Born Under a Lucky Moon Page 7

  I shut off the shower and toweled down while Sammie shed her clothes. She hopped into the shower while I blew my hair dry.

  “So. Chuck,” she called from the shower.

  That’s all she said but I knew what she meant. I tried to clear the mirror with my hand but the shower steamed it back up. Blindly, I took the curling iron to my hair.

  “Your bangs are sticking up,” Sammie said as she got out of the shower.

  Through a clean spot on the mirror, I saw that I had fried my bangs. They were now shriveled at the ends like when Mom would light a cigarette over the gas stove and catch her hair in the flame.

  “Goddamn it! When you people all come home it’s just chaos.”

  “Don’t you yell at me!” Sammie was now shouting. Someone tried to open the door, but Sammie was directly in front of it, bent over toweling her hair. The door smacked her bare butt and she sprawled into me. I dropped the hot curling iron on my foot.

  “Watch where you’re going!” we both yelled.

  With uncharacteristic calm Lucy walked in and took off her clothes. “It’s 4:40 and it’s my turn. And I know what you’ve been saying in here so just stop it.”

  “We haven’t been saying anything. Really.” Sammie looked at me.

  We both knew this was Lucy’s day. Actually it was Evan and Lucy’s day, but Lucy was the only one in the bathroom. It was important not to upset her.

  “Do you know that you’re wearing Anna’s wedding dress?” I asked politely.

  Lucy turned slowly, one foot over the edge of the tub. “You’ve got to be kidding,” she said. “Mom planned a surprise wedding and she doesn’t even get me a dress?” She climbed into the shower.

  “She tried, she really did.”

  “Anna doesn’t mind me using hers?” Lucy peeked around the shower curtain and lifted an eyebrow.

  “No. In the end she was quite cool about it,” Sammie said while mascara-ing her lashes with her mouth slightly open.

  “How was she in the beginning?”

  “Not so cool. But she came around.”

  Lucy sighed. “Christ, it’s her wedding weekend, after all. And Evan’s. If I were them I’d be furious.” Sammie and I looked at each other, and I switched the subject.

  “You get to pick out your headgear-thingy tomorrow morning,” I said helpfully. “We haven’t found one yet. Mom made an appointment at the June Wedding.”

  “Why didn’t she get me a dress there?” Lucy asked.

  “Nothing in your size. Only size fourteens, the one-size-fits-all samples.” I sat on the toilet seat fixing my hair. The cord from the curling iron stretched over the sink where Sammie was brushing her teeth. “Don’t spit on that. It’ll fry what’s left of me.”

  There was silence from the shower for a while; then Lucy climbed out and all three of us crowded around the mirror trying to do our makeup. Lucy was au naturel, Sammie was in a towel that kept slipping off, and I had put on Dad’s robe. Lucy looked at her reflection and handed the mascara wand to Sammie, who pushed Lucy down onto the toilet lid. Sammie studied Lucy’s face.

  “What are you wearing?”

  “The green.”

  Sammie grabbed her eye shadows and started in on Lucy’s face. She next applied powder and blush, and then added lipstick to Lucy’s uncooperative mouth. When Sammie was finished, Lucy looked at her reflection in the hand mirror. “You always put too much on,” she said to Sammie.

  “You always put too little on,” Sammie shot back.

  When Sammie turned to the mirror to do her own makeup, I handed a tissue to Lucy, who promptly blotted her lips.

  I stared at my own hair, which, being thin, had been subjected to a series of unfortunate perms, most recently a Toni home perm that left my semi-blond hair looking like I was in a constant state of fright.

  Sammie grabbed Mom’s Aquanet. “Close,” she commanded.

  I shut my eyes. She held my bangs down against my forehead and sprayed.

  “Twenty minutes!” Elizabeth sing-songed a warning up the stairs.

  “I hate it when she talks like that,” I muttered.

  “That nursery school teacher voice really annoys me, too,” Lucy replied.

  Elizabeth really wanted to be a news anchor. She’d have been good at it too, except she tried too hard and her voice sounded fakey. Elizabeth’s hero growing up was Mary Tyler Moore. She even kind of looked like Mary Tyler Moore, with her tall, slender body and brunette hair. I could just hear her saying, “Oh, Mr. Graaaant!” and throwing her hat up into the air. When Elizabeth was eighteen, she had tried out for Miss Muskegon. She certainly had the beauty portion nailed. Confident and poised, she had strutted across the stage in a peach one-piece bathing suit—legs going from here to there. We clapped madly in the audience and, of course, she won the beauty segment of the contest.

  Then she did her talent segment. For some reason, she had opted to dress as Sprout, the elf from the Jolly Green Giant TV commercials. Mom had gamely made her an elf outfit out of sparkly green material. We helped Elizabeth decorate a forty-gallon oil drum with tin foil so that it would look like a big can of peas. She did a skit, and maybe that wouldn’t have been so bad, but she also decided to sing. Elizabeth can’t sing. She came in third place overall. I thought she at least deserved second place, in front of that girl in a hoopskirt who recited something from Gone with the Wind.

  I was shaken from my thoughts when Mom pushed her way into the bathroom. “Lucy, I don’t want you to panic, but there’s a problem with Chuck.”

  Oh God. She wasn’t going to start in on Lucy right here in the bathroom, was she? Sammie and I would have edged for the door but there wasn’t room to get around Mom.

  “What’s wrong?” Lucy asked. The hairbrush in her hand stopped mid-stroke.

  “He’s fine but there’s been an accident.”

  “What happened?” she asked as she snatched Dad’s robe off me and squeezed past all of us out the door. I grabbed one of Dad’s long T-shirts from the back of the door, put it on, and ran after her and Mom.

  Chuck was bent over in the front foyer holding on to his face. Jeff was awkwardly patting him on the back and looking at the air above Chuck’s head. My first thought was that Mom wasn’t going to be too happy about the blood streaming down on her Oriental rug.

  Chapter Seven

  January 2006

  I hustled to get ready for work at Aidan’s house on Monday morning. Nine a.m. is the weekly meeting with the entire Oxford marketing staff. When I kissed Aidan good-bye he held me a bit longer as I made to pull away.

  “Do you think you’ll have an answer soon, Jeannie?” he said into my hair.

  “Sure. Soon,” I said into his chest. Raising my head, I looked into his eyes. “I promise.” But my stomach was churning.

  At 8:50 I entered the conference room and headed for the coffee urn at the back of the room before taking my usual seat near the head of the table. The highly polished cherry table had room for about thirty people. More chairs lined the walls for those who had not yet been ordained with a position at the table. Holding my Styrofoam cup and my notebook, I exchanged pleasantries with people as I made my way forward.

  Pulling back my chair, I stopped short. A notebook with a pen lying neatly on top was on the table directly in front of me. It practically had the word RESERVED printed on its cover. Flipping it open I saw Katsu Tanaka’s name at the top. He wouldn’t! Would he? He couldn’t possibly think he could swipe my prime position at the table—just one seat from the head.

  Seating was not a free-for-all. Some chairs had been occupied by the same butts for years. Sitting toward the head of the table, where the president of marketing ruled, indicated higher rank. People only moved up if someone died or got fired or if there was a direct coup in the works. Last week, Katsu was sitting along the wall.

  I looked up to see some people watching me with interest. Hiding my anger, I grabbed the notebook and walked it down to the end, placing it in front of one of th
e few seats that had a history of rotating owners.

  Nine a.m. and the meeting hadn’t started yet. Tapping my pen in annoyance, I kept glancing toward the door for Rachael, the president of marketing, to enter. I hated it when meetings didn’t start on time. At 9:05 Katsu strolled in. He was of Japanese descent but he was firmly Ivy League American. His jet-black hair was swept back with gel with a few pieces in front carefully arranged to stick straight up, and he draped his six-foot frame with only the latest designer suits from Barneys New York. I watched one person after another approach to offer congratulations. Stubbornly, I remained glued to my chair. Possession is nine-tenths of the law.

  When Katsu glided toward me, I saw his eyes glance up and down the table, searching. His mouth twisted ever so slightly when he spotted his notebook down in the hinterlands. Without rising, I stuck my hand out at him.

  “Congratulations, Katsu. Very impressive.” I tried to sound sincere.

  “Thanks, Jeannie. I’m looking forward to working more closely with you,” he said graciously. Then he moved off toward the end of the table. I fumed inside.

  Rachael finally entered and started the meeting with the announcement about Katsu. Applause followed. Was I imagining it or did her eyes narrow when she saw how far away Katsu was seated? With her steel gray hair and severe suits, Rachael made a lot of people nervous. I had always gotten along with her, though. Maybe I was just being paranoid. After all, what was the big deal? A guy got promoted. It didn’t mean I was on the outs. I had opened billions of dollars’ worth of movies. Rachael hadn’t consulted me or even simply told me ahead of time but there could be a lot of reasons for that. I just didn’t know what they were. Finally, after forty-five torturous minutes discussing the past weekend’s box office, I was released.

  Caitlin tried to follow me into my office with a stack of dvCam tapes and notes but I waved her off. Shutting the door behind me, I took a deep breath. Then I noticed one of the framed photos of Aidan and me was hanging askew. Carefully I adjusted it, stepping back to make sure it was straight. Then I sat down at my desk with its two pens, call list, and typed-up list of notes of what needed to be done that day, neatly lined up side by side.

  Opening my email, I noticed that Sammie had sent me another missive. Shit, I had forgotten to call her back. I left the email unopened so it would still appear as “new” when I got back to it.

  An instant message popped up on my computer screen. Caitlin was letting me know Aidan was on the line. Before I could tell him what had occurred that morning, he said Warner Bros. had just called him. They wanted him to go to London immediately to check on a film that was going over budget.

  Aidan is a well-known and trusted producer in studio circles. Every once in a while, when a studio had a film producer who “wasn’t working out,” they would call in Aidan to save the day. He sounded harried, so instead of telling him about Katsu, I told him I loved him and to travel safe.

  In the two weeks that followed, we spoke on the phone every day and emailed constantly, but I missed him like crazy. He was under such pressure to straighten out the film’s budget that I didn’t have the heart to unload on him about Katsu’s antics. But every night like clockwork, I woke up at 3 a.m. My head spun like a never-ending disc with the events jolting my life: Aidan and his proposal, Katsu and his pushiness.

  Katsu continued to try and usurp my place at the conference table for the Monday and Wednesday meetings, forcing me to arrive earlier and earlier. Then he dropped thinly veiled criticisms in the meetings, saying that maybe my trailer test scores weren’t as strong as everyone thought, or questioning whether it was a good idea to spend so much money on a particular song for the trailer. Finally, I walked into the executive dining room for lunch, only to see Katsu sitting at Ms. F.U.’s table. Unbelievably, he was even cozying up to the stars—my stars—to try and poach the films I was currently working on.

  When I got back to the office I furiously punched in Aidan’s number. He would know what to do. “Aidan, I—”

  “I miss you too, lovebug. I can’t wait to get home.” Aidan’s voice came from across the continent and the ocean.

  “Yeah, Aidan, I have some things going on at work that I really need to talk—” My words came out in a flurry.

  “That’s how you respond to my saying I miss you?” Aidan sounded hurt.

  “No, no, I’m sorry. It’s just that I’m under a lot of pressure right now.” I rubbed my eyes. This wasn’t going right.

  “Well, I’m under a fair amount of pressure too. But I still take time to tell you that I miss you. Is that so hard?”

  Moving the two pens on my desk, I got them into even more perfect alignment. “I’m sorry. Can we start over?” I poured a glass of water from the bottle in my mini-fridge and added two Alka-Seltzers.

  “Actually, I’m sorry to leave you this way but they just called me to the set. I’ll talk to you later.” He hung up without so much as a good-bye or an “I love you.”

  “Jeannie?” Caitlin poked her head into my office a few minutes later.

  “What?” I fairly snarled at her. Caitlin furrowed her brow but didn’t back out. It was pretty rare that I lost my temper. She entered and looked up at me.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  “What the hell does it look like I’m doing?”

  “It looks like you are balancing in high heels on the back of your couch cleaning the windows with Windex. We have people who do that, you know.”

  “They do a terrible job.” I tried to climb down but caught my shoe in the artfully placed afghan on the back of the couch. Windmilling the Windex and roll of paper towels, I fell into Caitlin’s arms. As she is a fairly tall woman, at least I didn’t take her down with me. She stood firm.

  As we disentangled, she put me on my feet and regarded me. “Jeannie, how long have I worked for you?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe three years?”

  “Five. So you’ll excuse me when I tell you that you are acting weird.”

  “I’ve told you what Katsu’s doing. He’s making a move on my job.” I slammed myself into my desk chair. I didn’t mention Aidan’s call. That was personal territory for me.

  “Jeannie,” Caitlin’s voice was gentle, “you don’t know that. Maybe he’s simply trying hard to make a good impression because of his promotion. Why don’t you just go to Rachael and ask her what’s going on?”

  “You don’t ask what’s going on in a film studio! You surmise. You ask semi-trusted sources what they know. You try not to act too desperate so they don’t spread the word you are on the outs.”

  “Personally, I think you are making too much of this thing. Let it go and move on. You’re valuable to the studio. Just look at your stats. You have no reason to be acting this way.” Caitlin’s voice was soothing but I was having none of it. When I didn’t say anything she turned and left, shutting the door quietly. She couldn’t understand why I was behaving the way I was. Frankly, I didn’t know why I being such a freak.

  I leaned back in my ergonomically correct Aeron office chair and stared at the white-tiled ceiling. Catching sight of the fire sprinklers, I involuntarily closed my eyes as the humiliating memory resurfaced of my first week working at Oxford Pictures. Nervous about making a good impression on my new colleagues, I had been dressing carefully and watching how everyone behaved to make sure I did the same things. I felt very much like I had been invited to a formal dinner party and didn’t know which fork to use. Nevertheless, I had proudly invited Elizabeth to come see my wonderful new office. When she arrived she stalked around the office inspecting the furniture like she might buy it.

  “Is this brand-new furniture?” She had arched an eyebrow at me.

  “No.” I was confused by the question. “Oxford has a big warehouse where you can pick out furniture that no one else is using.”

  “I thought as much.” Elizabeth reached into her oversized purse and pulled out what looked like a dried bush. It dwarfed her hands. “This
furniture has a lot of negative energy attached to it from its previous users—employees who were probably fired. You need to smudge the office with sage to drive away this bad energy.”

  I didn’t know what “smudging” meant, but I did know that Elizabeth should not be lighting a dried bush and making a fiery torch out of it in my shiny new corporate office. She began waving the torch around over her head. “You put the flame out and then the smoke will take care of the negative stuff in here.” That’s when she waved the flames a bit too near the ceiling. The fire sprinklers had come on, drenching both of us, the furniture, TV monitor, and computer. Alarms had squalled through the entire building and hundreds of people had been evacuated to the parking lot. So much for being inconspicuous during my first few weeks at Oxford Pictures. At the time, I had tried to console myself that at least the sprinklers had gone off only in my office and not on the entire floor.

  I was lucky I hadn’t been escorted off the studio lot right then and there. But by the time the security guards and firemen had piled into my office, Elizabeth had crammed the evidence of the burned and now dripping sage bush into her purse. We lamely explained that the sprinklers had suddenly started by themselves for no reason at all. I don’t think they quite bought the story of a malfunction but no one had questioned me further. After all these years I still hadn’t let any of my family back in my office.

  Shifting my eyes from the ceiling and the offending fire sprinklers, I buried myself at the office for the next eight hours. When Aidan still hadn’t called me back, I finally texted him that I loved him and that I was sorry. I got a text back almost immediately. He loved me too, things were wrapping up, and he would be home in two days.

  As promised, Aidan came to my house two nights later straight off the plane. “Will you marry me yet?” he asked as I opened the front door.

  “No, not yet.” I threw myself at him.

  He smiled at me, then stepped in and dropped his bag. “Woman, you are an exasperation.” We were both too happy to see each other to pursue the subject of marriage though.