Diary of a Stage Mother's Daughter: A Memoir (17 page)

Read Diary of a Stage Mother's Daughter: A Memoir Online

Authors: Melissa Francis

Tags: #Biography & Autobiography, #Personal Memoirs, #Entertainment & Performing Arts

BOOK: Diary of a Stage Mother's Daughter: A Memoir
5.81Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
We gasped.
“You’ll never fight over this shirt again!” she said, slicing through the shirt with her shears as we watched in horror. I waited for the fabric of our most beloved shirt to bleed. Then Mom threw down the scissors and just started tearing our treasure to shreds.
“I hate you!” Tiffany screamed.
Mom threw down what remained of the shirt and charged her, grabbing her by the shoulders, shaking her. Then she turned toward the door, dragging Tiffany’s body violently alongside her as if she were a rag doll.
They disappeared through the door and after a frightened beat, I followed them into the hallway where I saw my mom drag Tiffany down the flight of stairs while Tiffany scratched and clawed to get away.
Resistance was hopeless. Mom was stronger than any wrestler when she was fueled by rage.
When they reached the bottom of the stairs, still entangled, Mom grabbed Tiffany’s arm with one hand and reached for the front door with the other hand. Tiffany was still naked from the waist up, except for a bra, and I could see the red marks on her arms and shoulders where Mom’s fingers had been gripping her.
Mom opened the door and flung Tiffany out into the night, slamming the door with so much force, the picture windows that lined the front of the house shook. She bolted the top lock and came stomping back up the stairs, where I was watching the scene, gape-mouthed.
“You can’t leave her out there. She has no shirt on,” I reasoned when Mom reached the top.
“You want to go with her?” she shouted, eyes wide with anger, teeth clenched.
“I’m letting her back in!” I said, sliding past her.
But as I moved past her, she grabbed me by the shoulders and threw me down the stairs, headfirst.
I tumbled forward, the carpet on the stairs burning the skin on my face. I stuck my arm out to brace for the fall, but my legs caught on the banister first, my shins slamming painfully into the wood. But, at least, this slowed my fall.
I slipped the rest of the way to the bottom, just as Dad finally emerged from the den downstairs. I was amazed it took this long for him to come out.
“What’s going on?” he yelled.
He turned his head to the window and saw Tiffany shivering outside, half naked. He turned back to Mom and glared at her.
She was indignant. “You want to deal with them! Fine! Get involved! For once! You deal with them, for once!” she screamed, thundering into her bedroom and slamming the door.
I was still on the ground, assessing my limbs for damage, when Dad went to the front door and unlocked it.
“Get back in here,” he said to Tiffany, who was now bewildered and tearful.
“I don’t know what you two did, and I don’t fucking care. I’m sure it was something. Get upstairs to your rooms! Both of you! Jesus Christ!” he cursed, returning to the den as the mayhem in the house ended, leaving only silent rancor and the hum of the television in the den.
 
 
A few months after NBC canceled
Morningstar
I got a postcard in the mail from the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, saying that the show’s producers had submitted my performance in the final episode for Emmy consideration. I didn’t get a nomination, but I saved the postcard in my room, taping it to the mirror.
At least they reran the show, and more checks arrived in the mail. I rode with Mom to the bank, where she left me in the car and went inside to deposit them. She came back with the printed receipt and I decided to quietly pick up my financial investigation. After all, she’d told me that I was making five grand an episode. That meant she was weakening. Now was the time to strike and get more information.
“So how much is in that account now?” I inquired.
She stopped adjusting her seat belt and let her hands drop to her lap. “Why do you want to know?”
“Because I work hard. I’m excited. I want to know. There’s got to be more than I need for college. Come on. Tell me. I’m fourteen. I can take it.”
“But I don’t want you telling everyone. The reason I’ve never told you is because this is what everyone wants to know. They always ask you, ‘How much money have you made?’ like a bunch of low-class people. It’s so rude and none of their business. And I didn’t tell you so you could honestly say, ‘I don’t know.’ Will you be able to keep your mouth shut?”
“Yep.”
She waited for what seemed like a year. I didn’t budge. Finally, she handed me the slip.
It was over a quarter million, a lot of money, but not what I expected. I’d done a lot of math since she’d told me I was making five thousand an episode for
Morningstar
. I knew you got paid a large percentage of the original fee every time a show re-ran. It was called a residual. And I knew my quote hadn’t been much lower on
Little House
. Even if it was half of what I’d been paid per episode for
Morningstar
, the show had run about fifty million times. Plus I had heard Mom tell my dad that each cycle of a national commercial brought in about ten grand. Those could pay out for years. I’d done dozens. More than fifty. Maybe seventy-five. We’d lost count. I’d been in two movies, which had shot for months at a time. The number I’d come up with was much bigger.
“Is that it?” I finally said.
Her face fell.
“Is that the only account?”
Mom’s shocked expression flushed with anger and her face darkened. Then just as quickly, she looked defeated.
“ ‘Is that it?’ Is that really all you have to say?” She sucked in a mouthful of air and made a noise like a wounded animal.
“I’ve devoted my entire life, selflessly, to taking you to interview after interview, callbacks, and so many times you’ve come up empty. I’ve sat on set after set for hours, bored. To tears! Taught you a million lines. Driven hours in traffic, packed clothes, sacrificed all my time! The things I could have been doing for myself all that time! I could have gone back to college, improved myself like so many moms. Selfish moms. But instead what have I done? I’ve made
you
a star. I’ve made
you
rich. And that’s the thanks I get?”
She started to cry, not even stopping to breathe as she unloaded her frustration on me.
“What an ungrateful, selfish brat you turned out to be! I might expect this from your sister. But not you. Never in a million years did I think you would look at all I’ve done for you and say that!” A man walking by looked in the car, but it didn’t slow Mom down. She just rolled up the window and kept going.
“My mom never lifted a finger for me. It was all about my brother, her beloved Sonny! Or Marilyn, the pretty one. My father wouldn’t send me to college. Just a waste of money, he said, when you’ll go get married and get pregnant. The day I graduated from high school, no thanks to them, by the way, he told me to go out and get a job and start paying him back for raising me.” She sniffled angrily.
“If I’d had half the support from my parents that you get from me, who knows what I’d be today! But I didn’t get an ounce of anything from them, and I’ve poured my life into you and this is the thanks I get!” She pulled the slip out of my hand and crumpled it into a ball.
“My friends have always told me that I shouldn’t do so much for you when I get nothing in return. You get all the fame and fortune and I’m just the hated stage mom. What do I get? Nothing. But I always did it, I was happy to do it because I love you and we’re a team. I never thought you were the type of kid who would turn on me and bite the hand that’s feeding you, that’s made everything possible. My friends warned me, but I didn’t believe them.”
We sat in silence for a while, then she finally put the car in gear and headed home. When we got home, she got out of the car and slammed the door so hard the window should have shattered. Then she went into the house and up into her room and slammed that door so hard I expected the big picture windows at the front of our house to crash in next.
I tiptoed up to my room and lay down on my bed and stared at the ceiling.
I had the distinct feeling my mom was lying.
About what, I had no idea. I felt guilty for being an ingrate, but I couldn’t think of what friends she would have had that conversation with. She didn’t have any friends she confided in. None. Just her sister, Marilyn. But that’s not who she’d quoted. Why would she lie about that if she wasn’t compensating for another stretch of the truth.
Then again, what did I really know about how much money had come in? I could be wrong. I’d been kept in the dark so long, I had so little information. I couldn’t tell.
I looked at the framed picture of Grandpa, her father, that I kept next to my bed. A tiny three-by-five, black-and-white of him in a Yankees uniform. I’d put it in a gold frame and set it next to my bed after he’d died two years earlier.
He’d played on the Yankees’ farm team, or at least had tried out for it, depending on who was telling the story. He was up at bat, smiling but looking serious at the same time. Tall, handsome, and slender, it was the 1930s version of the man I adored.
He was always my favorite grandparent, ready to play catch in our cul-de-sac at any moment, even in his dress shoes, which he always wore. Endlessly patient, he never turned me down for a game of Monopoly. So many times, I’d run down the hallway to build up a head of steam, then fly through the air and crash down onto his stomach as he snored unsuspectingly on our guest room bed. He’d nearly have a heart attack from the shock, but he never got angry. He’d chuckle and fall back to sleep, or rouse himself and play whatever game I wanted.
When he walked in the front door of our house, Tiffany and I would attack him and turn out his pockets, looting him for gum, candy, or spare change. We’d even go visit the little candy store he owned in downtown L.A. and pillage the shelves there, taking a year’s supply of chocolate and candy. And he’d just laugh as Mom tried to rein us in.
This was the man who had demanded payment when Mom graduated from high school? This was the miser who had terrorized their household? I’d heard the story a million times, but it still didn’t ring true.
Mom had said a lot that didn’t add up and tried to cover it all with outrage. I knew something wasn’t right, but I wasn’t going to solve the mystery that day.
CHAPTER TEN
 
W
hen Tiffany walked in the door from school, there was a thick envelope sitting in the middle of the kitchen table. Mom was standing next to the table with her hands on her hips, shifting from foot to foot. She had somehow stopped herself from opening the envelope since the mailman dropped it off hours earlier. I had to give her credit. Normally Mom didn’t hesitate to open our mail. She said we were minors living in her home, so she had every right to monitor our communications.
But this was special. Tiffany had been waiting to hear back from colleges and we all knew what a thick envelope meant, versus a skinny one. This one seemed to hold a whole registration packet and had been sent by one of the most prestigious schools in the state, the University of California, Berkeley.
The college admission process had been a tense time in our house. Tiffany’s SAT scores were very good, but even though I was only in eighth grade, I could see her that track record in the classroom had a few potholes. She’d opted to take the hardest Advanced Placement classes but had settled for mostly B’s along the way, plus many of her after-school activities, like getting into trouble with her friends, weren’t the kind you’d list on a college application. Her transcript read smart with a bit of a lazy streak.
In a fit of crisis management, Mom had hired a college consultant to dress up Tiffany’s applications and improve her odds, and he’d said she’d be a stretch for anything Ivy League, but there was a back door she could use to make sure she got into UC Berkeley. She could apply directly to the College of Forestry and then switch out once she got there. Stanford, everyone’s first choice, remained a long shot. In 1987, Stanford had been the premier school in the state for years.
The consultant turned out to be right on every count. Tiffany got into UCLA, and Penn State, and rejected by Stanford. But now Berkeley seemed to be calling.
“Open it already!” Mom squealed.
Tiffany’s face broke out into a huge smile. She laughed nervously. I wasn’t sure I’d ever seen her this elated. She tore through the envelope and read the first sentence.
“They are pleased to offer me admission!” she laughed. Both Mom and I rushed over to hug her.
“That’s huge!” I said. “You are so smart! Wow! I’m so proud to be your little sister, smarty pants!”
“I’m really proud of you,” Mom said hugging her. “This is a real feather in your cap! What an achievement. Of course UCLA is right here, though. We could still see you all the time,” she added.
“Oh, God!” Tiffany laughed, as if that wasn’t entirely a selling point. Mom got the message and rolled her eyes, letting the comment go by.
Mom, who hadn’t gone to college, wanted Tiffany to go to UCLA and become a sleek blonde sorority sister. Over the past year, Tiffany had turned eighteen and come as close to Mom’s ideal as was humanly possible for her. She’d picked up a seemingly preppy boyfriend, grown her hair long and blonde, and acquired a wardrobe that was mainstream with a little edge. At five feet two, she’d slimmed down to a hundred pounds, and she looked gorgeous. Overall, she was finally well behaved, at least on the surface. The last step in a full transformation would have been to go to UCLA, which was known for its population of perfectly toned, blonde California girls.

Other books

The Search for Joyful by Benedict Freedman
The Star of India by Carole Bugge
Why I Write by George Orwell
You Only Die Twice by Christopher Smith
Grand Theft Safari by Precious McKenzie, Becka Moore
34 Seconds by Stella Samuel
The Grasshopper by TheGrasshopper
Patricia Falvey by The Yellow House (v5)
No Ordinary Noel by Pat G'Orge-Walker