Secrets of a Soap Opera Diva (25 page)

My pulse surged.

“Gretchen, may I see that magazine before you cut any more?” I choked out.

“Don’t you have enough magazines down there?”

In a staccato voice, I said, “It’s just . . . there’s something . . . on the front . . . I need . . . to read.”

Pursing her lips, she said, “Okay, I guess,” tossing it down the table. “But make it snappy. I want to finish my collage in time. There’s a picture of Shelly Montenegro in there from
The Daring and the Damned
screaming that perfectly captures my inner suffering. I just love her.”

Trying to quell my shaking hands, I flipped through the magazine until I found the article. It was short but deadly.

Execs at
The Rich and the Ruthless
confirmed today that Ruby Stargazer will be finding her way to shore soon, and none other than film star Vivica A. Fox has been hired to replace popular bubbler Calysta Jeffries. Co-Executive Producer Randall Roberts said, “Vivica has signed a six-week contract to come on as Ruby Stargazer to tie up some loose story ends. The WBC and
The Rich and the Ruthless
are thrilled with the casting. I know she’ll make a wonderful addition to our #1 daytime show.”
R&R
cast members were all smiles, as well. “I just adore Vivica,” says Emmy Abernathy. “She’s the best! A real pro.” Jade, who plays Ruby’s daughter, had this to say, “Like wow, we totally resemble!” It’s unclear how Calysta Jeffries’s many fans will react to this potential upset, but Ms. Fox assured us, “I love Calysta, we go way back. I know she won’t mind if I take a stab at the role.”

In disbelief, I read it three times. There was a picture beside it of Vivica, Ethan Walker clutching her, planting a kiss on her cheek.

My heart pumped.
Take a stab at the role? A real pro? A wonderful addition to the team?
How could they do this to me? I could forgive Vivica, since roles for black actresses were slim to none in Hollywood. But now I knew exactly what Dell Williams had meant when she said, “Honey, the suction sound you hear walking back to your dressing room will be nothin’ but you pullin’ those knives out your back.”

The last straw was when I read on further that
R&R
was building Viv a new set.

“A
new
Ruby Stargazer set?” I screamed out loud, rising to my feet. “I stood in that dinky excuse of a living room and kitchenette for fifteen years, acting my ass off making it look like the Hearst
friggin’
Castle, chowin’ down on plastic artichokes like they were gourmet Rachael Ray, and this is the thanks I get?”

I ripped the pages out of the magazine, tearing them to shreds before collapsing in my chair, hysterical.

“My
Digest
!” Gretchen hiccuped.

“Heavens, Calysta, calm down. What’s all this about?” Erroll exclaimed, coming around the table to pat my hand.

“I know what’s wrong,” Toby said with a knowing look, wrapping his scrawny arm around my hot shoulders.

It was a few moments before I could get any words out and when I did they were, “
R&R.
Replacing? Ruby. Viv?” Toby was the only one who understood my cryptic gibbering, giving me a reassuring squeeze.

“Aw, Calysta, forget the soaps! You’re bigger than them. Look at me, when I bounce outta here I have multiple offers to consider.”

I sobbed louder.

By now everyone was standing around me offering words of comfort, except for Dolly, who sat snipping away at a picture of a rival starlet, hundreds of cuttings lying in front of her, clearly high on something.

“Okay, everyone,” Zima’s voice called out as she hung up her phone,
“I need you all to calm down and take your seats, I’ll take care of Calysta.” She clapped her hands, causing her bangles to chime, shooing everyone away.

Holding me firmly by the arm, she steered me into her office, shutting the door behind us.

I knew I needed to get a grip but a dam had broken. I was exorcising my pain, all right.

“Breathe, Calysta,” Zima instructed. “Breathe in. Breathe out. Did someone say something to upset you?”

Still hyperventilating, I said, “Nooo. Hhhh . . . I’vvve . . . been . . . reeecaaast!”

“Excuse me?” Zima clearly didn’t know who I was. In fact, she didn’t know who any of us were. She only listened to NPR and watched heady programming like Link and Ovation.

“On my soap! Those bastards are recasting me!”

“Okay, Calysta, let’s calm down. I think I understand what’s causing your reaction, but whatever you did on TV doesn’t really matter in the here and the now. We are in search of the truth. The present. The real.”

“But I’m Ruby Stargazer! I created that character! Everything I do matters!”

Zima gave me a stern BML (black mamma look), the kind that reminded me of Grandma Jones. “If you don’t calm down I’m going to send you back to your room.”

Swallowing hard, embarrassed by my diva behavior, I said, “You know what? I think that’d be best.”

“Fine then. But you’ll have to make up your collage session. And I’ll be reporting this to Kelly.”

“Oh come on, Zima, between us sistahs can’t you let this one slide?”

“‘Us sistahs’? ‘Let this one slide’? This ain’t about you. Do you think just ’cause I’m black I’d risk
my
sobriety?
My
integrity?
My
spiritual foundation? My
job
, to cover for your ass? You have gone and lost your mind, girl. ’Cause the last time I did that I paid dearly for it.”

I looked into Zima’s midnight eyes and couldn’t believe she’d gone from a Topanga Canyon hippie to a Chicago South Side gangsta in ten seconds flat.

“That’s right, wasn’t always a self-taught painter and collage therapist. See, I helped out one of my
sistahs
from the hood back in the day and I was the
dummy
who ended up holdin’ the bag, literally. That’s right, she talked me into robbing a dang bank to pay for our crack habit. Next thing I knew I was in a shared prison cell at Women’s Reentry Center in cold-ass Maine lookin’ out at freedom. And my
sistah-girlfriend
nevah came to visit me while I was doin’ time either, not once. I don’t break rules no more, you dig? I enforce ’em,” she asserted, rockin’ her head from side to side, dangly cowrie shell earrings brushing the sides of her neck. Zima continued, pursing her lips, “It’s all about the KISS.”

“Huh?”

“Keep It Simple, Stupid.”

Put in check, I dragged my sorry butt back to the TT big house numb, digesting Zima’s sobering message. You just never knew what someone else’s bottom was or what they’d been luggin’ around. Really didn’t care for the journaling jazz all that much, but this was something I couldn’t wait to write about.

Kelly Lava kept that from happening. Holding up a halting hand, she barked, “Calysta. I’ve just been notified about your disruptive episode in collage therapy. You’ll have to do a double session with Zima next week and I think it would be best if you shared at tonight’s off-site AA meeting. You clearly need to.”

“Okay,” I said dully.

“Also, I checked beds this morning and yours wasn’t made up properly.”

“Huh? I made my bed before breakfast.”

“Military corners, Calysta. I took the bed apart so you can do it right. And remember, you need to be in the van no later than five o’clock sharp for the meeting. You’ll want a good seat up front. As for our alum
meeting tomorrow, be primped and prompt. TT always has a powerful speaker and I hope you get something out of it. I’ve been sober for eleven years and I still learn something new,” she said with an air of superiority, resting her thumbs behind her oversize turquoise triangle belt buckle. Walking several steps away before stopping, she pivoted around, saying, “I forgot to give this to you the other day.”

“Thanks.” I took the already-opened envelope from her icy hand, heading to my room.

Hey, Calysta,

Hope you’re hanging in there, sweetie. Just wanted to let you know that I’m picking up your Grandma Jones this Saturday at the Hollywood Greyhound station. She’s staying with me so don’t worry for a sec. We’ll be there on Sunday, bright and early, promise. Chin up. Fern secretly told me there’s bags of fan mail for you in the WBC mailroom. I’ll bring some when I visit. See you soon.

xoxo,

Shannen

While my friend’s note was comforting, I missed Ivy so much it hurt. And the thought of Grandma Jones seeing me in rehab was more than I could bear. All I could think about was how disappointed she must be in me. Unable to stem my tears, I let them flow.

A
uggie, the vote is
next week
and you keep canceling meetings with Mom and me! I can’t
believe
you didn’t fly out to Baltimore to visit Dad,” Veronica fumed. “We’re back home now so there’s no excuse. And don’t tell me you were too busy working, either. I checked the Burbank flight records, there’s no business in Scottsdale.”

“Okay, Nancy Drew, you caught me, now would you stop being such a nudge?” Auggie agitatedly paced. “I don’t need to go to any meetings ’cause there’s nothing to discuss. It’s the twenty-first century, Dad’s in the Stone Age, and selling is for the best.”

“Best for whom?” Veronica tersely asked.

“Ronnie, don’t be shortsighted. We gotta strike while the iron’s hot. The WBC has an offer worth millions on the table for both shows; we’d be fools to pass it up. Plus, as an added incentive they’ll cut us in on a
percentage of foreign, which is more than they do for those idiot actors. The only one who was getting wise to it was Wolfe but we paid him off. Mom’s putty in my hands. I can get her to change her mind. And as much as Dad’s disappointed in me for flunking out of Duke, you don’t need a college degree to figure this one out. Besides, who needs college when you’re rich? Jobs are for losers. This is a dying industry, I say we jump ship before it sinks and untangle ourselves from those whiners. Let’s face it, most of ’em should be working for Andy Gump or Homeland Security. Only one I ever cared for was that sexy Shannen Lassiter, now, she’s good. The rest of those bums, if it weren’t for Dad, couldn’t get arrested in this town. Besides, I want to get into nightclub promotion or Formula One racing.”

“Over my dead body will you sell Dad’s legacy. I’ll fight you
tooth and nail
now that my suspicions have been confirmed.”

“Give me a break. You expect me to believe my baby sister, the one who cried if she broke a nail,
really
cares about the family business? Last I checked you and Mom were on your way to Milan for fashion week.” He sneered. “You have no idea what it takes to run this operation. That’s why Dad’s got one foot in the grave right now. We’ve lived a whole different life, sis. We didn’t inherit Mom’s wealth and Dad’s empire to be slaves to it. Dad wants us to live the privileged life we were born into. I have no intention of sitting up in his office taking meetings with that shmuck Randall, that lesbo Edith, and that hack Felicia. Dad knew how to work hard, growing up poor, but that’s not our cross to bear. I’m rich and I’m ruthless—”

“You’re disgusting is what you are. And I’m leaving. Consider yourself notified, the vote is next Wednesday; be there. We’ll see how cocky you are once Calysta has her say.”

“Must be that time of the mon—Calysta?”

“You heard me. Dad made her his proxy while he was in the hospital; she has the deciding vote. And I doubt she’s your biggest fan.”

“You’re really reaching, Ronnie, if you expect me to believe that bull. I may have had my differences with Mom and Dad over the years, maybe they had to bail me out of jail once or twice for those DUIs, and I’m sure you want to throw those meaningless flings with Emmy and Jade in my face, and that one pregnancy, but let me remind you I’m Augustus Barringer the Third, heir apparent. Dad definitely would have discussed this proxy stuff with me first.”

“Oh noble and powerful big brother, how wrong you are.” She swept her Prada purse off the mahogany desk and faced him. “But hey, if you think I’m bluffing come see for yourself next week. What? Not going to open the door for your sister? Don’t tell me you’re letting our differences kill good breeding, even if you don’t use it very often.”

Auggie opened the door in thorny silence.

Veronica strode out of their father’s corner office, leaving her brother tilted. He immediately picked up the phone.

“Hello?”

“It’s Auggie. We need a face-to-face. Might have a
little problem
.”

Edith forced herself to say through gritted teeth, “Sure, whatever you need, Auggie, but what’s this
little problem
about?”

“Just be at Burbank airport at eleven.”

“That doesn’t give me much time. I have to—”

The phone went dead.

Three hours later, on his second hole of golf, Auggie’s femme “caddies” Ginger and Sparkle attended to his every need as Edith, never having golfed in her life, stiffly walked across the green in her perfect ecru Nancy Lopez golf outfit, on a mission.

“Could’ve saved yourself a lot of trouble and used a golf cart,” Auggie joked, his Ray-Bans dangling by an arm out of the corner of his mouth.

“Love walking, don’t do enough of it in L.A.” She was still smarting from the way Auggie dismissed her the moment she boarded the Barringer jet.

The horny heir apparent had disappeared into a back bedroom with his playmates for a private “golf lesson,” never emerging until they landed. Feeling hijacked, furious that she was at the mercy of a moronic party boy until the soaps were hers, Edith had endured the high-pitched giggles and outrageous banter as she tried to focus on reading about the ripple effect the financial tsunami was having on daytime in the business section of the
Los Angeles Times.

“Is this the nine iron?” Ginger asked now.

“No,” Auggie corrected, “it’s the driver, the wood.”

“Wow. The
head
on this one is so big,” Sparkle marveled.

“Yeah, the face is the area where you make contact with the ball,” Auggie lectured. “And don’t forget to check out the size of a club to hit that ideal sweet spot right in the middle.”