.

“She was sloshed. Slurring. What, you don't have embarrassing drunks in your family?”

“Not that I know of. I mean, obviously, I'm sure somewhere out there I have a third cousin who's at the bar every night. But my parents never really kept in touch with their extended families.”

“Well, if you had a loose cannon drunk in your family, you'd know there doesn't have to be rhyme or reason. Sometimes they just get crazy mean. You don't always see it coming. My sister did AA and it worked out for her, but let me tell you something. Before that she would pick fights with me that were ten years old. High school stuff, my friend. For some people, booze just magnifies feelings they buried when they weren't wasted.”

We pull up to Gate 2 of the lot, and the driver rolls down the window to show the security guard his credentials. “Good evening,” he says, suddenly professional.

“If she was obviously drunk, then people probably won't put that much weight on what she's saying about him.”

“Well,” the driver says, being waved through, “then there was also the town car driver—I actually know the guy—who told E!Online that Ford and his brother puked all over his car. My friend had to scrub the chunks out! So that's probably not going to help either.”

I lean my head against the window, and it's not that I want to be thinking about Ford right now, but I can't deny a gut feeling that this kind of thing was the reason that Ford tried to pretend like his family didn't exist.

The driver pulls to a stop in front of the studio.

“So many chunks,” he reiterates.

“Magnolia,” Lance says, and I get down from my stool. I walk across the stage to electronic music that's both sad and pulsing, however that works. I take my place next to Lance and face out toward the judges and audience. I've made it into the bottom two. Here we go.

“I wonder who's going to join her?” Lance ponders into the microphone. The anxiety of waiting for this to be over is undoing my nerves. I'm close to shaking him to just get it out.

After what seems like a whole minute, he says, “Gardener.”

Wonderful! Gardener!
I think. I can beat Gardener for worst in show. I know I can. He's had his own problems with approachability because he's got the vibe of a long-haired magician, except he can't do any illusions. And his song was really bad this week. But I think I have the upper hand because I actually pissed people off.

Still, if America wants him out, I've got my backup plan. I can feel the silver Superstar where I've tucked it in the back waistband of my silvery pants.

Gardener walks over to the music and stands next to me. The PVC of his trench coat smells like wet paint.

I look to Lance, his bronzer visible up close; I'm jittery and waiting for him to make the announcement about which one of us is going home. But he says to the audience, “You thought I was done calling names? Well, I'm not done. Because . . . this is a double elimination week! We have a bottom
three
, ladies and gents!”

The music switches to something more ominous than sad, the beat still pounding, though. There are surprised reactions across the board onstage. The judges swivel in their chairs like the shock in the audience has created some weird quaking field of energy.

I'm telling myself,
Great, two eliminations. You've got this
.

“Who's the third contestant in danger of leaving tonight?” Lance asks, twisting to look at the contestants on the stools. He pauses. Of course he pauses.

He says, “Ford, man, I'm sorry, but come on down here.”

The look on Ford's face when his name is called is so raw that I don't know how they can put it up there on the projection screen behind us. Who wants to have to stare into his eyes, which are blown up times fifty, and linger on how hard he's taking this? You can see what going home would do to him. I mean, you can see this moment threatening to break him. Even if we're still not talking, that doesn't make me want to see him like this as he's walking across the stage to take his place.

“Here's your bottom three, America. Two of these singers will be going home!” Lance moves so he's standing behind the three of us. A spotlight whips around the stage to create suspense.

I can't believe Ford is in this line. Gardener separates us. Ford's votes stumbled a little after his family reveal, but the producers have done a pretty good job of smoothing that situation over. He sang well on Wednesday. So it has to be the stuff that his mom said about him, that the driver said about him.

I can't look at Ford anymore. I'm only going to worry about myself. My mom is the only mom I'm going to be angry with. I give my attention back to Lance, who is pressing his tie against his chest. He's looking sort of gaunt in the cheeks. I think he's been trying to lose weight even though he shouldn't.

“Our first contestant going home tonight is . . .” Lance waits for the lights shining down on the stage to turn white then green then blue.

“Gardener,” he says.

I take a breath. One spot left for elimination. Gardener flips up his coat collar and hangs his head, then Lance puts his hand on Gardener's back and gestures for him to leave the stage. Gardener does, to audience applause and the good-bye song of the show. It has a chorus that goes, “Got to find another light, if I can just make it through the night.” In my opinion, it's a little melodramatic and bleak.

Ford and I are now standing together in the middle of the stage. We're not looking at each other.

“Ford and Magnolia, Ford and Magnolia,” says Lance, shaking his head. “Former show lovebirds, and now one of them is the next contestant eliminated from this show.” A clip package of us kissing starts running on the screen behind us.

I thought I would be up against Gardener or Nikki, because of what my mom had said. And I was totally enthusiastic about giving the Superstar over to either one of them. I tried to give it to Mila last night in our room, but she wouldn't take it.

“Why don't you hold on to it, just in case? Just keep it wrapped up in a sweatshirt,” I told her.

“Don't want it.” Mila shrugged.

“What do you mean, don't want it? I'm the one who doesn't want it. But you want to win. So take it.” I was packing my bags, and I shoved the statue across our floor toward Mila like it was something gross or a hot potato or a gun.

“I went on this show to beat my sister for once. It has to be real. So if America votes me out before her, I screwed up. That's the only competition I care about.” She shoved the statue back at me.

I threw the statue onto her bed. “But what about if Felicia's already gone and America tries to vote you out? Don't you want to use it then?”

Mila went to her bed and picked up the Superstar, tossing it back at me. “I would respect the decision. This isn't between me and America. This is between me and my twin.”

When she wouldn't take it, I decided that I'd take it onstage with me just in case something weird happened. I felt confident that I'd done enough to lose, but just in case.

I didn't think through whether I would want to hand it over to Ford.

The screen goes dark. “For one of you, this is the end,” Lance says.

Magnolia,
I think, like I can actually plant an idea into Lance's mind.
Magnolia. Magnolia. Magnolia. Magnolia. Magnolia. Magnolia. Magnolia. Magnolia. Magnolia.

“Ford,” Lance says.

I glance over at Ford. I'm still angry with him for not letting me know I was the only one of us with a dead parent.

But as I'm looking at him, I can't ignore the haunted expression on his face. I don't see a fake. In fact, as we're standing here, I think I see him even more clearly than I ever have.

Oh, Jesus Christ.

“Uh, hold on a second, hold on,” I say, leaning over so I can be heard in Lance's mic as I pull the statue from behind my back.