Hollywood Beginnings (A Novella)

The Do-Over

Just before her fortieth birthday, Mara Jane Mulligan, devoted wife and mother, runs out of bubble bath, and the ensuing panic attack drives her to Canada for more. She realizes that one foamy soak won't cure what ails her, so she takes a 30 day vacation from her life. What woman doesn't need one of those?

Plan On It

Six men in six months. It's a logical plan to Professor Hattie McLean. Date 6 men in 6 months and one will be the clear choice to father her child. But biology involves the heart as well... even if she didn't plan on it!

Back To U

When Gwen hits the big 4-0, her husband leaves, and her daughter takes off with a Lynyrd Skynyrd tribute band. Taking her daughter's place at the university seems like a good idea until she runs into the reason she dropped out twenty years before... and he's also found his way Back To U.

What some of the more than 140,000 readers are saying about the romantic comedies of Kathy Dunnehoff…

"OMG girl, where were you when I was raising my family?!"

"The writing is witty, the plot clever, the theme universal, and the feeling at the end, happy but realistic."

"This book is wonderful and I loved it... 5 heartfelt stars for this book, deservedly given."

"Make mine a Do-Over!"

"To me it's the equivalent of a "feel good" movie enjoyed with thick real buttery popcorn (and a handful of Hershey's Kisses!) I recommend it with a very rare-for-me five-star rating."

"The book inspired me, and reminded me not to let my life slip into the predictable and repetitious!"

"Ms. Dunnehoff has done it again! She's given us another wonderful romantic comedy with colorful, relatable, and funny characters. The author has a wonderful sense of humor that comes through in her writing."

"I laughed, I cried, I lost sleep staying up reading this. Great read!"

"Too good to be just a casual read, you end up savoring bits and pieces of the story - like they are bites of Tiramisu."

My mom starred in the most popular beach party movie ever made. Sounds great, right? Like I might have grown up in Malibu and gone to school side by side with the offspring of famous directors and actors? I could be the stunning product of a starlet and the handsome actor who wore the swim trunks so well beside her in
Beach Towel Twist
. I'd have a memorable name like
Amelie
and not a pastoral one like
Amy
. And now, in my mid-thirties, I'd use my trust fund to pursue art full-time, and since it's Hollywood, let's add in a movie-perfect husband by my side.

But the truth of my life is... well, I don't entirely know what the truth of anything is. What I do know is my mother made one film at the end of the beach party craze, was instantly declared a rising star, and fled Hollywood for Minnesota. And, yeah, you don't even need to ask it because when a blizzard dumps two feet of snow in my frigid hometown, I'm thinking it too. What in God's name was
she
thinking?

I don't know, and I thought I'd never know. She talks about Hollywood about as often as I've heard her say
you need to
have fun
,
that skirt should be shorter
, or
why don't you go out with him
? The conclusion I came to was she fled the City of Angels because she was the only angel there.

When she left the movie business, she never acted again, married a minister within two years, and made her three children take vows of poverty, humility and chastity. And, yes, one of those vows stuck with me but only accidentally. The Minnesota hourly rate for my graphic design business keeps me in a small apartment doing a fair amount of couponing to make ends meet, so I count poverty as a vow I've kept. And since my divorce, it's the only vow I'll ever keep. Although in the past year, I've done a stellar job with chastity as well.

The Hollywood husband in my dreams was a Minnesota mistake in real life. And not only do I not reside in Malibu, I live two hours north of my parents, and believe me there's not much North of my parents that's not Canada. I did inherit my mother's starlet curves, but I'm not one for calling it a day when I could screw something up, so I went on to inherit my father's basketball height. In any given room, I look down on men like I'm some kind of Xena Woman Warrior. I've found that the Amazon thing and my general mood after my husband received more than a scratch ticket from a mini-mart clerk has limited my dating.

So I got the call when Mom needed to take a trip to L.A. for a funeral. Since my family knows I'm self-employed and a highlight of my life is using a fifty-cent coupon on graham crackers, it fell on my shoulders to take her. My father would have, but he's knee deep in June wedding season. My older sister and brother reminded me they have families while I am shamefully divorced. Alright, they didn't specifically mention the divorce and their families, but I heard it anyway. I'm the lone screw-up in the perfect Moore family and the entire congregation knows it.

But to be completely fair, my siblings got out of the trip because they soundly beat me in round nine of rock-paper-scissors.

And someone did need to accompany mom. She hadn't left the borders of her home state in forty years, believes people are inherently good, and dresses like she's starring in an ad for fabric softener. She's not equipped to manage a city like L.A. even for a long weekend, but she insisted on paying her respects. I guess all those church funerals she orchestrated the luncheons for has made her sensitive to offering condolences even to people she hasn't seen since she was eighteen.

She must have gotten her hands on a tabloid magazine because she knew the day after it happened. The handsome leading man of
Beach Blanket Twist
, the one who could have been my father in that other life, slid into the end of his life on a dark highway in a too fast convertible. In his seventies, Van Baron found his Hollywood ending. At thirty-five, I hadn't even found my beginning.

***

We had the right kind of flight to L.A., the kind where nothing happens. But when we stepped out of L.A.X., I felt like I was in another world. I lifted my face to the late afternoon sunshine that filtered between the edge of the building and the overhang of the parking garage and thought,
yes
. It's not that Minnesota doesn't have summer, but there's a reason Beach Boys don't hail from the Mid-West. In California the sun felt like it didn't know how to stop.

I might have soaked it up all day, but Mom flagged down the hotel shuttle like she knew what she was doing, and trust me she doesn't. The day I helped her book our airline tickets, I lost an hour of my life explaining why internet sites weren't called obvious things like
Flights 'R Us
but were named
Canoe
or
Swizzler
. The whole time she insisted on three things: a window seat, a moment of prayer so we wouldn't crash, and calling Yahoo…
Knucklehead, that
search thingee.

Still, she insisted on booking the hotel herself, and when she decides something, she up and does it. Mostly what she decides are things good for the soul, good for the pocket book, or ideally both. That's why the lobby of the hotel took me by surprise.

We stepped into the Hotel Thomas, and I stopped to take in the restored 1920's glamour of it. Golden walls arched high into a ceiling painted like the sky where an enormous chandelier cast a golden light on the clouds. It looked like daybreak hovered there just waiting to begin.

This was a place I could live in happily forever. If the creamy stucco hotel was an art deco starlet, my one bedroom apartment back in Minnesota was the ingénue who couldn't get a Jell-O commercial.

I felt Mom's suitcase rest beside mine and turned to see her smiling at me.

That search thingee Knucklehead had really confused my mom. She must have accidentally clicked
book now
. "Mom?
This
is our hotel?"

She sighed. "It's lovely, isn't it?"

"Yeah, it's all that,
and
it doesn't even have a number."

She scanned the lobby like she was trying to figure out what I was talking about.

"Uh, the Moore family stays at Motel 7's and 6's, remember?" I thought of all the road trips visiting relatives in Nebraska and Iowa. "There was that Motel 2 we stopped at in Grundy. Anything under a 3, you don't even get soap."

She shook her head, tried not to smile. "Well, I'm sure we'll find some here."

I watched two uniformed hotel employees cross the lobby to take our bags and wondered what else awaited me in the golden state. "Hey, Mom, what are we doing tonight?"

She gave me her no-nonsense face. "First things first. We'll unpack and get a good night's sleep."

So the evening was already boring. I'd look forward to Saturday, a whole day and night to enjoy before the Sunday funeral of a man I didn't know, and after forty years, she didn't either. And Saturday I refused to waste, even if all I did was stand in the sun and soak up vitamin D for winter.

The knock woke me up, and I stumbled out of bed, opening the door a crack to see a hotel clerk outside. I glanced over my shoulder, but Mom was already in the shower, so I opened the door wider and the woman came in with a breakfast tray and set it on the desk. She pointed to an envelope next to the silverware. "This was left at the desk yesterday for Mrs. Moore. My apologies we didn't give it to her at check-in."

"That's fine, thanks." I wondered what to tip the woman. It wasn't like I was used to room service. But before I could figure it out, she left, and I found myself alone with the envelope. It was pretty much asking to be opened even though it was addressed, in a guy's handwriting, to
Marion Moore
. And I knew it was a guy because I work with fonts all day, and there's a distinct masculine quality some script has. That's my rationalization for considering opening it. It's a lame one, but I'm sticking with it because my mother has done two major things out of character. One, returned to L.A. with the flimsy rationale of paying respects to a co-star, and two, ordered room service.