After Ethan had confiscated all their phones and introduced Jared, Deirdre, and Jackie to Sister Benedict, Deirdre called a family meeting in the upstairs bathroom. It was the only room believed to be completely free of video and audio devices. It was possible Ethan had crossed that boundary, too, but Deirdre didn’t have any other choice.
“Listen,” she told her daughters, “from this day forward, we’re not to help the producers or crew in any way. We’ll fulfill the obligations of our contract but only the bare minimum. When they ask us questions, we use one-word answers. When a celebrity stops by, we excuse ourselves. When we’re not busy, we read books, watch television, or use the bathroom. Do you girls understand?”
Jackie was on board before Deirdre had finished her first sentence. Not Megan.
“But, Mom, we’re on TV!” Megan protested, as if the notion were so patently obvious it needed no further explanation. Deirdre was not to be persuaded, but Megan still put up a fight; she stomped, punched the shower curtain, and whined until Deirdre lost her cool.
“Enough, Megan,” she snapped. “This is how it has to be. Do you understand?”
Megan held her head low, like a vulture, offering only the slightest nod of agreement.
This quasi act of civil disobedience from the Stone women was a new problem for Ethan. He could deal with naked aggression, cold-blooded capitalism, but not this. The show, if it didn’t get more interesting soon, would start to lose viewers, and that would be, he knew, the end of his career. He had to find some way to motivate his cast to work.
***
Jared knew to expect the hair loss, but like so many cancer patients, he wasn’t ready for it. All the other crap the tumor was throwing at him—the headaches, the confusion, the missing memories; the nausea, the fatigue, even the weight loss—were somehow internal. It was almost like if he just tried hard enough, he could find a way to beat them.
The hair loss was different. It was tangible proof to the rest of the world that Jared wasn’t just sick, that he was really, really sick. Jared, of course, already knew this. But now that it was irrefutably obvious to anyone who looked at him—though if Jared was honest with himself, the hair loss was only the crowning achievement of his body’s complete and utter deterioration—it made the whole thing seem somehow inescapable.
Not normally a vain man—Jared thought of his own fashion aesthetic, when he bothered to think of it at all, as “homespun”—his first instinct was to get a toupee. Ethan talked him out of it.
“Trust me, Jared, you don’t want one of those things.”
“Why?”
“Because everyone will know it’s fake. And you know how they say the camera adds ten pounds?”
Jared looked down at his withering body and answered, “I hope so.”
“Yes,” Ethan hesitated, not sure how to react to the gallows humor, “well, it’s even worse with toupees. If they look at all suspect in the real world, they’ll look like misplaced pieces of carpet on TV.”
Jared thought about this for a moment. He was about to shrug his shoulders and move on, but then he remembered something. “One of your producers told me that there are plenty of actors with natural hair loss, and that professional makeup artists can work magic so no one will be able to tell the difference. Isn’t John Travolta really bald?”
“Ah,” Ethan responded. Jared didn’t know what that was supposed to mean, but he thought he detected a hint of annoyance. “I see. Well, unfortunately, Jared, the terms of our agreement forbid the network from doing anything more than medically necessary to aid you.”
“Oh.”
“But, hey,” Ethan added, “you’re free to get a toupee on your own. I just don’t think you’d be happy with it.”
Like she had done with the radiation therapy, Deirdre vowed to support whatever decision Jared made with regard to his hair. Which again wasn’t much help.
Not sure what to do, or even what to think, Jared opted for the path of least resistance. America watched him lose his hair.
The Life and Death blog on the People website noted that Jared “went from looking sick to looking terminal.”
Luckily for Jared, he didn’t read People.
***
Jackie’s phone was gone, but she still had her laptop, so she logged on to look for Max. She knew it was a long shot; it was already the middle of the night in Russia, and predictably, Max wasn’t there.
Looking for some other way to occupy her time, Jackie sat down to read the latest onslaught of fan mail. Most of it was very nice, but some of it was creepy. One man, an old man, at least thirty, sent a naked picture of himself. He was fat and hairy, like an ape. Jackie knew she should tell someone, but she worried they would start screening her mail, and outside of school, it was her only connection to the real world. She felt like a bird with an injured wing, unable to fly, too tired to walk.
She read through letter after letter, each offering its “love,” or “support,” or “friendship,” until they started to blur together. Jackie was just starting to nod off when she saw Hazel Huck’s name on the return address of an envelope.