Born Under a Lucky Moon (4 page)

Chapter Four
January 2006

I
paused in my story and looked over to see if I had put the love of my life to sleep yet. “Well?” I asked.

“Well, what?”

“Aren't you sorry that you asked me to marry you?”

“Your family sounds more entertaining than ominous.”

“Just wait,” I replied. Yawning, I got up and wandered into the kitchen, where I spied my iPhone. “Do you mind if I check emails?” I called over my shoulder.

“It's after midnight, and it's the night I asked you to marry me. Sure, you can check emails,” Aidan said good-naturedly.

I scrolled through the twenty new emails, and I promptly wished I hadn't. A prominent star, who shall go by only the initials F.U.—appropriately, I might add—had sent an email bitching about the billing block in the movie poster for
Sheer Panic
. The billing block is that list of tiny little names at the bottom of every poster. Nobody much cares about it except for the people whose names are in it. Ms. F.U. had sent me the message at 11:12 p.m.

The last time I had seen this person, she was having a pedicure in her home. In order for me to show the art for the poster, the star insisted I kneel down next to the pedicurist so that the art could be seen from “the proper angle.”

“My head looks too small for my body,” the star had proclaimed.

“But that's your head,” I carefully protested from my prostrate position at her feet.

“No, it's not. You stripped a hideously small and out-of-proportion head onto the body from another shot.”

I knew this star well. We weren't buddies having each other over for dinner parties or anything, but I knew her neurotic behavior. She was a diva in every sense of the word. Aging, but still a diva. I knew she obsessed over every detail down to the way her fingernails looked on a poster. We had had to reshoot her hands already, at a cost of fifty thousand dollars, because she didn't like the manicure.

When I suggested that we could just fix the way her nails looked on the computer, she had regarded me as though I had toads springing out of my mouth. Funny, she didn't feel that way when it came to getting her wrinkles retouched.

Before any meeting with her, I obsessively made sure I knew every detail about anything that could possibly come up. This was not a head strip. It was a single body and head from one photograph. I said to Ms. F.U., “I have the original photograph right here. See, it's not a head strip. Therefore, your head is in proportion.”

She looked casually at the photograph. “So you retouched this photograph to look like an original so you could cover up your mistake?” Did she actually think I had the time or the inclination to do such a thing?

“I . . . it actually is your . . .” I was stammering now. I do that sometimes when I am faced with an all-out lack of reason, courtesy, or just plain damn common sense in my profession. I stammer often. “It is your head. On your body. In one complete photo,” I finally managed.

“I don't believe you. I demand you make my head bigger.”

The pedicurist cast me a sideways look, and I knew she was thinking about all the jokes you could make in reply to that statement.

Don't get me wrong. I love my job. God knows I had come a long way from being a receptionist in an ad agency but it sure can be trying on some days. My job is twenty percent development of creative materials and eighty percent psychology to sell the movies, and that's just to the studio, the filmmakers, and the talent—all of whom have a say.

Every day has a fevered energy. Almost everyone on the advertising side of films works on twenty-four-hour adrenaline surges. People don't realize what goes in to making the film trailers and the TV spots and the posters. You deal with the talents' vanities, the filmmakers' egos, and the studios' pressure to open a film. The ad agencies struggle to “break the back” of the campaign while hopefully you, the studio marketing exec, are guiding them all correctly. I listen to research and my own gut instinct on how to reach an audience, and I've been proven correct more times than not.

But in the meantime everybody is squabbling the entire time to get his or her own way—me included. I've always thought that growing up in my particular family prepared me for a lot of that. What it hadn't prepared me for was the politics. I was lousy at studio politics. Since my brain didn't think in particularly devious patterns I assumed others operated the same way. I figured if you worked hard and did a good job that was about it. After all, that was how I had risen up through the ranks. But Katsu's promotion was one more example of my being clueless about such things.

Glancing back at Ms. F.U.'s email, I decided it could wait. Since she hadn't called me on my cell phone I knew that the situation wasn't urgent. I would solve the billing block problem by basically passing it off to our legal department. I just had to get an art director to design the damn billing block. It was not my responsibility to determine which screenwriter out of the forty screenwriters who had rewritten the script was going to get the credit for the illustrious work.

I scrolled through the other emails. Elizabeth had sent one. Opening it, I smiled. It was a photo of my nineteen-year-old niece accompanied by an invitation to a ballet performance she was dancing in at UCLA. Quickly, I replied, “Yep, I'll be there,” and hit
SEND
.

When I put down the phone Aidan was getting ready for bed, and I joined him. He yawned, “Don't forget we have brunch tomorrow with my mom and stepdad at the Hotel Bel-Air.” I had, in fact, forgotten all about it.

We both brushed our teeth and climbed into bed. We each had our side and each knew that he spooned me first, then we flipped and I spooned him. The rituals were all there. For all the world like an old married couple. Before we fell asleep I stroked his back and whispered in his ear, “Aidan?”

“Mmm?”

“Thank you for asking me to marry you.”

He reached around, patted my bottom, and fell asleep. I however watched the shadows on the wall for a good long time before my eyes finally closed.

The next day was, as usual, bright and sunny. We woke up on the late side and had to scramble to get dressed. I had brought clothes and makeup with me. I usually bring one decent outfit with me in case something comes up—like a brunch with parents. After driving up Stone Canyon we pulled in to the valet in front of the hotel. Leaving Aidan's Mercedes behind we strolled into the restaurant. Aidan's mom, Charlotte, was already seated. A bottle of champagne sat on the table. She held a mimosa in one manicured hand and stretched the other one out toward us. “Aidan! Love! I'm so happy to see you.” She beamed at him. Then she turned toward me and smiled. “Jeannie, it's so nice to see you, too. Aidan says you've been very busy at work.” Was it my imagination or was she noticing my ringless left hand? Maybe she was just wondering if not wearing nail polish was the “in” thing right now.

I kissed her cheek and sat down. Charlotte was dressed in a taupe knit pantsuit that showed off, even at her age, a damn good body. I knew she did Pilates three times a week and had a personal trainer in another two days a week. While envying her dedication I soothed myself that if I didn't have to work I'd go to the gym too. Maybe.

I spotted Sam, Aidan's stepfather, across the restaurant. Even though he was retired it was clear he was still working the room. He stopped by almost every table to say hello. Sam had been the chairman of a major film studio for decades. While I had heard the stories about how he had been both loathed and feared at the studio, I had never seen that side of him.

Striding over he gave me the biggest hug he could while I was still half rising out of my chair. “There's our girl!” He beamed. Straightening up, he grabbed at a waiter who was walking by carrying a full tray of food. “How 'bout a Bloody Mary, my good man?” The waiter recovered his balance, nodded his head, and moved on. Sam took his seat next to me.

“So?” He looked across the table at Aidan and winked. A silence followed.

Then Aidan cleared his throat. “Yeah, so, Sam. What's up in your world?” Sam sat back in his chair. Then he looked at me. The bottle of Dom Pérignon on the table took on a new meaning. They were expecting this to be a celebration of our engagement. Quiet fell over the table again and I took an overly long time getting my napkin arranged in my lap.

“Well,” Charlotte said to break the awkwardness. But she couldn't think of anything to say after that, and when no one jumped in to fill the void, she busied herself with the roll on her bread plate. I snuck a sideways glance at Aidan but he was pretending to study the menu. My napkin became fascinating to me again.

Sam was the first to recover. But even with my eyes cast downward, I felt his long stare before he finally switched the subject. “So, Jeannie, the grapevine tells me that Katsu what's-his-name got promoted to EVP.”

My spine stiffened. Word sure had whipped through town. Any major move in a studio could cause a domino effect. One person's promotion might very well mean another's demise so gossip was usually gleeful and rampant.

“He's coming on fast behind you. What do you suppose that means for you at Oxford?” Sam said as he tinkled his empty Bloody Mary glass at the waiter.

“There's always plenty of films to work on,” I snapped. My voice sounded downright petulant even to my own ears.

“Well, I'm sure the powers-that-be let you know all about it, to be sure you were on board.” Sam crunched the celery he had pulled out of his glass. Something told me that Sam damn well knew already that they hadn't.

Aidan squeezed my hand under the table. I hadn't told him of this development yet but he understood the possible implications. He also knew that Sam reveled in industry chatter. Sam might be his stepfather but he could also be a blowhard jerk—especially if he thought I might have just wounded his stepson.

Attempting to get off the subject of Oxford Pictures, I cast around for small talk. “You know, I think this is only the second time in my life I've had eggs Benedict.” I willed my voice to be pleasant.

Charlotte sat back. “Really, Jeannie? I think Aidan was having this by the time he could talk.”

“Wow, you must be a really good cook,” I said, relieved we had moved the conversation to safe ground. I imagined a civilized table where people calmly sat while eating a decadent breakfast. My mom usually tried futilely to shove scrambled eggs at us as we were all trying to get out the door to school.

“Yep, Mom cooked it for me every morning.” Aidan smiled at Charlotte as he took a bite of toast. Charlotte laughed and clearly there was a joke here I was missing.

Charlotte turned to me. “I've never cooked a meal in my life. If it weren't for restaurants and our personal chef I'm pretty sure Aidan would have starved. I was just never home enough to do things like cook. I was at work every morning by 7 a.m.”

I thought about Aidan's life growing up. I mean, who wouldn't like a life where you could order up what you wanted and then have it served to you in your own house? When brunch was over we all strolled down by the little lake and watched the swans glide by. Then we hugged Charlotte and Sam good-bye.

On our way home I asked Aidan, “Why didn't you call them this morning and tell them what was going on? They thought they were going to be celebrating our engagement.” I felt my cheeks reddening at the memory of the champagne on the table.

“I didn't think they would remember I was going to ask you last night!” Aidan downshifted hard. No one else in Los Angeles drove a stick shift because it was too difficult with traffic. But Aidan said it got out his stress. As we flew around the curves of Stone Canyon it was apparent he was getting out a fair amount. As we neared Sunset Boulevard the car slowed and I could tell Aidan was calming down.

“I want to hear more of your story,” he said.

“We just left your elegant family. Why would I want to keep telling you about my crazy, messed-up one?”

“Because I want to know,” he said quietly and patted my hand.

Chapter Five
Thursday, June 26, 1986

T
he night before, Dad had picked up Elizabeth and Ron from the airport. Elizabeth had not readily accepted that her layout of bedroom plans had changed. “But there is a schedule!” She stood in front of the refrigerator with her arms crossed. Mom sorted her out while Ron got into an argument with Dad about politics.

“It's apparent you don't have a full understanding of the real issues at hand.” Ron slouched comfortably in Dad's favorite armchair and pushed his jet-black curls out of his eyes. Dad muttered something under his breath that sounded a whole lot like a swear word and escaped back to the gazebo.

“Honey, there is a whole lot more to do than argue about bedrooms. Why don't you check outside and see if the tent will be okay?” Happier now to be in organization mode, Elizabeth flipped on the backyard lights and went outside to see how the rest of us had gone awry. Finally, she and Ron borrowed Mom's white Cadillac and drove over to Evan's house, where they were staying.

Mom woke Sammie and me up early to begin hand-delivering the invitations. Then we were to go to the florist and choose flowers. “Pink. Not black,” Mom said sternly to Sammie.

“God, make one little mistake and you'll never hear the end of it,” Sammie yawned.

After breakfast, Sammie and I were getting ready to go when we realized we didn't have a car. Elizabeth had taken the Caddie the night before to Evan's house and Dad had already disappeared with the Oldsmobile.

“Damn it, Elizabeth won't be up for hours,” Sammie said. “She'll never bring the car back.”

“So take your bikes,” Mom said, wholly unperturbed by our predicament.

“You've gotta be kidding me,” I said. “I think my bike is my Schwinn from the seventh grade.” I was not about to be seen on that decrepit piece of shit.

“And I don't have a bike,” Sammie said.

“Use Lucy's.”

I remembered Lucy's bike. One year she had desperately wanted a bike for her birthday. I knew she was hoping for a Fuji. She had the whole thing scoped out. All of her friends had Fujis from the Bicycle Rack downtown. They could get to the Four Corners in record time to hang out and do nothing. And they would do it in that ultra-casual cool way—with no hands.

When her birthday came, Mom and Dad did get her a ten-speed, but it was a Huffy from J. C. Penney. It was white with black tape on the ram's-horn handlebars. She tried really hard not to look disappointed, but it was from
Penney's,
for God's sake
.
She only rode it a couple of times and I think that was only so Mom and Dad's feelings wouldn't be hurt. My birthday was a month later, and since Lucy had wanted a bike, of course, so did I. My parents, knowing they had made a mistake with Lucy, had given me a green metallic-flake Schwinn ten-speed. Not a Fuji, but definitely not a Huffy. I never forgot the look on Lucy's face. Or the look on my parents' faces when they looked at Lucy.

“Or take the truck,” Mom said absentmindedly.

“Oh God. That's worse.” I flopped into a kitchen chair.

But Mom gave me the eye like she was at the end of her rope. We were taking the truck. My dad had bought the secondhand truck in his handyman phase. It had a red door, which wouldn't have been so bad if the rest of the truck was red as well. Over the years, as it got more and more broken down, Dad had tried to fix it up. When Mom had said it would look better painted, he hit it with white spray paint. She should have said
professionally
painted. Semantics can be important around here.

Someone knocked on the back door and I went to answer. It was Walker, my boyfriend. He had on a wrinkled blue-and-white-striped button-down shirt worn untucked over a fraying pair of khaki shorts. With his black hair and brown eyes, he was easily the most handsome man I had ever met. Towering over me, he gave me a hug. “It's going to be eighty degrees today. Grab your swimsuit. We'll get some sandwiches and hit the beach,” he said.

Looking over my shoulder I saw that Sammie had heard him. “No way, Walker. We have to deliver invitations to Lucy's wedding, and I'm not doing it by myself.”

Walker eyed me questioningly. I inwardly cursed Sammie. I hadn't broken the news to Walker yet about Lucy's wedding. Opening the door wider, I swept my hand toward the kitchen to usher him in. Walker helped himself to a Coke from the refrigerator, then looked in the freezer for ice. “So Lucy is getting married, huh?” he said.

Before Sammie or I could answer, he said under his breath, “Why is it that no one in this house refills the ice trays?” He pulled out six empty ice trays, carried them to the sink, filled them, and returned them to the freezer. He flopped into a kitchen chair and picked up one of the invitations. Then he read it. “It's
this
Sunday?”

“Yeah, um, that's just kind of how it worked out,” I muttered.

“So who's the guy?”

“His name is Chuck. We don't know anything else about him except that he's in the army, too,” I said as I started stacking the invitations.

“If he's in combat training, then that at least will prepare him for your family, especially Lucy,” Walker snickered.

I wasn't in the mood to hear how nuts my family was. I changed the subject. “I know you want me to go to the beach but I can't today. We have too much to do.”

Walker softened. “Okay, sorry. I guess I shouldn't be too surprised by anything Lucy does after, you know . . .”

I did know. He meant Lucy suddenly dropping out of school to join the military. It was something that was hard for a Princeton undergrad to understand. “I'll just go to the beach myself,” he continued. “Plenty of other people will be there to hang around with. If you think you can get away later, just let me know.” He gave me another hug, kissed the top of my head, and left.

Sammie divvied up the invitations and handed me half. “Okay, let's get started.”

Shaking my head, I took her stack from her and sat down at the table. “If we don't organize them we'll be driving back and forth all over town.” Methodically, I arranged them by street and street number. “See, now we just start at the east end of town and make our way west down Ruddiman, then back up Mills Street, and you get the idea.”

Sammie and I took the truck, lurching and screeching up and down the streets delivering the invitations. We really could have just walked. The truck, however, allowed us to hide more easily. If we were lucky, we could just stick the envelope into the mailbox out by the road unseen. But a couple of people caught us.

“Yes, Mrs. Petty, that's right. Lucy's getting married,” I stammered on the Pettys' front walk. I backed up as she started to open the envelope, but she was quicker than me.

I was almost trotting back to the truck when she called after me, “Honey,
this
Sunday?”

“Yes! Sure hope you can come.”

“But . . .”

I had already slammed the truck door. Let Mom handle the phone calls. Sammie didn't have a much better time on her side of the street. We finally made it home, exhausted from outrunning the questions. Elizabeth and Mom were upstairs. They yelled for us to come up and help them.

“Jeannie, you are going to be the maid of honor,” Mom started out.

“Why me?”

“You know you're the one Lucy would choose if we let her know about this.”

“Why can't Terri Worthington do it?”

“Because Terri Worthington is not family and it would be too hard to explain anyway.” Mom reached into the closet and pulled out a dress.

“Oh God. Not that.” It was Sammie's high school prom dress. It was about eight years old and made out of silky polyester stuff with big red roses printed all over it.

“You'll look lovely in it.” Mom was smoothing the fabric and holding the dress out to inspect it.

“Let's just hope everyone is still drunk from Evan's wedding the night before,” I sighed.

“What is Lucy going to wear?” Sammie asked.

“I'm not sure yet.” Mom pursed her lips.

“Why don't you call the June Wedding?” I asked. It seemed logical, as it was the one and only bridal shop in town.

“I already did. Nothing is available in her size, and it's obviously too late to order one.”

It wasn't like we had an old wedding dress in the closet. Elizabeth volunteered hers, but it was in California. Not to mention that Elizabeth is about five inches taller than Lucy. Sammie had ceremonially burned her wedding dress in a Weber grill. I remember we had all barely flown back from her California wedding before she divorced the guy. Apparently he made some remarks about how she should get her family under control and that was that.

“What about Anna's wedding dress?” I asked. We all stared at each other. They were about the same size, but this might be pushing things a bit too far with Anna.

“It's not like she's going to need it after Saturday night,” I added in defense of my idea.

“So we track her and Evan to their hotel room on their wedding night, wait outside, then knock and ask if they're undressed yet? That seems very not right,” Elizabeth said.

“So who's going to ask her?” Sammie asked. Nobody volunteered for this duty.

“I guess I'll call her mother first,” Mom finally said. She turned and went downstairs.

“Does anyone else think this is crazy?” Elizabeth asked. Sammie and I didn't even bother answering.

I went out into the hallway and opened the hall closet. As I figured, it was jam-packed with towels, blankets, old curling irons, squashed boxes of tampons, and my brother's free weights. On tippy toes I reached up and began pulling the mess from the top shelf. Blankets cascaded on my head and fell to the floor.

“No way, Jeannie!” Elizabeth rapped out behind me. “Mom will kill you if she sees this mess!”

“Just this one shelf,” I pleaded. “It will only take a second.”

Elizabeth simply glared at me until I reluctantly gathered up the blankets, climbed up using the bottom shelf, and shoved the whole pile back onto the top shelf.

Deprived of cleaning, my normal method of calming myself, I went downstairs. The caterers were spreading out brochures in the kitchen. Dad had the sprinkler heads apart on the kitchen table and grumbled that they were getting his parts all out of order. Mom was pointing to various photos of food while she spoke on the phone. “Yes, Helen, I know this may be difficult for Anna, and you should absolutely not ask her if you aren't comfortable with it.” There was a long pause before Mom said, “That's a good idea; think it over and let me know. We'll come up with some other idea in the meantime.” She hung up. “This is some fine welcome for Anna into our family.”

“Do you want cheese balls or the crudités?” the caterer asked.

“Crudités. Where else could we get a dress? Jeannie, get the phone book.”

“Chicken, fish, or steak?”

“Chicken and steak. We should give them a choice, right, Harold? I'm so worried about Anna. I should call Helen right back and tell her not to bring it up. That poor child, we are just running roughshod over her.”

“Palate-cleansing sorbet?” the caterer continued.

“Yes, but lime.”

I paged through the Yellow Pages and found something. “Here's a store that sells costumes. They list wedding dresses,” I said.

“Give them a call right now. Lucy is a size six.”

The caterer thrust another photo in Mom's face. “Now for the wedding cake, you can have either marble or white with, I assume, white frosting.”

“Marble with white frosting. Harold, aren't we supposed to put a sixpence in the cake or something? Or is that in her shoe? Isn't there some English family tradition we're supposed to follow?”

“Yeah, post banns in the church six months before the wedding. But it's a little late for that.”

“They've got a dress,” I said to Mom with my hand over the mouthpiece.

“What's it look like?”

“It's white, high-necked, full skirt.”

“Perfect. We'll take it.”

“But it's a size ten and it has fake blood all over it.”

Mom shook her head and I hung up the phone. She finished up with the caterer while Dad and I went outside. The sun was setting over Bear Lake and the water carried its red reflection. For once the lake was quiet, without speedboats and water-skiers. A lone Butterfly sailboat was making its way home. Dad and I sat for a long time without speaking. We could do that, while everybody else seemed to make endless chatter. When it was almost too dark to see him, he said, “I hope she's happy.” His voice cracked just the littlest bit. I nodded in the darkness and we rocked on the porch, swatting at mosquitoes, until the streetlights came on.