No Ordinary Life (26 page)

He's acting
, I think, the revelation striking like a bolt of lightning.

Chris says something funny, and Griff offers a retort that causes the room to chuckle, then he turns my way and gives his signature Elmer Fudd grin. Usually I return the smirk, but this morning my face doesn't respond, and after an eternal second, he turns away.

“I want to change that line,” Chris says. “I want Molly to say it instead of Gabby.”

At the mention of Molly's name, I pull my attention back to the script and scan the page to find Gabby's name.

The line he wants to give Molly is, “What a man-whore,” said in response to Jeremy bringing Linda, the obsessed groupie, home for dinner only a day after he broke up with his girlfriend.

“Molly can't say that,” I say.

“Good morning, Faye,” Chris says, as if just noticing I'm in the room. “Why not?”

I'm surprised when my response is remarkably calm, my distraction over Griff causing me to forget my normal reticence. “Because she's only four.”

“That's what makes it funny.”

“That's what makes it inappropriate.”

His face shifts almost imperceptibly, and the air in the room shifts with it.

For four months, I've witnessed Chris's temper and have learned that you never want it directed at you. Everyone else knows it as well, and I feel them watching now with horror and thrill, sympathetic for what's about to happen while at the same time elated that it's not happening to them.

“Are you a writer?” Chris says.

“No, but…”

“A producer? A director? No. Do you have any fucking idea what the audience wants? No. So, shut the fuck up.” His voice is not so much loud as mean. “After that…” he goes on.

“Molly's not saying that,” I say, interrupting him, my voice barely loud enough for anyone to hear.

Chris stops and his eyes drill into me.

Seconds tick by and no one breathes, or perhaps it's only me that is holding my breath.

“Fine,” he says finally. “Gabby, you'll keep that line.”

Jeremy, who sits beside me, leans over and whispers, “You shouldn't have done that.”

“He's not God,” I whisper back.

“But he thinks he is.”

57

I
think our day is done. Molly and I return from lunch and are on our way to pick up Tom from studio school when my phone buzzes.

I nearly groan when I see the sender is Beth.
Let It Shine recording session bumped to 2:00 today.

Penance for my impunity or simply bad luck, I'm not sure. All I know for certain is that our short day has just turned long, and my only hope for making it to Emily's open house is for the rehearsal to go smoothly and for us to finish the recording in one or two takes.

We pick up Tom and walk him to the limo to be driven home by Mack, then Molly and I head off to Newman Scoring Stage on the other side of the lot. The table read this morning took four hours, technically that's an hour more than Molly's supposed to work in a day and only leaves half an hour for her to be on the lot, but it never works out that way. Now that Mack drives us, we no longer even have to leave the lot to conserve Molly's precious minutes. The union rep responsible for the studio's compliance with the child labor laws now has no way of monitoring how long we've been here. Chris and Beth are careful to keep us moving from location to location so we are never in one spot too long, and sending us to the music studio is one of their favorite tricks.

“Okay, Bug, let's do this,” I say, pulling the music sheets from my bag so I can read the lyrics to her as we walk.

“I tiwred,” she says, shuffling along beside me, her eyes on the sidewalk.

I put the music back in my bag and lift her into my arms. Her arms wrap around my neck, her head slumps onto my shoulder, and before I've taken ten steps, I feel her heavy snores against my neck.

I carry her to the courtyard beside the building and sit down on a bench, jostling her lightly to wake her. Her response is to nuzzle tighter against me and mumble, “Want to swleep.”

I check my phone. Our call time is in an hour.

“Okay, Bug, ten more minutes of sleep then we need to rehearse.”

This has become my method of mothering, pure negotiation, this for that—the line of parenting and managing blurred into a hazy relationship of compromise. The mom side of me wants to tell her to nap because she's already worked hard and deserves a break, while the manager side of me knows her day isn't over, and if she shows up unprepared, there will be hell to pay, our day indeterminately extended until it gets done, so we should rehearse and make it easy on ourselves.

I set the alarm on my phone to ring in ten minutes, lean back on the bench, and close my eyes as well. Griff looking at me through the lens fills my mind, and when the alarm bleats, I'm disoriented, my eyes darting around, searching for Griff. Then I realize I'm in the courtyard of the music studio with Molly asleep on my lap, and I close my eyes again to regain my bearings. Molly's deep rhythmic breaths pulse like a soothing metronome against my chest, and only when my phone rings do I realize I drifted to sleep again.

The call is from the studio director asking where we are. Our call time was ten minutes ago.

Molly's still half-asleep when I carry her into the room, the musicians and the director glowering at us for making them wait. And they have yet to discover the worst of it.

Molly is utterly unprepared.

58

I
keep looking at my watch, a fervent wish for this day to be over.

When I'm certain there's no chance of making it to Emily's open house, I call Sean and ask him to take my place.

Life has turned out unfair for Emily, and I feel awful about it. In Yucaipa, she was the center of our universe—the oldest, the leader, the one with all the activities and friends. Now Molly and Tom are in the spotlight, and she has been relegated to the sidelines. Everywhere we go people clamber to see Molly and Tom while she is asked to step aside.

I haven't met her teachers or her friends and have yet to make it to one of her club soccer matches. Tonight was important. I needed to be there. I told her I would be there. My frustration makes my head pound. This wasn't my fault, or maybe it was. Perhaps I shouldn't have challenged Chris this morning, but I really had no idea it would lead to this. And truthfully, had Sean brought the kids home at a reasonable hour, Molly wouldn't be so exhausted and the recording session would be going better. Chris and Sean—I can't decide which one irritates me more.

“What do I get in return?” Sean asks when I get a hold of him.

“You get to meet your daughter's teachers and spend an extra night with Emily,” I say, rolling my eyes.

“Besides that. After all, I'm helping
you
out.”

“You know what, forget it,” I say. “Let's just skip the open house altogether, disappoint Emily, make her feel like no one gives a shit about her…”

“Whoa, settle down. I'll be there. I was just messing with you.”

“Thanks.” I sniffle back my frustration as I watch through the glass of the music studio as Molly flubs her lines for the twentieth time.

After I hang up, I call my mom to make sure Tom got home safely. He did, and the two of them are enjoying a dinner of hot dogs and chips in front of the television while watching a DVR recording of
The Voice
, and I'm so jealous that I can barely muster a thank-you before saying good-bye.

Finally, after a dozen more tries, we've maxed out our time on this side of the lot, and the director has no choice but to release us.

It's already dark when we walk outside. The sun has begun rising later and setting sooner, so each workday seems eternally longer, and I wonder if the shortage of daylight is contributing to our chronic exhaustion, making me worry that a vitamin D deficiency or perhaps some other deficiency is causing our constant fatigue.

“I did bad today,” Molly says, her face drawn and sad.

“No, baby, you were just tired,” I say, resting my hand on her shoulder.

She pulls away from my consolation and folds her arms across her chest, her disappointment in herself curling her small shoulders as she shuffles forward. Because no matter what I say, she knows that she did in fact do bad, and because of that, we wasted everyone's time and now we need to come back and do it again. I want to make it better, but I can't, because sometimes you screw up and you feel bad about it, and even if you're only four, that sucks, and no one, not even your mom, can change it.

“Hey, Bugabaloo.”

Molly's head snaps up. “Daddy!” She runs into Sean's open arms.

I look down at my phone to check the time, and my face goes red. Open house should still be in full swing. He stands beside our limo, Chris and Mack beside him.

“What are you doing here?” I say, trying to keep my voice level in front of our audience.

Sean bounces Molly up and down. “We are going to dinner.”

“Yeah!” Molly says, hugging his neck.

“Chris and Mack, will you excuse us?” I say.

The two men walk out of earshot.

“I mean, where's Emily? And why aren't you at her open house?”

“Chris called,” he says with a nod toward Chris, like I don't know who Chris is. “Asked if we could meet. Said he felt bad that he hadn't gotten to know Molly's other parent.”

My skin prickles as I glance at Chris. His eyes hold mine, his message clear—challenge him again and I'll be going the path of Rhonda.

“Where's Em?” I manage.

“I asked if it was okay if we skip the school bullshit, and she said that was cool with her. And since we were coming to the set, she called that kid Caleb, and they're going to hang together while Chris and I take this one to dinner.” He bounces Molly again, and she smiles.

“You sent her off with Caleb? Are you nuts? I told you what happened at the premiere.”

“Yeah, but your version wasn't nearly as funny as Emily's. I swear I nearly pissed my pants when she told me about the security guard running from the restroom and chasing them with his pants still unzipped as they took off in his cart.”

“Sean, it's not funny.”

“Christ, Faye, where's your sense of humor? It's hilarious.”

“She was drunk.”

“And you've never gotten drunk?”

“Not when I was twelve.”

“Man, you used to be fun. What happened?”

“I grew up.”

He shakes his head. “No wonder Em doesn't like you anymore.”

My heart pinches with the hurtful declaration.

“Sean, we should go,” Chris says, stepping forward. “Our reservation is at seven.”

Sean walks around me, loads Molly in the back of the limo, then climbs in after her.

Chris follows. Halfway in, he stops. “It was just a line, Faye. She's an actress, and it was just a line.” He slides the rest of the way in and closes the door.

Just a line.
And as I watch the limo drive toward the gates, my dad's voice comes back to me.
A line in the sand, Faye. At some point, we all need to draw our line and stand behind it.

I drew my line and look what happened.

“Hey.”

I look up to see Griff walking toward me, a sandwich in his hand.

“You're still here,” I say. “I thought there were no shoots today.”

“Exactly. The perfect time to figure out what the hell I'm doing so people think I'm spontaneously brilliant when I do it tomorrow. Where's Squidoo?” Griff's nickname for Molly. He either calls her that or Squid Junior.

“Hijacked by my ex and Chris.”

Griff's eyebrows rise. “They know each other?”

“They do now.”

“Scary.”

“Exactly.”

“So you're kidless?”

I look around me as if checking. “Looks that way.”

“Perfect. Then you can help me.”

Without waiting for my response, he pivots toward the soundstage, and I lope after him, perfectly happy to put off catching a cab home to face my mom and explain my latest parenting debacle.

The soundstage is eerily dark and quiet, and if Griff weren't a step ahead of me, I'd be creeped out. Cold as a coffin, my breath frosts in front of me, and the emergency lights provide only enough light to see vague shadows of discarded equipment and scaffolding that litter the corridors. We step onto the master bedroom set, and Griff flicks the breaker, blazing the room into blinding brightness.

The set is altered from its usual state, the bed set higher, the floor laid with green carpet.

“It's the dream sequence,” Griff explains. “And I need the floor to disappear.”

“How can I help?”

“I need you to be Helen.”

“Ha! No problem, I'll simply grow a foot, get a figure and a voice, become impossibly beautiful, and learn how to act.”

“You are beautiful, and I don't need you to act. I just need you to be her stand-in so I can figure this out.”

You think I'm beautiful?
I want to say, milking the offhand compliment for what it's worth, but I restrain myself.

He positions me beside the bed then walks behind the camera. “Say something and act it out then walk over to the mantel.”

“What do you want me to say?”

“Whatever's in your heart.”

“Two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions, on a sesame seed bun,” I sing as I pretend to stack all the elements into a sandwich then take a giant imaginary bite.

He laughs. “Profound.”

“I'm hungry.”

After several takes, Griff has the shots he needs, and I walk to where he is and watch over his shoulder as he pops the disc from the camera then slides it into his laptop.

He adds a filter, aligns the different shots so they're in sync, then says, “Ready?”

I feel his anticipation and my own heart picks up its pace.

I nod and he clicks play, and miraculously I watch as my body disappears and my shadow crosses the room to pick up the photo from the mantel.

“Whoa, that's amazing,” I say as Griff swivels, his face lit up.

I reach to hug him, but my head does not tilt and neither does his, our lips coming together as my arms wrap around his neck.

He pushes away, his hands pressing on my shoulders to put distance between us, then he stands, stumbles back, and the back of his hand rises to his mouth as if blotting away the kiss.

“I'm sorry,” he says.

“Sorry you kissed me, or sorry you're being a jerk?”

“Both.”

“What is it? Do I smell? Am I ugly? Do you just not like women?”

“I like women.”

“Just not me.”

“I especially like you.”

“So then, what is it? Is it because I kissed Chris?”

He snort laughs, a chortle through his nose that causes my skin to sizzle.

“I'm glad you find this amusing.”

“If that were the reason, I'd have to give up women altogether. Chris has kissed at least half the women in LA, and the ones he hasn't are the ones you don't want to kiss.”

I glare at him, not finding any of this the least bit funny.

He steps toward me and pulls me against his chest, then says, “I've given a lot of thought to kissing you, and it has nothing to do with Chris, but I decided it's not a good idea.”

There's no meanness in his tone, but the words cut like a knife just the same, and I can barely restrain myself from reaching up and forcing him to kiss me, proving that he's wrong, that kissing me is a good idea, a very good idea—that I'm a very desirable, very kissable, very good idea indeed. Instead I mumble, “I get it. A mom with three kids, a family that's not yours, that's not what you want.”

He rears back. “Where'd you come up with that? That's not it. Jesus, woman, will you at least let me say my piece? Damn it. Where was I? Damn frustrating.”

“
I'm
frustrating. That's hilarious coming from you, Mr. Hot Cold, Hot Cold.”

“At least I recognize that there are consequences to what I do.”

“What the hell's that supposed to mean?”

“It means you can't just act on whatever impulse you feel the moment you feel it and expect it to all work out.”

“So a few moments ago, when you were kissing me, that was carefully planned out?”

“No,” he snaps. “That was a mistake.”

“I'll say.” I whirl and storm away, tripping in the darkness as I try to see through my tears, not stopping until I'm out of the soundstage, off the lot, and a block away.

Shivering with cold and rage, I pull out my phone to call for a cab, and that's when I see the five missed calls, three from my mom and two from Sean. And I know before I press play that this awful night is about to get worse.