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You have two messages.
BEEEP
Hello, this message is for Frances Banks. I’m calling from the office of Dr. Leslie Miles, nutritionist. We’re happy to inform you that your space on the wait list for the wait list to see Dr. Miles has finally been upgraded. You are now on the actual wait list to see the doctor. Congratulations. We’ll call you in one to sixteen months.
BEEEP
Hello, Franny, it’s Heather from the agency. You’re confirmed for Niagara today, right? Where’s the … Sorry, all these papers! Here it is. Also, just wondering if—do you have a problem with cigarettes? I’m working on a submission for a cigarette campaign to air in France, I think, or someplace Europe-y. Anyway, you wouldn’t have to actually smoke the cigarette, I don’t think—Jenny, does she have to put it in her mouth? No? Okay, so you’d just have to hold the lit cigarette while smoke comes out of it. You’d get extra for hazard pay. Let us know!
BEEEP
Today, I have an actual audition, which helped me to arise promptly at—well, only a few minutes past—my ideal rising time of eight. But that victory is behind me, and now I stand in front of the bathroom mirror and glare at my reflection in an attempt to look menacing. I’m a matador facing the angriest bull, but I won’t be defeated. Armed with the diffuser attachment by my side, I dip my fingertips deep into the jar of piney-smelling, jiggly Dep gel and pull out a giant dollop of green goo. Today, I’ll get you with quantity—you didn’t see that coming! Take that, hair!
I finally tear myself away from drying and scrunching to face my very small, very packed closet. Over time I’ve realized that commercial characters tend to fall into one of three types, so I’ve gotten it down to three audition uniforms: Upscale Casual (person who works in an office—black blazer with padded shoulders, collared shirt), Mom Casual (person who works at home—denim shirt or plain sweater, khakis), and Slutty (person who dresses slutty). I’m so used to choosing an outfit to play someone else that on my days off, I struggle to get dressed as myself. I keep trying different looks, but I’m not sure what “me” wears yet. A few weeks ago I thought I’d found it: I’m bohemian, that’s it. I wear hippie skirts and hand-embroidered cloth shirts. I’m colorful but laid back. I combined the best of my flow-y pieces and proudly modeled them for Jane.
“Was there a clearance sale at Putumayo?” she said, after a moment of silence.
“It’s my new look,” I told her.
“For the Stevie Nicks Fan Club?”
“Jane, seriously. Say something helpful.”
She tilted her head, studying me carefully. “Honestly, Franny, all I can think of to say is—you look like you work at a really great bakery in Maine.”
I have class tonight after my audition, so today I go for young mom meets acting class: black sweater, black tights, short black wool skirt, and my Doc Martens oxford lace-up shoes—not super momish, but practical for walking. I’ve worn this combination so many times before that today my all-black outfit feels a little boring, a little blah. What would Jane do, I think to myself, and pull a chunky brown leather belt from the top shelf of the closet, slinging it low around my hips. Finally, taking weather and product into consideration, I take the top part of my hair and tie it into a small black velvet scrunchie on top of my head.
The phone begins to ring from its place on the landing between my room and Jane’s.
“Hi, Dad.”
“Hello?”
“Yes. ‘Hi, Dad,’ I said.”
“Franny? This is your father.”
“Dad. I know.”
“How did you know it was me?”
“I told you. We have caller ID now.”
“Is it curable?”
“Dad. It’s that thing where your number comes up when you call.”
“What a horrible invention. Why would anyone want that?”
“So you know who’s calling before you pick up.”
“Why don’t you just say, ‘Hello, who’s calling’?”
“Dad. What’s up? I have an audition.”
“To the point, then. Your Aunt Mary Ellen wanted me to remind you to book a room for Katie’s wedding.”
“Shit—er, shoot. I keep forgetting.”
“Of course the wedding’s not until June, but if you want to stay at The Sands by the shore, she said to book early.”
“Okay, thanks.”
“Franny, I’m worried about you.”
“Why?”
“Well, from my initial calculations, this new telephone identification system could save you upwards of twenty to twenty-five seconds per day. I’m concerned about how you’ll adjust to all the new free time.”
“Har har.”
“Also, one of my students says there’s a show called Friends? Apparently it’s a popular one. Maybe you should try to apply for that.”
“Dad, it doesn’t work that way. Besides, I’m not skinny enough for television.”
“Who wants to be skinny like those girls? Those girls look sick. You’re healthy.”
“I don’t want to look healthy.”
“Who doesn’t want to be healthy?”
“I want to be healthy. I just want to look sick.”
“And for this, you studied the classics,” he says with a sigh.
My father cares about literature and poetry, the symphony and the opera. He owns just a small black-and-white television with tinfoil attached to the antenna, which he uses mainly to watch the news. He doesn’t understand what I’m doing exactly, but he tries to be supportive. The year I moved to New York, he gave me my brown leather Filofax. “To keep a record of your appointments,” he said. “You’ll have no shortage of them, I’m sure.”
My father and I have always been close, especially since the day he pulled me out of school in the middle of making clay ashtrays in Mrs. Peterson’s sixth-grade art class and told me, while sitting in his beat-up Volvo in the parking lot, that Mom had died. He explained that her car had been hit when she accidentally turned the wrong way down a one-way street, and I thought:
He’s wrong.
But in my heart I knew he was telling the truth.
For some reason, instead of imagining my mother’s face, or trying to think of the last thing she said to me, all I could picture was the worn burgundy paperback cover of J. D. Salinger’s Franny and Zooey, the book she named me after. I think I was in shock, since accidentally turning the wrong way down a one-way street just didn’t seem like something that could possibly have happened to my intelligent, observant mother, who noticed even the smallest details. “Look at this beautiful thing, Franny,” she’d say of a chipped porcelain cup she picked up for pennies at a flea market. “Look at the tiny dot of yellow on the pink petals. See?”
So I pretended it wasn’t happening to me. I imagined it was happening to someone else. I’m not sure if that had anything to do with me becoming an actor, but that’s the first time I remember realizing that it was easier to think about what I’d do in someone else’s shoes than mine, and that pretending was a way to feel better.
Almost.
After hanging up with my dad, I think I hear Jane downstairs, home from the set which means I might actually get something to eat before I get on the train.
“I made it onto the actual wait list!” I call while coming down the stairs.
“To see the famous nutritionist person?”
“Yes. Also, do I have a problem with cigarettes?”
“You seem to be doing just fine with them,” Jane says, dumping a large brown bag onto the top of our never-used oven with a thud. She’s wearing a trench coat we found at the Goodwill in Prospect Heights, and her signature giant red vintage sunglasses. Jane grew up in Greenwich Village in Manhattan, and has style. Where I struggle to match a black shirt with black pants, she throws on jeans and a T-shirt and nine chunky cuffs on one wrist with an air that says, “So? I dare you to not find this cool.” She shops at Century 21 and Bolton’s and secondhand stores, and somehow makes it all look expensive.
“Wait—Jane Levine, you’re not just getting home, are you?” I ask, peeking into one of the brown bags. “Can they do that to you?”
“They can do anything to me. I’m not union.” Jane leans dramatically on the door frame between the kitchen and Dan’s room, and puts the back of her hand to her forehead, the way they do in black-and-white films when they’re about to faint. “This movie,” she sighs. “They’re trying to kill me. Russell sent me out for a McD.L.T. at four A.M. The McDonald’s in Times Square was closed because of a shooting. But I found another open one in Midtown, and Russell now wants to have ten thousand of my babies. A bunch of us were hanging out in his trailer after wrap this morning. We had mimosas!” She grins crazily. “I’m sort of drunk!”
Jane is trying to become a producer, which is perfect because she’s very smart, and one of those people who inspires confidence in others by appearing to have all the answers even when she has no real factual information. In the meantime, she’s a production assistant on the new Russell Blakely movie, Kill Time. The job seems to entail mostly food retrieval, occasional paperwork delivery, and attending to the whims of the movie’s star. Whenever Jane talks about Russell Blakely, all I can picture is that line everybody was quoting from his last movie, Steel Entrapment, where he calls out to Cordelia Biscayne, “Honey, I’m home,” while hanging by one hand from the landing gear of a helicopter, bare-chested.
“Today’s specials from the set of Kill Time: an assortment of bagels that were only out on the craft service table for about three hours, but are not, sadly, accompanied by cream cheese, and that Chinese rice thing that Dan likes, which I don’t think was too aggressively sneezed upon.”
“Bagel, please. And outfit approval, if you can see anything through those shades.”
“Please. I’m a professional.” Jane dips her glasses slightly, but only slightly, down her nose, and studies me carefully.
“Now, of course, I’ve seen this outfit before. But today, it’s really speaking to me, positively singing to me with personality. Today it says: happy housewife who loves staying at home, who’s devoted to her family and possesses an enthusiasm for floor wax seldom seen in the Western world.”
“Close. Passionate love of clean clothes.”
“Ahh. Laundry detergent! You’re perfect. So wholesome, I want to run to the laundromat immediately. That face! Familiar, yet a breath of fresh air, and your hair seems positively subdued.”
“Thanks, Janey.”
“I would, however, lose the belt.”
I hang my wayward attempt at fashion on the banister, and for no particular reason decide to make a dramatic entrance out of the kitchen/alcove into the living room where Dan is working, and pose, Price Is Right style, like I might be illuminating the features of a NEW CAR!
“Hey, Dan,” I say. “Do I look like someone with really clean clothes?”
“Hmmph?” he says, not looking up.
My first pose having gone unappreciated, I decide to change it up and attempt an even more dramatic attitude, a sort of King Tut, Egyptian-tomb look.
“Dan,” I say, standing mummy style, hands bent in an L-shape at the wrists. “Jane’s home. She brought food.”
“Garphmm,” he mumbles, scribbling furiously in his notebook.
Finally, I clap my hands at him. “Dan, emergency! Your fly is open!”
“What?” he asks, finally looking up, blowing his bangs out of his face. “Sorry, Franny, I’m really struggling with the Photar creatures.” Dan is trying to write a science-fiction movie for some sort of competition. I’m sure he’ll win. He was apparently a straight-A student at Princeton, and no one is more passionate about aliens than Dan. When he tries to describe the story to me, I find myself counting the planks in our floor, weighing the merits of vegetable versus scallion cream cheese, but I’m sure it’s better than it sounds.
“How’s my hair? I’m taking an apartment-wide poll.” For some reason, this time my question is accompanied by a weird sort of tap-step flourish, in order to “sell it.”
I hate myself. I must be stopped.
“Um, big?” he says, hopefully.
“Huh?”
“Well, that’s what you’re going for, right? Big, with a sort of curly fountain thing on top?”
From the kitchen/alcove I can hear Jane snort, as though orange juice just came out of her nose. Worse, I realize that while waiting for Dan’s answer, I’ve stayed sort of frozen, still holding my Bob Hope—movie, high school dance recital jazz-hands pose. Dan just stares at me.
Defeated, I let my hands drop to my sides.
“Yes, ‘curly fountain’ is definitely what I was after. Thanks, Dan.”
As I start out on the six-block walk to the Seventh Avenue subway station, I decide this: I must work harder to achieve my goal of not seeking approval from those whose approval I’m not even sure is important to me. This includes, but is not limited to, people I grew up with who I see when I go home for Thanksgiving; people with real jobs of any kind, especially those requiring suits or high heels; people in my acting class; people who work at Barney’s New York; people on the subway; taxi drivers who question my choice of route; people who work at the deli on Eighth Avenue where I sometimes ask for extra mayo; other people’s mothers; dance teachers, aerobic instructors, or those who habitually wear or have seen me in spandex, and gargantuan freak boys who write about Photar creatures.
I must not seek approval from absolutely everyone, or anyone really. Actresses should be poised and confident, like Meryl Streep and Diane Keaton. I should be more original and unique, like they are. I’ll take to wearing men’s ties!
The woman behind the glass who sells the subway tokens eyes me warily. I’ve been known to pay my $1.25 in small change, sometimes in the very smallest. It’s not a proud moment when I’m holding up the line while she counts my pennies, but some days it’s come to that. Today, though, I have actual paper money. We share a nod, like things might be looking up for both of us.
I put my token in the slot, and as I wait for my train, I decide to use my time on the platform to think only positive thoughts, in the hopes that I might create a more positive outcome at my audition today. I read somewhere that positive thinking is very powerful and you should train your mind to think about happy things more often, instead of letting it wander to why your jeans feel tight or whether you have enough in the bank to take out twenty dollars, or if there will ever come a day where your life isn’t measured in twenty-dollar cash withdrawal increments.
Positive thoughts. Positive thoughts.
It’s not always easy to think positive thoughts.
Um.
Just start somewhere.
Accomplishments.
Positive things in my life right now.
Um.
I’m alive.
The obvious. Always a good place to start.
I had a good time with Clark over the holidays.
Not an accomplishment, exactly, but still, a fun thing to think about.
Clark and I met at freshman orientation and were inseparable from that day on. Everyone who knew us assumed we’d get married. We never talked about it exactly, but I’m pretty sure we both thought the same thing.
Then Clark only got into law school in Chicago—not in New York at Columbia, like we’d planned. He asked me to come with him, he wanted us to move in together: “They have great theater in Chicago, too,” he’d said, but I couldn’t give up on New York, not before I’d given it a try. So we made one of those “agreements” to sort of take a break and see where we were after he finished school in three years. That’s where my deadline came from—I figured if he could get a law degree in that amount of time, it was long enough for me to make some measurable progress, too. I’ve had a few dates since then and he probably has, too, but nothing serious. And when we see each other it’s still like no time has passed. He tells me every time he knows we’re going to end up together.
“Are you sure you won’t come back with me now?” he asked last time, as I waited with him at his gate at the airport.
“I just—not yet.”
“Okay,” he said. And then, with a wink: “Call me when you change your mind.”
Sometimes, when the tips are bad and my feet ache, I wonder why I’m putting off the inevitable. I wonder why I don’t just pick up the phone and move to Chicago rather than continuing to attempt something that has a less than five percent success rate.
But for some reason, I don’t.
As much fun as I have with Clark, it can also be confusing when I see him. I miss him, a lot sometimes …
Shit.
Do you see why focusing on the positive is such tricky business? You’ve got the slippery guy for a minute, and then he turns all negative on you. I’ll be more specific—I’ll just think positive work thoughts. Thinking about my personal life is not helping me. I came to New York to be an actress, not a girlfriend or a happy person.
Positive thoughts about work.
Well.
I did book that one job.
Before Thanksgiving, right after Dan moved in, I got a small regional commercial, my first, for a local discount clothing store called Sally’s Wear House. It was a holiday promotional to run for just a few weeks, featuring really bulky sweaters, made out of acrylic and ramie, whatever that is. Mine had a gray and white argyle pattern and padded shoulders with white fur trim around the neck and cuffs, and I had to wrap my arms around myself in a hug, and say, “Yummy, Yummy.” In another shot, I had to jump up in the air and yell, “I’m dreaming of a white Christmas!” Then, I had to look up at absolutely nothing and say, “Ohhh, snowflakes.”
The three of us went out to the upstairs Chinese place, whose name we can never remember, to celebrate. Then the commercial happened to come on a few weeks later, while we were all together watching Law and Order, and first we all screamed, then Jane practically fell down laughing. Not in a mean way, but she just couldn’t believe I’d managed to appear happy while wearing such an ugly sweater. It was shocking to see myself on television. No one had thought to set the VCR, and it was gone in what felt like a few seconds. All I could remember after it was over was thinking that my face seemed round, and I looked much taller than the other girl I was with.
“I’m a giant!” I said, covering my face and peering out between my fingers.
“You’re not a giant,” Jane said, still laughing/coughing/hicupping. “You’re a f*cking great actress is what you are. I totally believed you loved that sweater that came from where angora goes to die.”
“Those snowflakes they added looked so fake,” I said, still in shock.
“But you looked great,” Jane said. “Really pretty.”
Finally, Dan spoke up.
“So, it’s an ad for Christmas sweaters?” Once again, nailing the obvious.
“Um, yes, Dan,” Jane said, rolling her eyes at me. “I think we can all agree that what we learned in those thirty seconds is that the commercial was for Christmas sweaters.”
Dan nodded slowly, as if he were making a very important decision about something, then he smiled at me.
“Well, Franny, I felt that,” he said. “It was very Christmas-y. You looked like Christmas, Fran.”
What does that even mean, to say someone “looks like” Christmas? Jane and I shared a look, and I immediately began to formulate my snappy comeback, the way I do whenever I’m complimented. But something about his sincerity stopped me, and for some reason, for once in my life, I nodded at Dan and blushed a little, and just kept my mouth shut.
I made seven hundred dollars on the sweater job, the biggest amount by far I’ve ever seen on a single check. But I haven’t booked anything else since. It was probably a fluke. I’ll probably never work again.
Positive thoughts.
Well.
I got that one job.
And today I have a chance to get one more.
There. I did it.
When the subway arrives, I find a seat and take a deep breath. The D train between Brooklyn and Manhattan is one of my favorite lines, because at one point the train emerges from underground and goes high over the river along the Manhattan Bridge. Sometimes I put on my headphones and listen to music, sometimes I do the New York Times crossword, and sometimes I read, but no matter what else I’m doing, I consider it very bad luck if I forget to look up as the train crosses over the East River, even just for a second, before it goes back underground. It’s just a superstition, but looking at the river, the boats, the sign leaving Brooklyn that says “Watchtower” in big red letters, is a ritual that reminds me I am small, I am one of thousands—no—one of millions of people who looked at this river before me, from a boat or a car or the window of the D train, who came to New York with a dream, who achieved it or didn’t, but nonetheless made the same effort I’m making now. It keeps things in perspective, and strangely, it gives me hope.