Girls on Film (3 page)
She stopped the car, got out, and followed the balloon-lined walkway to the front door. Three more balloons were tied to the handle, and taped to the biggest balloon was an envelope. Anna removed the envelope; in the process the three balloons floated off. She watched them bob into the sky, remembering the last time she’d let helium balloons go free. She’d been six, walking with her parents in New York’s Central Park on a hot summer afternoon. She, her mom, and her dad had all written self-addressed postcards and taped them to balloons, asking the finder to please write on the card where the balloon had landed and drop the card in a mailbox.
There’d been an odd east wind that July day, and the balloons had flown west toward the Hudson River. Two days later they’d gotten a postcard back from an old man in Passaic, New Jersey, who’d found one of the balloons dangling from a maple tree in his backyard. It was one of the more vivid memories Anna had of her family when it had seemed happy and whole.
When the balloons were pinpricks against the California blue, Anna opened the envelope.
ANNA—
I SCREWED UP. PLEASE FORGIVE ME
.
I NEED TO SEE YOU
.
—BEN
Damn him.
Damn him to hell. Why was he doing something sweet and wonderful? And why was she falling for it?
“If I can stop one heart from breaking, I shall not live in vain. …”
The line from an Emily Dickinson poem came to mind as she commanded herself to harden her heart. If Ben Birnbaum thought she could be seduced by a bunch of balloons and a pleading note, he was sorely mistaken. No matter what Anna felt for him, no matter how drawn she was to him, no matter how good he could make her feel, she knew he was bad for her. His gesture was sweet on the outside. But there was no telling what was driving him on the inside.
Anna spotted some pruning shears outside the garage door and used them to release each of Ben’s balloons to the heavens—a place Anna was sure that Ben would never be admitted.
S
amantha Sharpe was drinking tea. And Samantha Sharpe was not happy.
Her movie-star father and his pregnant new wife, Poppy Sharpe (the former Poppy Sinclair, who was now emphatically using her new husband’s surname), were having afternoon tea in the five-hundred-square-foot formal dining room of the Sharpe family twelve-thousand-square-foot Bel Air mansion. Thanks to the New Year’s Eve nuptials, Poppy was now Sam’s stepmother, and the trio were calling said mansion home sweet home.
Logically, Jackson Sharpe and his new bride should still have been on their honeymoon to Sandy Lane in Barbados. But they hadn’t been on the Caribbean island for more than one night when Poppy had awakened in hysterics; she was feeling insecure so far away from Beverly Hills and her obstetrician. Jackson had tried to reason with her; the baby wasn’t due for another eight weeks. But Poppy wasn’t buying what Jackson was selling. What if something in the exotic diet triggered early labor? What if they didn’t have the really good drugs that she absolutely had to have when she went into labor?
So they’d chartered a jet and come back to Los Angeles, which was why Sam was currently bonding with the newest member of her family over cranberry and orange muffins, raspberry scones with clotted cream, and fresh papaya.
Poppy loved afternoon tea. She’d read that afternoon tea was served at Buckingham Palace. Poppy’s grandmother had been British. For Poppy, that was connection enough to the royals—she ordered that afternoon tea become a Sharpe household institution. Sam had experienced a moment of intestinal distress when she’d come home from school to find that her father and Poppy had ditched their honeymoon. But what could she do? Her father beckoned her to join them over the tissue-paper-thin teacups, so she did. The sight of Poppy sitting there with that humungous Harry Winston diamond on the ring finger of her left hand, which was resting on her humungously pregnant belly, was enough to make Sam shovel down the scones. (It turned out that she was the only one who consumed them. At the last moment Poppy decided that they were too rich and stuck to tea and dry sprouted-wheat bread. As for Jackson Sharpe, he was starting a new movie at the end of the month called
Glamour Boys
, about the party scene in the eighties. He was to play an AIDS patient and had to lose fifteen pounds before the start of principal photography. All he had for afernoon tea was tea.)
“The whole family! This is so nice,” Poppy cooed, and blew a kiss across the table to her groom. He blew one back.
Sam swallowed the last of her third scone, beyond appalled. Her stepmother—minus the belly bump—looked like a Laker Girl. Permatan, legs that never ended, bleached blond hair, and boob-o-licious. Plus she was only four years older than Sam. Talk about your horrific Hollywood clichés.
Sam, a budding film director, often thought of her life as a movie, complete with music score. Her plan was to do for this decade what Scorcese had done for the seventies. What would work now? Maybe something old and punk? “I Wanna Be Sedated”? No.
No
Ramones. They were using their music in AT&T commercials now. Dead Kennedys, maybe. “Too Drunk to …” If only her father had taken that song literally. Then Sam wouldn’t be looking at acquiring a half-sister or half-brother in a couple of months.
As Sam chewed, Poppy frowned. “I hope you’re not binging and purging, Sam. Because I had a friend who ruptured something and nearly died from that.”
About fifteen different responses ran through Sam’s mind, but she choked them all down in favor of the neutral. “Thanks for sharing.”
“Sam … watch the tone,” her father said in between sips of tea.
Apparently not neutral enough.
Poppy looked self-righteous, and Sam gave her a withering look, thinking again how this marriage made no sense. As America’s most popular movie star, Jackson Sharpe could have his pick of women. He almost always ended up in a fling with whatever barely-old-enough-to-vote ingénue was in his latest film. When the movie ended, so did the romance. Sam figured her father must be very careful about birth control because if he wasn’t—at the rate he changed girlfriends—he’d have enough off-spring by now to form his own Little League team.
So what had happened with this girl? How had Poppy managed to get pregnant and get Jackson to marry her?
Then Sam had a cheery thought: What if Poppy’s bun in the oven belonged to someone else? Maybe she could figure out a way to get the baby’s DNA tested. If the baby
wasn’t
her father’s, maybe Jackson would dump Poppy’s ass, and she wouldn’t have to lose what little attention her father gave her to some drooling, burping poop machine with Poppy’s perfect jawline.
“So, Sam, how’s everything going?” her father asked.
Well, at least it was an attempt at showing interest.
“Okay.”
“Great, kitten.” He slapped his flat abdomen. “I’m in for a killer workout. Billy Blanks is coming over to whip me into shape.” He checked his Cellini Quartz Rolex and backed away from the table. She tried to think of something that would keep him at the table a little longer.
“I’m making a short film, Dad. For a school assignment.”
“That’s great, babe.”
He already sounded distracted. Not good. “With my friend Anna, from New York. She’s really nice—I want you to meet her.”
“Uh-huh.” He patted the crown of his head to make sure his hair covered the spot that was starting to go bald.
“A sort of Gatsby meets Fellini meets the Beverly Hillbillies thing,” Sam rushed on. “So I’ll need to give a party, probably Saturday night. And film it.”
“Saturday?” Poppy echoed.
“Yes, Poppy,” Sam said slowly. “You know, the day after Friday.”
“I
meant
that our renovations are beginning this weekend. So a party would be out of the question.”
Sam turned to her father. “Renovations?”
“I told Poppy she could do whatever she wants to with the place,” her father said pleasantly. “She doesn’t feel at home here yet, and she wants to outfit one of the upstairs rooms for the baby. The one next to yours, in fact.”
Sam could practically hear the incessant wail of a colicky baby at three o’clock in the morning. “I think we’re fine. I don’t want the house redecorated. Well, maybe a little soundproofing.”
“Hey, sugarbun, you’re off to college next year. You won’t even be living here. But for us, it’s forever.” Her father went around the table and kissed his new wife. “Sam’s sorry, Poppy. We all need a little time to adjust to our new family. So what about you today?”
“I’m meeting with my life coach to work on names for the baby. I’m thinking Chrysalis if it’s a girl. Isn’t that pretty?”
Yeah
, Sam thought.
Except you wouldn’t be able to spell it
.
“Then I’m having lunch with Lateesha Allison,” Poppy went on. “We might do a CD together.”
“Great, sweetheart,” Jackson said distractedly as he checked his hair in the mirror over the buffet table.
“Poppy, Lateesha Allison had a number-one single last year,” Sam pointed out. “Why would she do a duet with you?”
“Your father set it up. I happen to have a trained voice, Sam.”
That was it.
There was only so long that she could sit there and listen to this airhead pretend she had anything going for her
other
than her marriage to an Oscar winner. Sam stood up, said she had homework to do, and headed for the stairs.
She’d just have to pin all her hopes on the DNA test.
“H
i, Anna.”
Anna’s father, Jonathan Percy, stood in the doorway leading to the palatial living room. Tall and rangy, wearing battered jeans and an ancient blue T-shirt, he easily looked ten years younger than he was. It was strange, because Anna had always known her dad to be a Savile Row suit kind of guy, consumed by his work as one of the country’s leading investment analysts—a guy who worked on Christmas because they didn’t celebrate in the Asian markets. But in the three days since she’d come to California, he’d mostly been scruffing around in jeans and tees, smelling more than faintly of marijuana.
“Dad. I didn’t expect you to be home.” Anna swung her leather backpack off her shoulder and set it on the antique rustic French side table. A different Ming vase had already replaced the one she’d accidentally shattered on New Year’s Eve. She’d run into it in the pitch-black foyer and sent it crashing to the marble-tiled floor.
“I worked from home today,” he explained. “How was school?”
Anna shrugged. “Honestly? A waste of time. We got assigned
Gatsby
in lit class. I read it when I was in eighth grade.”
Jonathan nodded. “They’re probably teaching to some standardized test. Look, I know the internship I lined up for you at Randall Prescott’s agency fell through, but I’ve got something else cooking.”
She sighed, not feeling hopeful. “Thanks. I made a bunch of calls yesterday and faxed my resume every-where. Maybe I’ll hear something, too. I guess I’ll go upstairs and do my homework. I’m going out later.”
“Can you come into the kitchen? I want to talk to you about something.”
Her first instinct was to make some excuse as to why this wasn’t a good time for a heart-to-heart. Avoiding confrontation was a knee-jerk reaction instilled by Anna’s mother, who referred to any encounter with an emotional component as “making a scene.” But part of Anna’s motivation for coming to Los Angeles had been to take the opportunity to get to know the father who’d left Anna’s life when she was only seven. The split had been so hostile, he’d been forced to leave his wife with not only the Manhattan duplex but full custody of the children
and
the entire East Coast.
So she followed her dad into the spotless, ultramodern kitchen. There was a stainless-steel center island for cooking, a restaurant-quality double oven against one wall, and a red Swedish table and matching chairs that could have easily fit in the design wing of the Museum of Modern Art. For once, none of the household staff was lurking.
Her father peered inside the refrigerator. “Sparkling water? Soy milk? Juice?”
Anna was surprised. The cook seemed to purchase what she needed on a daily basis, which left the refrigerator empty. “Since when do we have cold beverages?”
“Since I had Gelson’s deliver groceries. What can I get you?”
“Juice is fine. Any kind.” Anna took a seat as her dad poured pear juice into two Baccarat crystal goblets and handed one to Anna
“So, how’s your mom?”
She
was what he wanted to talk about?
“Still in Italy,” Anna said, keeping her voice neutral. “I haven’t spoken to her since the last time you asked me. Yesterday.”
“I thought the two of you kept in really good touch.” He stood near the cooking console, as if reluctant to sit.
Anna shrugged. “I have her phone number. If you’re so interested in how she’s doing, call her.”
“Somehow I doubt that’s a call she’d welcome.” He gulped down the last of his juice.
“Well, from what I’ve heard, you didn’t show much interest in her when the two of you were married, so it might be odd to start after you’ve been divorced for ten years.” Anna knew that sounded harsher than she’d intended. But her father had intimated that he wanted to talk about her. Instead, this was all about him.
“I was a jerk back then.” Finally he took a seat kitty-corner from Anna and stretched his long legs out under the table. “People change, though.”
“Good to know.”
Her father wagged a finger at her but grinned gamely. “I know that tone. That’s the patented Jane Percy frost-on-the-voice.”
“The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, I guess.”
He nodded, turning the goblet between his fingers. “Anna, I really am working on lining up another internship for you. I want you to know that.”
“Thanks. That’s nice of you.”
“But you sound like you’re talking to a stranger.”
“Well, we kind of are strangers,” Anna pointed out.
Her dad scratched his chin. “Touché. So I should know tomorrow if it’s happening. It might be an after-school internship, though. You’ll still have to go to classes. Sorry about that.”