Page 11 of Comfort Read

Executives are apparently furious, and plan to make Sage pay handsomely for bungling their plans. TMZ has yet to hear from Ballard’s camp as to why he abruptly needed a clear schedule. New project? Illness? Rehab? Whatever it is, we hope it was worth it…

Like Father, Like Son? Therapist Weighs In on Ballard Family Curse

For many of us, our first impression of Sage Ballard wasn’t Sage Ballard; it was Gus Greyly on Good Fences. Gus was shy but funny, sensitive, sweet. He had a tendency to get into trouble, but when he smiled into the camera, earnest and innocent, you couldn’t help but forgive him. Ballard carried a touch of Gus’s energy into every subsequent role, even his public persona. It was as though he was poured into that mold when cast at age nine, and by the time the show wrapped six years later, parts of him had permanently set.

Perhaps that’s why so many of us were blindsided by Ballard’s recent turn towards instability. We ascribed to him an innocence that was never his to begin with, and which, regardless, he outgrew long ago. It’s hard to even remember that innocence when you watch, for example, the viral video of him screaming expletives at his former manager in a subway station. Gus Greyly would never.

But maybe Sage’s crashout shouldn’t come as such a surprise. His father, director John Ballard, famously died by suicide at the peak of his career. The tragedy rocked Hollywood, and set the younger Ballard on his path to stardom. Sage has spoken extensively in interviews about building an acting career as a tribute to his father, honoring his half of the dream John had for the two of them to someday work together. As the legend goes, he went to an audition for his Good Fences role straight from his father’s funeral.

I sat down with Dr. Esmerelda Lissen, therapist to the stars, for her thoughts on the hereditary aspects of depression, the hazards of fame to mental health, and whether we might be watching history repeat itself…

SIX

As Kit pulls into the parking lot for his meeting with Sage on Monday, he has only one goal: Try to be normal.

It would be better if it were a more achievable goal. “Try to be charmingly odd, instead of so odd someone calls the police” would be closer to Kit’s wheelhouse. Or maybe, “Try not to fall down any stairs.” As it is, he’s already braced to disappoint himself as he walks through the door marked Zinnia’s Coffee Cafe, where Sage asked they meet for breakfast.

Kit had assumed when Sage suggested it that the name of the coffee shop was simply a name, perhaps paying homage to an owner or founder. As the door closes behind him, however, it becomes unmissable that it was a tribute to the favorite flower of whoever here calls the shots. Every available inch of the place seems to be covered in zinnias. They’re printed on the tablecloths and hung on the walls, either dried under glass or represented as paintings, cross-stitch, or photographs. The restaurant is an explosion of oranges and yellows and pinks, the color so bright and saturated that it takes Kit’s eyes a second to adjust.

Once they have, he spots Sage immediately, hunched over in a booth near the back. Wearing a black overcoat, charcoal baseball cap, dark wraparound sunglasses, and a scowl, he stands out like a thumb that was sore hours ago, but has now progressed to levels of agony necessitating a hospital. It’s not right for a man to be so attractive, especially here, surrounded by normal people. Kit—barely 5’7” and perpetually scrawny, with unruly hair, a sharply angular face, and glasses he really can’t function without—feels so unimpressive in comparison that he almost wishes he’d come equipped with a paper bag to put over his own head.

Perhaps this is why he forgets about being normal, the goal flying out of his head the minute he reaches the booth. Instead of “Hello,” or, “Nice to see you,” or even, “What motivated you to choose the world’s most zinnia-forward dining establishment?” Kit says, “Oh my God, I’m sorry, but—are you, like, trying to be incognito right now?”

“Yes,” Sage hisses, flicking Kit an annoyed look over his sunglasses. “Will you sit down, please? None of the paparazzi ever think to look for me here, I guess because it doesn’t seem like the kind of place I’d go? But someone might figure it out if they see you hovering over me through the window.”

This strikes Kit as decidedly paranoid. He sits down anyway as, earnestly and without entirely intending to, he says, “Just so you know? You’re not exactly blending in at this moment. You look like you’re playing a spy in one of those movies where it’s just one human and the rest of the cast is Muppets.”

“Thanks,” Sage says, rolling his eyes. Then, grudgingly: “That’s actually a decent idea for a Muppet movie.”

Kit, despite being humble in most circumstances and on most topics, nods firmly. “I have dozens of great ideas for Muppet movies. If the Muppet people ever want to start raking in money, I’m only a call away.”

Kit’s made this joke a hundred times, but it’s the first time anyone has responded as Sage does: with a frown, and then a slight smile, and then, sounding serious, the words, “I’ll let them know.”

“Oh God, what? No, don’t do that,” Kit says, or starts to say. He’s about halfway through when Frankie interrupts him, dropping a chair at the end of their booth and folding sharply down onto it.

“Let’s start with skeletons,” Frankie says, in lieu of hello, turning to Kit. “How many would you guess are in your closet? The average person has at least four, and I can work with that. But for every number you go over ten, the risk of one being dug up increases exponentially, and the whole point of this is to improve Sage’s reputation, so. What are we looking at here? Start with the juicy stuff. Gambling addiction? Parents in the mafia? Manslaughter?”

Sage stiffens as she talks, his face freezing while Kit blinks at her, trying to process her question. Finally, he says, “Um. Hello, for one thing, and, I guess in tenth grade I got arrested for trying to fill my neighbor’s hot tub with Jell-O? But it was my sister’s idea , and we didn’t end up getting charged with anything.”

Sage looks amused by this; Frankie does not. She reaches into her briefcase, pulls out a file, drops it on the table, and taps it. “Oh? Is that all? Then why does your name turn up in a court filing from⁠—”

Sage cuts her off with a groan and a raised hand. “Jesus, Frankie. We haven’t even had coffee. I told you not to go all weird and investigative; I was creepy enough snooping on my own.”

“You tell me not to do lots of things,” Frankie says, with an air of someone remarking on an irksome habit. “And I ignore you when you’re wrong, which is nearly always, especially when it comes to looking out for you. Anyway, I didn’t read it—out of respect for your request, I figured I’d let Kit explain for himself.” She smiles at him, not entirely nicely. “Go ahead.”

Kit, who wasn’t expecting to find himself on trial this morning, fights the urge to say, “This was his idea! Why are you interrogating me?” or, “Whoops, so sorry to waste your time, but I’ve just realized that this isn’t remotely worth it and must depart at once. I’d rather gargle rocks than discuss this with you and the star of Gowanus High! Farewell and best of luck!”

He thinks of Ezekial and Umar and Nina, of the bookshop’s comforting symphony of familiar sounds, of Allison’s wit and warmth and excellent coffee, of Throgmorten. He thinks of how humiliating it would be to shut down a business less than two years after he purchased it for the express purpose of proposing to a man who then dumped him before he got up off one knee. He takes a breath.

“If you had read it,” Kit says quietly, tapping the folder without bothering to examine its contents, “you would have seen that I was the plaintiff, not the defendant. Or, technically my parents were acting on my behalf; I was about eight years old.” Absently, he touches the side of his jaw, rubbing a finger along the faint line of the surgical scar. “A piece of equipment malfunctioned while I was on it at one of those indoor play zones? So I fell fifteen feet and broke my jaw in three places, and had to have it wired shut for two months. My parents sued, and we settled out of court, and that money—every last cent of it, plus what little I’d been able to save up on top—is what I eventually used to buy the bookstore. Does that count as a skeleton?”

To her credit, Frankie has the decency to look abashed in the long moment of silence that follows. Sage looks like he’s considering jumping out the nearest window, which is painted with images of—what else?—zinnias.

“No,” Frankie says eventually. “I think it does not. Sorry.”

Kit shrugs, looking down at the woodgrain of the table—or at what’s visible of it beneath the resin-covered layer of dried zinnia petals. “Don’t worry about it. It was a long time ago.”

A waitress comes to take their orders, and it gives them all a moment to regroup. When conversation resumes it’s lighter. Frankie runs him through basically the same pitch Sage did: Sage’s reputation is in the toilet, he can’t get projects funded, and he may have insinuated to some mysterious rich guy named Wayne, who neither one of them seems eager to talk about, that he had a serious boyfriend. So now they’re on the hunt for someone discreet and non-provocative to fill that role. Kit nods along, hoping that neither she nor Sage can see, in his eyes, a scroll feed of the many, many articles about Sage he ended up reading last night. The content feeding frenzy was against his better judgment, but that hadn’t done much to stop him.