Heller - Lucky Stars

A lot of generous people lent their time and expertise to the story that ultimately became Lucky Stars, and they all deserve mention along with my very sincere thanks and gratitude:

Jennifer Enderlin, my enthusiastic editor, who pored over several drafts of the book and offered insightful and constructive comments after each reading;

Ellen Levine, my literary agent, who continues to both guide my career with her customary competence and laugh out loud at my jokes;

The five talented actresses who shared their experiences with me and gave the heroine of this book authenticity and gutsElisabeth Blake, Donna Lynn Leavy, Dawn Maxie, Shannon Morris, and Cindy Warden;

Julia Grossman, Howard Papush, Adryan Russ, and Steven Shmerler, who helped me gain access to some of the above women;

Ed Kreins, captain of the Beverly Hills Police Department, and Michael Barrett, former detective of the Westport Police Department, who are wise in the ways of catching criminals;

Laurence Caso, Mort Lowenstein, Tim Mason, and Brad Schreiber, who made suggestions that gave the story credibility and/or just plain made it better;

Helen Gallagher, Patty Bunch, and Maurice Stein, makeup artists extraordinaire, whose contributions were invaluable as I prepared my heroine for her big scene;

Laurie Burrows Grad, who either knows everything or knows how to find out everything, and is a fabulous cook on top of it;

Kristen Powers, my Web guru, who allows me to communicate with my readers on www.janeheller.com;

Michael Forester, my husband, who, when I whined, Ill never be able to come up with another idea for a book, rolled his eyes and replied, You always say that.

I loved my mother, really I did, but there were times when she drove me nuts. And I dont mean nuts, as in: she aggravated me. I mean nuts, as in: she made the tiny vein in my left eyelid twitch. I mean nuts, as in: she gave me hives. I mean nuts, as in: she had the power to cause my period to be irregular.

No, Helen Reiser wasnt a force of nature, just a nagging mother, an overprotective mother, a pain-in-the-butt mother. She meant well, but she just couldnt face the fact that her baby had grown up.

She called me a million times a day, offered her advice whether it was solicited or not, had no compunction about saying, Your hairs too long and Dont forget to take an umbrella and, on those rare occasions when I was actually dating someone, Hes not right for you. She was the opposite of a shrinking violet. She was like a weed that grows and grows and grows until it chokes the entire garden.

She was only five feet two, but she was built like a linebackera short but sturdy woman with square shoulders and thick ankles and ramrod-straight postureand she had this nasal, adenoidal voice that was so unmistakably hers that it got under my skin, haunted me in my sleep, brought me to my knees, especially in combination with the narrowing of the eyes and the arching of the brows.

Come on, Mom. Im not a child anymore, Id pipe up whenever shed boss me around, and I dont appreciate your constant interference.

Oh, so youd rather I didnt care? was her typical comeback. You know, Stacey, there are plenty of mothers who dont care about their children.

Yes, but caring is a lot different than criticizing, Id point out.

Whos criticizing? shed say. Youre being too sensitive.

Huh? She would literally stop speaking to people who didnt fall all over her in the supermarket, but I was too sensitive?

Im just an honest person, shed add. And you should thank your lucky stars that I am honest, because not everyone is, dear.

Like that was a news bulletin. I was a thirty-four-year-old actress on a quest for fame and fortune in Hollywood, a place where honesty is hardly ever an option. The minute you get here you start lying spontaneously, as if theres something toxic in the drinking water. You lie about your age (you shave off ten years minimum). You lie about your heritage (you claim to be one-quarter Cherokee, or whatever is the heritage du jour). You lie about needing to supplement your income with a real job (you explain that youre only waiting tables in a biker bar so you can research a character). And then theres the lying that comes at you from the other side (you go to an audition and they tell you youre wonderful and you never, ever hear from them again).

Of course, my mother wasnt thrilled about my choice of a profession, any more than she approved of my boyfriends or the fact that I had yet to get married. When she wasnt hitting me with: God forbid you should give me a grandchild, shed hit me with: Why cant you do something practical for a living, like Alice Platkins daughter? Alice Platkins daughter was an accountant who, unbeknownst to Mrs. Platkin, was also a psychic with her own 900 number.

But whenever I did land a part, however small, she was right there cheering for me. Cheering for me and then reminding me to drink my milk.

She loved me and I loved her and I understood that one of the reasons she was in my face was because she was lonely. She was a sixty-six-year-old widow living in the same house in Cleveland where she raised me. She didnt have a job. She didnt play bridge. She didnt even belong to a book group. While she did have a few close friends, they were her emotional twins in the sense that they, too, lavished all their attention on their children. Whenever theyd get together, it wasnt a gathering of pals sharing confidences, but a contest between competitors one-upping each other about their offspring. (One competitor: My Sarah is marrying a proctologist. Another competitor: So? My Emily is a proctologist.) As her only child, I was her focal point, her keenest interest, the center of her universe. In other words, in this era of navel gazing, it was my navel she was always gazing at.

Maybe you have a mother like minethe kind whos there for you but makes you feel like an infant as well as an ingrate. Maybe youve experienced the love/hate, the push/pull, the yearning for approval/the yearning for independence. Maybe you, too, are the good daughter who harbors a secret wish that your mother would leave you the hell alone. But even you couldnt have predicted the bizarre turn my relationship with my mother would take. You see, all I asked was that she get a life. I never dreamed that the life shed get would be the one I wanted.

But Im jumping way ahead of myself. Let me go back to the period before the situation with my mother became the stuff of Greek tragedy (okay, French farce). Let me begin with the day my mother decided that calling me on the phone and leaving messages on my answering machine and reaching me on my pager didnt meet her requirements for mother-daughter closeness, the day that she came up with the brilliant idea of selling the house in Cleveland, moving to L.A., and becoming my neighbor

I was sitting in the outer office of the casting director, trying to stay calm while I waited for my turn to read. Auditions are a nerve-wracking experience, but its important to harness your fear, make it work for you. Thats what they tell you in acting classto use your emotions. Yeah, well, I used my emotions that day, but not in the way they meant.

This was my second callback for a network television movie (aka movie of the week, or MOW) about a death row inmate, who had twenty-four hours to prove her innocence before meeting her maker. I was there to read yet again for the part of Angie, the strong, brave, utterly unflappable sister of the death row inmate, who was to be played by Melina Kanakaredes. The part wasnt huge, but it was a juicy part, a showy part, the kind of part that gets actresses noticed. I was ecstatic that I had made the first cut and would now be reading for the casting director a second time.