Trophy Kid (6 page)

seven

The Fourth of July (and all its fireworks) fell on a Monday that year. On Tuesday Tom and I were back working in the writing room above the garage. Well, we weren’t exactly working; we were playing Space Safari on Tom’s laptop.

“Jessica and I are having a barbecue on Sunday,” Tom said as he broke down the defense shield around my ship, which pretty much signaled the end of the game. “Nothing like you had here yesterday, but I thought maybe you’d like to come over.”

“Okay,” I said. I’d been wanting to see where Tom and Jessica lived but felt funny about asking if I could come over.

“Rusty’s son, Gary, will be there.”

“Oh,” I said, going over to the sofa and then pulling two sticks of gum from the pack Tom had set on the coffee table.

“Jessica’s niece, Martie, is coming over, too. She’s about your age. But I thought it might be good for Gary to hang out with you. He’s having a rough time with his folks breaking up, and Rusty—well, you saw him at the ball game.”

“Why do you think hanging around me would be good for Gary?” I asked, sort of fishing for a compliment.

“You’re cool,” Tom said, without missing a beat.

Good compliment.

“Okay, let’s see, where were we?” Tom said, pulling a legal pad from his black leather briefcase; the computer was only for video games.

I could hear Greta’s familiar speedy ascent of the stairs.

“How’s it going, boys?” she said with a smile upon entering.

“Great,” I said firmly, trying to say
Can’t you see we’re busy
without actually saying it.

“Tom, how do
you
think it’s going? Do you have anything I can read?” Greta asked, coyly.

“Not yet,” Tom casually responded.

Greta, as usual, was undeterred. “Well, I’m not expecting it to be
War and Peace
at this point, but you’ve been working for a few weeks now, and it seems reasonable that you should have some pages I can look at.”

“I don’t like to show anything before it’s ready,” Tom said, standing, or in this case sitting, firm.

“Is that one of your superstitions?” Greta asked.

“You might say that,” Tom replied, unfazed.

“Fine, then,” she said. “Well, I have to return some things. Would you like Octavia to make you lunch?”

I looked at Tom, hoping he’d want to go out for lunch.

“No thanks,” he said. “I think we’ll go out.” He turned to me. “What do you think?”

“Out,” I said.

“All right, I’ll be going.” Greta focused her famously beautiful green eyes on Tom, and her normal cheerful smile disappeared. “I really would like to read something soon,” she said, her words fired as precisely as the ammo we’d been firing in our video game.

Tom took a moment to respond. “Okay, you got it,” he said. “I’ll put together some pages for you.”

“Thank you,” Greta said, her America’s Sweetheart smile returning.

“Oh, we’re having a barbecue at our house on Sunday. Is it okay if Joe comes?”

“I don’t have a problem with that, but I’ll check with Robert. Bye now.” Greta turned and sped down the stairs.

“Didn’t she return stuff yesterday?” Tom asked.

“She’s always buying and returning stuff,” I said. “Dresses, shoes, tables, curtains, wine, pillows, rugs—”

“I think I get the idea,” Tom interrupted.

“She would have returned me if she could,” I said.

“You don’t really think that, do you?”

“No. But sometimes I feel like I’m not the kid she thinks she bought.”

Tom leaned forward, propping his right elbow on the desk and setting his chin in the palm of his hand.

“Who’s the kid she thinks she bought?” Tom asked.

“The kid they take out in public. The one who’s forever grateful to them and praises them for rescuing him from his pitiful, tragic, orphan life. I mean, what kid wouldn’t want to be adopted by movie stars?”

“I know Greta and Robert aren’t perfect, but they don’t seem that horrible, either. In their own way, I think they’re doing the best they can.”

I was ready to tell Tom something important, something that would make him see how inept Greta and Robert were as my so-called parents.

“You don’t know what it was like when I first got here,” I said.

“Tell me.”

Before I left Dubrovnik with Robert and Greta at the age of three, one of the soldiers at the military base squatted down and gave me a shoe box. Inside were photographs of my mother, father, and sister they’d taken from our apartment. There were also several small toys: a top, some hand-carved animals, a snow globe of Dubrovnik, and a tiny metal fire engine. Another soldier handed Robert a small travel bag containing some of my clothes.

I kept the shoe box in my lap all the way from Dubrovnik to Los Angeles; I even took it with me each time I went to the bathroom.

I held it tightly in the limo that took us from the airport to Robert and Greta’s Bel-Air house.

When Robert carried me up the stairs to my new bedroom, I clutched my shoe box as I twisted and turned and cried to be put down.

While in Dubrovnik, Robert had hired a Croatian woman named Hana to be my live-in nanny and translator until I learned English. Greta had gone all out in putting together the perfect boy’s room, and Hana explained that it was now mine.

The walls were powder blue. My little bed was covered with a comforter decorated with Winnie-the-Pooh characters. There were at least a half-dozen stuffed animals on the bed.

On the walls were framed cels from Disney movies like
The Little Mermaid, 101 Dalmatians,
and
Lady and the Tramp.

There was a Mickey Mouse dresser with Mickey stenciled onto the drawers, and a Donald Duck entertainment center.

There were tables on either side of my bed, one with the image of Aladdin and the other with the Genie.

I later found out that Disney had donated most of the furniture and even the highly valuable cels because the room was to be featured in
Home and Style
magazine.

There was a huge treasure chest that Greta opened, revealing dozens of toys.

“And look at this, Joey,” Greta said enthusiastically through Hana.

Greta turned off the light: the entire ceiling glowed with stars. Even though I was amazed, I was determined not to like anything about my new home, so I kept my pout on.

After a moment, Greta flipped the light back on.

Robert finally set me down on the floor. “Do you like your room?” Hana translated for Robert.

I ignored the question, sat on the
Song of the South
rug in the middle of the room, and opened my shoe box. One by one I took out the photographs of my mother, father, and sister; the top; the hand-carved animals; the tourist-shop snow globe of Dubrovnik; and the tiny metal fire engine and placed them on the rug in front of me.

Greta tried to remove my old clothes and get me into my brand-new Goofy pajamas, but I refused to let her. She finally gave up and left the room, along with Robert, leaving Hana to get me changed, washed up, and into bed. Robert and Greta then came back into the room and attempted to kiss me goodnight, but I flopped onto my stomach and buried my head beneath my pillow.

When I awoke after my first night in the house in Bel-Air, the pictures of my mother, father, and sister, along with my old toys, had been placed on the Aladdin table on the right side of my bed. On the Genie table, there was a picture of Robert and Greta and me taken in Dubrovnik. In the photo, Greta and Robert wore movie-star smiles, while I had a surprised look on my face, like the photographer had made flowers appear in one hand while he snapped the picture with the other—which was exactly what he had done to distract me from crying.

I knocked the picture of me with Robert and Greta onto the floor. I then looked around for my shoe box. I wasn’t planning on staying in this house and wanted to be ready when my real mother and father came back from heaven, or wherever they were, to take me home. It wasn’t anywhere in the room, so I took the long journey down the stairs and screamed “box” in Croatian over and over again.

Greta came running down the stairs in her robe and found me trying to open the front door. I don’t know why I was doing that. I guess I thought I might find the box that had transported my possessions outside. Or maybe I just wanted to go home. Greta pulled me away from the door and got down on the floor with me, trying to find out what was the matter.

“Box, box,” I kept crying in Croatian.

By this time our cook, Octavia, had arrived on the scene, her hands caked in flour.

“Octavia, go get Hana. She’s in the room next to Joe’s,” Greta ordered, in desperation. Octavia sprinted up the stairs, leaving a series of gradually fading flour handprints on the stair rail.

“Joey, what is it honey?” Greta asked, while holding me firmly in place so I wouldn’t run off.

“Box, box!” I cried.

Finally, a groggy Hana, also in her robe, came down the stairs and asked me what was the matter.

“Box!” I said again.

“He is saying ‘box,’” Hana said to Greta.

“Box?” Greta repeated several times, searching for meaning. “Oh, he must mean that old shoe box his things were in. Why would he want that?”

“Box!” I shouted louder than ever.

“Oh, my god!” Greta said, exasperated. “Octavia, look in the trash and see if you can find a shoe box.”

Several minutes later Octavia returned with the shoe box, which now bore tomato stains, bits of egg yolk, and coffee grounds.

“Box,” I said happily when she handed it to me.

I ran to the stairs and began climbing them. Hana picked me up and carried me to my room, with Greta following. Octavia had gone back to the kitchen to finish preparing breakfast.

Once in my room, I went to the Aladdin table and put all my possessions in the box.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Greta said.

She then spotted the photo of her, Robert, and me on the floor. She walked over, picked it up, and put it back on the Genie table.

“Hana, please try to explain to him that this is his home now,” Greta said. She then looked at the Goofy alarm clock that was next to their photo.

“Oh, no, I’m going to be late for the studio,” she said.

Greta got down on the floor with me. I didn’t look at her. “Joey, we want you to be happy here.” She looked at Hana. “Translate,” she ordered.

Hana translated, but I still didn’t look up. Instead, I shook the Dubrovnik snow globe and watched the snow come down over my city.

“Joey, Mommy has to go to work, but when I get home, we’ll make everything better for you.” She cranked her neck toward Hana: “Translate.”

Hana translated, but all I did was give the snow globe another shake.

“It’s nothing, really, right? Do I need to be concerned? I should go to work, right?” Greta asked Hana, who, having only worked for Greta for a few days, was reticent to offer an answer.

“Okay, I’m going to work,” Greta said to Hana, her voice uncertain. “Everything will be all right, right?”

“I will take care of him. Don’t you worry, Ms. Powell,” Hana said reassuringly.

“Okay. I’ll call you in a little while. Bye, Joey,” she said to me in a sweet voice, desperate to get even a nugget of sweetness in return. I shook the snow globe again, and she left the room.

My insistence on keeping my possessions from home in my shoe box continued into the next week. My face was in a constant pout and I screamed a lot.

Robert decided it might be a good idea to bring in an expert. A child psychiatrist, Filmore Moody, MD, PhD, and SAG (Screen Actors Guild—Dr. Moody had his own show on cable), came to our house to assess the situation.

After spending forty-five minutes with me, during which he tried to engage me by playing games with blocks and with the stuffed animals that normally were huddled together on top of my bed, Dr. Moody told Robert and Greta that there were no easy solutions to the grief I was experiencing. It was imperative that he see me no fewer than two times a week until I “took root” in my new home.

Eight months later, despite all the games with toys, blocks, and stuffed animals; despite all the crayon drawings and the application of every known modern technique for dealing with my grief—including having me rip up countless photos of Robert and Greta (old head shots were provided by the boxload from their respective talent agencies) until I burned out my aggression toward them—I still hadn’t taken root in my new home.