Shooting Star (Beautiful Chaos) (5 page)

LATER THAT DAY I went to see my new shrink. Well “shrink” is the wrong word because shrinks are able to prescribe medication and that was the last thing I needed: to get hooked on pills—any pills. People always assume drug addicts are going around with a needle stuck in their arm but no, most junkies are being aided and abetted by their very own doctors. Trust me, I know. My parents—Mom rest in peace—are great examples.

The truth is, I was very happy with my last therapist. He was cool. But in treatment, at rehab, it was decided by “the group” that I had been “manipulating” him, that he “had fallen into my trap” and that I was going nowhere fast if I continued on the same path. That’s what happens in treatment. Your lies are exposed, your shell smashed so you are left with nothing but your own broken pieces, which you have to mend. The physical part of getting clean is nothing to what goes on mentally. Suddenly, you see yourself for who you are. I’m a work in progress—Jesus, I’ve only just begun—but I’m still not ready to let my barriers go completely. That’s why I’m an actor. That’s why I cling on to whatever role I have like a piece of driftwood in a raging sea. It’s my only chance of survival. I need to hide behind another character. Because when I’m just me? I don’t feel so great about myself.

But that’s my secret. Even in rehab I tried my best to keep my walls from crumbling down. People don’t like weakness. And who am I to disappoint them?

Back to my new shrink. She’s a woman. I’ll have to tell my whole story all over again and I’m yawning—yes yawning—when I say that. She’s bound to feel sorry for me but I don’t want sympathy. I’ve got two arms and two legs, and a job. I’m one of the lucky people and in the world and I don’t take that lightly.

“SO WHERE DO YOUR PROBLEMS stem from, do you think?” Dr. Deal asked later. We were in her office and I was sitting comfortably in a big brown armchair, across from her desk, which was stacked with neat piles of paper—an old-fashioned fountain pen lay demurely on top of one pile. My hair was wet from a shower so I looked pretty drowned-rattish and she—well, she was immaculate in a Chanel-type suit (not
real
Chanel, obviously), and perfectly manicured nails which she held out in front of her, crisscrossed like show dogs sometimes do with their paws. She had smooth, shiny gray hair clipped into a page-boy cut and looked like she’d stepped out of an old copy of Vogue—or a collage of several old Vogues—because her hair and make-up was decidedly 1970s, but her suit was something from the 90s. A mixture of vintage—although perhaps that was accidental. Her mouth was a thin line—I could tell she was no-nonsense and her sense of humor on the back burner. Cool, ice-blue Nazi eyes. But there was a certain beauty about her. She must have been about fifty.

“Where do my problems stem from?” I echoed. I learned this trick from them. To repeat the sentence. It made them question what they’d asked me. In their minds, anyway. “To be completely honest, Dr. De—”

“Please, call me Narissa.”

“Narissa? That’s a cool, unusual name.” She didn’t respond, her lip twitched into a wannabe smile but didn’t quite get there. “Well, Narissa. I don’t really see myself as having any problems at all. I’ve just landed a part in a movie that people would give their right arm for. I’ve got more money than people can even imagine earning in several lifetimes, a beautiful home, friends—you know, I’m really doing pretty darn well. But thank you for asking.” I smiled sweetly at her.

“So why do you think you’re here?”

“Why am I here? Because the studio believes that AA and NA are too public despite the fact that they promise anonymity.”

“Narcotics Anonymous and Alcoholics Anonymous?”

I nodded. “Basically, it’s in my contract that I come here. Plus, I wanted to show good will. To appease the studio, tow the line, and maybe, you know, talk about my addictive personality while I’m at it.”

“So you’re willing to admit you have an addictive personality but you do not equate that with having ‘problems’ as such?”

“To me ‘problems’ are like, when you can’t make payments on your home, or when you can’t afford to feed your kids.”

“Go on.”

“I don’t have any problems. Right now, I’m riding high.”

She shifted in her chair and crossed her flesh-colored panty-hosed legs. “So you wouldn’t consider that ‘in denial’ in any way?”

I shook my head. “I have nothing to deny. I’m honest.”

“Why don’t you tell me about your childhood, Star.” This wasn’t a question but a suggestion.

I inwardly rolled my eyes.
Uh, oh, here we go.

She looked at her notes. “Your mother died of lung cancer when you were just ten years old. I’m so sorry for your loss.”

“You’ve done your homework.” She ignored my jibe.

“How did that make you feel?” she asked in a gentle voice.

“What do
you
think? I was only ten.”

“Perhaps we can explore that. Were you angry? Did you feel abandoned?”
Right to the nitty-gritty, no beating about the bush, this one.

“I don’t know if you’ve ever watched someone die, uh, Narissa. But when a person is screaming in agony to ‘just die goddam it, please just let me freaking die,’ then you kind of pray that their suffering will end. So when it does, you’re thankful. And when you miss them like crazy, two days later, because you realize they’re not ever coming back, you wish that life wasn’t so unfair and that it shouldn’t have been that way. But it was, and there was nothing I could do about it.”

“Those are very rational thoughts for a ten-year-old.”

“What can I say? I was ten going on thirty.”

“A grown-up mind in a child’s body?”

“Exactly.”

“How did the rest of your family take it?”

“You see, when you say the word ‘family’ I think of my co-stars. My family is whoever I’m working with at the time. Or better said, ‘with whomever I’m working.’ We become a unit. It’s like, when you’re doing a movie nothing else matters in the world, just the movie and the team making the movie. You become immersed in your work, in the minds and hearts of the other actors around you. The cameramen, Make-up, Hair, the electricians . . . everybody. You are one pulsing heartbeat.”

“I was referring to your father. Your brother.”

I could feel my insides coil at the word “brother.” I felt sick, nauseous like I hadn’t eaten all day. That empty yet bilious feeling, coming up like vomit. “My brother is not ‘family.’ And my father?” I could feel my sneakered foot tapping on the floor noiselessly. “Can we talk about this another day?”

“I see I’ve struck a nerve.”

“I haven’t even given my brother any mind-airtime for a long time. Because you know what? He’s
out
. For. Ever. And my dad? When you’ve supported someone for as many years as I have? You get to be the parent and he gets to be the child. And that’s what our relationship is, basically.”

“Do you feel your dad—your parents—robbed you of your childhood? Starting working so young as you did?”

“Did they rob me of my childhood? I don’t know. Because I can’t compare my childhood to any other as it’s the only one I’ve ever known. I can’t tell you what it’s like to stay at a school for more than nine months at a time because that was not my life. I can’t tell you what it’s like to experience first love, holding hands with a sweet-sixteen boy and making out at the back of a movie theatre. You know why? Because I
am
the movie theatre. I’m the spectacle. I’m the show.”

“And how does that make you feel?”

I thought about it for a second and blurted out, “Lost. Powerful. Responsible. Hopeless. Elated. It depends on the day. The past is the past and I can’t change a damn thing. The past shapes your present, your future.”

“Would you change aspects of your childhood if you could go back in time?”

Jesus, she was like a machine gun and I was in her line of fire. Worse than a press junket! I looked up, my eyes straying to the left where I locked on a framed painting of a seascape done in oil. Perhaps it was there to make her patients—“clients”—feel at home. I’d once had an acting coach who said that people’s eyes always went in the same direction every time they paused for thought. Up to the left, or right, or down to the floor. Or they leaned back in a chair or leaned forward, habitually doing the same thing, making the same motions, rarely changing their habits, and this defined their character. I was still looking up—to the left as it happened—and leaning back with no space between my back and the chair. This meant I was a “slow-time” personality, not “quick-time,” or some such nonsense. Without looking at her I answered her question:

“I’d re-write the script, sure I would. I’d 86 my brother, I’d give my dad a leading role instead of the half-assed secondary character he played. I’d give my mom a happy ending—”

“Interesting that you see things in terms of ‘roles.’ And yourself?” she asked, her pale blue eyes drilling into mine—“what would you do for yourself?”

“I’m rewriting that part of the script right now. I’m taking control of my life.”

“And the arrest prompted this one hundred and eighty degree shift in consciousness?”

“It did,” I answered. “They—the State of California—forced me to go to rehab. Believe me, I was kicking and screaming when I arrived at the clinic; it was not my idea of a vacation.”

“So why don’t you tell me about your arrest, Star?”

“Which one? There’ve been three. That one? The one I went to rehab for?”

“Whichever one you feel most comfortable discussing.”

“None of them make me feel ‘comfortable’ exactly. I mean I’m not sinking into some feather bed here—no offense to you.”

“Well why don’t we talk about the time when you were arrested for disorderly conduct and violent behavior.”

“Have you been Googling me?”

“Star, it’s in both our interests to hear your side of the story. Your reasons, your motivation behind your actions. I can’t help you if I don’t know what you’ve been through. And yes, I
have
done my research, not to say that I hadn’t heard about this on the news when it happened whenever it was last year.”

“You want to know about the ‘cat fight’ then?”

“Is that how you would describe it, yourself? A cat fight?”

“That’s what the papers said.”

“And what do
you
say?”

“I was making a point. And I’m glad I got arrested, by the way. Not for all the other times because, hey, I was out of control drinking and driving and I could have done someone some damage, but the catfight? She deserved it.”

“You don’t think you could have made your point in a more controlled manner?”

“I was acting on impulse. She made me so mad, I had to
do
something.”

“So you threw your drink all over her in the middle of an award ceremony?”

“It wasn’t just any drink, it was a Bloody Mary, thick with tomato juice.” My lips twitched into a subtle smile at the memory. “The red represented all the blood that had been spilled from innocent animals to create her tacky fur stole. There was a message.”

“Lots of people wear fur. Surely you’ve seen women in fur walking down the street? What made you attack this particular woman in public?”

“Because they are not style icons getting paid twenty thousand dollars to get out of bed in the morning! She’s one of the world’s most famous supermodels and she’s strutting around in
fur
? Think of all the young girls who think she’s cool, who want to copy her style—” here I took a breath and realized how hypocritical I sounded . . . me, who’d passed out inebriated under tables in clubs, who’d been arrested for drunk driving, photographed with powder—white as a bunny rabbit’s tail—all over my nose—and a thousand other things that young girls might think cool—“and, P.S.,” I continued, “Miss Supermodel had done an anti-fur campaign, way back when at the beginning of her career. Did that not
mean
anything to her? Talk about hypocritical. No, you can berate me for many things I’ve done, but not that. Can we talk about something else? You know just thinking about it is making my blood boil.”

I caught my therapist’s eye. The “pity” look. “Go ahead,” I said, “judge me with your steady eyes, but don’t judge me on
that
.” I took another long breath and felt my heart clatter inside my chest. I closed my lids to make the image of all the animal abuse in those PETA videos go away. People making money from death and suffering.
Ugh!
Spoiled rich bitches, trophy wives, swanning about in fur.

My therapist said softly, “I’m not judging you, Star. But maybe you judge yourself?”

I was used to this psycho-babble talk—trying to turn the tables on me. I took a sip of water. “Doesn’t everyone judge themselves every day of the week? That little voice that says, ‘Hey dummy, why did you do this or, why didn’t you do that?’ The Wouldda-Shoudda-Couldda voice? But I do my best within my boundaries. I have my morals.”

“And they are?”

“Don’t make money or seek pleasure from someone else’s misery. And that includes all living creatures. Don’t be disloyal to a friend. Don’t steal. Don’t hurt others—and yes, by drinking and driving I was potentially hurting others and that’s why I’ve turned over a new leaf.”