Melissa Senate (17 page)

“Do you happen to remember the name of his agency or his new name?” Stella asked, taking a deep breath.

“I’m sure it’s in this mess of a Rolodex somewhere,” he said, flipping through the cards. “Although you know, you’re not really supposed to call it a Rolodex.
Rolodex
is actually the brand name, like Band-Aids.”

“And Xerox,” I said.

Stella shot me a look that said: Why are you talking about nonsense when the important information of our lives—at that very moment, anyway—was at hand? Or not.

Freddy continued flipping. He stopped on a card, and Stella and I leaned forward, eyes wide. “I have to remember to call this dope,” he said, jotting down a name and number. “The weasel owes me twenty-five bucks from fifteen years ago. I should charge him a dollar a day interest.”

Stella stared at him. “Eric Miller?”

“Nah, some other guy.” The flipping continued. “Ah. Here it is,” he said, stopping on a card and tapping it with his fingers. “Yup. Got it. Michael Roberts.”

“Michael Roberts?” I repeated. “Are you saying Eric Miller changed his name to Michael Roberts? Why would someone change their name to something so common?”

“For that precise reason,” Freddy said. “There are probably tens of thousands of Michael Roberts in Nevada. Cops would never track him down.”

A new name. To avoid paying parking tickets, he changed his name. It was a good thing we hadn’t tried to find him before. To discover that he’d changed his name, had made himself unfindable, would have been hard to take, hard to understand.

What it clearly meant was that he didn’t want to be found, didn’t want his children to be able to look him up.

Stella stood and thanked Freddy, who then gave us the “we should sign with him” spiel. But this time, all his compliments didn’t do a thing for Stella.

W
E FOUND HIM
. J
UST LIKE THAT
.

“Michael Roberts” and his wife, Bunny Roberts, owned the Star Quality Talent Agency for, according to their ads and Web site, those with “Star Quality!” The office was located far west of the strip.

The online bio on Michael Roberts indicated that he’d been serving Las Vegas talent for over twenty years and before that was a “hugely successful” talent agent in New York City. There was a picture, and the moment before Stella and I first clicked on the
About The Agents
link, we took deep breaths and said here goes, and there was our father.

Twenty-four years older than the last time we saw him, yet his angular face, the strong nose, the piercing blue eyes, and the thick dark hair—that hadn’t changed. He was still handsome in his midfifties, but there was a dated quality to his style, to the hair, a little
too
Sonny Crockett, parted in the middle. A gold bracelet was visible on his wrist.

I had such few memories of him. Despite him chauffeuring us to and from jobs, despite the evening seminars (which he taught in the living room) in manners and charm, in smiling and holding a natural smile for the camera and a go-see, I remembered next to nothing. I’d once told my mother how surprised I was that I had around five memories, and she’d said I’d likely blocked them as I grew up, the heart’s way of protecting itself. She’d insisted he was a good father then, that he’d loved us, that he’d been overly focused on our careers, but that he did love us. She had no explanation for his abandonment other than he was a rainbow chaser. It took me years to understand what that meant.

Bunny Roberts I did not remember at all. If she was the same casting agent who’d run away with Eric Miller, I couldn’t tell by looking at her photo. She had the aged-out showgirl look about her, too. Hair too long and highlighted and teased, makeup too heavy, smile too obsequious.

“So what do we wear to meet our long-lost father?” Stella asked, looking on her side of the closet and mine, in our drawers. “Teacher clothes?”

“Us clothes,” I said. “Us as we are. You in that and me in this.”

Which was Stella in the pretty white cotton dress she’d bought from the Double Sisters and me in khaki capris and a white V-necked T-shirt, my mother’s small silver hoops in my ears.

“Flip-flops and all,” I said, eyeing our feet.

“Do you think he’ll recognize us?” she asked, closing the drawer. “When we walk in? Will he stare at us and say, ‘Oh my God,
Stella? Ruby?
’”

“We were six a long time ago.”

“But we look the same,” she said and we glanced at our reflections in the mirror above the dresser. “Sometimes I look at old pictures and I can’t believe how little we’ve changed. We’re just adult versions with the same faces.”

“I think that goes for every person in the world, Stella.”

“I want him to recognize us,” she said.

Back to the fantasy. But I wanted him to recognize us, too.

It took us a long time to actually walk in the door. The agency was a third floor walk-up. We stopped on each level, mild panic attack nipping at both of us.

“Let’s run in there first,” I said, gesturing at the Alison Gold, Acupuncturist sign on the door at the end of the hall.

Stella grimaced. “I don’t think having needles stuck in my head would make me less stressed and nervous right now.”

Grammy Zelda swore by acupuncture. I’d tried it once, just to experience it, and it was very relaxing. You really didn’t feel the needles. I stood there, trying to stay with the memory of lying on a table, needles protruding from most of my body’s surfaces, anything to keep from moving an inch or actually walking up the last flight of stairs.

“Let’s just get it over with,” Stella said, giving me a nudge forward.

The office was at the top of the stairs. A sign on the glass-paned door read:
The Star Quality Agency.
We squeezed hands one last time, and I waited for Stella to do the honors of pulling open the door, but she just stood there, staring at the doorknob. I joined her in that for a few moments, then grabbed it and twisted.

There were actually a few people in the waiting room. Two women and one man, all reasonably attractive. The three glanced up at us as we came in, then resumed flipping through the magazines or portfolios.

Michael Roberts was nowhere to be seen. Relief.

The waiting room was on the small side, but clean and perfectly presentable, not quite the old, peeling place I’d envisioned, complete with one of those ancient, noisy fans. The walls were painted a lemon-yellow and the chairs were a light wood. At the entrance was a table with brochures for the agency and copies of a pamphlet titled
How To Make It In Las Vegas.
Number one on that list was Believe in Yourself. There was also a bowl of wrapped mints. Stella grabbed one and held it in her palm, but didn’t unwrap it.

I could see the T-shirt (or in Stella’s case, tank top) now: I Went To Vegas To Find My Father And All I Got Was This Stupid Mint.

It was Bunny Roberts at the reception desk. She looked exactly the same live as she did in the glamour shot. Her hair was frosted, and she wore too much makeup, but I could see she was pretty. She flashed a lot of deep cleavage. She wore a peach suit in a stretchy fabric that was actually stylish, with a low-cut, ruffle-rimmed camisole underneath. I could imagine her in a convertible Cadillac with a silk scarf wrapped around her head.

“Welcome,” she said with a smoker’s rasp and a warm smile. She handed us each a clipboard with a long double-sided questionnaire. Application for Representation, it was titled.

Stella and I glanced at each other, then took the clipboards with their little spiral-attached pens, and sat down in the chairs that faced the door behind Bunny’s desk. The one with the plaque that read: Michael Roberts, Executive Talent Agent.

I stared at the door. I doubted he would personally usher in his next potential clients. But perhaps when someone came out of his office, he would survey the room, see us sitting there and stop dead in his tracks with the
Stella? Ruby?

The door opened and a Whoopie Goldberg look-alike emerged. Michael Roberts was behind her. Whoopie turned and said thank you again for meeting with her, and again, she was open to home parties, and Michael Roberts responded with a very original “I’ll be in touch.”

And then he glanced, for just a split second, at those waiting to meet with him, including the two daughters he hadn’t seen in twenty-four years, and without a flicker of recognition, walked back in his office and shut the door.

“Well,” Stella said, turning to look at me. “Well.”

“Well,” I said.

I took Stella’s hand and stood. Stella did, too. We glanced at each other, then walked to Bunny’s desk. Stella stared at her flip-flops.

“My name is Ruby Miller, and this is my twin sister, Stella. We’d like to see our father.”

Bunny’s mouth dropped open. The smile returned, then faltered, then returned, then she shot up and darted into the office behind her.

We held our breaths and waited. And waited.

A few minutes later, Bunny came out. “Mr. Ro—I mean, he’ll see you now.”

My hand froze on the doorknob. Stella opened it and we walked in. The Man Formerly Known As Our Father was standing in front of the window, his back to us. He was scared, I realized.

Stella shut the door behind us, and he turned around, neither smiling nor not, exactly. He wore a pin-striped suit with a pale-pink shirt underneath and a white tie. His hair was shellacked in place by hairspray.

“You’re both so beautiful,” he said in a voice that didn’t sound familiar.

Stella and I both had the same awkward almost-smiles on our faces. It was so dead silent in the room that we could hear the hum of the air conditioner. I supposed you couldn’t just have a normal conversation after twenty-four years of nothing.

“We thought it was important to find you,” Stella said. “Find out once and for all why you left.”

He didn’t move from the window. His own awkward smile came and went like Bunny’s had. “Well, I…I don’t really know what to say. I was a different person then.” His voice seemed to be cracking, but I couldn’t be sure. Maybe he always sounded that way.

“Do you remember us?” I asked. “Do you know who we are?”

“Of course I do,” he said. “Ruby and Stella.” He smiled and walked toward us, stopping in front of his desk. “In your day, you were something.” His chest puffed up some, as if with pride.

“We just really want to know why you left,” Stella said, crossing her arms over her chest.

The puff deflated. “I was never much of a family person,” he said, glancing from Stella to me, then to the floor. “I tried for a while, and I got real wrapped up in managing your careers. So much so that I didn’t even feel like a father—I felt like a superstar agent.”

“So when the jobs stopped coming in, you started feeling more like a father again?” I asked.

“Something like that, I suppose,” he said.

“But didn’t you love your own children?” Stella asked.

He didn’t say anything for a moment. “Something’s always been kind of off about me in that regard. I don’t mean about you two girls necessarily. I mean in general. Like a cut-off feeling, you know?”

It was a pretty good explanation. And it almost helped. It wasn’t so much that he hadn’t loved us, but that he
couldn’t.
At least Aunt Sally had prepared us for that.

“How’s your mother?” he asked.

“Dead,” Stella responded.

His lips tightened. “I’m real sorry to hear that.”

Stella glanced at me. “Well,” she said.

Well.

“I’m glad you girls stopped by,” he said, moving back over to the window. “I have thought about you over the years. It was nice to see you again.”

Talk about cut off. I supposed there were psychological diagnoses for Eric Miller, but I didn’t know what they were.

“We’ll show ourselves out,” I said.

“Bye now,” was his response, and I knew we’d never lay eyes on Eric Miller-Michael Roberts again.

Stella and I walked down Las Vegas Boulevard, both of us quiet. It had taken three buses to get from the Star Quality Talent Agency back to the strip. We would have gladly ridden a fourth just for the blast of air-conditioning.

We stopped in front of the Bellagio, but even the dancing fountains, again choreographed to Frank Sinatra, didn’t do a thing for our spirits. For the first time since we’d arrived in Las Vegas, the glowing lights and street performances and dancing fountains and constant action didn’t, couldn’t, attract our attention.

Stella was jostled from behind, and would usually scream an “Excuse me!” at the offending jabber, but she barely noticed. “I didn’t expect that,” she finally said.

“I know. The whole thing was surreal.”

“I was so sure he’d recognize us, Ruby. How could he not recognize us? I could understand if it had been just one of us in there, but together, Ruby and Stella, the famous Miller twins—how did he not know us?”

“He explained that, I think. He never really ‘saw’ us at all. He didn’t want to be a father, he wanted to be a big deal agent, and managing our careers when we were in demand made being a father tolerable. So I guess Sally was only half-right about us being just money in the bank to him. It wasn’t really about the money. It was more about his problems.”

“The whole thing is sickening,” she said and actually spit on the sidewalk, to the disgust of the woman standing next to her. “Everything he said was sickening.”

“I know.”

“I hate this,” she said. “And I hate that Silas or Clarissa could be standing right next to their father at a red light, waiting to cross Park Avenue, and they won’t even know it.”

I stared up at the bright-blue cloudless sky. “I don’t know which is harder, Stella. Having your father not recognize you after twenty-four years, or not being able to recognize him at all.”

She glanced at me and burst into tears. She stood there in the middle of Las Vegas Boulevard and cried and I hugged her and I started to cry, too, though I didn’t think I would.

“Mom took good care of us, Stella. She loved us like crazy. With all her might, all her heart and soul. And we’re okay. We take after her. Clarissa or Silas will be okay, too.”

“I’m not okay,” she said, wiping under her eyes. “My own father didn’t recognize me, never cared about me and confirmed it. And I’m standing on a street corner pregnant and alone. I have no idea who the father of my baby is.”

“First of all, you’re not alone. And, yes, you
do
know who he is,” I reminded her. “And that’s why you don’t regret it, right? Aren’t those your very own words? Because that night, Stella, you were in love and over the moon for that man, whether you knew him for a half hour or not. You didn’t hesitate. You will always know that, and you’ll be able to tell your child that you loved his father.”

She stopped crying, sucking in deep breaths, and her face brightened. “I know it sounds stupid, but I really did fall in love with him that night. In the first five minutes. I always thought love at first sight was for idiots. And, Ruby, this is really going to sound bad, but I never thought I’d feel that much for anyone after Silas.”

“Why does that sound bad?” I asked.

“I didn’t think I should feel like that for someone else.”

“Ah,” I said. “You feel guilty?”

She nodded. “Silas has been gone a long time and I think he would have been happy to know how I felt that night, how J made me feel. I hadn’t felt that since Silas.”

“I think Silas
does
know, Stella. I think he knows how happy you were that night. And I think he’s watching over you now and I think he’ll be watching over you for a long time.”

She burst into tears again and wrapped her arms around me, and we just stood there for a good long time until the hundred-degree-plus heat sent us running inside a hotel for the air-conditioning. We bought a pack of tissues for Stella, two ice-cold lemonades with extra ice, and sipped while watching a mime performance in the marble lobby.