That would be us, to a certain extent. To fit the brass ring firmly on her finger, my mother had to sacrifice. Serious contenders need a singular focus. So systematically, we were lead along a gilded path straight to the guillotine. My mother knew what this life entailed, and she entered willingly, fully expecting that we were all in on the big secret. That this journey can be a whirlwind of good fortune but we had better be prepared to accept the short straws that come along, too.
Not that I ever had a choice in the matter.
Do I sound bitter? Am I? Probably, a little.
I had to come to terms early in life with the idea that I may have fine clothes, and smart people around me teaching me important things, but I did not have a mother who met me at the door with chocolate chip cookies fresh out of the oven.
Not even once.
I’m the oldest child in this family of five. I love my sister and brother but because my mother was on this meteoric rise from the time we were little, there was some dysfunction planted long ago. Just like the sunflower that sprouts in late summer, you can bet it has grown tall and strong ever since. You wouldn’t know it just by looking at us. From the outside, you might just think we had it all.
While my mother’s career was exploding, my father’s was unwinding. They have been together a long time, the golden couple. Her opponents made a good case that she was nothing more than a sports wife who had benefited by national exposure and strong name recognition. In some circles, that stuck, but spend two minutes with her and you’ll see she is no slouch in the brains department, and by all means she is her own woman. She had a bunch of degrees hanging on the wall and had already logged long hours in a law firm when she first met my father. He was a few years older, had that whole professional athlete thing going on, and came at her with the kind of swagger only a few men can legitimately pull off. The rest, as they say, is history.
Theirs is a good kind of love, I suppose. They have each other’s backs all the time. When you get one, you get the other and God help you if you try to come between them. All these years later, they are still each other’s biggest fans.
Two of a kind, success stories crafted out of pure human will.
I remember being thrilled when my sister came along, then my brother after that. Kelby and Kass are just a year apart, so we are all pretty close in age. I love them both, but we are very different. On the other hand, maybe I’m the one who is different. In many ways, they’re actually a lot alike.
My dad had just about ripped his shoulder apart by the time he was forty, and thank God, he had the wisdom and humility to step aside while he was still whole. Somehow, he avoided giving in to that nauseating ego that keeps aging athletes in the game far past their expiration dates. He admitted toward the end it got harder to get up from beneath the bulk that had just pummeled him into the turf. He began to worry about the blitzes. He knew he was losing his touch. At just the right time, he hung it up. Once he retired, my parents built a sprawling but comfortable ranch on fifteen acres in a small town. After all the adulation, glitz and glamour they were ready to slow down and raise their kids.
Or so they said. In reality it didn’t slow down, not for long anyway. Political ambition has a funny way of turning into the elephant in the room. Once that world came calling on bended knee we were off and running again.
It’s not like we were ignored, or raised by a gaggle of nannies, or even homeschooled. Sure, they were busy but my parents were involved during those early years. They were authentic in their hope that we would see parts of the real world their wealth and fame might otherwise have buried from sight. They told us early and often that we all had a responsibility to live with dignity, respect others, appreciate what we had, and work for what we wanted.
It is because of my parents’ almost altruistic shove into Mrs. Dupont’s second grade class that I found my dearest friend. I consider it an act of fate because there would have been absolutely no conceivable way I would have met Lauren had I gone to any of those private elementary schools that kept girls in pigtails, plaid skirts, and bad attitudes for their entire adolescence.
Lauren was bold and brash, almost cocky if you can say that about a seven-year-old. She was as irresistible to me as a cold Popsicle on a hot summer day. In no time, we were inseparable.
Our small town was unable to keep her around for very long. Blessed with the voice of an angel, Lauren is one of the most naturally talented women I have ever known. She packed her bags, hopped on a plane, and headed to the West Coast the day after we graduated from high school. She had contacts rather than friends, and about enough cash on hand to rent some shitty East Hollywood apartment. She would call me every Tuesday, reverse the charges, and spill her guts in ninety seconds or less. She found a part time job in some trendy Melrose second-hand clothing store, so her afternoons were open for auditions. Soon enough, she was singing jingles for TV commercials and doing background vocals for up and coming bands. Her wings were spreading, but it was a grind, and Lauren had about as much patience as a junkie in a church pew. She struggled for a while, trying to stand out in a sea of equally talented, physically flawless competitors. Who actually got the part was a crapshoot because for the most part she was as interchangeable as the rest of them.
It was a vicious, twisted world that snuffed out too many dreams, but every now and again, the magical mix of opportunity and timing paid off. It happened right before her self-imposed Hollywood age limit was set to expire. Lauren made a promise to herself she would pack her bags and her ego if nothing significant had happened by the time she was twenty-five. About six months before that fated birthday arrived, Lauren’s agent got an interesting offer. The executive director of the longest running soap opera, A Life in Progress, caught a glimpse of Lauren’s demo reel and fell in love with her dark, stormy face and her deep, perfectly pitched voice. The part was meaty, much more challenging than Lauren had ever imagined, and she became a true soap star in no time, earning two Daytime Emmy nominations, a significant extension on her original contract, and a steady paycheck that kept her on the good side of the Hollywood sign.
Best of all, Lauren has not changed one little bit. She sends a good chunk of her paycheck home to her two sisters and mother, volunteers for community music programs, and keeps her feet firmly on the ground. Never once have I found her floating too close to that stratosphere of self-importance that hovers over L.A. like smog. Lauren is real, she is true, and she is always the first person I confide in.
Although this time, the news really sucks.
This brings me back to my previously discussed dysfunctional family.
They handle good news really well. Bad news, not so much. There are a slew of reasons to avoid having heavy discussions with them. First, they are all tremendously busy people. Already pulled in a hundred different directions, they live under the earnest assumption that we can all take care of ourselves. There are no cracks in their system, so trying to squeeze my cancer into a hairline fracture is like trying to stop a nosebleed with a single sheet of discount toilet paper.
I am not the only one who thinks the family chain link is ridiculously strong. Enterprising reporters and paparazzi armed with telephoto lenses and unscrupulous sources have searched for the weak spots for years. There just aren’t any.
Sorry folks, it sucks for me, too.
Our closets simply don’t house any skeletons, hideous or otherwise. As hard as the media has tried, it has never been able to dig up anything that would jeopardize or shame my family during my mother’s campaigns. Countless reporters have taken a whack at it, and one of them got pretty darn close. It was during my senior year in high school, a flying soccer ball caught me right upside the head. Our team was playing “away” at the time, so how some photographer managed to find the obscure field and snap this one nasty shot is beyond me. But he did. He clicked away at the exact moment I whipped my body around, grabbed hold of the offending midfielder’s long ponytail and dropped her flat on her ass. Sure, it was a knee jerk reaction and I should have cooled down on the sidelines, but I popped her. In a way, she popped me right back.
The next day, I appeared on the front page of every rag across town. Teeth bared, muscles tensed,