Beneath a Starlet Sky Read online

  “And there isn’t one photo of you without that sketchbook,” Lev adds, turning his inquisitive green eyes to me.

  “I told them both to document their feelings,” Mom says. “It wasn’t easy for them growing up in Hollywood with busy parents.”

  “‘Busy’ is a nice way of putting it,” I say under my breath. Totally consumed with their lives would be more accurate. It was pretty much Chris and me against the world. Still is.

  “Lola told me she wanted to be a fashion designer when she was seven,” my father says, popping an entire rugelach in his mouth.

  “He showed up the next day with a Moleskine journal and said, ‘Draw what inspires you,’” I say to Lev. “It’s the same kind of journal I carry with me everywhere to this day.”

  “Oh, Lev, you’ve never seen this one.” Kate offers up the photo album. “This is the famous mother-daughter Santisi shot.”

  “It kinda says it all,” I mutter.

  “This is where Lola’s love of fashion began,” my mother says, laying a protective manicured hand on the photo Papa took the night I was born. “She was born on Oscar Night, you know.” Mom’s still in her Thierry Mugler one-shoulder black-and-silver sequined minidress in the delivery room at Cedars. I’m sucking on my mother’s boob and she’s sucking on a Camel Light. “She’s given me fashion advice for the Oscars ever since,” she says, flipping to a family photo from the night my father won his first Oscar for The Assassination. The Santisis: a more slender version of my father in the forefront, the warrior chief puffing proudly on a Cohiba, wave of dark hair, olive skin, and salt-and-pepper beard. My mother, standing slightly behind my father in the cream Chanel I picked out for her, blond hair smoothed into a gentle wave as she tugs absentmindedly on a diamond-studded ear with one hand and waves a Camel Light at the camera lens with the other. Us kids at their feet: eleven-year-old Chris aiming his camera at whoever’s taking the picture so that his face is covered by his mop of golden brown hair. He’s paired his tux with Converse. And me, eight years old in the white taffeta Lacroix pouf I paired with a black camisole with white polka dots and black patent Mary Janes—and of course—my sketchbook tucked beneath an arm to document my favorite Oscar gowns.

  “Oh my god, look at this one,” Kate laughs as she flips to a shot of the two of us as teenagers.

  Kate has her Polo-clad arm draped over my plaid grunge-shirted shoulder and we’re on the Texas set of my father’s movie, Bradley Berry. We had as much in common as Lindsay Lohan and Rachel McAdams in Mean Girls. She was a chocolate-haired, blue-eyed, lacrosse-playing, straight-A preppie who took notes furiously on a steno pad as a PA on the set. And I was a fishnet-stocking-wearing, Converse-All-Star, black-eyeliner-wearing, PE-failing, straight B-minus preppie-hater who was perpetually serving detention at Crossroads, my alternative high school, for tardiness. And the only notes I was taking were in the margins of Teen Vogue. But we bonded after she saved me from my first broken heart over Actor Boyfriend No. 1. And I was there—I cringe to think—the night Kate lost her virginity to Christopher on that Texas set. Those days all he was into was the Super 8 camera he toted with him everywhere.

  “You were smoking hot at sixteen.” My brother leans in to look at the shot. “Even if you were a total prep,” he adds, kissing Kate on the ear as he does.

  “Not my best look,” she adds.

  “Who’s this?” Lev asks, flipping to a weathered black-and-white photograph taken on a gritty sidewalk in front of a sign that says HUGO’S CIGARS.

  “That was my father’s shop in the Bronx,” my mother says, leaning back in her chair as if readying herself for a plane’s takeoff, resting her palms in her lap face-up on her Bedouin number. “My parents moved from a small village in Southern Spain when I was three years old. I must be about five years old in this picture.” My grandfather stands proudly, dark hair slicked with pomade, a cigar resting between his lips, my grandmother beside him in a simple flowered housedress, her dark hair in a matching bob to my mother’s, an only child standing in front of them. I barely recognize this little girl as my mother, startling blue eyes looking shyly at the camera in a simple white dress and with the natural dark hair of her childhood before she became a blonde. “We had nothing,” she says matter-of-factly.

  “You had your beauty,” my father adds, smoothing out his orange sarong, “and your brains.”

  “It’s what got me out,” she says. “My mother always told me to educate myself. She took me to get my first library card the second we got into the country. Every second that my mother could get away from the Johnson’s house, where she was a housekeeper, she’d take me to the Bronx library. We’d sit in the stacks and read. When I went off to model in New York at seventeen, my schooling was at the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney, the Met. I would spend days on end in the museums just soaking it up.

  “And then of course I met Paulie when I was just twenty-three years old, and he opened up the world to me. He gave me Becket and Pinter and took me to art house movie theaters to see De Sica and Fellini and Hitchcock. If my New York modeling days were undergraduate studies, then Paulie’s been my graduate school.”

  My father leans into the photo for a closer look. “Blanca’s father was a tough bastard.”

  “He was very handsome and a famous philanderer,” my mother adds. I look to my father and can only wonder: Do we all end up with our fathers in the end? Then I look to Lev and in my mind let out a very emphatic: NO. “My mother forgave it because it was cultural, really, and maybe generational, and of course she was crazy about the bastard.”

  “And because he loved her and she knew that,” my father says quietly, tipping off his Panama hat and looking at it in his large hand, then just as quickly popping it back on. “Blanca’s mother made the best empanadas. She won me over with those.” He chuckles.

  “Are they still alive?” Lev asks as he unrolls the sleeves of his button-down shirt and crosses his arms in front of his chest. Did it get cold in here or is he uncomfortable, I wonder, as I scoot my chair away from my father and closer to Lev, wrapping an arm around him.

  “Very much so,” Chris chimes in, “with the rest of the retired Jews from the Bronx and Brooklyn living Happily Ever After—in Boca Raton.”

  “When I was able, the first thing I did was get them out of the Bronx,” my Mom says. “My father had a dream of living by the ocean. When I took him to find a house in Florida, we walked out to the beach, he dropped to his knees and kissed the sand. My mother had to help him up and as she did she said, ‘Blanca, it’s so pink here.’ Then she looked out to the sea and said, ‘I’m going to get a lot of reading done.’ My father has a chess club. My mother has a book club. They take salsa classes together. They have a mojito on their balcony and watch the sunset every night.”

  “It’s good of you, Blanca,” Lev says simply.

  Suddenly looking at my mother’s heavy eyelids, weighed down by all of that makeup, I have one of those rare moments where I see her as a human being and not just as my mother. It hits me in the gut just how hard it was for her growing up, and that in the end—despite everything—she took care of her parents. And I can’t help but look to my father and think how eerily similar this through-line seems to be. But then I’ve gotten so lost in this rewind of The Santisi Chronicles that I’ve momentarily forgotten the cameras circling around like vultures looking for crumbs. And I see my mother again, for all of her complexity: one moment totally caring and the next totally self-involved. Looking at the family shots, her image sticks to me like a second skin, that habit of absent-mindedly tugging on her ear with a faraway look in her eye. That look: Discontent? Longing? Ambition? This Sephardic Jewish girl from the Bronx who made it to Hollywood by route of a modeling career, by route of Paulie Santisi, dreaming of more for herself than being married to Famous Director. But as the cameras for Wristwatch Wives buzz about, I wonder, is this really what she wants?

  “I think everyone’s had enough of a walk down Santisi Lane,” I say
, pushing back my chair and taking an armful of dishes. At least I have. “Kate, help me with the dishes.”

  Kate and I are clearing the table when she shuts the kitchen door and faces me.

  “Lo,” she says, gripping my arm so hard I can feel my veins clamp shut. “Your father’s right. Chris has to do something. He’s doing absolute crap. It’s driving me nuts.”

  “But I thought you liked his commercials! You said—”

  “Lo, who cares if Adweek called him the new Michel Gondry? He’s still shilling for Lexus and Grey Goose when he should be making movies. It’s like he’s afraid of success. Why doesn’t he give a crap about doing anything worthwhile anymore?” I can’t tell whether those are tears of anger or frustration filling her eyes. “Can’t you talk to him? He won’t talk to me anymore! We don’t talk!”

  “Kate, please, not now. I’m barely saving my own career at the moment. We have so much riding on Nic Knight wearing the Julian Tennant gown in San Quentin Cartel—thank god for that—and we need this Baz Luhrmann gig desperately. Of course the damn recession had to hit right when Julian Tennant finally got the official stamp of backing by LVMH. It was our big break but it seems like all that’s breaking is the bank.” I stop myself from having a full meltdown right there on my parents’ kitchen floor because I can see my best friend is feeling awfully desperate herself. “Look, Kate, okay, don’t worry, I’ll talk to Chris—” and then there it goes. Lev’s beeper going off. Now, this is a sound that I’ve learned to dread, especially when we’re eating Chinese out of the containers while curled up on the couch in our PJs. But tonight it’s as though the bells of St. Peter’s are reverberating through the house. As in, saved by the bell. Get us out of here!

  “Jesus, that fucking beeper again. Lo, how do you stand it?”

  I squeeze my best friend’s arm. “Kate, I’ll talk to Christopher, I promise,” I tell her. “C’mon, we’ve got to get Lev out of here before Papa tells him how much his world-famous dermatologist makes, and before my mother breaks out my bat mitzvah video.” I lead Kate back to the dining room, where Lev is scraping back his chair.

  “I’m sorry to have to say this, but I’m wanted back at the ER,” he says. “We’ve got two gunshot wounds and one is bleeding out.”

  “Oh, how fabulous,” my mother squeals, followed by a confused silence from all of us—except for the camera crew, who are quickly packing up their equipment. “Lev, this is the perfect opportunity to share the important work you do with the entire country,” she says as if she’s Lesley Stahl and this is 60 Minutes.

  “Oh, no, that’s not going to work,” Lev says matter-of-factly, which makes me love him even more than I thought was humanly possible, because this is a man who will stand up to my parents. “No one in the ER except essential medical personnel. Sorry, Blanca.”

  “Well, maybe we could just stand outside the operating room? Alex is very discreet. He worked on Keeping Up with the Kardashians.”

  I can’t help smiling. Another reason I love Lev: He has no idea who the Kardashians are. “Blanca, I’m sorry, but it’s a definite no.” I’m witnessing a miracle. Lev doesn’t care who my parents are, whether they can get him into the VF Oscar party or into Cut for dinner on short notice.

  Mom tries to take her defeat graciously. “I understand, dear. But will you come back and tell us all about it?” And by “us,” I’m pretty sure she means Alex’s crew.

  “Absolutely,” Lev assures her. “Blanca, Paulie, so glad to have gotten the chance to meet you,” he says, giving my mother a hug and trying to do the same with my father, which turns into an awkward handshake-meets-side-of-the-body arm-slap. “Lola, I’ll drop you on the way.”

  “Lev, please go ahead. You’re needed for far more important things. I’ll get a ride home with Christopher.”

  “You sure?” he asks, looking to Christopher for the signoff and then back to me.

  “Absolutely positive,” I say, disappointed that I won’t be able to make up for our time at Chez Insane Asylum with some time alone but relieved just to get him out of here. “I’ll walk you to the car.”

  When we’re safely outside with the palm trees and wisteria, he wraps his arms around me.

  “Thank you so much for enduring that,” I say into his chest.

  “Oh please, it was fun for me,” he says, “and now I understand what you’re talking about. I just hope they filmed my good side.”

  “You’re the best,” I say to him. I sigh out loud at the healthy distance Lev has from this Hollyweird thing and feel so, so grateful for my Doctor Boyfriend. This man who comes from the other end of the world from here, from a “normal” family, the kind as a kid I’d always dreamed of being a part of: parents who cheered from the sidelines of soccer games, whose family actually ate dinner together and talked about the state of the world over Cheerios at the breakfast table, all from behind their white picket fence in Cambridge, Mass, where his mom and dad were doctors and took turns as president of the PTA. This was the world I wanted to live in. The Brady Bunch was my freaking favorite show. Of course it turned out that Mr. Brady was gay and Greg had a massive crush on Mrs. Brady, but they all looked so happy on TV. Even if there’s no such thing as “normal,” I can’t help but think for the first time in my life I’ve made a healthy choice in a guy. That maybe I’ve got a shot with him at getting off of Planet Hollywood.

  “And I still love you,” he teases. “Do you still love me, even though I’m not raking it in like Frank Luks, world-famous cardiologist?”

  “I love you,” I say softly as he kisses me good-bye and then runs to his car, calling out as he goes, “See you at home.” See you at home. And those words sound like a song. I watch his car until it’s out of sight.

  * * *

  “You are sworn to absolute secrecy,” my brother says to me on our way back to Lev’s house after we drop Kate off at their place. She’s got a 7:30 A.M. breakfast meeting at The Polo Lounge and needs to finish the Todd Phillips script, Flake, that she’s pitching Nic Knight for. “It’s about a schlumpfy guy who’s an assistant manager at Applebee’s who falls for a gorgeous blond pastry chef at a five-star restaurant and fakes a Le Cordon Bleu diploma to impress her. Nic’s perfect for the lead and I want to get him into comedy.”

  “You have to promise me,” Christopher says, emphasizing it by pulling to the side of the road as we make our way over Coldwater Canyon into the Valley. He pulls up behind the thirty or more cars collected at Britney’s driveway on Mulholland Drive. The paps’ telephoto lenses are resting on their window sills like rifles aiming for a shot at her.

  “Chris, you’re freaking me out now,” I say. “Yes, I’m sworn to secrecy. Now what the heck’s going on?”

  “Have you sensed Kate pulling away from me recently?” Chris asks without looking at me.

  “No,” I lie. This is where your brother and your best friend in a relationship is not exactly ideal. “So what’s the big secret? Is this about Kate?”

  “Well, no, I mean yes, well no, not really, yeah, kinda, you could say—”

  “Would you just tell me already!”

  “It’s about Kate. The movie I’ve been making. I haven’t told anybody; it’s a closed set. It’s a comedy. Inspired by Kate. It’s called Into the Woods. I just finished the final edit. It’s a romantic comedy about two opposites—the guy’s a pot-smoking slacker who isn’t living up to his potential and the girl’s an overly ambitious businesswoman—of course they fall madly in love and hilarity ensues.”

  “Wait, a movie!? You’ve been making a movie? How come you didn’t tell me—or Kate?”

  “I think it might be really good,” he says, looking out at the night sky. Well, this explains the certain gleam that he’s been walking around with for a while. I thought up until this moment that was the look of my brother in love—of his being quote unquote “Into the Woods.” But this look isn’t exactly about being in love with Kate Woods. More like, it’s the look Einstein had before he came up with
the theory of relativity—or Calvin before he came up with jeans.

  “Chris, this is such fantastic news,” I say. Maybe my brother’s living up to his potential after all. “But I still don’t get why you want it to be a secret.”

  “No one knows, Lo, okay,” he says, looking at me for emphasis.

  “I got that part. I got it. No one knows, okay. I will not utter a word.”

  “Except for my production crew and actors who’ve all signed confidentiality agreements to keep it under the radar—and now you. If Papa knew, he’d either slam me or bury me in advice. You know Kate. She’d be absolutely obsessed with helping me with contacts and everything. I’ve got to do this completely on my own. I really need to prove myself—not just to Kate and Papa. But really to myself.”

  “I understand,” I say, as in totally understand. As in, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if I’m walking around with that phrase stamped on my forehead.

  “The only problem is that I’ve plunged myself into huge debt doing this independently. My credit cards are a joke,” Chris says, shaking his head.

  “Um, when do you plan on telling Kate?” I have no idea how she’ll take the news, especially with it being based on her life. Kate’s the most private person I know. And if I know my best friend, she’s not exactly going to be thrilled about the whole debt thing, either. The only kind of debt she’d be interested in is the kind where Colin Firth stands up and says, “This Oscar is for my agent, Kate Woods, to whom I owe a great debt.”

  “I want to wait until I hear back from Cannes to see if it’s been accepted before I tell Kate. Just to get a sense of what kind of league I’m in.”

  “Cannes,” I say, dumbfounded. “You sent it to Cannes?” I mean, I want to be supportive, but the Cannes Film Festival? Now my brother’s dreaming.

  “Okay, so it’s a real long shot. But maybe the South by Southwest Festival? I dunno. We’ll see. I’m just hoping it has a life. And Kate really doesn’t need to know about it until I see what kind of a future there is for it and I’ve pulled myself out of this mess I’ve gotten myself into,” Chris says, resting the weight of his forehead on the steering wheel. “She really doesn’t need to know I fucked up here.”