How could I tell them the truth? How would they even understand?
My father was a producer, that much is true, but he was also the sleaziest guy nobody in Hollywood knew. He made low-grade action films, straight-to-video thrillers, budget clones of whatever was big at the time. Every person on set from the director down to the runner was a friend of a friend, a connection only there because they knew someone – or something. Some of the movies ended up being cult hits, ‘so bad they were good’ – most of them were just bad, though.
It’s no lie that my mother was an actress, either, though only for a couple of movies, until she met my father. Only until she got married, had me, then divorced him a few years later, taking half of what he had. After that she was basically done playing house, and decided to leave me with him for the majority of every year while she’d travel the world, spending what she’d won in the divorce settlement across Europe and the Caribbean islands.
As for the mansion, that might have been the worst part. It’s big and beautiful from the outside, the brick and mortar version of the American dream. From the road it looks like the kind of place a wholesome family might exist; all natural smiles and mealtimes together, ‘how was your day’ and ‘eat up your greens.’ It’s only when you make it through the big gates and start getting up the driveway that you start to see it isn’t. When you get close enough to see the trashed grounds, bimbos and bros lying around stoned and unconscious from the night before. Empty wine bottles floating in the pool and items of clothing hanging off the bushes. The only movement being the maids and cleaners tasked with removing any trace of the fallout from the night before.
I really do know I’m lucky.
My father was a narcissistic asshole, and the mansion was nothing but a monument to his ego. He ruled it like a tyrant, compelling people to party there every night as if he thought they were worshipping him somehow. The people who came were on the fringes of Hollywood themselves, not good enough to make it to the proper A-list events. They were desperate, sketchy, opportunistic. Hopeless men with personality deficiencies who came to be fawned over by young, wannabe actresses too talentless to even pretend to like them. The only thing left for all of them to do was to indulge all their inane desires. Drugs, drink, sex. Growing more pathetic as the parties continued while my father, the mansion, and his guests grew older.
My mom got a pass – not because I thought her disappearing act was right, but because I understood it. And she always remembered to call on Sundays and send a card for my birthday, which was more than I could say for my father and the parade of wives, girlfriends, and step-siblings who’d come and go every year as if our front entry was a revolving door.
So that’s how I spent my childhood, right in the middle of it all. A young kid witnessing adults act so stupidly and irresponsibly that even I could tell something was wrong. Raised by nannies that loved me much more than the pithy salaries my father doled out required. When I got home from my private school, I’d beg the help to let me assist with the chores, gardening, cleaning, whatever. And at night I’d lock my bedroom door and put on a pair of headphones, pretend I was somewhere else.
Really lucky.
I should have grown up a mess. A fuck-up. Seeing all of that before I was even old enough to understand, a permanent sense of unjust anger in my soul, I could have done a million shitty things and forgiven myself. I didn’t, and the only reason I didn’t were my neighbors, who moved into the old, fixer-upper ranch house next door when I was about eleven or twelve. The house was a hand-built bungalow that looked even more humble and smaller than it was for being next to my father’s French Normandy-style mansion. A tiny but meticulously-kept place that became a safe haven for me, that I’d sneak away to at every opportunity to experience a little love and comfort. A home I wished I could live in permanently every second of my childhood.
Kyle and Jessie’s place.
I’m thinking about all this as we drive to the party, but my weighty memories are interrupted by Jessie’s sudden gasp.
“Hey!” she screams from the passenger side. “Stop the car! Pull over.”
“What?”
“Our old house. Look,” Jessie says, nodding towards it and opening the car door, even before I’ve had time to come to a full stop.
“Jessie, wait, we’re already kinda late and I wanna get in and out fa—”
She slams the door shut and I take a deep breath. I’m already struggling to keep it all together, I don’t need Jessie piling on more stress before the birthday party.
I get out of the car and walk around it, stepping towards her with my arms open in a gesture that politely translates as ‘why the fuck are we stopping?’ Jessie’s too busy leaning in to inspect the signpost hammered into the front lawn to notice.