I'll Be You(9)

Nearly two decades later, To the Maxx still played in reruns on a third-tier cable channel. Sometimes, on those sober nights when I couldn’t sleep because I’d had one macchiato too many and I felt on the edge of damage—my eyes vibrating and dry, a bitter chew in my jaw—I would turn on the TV to watch myself. I’d sit there in the dark, feeling my pulse slacken as the familiar theme music washed over me. Watching myself was like Xanax for my soul: that pretty flaxen child, staring brightly into the camera, full of so much confidence as she shaped her mouth around her lines. All the possibility of my youth, frozen forever in time.

Sometimes I’d even find myself saying the words along with the me on the screen: Mommy! Watch out behind you!

Then again, I was never really sure if it was me I was seeing on the screen, or if it was Elli. Sure, I could blame the passage of time—so many years had passed since the show first aired, how was I to be expected to remember every scene I had ever shot? But really, I knew that my fuzzy recollection was my own fault. I’d spent the last fifteen years of my life brutally bludgeoning my own brain, so of course my memories were going to be wobbly.

And yet, wasn’t this the way Elli and I had liked it to be, back then? The edges of me blurring into the beginnings of her?



* * *



—

Almost exactly a year after Harriet discovered us on the beach, my sister and I moved to Los Angeles with our mother to start production on To the Maxx. Our mother had rented us a furnished apartment near the La Brea Tar Pits, a generic two-bedroom box that would be our home base for the next few years. Most weekends—and every summer—we would return to Santa Barbara, where our father had remained, to try to cobble together some semblance of a normal family life.

I loved Los Angeles. I loved how the city went on and on, a river of buildings that flowed in all directions. I loved the wild mix of colors and cultures and cuisines, the way Koreatown fused into Little Armenia and Historic Filipinotown. I loved how there was so much to buy, endless shop windows loaded with things that sparkled in the dazzling coastal sun. The world felt big here, full of unimaginable potential, surreal and exciting.

And yet my world here was so small. Each morning my mother drove us to the studio backlot in Burbank where our “home” had been constructed on an enormous stage, and where we would spend our days sitting in dark corners, awaiting our scenes. Even the location days were mostly spent sitting in our trailer, perpetually waiting to be called. When we weren’t performing, there was “school,” with a retired schoolteacher who joylessly hammered us with times tables and spelling tests. Evenings were spent back at the apartment, eating takeout with our mom and memorizing our lines. Our mother had read enough magazine stories about the tragic lives of child actors and she wasn’t about to take any chances. (My problems would start a few years later, after her grip on me had started to slip.)

That first year, most of what Elli and I saw of Los Angeles was through the windows of our mother’s car, on our way to set and back.

This seemed to suit Elli just fine. Los Angeles intimidated her. In order to get to the backlot, we had to drive through Hollywood, where homeless teens panhandled on the streets and hustlers in superhero costumes hassled the tourists who marched up and down the Walk of Fame. The air there smelled like a party that was on the verge of veering out of control, like urine and sugar and French fries and vomit.

The first day that we made this drive, I put my window down and stuck my head out, trying to take in everything at once: the looming billboards selling handbags that cost as much as cars, the neon signs advertising wax museums and Scientology exhibits, the drag queens in platform heels who stomped their way against the traffic lights.

“Can we stop?” I said. “I want to see the Walk of Fame.”

No one answered. My mother’s hands were tight on the steering wheel; driving in city traffic made her nervous. From the other side of the back seat, I heard a click. When I looked over, I realized that my sister had locked her door.

“It’s not dangerous, silly,” I said. “Look at all the tourists.”

“It smells,” she said softly.

I reached across and took her hand. “Hold your breath.”

She stared at me, her eyes huge, her palm gluing itself to mine with the jammy remnants of our breakfast toast. “How long are we going to do this for, do you think? Be here, in L.A.?”

I thought forever but I didn’t say it because it looked like she might cry. I knew without having to ask that she was frightened of the scene outside the car, but also of this new life on which we were embarking. Of a life that was going to be spent onstage, with all eyes on her. For the first time, I felt a pang of self-doubt about what I had talked my sister into doing. What if she didn’t like Hollywood as much as I did? What if she was only doing this because I wanted to?

“It’s going to be fun.” I slid across the seat until I was beside her, our thighs touching through our brand-new jeans. Our mom had bought us identical outfits at Macy’s for this first day on set, and although I’d objected to it at the time—we hadn’t dressed the same for a while—I now felt a familiar comfort in our armored uniformity. The power of being two instead of one. A double force to contend with.

I put my arm around Elli, and together we watched Los Angeles slide past in all its gritty glory as we headed toward our new future.