Show Business Kills (8 page)

There was always an instant of needing to do a reality check when she saw the man that he was now. Over six feet tall, with
shoulder-length black hair and huge hazel eyes that danced with his sweet sense of humor.

“Sorry to be late, honey,” she said, hugging him and sitting in the chair he’d pulled out for her.

“Mom, for you fifteen minutes late is early,” he said, grinning at her.

“Happy birthday,” she said. “I’m giving you cash.”

“Thank you. It’s just what I always wanted.” He gestured for the waiter to bring his mother a San Pellegrino, which was what
he was drinking.

Ellen studied his handsome face. A face she knew so well she could tell a story about every funny little scar on it. The one
on his chin that he got when his dirt bike hit a bump and he went flying over the handlebars. The one near his right eyebrow
that happened one day at Little League when instead of catching a baseball in his glove, it hit him in the face. Ellen had
a fast slide show in her head of all the emergency rooms they’d sat in playing “Go Fish.”

Somehow they’d survived a life with no husband for her and a deadbeat father for him, a million different nutty jobs for her,
and assorted homes, rented and owned, depending on her financial status at the moment. Now things were good, now she was where
she’d fought to be. Now she could afford to give Roger the moon, and no Bibberman was going to get that good feeling away
from her.

“So how’s life at the top?” Roger asked.

“Believe me, baby, if I knew how to do something else, I’d do it,” she said, working to keep it light. She’d never trouble
Roger with her fears about her job. “But I’m too old to have babies and too anal retentive to get married, so what’s left?
Limos, lunches, deals. Right? That reminds me,” she said, pulling her electronic organizer out of her purse and pushing a
few buttons, “I have to input the alarm to remind
me to call an agent at nine in the morning about an auction for a screenplay.” While she typed a note into the microcomputer,
adding a note to herself about the exact wording she wanted to use with the agent, she heard Roger say, “Mom, I’m gay.”

She dropped the screen tapping pen and looked at him.

“Oh, honey…”

“I’m lying,” he said, “but I figured I’d get your attention, and now what I have to tell you will be a relief by comparison.
I want to go to USC film school.”

Ellen looked closely at him, hoping she’d misheard.

“There’s no contest. I’d much rather have gay,” she said, taking his hand. “I mean, Rogie, you really do?” she asked, her
brow furrowing as he nodded. “I’m amazed. How can you want to go to film school and be in this business after all you know
about all the awful parts of it.”

“How can I not? I’m a tinsel diaper baby,” he said, grinning. It was a grin that had cost her thousands of dollars in braces.
It was true. His whole life had been spent in show business. He’d gone everywhere with her, sat under directors’ chairs playing
with his Matchbox cars, spent weeks on locations all over the world. At four, he discussed divorce with Cher. At seven, he
“did lunch” with John Travolta. When he was nine, Michael Keaton was directing a short film with a part in it for a young
boy, and he’d asked Ellen if he could “borrow” Roger to star in it.

“Rogie, the business really stinks,” she tried, already knowing it was a lost cause. “It’s mean and ugly and shitty. They
lie, they cheat, they steal, they’re phony and immoral. They’ll screw you six ways till Sunday and then hug you and say, ‘We’re
family.’ ”

“Mom,” he said, squeezing a lime into his mineral water. “I don’t know how to break it to you, but to a lot of people in the
business, you’re the ‘they’ in that story.”

She put the organizer back in her purse and watched the fizzy mineral water as the bubbles rose in her glass. “Besides,” Roger
said, “what else do I know? I grew up in the business. I understand grosses better than geography. Once I was in the library
and I saw a copy of
Sophie’s Choice
and I said, ‘Oh, wow! The novelization.’ All my life I thought when kids played doctor, the doctor was supposed to be a plastic
surgeon.”

Ellen laughed. “Okay, enough with the Hollywood jokes,” she said. “I can see your mind is made up. Just when I thought I was
finished paying tuition. Why couldn’t you have gone into your father’s business instead of mine?” she joked.

“Podiatry?” he laughed, knowing she was kidding. “Somehow it doesn’t send the same excitement through my body.”

Ellen sighed, and her only child put his hand over hers and looked into her eyes. “Hey, Mom, look at it this way. Maybe I’ll
be among the exceptions. The one honest, uncompromising director. The one who cares more about the product than the bottom
line.” It choked her with emotion to hear words she remembered saying herself somewhere a long time ago. But that was before
she moved to Hollywood and her first job was as a gofer on “The Monkees,” and the idealism started slipping away.

“Sure, honey,” she said now, “maybe you will.”

Roger had a late date with a new girlfriend, so Ellen was home by nine-thirty. While she fed the cats, she played back her
answering machine. She had calls from Richard Gere, Mike Ovitz, Meryl Streep, and Marly Bennet. Marly’s call
was reminding her that Girls’ Night was on Friday and that she’d better be there.

The wine she had with dinner was making her a little woozy, and she thought she’d fall asleep immediately, but after she took
off her makeup, flossed and brushed her teeth, and shooed the cats away so she could slide into her bed, she picked up the
stack of scripts from her night table and sorted through them.

One of them was an action-adventure piece that interested her because she saw on the title page that it was written by two
women. Maybe that would mean there would be some heart in it. Maybe if it had emotions along with the explosions and she really
liked it, she could bring in a woman to direct it, too. Wouldn’t those kaboom films benefit by a human touch that made the
characters more accessible, so that the audience actually felt something for the people involved?

Yes, maybe she’d just look this one over. Even though she felt worn out, she kept reading. Good opening, she thought, after
the first four pages. And after a few more pages the story was starting to intrigue her. By the time she was on page forty,
she had grabbed a pen and a pad and was feverishly making notes. Hurriedly writing down what she knew were wonderful ideas
to make this project work. People she could put together. The people who would make it happen. She could even imagine the
kind of musical background it should have.

When she’d finished the script, she put it and her pad of notes on the table next to the bed and turned off the light. Ah,
Bibberman, you son of a bitch, she thought. There’s life in this old girl yet, and I am not going to let you get to me. I’ll
hang in and get some good work done, even if I have to be known as the menopausal mogul. Then she slid into sleep with a smile
on her tired face.

  
6
  

S
he wasn’t even
sure
if her rattletrap clunker of a car would make it all the way to L.A. She couldn’t afford to have it serviced. Couldn’t afford
to do anything. She had one credit card that wasn’t maxed out, so she’d use that to fill the tank and get the oil checked.
Of course once she got down there and one of them gave her a job, things would be different
.

After she decided on the plan, it was so easy she wondered why she hadn’t thought of it before. Well, not easy, it took some
nerve, but hell, she was an actress. She could sound as if she were somebody important. She took a deep breath and dialed
the alumni office in Pittsburgh
.

“
CMU Alumni Office. This is Dee Dee. How may I help you
?”

“
Oh, hi, Dee Dee. This is Rose Schiffman. I was Rose Morris when I was at school there,” she said, and then she took a beat
to hear if Dee Dee would make some remark to let her know she didn’t sound like Rose Schiffman, or if Dee Dee knew Rose Schiffman,
but she didn’t seem to notice that anything was weird. It was a great idea because since Rose Schiffman was a writer, most
people didn’t know what her voice sounded like
.

She said she was part of the West Coast Drama Alumni Clan, and she wanted to do some personal solicitations for the new building
fund, to write a personal letter reminding all of the entertainment-business alums that the drama department had been responsible
for their success and that now it was time for them to “give back “ Boy was that the right thing to say. The very friendly
Dee Dee flipped
.

She said, “Oh, Mrs. Schiffman, I loved the movie you wrote
, Faces.
I cried so much when I watched it. My husband and I just rented the video again the other night, and I cried again as if I’d
never seen it before. I know a personal letter from you to some of the alums would mean so much. I mean there’s such a lot
of money in the entertainment industry, and who better to give it to than us. Right
?”

“
My sentiments exactly,” she said, thinking what idiots people made of themselves over celebs
.

“
Why don’t I fax you a list of the people we’re trying to get involved in the new fund-raising campaign?” the girl asked her
.

“
Great,” she said. “Home phones and addresses, too, Dee Dee. And I’ll get right on the case. But I’m out of town, so if you
don’t mind, I’ll give you a local fax number where you can reach me
.”

“
No problem,” said Dee Dee
.

She gave her the fax number of a drugstore outside of town, and by the time she got there, the pages were waiting for her.
Names and phone numbers and home addresses of the big-time West Coast drama department alums. Yes! That night she sat and
read the fawning cover letter that came from the alumni office to Rose Schiffman. Then she went over
and over the list of names and home addresses, trying to picture the houses that went with those addresses
.

She circled the names of the people who would remember her and who would be nice to her. Trying to decide which of them might
have a job for her. Then next to their names she wrote ideas for what the jobs might be. That way when she went to see them,
she wouldn’t be wasting their time. She could go right in and ask for what she wanted. That night in bed she copied all the
addresses into her own little address book by hand. Put them in their alphabetical locations, as if they’d been in there all
these years. They should have been. She could have stayed in touch. That’s what she’d tell them when she saw them
.

Early in the morning, she packed a few things in her little duffel bag, the only piece of luggage she owned. Then she called
in to her boss and told him, in a voice she knew would be convincing, that she was deathly ill. “You sound awful,” he said.
Hah! She thought, at least all those years of acting training didn’t go totally to waste
,

When she was ready to leave, she checked her purse to be sure she had the little remote control for her answering machine
with her in case she needed to call home for messages from LA. Then she went into the kitchen to turn on the answering machine
she’d had for a million years. When she caught sight of her face in the oven door of her murky little kitchen, she laughed
a pained laugh
.

It was the face of Marterio looking back at her, the character she played in
The House of Bernardo Alba
at Tech. She had coveted the part of the beautiful young Adela, the starring role, but when the casting went up on the call
board,
the part of Adela had gone to Jan O’Malley. And instead she had been cast as Marterio, the dried up, jealous sister
.

Poor Marterio, she thought, looking critically at herself, and poor me. She remembered sitting in the dressing room in 1966,
putting mauve shadows under her eyes and lines across her forehead, drawing more lines from her nose to her mouth. Then pulling
her long orange silky hair back and spraying it with a black-colored spray, except for the temples, which she powered gray.
And when she heard her cue, she’d charged out on that stage and given the best performance the school had ever seen
.