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

Authors: Melissa Francis

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

Diary of a Stage Mother's Daughter: A Memoir (5 page)

BOOK: Diary of a Stage Mother's Daughter: A Memoir
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“There’s nothing for lunch,” I reported.
“Oh, fine. I will go to McDonald’s and bring a Happy Meal to the parking lot at noon. Does that meet with your approval?”
“Yes, but . . .”
“I know! Chicken nuggets. No hamburgers. God.” She rolled her eyes.
“Thanks, Mom!” I kissed her and ran out. From nothing to hand-delivered McDonald’s, that was quite an upgrade.
 
 
Dad sat in the car with the engine idling. For all the fuss to hurry, he now lounged casually in the front seat smoking a cigarette, letting the car warm up. He wore blue jeans and a crisp blue and white button-down shirt under a navy sweater. His thick salt-and-pepper hair had been blown dry smooth and shiny. He was forty-two years old and still had a full head of hair. When I rode on his shoulders, I liked to grab clumps of his mane in my fists to steer him. Then I’d tease him that I could see a bald spot that he didn’t know he had. He’d laugh at the very idea.
His sleek, relaxed demeanor hid a serious mind and a sensibility shaped by his childhood on the rough South Side of Chicago. He loved to say his parents were so poor he had holes in his shoes growing up. The button-down shirts and loafers he wore now were all chosen by Mom. It didn’t matter to him what he wore.
He was an engineer who ran his own business designing and installing screening rooms and commercial theaters. He’d started the company mostly because he bridled when anyone gave him an order.
With his thick hair and his Marlboro Man swagger, he was the type of dad who was noticed by all the ladies. I’d heard one of the moms at drop-off ask, “Who’s that?” while throwing her shoulders back with a big smile. I’d shot back, “That’s my
dad
.”
Our house sat at the highest point on a hill overlooking a golf course in a little suburb of Los Angeles called Porter Ranch. My parents had lived downtown when my sister was born, and they’d crammed her into their small apartment. Before long they realized they needed more space, and perhaps some distance from Mom’s parents and sisters, who lived two blocks away.
All of the homes near them in neighborhoods Mom liked, like Hancock Park, were far out of their newlywed price range. So they’d hunted deeper and deeper into the Valley until they found a four-bedroom house they could afford. Dad loved to tell the story about how, by the time they got all the way out to Porter Ranch, there were only two houses still for sale in our division of tract homes: the pretty little model home at the bottom of the hill that was small but smartly trimmed, and the big expensive one at the very top of the mountain.
The developer wanted forty thousand dollars for the model, but Dad got him to fork over the crown jewel for just four thousand more. It had already more than doubled in value since we’d lived there, and we weren’t selling anytime soon, no matter how many open houses Mom dragged Tiffany and me to on the weekend. The white stucco façade, Spanish tile entry, and brown shingle roof suited Dad and us girls just fine, even if Mom was permanently aspirational.
When my parents had recovered from the down payment, they put in a rolling green front lawn to meet the long black tar driveway, creating arguably the nicest home for blocks around. The house itself sat back on the lot for privacy, and the sweeping backyard offered a one-hundred-and-eighty-degree view of all the unsettled territory to the north and east of our development. The hills just beyond our community rolled on for miles, unspoiled by other homes or any sign of life. We seemed to live on the very edge of Los Angeles, and I imagined that somewhere way off in the distance lay Nevada, or maybe China.
The cliff our house sat on dropped straight down to the twelfth fairway directly below, and Mom lived in fear that the wind would blow one of us off the edge, tumbling hundreds of feet down the hill. But it never happened. Tiffany and I often made plans to scale the brush down the cliff rather than driving or walking all the way around on the road, but it was impossible if you weren’t a mountain goat. Coyotes lived in the undeveloped area to the north and ventured into the brush on our cliff after sunset, eating more than one of our cats for dinner over the years. Anytime a cat didn’t show up for a few days, we’d know he’d turned into a meal.
Dad put the silver-blue Pontiac into reverse and backed down the driveway, then coasted out of the cul-de-sac. It was only a ten-minute drive to school, but at this rate, the trip would take three days. My father never hurried for anybody.
“How long does it take you to get to the office after you drop me off?” I asked. I had been to his workplace before and played with the Xerox machine in the office area where a dozen or so people worked at desks. The office part, where they designed and sold sound and projection equipment, connected to a huge warehouse filled with inventory. The complex seemed very far away from our home. I figured that if he drove the whole way at this pace, he would just get to work every day and have to turn around.
“Oh, it takes like an hour or so for me to get there, really depends on the traffic. It’s all the way in West Hollywood.”
“Where I go for interviews?”
“Yes, basically the same area.” He took a final drag of his cigarette and then flicked the stub out the window. I wondered if anyone’s grass would catch fire. “Are you excited to start work tomorrow?”
I’d been cast in my first role as a series regular, which meant I had my first steady job, according to Mom. I’d done a few Movies of the Week for ABC, and even one real feature film that we saw in a movie theater, but this was really the big time, Mom said. I had a job that could go on and on, like Dad’s. She’d lavished me with toys and praise and love and attention since I’d been cast, so it had to be huge. I had a whole new team of stuffed animals in my room as evidence.
NBC bought eleven episodes of the show and named it “Joe’s World.” The story centered on a midwestern working class family with five kids. The producers cast Christopher Knight, who had played Peter Brady on
The Brady Bunch
, as the oldest brother. I played the youngest kid.
“I gather it’s a sitcom. Like that show with Gary Coleman. What’s it called? Mom says you’re the comic relief. You just walk in the room and deliver punch lines,” Dad said.
He took a left on Rinaldi Street and picked up a little speed as the golf course disappeared behind us.
“You and I are going to be heading to work together instead of school for a while. Did Mom tell you that? I’m going to take you to the lot at Metromedia, and your grandmother is going to stay with you on the set so Mom can take care of Tiffany.”
He laughed to himself. “And I’m betting that arrangement will last about a day.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Because your mom is addicted to showbiz.”
 
 
He was right. Grandma sat on the set for the first few days of table reads, and then, sure enough, she and Mom swapped positions. I was happier with this new arrangement. Grandma loved to talk and talk to everyone on the set, mostly just bragging about Tiffany and me. But she wasn’t as good at helping me as Mom. With her tight gray curls and ample build, she was a big soft pillow to run to during breaks in the action, but she knew very little about the mechanics of working, like when I was supposed to deliver a line.
Herbert, the director, helped quite a bit and smiled and cued me, but I felt better when Mom was there, making sure I was doing my job properly. I hated to mess up a line or hold up the other actors, especially because they were all older and had been working even longer than I had. I didn’t want to be the worst or the least professional in the group, even if I was the baby. I had a standard to uphold.
And when it came to work, so did Mom. When we weren’t working, she made running out of gas or crashing into the occasional fire hydrant seem like typical, unavoidable occurrences. But when we were working, she was careful and precise. We always arrived on set at least thirty minutes before my call time. And I checked in well rested and scrubbed clean, with my hair smelling like soap, my skin soft and sweet with baby powder.
At home, the laundry might pile up for days. The cupboard stood bare for weeks before she broke down and hit the grocery store. But when it came to working, she was a machine. She made sure I knew every line, hit every mark. She’d nag, cajole, mentor, bribe, threaten. Whatever it took. I realized when Grandma stood in that I very much preferred the more intense support Mom provided.
When we arrived home from work, Grandma generally sat yapping at my annoyed father, while Tiffany did her homework at the kitchen table. Tiffany seemed undercut by all the attention Mom lavished on me, but she was still the boss when we were alone.
“Don’t touch,” Tiffany said when I entered her room after dinner in search of the new miniature horses she’d gotten as her consolation prize when Mom decided to switch jobs with Grandma.
I ignored her warning and took the dapple gray with the English saddle.
Tiffany grabbed my wrist and seized the horse, prying it loose from my fingers.
“That’s mine!” she said through gritted teeth.
“That doesn’t mean I can’t play with it,” I said.
“Yes, that’s precisely what it means. You’re in my room and I make the rules here,” she said.
Now that Tiffany was ten and nearly grown up, Mom had let her take down the childish fabric that had covered her walls for years. All that remained now was the stark white paint that had hidden underneath and few pictures of horses she’d put up with Scotch tape.
“You can play with this one,” she offered, handing me a horse she’d had for a while and no longer played with. It was a small bay with a tall white sock and a chipped tail.
“I will name this one Princess,” I said.
“That’s a stupid name for a horse. And you already have a cat named Princess. Don’t be a moron.” She went back to reading a magazine at her desk, but she shifted in her chair so she could keep an eye on me.
I put the horse in a stall in her play barn and went back for the gray.
“Don’t be a pest!” she said as she smacked my hand away from her horse. “I don’t care what they give you on the set. In my room, these are my toys. Now get out!”
“Why are you being such a jerk?” I asked, confused.
Tiffany turned her back on me and said nothing. Then she faced me again. “Why don’t you just take all the horses and get out! They’re for babies anyway.” She put a tape in her tape deck and blasted the music before I could say anything.
 
 
On the set of the new sitcom, I may have been the baby, but I felt like a real professional. We rehearsed for a few weeks to work out the kinks, and then taped the pilot. The network brought in a real audience off the street to sit in metal bleachers and watch us perform the show while three large cameras maneuvered around the studio floor recording the scenes.
We’d do the whole show all the way through twice for two different audiences in one night, and then the producers sliced and diced the two versions together to make the final episode that would air a few weeks later. They called the genre “three camera live” because we performed for a live audience, but the show was actually taped.
The applause and laughter and feedback overwhelmed and thrilled my senses. The warm-up comedian would call out the cast members one by one before the show started to introduce us to the audience. He saved me for last, and the crowd would laugh and cheer when I came out. So small in comparison to the six actors who had preceded me, I was like a tiny dot of punctuation at the end of the list of cast members.
Nerves fluttered through my limbs before he shouted my name, but the crowd yelled and clapped so loud each time I got out there, I looked forward to it after the first try.
I loved being part of a team with a goal to accomplish. We played our parts and put on our show, and soared on a cloud when the final scene ended. Mom wasn’t the only one addicted to showbiz.
We finished the pilot near the end of December, just after my seventh birthday, and the network invited the whole cast to the NBC Christmas party. The celebration took place at a sprawling studio on the Metromedia lot in Hollywood that they’d turned into a winter wonderland. All the stars from all the NBC shows—early ’80s hits like
Diff’rent Strokes
and
The Facts of Life
—promised to show up. The network even sent a limo to our house to get us there and back in style.
BOOK: Diary of a Stage Mother's Daughter: A Memoir
13.08Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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