19. Rather than Fame

“Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.” —Henry David Thoreau

Jennifer!

Jen, over here!

Smile!

The familiar yells, the clicking of camera shutters, the sour smell of coffee and unwashed clothing—Jen felt a rush of strange, incongruous recognition to encounter these things not outside a restaurant or nightclub in Los Angeles, but in the erratically decorated yard of North Middleton’s food co-op.

A few days ago, when her picture first appeared in the Cadillac newspaper, Jen had thought briefly of the paparazzi and wondered if they would follow her all this way, once the news made its way out of Cadillac, which she figured might take a few days. She had tried to remember if they followed celebrities around in places that weren’t Los Angeles or New York or London. She usually never traveled outside of those sorts of places, except sometimes on movie shoots, which didn’t count, insolated as they were by the highly visible presence of the security guards, most of them former military and dead-serious about fortifying the borders leading out to civilian territory.

She scanned her memory of the magazines she had seen back when Becky used to read them; she didn’t recall any stories taking place in a non-coastal state. Then again, she couldn’t actually recall any specific stories from the magazines at all—she only remembered the kind of thing they published, a hazy melange of cheating spouses, broken engagements, and weight gain. She remembered a few stories about herself, and friends from Los Angeles. Maybe…just maybe, she could envision a story about a standoffish leading-man who had run off to one of the M-states. Was it Montana? Missouri? Or could it have been Michigan?

Since the day of the Cadillac story, Jen hadn’t left the lake house. Paula and Becky had kept her there, encouraged her to swim and do yoga and appreciate the beauty of nature. She had wondered at the time whether they were hiding her on purpose, hoping that if they ignored the problem it would never arise.

Now Jen felt a little annoyed at her friends; she would have much rather encountered these reporters and photographers with Becky and Paula to help her. Now she would have to deal with them all alone. And yet, she recognized that she herself had been equally in denial, allowing herself to think that she was not interesting enough to follow to such a remote nowhere of a town. Why were they interested, she wondered, trying to consider the question as realistically as she could. Her last movie had flopped, and that had been over a year ago. She hadn’t been working on anything new since her marriage had begun to fall apart. She was hoping she was now on the B-list, that there would be no money to be made by covering every petty detail of her life.

Still, here they were, a small encampment to be sure, but here in North Middleton, two photographers and a reporter hovering amongst the metal statues in the yard of the co-op, five more of them running across the street from their ominous fleet of illegally parked SUVs. They had left all the detritus of a serious encampment: the ground below the SUVs was littered with empty fast food wrappers and plastic soda bottles. Two of the vehicles had magazines lying open on their roofs, suggesting that their owners had been hanging around by the side of the car for quite a while.

Jen automatically raised her hand to her head to check her hair. Her fingertips hit warm plastic mesh—the baseball cap. Oh no, Jen thought, remembering her appearance. She hadn’t taken a shower this morning; her hair was oily and unstyled underneath her hat. Her clothes had been chosen for function—khaki pants and an old soft t-shirt with a picture of a lotus flower on it that used to belong to Becky—and were now covered in the grime of the forest and the road. Looking down at the shirt, she noticed it was damp with sweat. Already the photographers were moving in, crouching at funny angles, while their reporter counterparts tried to get her to make unattractive faces by yelling things at her.

“Jen! Why did you move to Michigan?” asked a woman, the only female of the pack.

“Are you making a movie?” another yelled. “Or trying to get away from Bradley?”

“Tell us about your ‘aircut,” a man shouted, in an odd accent that sounded somewhere between Brooklyn and Australia. “Are you trying to hide your identity?”

All the while, the cameras were clicking away. Jen was annoyed. She hadn’t thought about her appearance all week, since she’d gotten to Michigan. The people here seemed to be dressed for practicality rather than fashion, and Jen was doing the same and enjoying it. She didn’t want to return to the self-conscious necessity of worrying about how she looked. Now she would need to start wearing makeup again, and maybe get a real haircut, and find some of her cuter sweatpants and t-shirts to wear for long walks.

Or…She thought of Fo’s book. Or she could be like the toad and not care. She would wear her ugliness like a robe. She would treat the reporters politely and then go about her business and ignore them.

“Jen,” the woman was yelling, waving her arms, trying to get Jen to make eye contact so the photographer could get a straight-ahead shot of Jen with her frumpy hat and sweaty face. Jen was used to this game, and she knew to keep her head lowered and her face a perfect, unreadable blank.

But instead, thinking of Fo, she tried doing the opposite. Why shouldn’t she let the photographer take her picture? She had nothing to be ashamed of. She had taken a long walk—of course she would be disheveled and sweaty. That was natural, and there was no reason to pretend that nature didn’t affect her just as it did everyone else.

Jen stopped along the path to the co-op door and looked right at the reporter who was frantically calling her name. “What is it?” Jen said.

The woman looked startled for a moment, and then pleased. Her face lit up for just a moment before she regained her journalistic composure. “Is it true that you have come to North Middleton to join a cult?” she asked, holding a little voice recorder up in the direction of Jen’s face.

Wow, thought Jen, honestly startled. Give them a chance to ask anything, and that’s what they come up with? She was determined to be polite, but a polite response to this question was beyond the scope of Jen’s imagination. “I’m sorry, but that’s kind of a stupid question,” Jen said, as cordially as she could, turning back towards the co-op door.

The reporters followed her, energized by her acknowledgment, all shouting questions at once.

“I really need to shop now,” she called out, walking through the co-op door. She could hear them following her as she turned sharply towards the produce section. Her plan was to buy a few fresh groceries to supplement the dry goods Becky had stockpiled, and to cook her first dinner alone later in the evening. She was tempted by the plums and peaches, which would make an easy snack, but she forced herself go look at the vegetables, which she would need to make a truly nutritious meal.

She tried to focus on her shopping as the small group of reporters and photographers trailed her through the store. She didn’t want to answer any more of their inane questions; however, she was not going to cover her face or avoid eye contact. She would go about her business as though they weren’t there, and it didn’t matter how many ugly pictures they took of her, because those pictures would be the truth, and so far, she was happy and proud of the truth of her adventurous move to the Midwest.

After throwing a few small pears and two lemons into a plastic shopping basket she found on the floor, Jen finally located the section she needed: a refrigerated wall stocked with all manner of green items. She saw the large bundles of all the leafy greens that Becky like to cook, kale and chard and collards.

“Jen!” shouted the woman reporter, who had rounded a corner and appeared quite suddenly right next to Jen. Jen turned, startled by the woman’s proximity to her, and by her unnecessary loudness.

She looked straight at the reporter, a blonde woman, perhaps in her forties, or maybe even late thirties, but old-looking. She wasn’t a real blonde; her dark roots were showing two inches down her part, and the ends of her hair were a tortured shade of peroxide-yellow.

Jen noticed, with a wave of disgust, how unhealthy the woman looked. Her skin was greasy, with large pores showing on her nose. Her eyes were bordered underneath with dark purple shadows, and her cheeks were sagging a bit from her face. She must be eating too much of that fast food, Jen thought, now feeling sorry for the woman. And not sleeping enough. Jen had never thought about what horrible jobs the paparazzi had, chasing boring actors like herself from town to town, waiting around in their cars, circling a residence or a business in hopes of getting that one gossip-worthy picture that would earn the next month’s mortgage payment.

The photographer behind the woman took advantage of Jen’s direct gaze to take a series of pictures, the repeated flashes forcing Jen to finally lower her eyes in discomfort. She looked down at the greens again and decided that they were too large and wet to carry in her backpack. Then her eyes fell on the perfect thing for dinner: broccoli. The heads were small and dry and wouldn’t mess up her book or the other contents of her bag.

As Jen reached down to grab the vegetables, one of the male reporters appeared behind his female colleague. He was the tallest one, the man with the strange accent.

“What do you think about Bradley’s baby?” he asked, sounding more Australian than New Yorkerish this time.

Jen’s hand stopped dead on the head of broccoli.

“What?” she asked, in a low, quiet voice that was directed inward at herself.

“His baby, due in October. Do you have any comment?”

Jen swallowed.

“You guys need to leave,” said a voice from behind Jen. She turned, and saw her cashier standing there, looking as sturdy and dependable as Superman come to save her.

“This is a public space,” said the reporter in an angry, rehearsed voice. “We’re within our rights.”

“Actually, this is a private business,” replied the cashier. “I’m the manager, and if you don’t leave immediately, I’m going to call the police.”

At the sound of his raised voice, two more photographers appeared from around the corner of the produce aisle. They’re hoping to catch a fight, Jen thought, her mind flashing suddenly to the fight that she herself had just witnessed at the schoolyard, not forty-five minutes ago.

“Just a few more questions,” the reporter said, quickly. “Jen, about your connection to Groundbreakers—”

The cashier interrupted him. “You need to leave now,” he said. He walked up to the Australian Brooklyner, close, so close that the reporter stepped awkwardly backward to get out of the way, stumbling a bit as he lost his footing.

Jen was sure that the cashier was going to push the reporter, or punch him. But in fact, he didn’t touch him at all. The cashier seemed to puff himself up, to become bigger, so that the air around him was bumping the reporter out of the way. His aura, maybe, Jen thought, wondering which color it would be. The Sapphire for bravery, or the Ruby for impulsiveness?

As the reporter complained and protested, the cashier backed him up all the way to the front door, and then out the door, as he awkwardly juggled his notebook and recorder. All of the other customers were frozen as motionless as Jen, who still stood with her hand touching the broccoli.

The cashier held the door open and called to the other reporters and photographers. “Out, all of you,” he commanded. Like guilty puppies returning to their cages, they filed one by one out of the store.

“Next time I see you here, I call 911,” he said to the last reporter, the woman, as she walked through the door that he was holding open for her. “Tell your friends.” She didn’t look up or reply, just continued walking out of the door.

It was like something from a movie, Jen thought. The cashier closed the door decisively and returned to his cash register, where he straightened his apron, apologized to a waiting customer, and began to ring up her groceries. What a strange day, Jen said to herself. Before today, she had never seen a real fight, and now she had seen two fights in one day, one physical, the other, she supposed, lacking a better word for it, metaphysical.

Around Jen, there was a wave of noise as the other customers expressed their collective surprise and relief to one another, erupting into laughter and joking comments directed at the strangers around them, before they resumed their shopping.

Shaken, Jen looked down at the fruit in her basket and decided that maybe she didn’t need these groceries after all. She thought about returning them to their places, but she didn’t have the energy. All she wanted to do was get her tea and sit down. She placed the basket back on the floor, sliding it to the very edge of the aisle and abandoning it there.

She walked past the cash registers to the espresso counter and ordered her regular black tea.

“Anything else?” the cute espresso girl asked her, smiling. Jen didn’t feel hungry at all, but she knew she needed to eat. She hadn’t eaten anything since her morning toast, and she had walked at least six miles since then. Her plan had been to eat a real lunch—one of the pre-made sandwiches from the cooler, maybe, or some humus and pita bread, and maybe some juice to wash it down, and some fruit for desert—but now her head was racing and she couldn’t imagine eating anything at all.

“A bran muffin,” said Jen, grudgingly, knowing that she needed some kind of food or she wouldn’t make it back home.

She carried her meager lunch over to the cash registers to pay. This would be her first time going through the check-out line herself; during the past week, Becky had always stood in line while Jen and Paula sat down.

There were two check stands open. Jen got into line at the other one, the one without her cashier at it. She had been planning all day to go through his line; in fact, that had been one of her explicit goals for the day. But she didn’t feel like talking to him right now; her nausea had resurfaced, and she felt like things were spinning. Her focus shifted wildly around, from the little bags of pumpkin seeds and dried cranberries on the counter to the old ceiling fans above her head. I can’t see straight, she thought; this was no time to be making friends, or even conversation.

But the cashier at this register was slow, and soon there was nobody in the other line. As the woman in front of Jen rummaged through her purse, looking for her checkbook, Jen’s benefactor cashier caught her eye and beckoned her over to his cash register. She thought about telling him that she didn’t mind waiting in this line, but it seemed rude to rebuff him after he had come to her defense earlier.

She set her paper bag and cup down on the counter and looked up at the cashier, expecting him to say something, some question or explanation or proposal.

“What have you got there?” he asked, pointing at her food. His tone was quiet and polite and his face was carefully blank, only a glimmer of recognition and empathy flashing in his smiling eyes.

“Tea and a muffin,” Jen said, relieved not to have to discuss any of the obvious topics hanging silently between them.

“That’s three fifty-seven,” said the cashier, punching numbers into the cash register only after he had given her the total. Jen pulled her wallet out of the front compartment of her backpack and handed him a five dollar bill.

His hands flew over the cash drawer so quickly that it seemed impossible that he would actually produce her change, but then there it was. He placed the bills and coins directly into her hand, his skin lightly brushing against hers.

Jen was impressed with his discipline. He had gone through that entire transaction without acknowledging that anything unusual had occurred just moments before.

She looked at his face, and noticed his bright blue eyes, which met hers in a direct, steady gaze. She realized that she was being horribly rude to this nice man. He had heroically saved her from those reporters and photographers, and here she was hardly speaking to him. She hadn’t even thanked him yet.

“Thanks,” Jen said.

“You’re welcome,” he answered, smiling.

“No, I mean, about before,” she said, amused that she had succumbed first; she had been dreading discussing the paparazzi with him, and now his reticence had driven her to bring up the subject herself.

“Any time,” he replied, still smiling.

Jen was now absolutely dumbfounded by his conversational restraint. This guy would make a great yoga teacher, she thought. He’d blow Becky and Paula out of the water.

She carried her tea and muffin over to the table by the window, sat down, and placed her book in front of her. She opened it to the page where she had left off, the one that began with the toad haiku, and began to move her eyes over the page.

“We live in a culture that encourages us to identify with those aspects of ourselves which are the most superficial, fleeting, rooted in artifice…”

She was reading in a funny way, she noticed; her eyes were speeding frantically across the page, as though racing to get to the end. She was having trouble actually understanding what she was reading, though. She felt as though she were flying high above the page, and could not ground herself in the words and meanings. She returned to the first sentence once, and then again, determined to slow down and follow Fo’s point.

“…those aspects of ourselves which are the most superficial…”

In a far, hard-to-reach corner of her mind, something was bothering her. She felt that it was something obvious, something that had just happened, but amidst the confusion of the last fifteen minutes, she couldn’t place it. Was it just that the reporters had found her? That they would probably be around for a while before she got too boring to be worth their time? Or the uncanniness of how the cashier had fought them off without touching them? How had that worked? She had been standing there, about to pick up the broccoli, when…

Suddenly it came flooding back, the question that the reporter had asked, that she hadn’t had time to really hear, that had been floating around the very farthest back corners of her attention for the last twenty minutes:

Bradley was having a baby?

That was what he had said, right? Was it true? She rolled the question around in her head. Bradley having a baby. Bradley’s baby. Little baby Bradley. She wasn’t sure what she thought about it. She remembered her tea, and took a large gulp of it, the bitter liquid already growing cool from too much waiting.

Of course, it might not be true. It might just be a rumor: somebody thought the girlfriend was showing a “bump,” or she had gained a little weight, or the couple had been seen browsing in an exclusive baby store on Rodeo Drive. Or the reporter was just saying it to upset her, to get a reaction, hoping to get that prized photograph of Jen going crazy and throwing a hysterical, flimsy punch at the camera. There was definitely no reason to trust anything that came out of the mouths of the paparazzi, who fed off lies like maggots.

But it also might be true, she reasoned. It hardly seemed unlikely; a woman in her mid-twenties, at her peak of fertility, having scored an established older actor on the rebound. Why wouldn’t she get herself knocked up? It would certainly keep her in the spotlight forever. Her career might fade as the sparkle of her youth did, but she would be the mother of Bradley’s baby forever.

Jen expected to feel upset at this thought, and braced for the negative emotions that would hit her at any moment. But as she sat longer with the idea, she realized that she didn’t feel sad about it. In fact, she felt almost relieved. Definitely relieved, to be here, in North Middleton, two thousand miles from Bradley and his girlfriend and his baby and all the press that would follow them, the baby that would be more a story in an entertainment magazine than a real, newly formed, living human being.

As she sat thinking, staring absently at the open book in front of her, the cashier appeared at her table.

“Hi,” he said, pulling a chair over to her table and sitting down on it backwards, his arms crossed casually over the chair’s back.

“Hi,” she said, closing the book quickly and putting it in her lap so he wouldn’t see what she was reading and think it was a self-help guide.

“Good book?” he asked. His face was still carefully blank, Jen noticed.

“So far,” she said. “I just started it.”

“Oh, right,” he said. He shifted in his chair and sat silently, looking at her, as though waiting for her to say something. This was her chance, she thought, to make conversation, to ask about yoga, to learn his name. But she was too worn out for chit-chat. She remembered that she still hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast, and she suddenly felt hungry for the muffin that had been sitting, neglected, in its little waxed-paper bag on the corner of the table. She didn’t want to eat in front of the cashier, though, so she just sat looking back at him.

They faced each other in awkward silence for a moment, and then finally he spoke. “When you’re done in here, I’d be happy to walk you to your car.”

“Walk me to my…” Jen was confused. She didn’t even know this guy; why would she want him to… “Oh,” she said, remembering the photographers and reporters. They seemed a distant, surreal memory, like ghosts, and yet they were without a doubt waiting for her just outside the property lines of the co-op.

“Thanks,” she said, thinking that it would be comforting to be walked out by the cashier, protected by his uncanny ability to deflect the paparazzi without using any force. Then she remembered why this plan wouldn’t work.

“Actually, I don’t have a car with me,” she told him, smiling sheepishly. “I walked here.”

The cashier raised his eyebrows slightly, the only sign that he was impressed.

“Was it a long walk?” he asked. Something in his measured expression led her to suspect that he knew exactly how long a walk it had been, that this is what accounted for his carefully veiled surprise. She wondered if the newspaper article had revealed where she was staying; but probably not, she reasoned, since then the reporters would have been waiting for her at the lake house. She wondered how else he might have found out, what unknown channels of communication conveyed rumors through this small town.

“Do you want a ride home?” the cashier asked. “They’re probably going to follow you.”

For the second time today, Jen was being offered a ride by a strange man. She wondered if this was what happened to everyone when they walked, or only to women, or only wayward celebrities. For all that our culture extols the virtues of walking, Jen thought, no one wants us to actually do it.

“That’s very nice of you,” said Jen. “But I’m not going straight home.”

“I can give you a ride wherever you need to go,” the cashier said. Then, seeing her skeptical expression, he added, “Really, I’m not just being polite. The night manager’s here already and they don’t really need me right now. I’d be happy to drive you.”

She knew the right thing would be to respectfully decline. He was a stranger, and while he was mostly likely harmless, she shouldn’t inconvenience him or draw him into her outlandish plans for the day. But observing his controlled facial expression, she felt the urge to tell him her destination, just to see if it would provoke some kind of reaction from him.

“I’m going to the Snail Plant,” she said.

She scanned his face for a response, feeling guiltily similar to the photographers who had just been trying to goad her into an emotional response. She thought she might have seen something—a small twitch at the corner of his deep blue eye, an inhale of breath—but then again, she might have been imagining it.

“Sounds good,” he said, rising from the chair and turning it around to face in towards the table. “I’ll be at the register. Let me know when you’re ready to go.”

He turned to leave, tugging on the straps of his apron to tighten them. Then he turned back towards her and extended his hand. It was large, she noticed, and strong looking. She offered her own hand back, feeling small and weak.

“I’m Rob,” he said, shaking her hand firmly.

What a normal name, she thought approvingly, contrasting it pleasurably against the name of her most recent lover and her other friends in Los Angeles. So simple and honest.

“Jen,” she said, hoping her grasp felt at least respectably firm.

She was expecting the regular “yes,” or “I know,” but it didn’t come. Instead, before turning again to return to the cash register, he said something to Jen that she hadn’t heard in years: “Nice to meet you.”

Jen was enthralled.

Chapter 20:
http://kickoutofyou.blogspot.com/2009/03/20-being-more-paranoid.html