A chorus of “yeah’s” and “uh huh’s” followed, the kids completely engaged with this big man who was comfortable enough to get down to their level.
“Being poor sucked shit.” The kid’s shocked ooo’s alerted Seth to his mistake. “Whoops, sorry,” he said looking at the principal apologetically. “I meant to say it wasn’t fun. When I got to middle school and high school, things got even worse. That’s when my dad went to jail and my mother had to take a second job. Without them around, I got myself into some trouble too.”
A lump lodged in Heather’s throat. She had suspected Seth had had it rough, had associated him with her own less-than-joyful past. But she had no idea—no idea at all that he’d experienced that kind of pain. He’d said he got it. He did.
“What did you get in trouble for?” a kid asked.
“Lots of things.” Heather could sense he was trying to be evasive as well as honest. Not an easy task. “Joy riding. Messing with people’s stuff.”
She imagined messing with stuff was a way to say vandalism. She’d known kids like that growing up. Kids who were so enraged about their own lack of material possessions that they found solace in destroying what belonged to others. She took a deep breath, allowing her new understanding of Seth to settle through the very fiber of her being.
“What did your dad go to jail for?” This from another kid.
“Um.” Seth paused, seeming to search for a way to explain to young kids. “He took things that didn’t belong to him.”
“He stole things,” the kid said. “That musta made you sad.”
“Yeah, it did. It made me very sad. But there were two things that made my days brighter: design and carpentry. We didn’t have a cool Arts Program at my school like you do though. We did have a great shop. I spent all my free time there, making up new designs of things to build. Wait—there was one more thing that made me happy. Going to the movies. I couldn’t afford to pay for a ticket, but there was a local theater that was easy to sneak in to.”
The principal cleared her throat.
Seth caught her disapproving eye. “Which is a totally bad thing to do. Don’t do that.” He exchanged a guilty smile with Heather. “Anyway, I spent as much time as I could in that theater. I saw everything that came out. Sometimes I saw the same movie over and over. I started to fantasize that I could have something to do in the movies. But I had no experience acting. And I didn’t know sh—I mean, I didn’t know anything about directing or writing. What I did know was building. Working with my hands.”
Seth met Heather’s eyes briefly. She wanted to keep his gaze, but he moved his focus back to the crowd. “So the day after I graduated from high school—and let me stress the importance of graduating—stick it out, even if it’s the most miserable thing you ever do. It gets better, I promise, but only if you put in the work.”
Heather caught the principal’s satisfied gleam.
“So the day after I graduated,” Seth continued, “I hitched a ride.” The principal’s gleam was replaced with a cringe. “Which is another thing you should never do. Very dangerous. Anyway, I came to L.A. and I knocked on doors until I found a set design company that was willing to hire me.”
“And the rest is history,” Heather said softly.
“And the rest is history,” he repeated. “Any questions? You in the blue.”
“How long have you been working on movies?” the kid in blue asked.
“I’ve been here for twenty-one years now.”
“You must be old.” This comment came from a young girl causing all the adults to laugh, including Seth.
“Yes, I am old,” he said. “And guess how many movies I’ve worked on?” He paused, letting the kids shout out numbers that ranged from twenty to a hundred. “Not quite that many,” he said to a particularly high guess. “But over fifty. I spend almost every day on a movie set. I get to work with famous directors and actors—like Matt and Heather. My life now is nothing, nothing like the life I grew up with. Even though I’m not proud of where I came from, I’m proud that it didn’t keep me from getting where I wanted to be.”
His eyes caught Heather’s, and in them she saw his desire. Not just physical desire, but desire to connect. Desire for her to understand that he really did get it. The realization stole her breath away.
“So now you build sets for movies?”
Heather didn’t see where the question came from.
“Yep.”
“Do you design them too?” Now she saw it was an older boy sitting in the back, the boy who had shared his artwork earlier.
“Well, um, not exactly. I started out at the bottom of the set crew. Those are the guys who do all the crap jobs like carrying the heavy stuff and putting up drywall. I kept working and I worked my way to lead carpenter—that’s the boss of all the set builders. Some people can go from there to designing sets. Even, uh, even to higher jobs sometimes. Like designing the whole look of the movie from the set to the makeup to the costumes. Those people are called Art Directors or Production Designers.”
Seth struggled with his speech now and Heather wondered if he was embarrassed that he hadn’t achieved that level of success. Would he be less embarrassed if she wasn’t there? She’d been such a snob about his career, never giving him credit that he had built it entirely out of nothing. Just like she had.
She couldn’t fight the tug to validate him now. “Lead carpenters are very important on set, though. They have to be there every day, sometimes making adjustments on the fly. Like, if the director says, ‘I wish there was a door here,’ then the lead carpenter takes care of it. Just like that.” She snapped her fingers to demonstrate.
She met his eyes again. “They’re very important,” she repeated, this time directed at Seth. “If you get a sliver as far in your career, you should be proud. No matter where you started from.”
She recognized the words she spoke could easily be turned back on herself, and for the first time ever, she could see herself from the outside. Like she’d stepped into Dickens’s A Christmas Carol and had been taken away by the Ghost of Christmas Present, she saw what other’s saw, what Seth saw—that she’d come far, that she should be proud, that she wasn’t that sixteen year-old girl from the trailer parks anymore.