Under the Lights

Nannette’s birthday — send sunflowers! her purple pen screams from the August 4th square of the calendar she replaces on my wall every month. Always wear Ben Sherman to Esquivel — hostess is dating a designer’s brother is on a Post-it wall in the closet. Call your grandmother on Fridays at three is next to the Bang & Olufsen on my nightstand.

Try getting your agent or manager to find out the best time to call your grandmother in her nursing home, taking into account when all her friends will be around and she can show off your name on her caller ID, essentially making her weekend. I dare you.

That same phone rings now, which triggers a feeling of dread in my gut, like I’m one of Pavlov’s fucking puppies. Only one person calls the house phone here rather than my cell, and it’s not someone I possess any desire to talk to, ever. Unfortunately, I can’t exactly ignore her, either. I snatch the phone and drop onto my bed, answering it without bothering to glance at the screen.

“What is it, Marsha?” I ask, already bored with the conversation that hasn’t started yet.

“For the billionth time, Joshua, it’s Yvette. Or Mother, if you’re feeling novel.”

I roll my eyes. Yvette is the fucking stupid name she chose when she first started auditioning a billion years ago and landed on Time Goes By, the absurd soap that’s been her baby for longer than I have. As if she’s fooling anyone into thinking she’s exotic and French instead of a one-time diner waitress from Oklahoma.

Sort of like how she pretends she’s thirty-four, even though she’s got a nineteen-year-old son who’s more famous than she is.

“How can I help you?”

“You can come to dinner tonight, at the house,” she says coolly, referring to the thirty-room mansion she and my father occupy in Bel-Air, although they reside in different wings. “I thought it would be nice to eat together, as a family.”

We have never, in as far as I can recall, done anything as a family.

Unless it was for publicity.

“Photo shoot?”

She sighs. “No, Joshua, not a photo shoot. I just want us all to eat together. Is that so much to ask? Elaine is preparing those pork chops you like.”

“I have literally no idea which pork chops you’re referring to.”

“Seven o’clock,” she says huffily. Then her voice brightens a bit. “I look forward to seeing you then!”

It’s hard to say who hangs up faster.

* * *

I’m not sure when’s the last time I saw both my parents in the same room, but it’s obvious there’s something behind this stupid dinner, and I won’t find out what until I go. Just as well — I don’t have dinner plans anyway, unless you count the tequila I expect to be licking out of a belly button later. But I’m not meeting Paz and Hudson until eleven, so I jump in the shower, throw on jeans and a T-shirt I know my mother will hate, and tell my driver, Ronen, to be out front at six thirty — that should get me there about half an hour late.

“I asked you to be here at seven, Joshua,” she says tightly when I arrive, her eyes narrowing on my outfit. “And is it so much to ask that you dress like an adult for dinner? If you’re old enough to live by yourself in the beach house, you’re old enough to put on a button-down. Go get dressed.”

“You want me to head back out?” I jerk my thumb toward the door. “I mean, sure, but I won’t be back for a couple of hours.”

“You have plenty of clothing in your room upstairs. Go change into something presentable and then join us.”

“There is a photo shoot, isn’t there.”

“Harold!” she calls out impatiently. As if my dad gives a shit what I wear to dinner.

“Do what your mother says, Joshua,” I hear, and I look up to see him sitting at the kitchen counter, a bunch of papers spread out in front of him, a pen in his teeth. Clearly, he has no more desire to be here than I do, to the surprise of absolutely fucking nobody.

I’m already sick of this whole night, so I choose the path of least resistance and haul my ass upstairs to get a shirt. It’s true I’ve left plenty of shit in this house. I make a mental note to have Ally deal with clearing it out. The less I have tying me to this place, the better.

It’s almost eight by the time we actually sit down to the stupid farce of a dinner, and though I know I’ve never had Elaine’s pork chops before, they’re pretty damn good. My mom amps up the small talk, putting her acting skills to maximum use as she pretends to give a shit about my life.

“Have you talked to Calvin about your next project?” she asks me, taking a tiny bite of cucumber, not even pretending she’ll be eating more than half a salad for dinner.

“I dropped Calvin a year ago,” I remind her dully, though that’s not exactly the truth of how it went down. “Holly Bremen’s my agent now.”

“Right, right. Well, Holly, then?”