Page 28 of Under the Stars
“Honey, can you come here for a second?” says Mallory.
The man swings the baby to one arm. “I see you’ve got my wife on her hands and knees.”
“Oh, for God’s sake, play nice, okay?” says Mallory, without looking up. “And say hello to Audrey. She’s a friend of Sedge.”
Mallory’s husband turns to me, shifts the baby to his left arm, and holds out his hand. Sunbeams shoot from his eyes. “My condolences, Audrey. Monk Adams.”
—
The first time I realized my mother was famous, we were at Disneyland with Steve.
This was Steve’s idea. He was into the whole stepdad role, wanted to do all the things.
First he took me to the place where they do you up with costume and hair and makeup like one of the princesses.
I think I chose Belle. Then we hit the rides.
It was a typical Southern California day in October, bone-dry and warm, not as crowded as the middle of July but still bustling, because it was Disneyland.
We had these VIP passes that allow you to board from a discreet line all your own, although I didn’t realize this in the moment—I was just having the time of my life with Steve while Meredith trailed behind us, wearing this puzzled frown beneath her sunglasses and baseball cap. Meredith did not get Disneyland at all.
When we reached Pirates of the Caribbean, though, and entered the blissfully cool darkness of the ride entrance, sailor music playing away tinnily from the loudspeakers, Meredith took off her sunglasses.
(This was about six months after her spectacular turn in Tiny Little Thing, followed by that thriller where she finds out her husband is a KGB defector in the witness protection program, followed by that Late Show interview you’ve almost certainly seen shared on the internet somewhere, when the host asks her some bullshit sexist question about the nude scene and she challenges him to a lightning round of strip Truth or Dare.) The pirate helping us into the boat did a double take and broke character with a heartfelt Holy shit, Meredith Fisher ?
Everyone in the line swiveled to look. Somebody gasped.
Then this clamor of recognition rose in a noise-cloud that filled the cavern and suffocated the pirate music.
This was before the days of camera phones, obviously, but because it was Disneyland people had their little cardboard disposable cameras, their point-and-shoots, their Canon Rebels all hanging from their necks or tucked away in their Mickey Mouse backpacks, and within fifteen seconds the flashes are going off, the people are pressing forward, the cast members are trying to calm everyone down, and all I remember is this feeling of terror, this violation.
Meredith was my mother. She belonged to me .
Steve took me aside and said, Just let her do her thing, honey; we’ll get on the ride in a second.
I stood safe inside the shelter of Steve’s arm and watched for ten minutes while Meredith did her thing—beamed her smile and scrawled her signature on those postcard-sized autograph books that people carry around for the Disney characters to sign—and it came to me like a revelation that she had done this before.
While I was home reading books and watching TV with the babysitter, she was out there in the wide world, soaking up its thirst for her.
By the time she handed back a last book and said, That’s enough, thank you everybody, and we boarded the ride at last, in a boat we had all to ourselves, I was shaking. My earth hadn’t just shifted on its axis; it had become another globe altogether.
It had become Meredith’s world, and I was just her supporting character.
—
On the plus side, I got so used to meeting famous people—eating and drinking and generally hanging out with famous people who turned out to be awkward, or weird, or narcissistic douchebags, or sometimes just normal—that I could meet the dazzlingly handsome gaze of the multiple-Grammy-winning singer-composer of “The Day She Came Home” without losing my shit.
“Monk Adams. Yes. Yes, you are.” I clasp his hand and glare at Sedge. “You might have warned me.”
“Nah, I figured I’d enjoy watching your reaction.”
I turn back to Monk Adams. “Big fan. I didn’t realize you lived here on Winthrop.”
“Summered here all my life. Now that our son’s started boarding school—his idea, not ours, I hasten to add—we’ve started spending—”
“ Monk, ” says his wife, looking up from the floor.
He lifts his forefinger. “Hold that thought.”
He circles around the canvas to stand next to Mallory and reach into his chest pocket for the pair of readers that sticks from the top. His hand freezes halfway down. “Whoa,” he says. “Who’s that ?”
“Mike’s great-great-grandmother, we think,” says Sedge.
“Or three greats,” I add. “He’s not sure.”
“Mike who? Mike Kennedy ? From the Mo ? His grandmother ?”
“Great-great-great. We think.”
“Wow,” says Monk. “That’s, um, some nice use of shadow there on the leaves to the right of her chest.”
Mallory looks up. “Do you think you could pull your eyes back in your head for one second and give me a hand down here?”
Monk turns to Sedge and holds out the baby. She passes like a football from one man to the other and Monk climbs down on his stomach next to his wife. Mallory hands him the magnifying glass. He fixes his right eye behind the glass and squints the left.
Mallory points to something near the bottom of the painting. “Look at that for me and tell me what you see.”
“A toe?”
“No, along the edge of the foot.”
“Huh. Some letters, I think? H … L …is that maybe an I ?” He looks at Mallory and kisses the tip of her nose. “Is this an eye test or something?”
She takes back the magnifying glass and peers back over the letters. Her ears are pink. “That’s what I see. HLI. ”
“So what does it mean?” I ask.
Mallory lays the magnifying glass on the edge of the canvas and sits up on her knees. An expression of wonder illuminates her face, like some people manifest before a religious vision.
“It means you might just have found a long-lost Irving at the bottom of Mike’s cellar.”