I threw my remote at the small television screen, causing the batteries to fly out and hit me back on the forehead. Dammit. Even in Wisconsin, I still can't get away from you...and her. Really Nate? You get married to her a freaking month after our divorce!?!? A month!?!? Wait, calm down Alyson. The whole point of coming to Wisconsin was to get a fresh start away from the Hollywood life. Who knew they had E! News on my family ranch? So who cares if I'm publicly humiliated because my husband decides to marry the love of his life a month after we get divorced? It's not like my social status can get any lower now that I'm just Allie Jacobson, not Alyson Black.
"Everything all right?" my dad peeks in and asks. The sound of the remote chipping the tv screen must have been louder than I thought. "Oh, Allie. What the hell are you doing watching that crap?" he asks after seeing Giuliana Rancic pointing out the huge rock on Caitlyn Black's finger. Yes, that's Caitlyn Black. So you haven't officially released it to the press, but you and I both know you tied the knot. I give a small grunt.
"The only way I know what the hell's going on," I sputter, after slowing picking up the batteries. My dad pulls me into a big hug, and I inhale the familiar scent of cigar smoke.
"It doesn't matter what's going on out there with him. Only what's going on with you matters. I thought the whole point of coming back home was to get away from there," he responded. But it does matter. It matters to my dad too, I can tell. He can't even say your name. It matters when my only chance of being a mother has sailed. I'm 27 and divorced. No one wants to marry a crazy divorcee with tons of baggage and no money settlement out here in the midwest. We're hardcore out here. It's not like Hollywood, where the divorce rate out there is almost 100%. And I think I've had enough of Hollywood to last a lifetime. We're independent out here in the middle of nowhere and no one remarries except for widowers, like my father. It's times like these when I wish my mother was still alive to tell me all about the mysteries of love.
"If you say so," I grumble, just to make him go away. I really just want to be left alone and isolated. It's what I deserve, going into and out of a loveless marriage. He heads back out to his shed. He's making a new dresser for my 17 year old half-sister Sydney, as a reward for a new gig in a washing machine commercial. "My model daughter is going to need a new dresser for her new glamourous clothes!" he had said.
Ha. He said that to me once too, when I was heading out to Hollywood to chase my dream as a photographer. Funny how that ended up. I haven't picked up a camera for years. My half-sisters once looked up to me. They used to brag that their sister married a superstar and lived in the city of Angels. That's the real shit out here, where everyone just lives to live. Isn't that hilarious? I wonder they're once jealous friends are saying now. "Oh there goes Paris Jacobson's sister. She got dumped, now she's just a midwestern nobody like us". Just hilarious.
My sisters are something else. They're obsessed with the fabulous life, except for London who has already been shipped off to nursing school on the east coast. Just like their mother, Eliza. Eliza had big expectations of herself when she was young, but then she fell in love with my simple carpenter daddy. She traded her actress dreams for love. I guess she and I are alike that way, except for Eliza found happiness in something she never imagined, being a housewife and mother. But as homage to her old dreams, she named each of her daughters after the place they were conceived, as part of some glam Hollywood name they could use if they ever made it. I think it's a little freaky and gross, but whatever floats her boat. Her boat is floating a lot better than mine, so who am I to judge?
I think I will go pay my sister Sydney a visit in her isolated teenage room. She's the closest thing to a best friend I've got these days. All my childhood pals have married off and become dutiful mothers and housewives. I obviously have no friends in Hollywood. My "friends" were just your friends that ditched me when you left me for her. I knock on her door, which has been painted hot pink with glitter, as a tribute to the Hollywood life she envisions.
"Hey Syd, whatcha doing?" I ask, trying to act sisterly. She's lying on her bedspread, which has stars all over it. How appropriate for a girl who wants to make it big.
"Trying to think of my stage name. I can't be Sydney Jacobson," she says exasperated. I try to hide a giggle, and it seems to have worked.
"Why not? It's who you are," I reply. If there's one thing I've learned after going through hell with you, it's that a tiger can't change its stripes. I thought I was the shit, a Hollywood wife, but look at me now. I'm back home, still the small town girl I was.
"Because it sounds bad. I can't be a one name only person, like Cher, because then people would like ask about why I'm named Sydney, and that's just like ew. Do you think Reese Witherspoon was born Reese Witherspoon? No, Allie. She was MADE a star," my sister drags on dramatically in long run on teenage sentences I haven't heard in a while.
"Well, let me tell you Syd. It's not worth it. Hollywood is just full of lies, deception and dying dreams," I tell her bluntly, hoping to save her the trouble I went through with you. My sister looks shocked at my openness about you and I.
"What?" I ask and gently lift her jaw back up to close that O her mouth has made.
"It's just you're so...out there about this now. I'd be pissed as hell," she says in all seriousness.
"Well, I am pissed as hell. Just not at him. At me. I should have seen that he was still in love with her. I should have known better than to break up the NAITLYN. It wasn't her fault, Sydney. I was just in the way of destiny," I say, sounding very wise.
"But aren't you the slightest bit sad?" she asks truly interested.
"Oh, I'm extremely sad and disappointed. The last five years of my life were a waste. Now I'm just trying to save you from wasting your youth away too," I reply, without knowing how bitter I sound. I guess that's just another thing you did to me.
"Hmmm. Well, maybe it'll be different for me," she ponders. My sister is truly a dreamer; she hasn't given up on her modeling dreams. She'll become the next Tyra Banks even if she has to become the next Alyson Black.
"Maybe". That's all I can say, because that's all I know. Nothing is for sure, and nothing lasts. It's just all maybes in life.