Jenna & Jonah's Fauxmance (6 page)

Right now, though, I’m nobody. Just a guy in Rug Suckers coveralls.

I think I love being nobody.

I get back to the van, open the door, and say, “I’m nobody! Who are you? Are you nobody, too? Then there’s a pair of us—don’t tell! They’d banish us, you know.”

Charlie leans over to her Bluetooth. “Hang on a sec,” she says to her right cheek. “You’re not the manliest guy on earth, but you’re definitely not Emily Dickinson, and you’re not nobody. You’re a tool. No, not you,” she reassures whoever she’s on the phone with. “Fielding. Yeah.” She returns to ignoring me and talks, her phone sitting on the van’s center console.

I think about the prospect of listening to her talk about me for another hour the way she’s doing now.

“Well, no, I don’t
think
he’s gay, but it doesn’t really matter what I think. He’s totally fine with that being the public perception. I know. Naive. No, you know, when you see him up close, he’s not actually that cute. And definitely not careful enough with the personal grooming and hygiene to be gay.”

Fortunately this Rug Suckers van is fully equipped. I grab the hose of the cordless shop vac behind the front seats and suck Charlie’s phone right into an oblivion of dirt and pet hair.

“Hello?” she says. “Can you hear me? You’re breaking up!” She grabs frantically for the phone on the center console, only to see me holding the Rug Sucker, which allows her to do the math.

She yells at me, using a string of expletives we are actually contractually forbidden from saying on Family Network property. I know she’s angry, but I can’t help smiling. America’s sweetheart is calling me names that would make a truck driver blush.

“Well,” I say, “I’m pretty sure what you’ve suggested is physically impossible, but should all the right equipment present itself, I’m not averse to giving it a try. Shall we go, then?”

“Great. So you’ve got a phone, you get contact with the outside world, and I’m like this prisoner in the nineteenth century. Since you talk like you live there anyway, that’s probably not a big hardship for you, but it is for me. Really fair.”

“Here,” I say, handing her the Rug Sucker. I place my phone on the center console. “Fair and square.”

Charlie gleefully sucks my phone into the shop vac, then turns it off and faces forward. “Somehow I thought that would be more satisfying,” she says.

“Whoa, if I had a quarter for every time I’ve heard
that
… ,” I say, and I see a smile trying to escape through her gritted teeth.

We spend the next forty-five minutes in complete, wonderful silence.

7
“LONG AND WINDING ROAD” REMIX

Charlie

Five thousand four hundred. That’s how many seconds are in one and a half hours. I know because I’ve been doing mental math since we left the Family Network lot and got on the PCH to avoid any would-be followers from LA who would probably take the 101 up the coast to try and find us. But no one will find us because Fielding’s real estate investment is tucked into the middle of nowhere. It’s probably the longest we’ve ever been together and said nothing. Usually we have lines to run, dialogue to test out, or songs to learn. Or photo ops to figure out. But with none of that laid out for us, there’s apparently nothing to say.

“I thought you said it was a house,” I say to Fielding, who mouths the words to a song on the radio. He’s perfected the lip sync after we both endured hours of brutal practice on set. And like it or not, his lips are pretty perfect, too. I try to avoid looking at them.

Fielding puts the van in park and shrugs, looking out the window. “Guess I was wrong.”

We have no bags, no luggage handlers, no bellboy grinning ear to ear, no public fawning over us. “This is really weird, huh?” I take a few steps on the stone driveway and survey the area.

“Well, it’s not exactly an ode to modernism,” Fielding says as he looks to the left at the Tuscan-style farmhouse, “but it’ll do.”

It’s one of his typically understated responses. We tentatively explore the grounds. Rather than a beach hut, Fielding is the proud owner of an old fruit plantation. Rows of trees, a canopy of vines between stone walls, all with dramatic ocean views of the Pacific smashing onto the boulders and cliffs below. Fielding takes it all in and I watch him without the ever-present spotlight: how funny he looks in his carpet-cleaning gear. He asks, “How bizarre is it that I own this place and have never seen it?”

“There’s a lot that’s fundamentally odd about this,” I say, but I don’t elaborate because I’m scared Fielding will think I’m superficial for worrying about our jobs, for focusing on what we’ve left behind, on what happens next. Or make fun of me for feeling slightly naked, a tortoise without its shell, naked for all the world to see. Not literally, of course—that’s another prohibited activity per my contract—but exposed without the padding of personal assistants or crew or staff on hand to fulfill my every wish. I realize I don’t even know when the last time I bought myself a soda was, or even water. Even Fielding bought my bottle of Purest today. How pathetic is it that I don’t even know what it costs? And how nice is it that he knows me well enough to give me what I need?

As if reading my mind—which is possible given that we’ve worked fifteen-hour days, traveled to more than twenty countries, and basically spent every waking hour together for the past three-plus years—Fielding says, “Here’s the thing: we can have tunnel vision, zooming in on all the issues at hand, which are sort of out of our control right now …”

“You sound like your agent talking,” I tell him.

“Whatever. The point is, we don’t really have control over stuff, so we can either worry about everything and freak out …”

“Or?” I ask, going down a few steps from the circular driveway and finding that the stairs lead to a sprawling orchard filled with fruit trees, the scent of citrus ripe and warm in the late afternoon sun.

Fielding bounds down the steps two or three at a time and leans in to smell one of the lemons on a tree. He tests the avocados, chucking one at me. “Or we can enjoy the fact that for once almost no one knows where we are, no one can lay claim to our time. It’s like the ultimate vacation. And we’ve earned it.”

In the fading sunlight, the rippling rays weaving through his hair, in the breathtaking beauty of this place, I feel my shoulders sag. What a relief. No interviews. No chasing. No expectations. Just us. I unzip my polyester-blend nightmare of an outfit, revealing the T-shirt and jeans I had on prior to covert operations. Maybe this won’t be so bad.

“Even though we’re stuck here with each other,” Fielding adds. My stomach tightens.

“Leave it to you to ruin a perfectly fine moment.” I storm off, inspecting the fruit as I go, holding on to the avocado as though it’s someone’s hand. Security in a vegetable. Or is it a fruit? Probably Fielding would know this since his dumbness was just a front. Probably he would know the complete history of the avocado and what its Latin name is and he’d make fun of me because I don’t know any of that. I was too busy studying my expressions in the mirror growing up to learn Latin. Too busy ditching my money-sucking parents to memorize anything but lines and legal jargon.

The orchard is long, with row after row of untended trees, overgrown grass, and a bunch of fallen fruit littering the ground. I walk, letting my palms graze the tops of the grass stalks, still holding the avocado, until I leave many of the trees behind and stumble, nearly literally—I’m not the most graceful, despite hours logged in dance lessons—upon a sort of chapel. Surrounded by huge stones, the small outbuilding is made of smooth gray and white stone bricks; its roof, once tiled in red terra-cotta, is only half there. As the sun sinks lower over the distant water, I hoist myself up on the wall and sing softly.

Singing used to be an escape for me. In the shower, in the car, as I was falling asleep. But once it became a job, like acting, I never enjoyed it as much. There’s a constant inner critic worrying if I’m flat or pitchy or singing the wrong lyrics. But with only the fruit and rocks as my witness, I let the words out, singing the Beatles’ song “The Long and Winding Road,” and wonder where it will lead me next. I’m almost at the bridge, about to sing about being alone, when I realize I’m not.

“You know the actual long and winding road is in Scotland?” Fielding shouts, perched in one of the trees a few feet away.

I stay put on the wall, shouting back, “In fact, I did know that. It’s the B842, if you’re wondering, a road near Paul McCartney’s farm.”

Fielding hops down from the tree carrying something in his hands, and meets me halfway, stopping before he’s actually at the wall. “So we both like the Beatles. Who’d have thought?”

I fight the urge to say that ninety-eight percent of human beings probably like that band, because maybe Fielding is trying to be kind. Or maybe he’s just bored. “So what do we do now, O Guru of Knowledge?”

Fielding chucks the object in his hand at me. “Make lemonade?”

I manage to catch the thing and laugh. “This isn’t a lemon, you dolt.” I walk toward him, leaving the crumbling chapel behind. Fielding grins.

“I know that. It’s an, um—an artichoke. Or something.” He blushes. He hates being incorrect and often produces fake statistics to prove a point.

“Oh, so we don’t know everything about everything now, do we?” I say and smell the fruit. “This not-lemon-not-artichoke is, in fact, a cherimoya.” I wait to see if he’ll contradict me. “Inside it’s white. It’s delicious.” We stand there facing each other, with no script, and silence pulses through us. The breeze picks up, and right when I think Fielding will kill the moment with information about agriculture or make some comment about my tan rubbing off (which it is since I missed my spray appointment this afternoon), he points to the avocado and cherimoya.

“I’m incredibly hungry.”

The ocean glimmers in front of us, and the house we’ve yet to explore beckons us inside. “Me, too! We sort of forgot to eat today.”

“Maybe we can rustle up some sort of late afternoon grub?” He gets an idea and sprints away, leaving me with the fruit.

I pick a couple of oranges and a lime, and follow him to the back of the house. Underneath a trellis of vines, Fielding finds a garden that bulges with produce, even though much of it is rotten or forgotten. Staked tomato plants climb skyward; overgrown patches of herbs and a multitude of flowers all mingle together.

“Check it out—a forgotten garden,” Fielding says, still in his carpet-cleaning costume. He kneels down, picking through weeds to unearth a zucchini. “I’m thinking we might just have the makings for a salad.” He gathers some vegetables into his arms and we walk together back toward the van, which looks ridiculous and clashes horribly with the serene surroundings.

Again, we’re not used to the lack of dialogue, and it takes me a bit to get the feel for talking freely. “The cherimoya is also known as the custard apple. It kind of has a sherbet texture.”

Fielding nods as he pulls the key from his pocket and unlocks the arched wooden front door. “How come you know so much about fruit?”

I walk inside, my skin immediately chilled by the dark of the house. The walls are thick and the warm outside air hasn’t filtered in. The entryway is like a tunnel, and we follow it into an enormous main room. “My grandma cooked a ton,” I explain. “When I first started this whole thing—doing the commercials for Twinkle Toes …” I walk through the great room, admiring the wide wooden beams on the high ceilings, the enormous fireplace with its marble mantel.

“Twinkle Toes, for your own little princess!” Fielding quotes. “I totally remember those ads. They were on every two seconds.” He shakes his head. “It’s funny to think that you were that kid—the one who had to walk on tiptoes and smile in that oversized crown. My sister used to want to be you.”

From the recesses of my memory, I pull the theme music and hum it. “You know, those shoes sucked. They pinched my toes. I have an actual scar from them. Seriously.”

At the other end of the great room is another arched doorway. “Come here,” Fielding commands, and I hear the plunk of the vegetables being dropped onto a wood table. I walk in and rescue the biggest tomato before Fielding brings it to an untimely death by dropping. “Welcome to my kitchen—to both of us, I guess.”

“This is great! It’s sort of half antique, half modern.” I run around, searching the open shelves for bowls, a pan—any items previous tenants left behind that we can scrounge up for our impromptu feast. I love old houses, places with histories that really mean something, tell stories, rather than just simple cardboard backdrops of Paris or Ye Olde Candy Shoppe. It’s not very Hollywood of me, but I like a little dirt around the edges, some character.

“Oh, the cutting boards! They’re original. Look how old they are, all those marks …” I can’t contain my excitement at a real kitchen, one that could produce actual food rather than just being for show. When they feature food on
Jenna & Jonah
, either it’s made out of carefully sculpted clay that’s hand-painted but still wouldn’t fool a toddler or else they have real food, like a cheeseburger, but it’s cold and painted, too, so the bright colors show up better on camera and any steam that wafts from a fakely freshly baked cookie is really smoke from a little blower machine. Seeing it all up close pretty much ruins television ads for restaurants, because you see the bullshit that is the industry—all that visual pull for something you can’t even sink your teeth into.

“See,” I say to Fielding, “Grandma Ruth always had flowers everywhere, and food—too much to eat in one sitting. So we’d sort of make all this stuff together—homemade jams, and breads …” As I talk, Fielding washes the vegetables and I begin to slice open the avocado. “Even guacamole. Can you get the oven going?”

“Sure,” he says. His eyebrows are raised as I remove the avocado’s stone with one solid clunk of a knife.

“What?” I put the thing down, wiping my face with my hands, checking my hair for bird droppings or something. “Do I have something on me?”

Fielding shakes his head and hands me a cookie sheet. “No … it’s just … I’ve never really seen you …” He pauses, and I wonder if this is it. He hasn’t really seen me. And maybe I haven’t really seen him. “I’ve never seen you cook before.” I wait for him to say more, but he doesn’t.

“Well, you’ve also never eaten anything I’ve made before, so watch out!” I threaten with the zucchini in hand.

He wields a summer squash and we have a vegetable duel until the zucchini breaks and we go back to cooking.

“The oven-roasted tomatoes will be perfect later,” I say as I slide the tray in the oven.

“Like how much later?” He clutches his stomach.