‘I don’t know. I think I’m going to have the home study done here, which means I need to establish residence here. I have to talk to Kathryn and Glenn. I’ll have to travel back and forth until it’s final, but I can’t just … leave him here. I can’t just go back to my life, knowing he’s here without me.’
‘But if you can’t see him, what’s the point of staying there?’
She sighs. ‘I’m praying for a miracle.’
The thought of Brooke praying for anything is inconsistent with anything I’ve ever known about her.
Fifteen minutes later, she sends the photo to my phone. I’ve just arrived at George’s office when I pull it up and nearly walk into the glass door. ‘Watch out, dude!’ a FedEx guy yells, waking me from my stupor in time to swerve.
Inside, I stop and stand motionless in the centre of the glass and chrome atrium of my manager’s building. As I stare at the photo on my display, I realize one thing. This wasn’t real. He wasn’t real. None of it was real – not until this moment.
9
BROOKE
I’ve been acting for six years and recognizable since the first season of Life’s a Beach hit the small screen. So I’ve had rude questions hollered at me by gossip reporters as I try to get from my car to my front door. Probing entertainment columnists have interviewed me in conjunction with co-stars from films and cast mates from the show.
In other words, I’m accustomed to people asking seriously violence-inciting shit. But their most invasive enquiries don’t hold a candle to the eighteen-page interrogation I just got from my case worker.
Reading over my shoulder, Kathryn sighs. ‘Norman said they would ask intrusive questions, but gracious …’
The topic of the current enquiry is my sexual history – first time, how many partners since, type of sex, frequency, protection, birth control, sexually transmitted diseases … and everything I feel, think or believe about any of those things.
‘How many partners? Are they serious? Do I make an educated guess? Round up? Round down?’
‘Brooke,’ Kathryn begins, ‘you don’t have to do –’
‘I’m doing it.’ Head in my hands, I want to scream. Or break down and cry. Every self-destructive decision I’ve ever made – and plenty that only look bad because I’m female – rears up and hisses in my ear that I’m going to look as unfit as that meth-addled idiot who had the chance to be his mother and blew it. That no sane person would ever give me a child to raise, even if he is mine.
‘I’m doing it,’ I repeat less abrasively.
Squeezing my shoulder, Kathryn moves away from the kitchen table and leaves me to it, offering to make a fresh pot of coffee. I nod, pressing the heels of my hands to my eyes so tightly that no light sneaks in.
This house has been a refuge for me for so long. Half an hour west of Austin, it’s surrounded by acres of scrubby hill-country; the homes here are large, set a distance apart from each other and constructed from native stone and wood. They don’t tower above the native landscape so much as merge perfectly with it, as though they simply grew here along with the sage and desert willow.
Even with my eyes shut, I envision Kathryn’s familiar movements from the sounds she makes: scooping coffee from the copper-lidded canister, filling the reservoir, pushing the start button. She pulls mugs from one of the glass-door cabinets and sets them on the artsy concrete countertop decorated with inset bits of china and bottle glass. Along with the coffee, she’ll bring me a home-made oatmeal or macadamia nut cookie, which I’ll work off with a walk to the thin creek that serves as a winding border on one side of their property.
Kathryn and Glenn have agreed to let me claim their house as a secondary residence, so part of the home study will be conducted here. That means they’ll have to submit to the same sort of scrutiny I’m undergoing: drug testing, criminal background checks, character references. Their home will be inspected top to bottom for safety concerns. Their pet immunizations and behavioural histories will be checked. And possibly their sex lives, allergies and what type of toilet paper they prefer will be investigated.
My agent calls when I’m taking the cookie-blasting stroll to the creek, and I almost hit ignore. I’m so not ready to talk to her about what I’m doing, but I suppose that isn’t the only thing I’ll have to do this week that I might not be ready to do.
‘Brooke! Are you sitting? I hope you’re sitting but not driving. You aren’t driving, are you? Be honest.’
Ever since one of her clients wrecked his Jeep – breaking a kneecap and busting his forehead wide open – when she called to tell him about a big audition, she’s been reluctant to pass on any news to a client who’s behind the wheel.
‘Not driving, Janelle. What’s up?’
‘Okay, cool. First, I got a call from Stan this morning.’
Stan is the executive producer of Life’s a Beach. He’s been perfectly professional in public, but he was less than enthused when I left the show to pursue a film career, and he seemed to take it personally – something he hadn’t done when my co-star Xavier quit for the same purpose.
Unlike my film School Pride, Xavier’s first film – a drama of all things – flopped like a trout in the final stages of death. My ex co-star is pretty and beefy – with absolutely zilch going on upstairs. Perfect to star as a guy who runs a beachfront bar … not so perfect to portray a character who has thoughts. Rumour has it he’s begging for a chance to get his old role back.