My history teacher was not impressed that I was missing my test because I had to go for tea at the White House with Barbara Bush. Being Canadian, the whole thing was less remarkable than it would have been if I actually knew the words to the Pledge of Allegiance, but it was neat anyway. I did a TV movie with Jessica Tandy called The Story Lady and it was about reading being a good thing. It was shocking to think that this was news to anyone, but apparently Barbara Bush enjoyed it and wanted people to watch a movie about books. She was involved in a symposium called, “Developing the Lifetime Reading Habit: Libraries, Youth and Elders,” so Mom and I got to go to the White House.
The director, producer, writer, and some other actors from the film were also invited and we stood around a very flowery room at the White House and drank tea with the First Lady. She seemed nice and was wearing a suit with white sneakers that had the word “READ” on them in puffy gold paint. I wondered if she had done that herself or if there was an official White House bedazzler. We drank tea from tiny floral china cups and I learned how to eat finger sandwiches without dropping the saucer. There were photo ops and Mrs. Bush gave a little speech about the movie and then my mother and I just stood around awkwardly for a while, trying not to touch anything. Neither Mom nor I ever felt comfortable in fancy situations. We were the kind of family that went camping for vacations and considered dinner at Sizzler to be only for extra extra special occasions. So, we passed our uneasiness back and forth, while we stood below a larger-than-life-size painting of Jackie O in a gilded frame that probably cost more than our house.
After tea with First Lady we went back home to Canada and life continued along its strange but enjoyable binary. I never felt totally comfortable being a regular kid, but being an actor kid didn’t quite fit, either. I was starting to notice that actors talked about their work with this reverence that I didn’t have. I would always respond with, “Yeah, set is fun.” I was clearly missing something.
At least bouncing around from one to the other gave notable relief from the specific discomfort of each. I could avoid the horror that was the school bus because I had to leave for a shoot. I could also turn down an audition for the film with the dreadful dialogue because I had to go back to Canada for my driving test. There was no shortage of handy excuses to weasel my way out of things.
I would be a student for a couple weeks here and there, but when my report cards came, the number of days absent was usually about seventy. The comments from teachers were things like, “Lisa seems like a nice girl, however, we really hope to see more of her next year.” In that underlining would be a whole world of subtext and judgment about the path it seemed that I had chosen in life.
Besides teacher guilt, there were the legalities involved that demanded I at least try this school thing. And then there was my father. Dad was a labor negotiator for school boards, the son of Slovakian immigrants who became a lawyer, and a big believer in pulling up bootstraps. He truly believed in education, and for various reasons thought it might be a good idea if his daughter attended high school. So, while I had more than my fair share of doubts, I tried to be a student.
It generally went poorly. I did all my homework with tutors while away on films and got decent grades when the teachers could be convinced to dole them out. Apparently educators think school is about more than that; they believe it’s beneficial for you to actually be seated in their classroom. The fact that I was cultivating my career while learning about photosynthesis didn’t impress anyone.
Walking into a classroom you have not seen in several months is very daunting. I had stomach aches that would keep me up all night and leave me clutching my belly as I walked through the low-ceilinged hallways. It was the pressure of the first day of school jitters all over again, except it was the beginning of December and everyone else already knew how to find the computer lab, and so was much worse. My unfamiliarity with the school combined with my dreadful sense of direction meant that it was quite likely that I would show up for homeroom in the janitor’s closet.
Since I was there so infrequently, I didn’t really have friends to call for updates before going back to school. There would be no excited waves or warm hugs to mark my return, just unabashed stares from my classmates with whispers of, “She’s back,” as I tried to sit in the far corner of the room and remember the teacher’s name. Once, I returned to an empty classroom because I didn’t know there was a field trip that day. I waited alone in the room until everyone came back, entertaining myself by leaning out the window to clean the chalkboard erasers. It would have been way too embarrassing to go to the principal’s office to tell them that I was attempting to attend a class that had gone off without me.
When I was in school, I tended to either be far ahead of where the class was, or completely confused because the work the teachers assigned me on location had little relevance to what was going on in the classroom. I vacillated between feeling totally bored and totally stupid, both options bringing me to tears. Every time a teacher referred to, “the readings from last week,” I’d cringe and remember that my reading for the previous week had been memorizing ten pages of dialogue and flipping through some film industry magazine. Those were unlikely to be the readings she meant.
During a review of the French perfect participle, I’d daydream about being back on set. There, the work day starts early. There is a beautiful slow silence as everyone moves around the trucks, stepping over heavy cables trying to get to the catering truck for coffee in the pre-dawn darkness, mentally gearing up for a day that would likely slide into tomorrow. The first stop, with warm breakfast burrito in hand, is the hair and makeup trailer, traditionally staffed with sassy women and gay men who have the closest pulse on the day. They know who was out late last night with whom and who requires extra makeup on the bags that they brought home from the bar. They know that the first assistant director is in a bad mood because the studio execs are supposed to stop by later and that always slows down the schedule.
After makeup it’s time to put on the wardrobe that is waiting in the small, cramped trailer that smells like those aquamarine toilet chemicals. Maybe my wardrobe involves uncomfortable costumes, with corsets and tall lace-up boots, but maybe it’s jeans and a shirt that is worth “losing” at the end of the shoot so that it ends up in my own personal closet. The day might be rushed with a heart-pounding run to set because the lighting is ready and we need to go NOW. Or it might be painfully boring with shots that should take twenty minutes stretching out for five hours. The scenes might be emotional and gut wrenching with long, complicated speeches, or they might be easy and mindless, making it possible to wonder during the shot if the adorable camera assistant is smiling at me.
But then they call lunch. The catering truck has a decent vegetarian selection, but the pasta is kind of mushy, and that one time there was a dead fly in the pesto. We all eat together at big long tables, and people save seats for other actors, who are wearing oversized men’s button up shirts backwards, like little kids in a finger-painting class, to protect the wardrobe from the hot sauce. It’s always worthwhile to rush through eating and squeeze in a little nap before getting back to work. (As I get older, I enjoy spending part of my lunch break sprawled out on the couch in my trailer with some company. It’s a good time to fool around with costars or camera guys, should you be into that sort of thing.) Then the assistant director knocks on the door, interrupting napping or nookie or whatever, and it’s time for the hair and makeup folks to cover up the sleep lines or hickeys and tousled hair before heading back to work.
Maybe the afternoon speeds past, with the adrenaline of fast-paced scenes or perhaps there is time to sit in a corner of the warehouse and write in a journal or learn to knit from a library book. The craft services table tends towards more quantity over quality, but it’s always there, and peanut butter pretzels help ward off the boredom while the other scenes are shot. There are candy bars and seventeen types of crackers and some sort of dip with a random long blond hair in it. And then there is more waiting and then running to set to be told that they are not quite ready. And that goes on. For hours. Until the realization hits that this corset has been digging into your ribs for twelve-and-a-half hours and it must be time to wrap for the day. So, it all gets peeled off and a million bobby pins are removed from hair pieces and there’s a whole ten hours until it’s time to come back tomorrow.
Even though the cast and crew and script and location would change, the feeling was consistent. Whether we were in Dublin or Denver, the makeup sponges always smelled the same. But none of that comfort and familiarity could be found at school.
So I’d trudge through the halls until, like a lightning strike, my agent would call. Life in Canada would be upended within moments and I’d be put out of my misery. I booked a job and life would become a flurry of activity. Flights were arranged and hotels were booked and there were teary farewells with various pets. My father’s face would be filled with a painful combination of pride, sadness and impending loneliness as he watched his wife pack for months of traveling with his only child. We were moths that flitted in and out of his life with little prior notice. He was happy for me, certainly, but the realities of my career were much more apparent on his end than on mine. He was always the one left behind. Dad would hug me and say congratulations and then just hold on a little longer, knowing the hugs were going to be few and far between.
My father never said anything negative about my career. Besides his don’t-rock-the-boat Canadian-ness, Dad was proud. It was something that I had fun doing and he never objected, even if the logistics of my career broke his heart a little. Mom had no need for routine, she was an excitement junkie and a vagabond who was equally thrilled to go to Prague or Saskatchewan. So, my per diem money all went to the gigantic phone bills that resulted from my nightly conversations with Dad from whatever far-flung location we were in. Our lives would continue without each other, along this parallel path that would occasionally cross when I had time off and when he could take a vacation from work. The dull consistency of family life was a luxury we’d never have.
I never considered the impact that my career could have on my parents’ marriage. Like most kids see it, my parents appeared to be one cohesive entity. They had started dating when my mother was fourteen years old, so it was impossible to see them as two separate people. They were one, large parental unit that was big enough to stretch from home to whatever location shoot I was on. Some other kid actors had hired chaperones as parental stand-ins, usually someone barely older then they, who enforced no rules and commanded no authority. I was always happy to have my mom with me; she never cared about rules anyway and she was my best friend. I missed my dad terribly when we went away, but it never occurred to me that watching him wave good-bye to us from the front porch as we left for another three month jaunt could have been even more painful for him than it was for me.
The next time we returned to L.A., we had a new place to call home. I had recently worked with a producer who was relocating to New York for a few months, so she and her screenwriter husband needed a house sitter. My mother and I were happy to oblige; their mansion in Beverly Hills was a nice step-up from even the two-bedroom apartment at the Oakwood corporate housing. There was a minor hitch about the place, but the producer was sure we wouldn’t mind: it was the house that the Menendez brothers had killed their parents in just a few years earlier.
The house was about 9,000 square feet and had twenty-three exquisitely decorated rooms. If those felt too confining, there were manicured grounds, a pool, tennis court, and great trees to climb. The place was so enormous that the producer had decided to keep the live-in maid employed while we were there, just to help us take care of the place. Maria had her own wing of the house, near the kitchen.
The tennis court had one of those automatic ball shooters so that one can work on one’s backhand before the ladies come over for tiny sandwiches that the maid brings out on a sparkling silver tray. I spent hours outside trying to master that machine while stinging, gray ash from the L.A. fires floated down angelically around me. Los Angeles frequently burns in a phenomenon nonchalantly called “fire season” and the Santa Ana winds carry the ash even into the exclusive 90210 zip code. I’d play tennis until the burning in my lungs got to be too much, and then retreat to the air-conditioned mansion to cool off by lying face down on the marble entryway floor.
Besides burning ash, there was another obstacle to spending time outside. Graveline Tours frequently cruised the house, telling tourists the chilling tale of the brothers who shot their parents in cold blood. The decked-out hearse stopped in front of the house as the windows rolled down and sightseers stuck their long lens cameras out. The tour guide detailed the slayings through a speaker.
“On August 20, 1989, Lyle and Eric, who were twenty-one and eighteen at the time, allegedly shot their parents to death in this very house. Jose was shot point-blank in the back of the head. Kitty, who attempted to run for her life, was shot several times before she died. The brothers then came out to this very lawn out front here, crying and wailing that someone had killed their parents…”
I heard the monologue so many times I could have given the tour. The house was a particular hot spot because the trial for the brothers was going on while we lived there. People apparently felt that it might help their cause to stand in front of the house and yell at us, “Lyle and Eric are innocent! It was self-defense for years of abuse in that house of horror!” They came at all times of the day and night, pleading for the lives of these boys they didn’t know. They rattled the gate and begged for their mercy. They held up handmade signs and sobbed. I wasn’t sure how to explain to them that I had no control over the legal details. I just slept in Lyle’s bedroom, that was all.
Surprisingly, the house was not that creepy. It didn’t feel like a place of torture and murder. You expect that from dark places with low ceilings, not from a house with a brightly wallpapered sunroom and a restaurant quality kitchen. How could terrible things happen in a place with a screening room that was fully stocked with movies that were still in theaters?
The maid seemed unbothered by it all so I tried to take my cues from her. Maria was a tiny, quiet woman, not much bigger than me, who seemed to simply appear in the middle of a room without ever approaching. At first, the idea of having “help” that was always around was wildly unnerving. Home to me was always the place I could walk around in my underwear or pick my nose in privacy, but this was like having company all the time. The kind of company who wore a crisply pressed uniform and raked the plush carpeting with a little tool after I walked through the living room.
Maria was endlessly intriguing. After a while, I started operating under the assumption that the house came with a built-in buddy for me. Still a little short on companions, I followed her around as she did her work, attempting to befriend her. Not sure if something got lost in translation or if she just had no interest in the kid who stalked her and belly-flopped on the down-filled designer pillows. Regardless, Maria didn’t show much interest in me beyond saying, “Excuse me, Missus,” as she re-fluffed everything that had been in my path.
When Maria went home for her day off every week, I would stand outside the door to her quarters and try to guess what was inside. What do you keep in your work bedroom? What do you need for your halflife? Maybe it was a sad place, covered in photos of the children that she had to leave behind, so that she could dust the original Botero statues in the foyer. Or maybe it was her secret hideaway, removed from the constraints of family responsibilities, where she could decorate to her own taste and keep all the things she didn’t want to share. I never got the guts to go in and see how Maria lived. I would just touch the door to her room, outlining the grooves in the heavy wood and wonder how she managed it. Maybe everyone felt split in two by their work, feeling, like I did, that in either place we were always leaving an important part of ourselves behind. I never was able to explain that I had hoped Maria could teach me how to live with it.
The master bedroom had large, connecting his-and-hers bathrooms. One was drenched in pink marble and the other in black marble. Our producer friend said that she never used the giant pink bathtub. Before she left for New York, she explained that Michael Jackson, who the Menendez family bought the house from, surely used to bathe the monkey in that tub. She also pointed out that Elton John had owned the house before The King of Pop, so who knows what had gone on in there? There was just no way that tub could ever get “clean-clean” even with Maria’s meticulous attention. She advised me to use one of the other nine bathrooms for my bathing needs. The fact that the tub disturbed her more than the patricide/matricide was kind of disconcerting.
Despite the fact that the house was a far cry from anything I had ever known, the mansion became just like any home after a while. I comfortably bounded up the grand curving staircase, taking the steps two at a time. The marble bathroom became less impressive as I realized that it was no more functional than the Formica I was accustomed to. I knew the exact timing of how to press the button and run out of the ten-foot-tall, mechanical iron gate before it slammed shut. Opening the massive entry doors became as routine as opening the hollow plywood doors of the Oakwood apartment 202 G. My suitcase was there, so I was home.
One day, I was stretched out on the leather couch, flipping channels on the theater screen that acted as a television. There was some Hollywood pseudo-news show that was giving an update on the ongoing trial of the Menendez brothers. Suddenly, a black and white photo of the murder scene flashed on the nine-foot screen; a body lying on the floor, one on the couch, covered in dark splotches of blood. The photos made me catch my breath and my skin got prickly. I started pondering the fragility of life…but, wait. Those windows in the photo…they looked familiar. I glanced behind me. Yep. It was this room. I looked down at the floor next to the couch I was sitting on. Sure, it was a different couch, but it was in the same position. They were right here. Bloody. Swollen. Dead. Massacred. I turned off the TV.
It had been easy to avoid information overload about the murders. This was in the blissful time before the Internet and 24-hour news networks, when getting information actually took some time and effort. I knew the murders had happened in the house, but seeing the details in black and white was something different. It was a little harder to sleep after that. I watched the protesters outside the gates of the house and wanted to invite them in to sit on the couch and look at that photo. I didn’t know what the answer was, I didn’t know if it was prompted by insanity or greed or self defense. All I knew was that something very, very sad had happened in the living room.
The producer had assured us that the house had been remodeled since the murders and somehow that really did make everyone feel better. I’m not sure why. That’s a very L.A. mindset, thinking that a facelift changes the soul. There is an assumption that what something looks like on the outside is the important part. The content, the suffering, and the history don’t matter.
So, we accepted the house for what it was: a place we pretended was home, while I went to work and pretended to be other people. We pretended that the remodel changed the house in a fundamental way while the people crying at the front gate pretended that there could be sense made of any of it.