Daddy's Girls (55)

Gemma missed their serious discussions too, about what the future looked like for each of them. They were all suddenly at a turning point, a fork in the road. Caroline hadn’t figured out what to do about her marriage, and was worried about her kids. They asked her several times if she and Peter were getting divorced, and she told them she didn’t know. They were handling it better than she’d expected, but the whole family couldn’t hang in limbo forever.

    Kate had big plans for the ranch, and with Thad, and it was different without their father, a huge change for each of them.

Their father was the ghost of Christmas past for Caro, the bugaboo she had feared and run from. He was Gemma’s hero, and in the past she always knew she had him to fall back on if things got tough, but not this time. She had to bail herself out, she wasn’t Daddy’s Girl anymore. And Kate was thriving. He had repressed her and tacitly put her down for years, substituting her fresh new modern ideas with his, implying that everything he did was better and she couldn’t make it on her own. She had to now, with Thad next to her, as a partner, not overpowering her as their father had. Her father’s message to her had been strong, that she didn’t have what it took because she wasn’t a man, and without him she would fail. She wondered how one man could be so many different things to each of them. He had taken over their lives, tried to make their decisions for them, hidden their mother from them, and lied to them.

He had all but ruined Scarlett’s life, with her full cooperation and innocence at twenty-three, and run their lives or tried to ever since. She and Caroline had had to run away from him in order to breathe, and Kate hadn’t taken a deep breath in years without his standing over her, intimidating her, second-guessing her decisions. Now they were all breathing, in some ways for the first time, without him. He was the specter in the background, the savior when he chose to be, the judge of everything they did, the voice in their heads no matter where they went or how far they ran. There had been no escaping him, and now suddenly he was gone, and there was only the sound of their own voices, not his. It was finally beginning to sink in, for all of them. Their daddy wasn’t there anymore. They had grown up and were adults now, and it was scary as hell. And it almost seemed meant to try them, that Gemma had run aground, lost the show, and was out of money, Caroline’s marriage was on the rocks, and Kate finally had a man in her life, a real one, one who loved her, for the first time in a dozen years. It was about goddamn time for all of them. In the months since his death, they had all grown up.



* * *



—

    Gemma called Jerry the morning she got back, to see if he had any work for her, but he didn’t.

“Still nothing? How is that possible? The show wrapped nearly three months ago and all you’ve had are auditions for a vampire movie, the voiceover for a witch in a cartoon, and six commercials that didn’t want me.” And they both knew why. She couldn’t play ingénues anymore, or even thirty-year-olds credibly. She had entered a new phase in her career, while she wasn’t looking, the middle-aged actress. How the hell did that happen? She had aged with the show, and now the show was gone, and she was standing on the shore watching the ships pass her by. “There has to be something,” she said in a plaintive tone. She had been harassing him all summer, even when he went to the South of France, and stayed at the Hotel du Cap, where she used to go, and could no longer afford. All the fancy trimmings and perks seemed fraudulent now, and irrelevant. She needed work, something she could sink her teeth into, and pay the bills with. Where was stardom now? Her star was in the tank, or that’s what it felt like to her.

“There will be something,” he said with certainty. “It just hasn’t happened yet. You’re a big name, they’re going to want you for a decent part, but whatever that project is, it hasn’t come together yet. It will have your name on it when it does.”

    “I wish I was as optimistic as you are.”

“Do something,” he told her. “Go to the gym, get a hobby, buy a dog, sleep with someone. Keep busy.”

“I’m thinking of selling my house,” she said, sounding morbid about it.

“Good. Buy a new one. Decorate. Buy things. Go shopping.”

“That’s what got me into this mess in the first place. If I change clothes six times a day for the next twenty years, I can’t wear it all. My cleaning lady had more money in the bank than I did when the show closed.” The story was familiar to him. Most actors lived that way. They started to believe the roles they played and the hype. They went around living like royalty or the dictators of small countries, with nothing to back it up. Gemma was not unusual in that. Fancy cars, houses, art, and jewelry changed hands frequently to bail them out. And then they did it all over again when they got another big part, and forgot that it would end again one day. Few of them had a grasp on reality, and knew how to cope with real life.

Their relationships evaporated as fast as their films. Very few of them had their feet on the ground. Gemma was no different, no better or worse than most of his clients, though she was one of the rare few who had talent. Most of them just had great looks, which they frittered away too, with too much plastic surgery when they had time and money on their hands. He had a famous client who had died that summer from an infection after her fourth liposuction in six months. The doctor was under investigation. And another one who wanted a million dollars a year in her spousal support to pay for plastic surgery. They were all a little crazy, but he loved them. He tried to be gentle with Gemma. He knew she was panicking, but she had to be patient.