The Love Song of Jonny Valentine (14 page)

“They didn’t get you into show business?”

“I don’t think they knew the
phrase
‘show business.’ ” She laughed again. “A casting director came by my school one day for some parts in a TV movie, I signed up, that led to a few more spots, and now here we are. A parking lot in Denver in winter.
Finally
made it.” She blotted her red lips on a tissue. “This is a bit silly, don’t you think?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Do you know what they want us to do?”

“I think walk next to each other with ice cream and get into the car.”

“And, like, kiss or something?”

“No, definitely not. That was clearly specified in the contract.”

All my excitement drained out of me like blood leaking out of my body in Zenon. “Right,” I said. “I forgot. That’s good.”

Denise knocked on the window, which meant I might not get another chance to ask if she wanted to hang out again. “Maybe we should do another date in L.A.,” I said.

“Smart idea. I’ll have Denise look at my schedule for another photo shoot.”

“No, like getting ice cream for a real date. On our own.”

“Huh,” she said. “Maybe in the spring? Things are totally crazy for me right now with the album dropping and my shooting schedule. Like I’m telling
you
something you don’t know, Mr. Double Platinum.”

It was triple platinum, but I didn’t say anything. “So, should my mother call your manager then?”

She grabbed the door handle and said, “Um, I prefer to keep my professional and social lives separate, you know?” It felt a lot colder in the car all of a sudden, and it got even colder when she opened it and a hard wind blew in. “We better move before Denise throws one of her famous tantrums.”

I felt like an idiot during the shoot, acting like this girl was into me when she’d just dissed me. I should’ve spun it like I meant we’d get ice cream on our own so the paparazzi would get real candids of us, but it was too late. The photographer stayed outside the ice cream place and
shot us through the window. We pretended to order, but they already had a chocolate cone with rainbow sprinkles for me and vanilla with a cherry on top for Lisa. It
was
dumb to be getting ice cream when it was freezing out, but no one reading the glossy would figure it out, even with us in our winter coats. Your brain pretty much turns off when you read those things.

The photographer shot us from a short distance as we walked back to the parking lot, like he was trying not to get caught. As we approached the car, he said, “Now pretend you’ve spotted me and look back.”

We turned our heads, and when we were getting into the backseat, he said, “Lisa, I want you to shield your face, and Jonny, stick your tongue out at the camera, like, ‘Screw you, man, I just want to hang out with my girl.’ ”

I did it, and we got inside and shut the door, and Lisa opened the other side and dumped her ice cream on the ground when Denise called out that we were done. Since it was vanilla, it was like the ice cream disappeared into the snow, and the cherry was on top of the whole parking lot. She stuck out her hand for me to shake and said, “It was an honor meeting you, sir, and, of course, playing the illustrious role of your lady friend.” From her seat she did a fake curtsy and bow before tapping on her iPhone. I didn’t know if I should wait for Jane or what, but without looking up she said, “Door’s unlocked.”

I went back to our car, with Walter escorting me. Jane kept typing on her phone and said, “Well,
that
was a really good use of our time.”

Even if I was way more famous, Lisa acted like she was twice my age, and I should’ve known from the beginning she’d say no to going out. It’d be like me dating a six-year-old. She’d make it as an actress and as a singer, because she wasn’t a normal kid. She was an adult in a kid’s body. If you were just a kid in a kid’s body, you
might
make it, too, as long as you had good management. If you weren’t either, it was harder to tell.

A
t the end of the grueling first leg of the Midwest stretch of eight shows in eight nights, the glossy came out but without anything about me and Lisa in it. The label told us it was bumped till next week. The glossy would never bump a Tyler paparazzi spread, if they were lucky enough to get him in the first place.

Even though we were all traveling together, I didn’t have any downtime to hang out with the Latchkeys again, and I was so tired each night that I didn’t need anything, I just fell asleep after doing my homework and writing my first slavery-unit essay, on Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad. She didn’t write her own autobiography, though. A white woman who knew her did the actual writing. Her own Alan Fontana.

There was no chance to check email, and I got worried that maybe the guy was an impostor and I’d given him a candid and some info on Jane, not that the photo or info were so private. But the guy could think that
I
was an impostor, too, pretending to be a celeb by acting like I didn’t want him to know who I was. The idiot impostors on the Internet announced right away they were me, like it was no big deal to confab with possible child predators.

I hadn’t played a show in St. Louis since we moved to L.A., to distance my image, so I’d never been back. Jane had gone three times,
to visit Grandma Pat on her way to meetings in New York. Now that the heartland was a major plank of our new marketing strategy, Jane wanted to ramp up my Midwest connection a little more, at least here. So she’d set up a feature profile with a national morning show that was traveling to St. Louis and filming me here, and then we’d do a live interview the next morning with an abbreviated outdoor concert.

I didn’t recognize the city much when we got in. I probably never really knew it except for our neighborhood in Dogtown and my school. The Four Seasons where we were staying, for instance, could’ve been any city and I wouldn’t have known the difference. But most places in America are like that, so it’s not St. Louis’s fault. And I was young when we left so it didn’t have the time to get into my memory.

We had a few hours to kill before we filmed the feature in the afternoon. Jane told me she was going to visit Grandma Pat in her old-age home. “You can rest up,” she said in my hotel room.

I hadn’t gone there the last year we were in St. Louis. It was hard to remember what Grandma Pat even looked like. She wouldn’t remember what I looked like, either, unless she followed me through the media. And maybe there’d be a chance to ask her about my father.

Before Jane left, I said, “Wait, I think I’ll go.”

“You sure, baby?” She almost seemed like she was going to cry for a second, like she didn’t really want to go by herself and couldn’t believe I was offering to do it with her. “You don’t have to.”

“I know. I want to.”

“She may not know who you are. Her mind isn’t all there.” She calls her once a week, and the calls have been getting shorter and shorter.

“I don’t mind,” I said.

Jane thought about it and said okay. The car service drove us to a place that was more like a hotel than an old-age home. I forgot we’d switched her to a luxury one after I signed with the label. Everywhere we went were old people with wheelchairs and walkers and canes. A lot of old dancers have to use canes because of arthritis and injuries. The one cool thing was I didn’t have to wear my hat or sunglasses, since no one knew who I was. Old people don’t know anyone famous unless they’re their own age. The best would be an old guy who used
to be a businessman and didn’t have any grandchildren. I wonder if the tweens today will remember me when they’re old. They’d remember someone like MJ, but that’s a deeper level of cultural penetration I haven’t achieved yet.

Grandma Pat’s room was what you might get in a two-star hotel, with a small bed and an armchair and a TV and bathroom but not much else. I’ve asked Jane before if we could send her memorabilia, but she said it’s a hazard to have small objects around because she might try to swallow them, like a baby. At least when you’re a baby you don’t realize everyone is running your life for you. I guess some old people don’t realize it, either.

She was sitting in the armchair. She has Jane’s nose and forehead, except Grandma Pat’s has all these age spots and wrinkles and red splotches like zits for old people. Jane had to tell her her name a few times, and Grandma Pat said, “Jane is my daughter,” and Jane was like, “Yes, Mom,
I’m
Jane,
I’m
your daughter.”

Grandma Pat saw me for the first time and said, “Hiya, boy.”

It was strange how she didn’t know what the hell was going on but she could speak fine. Jane asked, loud, “Do you remember Jonathan? Your grandson?”

Grandma Pat looked longer this time. She finally said, “Michael?” I guess she’d met Michael Carns a lot of times when she used to babysit for me. I didn’t know if it was more sad or weird that she’d remember his name and not mine.

“No, Mom, not Michael,
Jonathan,
” Jane said. She seemed really upset by the mistake, like she was watching her mother’s brain depart the realm in front of her. “He’s
Jonathan
.”

Grandma Pat didn’t say anything. I probably should’ve been upset or scared by her because she had early onset dementia, and it would’ve been nice to have a grandmother who gave you gifts and played with you, but in a way it was relaxing. She didn’t know about “Guys vs. Girls,” she didn’t know about Tyler Beats, she didn’t even remember what my name was. I was just a boy to her. And not even
a boy,
only
boy
. But I definitely wouldn’t be able to ask her about my father, even if Jane left the room.

“So we made a lot of additions to our house in L.A.,” Jane said.

“That’s nice,” Grandma Pat said.

“It’s going to be featured in a big magazine in a few months.”

“That’s nice,” she said again.

Jane said, “Actually, we’re living in a halfway house.” There was silence for a few seconds, and you could see Jane feeling bad that she’d messed around with her. She asked in a cheerful voice, “What did you do last night?” Grandma Pat didn’t answer, so Jane repeated, “Mom, what did you do last night? Can you remember?”

Jane pointed to a DVD case of a movie next to the TV. “Did you watch that movie?” Grandma Pat nodded, but she had no clue. “We met him, Mom.” Jane grabbed the DVD case and showed her the cover. It was one of those comedies where the lead actor and actress are back-to-back with their arms folded, like they can’t stand each other, even though you know they’ll get together. It didn’t make any sense for Grandma Pat to watch something like that. Bad content-demo pairing. “We met the star of it a few months ago at a party. Isn’t that exciting? That your daughter is meeting movie stars?”

Grandma Pat shrugged. She
really
didn’t care about celebs. The nurse who gave her her meds each day was more famous to her than the movie star everyone in America knew. A celeb is only a celeb if you remember them. It’s like we disappear if no one is paying any attention. We think we have all the power, but it’s actually the public who decides, just like with politicians. Except it’s really the record and movie execs and probably a few guys in a room in Washington, D.C., who control the purse strings and give the public the next number-one Billboard singer and movie star and president, but they make it seem like the public chose it so no one gets too upset.

Out of nowhere, Grandma Pat said, “My daughter put me here. She works at the supermarket.”

“Mom,” Jane said. “I’ve been telling you, I don’t work at the supermarket anymore. We have a lot of money now. Jonathan’s a famous singer and I manage him.”

“My daughter failed a class in high school. But she didn’t want to go to summer school. So she never finished.”

I couldn’t imagine Jane being in high school, taking math tests and writing essays and talking with boys. It would’ve been over twenty years ago. Jane probably couldn’t imagine herself at that age anymore, either.

“I got my GED,” Jane said. “And it wasn’t that I didn’t
want
to go. You and Dad were pressuring me to—”

“Have you met Robert?” Grandma Pat asked.

“Yes, of course. He was my father.”

Grandma Pat turned to me. “Have
you
met him?”

“He died before I was born,” I said.

“That’s too bad. Robert was a very nice man.”

I wondered what she would say about Albert, if she remembered him at all. Jane snorted and said, “Pretty selective memory over here.” She asked a few more questions about how the staff was treating her, but Grandma Pat either didn’t give a straight answer or she nodded a bunch of times to herself. She wasn’t mean or anything now, but I got the feeling she hadn’t been the funnest person to be around when her brain was working right. If it was hard to imagine Jane in high school, it was harder to imagine Grandma Pat with a normal brain and Jane hanging out with her. I’ll visit Jane at least once a week when I put her in an old-age home.

Grandma Pat said she needed to use the bathroom, which meant we had to call a nurse. I got really sad watching the nurse hold her with her walker, that every time she went to the bathroom she needed help. Then I was like, Wait, if
I
ever use a public bathroom, I need Walter’s help for protection, too. Except with me, it’s because a million people would try to get in there with me, to make out with me or molest me or take a picture of my penis. No one wants to be in the bathroom with Grandma Pat.

Jane whispered that we should go. She kissed Grandma Pat on top of her head and told me I didn’t have to say good-bye and could wait in the hall. But I squeezed Grandma Pat’s arm anyway when she stood up in her walker since I was afraid a hug might knock her over.

Jane was quiet on the ride back to the hotel and didn’t multitask. She scoped out the Scottrade Center and took care of other business while
the film crew drove me to Carson Elementary. The school looked really small when we drove up to it, a couple short redbrick buildings with a soccer field behind them. I remembered it being humongous, but that’s what happens when you get older, the things that used to impress you now seem stupid, like how even though I still get nervous before performing I don’t think it’s a huge deal, but if you’d told me two years ago that I’d be playing Madison Square Garden on Valentine’s Day, I’d have had an accident in my pants.