Seeing Stars by Diane Hammond Page A

protested.
    “Yeah, you do.”
    “I eat other stuff, too.”
    “Oh, right, I forgot. Nachos,” Allison said. “And pizza. She eats a lot of pizza. Papa John’s is right down the street from the studio.”
    “We all eat pizza,” Hillary pointed out. Ruth could corroborate that. Every time she’d been in the studio there were pizza boxes scattered around like C-rations.
    “Plus she never has fruit or vegetables,” said Allison.
    “Oh, and like you do?” said Reba, wiping her mouth on her Mimi Roberts Talent Management tote bag.
    “I have an apple or a fruit beverage every day,” Allison said primly. “Especially when I can get someone to drive me to Jamba Juice.”
    Ruth’s blood was pounding in her ears. “Do you girls have any idea how many calories are in some of those drinks? Not to mention how expensive they are.”
    Allison shrugged. “It’s no big deal. I get two hundred and twenty-five dollars a week from Chet. Plus I weigh like eighty pounds and I’m already five foot six.”
    “Well, not everyone is as lucky as you,” Ruth said, and then subsided. “Anyway, Mimi must cook for you at night.”
    Allison just shrugged and looked out the window, clearly bored.
    “Mom,” Bethany said. “ Nobody cooks in LA.”

    R UTH BELIEVED THAT HER STRENGTHS AS A PERSON AND as a woman did not necessarily include parenting. Unable to conceive almost nine years into their marriage, she and Hugh had made their peace with being childless. As middle age approached, Ruth assumed that she and Hugh would gradually, gently , fill the void by developing an unhealthy attachment to some neighborhood child or pet. Then one morning she’d woken up and vomited. When it happened twice more, she’d picked up a home pregnancy test and stared at the pink strip as though it were stamped with hieroglyphics. She’d made herself read the box several times just to make sure she wasn’t taking a no as a yes, because sometimes she got flustered, but there it was: she was pregnant.
    Her first trimester had passed in a state of sleepy astonishment, which was gradually replaced in the second and third trimesters by an unsubstantiated but nagging certainty that she would give birth to a child with terrible birth defects. In the delivery room her first question, once Bethany had been born, was “Is she normal?” She thought the delivery nurse had given her a disapproving look, though it might have been her imagination—yes, she’d opted for narcotics during labor, even though it wasn’t the best thing for the baby; that was the kind of mother she was. When the news came that Bethy was perfect, Ruth believed with all her heart that she’d gotten away with it only because God had been momentarily distracted.
    Sometimes even now, when she looked at Bethany, her ears began to ring, actually ring , with amazement that this exuberant, smart, talented child was hers. She stood in awe: Bethany was a doer, not a watcher like Ruth. To do meant to risk acts of poor judgment, faulty thinking, weak-mindedness, and lack of conviction, all qualities in which Ruth believed she herself abounded. Not so Bethany; which was why, when Mimi Roberts had come to Seattle to give her Acting for the Camera weekend seminar and it had coincided exactly with Bethy’s decision that she wouldn’t pursue musical theater after all—and what stage productions weren’t musical, these days?—Ruth had signed her up immediately. The child had no neuroses, abundant dreams, and significant talent. What could Ruth do but trot along a half-step ahead of her, scattering rose petals in her path?
    And so here they were, tracking a series of yellow plastic signs with High Fivin’ printed both right side up and upside down, with an arrow telling them where and in which direction to turn. Ruth and Bethany had been seeing signs like these nailed to power poles all over LA: CSI: Miami, Ghost Whisperer, Numb3rs, The Closer . Ruth had assumed that the signs, with their