I close the trash can. I decide to keep the bag of goop, at least for a day or so. And I wonder about what other things Dad is quietly doing to mend our past. I wonder what other things Dad has maybe quietly already done.
I walk out to Reid’s garage, to Mom’s boxes stacked in the corner. By now the duct tape holding the contents together is older and dry. I tug at the strips until one box opens, bits of dust flying about like when you pull a tab to open a FedEx envelope. I look inside. Then I rip open another. I look inside. I rip open another, another, another. And these are not Mom’s things in these boxes—these are mine, my things. My notebooks from high school that I thought were long lost. My book reports Dad tore up and made me rewrite, now taped back together, the ink old and drifting. There are childhood clothes, pictures from my teenage years, newspaper clippings from being listed on the honor roll—these are things from after my mother died, things he kept for me. There’s the Priestess Talara action figure, stuffed unceremoniously at the bottom, her cape creased and wrinkled, her face the same as I remember it from way back then as a kid and from way back months ago, from the real woman. We’re reunited at last—and now I have two, the one from Reid and the one from my childhood; like both sides of the coin, a woman I find amazing and frustrating; Kathi Kannon, you can’t escape her.
Also, in the last box, there are my cassette tapes, in their tattered jukebox casing, including the tape with the song “Mother-in-Law,” my Star Search audition number. I open the case and a black mist falls—the decayed magnetic strip that stored the music, like the rest of us, it’s older now, worn and more and more fragile by the day. I pull out my phone, I open iTunes, I buy the ditty for 99 cents, and I dance in the garage, alone and silly and exquisite, at last surrounded by my favorite toy and favorite song, surrounded in so many ways by the childhood I always wanted.
WINTER
There’s death to deal with. Agnes, finally succumbing to the tumor she nursed while working in Kathi Kannon’s kitchen for forty-nine years, much of which featured Judge Judy blaring by her side.
ME: I’m so sorry about Agnes.
KATHI: So crushing, life ever the fickle bitch; but from you I love the love. I Missus you. Everyone is a ding-a-ling … and here I sit, missing my ole Cockring.
SPRING
I’m parked and panicked outside the estate of Hollywood royalty Kathi Kannon, star of stage and screen and People magazine’s Best Comeback list. She invited me to a birthday party she’s throwing for herself here at her mansion, my old stomping ground.
I’m nervous, I’m self-conscious, dressed in my fanciest outfit with my favorite accessory, Reid, by my side, chill and confident, not worried at all that I’m finally, after a year away from her, about to introduce him to the Kathi Kannon. Him, dapper and poised. Me, sweating and flinching.
“What’s wrong?” Reid asks.
“I don’t know,” I say, clenching my teeth, squeezing my hands into fists in my coat pocket. It feels just like the first day I was outside these gates.
“Remember, I’m here to make your life better,” he says gently. I warm to the reference, the kindness, the moment from way back in our early days that helped facilitate bittersweet changes, new chapters in my life. But it doesn’t ease my tension, my distrust of whether Kathi has really forgiven me for ending my time with her. It doesn’t ease my curiosity about why she invited Reid to come here with me, accepting him, welcoming him into her home, her life—what used to be our life, as she put it. There was a time I’d wonder if she was inviting him into my life with her, instead of Reid and me welcoming her into my life with him. Had I stayed working for her, would Reid be the third wheel or would Kathi? It doesn’t matter now.
Kathi considered having birthday parties during the years I worked for her but always said she didn’t have the money to do them right. Now her resources have increased. Priestess Talara is back. The film is a huge hit, a franchise alive. I was thrilled to see it, but had to watch it multiple times before Priestess Talara became the character versus me just seeing my old friend Kathi Kannon up there on the screen. Suspension of disbelief is harder when you know what someone’s thinking, when you know someone’s deep, dark tells. I see Priestess Talara’s right shoulder move forward and I know Kathi’s costume is too tight. I see Priestess Talara blink slightly off rhythm and I know Kathi is too warm. I can see from her face whether she’s hungry or thirsty. I can see from her smile if she’s tired. That Assistant Bible is still in me; I wrote the book on Kathi Kannon.
I arrived at her mansion driving my new little Fiat, Reid squeezed in the passenger seat, a ride far from the old Nissan that first entered these gates those many years ago—a different car, and me, its very different driver.
TV cameras are across the street from her gate. Paparazzi are clicking away. When I worked here, no one cared who lived up that hill. Now celebrity tour buses are stopping out front and playing Priestess Talara theme music and movie clips, and those tourists are just like me: outsiders.
There, on the wrong side of the gate, before the same smoking Santa painting, the same CLOTHING OPTIONAL banner, I’m thinking, I want to be back inside. I’m thinking, All that time I spent with Kathi Kannon and there’s still so much unsaid between us, so much I want to tell her at this party.
First, I want to tell her I’m sorry. I never thought she was telling me the truth. About my appearance: I thought she was making fun of me. About my abilities: I thought I was inherently inadequate. Introducing me as part of her family: I thought it was a contrived convenience. Calling me her friend as I told her I was leaving her: I thought that was a delusion. And now, looking back, I’m so fucking ashamed. I feel so stupid. I was so trapped in my own inner drama that I couldn’t see she genuinely cared. And in the end, I treated her like some random employer. In the end, I’m the one who put the space between us.
I want to tell her that I wish I would have done it differently. That sometimes—often, in fact—I regret leaving her at all. That she’s someone who raised me from the dead, who helped me see my reflection in the mirror again, who showed me that everything—just checking in to a hotel—could be an adventure, that humor was everywhere, even in airplane bathrooms, mental hospitals.
I want to tell her how much I miss getting those nonsensical text messages every day. I miss her nicknames for me, words made up from thin air, words that now carry me as I remember the room, I remember her tone, I remember what she was wearing every time I heard a new one: Niblet, Jimmy, Cockring, even darling.
I want to tell her she’s with me in my friendships, acquaintances, moments of mingling at parties where people are no longer bound by asking, “How’s Kathi Kannon,” but instead ask about me, how I’m doing, about Reid, about my actual life, not just the sitcom version of it. I talk about my moments with her as fond memories, not fodder, not my life’s only value. And the same with my new friends I picked up along the way, like Drew and Ben, who both kindly wished to stay in touch. And like Melody—who also goes by the nickname Jasmine—whose friendship I pursued and nurtured mostly because she was with me during the best times, at the beginning, my equal in the shadow of celebrity, and because she’s the only assistant who ever emails me back. As for Bruce, all of his haircuts and fancy shoes couldn’t keep him in Los Angeles. He never did get the promotion he desperately wanted. He’s back home in Iowa, working for his father, his Facebook now dark, his life now a secret; I’d look him up if I knew his real name. Turns out, both of us are silt.