"I saw you," she sang looking past Mommy at me. "I saw you from my patio coming up the walkway. So, Gina. Aren't you going to introduce me to your surprise?"

"Melody," Mommy said turning to me, "you see why you can't keep any secrets here. Everyone's a snoop. This is my kid sister," she said, eyeing me warily.

"I knew it," Sandy remarked with a clap of her slender hands.

"She's coming to stay with me for a while and try her luck in Hollywood like the rest of us nitwits."

"Richard's going to represent her, too?"

"Yep."

"Good. Welcome to the fight," Sandy said. "I'm having a few people over tomorrow night for a pot luck dinner if you want to introduce her around,"

Sandy said. "About seven."

"We'll be there," Mommy promised.

"See you later, Sis," Sandy said waving. She left the apartment and Mommy spun around to me with a wide smile on her face.

"It worked. I knew it. I do look young enough to be your sister. In this town everyone believes everyone else's lies. It's a perfect place for people who hate the truth.

"Welcome home, Melody," she said sincerely.

"I can finally throw my arms around you."

Even as she hugged me, giving me the affection I so desperately needed, I had to wonder: What had I gotten myself into?

7.

New Beginnings .

Mommy made us some coffee and we sat and talked in her small kitchen, catching up on what had happened to both of us since the day she had left me in Provincetown.

"I really did hate leaving you behind," she said.

"You remember how hard it was for me to do that, don't you? I think I cried all the way from Provincetown to New York City, but Archie, I mean Richard, was right in advising me not to take you along. It was a hard trip, struggling for work along the way, trying to get meetings with important people in the big cities, going from one cheap motel to the other, sometimes barely having enough money to feed ourselves. You would have hated every minute. Many nights you would have been left alone in some crummy motel room. Some of them didn't even have television sets in the rooms.

"How could that life compare to being in the fresh ocean air, going to a good school, eating well . .

. You understand why I did it, don't you, honey? You don't blame me anymore?" she asked, her voice shaking.

I took a deep breath and shifted my eyes away so she couldn't see how deeply I had been hurt.

Kenneth had once told me I might as well have had translucent skin. It was that easy to see my thoughts and feelings. However, there was no sense being dishonest and lying to my mother now that I had found her, I thought.

"I used to hate you for it, Mommy," I admitted.

"I used to sit there in Laura's room and listen hard through the walls for the phone to ring and hate you for not calling, hate you for making promises you wouldn't keep."

"I know. And that bothered me, too, but Richard kept saying, 'If you call her and can't send for her, it will be even more cruel, won't it?' He was right."

"He wasn't right. I needed to hear your voice, Mommy," I insisted.

She slammed down her coffee cup so hard it nearly shattered on the table.

"You've got to stop blaming me for things. I can't have any stress," she whined. "Stress brings on age and wrinkles and makes you look terrible and then you can't get jobs. The camera picks up every little detail, you know. They don't want you if they can't use you for close-ups. I won't get any work. Is that what you want to happen? Richard won't stand for it anyway. He won't let you stay here," she warned.

I gazed around the apartment, just realizing what she was saying.

"Does he live here, too?"

"Well what do you think? You have no idea how expensive it is to live and work in Los Angeles.

Apartments like this are hard to come by. What would be the point of both of us having our own apartment and paying two rents?"

"Are you married?" I asked, holding my breath.

"No, we never got married. I don't want to get remarried for a long, long time; but Richard is . . .

well, he's more than my agent; he's my financial manager. He takes care of all our money needs. He does that for all his clients."

"How many clients does he have?" I asked.

"A half dozen, but none earn as much as I do right now, so you see why it's so important everything remains smooth for us," she repeated. "No more talk about the terrible past," she said, waving her hands over the table. "I don't want to hear about how you suffered and I don't want to be reminded about what I did when I lived there. Don't ask me any questions about any of them, and don't even bring their names up in front of me," she ordered. "That's the rule if you want to live here, understand? I mean it, Melody." She glared at me, her eyes colder than I ever recalled them.

"Even Kenneth?" I asked.

"Yes, yes, yes, even Kenneth. Nobody. I forbid it. I didn't have a life before this. That's the way I want to think now. It's what Richard says I should do.

These are changes we had to make for our own well-being. I hate being selfish, but it's a good selfishness because it helps us find success."

"Why did he have to change his name, Mommy? I never believed that story about Archie being his nickname."

"You're right. Archie was never his name. It was his older brother's name and he took it so he could be thought of as older when he first left home.

That's a big difference between men and women. Men like to be thought of as older. They don't get punished for being older and turning gray with wrinkles, but we do.

"Anyway," she continued, "his brother got himself into big trouble with loan sharks and the like and as soon as Richard found out, he dropped that name like a hot coal so they wouldn't mistakenly come after him. That's why he never liked to talk about his family. He was ashamed of them. His father wasn't any better. Now, don't mention any of this in front of him. Understand? He would be furious with me. He's very sensitive about it."

"I won't say a thing," I said, not really believing the story anyway.

"Good. As long as you do what you're told, we'll be fine. I think," she said, still not sure.

She looked at me hard again and then tilted her head, smiling.

"I like that outfit you're wearing."

"Dorothy Livingston bought it for me."

"Did she? You and I are almost the same size.

We can share things, but you've got to take good care of whatever I give you to wear, okay? Some of my things are very special and designed for auditions. Did you bring a lot of your own stuff to California?"

"Not a lot, no."

"Where are your things?"

"At the Livingstons'."

"Well, I guess you'll have to go get your stuff.

Don't tell her too much when you go back." She thought a moment. "I know what you should say," she added with excitement. "Tell her you're going back to Provincetown. You probably won't see her again anyway, and that way, she'll tell everyone else who asks about you that you left."

"Why don't I just tell her the truth?" I asked.

She laughed.

"You never tell anyone the truth if you don't have to, honey. That's something you keep in your back pocket as a last resort. Take it from someone who's had to make her way on the road of life the hard way. I know from where I speak. The less you tell people about yourself, the better off you'll be later.

There's always a jam to get out of and the truth can reduce your options. Richard taught me that lesson real well," she said, nodding.

"Okay," she continued, "let's look at where you'll sleep." She rose to go to the doorway of the second bedroom.

I followed her and she snapped on the light. A dull glow fell from the ceiling because the fixture was full of dust.

"This is going to be your room. We have only one bathroom, as you see, so don't hog it. You can help me keep the whole place clean. It's too much for a working girl to do that and stay pretty enough for an audition at a moment's notice anyway. That's why it looks a little disorganized right now," she said, but I remembered that Mommy was never a very good housekeeper. My stepfather Chester and I did most of the heavy cleaning in our trailer back in Sewell.

I studied the small bedroom. The walls were a faded pink, scratched, scuffed and chipped. Even the guest room at Holly's in New York with its one window was more comfortable and cozier-looking than this bare-walled, dusty room with a bed now covered with clothing, cartons of files, old issues of movie magazines and trade papers. The thin rug was badly worn in places, its thin threads frayed and unraveling. The curtains on the two windows were limp from dust and bleached from the sunlight. Large cobwebs dangled in the corners of the ceiling. I noticed a pile of what looked like thin briefcases in the right corner.

"You'll have to clean up a bit in here, but don't lose anything."

"What's that in the corner?" I asked.

"Oh, that you can't touch. Those are Richard's watches, antique watches. He sells them on the side.

A friend of his got him into it here and he's made a nice bundle of pocket money doing it."

"He sells antique watches? I thought he was an agent with a half dozen clients."

"Everyone trying to break into the business does something else in the meanwhile, Melody. Most of the people living here work as waiters or waitresses in restaurants, some valet park cars, some even pack groceries. Anything to keep food on the table and pay the rent until you hit it big."

"I know. Dorothy's chauffeur is an actor. He told me he was in a few movies."

"What's his name?" she asked quickly.

"Spike. I don't remember his last name."

"Spike. I know ten Spikes if I know one,"

Mommy said with a laugh.

We both turned as the door opened and Archie Marlin entered. The moment he set eyes on me, his face became flushed with surprise and then anger.

"What the hell? How did she get here?" he demanded. He closed the door sharply and stood facing us with his hands on his hips, a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth. He pulled it out. "Huh?" he said pointing the cigarette at me. "Did you send for her behind my back?"

"No, Richard. A friend of hers from Sewell saw my picture in the En Vogue catalogue. She sent her the catalogue and Melody brought it to someone who knew advertising. He tracked me down for her and she came out to L.A. to find me."

"That's just great," he said throwing up his arms. "That's just what we need right now. Your daughter," he said with disgust.

"But no one knows she actually found me, do they, honey?" she asked me.

I shook my head.

"Big deal. What are we going to do with her now?" he asked, as if I were some puppy left on their doorstep. "And just when I had everyone believing you were young enough to play their parts."

"That's not going to be a problem. We worked it out," Mommy told him.

"Yeah? How?" he said. He dropped himself into the worn easy chair, ashes from his cigarette raining down on his pants and the chair. He didn't seem to notice or care.

"Sandy thought she was my younger sister.

Remember the story you told me to tell? That I have a younger sister back home in the Midwest?" she said, nodding to get him to remember. I imagined he had trouble keeping track of all the lies they had spread from West Virginia to California.

"Yeah, I remember. So?"

"So don't you see?" She turned to me. "Melody came after me, following me, looking for a career herself," Mommy said. He turned from her and gazed at me with sudden interest.

"Younger sister? Looking for a career herself, huh?" He sat forward. "Come a little closer," he ordered.

"Go on, honey. Richard doesn't bite," Mommy said with a smile.

I took a few steps toward him and he raised his lusty green eyes to look at me, lingering over my body in a way that made me feel naked beneath his gaze.

His lips curled.

"Yeah, she's a looker now, ain't she? How old are you again? Never mind. From now on, you're twenty-one, see?"

"Twenty-one?" I looked at Mommy, but she just smiled and nodded. I turned back to Richard. "No one will believe that," I told him.

"Of course they will. They won't care if you're lying or not anyway, which is more important. Yeah,"

he said nodding and smiling as his eyes burned through my clothes, "I can find her some work."