Daddy's Girls (56)

    “Just don’t get work done on your face while you’re waiting. Every time I sign someone for a big part after a slump, they show up with a new face and the producers don’t recognize who they hired, and neither does the public.” They both knew it was true and saw it often, actors and actresses who surfaced looking like strangers. “You’re perfect just the way you are right now. Keep it that way.” Most of the time he felt like a babysitter or a shrink or a combination thereof. “Have an affair,” he advised her, “it’s great publicity. Go break up a marriage.” He was kidding, but his clients did that regularly too. “What about a younger guy? Women love reading about that. It gives them hope.”

“I just want work, Jerry, not a face lift or a boyfriend.”

“Then you’re in the wrong business. Don’t go getting all deep on me, or find religion.” One of his biggest stars had become a nun, he had lost a shitload of money when she bagged on her contract in a big series. The producers had sued her, and him, for not honoring the contract, and won.

She was still hoping for an audition for the British TV series he had mentioned, but they weren’t holding auditions yet, and he didn’t know when they would.

Gemma went to a spinning class after they hung up. At least she could keep her body in shape while she waited. She’d been bicycling all over the Valley with her niece all summer, and was happy to say she could keep up with a fifteen-year-old, and occasionally even beat her. She could go back to the Valley too, but she thought she should spend September in L.A., and get her face out there, so people didn’t forget her when they started casting series for the following year. But she actually missed the Valley now. It was a first for her.



* * *



—

    Caroline and the kids had gone back to Marin County a few days before Labor Day weekend. She had to get them ready for school, which was starting on Tuesday. Billy had outgrown everything he owned except his shorts and flip-flops and his oversized T-shirts. Morgan said she had nothing to wear to school, and they needed all the usual supplies, pens and notebooks, a new backpack for Billy with the latest superhero on it. It was bittersweet going home and knowing Peter wouldn’t be there. Neither of them had been in the house since the end of June, or so he claimed. It hit all of them when they walked through the door. Caroline knew she couldn’t avoid reality any longer.

“So when’s Dad coming back?” Billy asked her their first night home, when she took a frozen pizza out of the oven, and had burned it. His words hit her like an ice cold shower.

“She doesn’t know,” Morgan growled at him in an angry stage whisper. “Don’t ask her!” They didn’t want bad news either.

“Your sister’s right,” their mother said in a tired voice. They’d been home for six hours and she was already exhausted, and every time she walked into her bedroom, she thought of her discoveries there two months before. The room felt toxic. Their life hadn’t been the same since, and probably never would be again. It had seemed easier to be brave and a little cavalier on the ranch, trying on different decisions, to see which one fit. So far, none did. Leaping into divorce seemed too extreme, moving back in together was impossible. They couldn’t pretend it hadn’t happened, she was incapable of forgetting it, and she couldn’t sweep it under the rug anymore. A year or two ago, or ten years, she might have. Now she wanted to face it, and make the right decision for all of them. She knew that sooner or later it would take a toll on the kids. They had been good sports so far.

    Peter called her that night and invited her to lunch the day the kids started school, since he knew she’d be free then. He knew what the week before school looked like, a frenzy of activity, planning, driving from store to store, and setting up carpool schedules with other mothers. There were additional carpools for their afterschool activities. Morgan wanted to start ballet again, and Gemma had gotten her hooked on yoga and Pilates. Billy had to go back to the orthodontist.

“How are you?” Peter asked her as though she were a friend he hadn’t seen in years. Time had put distance between them. Her life seemed to be full of faces from the past now. She had run into them in Santa Ynez constantly. Now he was one of them, except that they were still married, or said they were, and she thought she still loved him, or who he had been before. She wasn’t sure who he was now, and if she could love that man. The children had spent Saturday night and Sunday with him, but she was out when he picked them up, so she missed him. He’d only seen the children one weekend in two months. He said he was working the rest of the time. Thad had driven them to Santa Barbara to meet their father and a driver brought them back, so Caroline hadn’t seen him since the end of June. She had to face the music now. They both did. They couldn’t hang in space forever. She hadn’t called the lawyer back. She had nothing to tell him. She wanted to talk to Peter first and see him and how she felt before deciding to divorce.

    “I’m fine. How are you?” she asked politely when he called.

“Okay, it’s been weird not being with you and the kids,” he said in a sad voice, but so was finding pictures of his penis and his girlfriend’s vagina in her night table. She thought of it every time she thought of him now, and hated their bedroom, knowing what had gone on there. It still felt like days ago. Two months later, the memory hadn’t dimmed. Just hearing him brought it all back. She knew he had rented an apartment in the city, in a building that was famous for housing divorcing men, and couples having affairs. She wasn’t sure which he was. She didn’t know if the affair was over or not, which made a difference.