Chapter 3
Wig Sympathy
We read through the play again after lunch.
The room was filled with even fewer people now, only the cast, Rebecca, playwright Stephanie, stage manager Kevin, dramaturg Hannah, the assistant stage manager, and a few other team members.
Knowing this would be our core group settled something within me.
I loved this work, after all. I’d find my way into the character.
Didn’t I always? I could set aside the fact that the cast didn’t want me here, that the person who’d hand-picked me was gone, and that my ex-girlfriend looked at me like I was a stranger.
Still, when Rebecca dismissed us early for the day, a wave of relief washed over me. Being home sounded better than being here. Easier, at least. I took my time getting my things together and let myself fall behind the rest of the cast. Would Rebecca say something if I were the last one here?
Would I?
Kevin turned back from a conversation with Michael on his way out and walked toward me.
He was an Asian guy, probably in his late twenties, with floppy hair that fell into his face like a 1990s dreamboat, and clearly the kind of gym routine I only maintained when I was gearing up for a Vindicators movie. “Hi, Ms. Gardner—”
“Tess,” I said quickly, brightly, sweetly.
“Sure, Tess,” he said, matching my tone. I was ninety percent sure it was earnest and not mocking. “I wanted to give you an update about our schedule tomorrow. We’ll get started again at ten for another table read—Rebecca likes to stay around the table for as long as possible—”
How could I understand that a dozen years had passed, that her life had gone on in the meantime, and still feel floored by the idea of Kevin knowing things about Rebecca that I didn’t?
“—but after lunch she’d like to meet with you for a half hour or so. Then you should have a little chunk of free time—and then we’ll end the day with another read. Sound good?”
I nodded because it was the right way to answer, no matter how not good it sounded.
I reminded myself I’d wanted this world where people spoke directly to me and not through my people.
But also this would have never happened on a set!
No one would have been able to see what my face looked like while agreeing to meet with Rebecca Frisch.
In fact, if I really didn’t want a one-on-one, Joyce would have gotten me out of it.
I should have been relieved to be treated like an adult who could handle her own appointments—and her own water and her own lunch—but the more exhausted side of me missed being taken care of.
And the other sides of me hated that! I wasn’t a precious royal baby who required everything fetched for her, and it was hard to think of something grosser than wishing I was treated like one here.
Still, there were hardly any clichés about it feeling bad to be treated like royalty.
Verne filmed us on our way out, getting everyone to say something about our first day.
With the LA Times long gone, Erica was long gone as well, and so no one was murmuring approved statements in my ear as my turn in front of the deftly wielded two-phone situation approached.
I often dreamed about being less managed, until I was required to say something interesting and intelligent and relatable.
Not even to get into the fact that the rest of the cast thought I was an entitled miscast bitch, and that maybe I was.
“I love being back in the theatre,” I said, though, to Verne’s phones. It wasn’t a lie. “It feels like coming home.”
I texted Andy on my way to the parking garage. I’m getting out now. Can I bribe you to come by early?
I didn’t wait for his response—my brother was rarely a quick texter—so I tapped back to my chain with my best friend, Aisha. I’m already heading home, so stop by whenever.
Michael seemed to be holding court in the parking garage, and I did my best to look neutral instead of emotionally drained as I walked to my car.
“… yeah, absolutely,” he said, with a nod to Henry. “I’ve spent enough time in LA to know. You see a car like that on the freeway, you know it’s the worst kind of asshole driver.”
“Have a good night, everyone,” I said, absolutely nailing the fine line between beautifully professional and drenched in passive-aggression, as I unlocked the Porsche. Henry, for his part, had the decency to look embarrassed, but Michael only chuckled and said something under his breath.
I wanted to floor it home, but LA traffic intervened again and instead I patiently slogged up the freeway to where my favorite people and my dog would be awaiting me—or at least on their way.
Taylor Swift was still on my stereo, the patron saint of privileged women who still had a lot of petty protesting to get out of their systems, and I sang along to every single word.
Andy’s truck was in front of mine when I reached my home, pulling through the gate as I zipped behind him and pretended to honk aggressively.
“What the fuck,” he shouted out the window.
“I’m doing a bit where I pretend to be an impatient driver blasting my horn at you,” I called back. I was only a year younger than Andy but my younger pesky sister mode reactivated often.
“From here it seems like you’re literally an impatient driver blasting your horn at me,” he said and rolled up his window as he pulled through with me on his tail, and we took our regular spots in my garage.
Andy was such a constant presence in my daily life—since the day about a dozen years ago when we packed our belongings into my Ford Focus and his banged-up F-150 and drove out west on I-40—that the third space in the garage was reserved for him.
I wished I saw my two oldest brothers as often—or at least more than once or twice during a good year—and hated that I didn’t know my nieces and nephew better, but it was hard to feel too lacking for family when I had Andy so close.
Andy popped open his door, and my dog, Rosie, all but flew to my side.
Her snuffly pug breathing echoed through the garage, and I found it very hard to hold on to the day’s list of complaints when this weird little creature greeted me with this level of goblin enthusiasm after only several hours apart.
“Oh my god, did you have a good day?” I asked her.
“She came to work with me for a while.” Andy walked over to me, honestly looking a lot like Henry cast in the role of my brother, light brown hair like mine if I didn’t pay a team to keep it a particular shade of blonde, stubble that made him look casual but not unkempt, and his usual outfit of jeans and boots and a plaid shirt.
When we’d moved out here, Andy’s goal had been to start a West Coast branch of our older brothers’ landscape business back home.
(“Good weather all year round, more profit,” he’d said, which had been na?ve but had also turned out to be true.) By now Gardner Lawns LA had expanded, with a whole team making drought-friendly southland lawns look better, and a small office where Andy mostly worked these days, not far from his house less than a mile south of me. “Barked at the mail guy and an guy.”
“Good work, baby,” I said, rubbing her fuzzy head. “Girls aren’t taught to be assertive enough.”
“Feel like that hasn’t been an issue in this house,” Andy said, which made me laugh as the three of us headed inside.
I bought the house after booking the first Vindicators; up until then my success had seemed potentially like a trick of the light.
Early on I’d snagged a little cottage in Franklin Hills, only a couple miles down the hill, and it would have been good enough for me to stay in forever if things had worked out that way.
But then Andy had a job in the neighborhood the same week I’d signed the contract, saw the realtor sign out front, and texted me the listing.
If I was getting paid what you’re probably getting paid now, I’d at least go look at this place.
When I’d walked in for the first time and saw the way the sun lit up the huge front room, I’d all but made an offer on the spot.
Aisha arrived while I was pulling out ingredients to continue prepping for dinner—Mom taught me that a good dinner’s prep started the night or morning before—and Rosie darted over to greet her as Andy let her in.
“It’s offensive,” Andy said, walking back to his spot in my kitchen nook. “I spend all day with her, ply her with all those organic treats that cost more than anything I eat, and she still likes Aisha more.”
“I’m more likeable,” Aisha said in an innocent tone, and I cracked up.
“How was the new afterschool session today?” I asked as I added the marinade to the salmon fillet I’d picked up the day before at McCall’s.
Aisha and I had started out in the industry at the same time, playing friends in the road-trip movie All Green Lights.
For me it had been a launching pad; for Aisha it had taught her that she actually didn’t love being a part of Hollywood.
She only shot a few more things before finishing her teaching degree and founding a nonprofit arts camp and education center.
“It was fine,” Aisha said, plopping on the floor next to Rosie.
Aisha’s brown hair was loose, glimmering with highlights in the fading evening sun, and she was wearing a patterned orange tiered maxi dress that popped beautifully against her medium-brown skin.
That was just how she looked all of the time, because in our friendship one of us knew how to get dressed in the morning and the other was lucky she had a stylist for the times it mattered.
“Fall’s so much quieter than our summer sessions and camps, and it always takes me a minute to get used to that.
But the kids are great. They always are. ”
“Because you create a warm and nurturing environment where they feel supported and capable of great things,” I said.
Aisha rolled her eyes, but she shot me a grin. “Yeah, yeah.”