Bruce Wagner - I Met Someone

When her son turned ten, she was already in a period of intense self-reflection. The Twin Towers had fallen the year before and Larissa took that as a sign. She was thirty-eight, deeply depressed, and pregnant with Rafaela — a mindblower because she had been so sure she’d never have another child. It occurred to Larissa that she would never be famous, which apparently had been obvious to everyone on the planet but her; the second child was the final nail in the career coffin. She’d been acting since her twenties, running the hideous L.A. 10K of doomed equity waiver runs, pay-to-play daytime improv “workshops” in rented comedy clubs, power-drunk pilot-season casting directors, and failed cartoon voiceover auditions (though she did get occasional loop-group work). In her golden years, the late eighties, she booked nonspeaking roles on Murphy Brown, Alf , and Married with Children , and got Taft-Hartleyed into SAG when a showrunner gave her a line (subsequently cut, but no matter) on Knots Landing . She thought she was on her way, but nothing happened. Nothing! Why was it so impossible? And why was it so possible for others? She was getting lapped by everyone she knew, they blew by her on the track, all her friends and acquaintances were getting rich and famous. She frequented the bars where actors hung out. She met Tony Danza and Bob Saget and Kelsey Grammer that way. As a conversation starter, Larissa invented a story about how she was the illegitimate daughter of Richard Harris, that he had a one-night stand with her mom in Cannes when he won an award there for This Sporting Life , and how her mother was a chambermaid (she actually used that word) at the Hotel du Cap. She tried to seduce Danza et alia but wound up sucking off the bartenders instead. Then she married a film editor… how losery of her! And nothing happened in her fakakta career until years later when she had another golden era, in the movies. She was a day player in Kalifornia (Female Officer), Indecent Proposal (Dress Shop Saleslady), and Ace Ventura: Pet Detective (Reporter #5). She dipped her toe back into the television waters (it was all about being versatile), getting a gig as a Law & Order stand-in — fun! She was good at it and networked her way into camera doubling for Gillian Anderson and Fran Drescher. Then she hit it big and became a full-time stand-in for Katey Sagal (they really did look alike) on 8 Simple Rules but when John Ritter died, her niche career got buried along with him. The Stand-In Years dissolved into the Switching Price Tags at Department Stores Years. She wasn’t even sure why she did what she did because Derek was making more than okay money. The first time she was arrested it wasn’t too huge a deal but the second time they had to pay a lawyer $23,000 to keep her out of the hoosegow. That was when she started going to Landmark Forum, looking at her deep dark secrets and the ones her family kept, trying to get to the root of all her shit. She really thrived there, she was a Forum rock star . Larissa even thought of becoming a Landmark personal coach or maybe a therapist, like an MFCC — all her struggling actress friends were aging out and hanging marriage- and family-counselor shingles… She started feeling so much better about herself, the whole empowerment cliché but for real, and after she gave birth to that second child something inside her said it was time to tell Derek about the affair and about Tristen. What happened was, she caught Derek in his affair three years into the marriage (he was an editor on Lethal Weapon , and she was his intern; so totally his M.O.) and he begged Larissa not to leave him. A few months after she took him back they had some argument and she slept with a stranger as a fuck-you . (Landmark allowed her to see that it was really just a fuck-you to her dad.) So because of her own personal evolution it was time to come clean and she confessed all and of course he was shaken but seemed to be okay. (As okay as he could be.) He asked for paternity tests on both kids, and when the results confirmed that Rafaela was his and the boy wasn’t he broke both of Larissa’s arms. She cabbed it to the hospital and said she got mugged. At the E.R. a lady cop pushed her to file charges on her husband but she stuck with the mugging alibi. Her mom flew out to help with the new baby while Larissa mended. Derek got his own place. She could never explain why she hoped he’d come back.

He was working on Resident Evil , making good bread. He never stopped taking care of her and the children. He sent regular checks; then sweet notes with the checks; then small thoughtful gifts in the in-between. He apologized for the beat-down and said he understood what led her to betray him. He even said he was in therapy! That he agreed with everything she’d told him about the devastation wrought by capital-S secrets, and was proud of her moxie . (Actually using that word.) He said he was deeply ashamed, and really seemed to mean it. By the end of the year he was living at home again, bedding down in the garage. Tristen was overjoyed; he had missed his father terribly, and been so confused. (Thank God he wasn’t there the night Derek broke her arms.) On his return, Derek really did try his best. The miracle was that things went well, relatively, for a moment anyway, between father and make-believe son — that Derek behaved . His performance wasn’t perfect but it was solid, like a good understudy’s; he fell back on all the years he’d loved that boy as if he was his own. In time, even after becoming Tristen’s tormentor, Derek never told him that he wasn’t his real dad. Didn’t that count for something, for anything? Didn’t that count for some kind of love?

She stood beside the body now.

He wore the clothes he’d be burned in — that gorgeous grey Prada suit she bought for his graduation from Crossroads. Larissa touched the cold forehead. Just beneath the sternum rose the tip of the closed excision atop his heart; through the white shirt’s thin cotton she could see the cowlicky infestation of black threads that sewed it up. Her finger reached out to trace the fabric covering the unruly tendrils’ bristle; then drew back, like the twiggy phalange of a timorous witch.

—

Dusty had been in constant touch with Ginevra since that unfortunate row in the driveway, yet again she vacillated about telling Allegra— Aurora —the full truth and nothing but. Insofar as her daughter had filled in the blanks with an imaginary adultery (the therapist encouraged her to actively say “my daughter” and “Aurora” instead of Allegra), Dusty thought it would be easier to just capitalize on the misunderstanding and make it legitimate; confess to multiple affairs and break it off. The blow had already been struck, albeit for the wrong reason, and she saw no benefit in delivering the alternate coup de grâce. Of course, Ginevra didn’t agree, urging her to be strong, bla.

On Monday, they met as agreed at the restaurant in the hotel. The actress had no plan. The primary thing was to get back on some sort of even keel, whatever that looked like, then see what she could see. So there they were, having a surreal and civil tea; she wouldn’t have been surprised to be interrupted by a hatter and a dormouse — though Bunny, bereft, lacked the oomph just then to give any kind of March hare its marching orders.

The two looked as beautiful as an arrondissement between downpours. For the first time, Dusty sat across from the storybook creature who’d been transfigured by a single kiss (though one that lasted years) from defiled, warty frog-wife to daughter-princess, impossibly, luminously restored. It was breathtaking, and gutted her. They danced around their recent estrangement. When Allegra brought up Jeremy’s loss (in spite of herself), Dusty startled, claiming not to have known. Allegra was certain the actressy denials were for show but held her tongue. Anyway, it was a good distraction to be gossiping about travails other than their own.