Everybody Knows Your Name (19 page)

Over the past two weeks, I've been brainstorming how I can get America to turn on me.

Ten minutes ago Jesse delivered a gigantic bouquet of magnolias to my dressing room. It's from a group of girls who say they are my biggest fans, the Magentas. They've only seen me sing three times. At last week's elimination Lance surprised us by announcing that no one was going home because we were “going out on a yacht! Right now!” They taped our group performance on the boat and made a Saturday special out of it for more money. Catherine says she's keeping the show fresh.

But I know it's more fun to watch a game if you take a side, and this is definitely a game.

I run my fingers along the petals. Some of the flowers have a little bit of pink in them, and some have a little bit of purple in them, and I genuinely hate disappointing these girls when they've decided to emotionally invest in me.

Still, I have to remind myself that I never had it in me to be a person who wants to be turned outward all the time. I'm an introvert. Happiness is keeping a small world for myself.

This morning I was watching Felicia rehearse her song, “Losing My Religion.” She's doing the Tori Amos version from the movie
Higher Learning
because it's soundtrack week. She was singing about being in the spotlight, losing her religion. I took my mom's phone and Googled interviews with Michael Stipe, and I read an interview where he said the lyrics are about pining for someone. But when I was listening to those lyrics today, I felt like religion was a stand-in for the sense you make of yourself. You can lose it to a person; you can lose it to a show.

In my case, though, me in a corner is just me. It feels so good to accept that. And now I have to do what I want. Not what my mom wants, not what Stacy wants, not what Robyn wants, not what Catherine wants, not what the Magentas want.

Most of all, this means giving up romanticizing what I was convinced people in general want out of another person. There are a lot of ways to live.

I want to go home, open a blank page, and write my own show.

You'd think it would be as easy as giving a bad performance, but even that can be risky. The week before last McKinley sang “Purple Rain” by Prince for the song that best represented him, who knows why. He did such a shaky job that Jazz Billingham told him he seemed washed-up. Chris James said that it was more like “purple migraine.” DJ Davey Dave said (as usual when he doesn't like something) that it had depressed him.

The girls in the audience made really furious animalistic sounds at the judges, and then a lot of them started yelling that they loved McKinley anyway. The ones at home must have had the same reaction in their bedrooms because the next night, he was safe. There's always the danger of America feeling bad for you.

So I've really been brainstorming. A bad song, a bad vocal, a bad performance are only maybes. Somebody else could always do worse than you. America might like how bad you were for reasons you couldn't have predicted.

I'm contractually obligated to perform when I hit the stage, so I can't just stand there, or else I think I get sued. But also, America is fickle, and I don't think it's that crazy to think that viewers might get behind a person for resisting authority because really, that's the very thing that America's founded on, when it comes down to it.

I know I could just half-ass it for a couple more weeks and eventually get voted off, but I want out. There's a frenzy in me to leave. It's like if I were a bull with some asshole on my back and you said to me,
Hey, Magnolia, you don't have to buck him off. Just give him a ride to the mall
.

So I've been through a lot of options in my head. There's only one I've come up with that I believe is pretty close to a guarantee. Because there's one thing that America hates all the time, without ever budging, and that thing is when you disrespect America.

There's a knock at my dressing room door.

I stiffen, wanting it to be Ford, even after everything that's happened. I can't help it, and I don't like it. But I'm admitting to it.

“Come in,” I say.

The door opens, and it's my mom. I'm instantly nervous to see her. In less than an hour she's going to be so confused, pissed, and let down.

“Hey,” she says, leaning in with the door, draped across it. She's totally at home around the set. Her body language reminds me of how she'll swing in with my bedroom door at our real house, interrupting me in the middle of studying because she's bored and wants to go to the beach.

“Hey,” I say.

She tips her head and stares at me sideways. She looks like an innocent kid in high heels. The pair she has on is too big for her, and they gap at the back like the ones Disney puts on Minnie Mouse. “I'm proud of you.”

Oh, Jesus,
I think. That's what she would have to go and say while I'm doing my best not to think about her looming disappointment. I feel like the parent who knows the one present her kid wants isn't in front of the fireplace (that's where we put our presents at Hanukkah).

But I don't want to be the parent.

So I try to just let myself be the kid with the proud mom for a moment.

“Thanks, Mom.”

“Your dad would be proud too,” she says.

Now my head goes,
Oh, Jeeeeesus
. I'm almost panicky with needing her to leave if she's just shown up to tell me about her pride and to start suddenly saying warm things about my dad. I avert my eyes and stare at the magnolias on the dressing table. If my dad hadn't died, I would have a vase of carnations.

I tug on the belt of my robe. “Well, I'd better get dressed for the show.”

“Yeah, why aren't you in wardrobe already? It's, like, ten minutes until show time, Mag.”

“I've already been to wardrobe. I got out of the outfit because I was uncomfortable sitting in it.” I gesture over at the wardrobe bag lying on the couch.

It's true. The outfit was uncomfortable because it's pretty much a chain mail dress. And it is in that bag. But it's not what I'm going to wear onstage.

“You need help?” my mom asks.

“I'm good.”

“I have a feeling that you're going to be especially off the hooooook tonight.” She laughs at her bad hip-hop inflection and starts to shut the door while lounged across it. “And I've been hearing everyone thinks it's Nikki's night to go home, so don't worry.”

I'm alert. “Why? Why does everyone think that? We haven't even performed.”

“You didn't hear? Some old girlfriend sold e-mails between her and Nikki to the tabloids, and all of a sudden it's, like,
Duh, she's gay
. Fans are saying she misled them. There are groups out there being hateful, like they get off on being.”

It's all so petty, so stupid and exasperating and shitty. “That's horrible.”

The other day in the bathroom I asked Nikki if Rebecca cared that the audience just automatically assumed she was Nikki's aunt.

“No, uh-uh,” Nikki said.

“Because she thinks it's better for you in the competition?”

Nikki began taking off her blush with a baby wipe. “We just both think it's funny. Because the chemistry between us is so obvious, and people want to say she's my aunt?” She laughed. “People are lolo.”

“Lolo?”

“Crazy,” translated Nikki.

“I know,” my mom says now. “Bad people come out of the woodwork when you get famous. Mo' money, mo' problems.” She does a momentary kind of raising-the-roof thing. “I'm going to grab my seat. I can't wait to watch you up there. It seriously makes my heart sing.” She clasps her hands over her heart, mimes a fist bump, then is gone.

Now it's not only that I want to go. I want Nikki to stay. I have to give a performance that, if Nikki were to pull Rebecca onstage and sing into her mouth for four minutes, would still
leave the worst people out there angrier with me. I go over to the duffel bag I've stashed beside the couch and unzip it.

There's another knock. I don't want to, but I think about the last time Ford walked in and almost undressed me, in here, on this couch, with his palm pressing on my hipbone.

“Yeah?” I say.

The door opens, and Catherine steps in. It's for the best. She's holding a spiky plant. “I saw Jesse back on his way to bring this over.” She puts the pot down on the tabletop next to the magnolias. “Why aren't you dressed yet?”

I get up from crouching on the floor and go over to the dressing table. I pull the card from between two big thick leaves. “The dress they gave me is
really
heavy,” I say, opening the envelope.

Catherine says something, but I don't hear well while I'm reading.

It says,
Tiny: I figured you're probably getting a lot of flowers. But probably not as much aloe. Laugh now, but you'll be thanking me later when we go to the beach and you get a sunburn on your shoulders. Like you always do. No matter how much sunscreen you wear. Love, Scott
.

Scott now? Scott wants to reappear for no reason I can understand just to throw himself into the mix of my anxiety? The last time I saw him, I yelled at him, and he seemed to grasp that I wasn't joking. I was sick of him, sick of us. Not looking to go to the beach. But there's Scott for you, and it's just like him to send a card that completely ignores reality. Maybe my dismissal of him got him down for a couple of weeks, but he has this bizarre resiliency. He pops back up. He creates an alternate universe and has weird faith that you'll just accept it too. That's how incredible he is at playing dumb.

“So is that all right with you?” Catherine asks.

I look up. “Is what all right?”

She shakes her head, and her earrings, which are circles inside of circles inside of circles, spin in circles themselves.

“The candles.”

“Sorry, what candles?”

Catherine makes a gesture of wanting to take me by the neck and throttle me. “You kill me!” she suddenly yells, looking me straight in the eyes. I'm surprised because she's never been direct with me before. I mean, of course we've had conversations and she's talked directly to me, but you can always feel that there are wheels turning in her mind, and she's actually watching those instead.

Now she's staring straight into me. “You don't understand how great this is, do you? If we didn't have such dumb stringent laws for the workplace, I would slap you upside the head. And I'm not saying that in an aggressive way. This is sensitive personal frustration.”

“You're mad at me?” I ask.

“I have worked
so
hard, harder than anyone knows, to make a name for myself in this business. But you think the people at home watch the credits? They don't.”

“Maybe someone who wants to be a produce—” I start, and she says, “Can it.”

Then she says, “Then here's you. Oi-ta-doi-ta-doi, skipping into this world”—Catherine mimics a kind of yokel type skipping—“except, no, you don't skip. It's more like this. Mua-wah-wah-wah . . .” She switches over to a Goth kid shuffle with her head and arms hanging, legs limp. “The very next day, millions of people know your name. The show pulls a miracle and does better than anyone expected coming from me and a tired format on its last legs. You're a
direct
recipient of that glow. And you don't even understand how meaningful that is. I could go out onto any street in this town and give your name, ask who you are, and right now I can find a person who can tell me within two minutes.”

I understand it, I think, but that doesn't mean I want it. Is it such a crazy thing to not want? Is it a given that everybody wants to be famous almost more than they want to be anything else because this is just the bigger version of being really popular at school? Because fame is just the smaller version of leaving something behind when you die? Did my dad wish he'd left more, been more noticed somehow? Why am I thinking about death right now? Why am I such a bummer? This is exactly what Catherine is talking about.

I throw my arms up in the air in bewilderment. These things don't make any sense, why one person wants one thing, why another wants another. “I'm sorry!” I tell her.

“There are a million girls who would give their left pinkies to be you. No joke. They would go to Claire's in the mall and instead of getting their ears pierced, they would let the salesgirl use a pinky-removing gun. Okay, Magnolia?”

“Okay.” I nod, feeling both worse now that I have a deeper understanding of how disappointed Catherine will be in me after tonight, and also feeling more positive that I'm not supposed to be here.

Catherine pinches the bridge of her nose and reigns in her emotions. She says, “I was telling you that they were putting out rows of votive candles for your performance, but I thought you deserved more drama, so I had Jesse go and pull you a truckload of pillars.”

“Thank you. For everything.”

“Get dressed.” She walks out the door. I wait for it to click closed, and then I go back over to my stashed duffel bag to get my outfit for the show.

I'm singing “In Your Eyes” by Peter Gabriel, which is from the movie
Say Anything
. I've always liked that movie because the characters feel honest. And, Jesus Christ, the scene where Lloyd stands outside and holds the stereo above his head and plays “In Your Eyes” to Diane, who's in bed, because he knows that he doesn't have any better words? Right there, that's what I love about music, what I love so much more than performing it.

Yesterday morning I took a cab down to Hollywood Boulevard, wearing a big pair of sunglasses and my hair tucked in the Angels cap. I was there to shop in the older, trashier stores, the ones that were there before the new hotels and Hollywood and Highland Center came in. Back in the days when I was pretending to be a social butterfly, my mom drove me up to the trashy stores so I could get a Julia-Roberts-in-the-beginning-of-
Pretty-Woman
costume for an eighth-grade Halloween party.