— DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE

— PARS UNA: the rumbling.

      Lucky doesn’t want to believe the rumors floating just outside her social circle. Her mother’s name is one very few dare to utter to the actress’s face but they certainly didn’t mind mentioning her behind her back from time to time. Lately however it seemed to be on the tip of everyone’s tongue. Lorraine Jacobs, playwright extraordinaire, back on the West coast to turn one of her infamous plays into a motion picture. At first it felt too outrageous to be true. Lorraine Jacobs hated Hollywood and she’d sworn to never step foot in Los Angeles county again regardless of it being where her children resided and yet it was all true.

       She couldn’t be sure what hurt more that her mother moved back for a job opportunity rather than to mend faces or the fact that she had to find it out through complete and utter strangers congratulating her for the early Oscar buzz her mother’s play turned movie was getting. By the time Lucky’s manager sat her down with news that the director assigned to the project was interested in screen testing her for a part she had already reached her limit. “Excuse me?” She all but shrieked manicured fingers digging into the expensive leather of his couch. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me. No, no, fuck no.” What exactly was her mother thinking? That she could make up for years of abandonment by spoon feeding her daughter a role in her movie? Did she really think so little of her own flesh and blood? 

      “Luce, listen, I know how you feel about your mother but this is a golden opportunity,” Jonathan attempted to reason, large hands reaching forward to engulf the one angrily tapping on the surface of his coffee table. “Even if the role you're given is small, it’ll do wonders for your career. It could be the big break you were looking for.” It barely takes her any time at all to pull herself out of his grasp. Her slender frame ricochets from the couch, golden hues burning as they search for the purse she’d abandoned somewhere in his office during their weekly meeting. She should have known something was up when he offered to read through scripts with her rather than just handing her a stack of them and sending her off. “How many times do I have to tell you that I want to earn my big break?” The question leaves her laced in thinly veiled venom. Disappointment etched into her features just as she finds her abandoned bag by a half-dead fern. 

      “I don’t want it handed to me because my father knows someone or because my deadbeat mother rolled back into town and wants to rid herself of some guilt. Now if you’ll excuse me I have somewhere to be.”

— PARS DUORUM: the explosion.

      How she managed to track her mother’s location couldn’t be spoken for. In fact much could be said about the last hour and half of her life. It passed by in a blur of was anger, hurt, and sheer force of will to hunt down the person responsible for her current less than pleasant head space. Ironically enough her mother had only been located fifteen minutes away from the set Lucky traveled to each day. Some may have been comforted by the knowledge of their mother being so close but it only fueled her anger. Tinder to the ever growing fire within the pit of her stomach. Lucille barely gets through the small talk it takes to trick the front desk into providing her a key to her mother’s room and the entire elevator ride up to the woman’s hotel suite is spent perfecting the monologue she had pieced together in the car ride over. 

      “Who the hell do you think you are?” Lucky demands to know the moment her mother swings open the door. She crosses through the threshold without permission, brushing past the older woman with more force than needed. “You can’t just waltz back into town expecting to placate me with a role in your movie. Don’t tell me you think that makes up for a decade and a half of skirting your duties as a mother?” There isn’t a pause long enough for Lorraine to answer, like an automatic with a finger on the trigger, the words kept spewing from her mouth. “You know what’s so funny to me?” Lucky continued, the laugh following her question far from one of amusement. “ You didn’t even have the balls to offer me the role yourself. You had to do it through the director.” 

     The last couple words spill from pink painted lips in a sneer. Her gaze wild and angry as she runs her fingers through wavy brunette trusses not unlike the style being worn by the woman before her. She can feel the tears building up beneath her lids and attempted to will them away. The last thing Lucky wanted to do was shed tears in front of her mother. Even if they were ones caused by years of built up rage. “I’m not sure what you thought you would accomplish by coming back here but,” it’s then Lucky finds herself cut off for the first time since her abrupt entrance.

    “I’m trying to accomplish a movie. That’s it. I’m sorry you worked up all this courage to come here and yell at me but your anger is misplaced.” If Lorraine’s intention were to calm her daughter down the sound of her voice seemed to be having the opposite effect. “If you got approached by anyone to do this movie I can assure you that it wasn’t my doing. In fact I strongly advocated against it.” Girl Rising had been a biographical play based on Lorraine’s real life. Once it became apparent that the success of the play could be repackaged into a successful movie she had been hounded to sign the rights away. Unable to part completely with something so personal she managed to negotiate a position for herself as co-screenwriter which gave her full control of the script but little control anywhere else. 

    When producers began to suggest that her daughter play the titular role as a gimmick to get even more eyes on the movie she had done her best to steer the conversation elsewhere but it seemed that her suggestion of other names hadn’t been enough to rid them of the idea completely. Hesitantly, as if she were holding out for Lucy to decide to leave, Lorraine shut the door behind the hurricane otherwise known as her estranged daughter. She maneuvers past Lucille to head directly to the mini bar. She needed something to subdue the headache forming in her temples. “You’re not going to take it right? It would make things extremely difficult for me in you did.”

   Her mother might as well have slammed one of her Tonys into Lucky’s chest, it would have hurt a lot less than the damage being inflicted upon the actress’s heart by the callously  dismissive words of the woman. In fact I strongly advocated against it. The statement repeats itself within her subconscious, ripping through her psyche much in the similar fashion to that of runaway freight train. How naive could she have been? Of course Lorraine wasn’t capable of extending an olive branch. She barely seemed capable of looking Lucky in the eyes since the disappearance of Lydia. Embarrassment floods through her system, olive features falling into expression devoid of any emotion as hazel hues silently watch the older version of herself cross the room. She barely manages to process the blow inflicted to her ego by her own mother before the woman delivers yet another.

   “You’ve got to be kidding me,” she’s quieter now, her response barely above a whisper. The anger she had entered with suddenly depleted along with most of her energy. Slender shoulders slouch forward, the invisible weight against them threatening to crush her as her mind attempted to pick up the pieces of her heart in real time. She doesn’t mean it, a small voice promises somewhere from the labyrinth of her wounded soul. She loves you, she does, it continues to urge sweetly. All pretty lies meant to sooth her and maybe they may have if it weren’t for the cold gaze in her mother’s eyes as she waited for a response. It was easier to convince herself that the woman who brought her into the world actually cared for her when she wasn’t right in front of her looking anything but the loving mother of her memories. “It would make things difficult for you?”

   “Is that all you care about? Yourself?”

   “Don’t be dramatic, Lucille. I didn’t mean it like that.”

   “But you did mom, you did.”

   God, Lorraine made it so easy to be hated, so why was it that even after all these years Lucky searched desperately her approval? Her love? Any ounce of affection she could drain from the seemingly cold hearted woman left in the place of the mother she once knew. She hadn’t always been so dismissive, cold, cruel and sometimes Lucky couldn’t help but wish that she had been. If she had been a monster from the start then maybe the actress would have been spared the heartbreak of losing a mother. “I've been making excuses for you my whole life and I’m tired. I’m so tired,” her voice breaks with the declaration. Resolve wavering the longer she stays in the presence of her Achilles heel. Hot tears spill over flushed cheeks as shaky fingers pick at the fabric of her skirt. “I can’t imagine the pain of losing a child and I hope I never do but what about me, mom? What about the daughter who’s still here?”