Everybody Knows Your Name (14 page)

Lance straightens his thin tie and puts his hand to his chest like this is a personal moment for him. Dramatically, he says into the mic, “Step on up here, Buckley family,” and I'm still thinking that this is some kind of really dark joke that's gone on too long. Mila's sitting on the stool next to me, and she looks over to see if I know what the deal is. I make a confused face to mean that this has got to be a dumb bit. Out of the corner of my eye, I can see my reaction on one of the camera's screens on the side of the stage.

Ford is turned so I can't see his face. But he wasn't smiling when Lance said there was something that needed clearing up. I caught a miserable look in my direction before he stood and went over to the mic.

Ford leaned over and began talking about his parents, in present tense, like they're still alive. Like they're still up and around, and not in the ground. And he talked about a brother and sister I didn't know he had. He said, “I made some stuff up about being alone because, you've got to understand, my family isn't used to this kind of attention. I got worried it would be overwhelming for them.”

“But then they made it clear they want to come out and support you, right?” Lance prompted. He had his hand on Ford's shoulder. In profile, Ford's visible eye looked especially bruised underneath the blue overhead lights.

I thought,
This is really terrible comedy
. It had Catherine all over it. I couldn't believe she would drag Ford into doing this kind of shitty bit. I thought Lance was going to say, “Well, let's meet Ford's family!” and then some bales of hay were going to come rolling out from the wings.

Except after Lance says, “Step on up here, Buckley family,” four people actually stand in the first row of the audience. They're all in shirts and jeans except for the younger of the two women, who's in a tank dress with pony beads hanging off the fringed bottom. They jog up the stairs on the side of the stage. They've all got both hands in the air, double waving hello to everybody out there. Two of them look like a mom and a dad, the right ages, I mean, and there's even some resemblance to Ford. You can kind of understand how features from those two faces could combine to make up his. And the other two look like they really could be his older brother and sister. They feel like real people. They've got this comfort in their own bodies that says they're not acting. Even the best actors, if you really watch them, give off something that says they're acting.

And maybe these four people are a little animated in terms of where I set my personal energy levels, but I'm really watching them, and they don't look like jokes.

When Lance passes the dad figure the mic, I can see from here that the guy has some prison-looking tattoos on his knuckles.

Those tattoos finally bring it home for me. That's Ford's real dad.

Ford's dad says, “I just want to tell everybody that I'm nothin' but proud of my boy. There's no hard feelings.” Ford, facing away from this side of the stage, awkwardly hits his dad on the arm with an open hand. It's like a theater slap. It makes a loud sound in the mic, but it seemed like his hand barely connected.

I just stare at Ford's family, my scalp tingling like they've walked straight out of their graves. Graves marked by red ferns. (Look, I can't help it, that's just what I pictured.)

I stare at the side of Ford's face, which has immediately become stranger to me than an actual stranger's. In another couple of seconds, when I belatedly accept the obvious truth that's right in front of me, that's when the really hard feelings come rushing in. They're such bad feelings. They're so overwhelmingly bad. So that's how I realize that I've fallen in love with Ford. Because it's incredibly painful to realize at the exact same time that I'm in love with him and that being in love with him doesn't even matter anymore, now that we're done.

“Did you know anything about this Ford family intrigue?” a fluish-looking reporter on the press line asks me outside the studio after the show. She looks like she should have stayed home in bed. There's a chill in the air, like cold weather is actually coming to Los Angeles.

“I don't feel like answering questions,” I say. I wish I had a coat. I'm practically in a leotard.

Catherine is walking behind me at just this moment, and she pulls me back from the reporter.

“Uh, yeah, answering questions isn't an optional part of the night,” she says, looking at me like I'm crazy. “This is part of your job. People ask you things, and you tell them things.”

“I'm not a robot.” As soon as I've said it, I'm remembering the night I met Ford.

“It's all been such a great opportunity,” I hear Nikki, standing next to us, answer a reporter. “Gets kind of gnarly sometimes back in the house, like, just accommodating different personalities, but yeah, still way cool.”

“I know you're not a robot,” says Catherine. “Because I had a Teddy Ruxpin, this talking robot bear, as a kid, and he would be doing a better job on this press line.” She walks me back up toward the reporter. “Ask her again,” she commands the woman with the probable flu.

The reporter coughs and clears her throat. Then she goes back into the same tone of voice she had before, like we're girlfriends dishing, like she hasn't asked this already. “Did you know anything about this Ford family intrigue?”

“Nope,” I say.

“But aren't the two of you close?”

“Nope.”

I'm sitting in the walk-in closet of what's supposed to be the maid's room. But we don't have a maid living in the mansion. There's a service that sends a different team of cleaning people every morning, and they seem like they've been instructed not to look anyone in the eye.

As soon as the vans dropped us off, I slipped away up here even though everybody's supposed to be practicing the group number for tomorrow's elimination in the living room. The song is a last-minute thing. Last week, when this was a show without high expectations, elimination night was mostly filler with performance clips and a ridiculously drawn-out reveal. But now that it turns out people are actually watching, Catherine suddenly has more money from the network. This week we're singing “Feel So Close” live. And we're supposed to dance too, kind of. It's not full-on choreography, but there are moments when we're supposed to be stepping side to side in time or looking at each other.

I'm not in the mood to be singing about feeling close to people. Only Mila saw me ducking out, and she jerked her head toward the stairs, meaning,
Get away while you can
.

Ford has been taken over to the Venice hotel, where his family is staying, to shoot footage of them being a family together. The show is trying to spin this new development into some kind of amazing reunion story, instead of what it really is, which is that Ford just bullshitted everyone.

When I was looking into his eyes and telling him stories about my dad, how could he not have cracked? When I was telling him about this hole in my life? When I was telling him about what it was like to have a dad gone, how you feel like one of your very earliest signposts in the world just went and evaporated, and he was saying that he knew? When he was looking right at me? Even just some unconscious part of him. I mean, even if his eye had twitched. Then I could look back and say I'd seen the real him.

For a minute there it seemed like we'd magically found each other. With Scott, it was more like we formed a balance. He had what I didn't emotionally, and the other way around. But with Ford, the pull felt more like we were somehow the same underneath, despite having almost nothing in common besides that. I mean, you think you've lucked into a connection. You think,
Wow, it's easier than I thought to talk to someone for hours and get the hell out of my own head
. You think,
I can't believe how great this feels; no wonder other people work so hard to find this in each other all the time
. And also, you think,
Oh my God, it's addictive to be this happy in the presence of another person
.

But you don't care that it's addictive. Until you find out that the person was running scenes with you and you just didn't know it.

The sliding door to the closet opens. My mom is standing there. “Found you,” she says.

I've felt like I could cry since about five seconds after I saw the tattoos on Ford's dad's knuckles, but I've been keeping it together. When my mom finds me, though, the tears start pressing uncomfortably against my eyes. It's not because I feel like it's okay for me to cry in front of her. She makes the tears come to the surface because I know she's not going to be what I need.

“I just want to be alone for a little while,” I say.

“Come on, gloomy. Is it the Ford thing?”

She invites herself into the closet and sits down across from me in a cubby that's meant for lots of shoes. This closet has an intense organization system installed. It looks like a secret level of Donkey Kong. My dad loved arcade games. Once in a while he would come home from his investment firm early, which meant nine, and he'd take me to a pizza parlor for dinner, still wearing his suit. He'd play the old-school machines beside the kids in Little League uniforms and the dorky, hunched teenagers playing the fighting games.

I always liked the game where the plastic chicken spins around clucking, and then drops out a prize in a bright egg. I know there's no skill involved, but there was some weird stuff in those eggs. If my egg had a piece of cheap jewelry, I'd give it to my dad and he'd wear it for the night.

“Mag?” my mom says. “You're not talking to me.”

“He could have at least told me before he told the audience. At least.”

She shifts to tuck her knees underneath her, and the shiny discs covering her minidress make a crunching sound. “Yeah, the pair of you were supposed to have this insta-deep connection, right? Okay, I have an idea. You ask to tape a scene at the mansion where he's trying to plead with you, and you're walking away from him. And then he comes running after you and takes you into his arms. To an amazing song. People love that moment where the guy runs after the girl in movies. They love it! I love it. I've heard you say you love it when we watch movies. You only need that kind of thing because I've been reading a lot of the feedback online, and there's definitely interest in that story. If you could just build up the love aspect, it would really help you. People connect with you because the idea of you being a part of this emerging couple is definitely a softening thing.” She starts patting the back of the closet wall like it's a false front. “But just in case, do you think the hidden Superstar could be built into the house?” she asks.

Right now I wish it were my dad sitting across from me. I speak slowly to my mom, like she's a kid. Which I guess in some ways, sometimes, I feel like she is. “I didn't mean that I'm worried about how tonight came off to the audience. I meant that
I'm
hurt.”

My mom stops her patting, and makes a sad smile. “Oh, Mag, my supersensitive girl.”

“I don't think this is a crazy thing to get sensitive about.”

“He's embarrassed by his family, it's obvious. Don't take it personally.”

The tears really push at my eyes. “But when you found out that dad was dying—not just dying, but pretty much almost dead—and he hadn't said a thing to you all those times that you guys talked about who was getting me for the first night of Hanukkah, or school supplies I needed or whatever, didn't that hurt you? That he was lying to you that whole time? That he could have said something to clue you in so you didn't have to feel so far from him when you found out? I mean, I know why dad didn't tell
me
. Because I was just a kid. He didn't want me to worry. But he could have told you. And didn't knowing that make you feel lonely and hollow and terrible?”