Dakota leads me to a few spare seats on the other side of the tent. “Trust me. You haven’t gotten the full-on set experience until you’ve visited a craft services tent.”
We settle in, and Dakota runs back to the line to grab us each a drink. When she returns, the Margaret Toliver is at her side with a plate of nachos. She’s a tall white woman with thick thighs and a narrow waist. Her brown waves are unruly, with streaks of gray. Her hair is the kind of effortless that most people spend thousands of dollars and endless hours trying to achieve. Her bare skin is free of any blemishes, and she has delicate, shallow smile lines that I’ve never noticed in pictures or interviews. Oh my God. MarTo. Here. In the flesh. My insides tighten and convulse. She . . . she means so much to me. I have to tell her.
I stand up and my folding chair tips over behind me. Do I curtsy? Bow? I open my mouth, but exactly zero intelligible words come out.
“Faith,” Dakota says, mercifully intervening, “this is Margaret.”
“People around here call me Marge,” she says, and drops her headset on the table, a rumpled white T-shirt that says The Future Is Nonbinary tucked into her high-waisted jeans. “Mind if I join you two for lunch?”
“I’m Faith,” I finally spit out, and extend my hand. Marge! She said I can call her Marge! My toes tingle, begging to take flight.
She shakes my hand. “Good to meet you, Faith.” And then she leans across the table. “Just breathe. I clean my cat’s litter box just like everyone else.”
And from that information all I glean is: “You have a cat?” She has a cat!
She sits down, so I follow her lead. “Back at home in LA. He’s a gray tabby named Frank.” She blows out a forlorn sigh. “I wish I could take him on the road with me when we’re filming, but that cat barely lets me drive him down the street to the vet. I guess I’ll just settle for being Bumble’s godmother for now.”
I can’t help but clutch my hands to my chest and let out an “Awww.” Animal people are good people. It’s just science.
Margaret shoves a fully loaded nacho into her mouth and swipes her tongue at the guacamole left behind at the corner of her lips. “Dakota tells me you’re a pretty spectacular person.”
“I can vouch for her,” says Corissa as she joins us, playing a crossword puzzle on her phone. “What’s a synonym for ‘helicopter’ that’s ten letters and ends in a D?”
“A whirlybird!” Margaret and I say in unison.
Margaret gives me a knowing smile.
“Season two,” I explain.
“Episode nine,” Margaret says.
Corissa and Dakota look at us both like we have sprouts growing out of our ears.
“Oh, come on,” I say. “You both work for this show but haven’t seen every episode?”
Corissa takes a swig of her drink. “Marge knows I love her, but the early stuff is a little dated even for me.”
Margaret shrugs.
“I like to keep my headspace in the present,” Dakota says, very obviously spewing bullshit. “I don’t want to get distracted by what was, when I need to be what is.”
Everyone is silent for a minute, even neighboring groups, until Margaret begins to laugh so hard she has to hide her face with her napkin. And then we’re all laughing.
Dakota rolls her eyes. “There are only twenty-four hours in a day, okay? Do you know how many hours of The Grove exist?”
“Hours?” I say. “More like days!”
“Exactly!” says Dakota.
Margaret dabs at the tears streaming down her cheeks. “At least Corissa was honest. You had to go and pull some art-house crap out of your ass.”
“Honestly,” Dakota says, “we should just hire Faith as a continuity adviser. She knows this show better than anyone I’ve ever met.”
“Is that a challenge?” asks Corissa.
“Trivia! Trivia! Trivia!” Dakota chants, attracting attention from neighboring tables.
Margaret grins. “Well, Faith, is that a challenge?”
I let out a wild giggle, aware of our new spectators. “Sure! Why not?” If I win, I get bragging credits for the rest of my existence. If I lose, I lost to Margaret Toliver, and I think somehow that might be even cooler to brag about than winning.
Sam Portman, who plays one of the dads on the show, is the first to find a website that claims to have the hardest Grove questions known to humankind.
How did this become my life? I can’t think of anything I wouldn’t do to share this moment with my parents. They’d totally lose it. Even Mom, who could keep her cool in just about any situation, would be a giddy mess under this craft services tent as I go head-to-head with Margaret Toliver to determine which of us is the ultimate Grover.
We agree on five questions—there’s a show to be made, after all. And in true trivia form, we jot our answers down and turn them over to Sam to be graded.
Dakota watches over his shoulder, and the minute he’s done, she screams, “It’s a tie!”
Everyone cheers, and someone yells, “All right, all right! Back to work!”
Margaret looks over our answers. “We both missed one question—the same one.” She lets out a low whistle. “Well, kid, you ever want a job in showbiz, you know where to find me.”
I laugh.
“No. Really,” she says, crumpling up the papers. “Trivia questions aside. There’s just something about you I like, and that’s half of showbiz: finding people you actually like.”
“Uh, thanks,” I manage to say. “I don’t mean to be a total sap, but I just wanted to say that . . . your work—all of it—means so much to me. It got me through some really tough times. And I’m sure you hear that a lot, but—”
She reaches across the table and takes my hands. “It never gets old.” Her eyes are intent and unwavering on me. “I can’t tell you how much it means to me to be a small part of your life. Of your story. Thank you, Faith. Truly.”
I swear in this moment it feels like she and I are the only people on the planet. I’ve never been a religious person, but if Margaret Toliver were a religion, call me a convert. I feel every single one of her words with my whole being. This woman is an icon, and I’m blessed to just exist at the same time as her.
My eyes are beginning to water, and I finally squeak out a word. “I’m the thankful one.”
She stands to leave, and before craft services has a chance to clean our table and while Dakota isn’t looking, I swipe the two crumpled-up pieces of paper and shove them in my pocket. This has been a day I’ll never forget.
I tag along with Dakota for a while longer as filming resumes. I even sit beside her and Margaret in one of the cast’s director’s chairs while we watch the scene play out on monitors and listen on headsets.
When the sun begins to set, the crew resets the scene, and I hop down from my director’s chair, which was not made to accommodate people with hips, by the way.
As I gather my bag to leave, Margaret beckons me closer. In a voice so low I can barely hear it amid the thrum of the crew, she says, “Dakota told me what you did for our Swan at the party a few weeks ago. I wanted to thank you. Personally. And also thank you for your discretion. Swan is . . . experiencing growing pains.”