Wallflower In Bloom Page 10

  Plus, I could practically write the script for that one. “How could you?” Tag would say. “How could you destroy everything I’ve worked my entire life to build?” He’d raise his palms to the heavens, exposing just the right amount of forearm. “Not just for me, but for all of us.”

  “Easy, tiger,” my father would say. He’d stretch himself up to his full height so he could get an arm around Tag’s shoulders. “I’m sure your sister didn’t mean anything by it, did you, Dee-Dee? Just give her a chance to explain.”

  My mother would cut in. “Five p.m. Tag’s house. We’ll all sit down and discuss it like civilized human beings, and then those of us who haven’t been disowned will have a nice family dinner.”

  A voice cut into my reverie, but it was only the announcement that first class was boarding. I stood and stretched and looked over my shoulder for a last-second stay of execution. Then I took a deep breath, found my boarding pass, and yanked the handle on my carry-on to extend it.

  I walked the ramp to the plane that would take me to Hollywood as if I were walking the plank on a pirate ship in the middle of a storm-tossed, shark-infested ocean.

  When in doubt, eat. When in eat, doubt.

  I slept most of the way to LAX. First class wasn’t what it used to be, but it was still a whole bunch better than coach. The way it worked in our family was that Tag always flew first class. My parents didn’t believe in it politically, so they always flew coach. I split the difference, flying first class with Tag and coach alone. This was the first time I’d ever been in first class by myself, so I took a moment to let it register. I knew just enough about sports to realize that today was the first inning of a whole new ball game.

  I ignored the man sitting next to me, as well as his briefcase. I’d planned on starving myself today so I’d look a little better when I got to L.A., but the smell of warm first-class chocolate chip cookies reached my nose before the plane even took off. Since I’d already eaten a breakfast sandwich anyway, I decided I might as well go for the cookies and then stop eating for the rest of the day. I washed them down with a glass of milk. What’s the point of chocolate chip cookies without a little milk to dunk them in?

  I crumpled my napkin and pressed it into the empty cup. When I handed over my trash, the flight attendant gave me a big smile. Flight attendants tended to ignore me unless I was with Tag, so I wondered if this one was just being friendly because I was sitting in first class.

  For the first time, it occurred to me that an actual photo of me might be circulating on the Internet. Wait, maybe even on television—the morning shows, and even Extra and Access Hollywood. I hoped they hadn’t gotten their hands on my high school class picture with the frizzy hair and that soulful gaze I’d attempted, which only ended up making me look bug-eyed. I’d spent most of my adult life dodging cameras, so maybe they’d just show a shadowy female figure stamped with a question mark. At least that would buy me some time to seek professional help. I’d heard those Hollywood stylists could make anyone look good.

  The endless line of coach passengers was still boarding, so I turned on my cell phone and tapped the Firefox icon. It opened to a news page. The headline was some political scandal.

  I scrolled down. Right under the first story was a tiny photo of Tag in one of his white tunics, standing with some floozy. Perfect. Maybe the media would keep using my more photogenic brother’s photo and let me dance in peace.

  I looked at the photo again. On my cell screen, it was the tiniest of thumbnails. I squinted. Then I opened the link.

  I was the floozy. Actually, floozy would have been kind. Frumpy was more accurate. I was handing Tag his rock star wireless headset, so finely constructed that all you could see from a distance was a tiny flesh-colored foam-padded microphone that photographed like a beauty mark. My arms were up and my blouse had followed them, exposing about three inches of flabby flesh. My jeans were bagging out in all the wrong places, and I appeared to have a slight wedgy. My roots needed a serious touch-up, and it looked like my hair hadn’t been brushed in a month.

  Just. Shoot. Me. Now.

  I smelled coffee, and realized the flight attendant was standing over my shoulder. “I thought that was you,” she said. “How exciting.”

  “That’s one way of looking at it.” I pressed the Off button on my phone.

  The flight attendant lowered her voice and leaned closer. “Just wondering, is Tag seeing anyone right now?”

  “Just wondering,” I said. “Do you think I could have another cookie?”

  Her face hardened, but she took the hint and left to fetch me my second snack.

  I ate my new cookie, pretty much without tasting it. And the whole time I was eating it I was wishing that I wasn’t. But as soon as I finished it, I wanted another one, because as awful as I felt while I was eating it, I felt even worse when it was gone.

  It was the story of my eating life: When in doubt, eat. When in eat, doubt. I ate when I was anxious about something. But as soon as the food was in my mouth, I realized I didn’t really want it, so I didn’t even enjoy it. Or sometimes even taste it. Maybe I should just start carrying a spittoon with me wherever I went.

  I curled up with my tiny white pillow and snuggled under my thin blue blanket. When we reached cruising altitude, I reclined my leather seat back as far as it would go and conked out.

  I woke up just in time for lunch, a pretty decent chicken Caesar salad wrap and a half-melted mini–hot fudge sundae. I ate all of it, figuring I needed to keep up my strength for whatever awaited me on the other side of this flight. I drank some water, made a quick trip to the bathroom, then dozed off a second time.

  When I opened my eyes again, we were landing. I stretched and rooted around in my bag for a piece of gum. As soon as our wheels touched the ground, I turned on my phone again. A fleet of missed calls and messages came in for a landing. I ignored them all.

  My phone rang and I jumped. I checked the caller ID to make sure it was safe to answer. It wasn’t a number I recognized, so I knew it wasn’t Tag or my parents.

  “Hello,” I said timidly.

  “Welcome to Los Angeles,” Karen the producer said.

  “Wow. You’re good. What, did you watch my plane land?”

  She made a sound that was almost a laugh. “You’ve got the rental car confirmation and the directions to your apartment. I’ll e-mail you tomorrow’s itinerary once I’ve got everything confirmed. You’ll start the day with a seven a.m. physical with the show physician—”

  “Oh, that’s okay,” I said. “I’m—”

  “Policy. It’s in your contract. I’ll meet you in the lobby and go with you to the exam room. Practice studio locations are confidential, so please do not share any details with the general public or with members of the media.”

  “Ha,” I said. “I’ll do my best, but those paparazzi are all over me.”

  I didn’t realize that the flight attendant was listening to my end of the conversation until she rolled her eyes.

  Karen the producer didn’t laugh either. Did they not realize I was joking? “There’s also a confidentiality clause in your contract. The contract, by the way, will be on its way to your brother’s agent tomorrow, and we’re hoping to have it fully executed by midweek.”

  I’d watched enough of my brother’s deals to know how fast that was. These DWTS people didn’t mess around. Wait a minute. Tag would never let his agent help make this deal happen.

  “Um,” I said. “Actually, why don’t you have the contract sent directly to me? It’ll be easier all around that way.”

  As soon as I said it, I wondered if I should have kept my mouth shut. Now I truly understood the meaning of the word ambivalence. I was completely in conflict—half of me still wanted to find a way out of this mess, and the other half couldn’t wait to start dancing.

  The plane door was opening. I stood up, tucked my cell phone in the crook of my neck, and reached for my carry-on.

  “Will do,” Karen said. “Well,
then, rest up and enjoy your first night in Hollywood.” Her voice changed pitch and got all warm and fuzzy. “Oh, and we’re hoping Tag will want to come out to support his sister, especially since it was his idea in the first place.”

  I tried not to gulp.

  “So when you talk to him, please do let him know we’ve got a front-row seat reserved for him at every sho-ow.”

  I closed my eyes. “I wi-ill,” I said. “Just the second I talk to him.”

  As soon as we hung up, I turned off my phone again so Tag couldn’t reach me.

  I deplaned and followed the signs to baggage claim, passing all sorts of famous-looking people whose names were right on the tip of my tongue. Or maybe everybody who lived in L.A. simply had that look.

  I climbed into the shiny black Land Rover Dancing With the Stars had rented for me instead of the compact I would have rented for myself. I could get used to this Hollywood thing.

  When I turned the key in the ignition, the seat started rumbling. Then it started moving around—up and down and forward and backward, as if it were weighing and measuring me.

  “Cool it,” I said. “Like I’m not feeling self-conscious enough as it is.”

  Once the seat was satisfied, I typed the address of my temporary home sweet home into the GPS.

  Los Angeles is so overwhelming it makes Boston seem like a cow field with a few cobblestone paths running through it. But my Land Rover gave me height. And shiny black bulk. It wasn’t quite a Hummer, but it had the same going-off-to-war-in-a-tank vibe.

  And in a way, that’s what it felt like. That I was going off to battle. The battle of my life. Of maybe even for a life.

  Tag had done some gigs in L.A., so I’d been here several times before. I managed to circle my way out of LAX and head north on what we would have called Route 1 at home but L.A. people called The One. I took a right on La Tijera Boulevard and then a left on South La Cienega Boulevard. As each new direction crackled out from the GPS, I pretended I was taking a Spanish class. “Tijera,” I repeated. “Cienega.” I wondered if people from L.A. felt like they were taking a foreign-language class when they came to Massachusetts. Worcester. Woburn. Gloucester. Scituate.

  Twenty-five minutes later I managed to pull into the tiny parking lot without taking anybody out. I slid out of the Land Rover and stretched.

  And then it hit me: This was my Mary Tyler Moore Show moment.

  Just like Mary, I’d actually had the courage to move away and start over. I was here. This was it.

  It wasn’t Minneapolis, but I spun around three times and threw my imaginary hat up in the air anyway.

  And right then and there I decided that, whatever it took, I was going to make it after all.

  A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, but a bush in the hand will feed the whole flock.

  My temporary apartment was beyond bland; it was lifeless. Not a single thing in it even hinted that a real person might survive here, let alone flourish. It felt like a failure-to-thrive holding tank.

  The front door opened directly into a no-nonsense rectangle of kitchen-dining-living room. The walls were white. The appliances were white. The cabinets were white. The dishes and mugs inside the cabinets were white. The wall-to-wall carpeting was beige, as were the ceramic tiles on the bathroom and kitchen floors. The living room side had a beige pullout couch, a matching chair, and a tarnished brass reading lamp. A white hallway was just big enough to hold the doors to two tiny white bedrooms and one tiny white bathroom.

  I’d been expecting the equivalent of a five-star hotel, or at least a three or a four, so I hadn’t even brought a blow-dryer.

  I opened the cabinet under the bathroom sink and pulled out a tiny white blow-dryer.

  “What else could I possibly need?” I said. My words actually echoed throughout the apartment.

  The whole place smelled like bleach. I pulled up the white plastic miniblind in one of the bedrooms to open the window and let in some air. It didn’t open. I tried the window in the living room. Nothing.

  My temporary apartment was permanently airless. I wondered if I could buy a carton of fresh air to go somewhere, maybe at one of those oxygen bars, the ones with the big serpentine hookahs. Did they still have those places, or had I missed an entire fad without taking a single airy toke?

  I was so not a nester. Even when Mitchell and I were in one of our honeymoon phases, his idea of decorating was to upgrade the flat-screen TV. Mine was to bang another hole in the rough sheep shed walls and hang up the latest beachy watercolor my sister Colleen had painted for my birthday.

  Now I had an overwhelming urge to do something, anything, to my temporary home to make it feel like mine.

  I cranked up the AC as far as it would go and grabbed the key I’d picked up from the guy who managed the place. The three-hour time difference between coasts had given me some bonus hours, so I figured I might as well get some fresh air and do a little shopping.

  I made a mental shopping list: some art for the walls, food, underwear.

  Instead I found tchotchkes, and lots of them. Every other store I passed sold T-shirts, postcards, and refrigerator magnets. I was sure walking just a block or so would take me to an entirely different class of shopping, but in which direction?

  Tag could always smell a mall a mile away, and for just a second, I realized I missed him. If he were with me, we’d be pawing our way through the T-shirts right now and scooping up tacky finds like they were hidden treasure—a yellowed Spice Girls T-shirt or a Harrison Ford bobblehead doll.

  “You know,” he’d say, “lots of people are bobblehead fans.”

  “Don’t start,” I’d say.

  Tag would hold poor bobbly-headed Harrison up to the dim light coming in through the dusty window. “I’m just saying. It’s something we should consider. Either that or an action figure. I’d make a good action figure.”

  I bought a laminated refrigerator magnet of the Hollywood sign and a poster of the Dancing With the Stars mirror ball trophy. Plus a candle for ambiance.

  “Home sweet home,” I said to the guy at the register. He ignored me. It was hard to tell whether it was because I didn’t seem important or because he didn’t speak English.

  I handed him Tag’s platinum American Express. “I’m going to be on Dancing With the Stars,” I said, trying out the sound of it.

  He dragged the card through the little machine. “I have two scripts. One of them is basically in development.”

  “Great,” I said. “Good luck.”

  His tired brown eyes met mine. “Yeah, you, too.”

  The next item on my list was underwear, which I seriously needed if I had any hope of starting a new life, especially a televised one, but the only underwear store I could find was a Frederick’s of Hollywood. I stood outside for a while, casually glancing at the leathery, feathery display in the windows and marveling at the fact that Frederick was actually from Hollywood. Or at least in Hollywood. Eventually I decided I didn’t have the guts to go in, so I kept walking.

  I found a little corner grocery store, the kind that makes you doubt even the freshest-looking produce because it’s so dank and dirty inside. I double-checked the date on the milk. I sniffed some scentless coffee and decided to buy it anyway. I picked up a box of Special K, then put it down and grabbed some peanut butter and English muffins instead. And a single banana.

  The banana almost made me cry, right there in the dingy little store. Somehow nothing makes you feel more alone than buying a solitary piece of fruit.

  The woman behind the register must have sensed it. Or maybe she just could tell I wasn’t from around here. “Hi there,” she said. “What brings you to the Land of Oz? Business or pleasure?”

  I smiled. “I’m going to be on Dancing With the Stars.”

  She smiled back. “I’m going to be on Two and a Half Men. I’m waiting for a callback, but I’m pretty sure I nailed it.”

  I wandered down the street with my groceries. There were probably some
hip restaurants around, but I had no idea where they were, and I also didn’t think walking into a restaurant with a half gallon of milk would be a very hip thing to do. I stopped at a Subway and bought a large turkey sub, so I’d have leftovers for breakfast in case I didn’t have time to toast the English muffins. Then I walked across the street to another dingy store and bought a package of peanut M&M’s for dessert, just in case.

  I kept walking. The crowds of T-shirt and fanny pack–wearing tourists seemed to be thinning and the area appeared to be getting sketchier, but it was hard to tell. I decided to go one more block and then turn around.

  I stopped in front of a pet store. Three tall, ornate bird stands filled the display window. Their elaborate scrollwork was the first thing I’d seen so far that made me think of Old Hollywood. An assortment of canaries sat on perches behind the metal bars and peered out at freedom.

  “I feel ya,” I whispered. “That’s exactly how things looked to me. Just yesterday, in fact.”

  A chiasmus, one of Tag’s most famous, popped into my head: A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, but a bush in the hand will feed the whole flock.

  I had no idea what it actually meant, and I was pretty sure Tag didn’t either. But he always managed to hold an entire auditorium of starry-eyed followers right in the palm of his hand with that one. He had this great spiel about how it’s not all about strategy or competition. You have to let go of that me-first mentality and focus on nurturing the rest of the world. With. Your. Passion.

  I shook my head to dislodge my brother from my brain and opened the door to the pet store.

  Growing up, we had a standard poodle named FooFoo that we’d rescued when we found him running around lost and panicked at a massive outdoor Grateful Dead concert on Boston Common one summer.

  “I think it’s having a bad trip, Eileen,” my father said as the dog circled by our family’s enclave of blankets and lawn chairs for a third time.