Adulation (25 page)

Life slowed down once the
 
Exposed
 
premiere season ended. The interviews and promotion ceased, thephone calls and e-mails were reduced to their usual levels (which was still higher than those of theaverage person), and the YouTube video had become a thing of the past.

So had Sunny. Or at least Danny had decided to make her such since he still hadn’t heard a wordfrom her. Whatever the encounter outside the theater had been was just that—a pleasant exchange with afan that, unfortunately, had turned ugly. And just as he didn’t mean what he had said during the Q&A thatevening, he told himself that she probably hadn’t meant what she said either.
 
Just forget it
, he thought.

But he couldn’t forget it. The words
jackass
 
and
failure
 
haunted him, especially when he sat at thecomputer to write. He’d erased everything he’d written for
 
The Seven Year Itch
 
pilot—including theshow’s title—and started over, taking Ken’s suggestions about streamlining it more to the kinds of thingshe typically wrote. Throw out the comedy idea, as well as the cheesy romance angle, but keep the marriedcouple and the public radio station in a more serious setting. He wasn’t sold on the title
 
Working Together
, but decided to keep it until a better one came to him in the shower.

None did. Nor did the good dialogue, character motivations and revelations, or story ideas, forthat matter.

Dez, Charlene, everyone told him it was a temporary slump, that he’d get his swing back in notime and to enjoy all the good ink
 
Exposed
 
was getting. The word
 
Oscar
 
was volleyed about not only for

Danny, but also Paul, Shane, Sharon, and the film itself. The hype still made Danny  nervous; he wasconvinced there was no better way to jinx a win than by prematurely calling it a shoo-in, but he reveled inthe praise for it.

Danny spent Thanksgiving with Charlene and her family. Typically he spent the day with Ella, but thisyear she requested that he spend Christmas with her instead—namely by taking her to New York. When heasked Frannie about it, she gave him her permission. “It’s the only thing she really wants. That and a newcoat to wear in New York.”

“Did she give any particular reason why?” he asked.

She shook her head. “I think she wants you all to herself this year.”

He liked the idea of that.

Mr. and Mrs. Dumont were such a sharp contrast to Charlene’s A-list lifestyle. They still lived inthe Indiana house she grew up in (although Charlene had paid off their mortgage after signing her firstmultimillion-dollar movie contract); he was a retired police officer, she a nurse-turned-manager of adoctor’s office, six months away from retiring. Danny almost regretted politely declining their invitationfor him and Charlene to spend the weekend at the house. Charlene had two sisters, both married withchildren—suburban soccer moms who were still starstruck by Danny Masters as well as by their sister’sstories about attending award show parties and being on the set with George Clooney and vacations onexotic islands. She was softer around the edges when she was with her family, as  if she was finally out ofcamera range and could breathe a sigh of relief. And yet she clearly enjoyed regaling her sisters with herstories.

Her parents asked Danny about Ella and his work, praised him for
 
Exposed
, and apologized forcomparing it to
 
Winters in Hyannis
 
. He was happy to indulge them, appreciative of their hospitality andhome cooking. He especially enjoyed watching football with her dad and brothers-in-law. They asked Charlene if she was getting enough sunlight (Danny couldn’t help but be amused by the questionconsidering Charlene’s home was in Malibu), eating properly, making time for herself, etcetera. Charleneanswered each question dutifully, but with a little bit of an eye roll, until Danny admonished her inprivate.

“Stop being so condescending to them. They’re treating you with love and respect. I would’vekilled to have my father take that kind of interest in me. You have no idea how lucky you are to have beenraised in this family, and you’re treating them like they’re your fans.”

“It wasn’t always roses,” she protested. “My father wasn’t home a lot. My mother was alwaystaking care of someone. Hell, the only time I ever got any attention was when
 
I
 
was sick.”

“I find that hard to believe,” he said.

“Don’t tell me how to behave in front of my family,” she snapped. “They’re
 
my
 
family, not yours.”

He could hardly wait for Christmas.

Danny and Ella did the touristy things in New York first—visiting the tree at Rockefeller Plaza and takingsnapshots with Prometheus blurred in the background, yet visible in all its iconic stature; attending thecheesy holiday show at Radio City Music Hall (and geezus, when had the Rockettes gotten so
 
young
?);

visiting FAO Schwartz and watching Ella turn seven again as she hugged stuffed animals as tall as she was. The two of them walked up and down Broadway, and Danny pointed out theaters he’d been to, including the one where
 
Madness
 
had been performed before it was adapted for the big screen, and a building where he’d shared a two-bedroom apartment with three other people—all actors—and no hot water.

Like so many native Long Islanders, Danny had spent his youth taking Manhattan for granted. Itwas a treasure chest he could open any time, knowing its contents were precious jewels but never takingthe time to appraise them. He loved the New York of so many movies he’d seen—all those Woody Allenfilms, and Scorsese and De Palma, from romantic to dirty to scary to electric to mundane, even. Heremembered being ten years old and loving the opening credits to
 
Miracle on 34th Street
, and young Danny was seeing the city from another time: cleaner, simpler, black-and-white not just in picture but inthe abstract as well. That was the New York he wanted to live in. Why had he never created that in any ofhis works?

The day after Christmas, Ella asked if they could drive out to Long Island.

Danny’s insides turned to stone. “Why do you want to go there?”

“I want to see where you came from,” she said.

Ella was now old enough that he could tell her it wasn’t the happiest of places for him, that itdidn’t conjure good memories. But when she looked at him with pleading eyes and begged, “For me?” (agesture he couldn’t help but think was performed in deliberate manipulation, and was manipulation evernot deliberate?), he knew he was whipped, and she probably knew it too. Poor Richie.

They drove out to Bethpage, and Ella asked all kinds of questions about who he used to play withand if he had a dog and what his bedroom looked like and what colors the walls in the house were anddid he take the bus to school—questions that Danny knew any forty-five-year-old should be able to

answer—but for the life of him, he couldn’t. He couldn’t remember playmates, couldn’t remember posters on the wall or petunias in the backyard, couldn’t remember after-school activities or sneaking out past curfew. He could remember the ashen face of his father, sullen, bitter, an angry word always seeming to hang from his lips in waiting, like an unlit cigarette. He could remember the smell of the smoke, although he thought perhaps that was more from his present than his past (or maybe it was because he had been craving the cigs so bad, curbing them while he was with Ella, who demanded he keep it down to one a day and way out of her presence, and by God, she’d better not smell it when he was done). He could remember the face of his mother, wrinkles framing her eyes and mouth and over her brows and even around her chin. He remembered her eyes sunk into her face, her bangs the color of her skin, her voice mousy and rarely heard. He remembered wondering  why she looked older than all the other mothers, but he couldn’t remember what the other mothers looked like or when he’d seen them.

They drove down the street,
 
his
 
street, and Danny slowed to a stop when he approached the yellow cape, repainted and re-sided and smiling, adorned with flowerbeds and dormant azalea bushes covered with Christmas lights that looked like they’d been dumped there in the daylight, and a carpet of grass that no doubt would be dazzling green come springtime, a plastic Santa Claus waving to the neighbors and passing cars. The mailbox at the edge of the driveway was wrapped in live pine garland, its little flag raised.

The house looked way happier than he ever had felt in it.

“It’s cute,” said Ella. “Way smaller than I pictured it.”

“It does look small, now that you mention it,” said Danny. “It had three bedrooms and two bathrooms. My parents’ room was downstairs, and mine was upstairs. The other room was kind of like an office. I was never allowed in it.”

“Mom says your parents weren’t very happy because your father drank,” said Ella before tacking

on, “and that
you
 
weren’t very happy either.” She spoke with authority, expertise. Not a trace of trauma.

“Yes, that’s true,” he replied, wishing she would change the subject, the car still in park. “Unfortunately I inherited that from him.”

“But you stopped drinking.”

“Yes, I did.”

“Because of the accident.”

Please God, make her stop. And please don’t let her ask me to take her to the scene.

“Why are you bringing all this up, El?” he protested with more annoyance in his voice than he intended. “You know I don’t like to talk about this.”

“I’m sorry, Dad,” she said, sounding more mature and less like a remorseful child. “I guess I’ve just been wondering if that’s what makes you so sad now.”

Danny turned sharply to face her. “What makes you think I’m sad?”

“You’ve been this way ever since your movie came out. It’s like you played your last baseball game because your knee went out and you’re bummed about not being able to play anymore.”

Ella rolled on before Danny could put together a response. “Everyone knows you’re going to get the Oscar, but you’re acting like it’s the end of the world. You’ll still write movies and TV shows and anything else you want to write. Write a novel or something,” she suggested. “Or can you only write dialogue?”

He had looked pensively past her and at the house next door to his own, trying to make out the faces of neighbors past. “I’m not sure.”

“Anyway,” said Ella, “I just wanted to know where you came from.”

He looked at his daughter, noticing how her hair fell softer and straighter than when she was younger, how her skin showed traces of blemishes, a breakout of acne thwarted by some magical skin care system that most teenagers couldn’t afford, and wouldn’t allow himself to look any further.

“Do you regret having me as a father?” he heard himself ask.

A look of shock overtook Ella’s face. “
 
What?
 
Of course not! Are you nuts?”

“I mean,” Danny backpedaled, “it can’t be easy having a father who’s so public, dating someone who’s larger than life, seeking the spotlight...”

It was the first time he’d admitted that.

“And then there’s the alcoholism thing and the scandal with the accident. I know you’ve gotten grief about that from your classmates.”