Unscripted Joss Byrd (2 page)

“You didn't drink anything yet, did you?” She shuffles me out the door. “'Cause we're not stopping till we get there, baby!”

At the Lobster Roll, my mother pulls into the parking lot; late-night diners are stepping out of the restaurant patting their bellies. There must be chowder and oyster crackers in there. I imagine Terrance Rivenbach and Peter Bustamante, my director and executive producer, sitting inside with bibs on. I want to run in and tell them that Viva's kidnapping me, that it isn't my idea to go. I imagine them sending my mother away but letting me stay. The waiter would give me a bib, and Terrance and Peter and me would clink lobster claws together as Viva drove away. I'd stay in the hotel room by myself and go to the set alone and shoot my scenes without her watching me. I could breathe without her telling me the right way to do it.

My mother pulls a cigarette from the sun visor and lights it in her mouth, so I roll my window down and stick my head out. I can see all the stars I rarely ever looked at until we came to Montauk Point.
I see you now, stars. Do you see me? I was a nobody. But I've been working so hard, so hard, to be one of you.

*   *   *

“We're gonna find you the best agent in Hollywood.” My mother is talking too loudly for the library. She wants people to hear that I got the part of Tallulah Leigh, and I'm gonna be in a movie. “An agent for real actors, the serious ones—you know, like the Fannings—kids who work with Sandra Bullock and Matt Damon. Not Disney actors.” She taps the keys on the computer and scrolls through pictures of kids with tiny words beside them. “We have to find someone big. Big! A real mover and shaker. And then we'll be on our—Bingo!”

She smiles her jackpot smile and starts dialing her cell. It's embarrassing when she turns on the speakerphone. The old man who's reading a newspaper and the lady behind the horseshoe desk are staring at us.

“Creative Team Management.”

“May I speak with Doris Cole please?” My mother grabs my arm. “This is Viva Byrd, mother of Joss Byrd.” Wink. “She's playing Tallulah Leigh in the film
Hit the Road
.”

“Please hold.”

My mother whispers, “She's going to make you a star!”

“Ms. Byrd! This is Doris Cole. I've been expecting your call,” Doris says, because that's the kind of mover and shaker she is.

*   *   *

“So?” Viva says now, staring into the window of the Lobster Roll. “Where are we going?”

When I pull my head back inside and stare at my bare feet that don't quite touch the mat, I feel poor—poor and sad and small. “Back to the hotel,” I answer, because I don't want to be a nobody again, and if we go back to our apartment in Tyrone, Pennsylvania, I will be.

“And this is what
you
want?” she asks, exhaling heavy smoke out the window.

I want to feel full and rich inside, the way I feel when the French toast on set is soft and warm, made especially for me, and when a wardrobe girl gives me ankle boots and designer jeans with the tags still on, even when I know they aren't for keeps.

I look back at the road. “Yes.”

Viva dangles her cigarette over the steering wheel. “Will I ever have to force you to do the work again?”

I shake my head.

She turns to face me; there are creases around her mouth I never noticed before. “I can't hear you.”

“No.”

She pelts her cigarette like a dart out the window. Dust whirls into the air when she turns the truck around.

Twenty-seven … twenty-six … twenty-five …
On the way back to the Beachcomber, I count the lampposts backward and hope that when I get down to zero, this night will subtract into nothing, too.

I remember that first time we spoke with Doris Cole over the speakerphone. She told us that her clients are the “cream of the crop.” She said, “No pageant princesses, no jazz hands, just real kids with honest-to-goodness talent.” By the end of that first phone call, Viva and Doris and me were all on a first-name basis. “Partners.” That's what my mother called us. And I was rising to the top. I just hope that someone lets me know the second I get there because it's gotta be better than this.

*   *   *

Wouldn't you know that now that I'm in my pajamas, I'm not sleepy anymore. I've already brushed my teeth and washed my face, so now I'm just running the water to sound busy. It's all I can do to get some privacy. The bathroom is the only alone time I get around here. I poke around Viva's makeup bag and use a little bit of her lip balm from a tiny red tin. If there's an expiration date for makeup, it's definitely passed. The blush and eye shadow don't have covers, and her lipsticks have mismatched caps. I don't know why she shaves the pencils into the bag instead of into the trash.

Finally I open the door. Viva pats the space beside her on her bed. “Come.” I guess we're cool again; we're back to normal. But I wait for a second. I'm not that easy to win back. “Aw, come on, crawl in,” she says.

Even though my mother has brushed her teeth, her whole being still smells like cigarettes. I settle in next to her and think about how she might seem so much younger if she didn't smoke or if she ran errands in workout clothes and a ponytail like some of the other mothers, instead of jeans and high heels and lots of makeup. Sometimes I leave magazine pages around the house with pictures of “On-the-Go Celebrity Moms” who look fit in yoga pants and shop at a store called Whole Foods, but Viva doesn't get the hint.

“Whaddaya say we take our spending money and have ourselves some of that lobster tomorrow night?” she asks in a gravelly voice.

Nodding into her chest, I curl against her shape.

“Didn't that place look yum? We could get dressed up, you could get a Shirley Temple, I could get a nice wine. We can people watch. You'd like that, wouldn't you?”

The name Shirley Temple makes me cringe. I don't think my mother even remembers half the things she says when she's angry.

“Oh, I know what else we could do,” she says soothingly as she reaches for her laptop. Inside her T-shirt, her heavy, loose boobs fall toward the mattress.

When my first movie came out, critics called me the “next Tatum O'Neal.” Since I didn't know who that was, Doris told us to study Tatum O'Neal in a movie called
Paper Moon
. That's what Doris said—not “watch” but “study.” That made it sound real important. Right away, I didn't think I'd like the movie because it was in black and white. But when I took a good look at Tatum mouthing off line after line after line without missing a beat, I could've sworn that she was in color. I've studied
Paper Moon
so many times that I know all of Tatum's lines. She's the best actor in the movie, even better than her own dad, who's in it, too.

To be honest, I would've been happy to be called just an okay actor instead of the next Tatum O'Neal. Critics really put the pressure on.

“Fully charged. We're in luck.” My mother wakes the DVD. It starts right back up from where we left off. We bought our laptop when I got my first job. It's definitely time for a new one.

“You see that spark in Tatum's eye? That's what won her an Oscar.” My mother's comments weave in and out at the usual places. I've memorized her lines just as good as Tatum's. “There's the scene … right there. The gold standard. Such a big attitude in that little body.”

I press my head deep into my pillow. Tatum's close-up is all tears and freckles.

“She's so scrappy. That's what everybody sees in you.”

That's why you have to work as much as you can …

“That's why you have to work as much as you can while it's still cute to be scrappy. We have to ride this wave as long as possible.”

Just ride it and ride it and ride it …

“Just ride it and ride it and ride it.”

Doris says that puberty can be the end of a child actor. Girls who stay petite and flat can play young parts for a very long time. But if you've seen my mother, who's tall and definitely not flat, you know that probably won't happen for me.

The laptop settles on my mother's stomach as she stretches her legs. “Tatum was lucky. It was easy for her to transition to teen roles because she grew up beautiful. But you might, you might not. If we save every penny now you won't have to worry about it either way.”

I'll worry no matter what. Savings or no savings, if I have to grow up at all, I'd like to grow up beautiful.

“And if you work enough now, you definitely won't have to struggle when you're my age. Look at those eyes … God, that Tatum…”

After I'd studied the movie too many times to count, Doris told me that
Paper Moon
could've been shot in color, but it was made in black and white on purpose, to be more believable. Who knew? That's another thing I learned from
Paper Moon
besides how to be scrappy: you can get away with anything if you do it on purpose. The way I figure it, as long as I keep a straight face, people will believe that I'm a real actor, when really all I am is a kid who wanted to skip school that first day.

“Nobody ever pushed me. Nobody ever thought I was worth pushing. You have something, Joss. You really do,” Viva says, adding new words to her comments. “And the fact that you have these opportunities … well, who would've imagined?” She's braiding my hair like she used to when I was little. “I just don't want you to waste all of this. I wish you could understand that.” She lets the braid loose and combs through it with her fingers. “Life's hard enough when you haven't got a talent. I should know. I don't want your life to be hard.”

When I take a long, deep breath, I can make out the sweet smell of my mother's lotion hiding beneath her stale layer of smoke. Tatum singing is the last thing I hear before I fall asleep. Her voice almost convinces me that everything will be just grand.

“Keep your sunny side up, up. Hide the side that gets blue!”

 

2

“I'm so happy to meet you, Joss. I've watched
Hit the Road
a dozen times. You're so good in it. So good.” Terrance Rivenbach, the famous director, hugs me with both arms. “Can I tell you a secret?” He has twinkly eyes; that's my favorite kind of face. All at once I'm nervous. I don't know how to talk to someone who's more handsome in person than he is on the Internet. “You're the only Norah I want.” He winks.

Terrance's office is full of boxes. All that's out are file folders, pictures of his family, and a coffeemaker. “Let's sit down, Joss. Sorry. This is a new building. We're all just getting settled.” We walk around the boxes to get to the chairs near the window. “How do you like LA?” He smiles kindly and hands me a warm bottle of water from a box.

I uncap the bottle but don't drink. “Fine.”

“It's a long way from Tyrone, Pennsylvania. Think you'll want to come live here someday?” He tilts his head toward the window. “You're getting awfully busy filming movies.”

“I guess.” I peel the label off my water. I should tell him that it's our goal—Viva's and mine—to live in Beverly Hills. Our favorite houses are the ones with ivy up the sides. You can tell they've stood there since what Viva calls the Golden Age of Hollywood, which was when “darn” was a curse, people kept their clothes on, and the camera faded after kissing. Even if you just moved into your ivy house, you can pretend that you've had money since the Golden Age. But I don't say any of that to Terrance.

“How do you like acting?”

It's the one thing, the only thing that makes me special
,
I think. “It's good,” I say. I'm failing the interview already.
Damn.

*   *   *

Every day in Montauk the cast-and-crew van shuttles us between the Beachcomber and our production basecamp and our filming location. This morning I have rehearsal first. Then I'll tutor for a while before we shoot. Our driver is following the handmade
TO SET
signs that lead us through narrower and narrower streets of tiny beach houses. When we pull up to what's supposed to be TJ and Norah's house, the crew is hauling equipment to the backyard. I'm embarrassed straight off by this rickety place with a dirt driveway because everyone's been saying that I'm perfect for the part of Norah. How can they tell I really am a dirt-driveway kid? (That is, if I had a driveway.) And I'm also embarrassed for Terrance because the character TJ is based on him as a kid;
The Locals
is about him, his actual sister, Norah, his actual evil stepdad, and his actual dumpy house. Why would somebody who's rich want the world to know that he used to be poor?

“Uh-oh! Here comes trouble!” In the backyard, a happy Terrance holds his arms open. “Look out, Montauk!” He squeezes me so tight—the exact way he hugged me when we first met—that I can smell his aftershave and his morning coffee.

I squeeze him right back. “Morning, Terrance.”

“When are you going to start calling me TJ?” he asks. But I can't call him that. TJ is a kid's name—a boy with a rainbow lollipop.

If you've ever met Terrance Rivenbach you'd never guess he grew up in a shack. I can tell you one thing: the minute Viva and me dig our way out of the hole we're in, we aren't gonna look back. We're in what my mother calls a “steaming pile of debt without a shovel.” It's stupid that we're in debt because we haven't got anything good. I mean it—nothing. For such a long time, I've wanted this pair of chunky headphones that I can use on plane rides. But all Viva can say is, “What do you need those for? They're ridiculous.” I want them because they would cancel out noise—her voice, for example—when I need my privacy.