“Did he look suspicious?” Agnes asks pointedly.
“Maybe,” I say coyly.
“That’s him.”
“Kathi texted me she urgently needed toothpicks,” I say, holding up the Whole Foods bag as proof. “Is she okay? Are her teeth okay? Is Brad Pitt here?”
“Who?” Agnes asks. “No, Kathi was just doing some baking.” Agnes points to the counter. “She wanted to test if the cookies were done, but she got tired of waiting for your toothpicks and so I told her to just use a raw spaghetti noodle. They’re cooling.” She points to the calendar.
I look over to see a cookie sheet sitting on two pot holders. There’s a dish towel on top of them and a Post-it note that reads, “Shhhh cookies sleeping.”
My tension melts away; I feel both relief and rage.
Duality.
“Okay. I guess everything is all set,” I say.
“What? What about the vet?” Agnes asks, cupping her hand around her ear, struggling to hear.
“No. I said, ‘Guess everything is all set.’”
“I don’t have any pets myself,” she says. “Kathi had a bunch of dogs in the past, but they always got killed. Hit by cars or accidentally poisoned by stray pills. One of those damn dogs was sick in the head and had a seizure and died right in front of the hostess while me and Kathi and Miss Gracie were waiting for a table at La Scala.”
Miss Gracie.
I swoon at the mention of Kathi’s mother—Gracie Gold. I delight at her being mentioned so casually, in everyday conversation, in this, her daughter’s home. I can’t wait to meet Miss Gracie, to see the legend from which all this grew, this—Kathi’s current life, and my budding new one. But first:
“Is Kathi here?” I ask.
“She’s back in bed,” Agnes says. “It was odd for her to be awake so early.”
“It’s eleven in the morning,” I say, my adrenaline slowing down, my senses returning, the smell of the fresh-baked cookies finally reaching me.
“Is it?” Agnes asks, looking around for a clock, as if she has no idea where to find one, as if no one in this six-thousand-square-foot manor has ever had to worry about time, responsibility, accountability.
“Should I get anything else?” I ask.
Agnes shrugs.
“What should I do now?”
Agnes shrugs.
“Who’s in charge?”
Agnes shrugs, staring at me. She’s innocent, sweet, a brain tumor apparently behind her eyes, smiling, satisfied as her days are spent, literally spent—nearly gone—nodding off in the kitchen of Kathi Kannon, film icon.
And as Agnes turns away from me, turns back and looks up to Judge Judy on the television, I get it. I know who’s in charge. Me. I am. I’m in charge. I’m responsible. I’m at the controls. I’m the adult in the room, in every room of this estate. And I know nothing.
Hey, Siri, I want to stake my claim in this home, in this life. I want to make this happen. I want to be an A-plus assistant like I was an A-plus student. Therapista says I’m a people pleaser, I’m an overachiever, I’m a perfectionist in an imperfect world. And I plan to put all those qualities to use immediately.
“Agnes, show me what needs to be done!”
* * *
Agnes can barely walk, barely stay awake, and barely show me the routine, the ins and outs of the job I’ve apparently won.
In the living room, she hands me a Barneys New York shopping bag full of bottles of prescription medications for Kathi’s bipolar disorder. I pull out one of the bottles. The pills rattle around as I roll it to read the label. It’s so strange to see a celebrity’s name on a prescription bottle. It’s odd, somehow reductive. Stars, they’re just like us: menopausal, depressive, anxious. It reminds me of that out-of-place feeling I got as a kid when I saw my teacher carrying her purse in Walmart, as if that purse—these meds—made my teacher, make Kathi Kannon, somehow more real as people. As if before that, it’s like they’re not humans, just ideas, concepts.
My responsibilities include feed her, water her, medicate her.
“Every morning you’ll go in her room,” Agnes says, “wake her softly, greet her nicely with her pills for the day—make sure you get the pills right and don’t kill her.”
I stare at Agnes. The animal portraits behind me stare at Agnes. She’s not joking.
She continues, “For breakfast, Kathi eats a bag of Weight Busters cereal. Dry. Also, bring in a glass of ice with a can of ice-cold Coke Zero. Pour the Coke Zero over the ice while you’re in the room so that she hears it fizz and starts craving it, and that will help her wake up.”
Agnes shows me the glasses in the bar, the same ones Kathi used to pour me a soda not long ago. “Kathi found these glasses in China. They’re probably toxic but just the right size to hold one full can of soda with ice. Sometimes she’ll wake up when you go in, and sometimes she’ll want to sleep in. Make sure her electronic cigarettes are fully charged and stocked, and good luck.” She shuffles away, nearly falling over twice as her slippery socks barely hold her wiry frame to the endangered floors. I’m thinking, What else in this house is endangered?
I sit in a Parisian chair and sift through the bag of meds, reading the instructions for each and sorting the daily pills into a pale-blue plastic pill dispenser with seven sections, one for each day of the week. I fill every section. Of course, these are not her assortment for the week, they’re her assortment for the day; it’s just that this massive number of pills won’t fit into a single daily compartment.
Tap, tap, tap, as I put the day’s pills in the various blocks. I’m working at an antique coffee table sculpted from a single piece of tree trunk, which sits in the middle of the circle of the leather-chair empire. There’s a sculpture at the center of the table that looks like a hunk of driftwood adorned with the kind of garnish you put on a fancy Christmas present instead of a bow. Alas, maybe it’s art. I’m just a kid from Louisiana, sitting in my first celebrity mansion, surrounded by more wealth than I’ve ever known, more pills than I’ve ever seen, more uncertainty than I’ve ever felt.
Tap, tap, tap.
* * *
A short time later, per Agnes’s instructions, I’m holding a tray with a cold, sweating can of Coke Zero, a full glass of ice, a gently crackling cellophane bag of Weight Busters cereal, and a container with a smattering of daily medications, all rattling as I walk down the hallway to wake a sleeping film giant.
I’m standing outside of her bedroom. The closed door is both disappointingly ordinary and utterly amazing—a lot like her. It’s thick old wood, with history and survival in its grain. It has two long stained-glass windows—just shapes, no fellatio here, unlike the front door. It’s dark in her bedroom. I can only imagine what it looks like from her point of view, the light out here flirting into her vision from my side of these stained-glass panes.
I knock gently on her door. Nothing. I turn the knob—an antique, wobbly, metal-and-glass door handle with an actual keyhole. I’m certain it’s another antique throwback to a long-ago time—you can’t get things like this anymore; everything here seems profoundly unique.