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3
Lake
I left the TV room while the show was still on and found Tiffany out back. She sat at Val’s rusted mesh patio table with a fresh glass of wine, staring out at the pool. I couldn’t watch the show a minute longer. What I’d signed up for wasn’t acting. I’d known that going in, and this wasn’t the end goal by any means, but I wondered if this would be everything Mike Galloway had dangled in front of me. Was it a silver bullet to the career I wanted? The cameras had been around while I’d volunteered, but was it the right kind of attention for the animal shelter I went to?
Tiffany fumbled with a pack of cigarettes. As she lit one, my first thought was Manning—the smoky, mint-on-nicotine taste of him. He’d finally let me around his cigarettes after years of wanting to be part of it and anything that involved him. But Tiffany, she’d been in it all along, and now that I stood there watching her inhale deeply with satisfaction, I couldn’t help but see things from Manning’s point of view. Finally. He’d exposed us both to it, but he’d protected me and not Tiffany. “Do you smoke a lot?” I asked, closing the sliding glass door behind me.
“I quit during the pregnancy if that’s what you’re asking.”
“I didn’t mean that.” I could tell that being here was hard for her, I just wasn’t sure why she’d made the effort. “Did you see how awful the show was?” I asked, hoping to break the ice. There was no better way to bring Tiffany out of her shell than to give her the chance to make fun of me. “Everyone keeps saying it’s a hit, but it’s so bad. I’m so bad.”
“You’re, like, adorably awkward. Naïve but not in an annoying way. People like that stuff.”
“I guess.” I pulled out the seat across her, steel scraping over concrete, and sat. “How’s Mom?”
“She’s excited, even though she can barely get through a conversation about you without crying.” She shrugged. “And Dad . . . well, you know how he is.”
“He probably thinks this whole reality thing is silly.”
“Pretty much.”
I touched the thin gold bracelet Dad had given me as a teen. I’d started wearing it again for filming. Even though I was angry at my father, when the cameras were in my face, the bracelet made me feel close to my parents—and Manning, since it was the reason we’d met. No matter how old I got, how successful I might become, my dad’s rejection would never not sting.
Tiffany blew smoke from the side of her mouth. “But I guarantee he’s watching tonight.”
“What about you?” I asked. “How are you?”
“Good.” She sat back, crossing an ankle over her knee. “I got a used bike on the Internet for only twenty bucks. I mean, I’m not starring in a TV show or anything, but it’s something.”
I rolled my eyes at her. “Look, I know this is weird, but you don’t have to make it worse.”
“I thought I could do this,” she said, stubbing out her half-smoked cigarette on the cement. “I thought enough time had passed that I could come here and be happy for you, but I just . . . it all seems so unfair.”
I digested her words a few moments. For as long as I could remember, Tiffany had taken offense to my success and happiness. “What part, exactly, is unfair?”
“You have everything handed to you,” she said, “and you just shrug, take it or leave it, like it’s nothing. You throw away your relationship with Dad. Your acceptance to USC. You ignore us for years to run around New York City calling yourself an actress. And then someone shows up at your door and hands you fame and fortune and now you’re not even sure you want it.”
“That’s not how it happened,” I said. “I spent years struggling with nothing, trying to make a life for myself without any of your support. I lived in a tiny apartment with a broken heater—” A broken lock and a broken heart, I thought, my chest squeezing. “The point is, you’re wrong. The only injustice is that you can’t ever be happy for me unless you have a leg up.”
“I came all the way here to support you, even though you never congratulated me on my promotion. When I call you, you’re too busy to talk.” She crossed her legs and fixed the twisted strap of her shoe. “How can you blame us for not being there for you when you made it impossible to be?”
I got quiet as I thought of the myriad excuses I’d invented over the years to get off the line with her or my mom. “Okay,” I said, “but it’s not as if any of you, not even Mom, were beating down my door, trying to get me to come home.”
