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Rainbowland
A fantasy that takes place somewhere over the rainbow, in one of many possible realities involving Katharine McPhee, her McPhamily, McPhriends and McPhans
“Okay, quiet everybody!” I said, trying to sound simultaneously important and humble. After all, I wasn’t the star of this show. Writer, producer and director, perhaps, but that was as far as it went. I looked around to make sure everyone was in place: grandpa manning the vidcam, grandma waiting expectantly in her favorite chair, and Mom yawning, trying valiantly to stay awake after a day of last minute sessions with dance coaches. “Are you recording?” Grandpa nodded, trying to hold the camera steady.
“Okay,” I continued, taking a deep breath. I was more nervous than the star at this point but tried to do my best Ryan Seacrest imitation and be a proper host. “Ladies and gentlemen, McPhans, and viewing audience everywhere, whoever you happen to be, Mc&Mc Productions is proud to present Miss Kaycee McDonald, in her first live performance of The No-No Song. You have to understand, when you’re two, ‘no’ is a very important word, which is probably why she loves this song so much. Plus, it’s her very favorite one of Mommy’s American Idol performances. So—here she is! Kaycee McDonald!”
That was the cue. Our budding star was supposed to march out, toy microphone in hand, and start singing. For some reason everyone seemed to be staring at me. “What’s the matter, is she holding out for a bigger salary or something?” Katharine said with a sly grin.
“Don’t ask me.”
“Well, you’re the producer. Who else should we ask?”
“I’m going to go find her. Then you can ask her,” I said. “Dan, hold it, I’ll be right back.”
A quick check of the surroundings turned up the missing star fast asleep with her head on Lily, an aging black Lab with the kind of disposition that put up with such things with no protest whatsoever. Her silky dark hair blended into Lily’s shoulder to the point that it was hard to tell where one stopped and the other started. “Katharine Christine McDonald,” I said, “you get your little butt out there right now!” I said. Her eyelids fluttered and she struggled into consciousness.
“My conthert!” she said, horrified that she might have missed a chance to play her favorite game.
“We’re holding the curtain for you. What does grandma always tell you?”
“Show muth go on,” she said solemnly.
“You’re on,” I repeated. “Give me a minute to get back in the other room.” I started off, then turned around. “You know all the words, right?”
“Wight.”
“You know how we practiced the end, right?”
“Juth like Mommy doth it.”
We tried it again. This time Kaycee was One Take Jake, starting from a very loud “Two, free, four!” through a couple of mixed up lines with words missing but obviously involving horses and trees, lots of enthusiastic Woo-hoos, then sailing right on into a chorus of “No, no, no, no-no-no, I said no, no, you not the one fo’ me!” Then she executed a remarkably good move involving bringing up one knee, arching her back, and flinging her head back. She probably should have watched the video of Mommy’s rendition of Hound Dog, from which we stole the move, a little more carefully, because she lost her balance and wound up flat on the floor, howling.
“Keep filming!” I yelled, scooping her up in my arms to check for damage. “You’re fine. Now gimme a kiss.” She planted a wet toddler kiss right on my lips. “That was a good one,” I said. “You kiss almost as good as Mommy.”
“Christopher, you’re being recorded!” Katharine said, somewhere between giggly and horrified.
I set Kaycee down on the floor and told her to take a bow. “Right toward the camera,” I said. “Bow toward grandpa.”
She managed that without incident. “A star is born!” he said, and I had a feeling we were both going to be, as he always said, a mess before long. I could feel the tears welling up already.
“Well, P,” I said, “you know what you’ll be doing in another couple of years.”
Grandma nodded and gave a mock sigh. “Yep. Training another one.”
We were strangely silent as we drove home. We usually chattered and bantered and delighted in making each other laugh, but it may have been that the prospect of a long separation was making us unusually serious. We’d talked and talked and discussed and discussed, and had finally decided that Katharine’s Broadway debut was long overdue, it would be good for her, she’d love it, and if they decided to turn the original three month contract into something longer, my boss was willing to make arrangements that would let us keep our family together. By some miracle, he had friends who ran a veterinary clinic in New York City and they would arrange a “doctor exchange” that would allow me to practice in a venue that would put me closer than 3000 miles away from my family. (continued)
But that couldn’t be arranged immediately, so for the meanwhile, I would have to be content with an occasional commute East while Katharine and her old friend Kellie Pickler stepped into the roles of Velma Kelly and Roxie Hart in a revival of Chicago. Multiple performances a week would be vocally challenging, and she was working hard to get her dancing chops up to speed, but basically she was excited at the prospect.
So was I, but that didn’t mean I welcomed the separation. Katharine figured I was a big boy and would survive, but the idea of being away from the kids really tore at her. At their ages, three months would seem an eternity on both sides, and it would disrupt the work she’d been doing with the Eating Disorder Center of California. It was not a decision arrived at easily or quickly, and at least every other day, she would get all teary and tell me she’d made a horrible mistake. I’d let her rant until she got it out of her system, and by the next day she’d be Broadway bound again. I hoped we could make it work. Grandma, Big Sis, and a trustworthy nanny were all onboard. Now all I had to do was keep Katharine focused.
By the time we’d arrived home, Kaycee was deep into a leaden-limbed unconsciousness. I pulled clothes off her and put her down while Katharine struggled with P.K., who, after an evening of sleeping through everything imaginable, had decided to wake up and fuss. “I told you we should have kept her awake,” Katharine said grumpily. “Now she’ll be up all night.”
“No, she won’t,” I said. “Give her here. C’mere, Pookie, Dad’s gonna take care of everything.”
“You and your nicknames. You’re worse than George Bush,” Katharine said, but the prospect of a good night’s sleep with Daddy riding herd on the kids was evidently lightning up her disposition a bit.
“It’s easier than Patricia Kellie,” I said
“Oh fooey, you called both of them Pookie. I think you just like the sound of it.”
By the time Katharine was out of the shower, I was still pacing the floor with a little blue-eyed replica of myself who showed absolutely no signs of being sleepy. “You wanta give this a try?” I asked.
“I should be sparing my vocal cords, but I guess this is an emergency,” she said, giving me one of those slow, sweet smiles that turned my brains to mush, and I suddenly realized that I really, I mean really liked the way she looked in that silky white gown she was wearing. Well, no, I didn’t like the way she looked in the gown, I liked the way the gown looked on her. Subtle difference. She looks good in anything. Then she started singing the song that was probably, if you stretched definitions a bit, responsible for the very existence of the child in her arms.
I never realized how much I loved the song Come Rain or Come Shine until I heard her sing it. I’d been sitting with the family watching her onstage, realizing that the cute little girl I’d known since she was nine years old had definitely turned into a real live grown-up woman, and by God I was going to find a way to talk to her before going home for the evening. I remembered her as she’d been down through the years: a skinny little kid who wanted to be taken seriously and talked to like a grown-up, so I called her Katharine, never any childish nickname, and listened to anything she wanted to tell me; a cute teenager who had a raging crush on me that I had to pretend I knew nothing about; an even cuter young lady who spent a wonderful week with me at a bed-and-breakfast up in the northern wine country before heading off to college.
Then, after sporadic holiday reunions, I discovered a lady lawyer 10 years my senior who enchanted me by being both hard as nails and still a crusader who worked gratis for the Animal Legal Defense Fund, a cause dear to my heart. And Katharine discovered the wonderful world of regional theater and all the charismatic, creative types who went along with it. I still occasionally attended the pool parties my boss threw every holiday, and sometimes his neighbors, the McPhees, were there, but their younger daughter usually wasn’t. Our paths had ceased to cross.
Then my lawyer tired of me, dropped me, devastated me, and Katharine’s life took a similar turn. Somehow we found each other again. We started talking, about everything, comparing scars, swapping war stories, commiserating with each other, each finding strength by trying to give strength to the other. I stopped drinking. She found an eating disorders clinic. We shared a pizza and toasted each other in Diet Pepsi while we watched a show called American Idol, and at some point during the evening she said “I think I could do that.” I was sure she could too.
I don’t know why I didn’t attend the first few shows, but instead I watched them from home, although I could probably have persuaded her parents to get me tickets. Perhaps we just wanted to work out our problems on our own, lick our wounds all alone, until we were sure they were really healed. Then one night I knew I wanted to be there. “Go on home,” she’d told her parents. “Chris and I need to talk. He can get a cab later.” Her father seemed ready to protest but her mother talked him out of it. She’d always been in my corner, for some reason, perhaps sensing that Katharine’s will was strong enough that although she deferred to her mother in many things, when she really felt strongly about something, it was best not to stand between her and what she wanted.
Kellie wound up eating stale peanuts in the hotel bar while Katharine and I got reacquainted. It wasn’t until much later that I realized I hadn’t a clue whether or not I even had enough cash on me to pay for a cab home. So a totally giddy Katharine had rounded up some of her new friends and she and Kellie took up a collection for me.
“Ooh-wee!” Bucky teased. “Kat’s got a groupie!” But he chipped in anyway.
“He’s an old friend,” Katharine insisted. “I’ve known him, like, forever.”
Taylor shook my hand, said he was glad to meet me, and seemed to be sizing me up, although in an outwardly quite friendly way. I had the feeling that in some way, she may have found herself a new big brother type, now that I seemed to be stepping into another role. We agreed that the younger ones did not need to hear about my visit, although that was probably a gross underestimation of their maturity level. Actually we were more concerned about their parents and guardians, and the ever-present media looking for any kind of a scoop concerning the most popular group of singers in the country.
“How about Mandisa?” Bucky asked. It was hard to tell if he was being serious or not. He just had that kind of personality.
“Ooh, I dunno,” Katharine said thoughtfully. “She’s been so sweet.” She didn’t have to say more. We all knew what she was thinking.
“I don’t think she’s much into judgin’,” Kellie said. “Although she might have an opinion.”
It was a totally insane moment in some ways, and although I promised to pay everyone back (and did), I really hoped the gossip rags never got ahold of this one. Before I left, I grabbed her much-put-upon roommate in a bear hug. “Pickle, I owe you one,” I said.
“The day may never come,” Kellie said solemnly, “but someday I may have to ask a favor of y’all, and I’ll make ya an offer ya can’t refuse.”
Her Carolina Brando was just too much for me and I dissolved in laughter. Eventually I wound up hugging both of them at the same time. “Name it, Pickler,” I said. “If I’ve got it, you can have it.”
“Well,” she said, with a delightfully pixie-fied smile, “y’all could always name your first kid after me. I got kind of a unisex type name.”
“Kellie!” Katharine squeaked. “You’re gettin’ ahead of yourself there, girl.”
“Yeah? Well, far as I can recall, this is the first time I’ve had to spend a Tuesday night fightin’ off the advances of strangers in the bar. You two musta had a lot to talk about!”
“Oh my God,” Katharine said, sounding truly horrified. “You mean somebody got obnoxious?”
“I just told the guy I was fifteen, but I didn’t care if he didn’t. Scared the heck out of him.”
“Nobody you knew asked you what you were doing there, did they?” I asked a bit anxiously.
“Naw. You’re safe.”
“You’re weird, Pickle,” I said, “but I’ll be glad to hold the community snot rag for you any day of the week. You’re officially my buddy.”
“Is there any more of him at home?” Kellie asked. “He’s kinda sweet.”
“Only child,” Katharine said, giving Kellie a commiserating pat on the arm. “Bu