The Corner of Bitter and Sweet (22 page)

“What she say? Alcoholic? I thought she stopped with the drinking, that one,” said Giovanni, the Italian cinematographer who I came to find out later that evening had twenty-five grandchildren because his family was very Catholic and didn’t believe in birth control.

“Oh, she did,” said a tall thin guy with little round glasses who was so pasty that I wanted to shove him in a tanning bed with a few sandwiches. From his English accent and some photos I had come across during a Google search, I could tell this was Alistair, the director. He was wearing peach-colored linen pants and a tight white tank top—which was way better than the very tiny, very tight Speedo he’d been photographed in while he was on vacation in Ibiza with his florist-to-the-stars boyfriend, Henrik. “I saw a photo of her coming out of an AA meeting on one of the blogs.” He turned to Barry, a fat bearded guy who was chewing on a straw. Barry was one of the producers, and from the few times I had met him, I now realized the pained expression on his face—a cross between indigestion and nausea—seemed to be his resting state.

“Barry, she is still sober, is she not?” I heard Alistair ask. (I’m not sure if there was any scientific evidence to back it up, but, like me, Walter also had supersonic hearing, which led me to believe that that was a by-product of the whole kid-of-an-alcoholic thing.) “Because I’m telling you right now—my healer said my nervous system is still recovering from that last film I did, and I refuse to put my health in jeopardy. Even for a Billy Barrett movie.”

“Of course she’s still sober,” Barry assured him, not even bothering to take the straw out of his mouth. At dinner, he had mentioned that the straw was because he was quitting smoking. (“Yeah, for the last five years,” Dina, his ex-assistant/now-wife/co-producer said, rolling her eyes.) He turned to Dina as she popped a piece of bruschetta into her mouth whole. The other night, after watching her scarf down not just her own meal but also Barry’s—not to mention part of Mom’s—Mom and I had decided that her gazellelike appearance was maintained with some good old-fashioned bulimia. “You didn’t see her drink anything at dinner the other night, did you?” he asked her.

“Nope. Just club soda,” I heard Dina reply. “I even picked up her glass and took a sip when she was in the bathroom to check.”

By this time they weren’t trying too hard to keep their voices down. Not that it mattered, as Mom was busy oohing and aahing over Giovanni’s wife’s little dog, which looked like a drowned rat. One actress cliché that Mom did not fall into was a love of small, bedazzled dogs that could be carried around in designer carriers—in fact, she sometimes had nightmares about them. (“Usually when I overdid it on the Klonopin,” she said.) Like any good actress, however, she knew that even more important than the director, the person to win over was the cinematographer. You did not want to piss off the person who was in charge of filters and lighting, unless you wanted every wrinkle and mark on your face to be magnified.

I grabbed a red juicy tomato topped with basil and mozzarella off the tray of a passing waiter and bit into it. Not having to lie awake anymore worrying about whether Mom was going to be able to pay the rent with tampon voice-overs was great, but my second favorite thing about her doing the movie was that between the party and the on-set catering, I could eat as much as I wanted and not have to worry about how much it cost.

“I wondered if I’d run into you again,” a voice said. A male voice. With a twinge of a New York accent. The very voice that I had played over in my head the last few nights before attempting to convince myself that the sweet and funny things it might be capable of saying were probably reserved for another girl.

I turned around to see Matt, in jeans and a cornflower-blue button-down shirt that made his blue eyes even bluer.

“Well, I guess you don’t have to wonder anymore,” I said. Was that lame? It sounded lame. And was I going to second-guess everything I said to him? If so, that would be exhausting.

“It’s Matt,” he reminded me, as if there had been any chance I had forgotten.

“Oh, I know,” I said quickly. Too quickly. Way too quickly. This is why I stayed away from guys. Well, this and the fact that I didn’t need to fall for someone and be let down by him. My mother had broken my heart enough times over the course of my life that I didn’t need anyone else doing it. “Annabelle. I mean, I’m Annabelle.”

He smiled. “Yeah. I know.”

Yet again the gap between his teeth did it to me, and I smiled back. “Are you—” I started to say.

“A guest here?” he finished. He smiled. “Nope, I’m working. I find that cater-waitering really informs the process of painting. All the great ones did it. Rumor has it Picasso could balance four trays at a time.”

“Yeah, I’ve heard that,” I said. “And when he dropped them, that was the start of cubism.”

He laughed. “Nice,” he said, impressed.

What was I doing coming up with comebacks on the spot? And, like, semi-smart ones at that? That was so not me. “So you’re a painter?”

“Yeah. Well, studying it at Bard. Just finished my freshman year,” he replied. “But mostly I just sit there staring at the canvas paralyzed with anxiety over the fact that I’ve chosen a career where, after thousands of dollars of debt in student loans, I’ll probably never make any money, forcing me to ultimately take a job as a telemarketer and move home and live in my mother’s basement.”

I cringed. “Wow. That sounds—”

“Like your worst nightmare?” he suggested. “’Cause it’s mine. Especially the moving-home-with-my-mother part.”

I laughed before looking over at my own mother, who was now demonstrating her signature pratfall for a couple who looked to be in their early forties, both dressed in black, with matching hip nerd glasses. I had a feeling they were the couple who wrote the movie. And who, from the way they exchanged a baffled look, didn’t seem to find it as funny as most of America had.

“Your mother’s very . . . colorful,” Matt said.

“That’s one word for it,” I sighed. “And she’s not even drunk.”

He motioned to my cheek. “You have some basil on your cheek.”

Of course I did. I swiped at it.

“The other side.”

I swiped again.

“Still there.”

I swiped harder. Actually, it was more like I scrubbed at it.

“Got it,” Matt said.

“Actually, it’s part of my outfit,” I said. “I thought the green went well with the red.” I motioned to the jersey dress that Mom and I had found when we stopped at Kohl’s post-Target crisis. It was cleavage-lite, which made me happy, but short enough to please Mom. “Kind of a Christmas-in-July theme.”

“Well, the outfit’s working.” He smiled. “Even without the basil.”

I was too busy turning the same color as my dress to be able to think of a comeback—witty or not—to that. But even if I could have, I wouldn’t have gotten it out because just then Billy arrived.

“Hey, Annabelle,” he said with a smile.

“Hey,” I replied. “Billy, this is Matt. He’s a painter.”

“And your cater-waiter for the evening,” Matt added.

Billy laughed. “Been there, dude.
A lot
. Back in the day when everyone in L.A. was on a Middle Eastern kick. Do you know how hard it is to get the smell of baba ghanoush out of your hair?”

He definitely got an A in charm.

As he told us a story about dropping a tray full of two thousand dollars’ worth of caviar at an Oscar party, Mom looked over from her conversation across the garden. When she saw Billy, her smile got so big that it erased all of the little stubborn lines that Botox never seemed to be able to get.

“Hey, will you excuse me for a second?” Billy asked. I turned to see that he was looking at her in that way they were always talking about in those Harlequin romance novels that Esme read—as if Mom was the only person in the room.

Before I could say anything—like maybe something along the lines of “So, Billy, what’s your position on fracking?” or “Have you ever thought of narrating a documentary on global warming, because even if it were just your voice and not you, shirtless, killing terrorists, I bet it would attract an audience that wouldn’t necessarily pay attention to that stuff”—Mom appeared.

“Hey, you,” she said as she stood in front of the three of us. Unlike me, she didn’t have any sort of food particle hanging off her cheek.

“Hey,” Billy said, dazed. Is that what happened when you were really into someone? You sounded stoned? Because I had to say, it was not very attractive. Although the other person, being equally high on hormones, probably wouldn’t notice.

“Hey, Mom—you remember Matt, right? From the café the other day? You know, the day you met that woman Wenonah?” I babbled. I could have kicked myself for not having bought some Play-Doh at Target earlier.

“Of course. Nice to see you again,” she replied, not seeing him at all, because she was too busy making out with Billy with her eyes.

“Nice to see you, too,” Matt said. He turned to me. “I think I should go . . . you know . . . work.”

“Right. Sure,” I said, trying not to sound disappointed. Of course he didn’t want to hang around. This was a guy who preferred documentaries to sitcoms, read real news instead of gossip blogs, and had never seen a Billy Barrett movie. I’d want to get away from it, too, if I could.

“You look beautiful,” Billy said to Mom as he mauled her right back with his eyes. “You both do,” he added.

While any girl my age—or woman or gay guy or dog, really—would have had an epilectic seizure if Billy Barrett had called her beautiful (and, after she recovered, begged him to say it again so that she could tape it with her phone and make a ringtone out of it), it pissed me off. How many times had I been in this position?

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN MOM HOOKS UP

• Mom hooks up with guy.
  
• Guy says nice things to me and buys me little gifts in order to impress Mom.
  
• Guy gets bored with pretending to like kids, causing him to stop putting on fake smile whenever he sees me and instead looks annoyed and impatient as he tries to figure out how long it’ll be before I’m gone and he can get Mom into bed.
  
• Guy starts to realize Mom’s a bit of a nut and begins to pull back.
  
• Mom catches on to the fact that guy is pulling back and starts getting clingy because, according to her, she’s got abandonment issues.
  
• Mom starts to get a little stalkery.
  
• Guy realizes Mom’s not just a bit nuts but a total freak and dumps her.
  
• Mom takes to her bed for a week with a bottle of Stoli in one hand and a bottle of pills in the other.
  
• Rinse and repeat.
  

“Oh, you’re sweet,” Mom said.

“Hey, I’m just stating the facts,” Billy said.

I pulled on her arm. “Everyone’s starting to sit down for dinner.”

“Okay,” she replied, not moving.

“We should go, too, don’t you think?”

“You go sit. I’ll be there in a second.”

“It’s okay. I’ll wait. I’m not that hungry,” I said, even though I was. I knew I was being annoying. But I couldn’t help it. I felt like, if I stayed, maybe I could prevent what I already knew in my gut was going to happen.

“Go sit, Annabelle.”

“I’m good.”

She tore her eyes away from Billy and glared at me while I tried my best to look innocent.

“Annabelle’s right. We should probably go sit,” Billy agreed. “Plus, I’m starved. I could eat a side of beef. If, you know, I ate beef.” He looked at us. “I just found out PETA wants me to be the voice for a bunch of PSAs they’re doing about vegetarianism,” he said proudly. “I’m so psyched.”

“Omigod, that’s fabulous!” Mom exclaimed. The same woman who, the other night, had torn into a hamburger (minus the bun, of course) and announced that it was better than sex.

It was starting. The morphing herself into a carbon copy of the guy she was into, except with boobs and a better ability to accessorize. Ben was the only guy she hadn’t done the pretzel thing with, the only guy she knew she could be herself with, and he’d love her anyway.

She took a deep breath. “But, Billy, if we’re, you know, going to be friends, there’s something you should know.”

“Yeah?”

“I love meat,” she confessed. “I actually eat a lot of it. And . . . I don’t plan on stopping.”

Okay, that was big.

Billy nodded. “That’s cool. I totally support a person’s right to choose around that issue.”

“Just so you know, I do go out of my way to make sure it’s grass fed. Obviously.”

“Good, good,” Billy said. “And, you know, I hope you’re cool with the fact that it’s just not my thing—”

“Oh, completely! I totally respect and admire that!” Mom assured him.

He gave her one of those smiles that kept getting him on the Sexiest/Most Beautiful lists. “Right on.”

They were flirting over the discussion of
beef
. And yet they had this way of making it sound cute. Mom had taken the risk to do something differently—i.e., not be a love-junkie pretzel—and it had paid off. Shouldn’t I be proud of her? This is what I wanted, right? For her to change and, in changing, get better? So why, instead of being happy for her, did I feel as if I was about to have a panic attack?

Mom and Billy could have spent all of dinner flattering each other about, say, Billy’s efforts to help revitalize New Orleans (“I know that’s really Brad Pitt’s thing, but the city holds a real special place in my heart from when I went there for Mardi Gras my junior year of college”), or the fact that Mom had decided that once the movie was over, she wanted to put her efforts toward starting a wellness and self-esteem school-like place in Mexico. (“I’m a terrible flier, especially now that I can’t take Xanax, and it’s a lot closer than Africa. Not to mention that between Madonna and Oprah, they’ve kind of got that continent covered.”) Instead, they let everyone else join in and compliment them as well. Because it was a Hollywood crowd, everyone knew how to do it in such a way that it all sounded very sincere. Like when Barry told Mom with a straight face that he agreed that inspirational bumper stickers were a terrific way to spread good energy on a daily basis, especially in a place like L.A., where there was so much traffic.