I'm Glad My Mom Died(24)

I was in my head during it because that scary part of me decided to try and speak up. That part of me that doesn’t want to be doing this.

“I don’t want to act anymore,” I say before I even realize I’ve said it.

Mom looks at me in the rearview mirror. A mixture of shock and disappointment fills her eyes. I immediately regret saying anything.

“Don’t be silly, you love acting. It’s your favorite thing in the world,” Mom says in a way that makes it sound like a threat.

I look out the window. The part of me that wants to please her thinks maybe she’s right, maybe it is my favorite thing and I just don’t know it, I just don’t realize it. But the part of me that doesn’t want to cry on cue, that doesn’t want to act, that doesn’t care about pleasing Mom and just wants to please me, that part of me screams at me to speak up. My face gets hot, compelling me to say something.

“No, I really don’t want to. I don’t like it. It makes me uncomfortable.”

Mom’s face looks like she just ate a lemon. It contorts in a way that terrifies me. I know what’s coming next.

“You can’t quit!” she sobs. “This was our chance! This was ouuuuur chaaaaance!”

She bangs on the steering wheel, accidentally hitting the horn. Mascara trickles down her cheeks. She’s hysterical, like I was in the Hollywood Homicide audition. Her hysteria frightens me and demands to be taken care of.

“Never mind,” I say loudly so Mom can hear it through her sobs.

Her crying stops immediately, except for one leftover sniffle, but as soon as that sniffle is over, it’s complete silence. I’m not the only one who can cry on cue.

“Never mind,” I repeat. “Let’s just forget I said anything. Sorry.”

I suggest we listen to Mom’s current favorite album, Phil Collins’s … But Seriously. She smiles at the suggestion and puts it in the CD player. She flips to “Another Day in Paradise,” and the song starts blasting through the speakers. Mom sings along. She eyes me in the rearview mirror.

“Come on! Why aren’t you singin’ along, Net?!” she asks giddily, her mood having switched.

So I start singing along. And I throw on my best fake smile to go with it. Maybe I wasn’t able to bring the tears for Without a Trace, but I was able to bring the smile for Mom on our drive home. Either way, it’s performing.





23.


“A LITTLE GIRL SHOULDN’T HAVE to worry about her entire family,” Grandpa says to me one afternoon.

He can tell I’m stressed. I’ve been pacing back and forth on our front lawn for a half hour while I try to memorize my lines for an upcoming audition for a low-budget movie called My Daughter’s Tears. Could there be a film title more perfectly suited to my Special Skill? Mom won’t let me read the script because she says there’s too much “adult content,” which is honestly a relief because I’m struggling enough as it is to try and memorize these fourteen pages by my audition tomorrow, and with a Russian accent no less. The character I’m trying out for, the daughter whose tears the title is based upon, is Russian. Mom booked me an appointment with an accent coach, but I still don’t have my r’s quite right.

I’m not allowed to go outside alone. Mom says I might get kidnapped and abused and murdered like Samantha Runnion—the girl who was kidnapped three weeks before her sixth birthday and lived just five minutes away from us—so whenever I go outside, someone has to join me. Today it’s Grandpa. He’s been watering the lawn while I’ve been memorizing.

“What?” I ask, not because I didn’t hear what he said, but because I’m confused. Of course a little girl should worry about her entire family. That’s what little girls do.

“I just…” He steps closer to me. “I just think… you deserve to be a kid.”

My eyes well with tears, and not from me forcing them to. This is a natural welling. I can’t remember the last time I cried naturally. I’m taken off guard. I shuffle my feet.

“Come here, give Papa a hug.”

I step forward and wrap my arms around his big belly. He pats my back with his free hand.

“Love you, Poppy Seed,” I say to him.

“Love you too, hun.”

Papa goes to bring his other arm around me to a get a proper hug going, but he forgets he’s holding a hose and the water squirts on me.

“Woops!”

He sets the hose down on the lawn and lets the water run into the grass, then he envelops me in his big Papa hug. It feels so nice and cozy, even though he kind of smells like beef jerky.

“You know, I was gonna give you a little present once you finished memorizing your lines, but maybe I oughta go ahead and give it to you now.”

“Okay!” I’m excited. Who doesn’t love presents?

Grandpa reaches into his back pocket and digs around. Crumpled-up receipts spill out onto the grass. Finally, he pulls out a little car antenna topper. It’s Mike Wazowski, the main monster character from Monsters, Inc. This kind of free movie merch is among the perks he receives as a Disneyland employee.

I take Mike into my palm. He’s squishy and made of Styrofoam.

“I love how funny-lookin’ he is,” Grandpa says. “Idn’t he funny-lookin’?”