Where are you echo blue, p.9
Where Are You, Echo Blue?, page 9
We had been there for about a half hour when Grace Jones came over and introduced herself. She was wearing dark glasses and a bra and thigh-high boots with black shorts. Her bulging cheekbones glittered in fuchsia. “You’re an icon, sweetheart,” she said and kissed me on the head. I asked her for her autograph, and she signed my arm with purple lipstick.
Greta turned to my dad and teased, “Grace Jones never came up to you, Jamie. She only approaches us when Echo is here.” A muscle in my dad’s brow jumped. “I need another drink,” he grumbled and stormed off. Greta told me to stay put and chased after him. I snuck a sip of Greta’s champagne, and it felt good, the bubbly feeling in my mouth and that fuzziness in my head. Then I gulped the whole thing, and I was no longer worried about them disappearing or fighting, or whatever they were doing, and I got up and danced around the table by myself. A day later, there was a photo of me in Page Six dancing with the champagne flute in my hand.
My mother called me and left a frantic message after she saw it.
“I thought your dad was going to act like a dad. I didn’t know he was going to act like Drew Barrymore’s mother and start dragging you to clubs. Are you addicted to cocaine too? Please be careful, Echo. This isn’t good for you.” I didn’t call her back.
* * *
• • •
Two days later, my dad sent me back to L.A. to stay with Alma, our house manager, while he stayed in New York to “wrap things up.” Things were tense between him and Greta, and he suddenly couldn’t stand the photographers who had been chasing us down since my Limelight appearance. Plus, I was going to start shooting my next movie, a Pollyanna remake, soon. “Miraculously,” according to Hazel, the contract with Disney had gone through, but not without a stipulation that they only wanted to see me in “family-centric” situations in the press. My dad scoffed at this. “Oh, me taking my daughter out at night isn’t family-centric? What would they rather me do, leave her with a nanny all day? Give me a fucking break!”
I felt so lonely back at the house without him after our week by his side at the Carlyle. To be lonely as a child isn’t something you understand until you’re an adult. You ache, but you don’t understand why. You rock yourself back and forth to get to sleep, holding the covers tight, embarrassed to say what you feel. To be close to my dad had been all I had ever dreamed of. For once it was me by his side in the tabloids (and Greta too, but that was okay). And now I was back home by myself.
No one my age was around to hang out with either. Belinda was in a school play, so when she wasn’t in class, she was constantly busy with rehearsals, and my social group had whittled down to just her. I’d never quite hit it off with the other Slugger Eight girls, and I’d hung out with my old friends a couple of times since getting my role, but it felt different now. They’d ask me about my “new life,” as they put it, and when I told them about craft services, or how I had to once do eleven takes to get a line right, they’d just look at me with blank stares. I didn’t like to think about how little we had in common now. My only company was my tutor, whom I had been seeing at home three hours a day since Slugger wrapped, and Alma. Plus once-a-week visits with my mom.
After several days without my leaving the house much, Alma suggested taking me to Disneyland. “I’m not a baby,” I shot back in an angry tone I didn’t fully recognize. We could have ridden Space Mountain, and part of me even wanted to go on “it’s a small world” like I did when Kat Bergen’s mother took us once. But if I wanted to hang out with my dad, I had to grow up. Instead, I had Alma take me shopping at an outdoor vintage market in Santa Monica because I missed those days in New York, being surrounded by people. I wore a baseball cap and sunglasses as a disguise, which probably just made me more conspicuous because it was foggy that afternoon. The market was jammed with kids who looked like high schoolers, giggling as they tried on floppy hats, their arms linked together as they walked through the crowd. I felt lonelier than ever. After only half an hour, Alma and I drove back to the house in silence as the fog lifted.
That night, I took a Klonopin out of my dad’s pillbox. (I’d seen him take one when he’d get off the phone with Hazel. Or when he was talking to a director he didn’t like. Or when he was breaking up with someone.) I never saw him take a whole one, just halves, so I did the same. About ten minutes later I was asleep in bed, not worried about a thing.
Life.
Shut.
Off.
18.
Pollyanna would be my first solo role after being part of an ensemble in Slugger Eight. The iteration of Pollyanna starring Hayley Mills was set in the early 1900s, but this remake would be set in the present with a stubbornly optimistic Pollyanna, now a kid in foster care, who goes to live with her rich, miserable aunt. Pollyanna was irritatingly happy. When her father couldn’t afford to buy her a doll, she played with the crutches from the nearby medical center. The soup kitchen she volunteered at with the rich aunt had no money for art, so she crafted flowers out of paper cups.
I was in almost every scene, a problem because I was only twelve, almost thirteen, and there were rules about how many hours a minor could be on set. Kids from ages nine to fifteen were allowed on set for nine hours but could only work for five hours of that day (three hours were set aside for class instruction, and one hour for rest). Once you turned sixteen, you could work for six hours. “Can you turn sixteen already, kid?” my director would joke. (No one laughed.)
My dad paid someone to be my on-set guardian, an earnest young woman named Irene Papa, who doubled as my studio teacher. I ran lines while learning about the Revolutionary War. I was the only kid on the Pollyanna set except Tyler James Masterson, the little boy who played Jimmy Bean, the other foster kid Pollyanna hangs around with. But his part wrapped in just three weeks. So most of my free time was spent with Irene or alone.
My dad wasn’t around at all during that time. He was shooting a movie in Wales, a “masterpiece,” he said, Matthew, Matthew. He came home maybe twice in six months. It was all for the chance to work with Samuel Tobin, an experimental director famous for demanding an unheard-of number of takes and, according to rumors, even once causing an actor to have a nervous breakdown. My dad didn’t care. He said he’d do a hundred takes if that’s what Samuel wanted, because this was the role for him. He wasn’t going to take Philadelphia, because he wasn’t going to play a gay guy with AIDS—“No way in hell.” And he wasn’t going to do Forrest Gump, because he didn’t understand the character. “If I act that way for a whole movie, you know, ‘special,’ are people going to think I’m like that?” My dad was ready for his Oscar, and he was banking on Matthew, Matthew to deliver it to him. The director of Pollyanna was older. Very gentle. Hazel told me he’d be patient and would take great care of me. He acted like it was fine when I flubbed a line, which had been happening a lot. Unlike the cool, brash Joey from Slugger Eight, Pollyanna was passive and sunny. I hated her. And I hated myself even more when I got things wrong, regardless of the director’s kindness. Being prepared was important to me—no, it was expected of me. I worked on set with adults, I sat in my trailer with an adult, I went back to my house with Alma, an adult. I was supposed to be a responsible adult.
Around that time, I started sneaking cigarettes. I’d lock myself in the bathroom, window open, away from Alma. Every time I inhaled, I could feel myself calming down. I told Alma I needed more privacy in my bedroom and my bathroom, not to clean it every day. “I’m practically a grown-up with a full-time job,” I protested. “I need privacy, Alma.” She left me alone. I hid the cigarettes inside a toilet paper roll and would flush the butts, which I know was awful.
Two weeks into filming, Irene started to worry about me. I was exhausted and couldn’t remember the branches of government. I had more important things to remember, like my lines.
“Echo, you look so tired, honey. Are you okay?”
“Don’t worry, Irene. It’s nothing that makeup can’t fix.”
“I’m not worried about the makeup. I’m worried about you.”
“Worried about me? Why?” But I knew why. I was a kid on a set without parents.
I heard from my dad soon after. “Irene tells me you’re depressed. That true?”
“I don’t know what she’s talking about, Daddy. She thinks she’s my therapist.”
“How about a visit from Belinda?”
“Belinda can’t come. She’s doing a school play,” I told him. I’d have to wait until she was on break to spend real time with her.
“How about Deborah? She called to ask about you.”
Deborah was the only one of my dad’s girlfriends whom I stayed in touch with, and she usually called me once a month. Sometimes it felt awkward talking to her because I wanted her to come back into my life, stay by my side like she did that summer after she got me from my mother’s house. There were times I wanted to tell Deborah I felt abandoned by her when she moved to New York, but I also knew she was rooting for me to succeed. Deborah had a beautiful quality. Her voice was calming and silky when she called me “sweetheart.” (Deborah was an acting coach now, but she had voice-over gigs too. With that voice, how could she not?) On the phone, my dad was saying he could look into flying her out here. Of course I wanted Deborah to visit. But it wasn’t her I wanted to see. It was him. I wanted to watch movies with him, have him drive me to set, have him take me to dinner at Dan Tana’s.
“Can’t you take a break for a few days?”
“Echo…” I could hear irritation in his voice, and I immediately regretted my ask. I knew he was under so much pressure to make a good movie. Matthew, Matthew had to blow critics away. We couldn’t have a repeat performance of Good Night, Awake.
“Okay, Daddy. I’d love to see Deborah.”
“You got it, kiddo.”
* * *
• • •
Deborah came right from the airport to my trailer and did one of those Look how big you’ve gotten shticks that people do to kids when they haven’t seen them in a while.
“How’s the movie going?” she said.
“Pollyanna is so frigging happy all the time. It makes me want to puke.”
What I liked about acting was you could play someone different from you.
But how could anyone be this happy? There were long days when I imagined Hayley Mills’s Pollyanna, her curly blonde bangs and the big gingham bow in her hair, with her sailor-style drop-waist dress. She’d be judging me from the corner of the set, saying, in her sweet English accent, Echo, you have to find something to be glad about. It was torture.
Deborah opened up the script to the scene that I had to shoot later that day. She stroked the page like it was a living thing.
“Let’s go over some lines,” she said and pointed to the part where Pollyanna first arrives at her aunt’s house. “I’ll be Aunt Polly. You start.”
POLLYANNA
I’m sorry about the T-shirt, Aunt Polly. I know it’s too big on me.
AUNT POLLY
Looks like you got it at the Salvation Army.
POLLYANNA
Goodwill, actually. But my dad used to say, sure it’s secondhand, but I should be happy it’s not a potato sack.
AUNT POLLY
That isn’t something to be glad about, dear.
POLLYANNA
My dad used to say—
AUNT POLLY
Don’t worry about what your dad used to say.
“Aunt Polly is a bitch,” I said, instead of my next line.
“Yes, she is,” Deborah said, laughing. “But let’s talk about Pollyanna. What is her action?”
“I want her to scream at Aunt Polly. I want her to defend her father. I want her to take charge.”
“Oh, sure. She could play it annoyed,” Deborah said. “She could snap at Aunt Polly, right? But what good would that do her? Deep down, Pollyanna knows she’ll be going to foster care if she’s difficult. She has no other family. Cheerful and polite is her defense mechanism. It’s Pollyanna in survival mode.”
“So this is a survival story? What’s the moral—that you have to pretend like you’re happy or else you’ll go to foster care? It’s backward.”
“Her whole life has been dictated to her, Echo. She’s making the change with this positive attitude. That gives her some control.”
How had I not realized that Pollyanna was so similar to me? She was suffering too, while trying to make all these adults around her smile. Deborah and I went through a few different scenes, breaking them down, concentrating on how Pollyanna pushes the other characters to get a specific response from them. It was the Stella Adler method, Deborah explained.
After that, everyone ended up loving my take on Pollyanna—and I had grown to love my character. I just wished my dad were there to see it. “I’m hearing good things,” he said in a quick call one night. “Turns out you’ve created a complicated little Pollyanna. Good for you, Echo.”
19.
Thankfully there wasn’t much downtime between Deborah leaving and Belinda’s school break. I was elated at the prospect of having her with me.
“You don’t mind hanging out while I work for the week?” I asked when she called to tell me she was free to come.
“Are you kidding? I wish I could be on set every day.”
“You’ll be on your own set soon enough. What’s your next project?”
“My mom is worried about how much stress another job would put on me. She wants me to take a break. Focus on school. But I want to act again. Nothing good has come along anyway, though.”
Imagine that. My “team”—which consisted of Hazel and my dad—didn’t think about my stress levels. They were signing contracts for me left and right.
“I’m going to make sure Hazel gets you in all of my movies,” I said.
“That’s the best idea I ever heard,” Belinda said.
Within an hour of Belinda being around, I practically turned into Pollyanna, skipping around that set all sunshine and lollipops. Belinda and I would bike around the studio lot, me in my preppy costume with the plaid Victorian, long-sleeved ruffled blouse (harkening back to the original film) and matching skirt, Belinda in her jeans and flannel shirt around her waist. Some pap got a good long-lens shot of us, and I had Hazel buy a copy and send it to me. I hung it up in my trailer.
The night before my thirteenth birthday, we snuck into my dad’s liquor cabinet in his office and made ourselves vodka sodas. This was new for both of us. The room smelled like him.
“Everyone at school thinks that because I was in a movie I’ve had all this experience,” Belinda said. “But all these kids are drinking and making out at parties, and I wouldn’t even know what to do. We’re so much more sheltered than real kids. Except for you dancing on tables at the Limelight,” she said slyly.
“That was only once,” I said, rolling my eyes and laughing.
“Did you ever notice we have more power at work than we do in real life?”
“What do you mean ‘power’?”
“Look at how everyone listens to you on set, Echo. You think that happens at school? I sit in class for forty-five minutes listening to a teacher drone on about algebra.”
I thought about my studies with Irene. If anyone needed me during those three-hour sessions, they made this lame joke—“Study hall is over”—and pulled me back to the set. I didn’t exactly have authority in that way, but on the other hand, if I needed a soda, someone ran and got it for me. If I had a comment about how Pollyanna’s line should be delivered, my director listened. I was number one on the call sheet. The adult actors knew me. They introduced themselves to me. The crew asked me how I was feeling. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel a sense of importance on set.
“Anyway, happy birthday, Echo,” Belinda said. “Here’s to getting shit-faced.”
We clinked the glasses, and I took a big swig of my vodka soda. It burned the back of my throat and felt like an explosion in my stomach. Much different than champagne. I let out a huge burp, and we started hysterically laughing. We drank more, eating M&M’S between sips. My skin buzzed and my fingers tingled, like I lost touch with my body. To stay this way with Belinda eternally, it seemed so appealing.
“Did I tell you about what happened with Tiffany Schaeffer, that popular girl at school?” Belinda said, her eyes glassy.
“No. What?”
“She said I was too ugly to be in a movie, which is why I wasn’t in any more of them.”
Belinda had her own beautiful quality—the brightest hazel eyes, full lips, her long face. She was awkward, the way she stood with her hands holding her shirt instead of placing them on her hips or something, but never ugly. “Anyone can look like a Barbie doll, Belinda,” I said. “But you’re the prettiest person I know because you don’t look like one of them.”
I stood up, full of confidence from the vodka. I pretended to be a big shot ready to beat Tiffany Schaeffer up, walking with a swagger through the hallways of her school, looking for her. “Tiffany…where are you, Tiffannnyyyy?” I shrieked. We drank more and laughed more. It got easier and easier, even though the burning in the back of my throat never settled. We fell asleep together on my dad’s office floor.
Thank God the next day was a Sunday because I woke up with the worst headache I’d ever had in my life. Like someone was stepping on my head. It was the first time I got wasted. Thirteen with my best friend.
Alma made us French toast, but we were so hungover we could barely touch it. I told her it was food poisoning from the Chinese delivery the night before, and she believed me. My dad sent me two dozen pink roses that afternoon. “Happy birthday, kiddo,” the generic card read. That’s all I heard from him.
