The door that this Reena person had come out of was the entrance to a small cottage that wasn't part of the main building. And behind its screen door I could see someone else watching. Watching and listening.
Reena looks us over and says, “Are they hungry?”
Lady Lana gives us a worried look. Like she's been asked to change a strange kid's dirty diaper. “No…I… Reena, we don't have time to eat! If Max or Inga sees me, I'll wind up like Opal!”
The screen door opens with a little squeak, and out steps a girl with long beaded braids, wearing an oversized UCLA T-shirt and toe rings. And as she comes away from the cottage and into the moonlight, she says, “Come on, Dominique. You don't have to play that game with us. You know you've got nothin' to worry about. Not with Max, anyway.” She looks us over, too, and says, “You're right, Mama. They're definitely hungry.”
Good ol' Lady Lana. It takes a perfect stranger to inform her that her kid is starving, and all she can do is look at us with horror—like we're Pampers, Extra Poopy. She turns to Toe Rings and says, “Why did you say that?”
Toe Rings shrugs and asks us, “You girls hungry?”
In the middle of our nods, my mother interrupts. “No, I mean about me playing games. I'm not playing games! You think I want to be caught breaking curfew?”
Reena shoots her daughter a sharp look, but Toe Rings frowns and says, “What's it matter, Mama?”
Reena mumbles something back, then disappears into the cottage. Toe Rings shakes her head, then says, “You're in some spot, huh, Dominique?”
My mother glances at Marissa and me with a flash of panic in her eyes. But she lowers her voice and asks, “Hali, what are you talking about?”
Hali eyes us, too, and says, “Oh, you know…. The question is, what's your answer gonna be?”
Now, I am absolutely clueless about what they're discussing. But as the color drains from my mother's face, I can see that she's not. She says, “I …I don't know what you're …”
Hali tsks and whispers, “Like I said, you don't have to play games with us, Dominique. Just be straight about it. What are you going to tell him?”
I thought my mother was going to faint. Her eyes open real wide, and she whispers, “How did you…”
Hali shakes her head and says, “He tells Mama everything. You should know that by now.”
“Can we please discuss this later?”
“No problem there. Just don't be playing that tearfulfearful game with Mama. She's been nothing but good to you. The least you can be is straight up with her.” She turns to go, then says, “Oh, Mama says you and LeBrandi made the final cut for some big part on Lords. Congratulations.”
She starts to walk away, but my mother chases after her. “What? Are you sure?”
“Oh, whoops. Well, like I said, Max likes to talk to Mama.”
My mother's cheeks have gone from ash white to fiery red. She whispers, “But you're sure?”
“Oh, yeah. Final audition is Monday. He's probably planning to announce it at breakfast tomorrow.”
“Does LeBrandi know?”
“LeBrandi? I ain't tellin' that twit jack.”
My mother studies her a second. “What did she do to you?”
“Nothing to me. But when Mama spotted her sneaking around the grounds after curfew, LeBrandi called her the Jamaican Jailer and told her if she said anything to Max or Inga, she'd get her deported.”
“She said what? When did that happen?”
“Oh, an hour ago. Which is why Mama noticed you. She's a little jumpy, you know?”
“I can't believe LeBrandi said that!”
“Yeah, well, that's 'cause you got more class than her. You watch your back, Dominique. That girl's a cat.”
Just then Reena comes out of the cottage carrying two lunch sacks. She hands one to Marissa and one to me, but she doesn't let go of mine. She holds on and just stares at me. Then, soft and low, she asks, “What's your name?”
My hand is next to hers on the paper sack, and I want to let go and back away, but it's like I'm frozen to this sack dangling in the air. I choke out, “Me?”
She nods.
“Sammy. My… my name's Sammy.”
My mother can't help herself. “Actually, it's Samantha.”
Reena doesn't seem to hear her. She leans in even closer, then looks in my eyes like she's reading a crystal ball. “What's your las' name?”
Her eyes are deep brown. Almost black. And even though she's looking at me real intensely, there's a softness to them that seems to be begging me to trust her. A softness that scares me.
It barely comes out a whisper when I say, “Keyes.”
She hesitates. “Not Windsor?”
I shake my head, then I back away a step, clear my throat a little, and say, “My name's Sammy Keyes, and this is my…” I glance at my mother, who's all in a panic, and finish, “My cousin Marissa.”
Reena doesn't look at Marissa. Instead she turns to my mother and whispers, “Go along, Dominique. It's late.”
Marissa and I murmur our thanks for the food, then follow my mother along the path, through a jungle of ferns, palms, and periwinkles, to the mansion's back door.
At doorbell height there's a grid of number keys. Like someone took apart a pay phone, shrank the number pad, and mounted it in the wall. My mother punches in four digits, and to me it looks like a little ritual. Like she's making a speedy little sign of the cross at the Altar of Stucco.
When a green light glows at the base of the keypad, my mother faces us and says, “That was close back there.” She turns the door handle, takes a deep breath, and whispers, “Not a sound. Not a peep. Just follow me.”
This was not easy to do. The moment we stepped through the door, it felt as though we'd been transported from the Mediterranean to Egypt. From the back door clear through a central open area to the fancy glass double doors at the front of the house, the place looked like an Egyptian museum. There were urns on black marble pedestals, ancient-looking torches strapped to the walls, and Plexiglas cases with cracked and crumbling artifacts in them. Jewelry, plates, scraps of cloth, slabs of stone with hieroglyphics—I felt like I was on a tour through a mansion on the Nile.
And as we tiptoed along behind my mother, we couldn't help gawking. Or talking.
Marissa gasped, “Is that a real sarcophagus?”
“Shhh! Everything here is real. Samantha, don't touch!”
“I'm not! I can't!”
“Well, get away from there!” She rubbed her temples. “Oh god, you're giving me a headache!”
I tried to pull myself away, but I couldn't. The sarcophagus was like the coffin of King Tut, upright, staring at me from behind half an inch of Plexiglas—the large eyes, lined in black, seemed to pierce right through the case, like time and space and man-made displays couldn't contain them.
“Is this Max guy Egyptian?”
“No! His father was some kind of ambassador, so the family spent several years in Egypt when Max was growing up. Now come!” She grabbed me by the arm and yanked, then dragged me past a black marble fountain in the central open area, around the corner to the base of a stairwell. Then she turned and whispered, “Please, please, don't make any noise.”
We nodded and followed her up the tiled steps to a hallway that was about as wide as a road. There were fresh flowers in vases on hall tables, brown leather-back chairs, and Oriental rugs running end to end over the polished hardwood floor. My mother tiptoed along in her peachy robe, pointing to doors, making stiff little hand signals and mouthing, “Bathroom… phone room…my room,” and then, right next door, “We're in here.” It was like getting a tour from a mannequin mime.
She hurries us in, then closes the door without a sound and lets out a windstorm sigh. “Okay. Here we are. Marissa, you can put that down by this bed. I'm afraid the two of you will have to share. Or one of you can sleep on the floor. There are extra blankets….”
After everything we'd walked past and seen, I was expe
cting the room to be big. Big and fancy. But it wasn't. There were two twin-sized beds with matching ivy-patterned bedspreads, two dressers with vanity mirrors, matching writing desks, and a closet. And even though everything was clean and tidy, it looked more like a budget motel room than a suite in a fancy villa.
Lady Lana sees what I'm thinking and says, “Our bedrooms don't have to be elaborate, Samantha. We don't spend much time in them—we're here to work. And it's a lot harder work than you've ever imagined.” She motions around the place. “My room's even smaller. One bed, no window—which is why it's not exactly convenient to have guests.”
Guests. I bit my lip and asked, “Where's the bathroom?”
“I pointed it out to you as we were walking past it!”
“That's the bathroom for everybody?”
“Yes. Four showers, four toilets. There are twelve of us, so most mornings you wait in line.”
Marissa parked her suitcase by the bed as she studied the room. “It looks like this used to be bigger. Like they subdivided it or something.”
A perfect little eyebrow arched up on Lady Lana's brow. “Exactly. They made these little cubicles out of the original rooms twenty years ago, when Max first started the agency. He used to be a director and a producer. He's even written a few features.”
“Uh… what about the phone room?”
“What about it?”
“Is that for everyone, too? I mean, can I call Grams? I promised.”
My mother says, “You stay here—I'll do it,” then wrinkles her nose and adds, “And eat those horrid sandwiches, would you? They're smelling up the room!”
We loved the horrid sandwiches. They were some kind of salty fish on buttered bread, and I could've eaten three of them. We sat on the floor and inhaled them, then chased the sandwiches down with bananas and sodas.
When my mother gets back, she says, “She sends her love and a reminder to call when you know which bus you'll be catching home.” Then she sits down in front of the mirror and starts dealing with her face. First she smears cream all over it, then she starts plucking microscopic hairs from her eyebrows. And let me tell you, she is on nub patrol like I have never seen, squinting into the mirror, turning from side to side, tracking down enemy hairs to seize and destroy.
And I know she's not going to tell me what that whole exchange with Toe Rings was about, and I know that asking is going to get me seriously snapped at, but after I finish my food I decide to try anyway. “So who was that girl with the braids?”
“Reena's daughter. Reena cooks, Hali cleans.”
“Isn't she kinda young to be a maid?”
“Oh, I don't know. The story I heard is that she was going to UCLA but had to drop out because they couldn't afford it. She is smart, but she can also be somewhat brash, which is not very becoming.”
I hesitate, then very quietly I ask, “What did she know that got you so upset, Mom?”
She stops plucking, turns to me, and whispers, “Samantha, it's imperative that you call me Dominique. At all times. Even when you think no one else can hear.” Then she goes back to looking in the mirror.
I just sit there waiting for an answer to my question, and when one doesn't come, I try again. “Okay… so, Aunt Dominique, what did she know that got you so upset?”
Pluck, pluck. Pluck.
“Well, if you don't want to tell me, I could make some pretty wild guesses instead….”
Pluck, pluck … pluck!
“Let's see … maybe …”
She eyes me through the mirror. “If you really must know…,” she says, then turns to face me, “Maximilian Mueller has asked me to marry him.”
FOUR
She might as well have stuck my finger in a light socket. “To marry you?”
“That's right. So now maybe you understand the complexity of the situation a little bit?”
A tidal wave of panic was crashing all over me. I mean, my real father was a stranger. A big unknown. Someone my mother refused to discuss until I was “old enough to understand.” And now here she was, talking about marrying someone else I didn't know and could never know because, according to her, I didn't exist.
I choked out, “But isn't he … isn't he old?”
My mother went back to searching for wayward eyebrow hairs. “Sixty-two is not that old.”
“Sixty-two!”
Pluck.
“Well, if I can't be me because you can't be over thirty, then how can you say—”
“Samantha!” she hissed. “It's not the same thing!”
“Why not?”
“He's a man, and he's not trying to be an actress!”
I wanted to say, What does that matter? but what came out instead was, “Well, do you love him?”
She frowned at herself in the mirror. “We can see how far love's gotten me!”
That shut me down cold.
And as she's working her eyebrows, Marissa holds on to my arm and whispers, “She didn't mean it like that.”
My mother stops mid-pluck and looks at me in the mirror. “No, Samantha, I didn't mean it like that. This really has nothing at all to do with you.”
“How can you say that? You're gonna marry some guy who's old enough to be my grandfather, who doesn't know who you really are or that you have a—”
“Stop!” she whispered fiercely.
I stopped, all right. Just clammed up and looked down. And while my eyes are burning like they've been doused with acid, Marissa says to her, “You're afraid of losing everything, aren't you?”
I looked through my tears at Marissa. It didn't even sound like her. She sounded calm. Older. And there was so much understanding in her voice that my mother turned completely around in her chair, gave Marissa a few painful blinks, then burst into tears. “Why can't I just be an actress? Why do I have to go through this nightmare?” She looks at me and says, “If I don't marry him, it's all over. I'll be back waiting tables at Big Daddy's like I never left town, and Samantha, that's going to kill me. Do you understand? Kill me.” She pushes the tears up and away with her little fingers. “And I can't afford to just leave here and live on my own. I'll never find another setup like this! I'm not out a nickel until I actually get work—do you think there's another place around that does that? No! Which is why we're all willing to stick to their ridiculously strict schedules and regimens. They want to make us stars as much as we want to be stars, because that's how they make their money.”
Marissa says, “So if you say no, you think he's going to make you leave?”
“I have no doubt about it. Max is a very proud man, and I'm sure he'd hold me to my contract, which means I'd probably never work again.”
Marissa asks, “Can he do that?” and I add, “Yeah, isn't that blackmail?”
She shrugs. “He hasn't come right out and said any of this. It's just my intuition that it's what I can expect.”
Marissa says, “Maybe you're just worrying too much.”
“Yeah. Maybe he does this all the time. How many wives has he had, anyway?”
She looks right at me. “One. He never remarried after his wife, Claire, died. Have either of you ever heard of her? Claire Lewellen.”
We both shake our heads.
“Neither had I, but she'd be a hard act to follow. Max's office is a veritable shrine to her. She was a very glamorous starlet, and from the way Max talks, she would've had a room full of Oscars if she'd lived.”
“What happened to her?”
My mother shrugged and said, “She died in a car wreck near Malibu.”
“A long time ago?”
“According to the newspaper article hanging in the reception room, it's been twenty-five years.”
I thought about all this a minute, then asked, “So why you?”
She frowned at me. “Don't sound so incredulous, Samantha.”
I was incredulous. I mean, after all these years of not getting married again, why now? And why, of all people, my mother?
She looks down
and sighs. “He says we're destined to be together. He says he's been waiting for me since the world went dark. He says he can't turn back now, and he can't go forward without me.”
For a moment the room is heavy with silence. Then Marissa says, “It sounds like he's in love with you.”
My mother looks at Marissa, her eyebrows practically screwed into a knot on her forehead. “Except that when he proposed…he called me Claire. He swears he didn't, and I was in a state of shock, but still….”
We all sat there a minute, quiet. And it was strange. In a way I was upset. Very upset. But in another way, the whole situation seemed distant. Like it was happening to someone else. My mother had transformed herself into someone new, just to be mistaken for a person who'd been dead for twenty-five years.
Oh yeah, that was worth the effort.
Finally I shook my head and asked, “So what are you going to do?”
“Samantha, this is not the picture I had for my life, but there's probably not a woman at the agency crazy enough to turn him down. LeBrandi said she'd do it. She said she'd do it in a heartbeat.”
I blinked. “You told her about it?”
“I had to tell someone! And LeBrandi and I have been through a lot of auditions together, so yes, I confided in her.” She eyed me and said, “And what I told her was that I couldn't do it.”
“Really?”
“Yes, but what she said makes a lot of sense. I'll lose everything if I turn him down, and think about what I'll get by becoming his wife! The man is extremely wealthy, but aside from that, imagine how my career would take off! I have every reason to believe he'd put the same effort and dedication into promoting me that he did into promoting Claire.”
It was like she'd zapped me with a stun gun. I couldn't move, I couldn't speak. I couldn't even blink. Marissa, though, was functioning just fine. She says, “But how can you marry him when he thinks you're Dominique Windsor? Don't you need birth certificates and blood tests and stuff to get married?”
My mother rubs her temples and whispers, “I know. I do have a fake driver's license, but—”
That brought me around in a hurry. “You do? How'd you get that?”
“Oh, Samantha, not now. It's way easier than it should be. The point is, I've been trying to figure a way out of this nightmare ever since he proposed. I know everything's on the verge of blowing up in my face, but I've been trying to keep the lid on it long enough to make the final audition for Jewel. And now, according to Hali, I've got that! If I can land that part…if I can just land that part, I'll be able to go out on my own and not have to deal with this nightmare anymore. I'll be able to get an apartment, and you”—she comes over and holds my hand, squeezing it hard—“you can come and live with me.”