Seeing Stars (25 page)

The little girl looked at her solemnly and popped her thumb into her mouth.

“Did the man say anything to you?”

The girl shook her head.

“Oh. Okay,” said the mom, clearly disappointed. “I know you did a wonderful job, though. Okay? We have a juice box and snack in the car. Then you can watch a
DV
D on the way home.”

Angie helped the young woman gather up the dirty diaper, the extra clothes she’d dumped out of the diaper bag, the scattered keys, both real and plastic, and the other objects the baby had discarded.

“You’ve been a godsend,” the woman said. “This is just so, so hard. I’ve told my husband if it’s so easy, why doesn’t
he
try it one day, but he just laughs, like I’m kidding. I’m not kidding, though.”

“No,” Angie said. “No, I can see that.”

“Well, thank you. And tell your daughter good luck.”

“I will.” Angie watched them disappear down the stairs and wondered if she’d ever had the stamina to do what that young woman was doing. She was so tired all the time now—she spent more and more of her energy fighting, or at least masking, a crushing fatigue. She remembered being that age, though. You came up with the energy when you had to. Not that Laurel had ever been hard to take care of. They’d wanted another child or even two more, but God hadn’t seen fit. And that was all right, too. Laurel was everything Angie could have ever wanted in a child, and more. People said you shouldn’t look upon your children as friends, but Angie didn’t see what was wrong with that. Laurel and she were even closer than most friends. They had never kept anything hidden, and Angie wouldn’t have wanted it any other way. Dillard loved them—Dillard adored them—but he wasn’t much for girl talk, as he’d put it to her on their honeymoon. Laurel was the one Angie told things to. Until now. Now she was determined to keep her sickness to herself for as long as possible. That was her work. Laurel had her own work to do, and Angie didn’t want anything to get in the way of that, even though she missed her quiet strength and unfailing support.

Laurel came up, breaking Angie’s train of thought. “Done?” Angie said.

“Done.”

“Scale of one to ten?” This was their system—to rate auditions on a scale of one to ten, with ten being an absolute certainty of booking the commercial, one being no chance at all.

“Eight,” said Laurel. “Eight and a half.”

“Oh, good.”

“You okay?” Laurel said, peering at her.

Angie turned away. It was getting harder and harder to mask her deterioration. “Of course.”

Chapter Fifteen

M
OST OF
M
IMI’S OUT-OF-TOWN CLIENTS WENT HOME FOR
Thanksgiving, but there were always some who got trapped in LA because last-minute auditions or callbacks trumped any holiday. Mimi had a long-standing tradition of rounding up the strays and newly relocated clients and hosting a Thanksgiving potluck dinner. This year both Hillary and Reba had flown home, but Allison had landed a last-minute callback on the following Monday morning for a guest-star role on
House
, and she convinced her mother to let her stay. Dillard, Angie, and Laurel Buehl, as well as Hugh, Bethany, and Ruth Rabinowitz, would also be there. Even Quinn Reilly would be coming; like Allison, he’d been stranded in LA by a last-minute callback. Though he was less than enthusiastic, he was still enough of a child to need a holiday observance someplace, and Mimi’s was the only port, Baby-Sue and Jasper apparently having been invited to a gathering that had not included him.

The one thing Mimi could cook, for reasons that were inexplicable even to her, was a tender, juicy, golden Thanksgiving turkey. Allison was making homemade cranberry sauce, so the two of them were out of bed and in the kitchen at the ungodly hour of seven o’clock Thanksgiving morning. They worked side by side, taking up, between them, every available bit of grimy counter space. Tina Marie lurked underfoot, snapping at scraps of dressing that fell like manna from above, while Allison sang an impromptu Thanksgiving carol to the tune of “Deck the Halls”:
Stuff the bird with mounds of stuffing, fa la la la la la la la la. / Tis the season to be hungry, fa la la la la la la la la.
If she minded missing Thanksgiving with her mother and stepfather, Mimi thought, she certainly didn’t let on.

Mimi shoved stuffing into the back-end cavity of the turkey, a twenty-pounder she’d been thawing since Monday. Allison seized the bird for a minute to murmur into its neck cavity, “You’re going to be yummy, aren’t you, because you like us and you chose our table from all the tables in all the houses in LA.” Then she turned back to the stove and transferred her cranberry sauce into a turkey-shaped copper mold Mimi had picked up at a swap meet however many years ago. Already assembled and in the refrigerator were a green bean casserole; a small pumpkin pie (as an emergency backup—the Buehls had signed up to bring two others as well as a cherry pie); and cornbread muffins Allison had baked last night in a fit of holiday zeal.

“Don’t you just love Thanksgiving?” she asked Mimi now, across the countertop. “I didn’t use to, but now I do.”

“Does your mom cook?”

Allison just gave her a look. “We always went to the Holiday Inn. This year she said they’re going to this fancy hotel downtown for like a twenty-course meal or something. They’re not even having turkey, they’re having goose. Who’d want to eat a goose?”

“Lots of people like goose,” Mimi said, dipping up a handful of Crisco to rub on the turkey. In the old days her mother had used lard, but she’d never been able to bring herself to try it.

“Well, I’d rather eat a pheasant than a goose. At least I’ve never seen a pheasant.” Allison ran the back of her wooden spoon over the glossy surface of her cranberry sauce, making it perfectly smooth and evenly distributed in the mold. Then she leaned down and kissed it, leaving the faintest lip print in the sauce. “Don’t tell anyone I did that,” she told Mimi.

A
T NOON THEIR GUESTS BEGAN TO ARRIVE
. R
UTH
, H
UGH,
and Bethany came first, and Allison gave each of them an impulsive hug. She wore a filmy skirt, tiny sweater, and high-heeled pumps. Mimi herself wore a sweatshirt and baggy pants, plus a pair of Dearfoam slippers that Allison had given her last Christmas. The Rabinowitzes held a middle ground in Dockers and button-down collared shirt (Hugh); knit pants and a Thanksgiving-themed sweater (Ruth); and jeans and a tight-fitting T-shirt (Bethany), which showed she was finally beginning to develop breasts. The three of them hovered around the kitchen—Ruth had made a fruit salad and a yam casserole with marshmallows—until the casserole had been stowed in the refrigerator and Mimi shooed them all into the living room. The girls headed for Allison’s bedroom, where Hugh saw Allison kicking off her high heels in favor of a pair of pale pink rubber flip-flops. Hugh and Ruth sat side by side. Ruth said to Hugh in a stage whisper, “They’ve cleaned.”

Tina Marie hopped up beside them, kissed Ruth repeatedly on the lips, and then heaved herself, with a deep sigh, against the sofa’s throw pillows. Ruth brushed dog hair from her holiday sweater as the Buehls arrived, bearing the promised pies and an assortment of microbrew beers, Dillard apparently not being much of a wine man. Under his arm he carried a photo album as hefty as a family Bible, which he brought straight into the living room and laid lovingly on the altar of the coffee table in front of Hugh and Ruth. While Laurel and Angie were dealing with the pies in the kitchen, Dillard hitched up a ladder-back chair and opened the photo album to the very beginning, adjusting its position so Hugh and Ruth could see better.

“You must be very proud,” said Hugh, dutifully examining the first two pages and gathering that Ruth intended to stay mum.

Dillard blew his nose on a red bandana and shoved it back in his pocket. “Yes, sir, I’m real proud of my girls. Best couple of women the South has ever produced, if you ask me, but then I guess you could call me partial.” Page after page revealed pictures of Laurel and Angie at pageants all over the South: little Laurel in spangly boots and a patriotic stars-and-stripes ensemble; Angie in a makeshift dressing room, curling Laurel’s hair with a curling iron and laughingly waving Dillard and his camera away; a preteen Laurel holding a microphone with the ease of Sinatra during the talent portion of some long-ago extravaganza; Angie and Laurel in matching mother-daughter outfits, which Dillard explained they’d worn at the one pageant in which Angie had also participated, taking second place. There were no photographs that included either Dillard—who was, presumably, the photographer—or other children, except incidentally in the background.

“She’s lovely,” said Hugh, because she was; and tragic, too, he thought, because whose only friend was her mother? He had read about pageant moms—close kin to stage moms, evidently—who made their daughters’ lives a living hell of never-ending pressure and competition, but he didn’t see any signs of that here. Both Laurel and Angie looked relaxed and exuberant, and it was clear where Laurel’s looks had come from, though Hugh thought Angie was now thin to the point of gauntness. A late-life eating disorder? He gathered that was a growing problem. Whatever the current trouble was, in almost every photograph they seemed completely at one with their surroundings, so perhaps theirs was a perfect harmony, a pageantry world yin and yang.

On and on Dillard went, turning pages patiently, allowing Hugh and Ruth enough time to examine each photograph in minute detail. Beside him, Hugh could feel Ruth stiffen, but he put his hand over hers on the sofa cushion between them in a petition for patience. From his limited experience Hugh had found Southern men of a certain educational and economic background to be crass, but Dillard was endearing, even sweet, in the seeming simplicity of his adoration.

I
N THE KITCHEN
, L
AUREL HELPED
A
NGIE SET OUT CHEESE
and crackers that she recognized as leftovers from Mimi’s last showcase, at the same time watching Dillard torment the Rabinowitzes with what she and Angie had simply dubbed The Book. Laurel was mortified, but she couldn’t bring herself to fault him for it. He loved them truly, nakedly, and unconditionally. As long as they were in it, his was a perfect world. In her experience you couldn’t say that about other fathers, many of whom didn’t even show up at their daughters’ pageants. There had been some summers when Dillard had driven all night to be there for just a few hours before driving back to wherever his boiled peanut booth was set up, not trusting Laurel’s uncle Bobby for longer than a day because he was, though well-intentioned—and this from Dillard’s own mouth—an idiot.

Laurel couldn’t imagine how he would handle Angie’s cancer, if a time came when they’d have to tell him. She still believed that the cancer would go away, though. She planned to prove herself and Angie worthy by working just as hard as she possibly could. He was a good and loving God—hadn’t her church made a point of teaching her that in Sunday school, year after year after year?—so although Angie had been visibly weakening lately, she had explained to Laurel that it wasn’t the cancer at all, but an uncommon but nevertheless recognized bounce-back reaction to all the chemo and radiation; and Laurel chose to believe her.

Q
UINN ARRIVED JUST SHY OF ONE O’CLOCK—HALF AN HOUR
before Mimi’s estimated turkey time—sullen and bearing two packages of dinner rolls he’d picked up at the dollar store. He set them on the kitchen counter without a word. It was the first time he’d been back in the house since Mimi had kicked him out six months ago. Tina Marie, the one creature here who seemed happy to see him, danced around his feet, piddling. He picked her up and tucked her under his arm like a football. He’d always been a sucker for the little dog, even though she was pretty awful most of the time.

“Thank you,” Mimi said over her shoulder about the rolls as she basted the bird in the oven. “How did you get here?”

“Jasper,” said Quinn. Jasper and Baby-Sue had gone out of their way to drop him off before going on to some party at a comedy club in North Hollywood. Baby-Sue had been all dolled up in a gauze skirt and strapless top that would have looked great on lots of women, none of them Baby-Sue. They said he could call them and they’d give him a ride back if they could, but he’d brought enough money for cab fare because by the time he was going to be ready, he knew, they’d be totally wasted.

He looked around the kitchen, at the familiar takeout menus curling and wilting on the refrigerator door; at the dingy dish towels hanging on the oven; at the dying plants on the grimy windowsill over the sink; at the permanently darkened floor vinyl where Tina Marie liked to sleep whenever the temperature rose above eighty, which was to say more than half the year. There wasn’t a single trace of him anywhere, and it suddenly, violently pissed him off. He’d
lived
here. For three-plus years, this had been home. And then, all of a sudden and
without due process
, it wasn’t anymore. Now he slept on the floor in a corner like a dog and was widely considered to be either gay or a pervert. For a minute, for a fraction of a minute, he was so angry his vision changed, made everything around him float and spin.

“Pass me that can of Crisco, would you, Quinn?” said Mimi over her shoulder, her face flushed from the heat of the oven. “It looks like I missed a spot.”

Quinn found the can of Crisco and handed it to her. She scooped up a gob in her fingers and let it melt on the turkey.

“Hey!” said Allison, coming back into the kitchen and seeing him. “’S up, dog?”

Quinn shook his head. “That sounds pretty stupid.”

The girl assumed the stance of a gangsta. “Who you be callin’ stupid, dog?”

“If you did that in East LA you’d be dead in less than a minute.”

“So you
do
care.”

Quinn shook his head.

“Come on, homie,” she wheedled. “Come play solitaire with me.”

“You can’t play solitaire with more than one person. It’s
soli
taire.”

“Yes, you can,” Allison said. “You each use a separate deck, but you share the aces.”

One of the new girls at the studio was coming across the kitchen toward them, looking nervous. Kids were scared of him now. This stupid girl with the face of a sheep—what was her name, Brittany, Bessie, something—was watching him like she expected him to expose himself or something. At least Cassie Foley and her mom seemed completely fine with him. Cassie was worth a thousand Allisons and Belindas or whatever the fuck the other girl’s name was.

“I wondered if maybe you guys would want to play Pictionary?” the girl said now. “My family plays that sometimes. We brought it with us.”

Quinn just shrugged. He didn’t want to play that or any other game. Kids played games. He wasn’t a kid. He’d stopped being a kid the night Mimi threw him out.

Fuck them.
Fuck
them.

M
IMI CALLED, WITH UNCHARACTERISTIC GAIETY
, “I
T’S
turkey time!” and hoisted the bird to the kitchen counter. Allison slid a trivet under the roasting pan while the others helped lay out the food on the dining room table, spruce in a snowy linen tablecloth Mimi had whisked out of a box in a distant closet. Hugh uncorked two bottles of wine, one red and one white, and put out an assortment of the beers that Dillard had brought. Allison and Bethany folded paper napkins to look like flowers, Laurel and Angie made giblet gravy, and then, at last, it was time to eat.

At Mimi’s request, Dillard carved the bird using an antique carving knife Mimi said she’d found at a swap meet. The group was about to disperse and begin eating when, somewhat apologetically, Angie asked if anyone would mind if Laurel said a quick grace, which of course no one did, though Ruth thought Hugh looked a touch uncomfortable.

“Oh, Lord,” Laurel said with a devoutly bowed head and faint smile, as though, Ruth thought, she were addressing an old friend, “we thank You for bringing us together today with our new friends and family over a really lovely dinner—especially the turkey—and all the other wonderful dishes. We feel that we have been truly blessed. Amen.”

“Amen,” Dillard and Angie and Ruth said, Ruth being of the belief that one should encourage spiritual expression, and that it didn’t kill you to be a part of it, either. Out of the corner of her eye she thought she saw Hugh winking at Bethany, but no one else seemed to notice, so she kept mum and exclaimed, instead, over the abundance of food and the excellent look of the turkey. The grown-ups, with heaping plates, took seats around the living room, letting the four “young people”—Allison, Bethany, Laurel, and Quinn—sit at a butcher-block table that Mimi and Allison had humped in from the kitchen.