No Ordinary Life (35 page)

83

I
stare at the papers in my hand. I've been staring at them for a full day now, since they were given to me last night as Molly, Tom, and I walked to the elevator after our day at the studio. The emergency change of custody order gives me twenty-four hours to refute the evidence Sean presented to the court proving I am a danger to my kids. The evidence includes:

1. A sworn affidavit from Elizabeth Glenn, the social worker from Yucaipa, attesting to my negligent behavior both in sending my children to the car unattended during our first meeting and in not getting Tom the therapy he needed for his disability, despite multiple counseling sessions in which I was advised to do so.
   
2. Two sworn affidavits from two street vendors from the Third Street Promenade testifying that I left Molly unattended on the promenade and subsequently lost her.
   
3. A sworn affidavit from the nurse at Methodist Hospital testifying that the gash on Molly's arm was inconsistent with the explanation I gave of her cutting her arm on a slide, and that the injury was more consistent with that of a knife wound.
   
4. A sworn affidavit from Beth that I allowed Molly to do a river scene without warning her that Molly couldn't swim, a scene in which Molly subsequently almost drowned, my lack of concern showing blatant disregard for Molly's welfare.
   
5. A sworn affidavit from the security director at the Park Plaza Hotel attesting to me slapping Emily across the face.
   
6. Video footage of me slapping Molly at JFK airport.
   
7. A written letter to the judge from Emily:
   

I called my lawyer immediately, but with so little time, there was nothing she could do. The problem with trying to refute the evidence is that there's nothing to refute. It is all either the truth, a version of the truth, or a lie I can't disprove. So today I sit on the couch staring at the letter from Emily as a social worker and my mom pack up the kids' things so they can move in with Sean.

In a month, there will be a hearing to determine whether the order should be extended beyond the temporary period. I have until then to figure out how to turn this around or to beg forgiveness, leniency, and mercy from the court and pray I don't lose them forever. My lawyer is hopeful that by then we will have a counterargument and evidence to discredit the testimony against me.

I stare at Emily's letter so hard that the ink blurs. Is it possible to love and hate your child at the same time? My hurt is so deep that I feel like my organs are turning black. Sean put her up to it, but still, the writing is hers. She wrote those horrible, wounding words.

My mind is having a hard time processing what is happening, my life unraveling so quickly that it makes no sense. How did Sean know about Ms. Glenn? Or the hospital? The answer comes in disconnected waves.
He didn't. He couldn't have. Someone told him. No one could have told him. I was the only one who knew about both. More than one person told him. He has been planning this. That's not like Sean. Sean doesn't plan things.
Mitten's words come back to me.
It's probably not the best idea to threaten someone who can destroy you. We don't need you to keep her.

My palm presses against my chest to push back the pain. Life needs an undo, a magic button that can turn back time so I can fix this, a rewind switch to return me to the moment before I threatened Mitten, or further back, to the moment on the promenade when Molly was singing and dancing with Leroy.

84

T
he kids are gone. I've had a week to get used to the idea, but the shock has still not worn off. I am numb except for the pulsing ache beneath my rib cage, each breath agonizing as though the air is made of shards of glass.

My mom hovers, afraid of what I might do—collapse from despair or act out and do something crazy like kidnap the kids and flee. She's right to worry, my thoughts vacillate between the two.

I wait for the complete breakdown, to lose it and go insane. It seems the least I can do. I lost them, misplaced them, didn't pay close enough attention, and now they're gone. But despite my synapses exploding with everything I've done to cause this, cruelly my brain remains intact, completely, horribly aware of what has happened, and it is only my heart that is cleaved in two.

Griff calls constantly and has tried to visit. I refuse to talk to him or see him. I cannot face him. He was right. There are those who lead their lives, and those whose lives lead them, and I am the latter, my life snatched away without even a fight.

I do not rant or rave, my emotions strangely quiet, a deadness, as if a winter chill has sent my feelings into hibernation. Perhaps for self-preservation, knowing that to allow them out would incite a storm, a tornado of madness that once released won't be contained.

It is an eerie calm as I sit day after day unmoving on the couch, my feet curled beneath me, the television blinking. A small itch buzzes in my brain like there's something to be done, perhaps someone I should call or somewhere I should go—a vibration of disbelief, the pulsating refusal to accept the truth, that there is
nothing
for me to do.

The shadows shift, and I watch them grow long on the carpet. My stomach rumbles. There are apples in the bowl on the coffee table in front of me, put there so the kids would be reminded of the healthy snack, the stone bowl keeping them cool. I make no move to take one, though they are large Rome apples—expensive apples—the kind I've become accustomed to buying.

Such stillness. Quiet I craved a week ago, now it chokes me, the emptiness pressurized like a pneumatic chamber until I feel like I might implode…or perhaps the opposite, burst from my skin into a fireball of destruction running naked through the streets, murdering anything in my path until I get to my kids, which of course I would never do. I am a coward. It has been proven again and again that I would never do anything so bold.

If I sit here long enough, I wonder if I will turn to stone like the bowl. The thought comforts me—cold, impenetrable stone.

85

W
hen there's a knock at the door, I ignore it. There's no one I want to see.

“Helen, thank you for coming,” my mom says behind me, causing my head to spin around so fast that I'm in danger of whiplash. Kiss-kiss, the two women greet like French royalty.

I smooth my disheveled hair, wipe the crusts of sleep from my eyes, shove the sweats I've been sleeping in for the past week beneath the couch, and push to my feet.

“Helen? What are you doing here?”

As always she looks radiant—her skin, hair, clothes so flawless that everything around her looks duller and more dilapidated.

“I heard you were wallowing in your wounds,” she says, almost causing me to smile. The woman is really too much when it comes to mixing clichés.

“Yes,” my mom says, “she certainly is. I'll leave you two to work it out.”

My mom grabs her purse and leaves us as Helen glides across the room to sit down on the couch, ankles crossed, hands folded on her lap. “Well, aren't you going to offer me a drink?”

I look at the clock on the television. It's ten thirty in the morning. “All I have is wine or vodka.”

She frowns. “I meant coffee.”

I shuffle to the kitchen and manage to start a pot, my hands shaking from the sudden burst of activity after a week of barely moving.

While the coffee brews, I search the fridge and pantry for something to eat and find a half-empty bag of Oreo cookies that nearly causes a meltdown. I steady myself against the counter, rein in the thoughts of Molly licking off the creamy centers, and carry the bag to the coffee table. I set it in front of Helen, hoping she'll eat the rest of the reminder and purge it from the condo.

She takes a cookie and nibbles the edges like a bird, and I return to the kitchen to retrieve her coffee.

When I sit down beside her, she says, “Chris will be calling this afternoon, and you need to be prepared.”

I blink several times. “Chris? Why?”

“Because Molly and Tom have more power than you think, and Chris was a fool to think he could just shove you out the way he did with that birdbrain Rhonda.”

“Chris did this?” I say. “No, he didn't. It was Mitten.”

“Mitten? Oh, darling, you really don't have a clue, do you? Mitten's harmless. He's a writer. He writes stories and pokes his head out once in a while to act important, and the producers tolerate his eccentricities because without him there would be no show, but he has no real power.”

“But Chris is on my side. He told me so.”

“Faye, you've been doing this long enough that you should know, believing what people tell you in this business is both foolish and dangerous.”

I shake my head. “I wasn't cut out for this.”

“No one's cut out for this. You think I was born the way I am, or Jules, or even Chris for that matter? This business changes you. It makes you stronger or weaker, better or worse, but one thing it doesn't do is leave you the same. As I told you before, Chris isn't evil, only ambitious. The show and its success are all that matter to him, threaten either of those and he'll cut you out like a cancer, which is what he thought he was doing by getting rid of you…”

“How was I threatening the show? He had already convinced me that quitting wasn't an option.”

“He knows you threatened Mitten…”

“How?”

“The walls have ears.”

I close my eyes and for the millionth time wish I could rewind time, go back and do it different, instead of threatening to expose Mitten, just do it. Set up a hidden camera in his office to catch him with some young starlet and send it off to
Star Gazer
or one of the other tabloids anonymously.

“Between that and threatening to quit, you were a loose gun…”

“A loose cannon,” I correct.

She frowns at me. “A loose whatever. The point is, he was worried and figured it was better to get rid of you before it got out of control. And of course, the whole Griff thing isn't helping matters.”

“He's mad at me because Griff is famous?”

She rolls her eyes like I'm an idiot. “No. He's mad at you because he's a man and you chose Griff over him. It's the whole alpha-male thing. Griff's always been his rival in terms of power, and now it turns out that not only is Griff the super alpha because he's mega-famous, but he also gets the girl. I'm not saying that's the reason Chris did what he did, but it probably didn't help.”

I drop my face into my hands.

“You should call him,” she says.

“Who, Chris? You said he was calling me.”

“Griff.”

The thought causes my heart to close in on itself, my head shaking back and forth. I can't face him knowing that once again life steamrolled over me and that I let it happen. I can't do it. I won't ever be able to face him.

“Well, like it or not, you're going to have to face him at some point,” she says.

“No, I won't,” I mumble into my hands.

“Yes, you will. I told you, Chris is going to call. He needs you to come back, and when you do, Griff is going to be there.”

“You just got done telling me I'm a cancer. Why would he ask me to come back? You're crazy.”

“Yes, certifiable, but that has nothing to do with this. He needs you to come back because your children…well, two of your children…are brilliant little thespians.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I'm talking about the fact that Molly and Tom seem absolutely incapable of performing without you.” She gives a naughty smile. “Ever since you've been gone, no matter who works with them, neither is able to remember their lines, and the show is terribly behind because of it. And I have no idea what's gotten into Molly, but she won't even crack a smile for Hershey's or Mattel. It's downright catastrophic.” Her voice is full of glee.

“And whose idea was it for them to suddenly become incompetent?”

“Let's just say you have friends in low places,” she says, her grin widening, and my heart cracks open an inch with overwhelming affection for this beautiful, wonderful woman who has become my friend.

“So Chris is going to ask me to come back as their manager?” I say, barely able to whisper the wish out loud for fear it will jinx it from coming true.

“Yes, so you need to be prepared.”

“Prepared for what? Yes, yes, I'll come back. Can I come back today?”

“Today is Sunday.”

“Then tomorrow.”

“See, this is why I needed to talk to you. You're terrible at this. You can't say yes.”

My eyes bulge. “Of course I'm going to say yes.”

“Eventually you're going to say yes,” she corrects. “But first you're going to negotiate.”

The light bulb goes on. “I'm going to force him to give me my kids back.”

“You're going to ask him to undo what he's done,” she corrects.

I nod, a glimmer of hope igniting.

“Then you're going to figure out how to get yourself and those darling kids of yours out of this mess,” she continues.

I shake my head. “I tried that. That's how I ended up here. From now on, I just need to play by the rules and not rock the boat.”

“To hell you do,” she says, her temper flaring. “You need to get them out. That older one of yours is already going down a dangerous path, and Molly's going to be right behind her.”

“You don't know that.”

“It's a pretty good guess. Child stars end up miserable. It's a fact.”

“You're not miserable.”

“I'm the exception, and make no mistake, I've had my share of misery. I'm tired of going to funerals, and I'm not standing at Molly's or Tom's.”

“You're being dramatic.”

“Normally I would say guilty as charged, but there's no need for theatrics here. It's the simple truth, child stars end up screwed up. Being famous when you're young messes with you, and a lot of us end up dead. We struggle, and when the struggle gets to be too much, we throw in the white flag.”

“You didn't struggle,” I defend, irritated with her tale of woe as she sits on my couch in her designer jeans and Prada boots with her limo waiting downstairs to drive her to her mansion. If I do what she's suggesting and break Molly's contract, the studio is going to sue me, and I'll lose every penny I have and won't have a pot to piss in, or worse they'll take the kids away from me permanently. That's struggling.

“Of course I struggled,” she snaps. “I'm better now, but I struggled like hell. I lost two husbands, nearly my daughters, and I still struggle with eating and with looking at myself in the mirror. I'm still standing, but I struggle.”

“If it's so damn awful, get out. You're Helen Harlow. If you want to quit, quit.” I realize I'm being rude, but my patience is used up for Hollywood royalty, the despots of Tinseltown like Helen and Chris, who can do as they please; write their own tickets; decide what they do or don't want to do—who, with the snap of their fingers, can make or break lives; who have no idea what it's like to be a mere mortal, a nobody with no power at all.

“I don't want to quit. This is what I do. It's the only thing I know how to do and the only thing I do well. Plus I'm treated like a queen and I make a shitload of money.”

“You're contradicting yourself.”

“No. I'm telling you how it is. That's why Griff came back also. He's great at what he does. Even when he was a kid, he could visualize a scene, see it in his head then recreate it. This town nearly killed him, and he shouldn't have come back, but he did because, like me, this is what he knows and it's what he's good at. I can't believe he pulled it off as long as he did, nearly ten years without anyone realizing who he was until you came along.”

“If you're here to make me feel better, you're doing a lousy job of it.”

“I'm here to tell you that Chris is going to call and that you need to be ready, and that you then need to figure out a plan to get yourself out of this mess without getting yourself fired again.”

“Yeah, okay, I'll get right on that.”

“Rumpelstiltskin,” she says.

“Really? That again? I thought we were over the whole intimidate-the-new-stage-mom thing.”

She laughs, a high, lilting giggle. “I did have fun meeting you that first day, like a cat toying with a lamb. But this isn't about that, it's about the actual story. You're kind of like the maiden. You're stuck and your children are going to be taken from you if you don't figure a way out.”

“Yeah, okay. So?”

“So, do you remember how it ends?”

I recall the story. Rumpelstiltskin turned a room full of straw into gold for a young maiden in exchange for the promise that she would give him her firstborn. When the promise came due, she begged him not to take her baby, and out of pity, he gave her one chance to save her child—she had three days to guess his name. If she did, she could keep her baby. It was an impossible task, except Rumpelstiltskin was cocky and foolishly sang a song around his campfire, giving away his secret, and the maiden's child was spared.

“My mom really liked that story,” Helen says.

“So you're saying I should be like your mom. Thanks, I'll keep that in mind.” I shake my head and drop my face back into my hands. I'm not Helen Harlow, and I'm certainly not her mom.

“I'm not saying you should be like my mom. I'm saying you should be like the maiden. The story is about the reversal of power, about using the arrogance of the person who thinks they're in control against them. The studio thinks they're untouchable, that the show is invincible.”

I lift my face to look at her. “And it's not?”

“I'm saying there's more than one way to skin a dragon, and sometimes charging straight at it with a knife isn't the best approach. Television shows are like Jenga, pull out the right brick and the whole thing comes tumbling down.”

My head tilts, and silence pulses between us as what she's suggesting registers in slow motion like a sunrise, glowing warm at the edges then growing brighter until it blazes white and fills my whole brain. “You're telling me to sabotage the show?”

“I'm not telling you to do anything,” she says, a small smile playing on her lips. “Though if the show were cancelled, your problems would be solved.”

“Helen, if the show is cancelled, you'll be out of a job.”

“Please,” she says as she stands, “I'm Helen Harlow.”