We learned he was the director Sunday when The Post-Dispatch printed it as a cover story, complete with feature photo of Ethan and me working on our applications as he leaned over us. Brucknerfield’s football/baseball hero and Miss Pseudo Vogue Fancypants had been hand-picked by the director himself. Overnight we became local celebrities. I wondered if Liam had seen it and done a double take.
Celebrities or not, reality returned. I’d spent every Beehive dime on my full-skirted gown, and neither Ethan nor I had money for the pre-prom dinner. Instead, he escorted me in rented tuxedo to Burger King, ridiculous but hilarious. I looked like a teenaged Cinderella-Barbie-bride gliding around the dance floor in my white poofy ensemble with Prince Charming. My plan to bolt for Los Angeles grew dimmer with every slow dance.
The call back from the casting company came a few days later. This time Ethan and I drove the thirty-five miles to Manchester for fittings. Racks and racks of vintage 1950s clothing lined a giant trailer parked behind the empty high school. The team dressed us in outfits appropriate to our assigned scenes, took a series of Polaroids, attached a profile to the paper work, and sent us home. We’d be called with final instructions and paid the promised $3.45 an hour. True Hollywood.
Since the day we’d moved in, serious chores mounted at home. Eighteen acres required attention. Sparks flew between my parents and grandparents. Doors slammed; phones rang; tension hummed. “And I should’ve known the best you’d do is some dumb ass movie extra,” my mother told me.
BHS, class of 1983 May graduation came and went. June arrived with no Hollywood news, but Mrs Birnbaum increased my shop girl hours and responsibilities. Ethan landed a maintenance job with the Brucknerfield Recreation Department while he kept up his baseball training. During a pizza date, as we discussed the mundane and Ethan talked about the intensity of ball practice required to make the pros, I picked off a slice of pepperoni. “It’d be a lot less boring around here if the movie deal had worked out.”
“It did,” he said. “That casting guy called the house yesterday. They want me in the drive-in scene.”
“No way!”
He shrugged. “I have to get time off from work, find a way to the location—total pain in the butt. They’re keeping their word about the money or I’d blow it off.”
“What the hell! You don’t give a rat’s ass and I’m the one who wanted it so bad.” I was still muttering as we left the pub, and more vocal when I got home and complained to my mother.
She scoffed. “You’re aware our phone was disconnected two days ago, right?”
“You mean even if they tried, they couldn’t reach me?”
“I told all of you.”
“You never did!”
“Well, you can take the blame, Emma. I’ve warned you before. You run up long distance bills calling all those friends in St. Louis. This month it was either groceries or phone bill. Groceries won.”
“You’re the one who wanted this so bad. You thought I was good enough for a speaking part.”
“I’m sorry.” She pinched her nose closed. “The number you are dialling has been temporally disconnected.”
“It’s not funny! You were hell bent to make money off the deal. You’ve ruined it! Just like you fucking ruin everything else.” She slapped me.
The confrontation went from bad to worse. It always went from bad to worse. Fury with my mother morphed into obsession over Ethan. His ten minutes of fame prompted a fan club. I was smart enough to recognise I was rubbing salt into my wounds, but my insecurity won. I demanded to go with him, unable to admit I ached to be part of it and convinced he’d pick up some random lusting extra.
As a child I developed a recurring nightmare. I found myself inside either a strange house with locked doors or a familiar house suddenly barren. In either case my mother refused to answer my calls. My senior year the dream returned except now I roamed the empty rooms and it was Ethan refusing to reply.
The union professionals refurbished an abandoned drive-in. Ethan finished May filming for ten hours while I laid back like a stalker. He enjoyed interactions with the cast and frivolous gestures with flirtatious schoolmates while I fumed. The oddball kid, out of step, excluded, powerless. Loser. Outsider. We fought, one misfit haranguing the other until we exhausted each other.
Shortly after the filming, I received a financial settlement from a lawsuit based on a St. Louis tanning booth episode the year before. There were no caution signs for eye protection; I was in the booth, eyes open, looking around. I recovered but it nearly blinded me. Alexandra’s attorney uncle took the case for no fee. I told my parents I’d lost the case, but was awarded four hundred dollars, a safety cushion I swore not to touch.
Ruth Birnbaum moonlighted as the Brucknerfield Avon Lady and kept a product selection at the shop. By summer I was the full-fledged window dresser and display designer. A strictly teen section with posters, open copies of fan and fashion magazines, plus our newly hip mannequin, brought them in, ready to spend their babysitting money. But our married clientele included a fair amount of tire kickers.
The downtrodden, rural women I’d secretly derided rarely spent money on themselves. That summer I realised they came inside for the air conditioning as much as the browsing, and spent their time in the children’s department. The latest polyester blouse or pleat-front slacks might be out of their budget, but Avon’s Odyssey Ultra Cologne Spray or New Vitality Conditioning Shampoo were not. I challenged myself to give them something affordable. “Have you thought about a fragrance or beauty product? You’re welcome to a spritz at the counter. My go-to response to ‘Just looking’ became, ‘Something just for you.’ The positive change in their demeanour over their aromatic wrists and small orders yanked me back to my joy over the free samples at the Saks Christmas counter.”
Summer steamed along until Ethan’s “You’re a fucking useless excuse for a human being,” blew the lid off the Paige Farm. After another go-round with his alcoholic father, the last kid from the first marriage was out on his butt. Ethan bounced among random white trash, drug dealer relatives, and gave me some cousin’s phone number where he could be reached. In August he landed at his sister’s in one of their father’s revamped trailers. He held onto his Rec Department job, determined to qualify for an Australian baseball program a scout had mentioned in one of his try-outs.
Predictably, Grandma and Grandpa’s failing deal with my parents slid from nagging to threatening eviction. The O’Farrell lid blew at Animal Cracker Park. A year after my parents uprooted me from St. Louis, and a week after turning eighteen, my mother dragged on her cigarette till the tip glowed. “We got bills to pay and mouths to feed. Go on welfare or get out.”
No way welfare. Meagre as it was, I had income and Mrs Birnbaum’s encouragement. I had my lawsuit nest egg. My gypsy life would be my undoing unless I fixed it. My mother’s directives disintegrated to a screaming match. I locked myself in my room; she beat my door with a broom. Dad broke it up with “Em, we got our own issues, it’s better this way,” nonsense.
I sure as hell couldn’t move across the acreage to my grandparents’ house or escape to Alexandra Campbell’s. My only choice was bunk with Ethan. Dad dropped me off at his sister’s trailer with a half-hearted apology.
Door frames sagged; sinks backed up; the septic system drained into the creek. We had to get out. Mrs Birnbaum listened to my fibs about friends’ pressure to return to St. Louis and the city’s job opportunities. I quit with her best wishes, a fifty-dollar Beehive spree, letter of recommendation, and Avon assortment. And then I finally brought it up. “You knew, didn’t you? That day you steered me into this office—”
“Emma, I had every intention of reading you the Riot Act. Something about you made me think twice.”
“I’ve been grateful.”
She patted my arm. “Frankly, I also watched you leave. If I hadn’t found those stolen bracelets returned without my prompting, I’d never have considered your application. It was important to see you dig yourself out of your hole.”
“You could have called the police.”
“The police were not what you needed.” She swiped her eyes and shooed me to the door. “Now go make yourself a good life.”
Chapter Three
Ethan and I found a small duplex behind a glass factory in downtown St. Louis. Two misfits together for every wrong reason was still better than living within proximity to our families. Low self-esteem, zero self-confidence, and our obsessive trust issues magnified the effort but we worked at being happy.
California dreamin’ bit the dust. I clung to my nineteen-year-old Superman. Ethan, in turn, considered our relationship temporary. On-off-on-off continued even under one roof, but he agreed to help me establish my independence. “Once you get yourself situated, we can go our separate ways,” he repeated.
His separate way? Play for a US farm team in crappy living conditions with poverty wages, or settle for bat, ball, and glove eighteen thousand miles from Missouri. Then I missed my period. I confirmed my pregnancy and braced for the worst.
“We’ll figure it out,” Ethan said.
Not exactly the marriage proposal I dreamed of but his heart of gold melted mine. He called Maxine. The following week we drove our duct taped 1978 Pacer back down I-55, out Route Thirty and sat with her for the consultation. Attendants were required but the last thing we wanted was family present. I corralled Genevieve, thrilled to be my maid of honour, and swore her to secrecy. Charlie the church sexton told Ethan he’d be proud to stand up for him.
We returned for the ceremony, me in my Beehive ensemble, Ethan decked out in the blazer Maxine provided for graduation. She performed the ceremony at the altar, blessed our union and hugged all four of us. Ethan and I headed back to St. Louis but on a whim checked into Dirty’s-on-Thirty. We spent our wedding night laughing and far more creative than the fakers in the infamous X-rated TV rentals.
