Diary of a Stage Mother's Daughter Read online

  “Why’s Mom so sad?” I asked Dad while we were both sitting on the couch in the living room. “Is she mad at me?”

  “No, honey,” he said soothingly, stroking my hair. “She’s just really disappointed you guys aren’t working on Little House together any longer.”

  “But I’ll get something else,” I said. “Is she going to stay in her room until I get something else?”

  “I don’t know,” he replied. “It’s possible.”

  “How will I get home from school?” I asked.

  “Don’t worry, we’ll figure it out,” he offered.

  “How will I go on auditions after school?” I asked.

  “Oh, that. Yeah, she’ll leave her room for that.”

  Dad always said those years on the Prairie were the happiest of Mom’s life.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  I waited at the curb in front of the school for Mom to drive up in her little white Porsche. The benches were empty, except for a couple of lingering strays like myself. I gamed how long I should wait before I went into the front office and asked them to call Mom and confirm that she’d forgotten me.

  The more time that went by, the heavier my chest felt. I wondered if she had decided not to come get me, or if I was just no longer a priority.

  I could see Mrs. Nan peering out from the office, watching the second-to-last straggler climb into a car, leaving only me. My gut told me to hide. Every moment that passed increased the likelihood that Mrs. Nan would have to take action. I hoped she wouldn’t come out and bear witness to my embarrassment at being the sole forgotten child. I checked the Peanuts watch I had received a few months back for my tenth birthday; it was now almost forty minutes past pickup time.

  Life had slowed to a mundane pace over the past year. We still rushed on auditions, but I didn’t have a regular gig any longer. I felt more comfortable, at least when I wasn’t abandoned at school. But the less demanding schedule also meant Mom had less direction. On the days when she picked me up from school in the same housedress she’d been wearing when I walked out the door that morning, I knew I was alone.

  She had gained a fair amount of weight, though I had no idea how much. Her weight problem seemed to flourish in this climate of malaise. She’d talk about the latest Hollywood diet, then I’d find empty snack bags littering her room.

  Finally, her Porsche peeled into the parking lot, taking the turn to the pickup area with a little too much speed. I could see her glance at the vacant benches that seemed to condemn her tardiness, but she dismissed them without changing expression.

  “Hey,” she said through the open window. I silently picked up my lunchbox and my backpack and tried to look as lonely and exhausted as I felt. She usually offered an excuse as to why I’d been forced to wonder if I were an orphan. Today, she didn’t bother.

  I yanked the door open and saw she had changed into jeans and a blouse. She had half a face of makeup, foundation but no eye makeup, and her hair looked slept on, either from last night, or maybe that afternoon. Either way, it didn’t seem as if she’d been busy enough since I’d left for school with Dad seven hours earlier to justify her forgetting to pick me up. But who was I to judge?

  “I brought your clothes. You want to go riding? It’s Thursday we can make the five o’clock lesson.”

  “Did you pick up Tiffany?” I asked. She shot me an angry look as if she hadn’t failed to pick up Tiffany’s carpool two days earlier. That day she’d stranded four kids.

  “She’s changing at home. I told her we’d come back around and pick her up.”

  When Tiffany came out of the house, she was wearing her beige riding britches and a gray concert T-shirt. Now fourteen, she cultivated a rocker style that stood in sharp contrast to the riding pants and boots. She looked like a British headbanger out for a quick fox hunt. Her shoulder-length brown hair was pulled back in a ponytail to combat the heat. The temperature had risen into the eighties, which was unusual for so late into the fall, and it would feel even hotter at the barn.

  I climbed through the center console of the car into the tiny backseat to let Tiffany ride up front. She opened the front door and sat down and then immediately adjusted the radio to her favorite station, which blasted Billy Idol’s “Rebel Yell.”

  “Turn that down. Or I will sing,” Mom threatened.

  Mom had grabbed a pair of britches for me. I slid off my shorts in the backseat and pulled on the riding pants, contorting my body to get enough leverage to yank on the stretchy leggings that fit like a second skin. Mom had also brought a few needlepoint belts that I loved to match to my polo shirts and ribbons. I chose the pink belt to match my pink and green polo and slid it through the belt loops of my britches.

  I counted the signs on the 118 Freeway as we snaked around the belly of the San Fernando Valley, approaching Hidden Valley from the back, rather than confronting the traffic directly via the 101. Tiffany and I had started riding at Foxfield about a year earlier and we’d timed every possible approach to find the quickest one. We arrived in a little more than thirty minutes, and from this approach, the rows of stables and adjoining hunt fields looked like a more arid version of the English countryside tucked into the outskirts of Westlake Village.

  Mom had taken us out there to start riding about the time Little House went off the air, highlighting one of the biggest differences between us and other kids in the industry. Tiffany and I didn’t support our family financially. The vast majority of kids in the business had parents who had also tried, with varying degrees of success, to make a living as actors. Those parents understood show business well and doubled as expert acting coaches for their children. That certainly gave those kids a huge advantage over us. But those families lived on the paycheck of whoever was working. Sometimes, that was no one. When a job ran out, it was time to cut back in a big way. Most families went from feast to famine almost overnight, never having saved or made enough for the inevitable rainy day.

  Even when times were good, a lot of these kids did without the basics, like an education. Their parents “homeschooled” them, which was usually a euphemism for blowing off education altogether so the kids would be available for any bit of work, or an audition. I was amazed by how many smart young actors I saw in set schoolrooms who couldn’t sound out a three-syllable word. I’d met a fifth grader who’d never heard of long division but went on to earn an Academy Award nomination. One of the girls on Little House wasn’t allowed to leave the classroom until she could spell prairie. She had to have lunch brought in. It was an unusual life, and one that I had only one foot in, I realized, by comparison.

  Mom, on the other hand, took a two-pronged approach to the lull in my work life. She’d either take to her bed in a fit of depression or throw us headlong into a hobby. Right now, she was doing a bit of both.

  In the meantime, Tiffany had checked out of most of the activities we used to do together, except riding, which she passionately loved. She had graduated to ninth grade, where she exercised her independence and grappled with the awkwardness that came with being a teenager. I had grown almost as tall as her, but she had fully developed, which only added to her shyness. Her posture had changed. She seemed to have rolled inward, physically and mentally, withdrawing from our family.

  Tiffany rarely went on auditions anymore. It had been ages since she’d really worked. I hadn’t considered that there’d come a time when she wouldn’t act at all, and I was alarmed to see show business evaporating from her life, which I hadn’t thought possible for either of us. Riding felt like the last thing we shared.

  When we got to Foxfield, Tiffany and I took off for Pony Island to get our horses. Pony Island was a series of barns on the other side of a ravine. To get there we walked down a path to the water and jumped from rock to rock. When it rained heavily, the ravine turned into a roaring river that surrounded the barns, hence the name. We liked to imagine that someday we’d get stranded there indefinitely with our horses, unable to cross back to the mainland.

&nb
sp; Mom had bought me a huge chestnut mare named Alondra with a stunning flaxen mane and tail. She had also bought a gorgeous Palomino mare for Tiffany a few years earlier, but Alondra was the first horse that was really all mine. She had tall white socks and big white stripe down the center of her face. Alondra was both spirited and spectacular, and turned out to be way too much horse for me, but I’d loved her from the moment I laid eyes on her at a show in Santa Barbara. She would gallop and stretch out her neck while shaking her head to loosen my grip on the reins, and though it sometimes felt as if she were out of control, I never got too scared because I knew deep down she loved me too and wouldn’t hurt me. Unlike most horses, she came when I called her. We had an understanding.

  Tiffany grabbed the lanky bay she’d been riding lately when she wasn’t working out Duchess. She rode stronger and jumped more bravely than I did, but I rode in a younger age group with less competition, so I’d won more ribbons by now. Tiffany didn’t seem to care. She’d gravitated to a faster, more rebellious crowd at Chaminade Prep, the Catholic high school she attended, and suddenly wanted to do things with friends on Friday and Saturday nights rather than have dinner at home or ride horses with me. Recently Mom had forced her to take me along on one such weekend outing. That’s when I realized there was more going on than I’d imagined.

  Mom had dropped us off at Magic Mountain with Tiffany’s new friend Dina. Tiffany said that Dina, who had a pretty face, wheat-blond hair, and an hourglass shape, rated among the popular kids at their school. I still went to elementary school and didn’t really get what that meant, but I could tell it was something valuable that Tiffany wanted. We ducked into the bathroom inside the park gates to fix our hair and figure out what we wanted to carry around the park with us and what we wanted to shove in a locker.

  “So what’s it like to be on TV? I used to always watch Little House,” Dina gushed. Unlike most girls stuck with their friend’s little sisters, she doted on me and I immediately felt lucky to be there. Maybe I could just slide into Tiffany’s older life and mooch off her fun. I’d done it before.

  “Oh, I don’t know. It’s fun,” I responded.

  Meanwhile Tiffany seemed to be inspecting the bathroom. She peered under the door of each stall then wandered back to where Dina and I were standing near the sinks.

  “What did you bring?” Tiffany asked, looking in Dina’s backpack. Dina slid the pack off her shoulder and pulled out a wild berry Bartles & Jaymes wine cooler. I hadn’t seen one before, and I didn’t realize at first that it contained alcohol.

  “Is she going to tell on us?” Dina asked, pointing to me.

  “Nah, she’s fine. Right?” Tiffany looked at me hard.

  Of course I wasn’t going to say anything to Mom or Dad. They were the other team. But I couldn’t really figure out why the girls wanted to drink at Magic Mountain. Just being here was exciting—going on the rides and pigging out on the food that Mom wouldn’t let us have if she were there.

  We crowded into a handicapped stall so no one could walk in and see what we were doing. I worried some park worker would discover us there and hustle us off to the police, who would immediately call our parents. Then Mom would show up and beat us, probably to death.

  Leaning against the green metal stall door, Tiffany took a big swig from the bottle and handed it to Dina, who took a few gulps and handed it back. Tiffany pounded the rest and Dina broke out the second bottle. She opened it and handed it to me.

  “You want some?” Dina asked.

  “She’s ten.” Tiffany looked dubious.

  “I’ve let my little sister have some.”

  I immediately took the bottle from Dina’s hand before Tiffany could stop me and took a sip. The drink was sugary sweet, with a weird medicine-like aftertaste. As soon as I brought the bottle down from my lips, Tiffany snatched it away. I stood there and waited to feel different.

  I liked taking part in Tiffany and Dina’s mischief. I felt older and very cool, especially for a ten-year-old. At the same time, I wanted to know when it would end and we’d go back to the park.

  Tiffany tossed back the rest of the drink with an abandon that made me nervous. She looked willfully out of control. I didn’t like that. As the older sister, she was supposed to be worried and in charge at all times. That was her job. I had no idea where this left me. I certainly couldn’t be in charge if something terrible happened tonight.

  They polished off the second wine cooler without offering me another sip, and stuffed the evidence in the sanitary napkin bin inside the stall. Then we all walked out of the bathroom into the night.

  “Wow, I’m buzzed,” Dina laughed.

  “Me too. Totally,” Tiffany said.

  I wanted to feel the sensation and join their club, but I had no idea how it was supposed to feel. How can you tell if you’re drunk if you’ve never been drunk before? I gave up trying and got in line for the Swashbuckler. Tiffany and Dina followed me on the ride and laughed too loud each time the giant ship shot up in the air and stalled, only to switch directions and freefall back to earth.

  When Mom picked us up at the end of the evening, she failed to detect any evidence of our misbehavior. This shocked me. In addition to the wine coolers, Dina and Tiffany had spent the night smoking clove cigarettes, which had a sweet, sickening smell to them. We’d doused our hair with Aqua Net hair spray to mask all the different illicit odors, but I never thought the trick would work.

  After our riding lesson, Tiffany and I walked our horses around the field to cool them down. I patted Alondra’s muscular neck, and she snorted and tossed her head. Like a child who had spent an entire hot day in the pool, Alondra was gloriously worn out.

  “Hey, so I saved you from spending the night at school today,” Tiffany said.

  “Yeah?”

  “Mom was lying on her bed eating chips and I asked her who was driving you home. She shot to her feet like I’d lit something on fire. So classic,” Tiffany said shaking her head in disdain.

  “Yeah, I could tell she just completely forgot to come get me,” I said, stroking Alondra’s blonde mane. I hadn’t fully recovered from being abandoned at school. The helplessness I’d felt while sitting alone on the bench still stung.

  “Don’t feel bad, I’m going to get thrown out of my carpool, she’s forgotten us so many times. Maybe I could set a timer for her in the morning. She does absolutely nothing all day long. All she has to do is pick us up!” Tiffany laughed, though neither of us really thought it was funny.

  “I just don’t get it,” Tiffany continued. “I would be bored watching TV all day. There’s nothing on. Dina loves Days of Our Lives, but seriously, nothing happens on that show. You could miss it for two weeks and come back and they are all still in the same clothes, doing the same scene.”

  “It would be awful to be on that show,” I agreed. “They do totally wear the same clothes for weeks. How do they keep the wardrobe clean that long? I guess they must have a dozen sets of the same outfit for emergencies or spills or whatever. And do they never get their hair cut? The continuity person must go crazy. It’s like that movie I did where it was the same day for the entire shoot. Scavenger Hunt. I spent weeks and weeks in the same pants and T-shirt. I never wanted to see that outfit again when that movie ended.”

  Tiffany looked thoughtful as our horses ambled next to each other. “The cute guy from The A-Team was in that movie. What was his name? Dirk Benedict! Is that a real name? Either way, he was super hot. That movie kind of sucked though.”

  “I know. It seemed like it was going to be funny.”

  “I remember Mom laughing nonstop when she read the script. No one laughed in the theater though. But you were cute in it.” Tiffany dropped her reins altogether and her horse’s head sank almost to the dirt bridle path in front of us. “Mom is only happy when you’re working,” she said.

  “I know.”

  “She says, ‘We’re making money, not spending money.’ ”

  “I wonder how much money w
e’ve made. Like, all together. Both us. Our whole lives? It must be millions.”

  “She’ll never tell us.” Tiffany’s voice filled with contempt. More and more often these days I heard that tone in her voice whenever she talked about Mom.

  “Do you have any idea how much we make a day? Or a week? Maybe we could add up how many days we’ve worked?” I wondered aloud.

  “No idea. I’m not even sure Dad knows. Mom puts all the checks into our accounts at Security Pacific Bank. I wonder if the tellers would tell us if we went in?”

  “Probably not. Ah, who cares.” I let Alondra’s head sink and dropped my feet from my stirrups, letting my calves stretch after the ride. I stretched my arms over my head, trusting Alondra not to run off while I twisted my tired back, vulnerably off balance.

  Our horses lengthened their strides as we turned back toward the barn. The sun sank low behind the rolling hills and a gentle breeze blew in from the ocean on the other side of the mountains. The peace and tranquility of the night enveloped us.

  “We’d better put them back in their stalls for the night. I’m sure Mom’s getting antsy,” Tiffany said as we reluctantly made the final turn and headed in.

  When we pulled up to the house, our cocker spaniel, KC, did not come out to greet us. Usually when we pulled into the driveway, the headlights caught him hopping out of his dog bed, tucked into the protection of our front porch. He never failed to greet us.

  I got out of the car and went over to the porch to see if he was there, just moving more slowly than usual. Nothing. Then I circled around the back of the house to see if he’d been accidentally locked in the backyard. He wasn’t there either.

  “There’s a note,” Tiffany said, returning from inside the house. “Dad went to go get him from the pound.”