Always, Tul. You were the only one who didn’t know that.
She looks down at Marah again, and sighs quietly, sadly.
Had I even thought about Marah last night? I can’t remember. I can’t remember anything
about what happened to me, and when I try, some dark truth presses in and I push it
away. “I’m afraid to remember what happened.”
I know, but it’s time. Talk to me. Remember.
I take a deep breath and scroll through memories. Where to pick up the story? I think
about the months after her death, and all the changes that happened. The Ryans moved
to Los Angeles and we lost touch in the way that happens with distance and grief.
By early 2007, everything had changed. Oh, I still saw Margie. I had lunch with her
once a month. She always said she looked forward to her days in the city, but I saw
the sadness in her eyes, and the way her hands had begun to tremble, and so I wasn’t
surprised when she told me that she and Bud were moving to Arizona. When they were
gone, I tried like hell to get my life back on track. I applied for every broadcasting
job I could find. I started with the top ten markets and worked my way down. But every
single road came to a dead end. I was either overqualified or underqualified; some
stations didn’t want to piss off the networks by hiring me. Some had heard I was a
diva. The reasons didn’t really matter: the result was the same. I was unemployable.
That’s how I came to be back where I started.
I close my eyes and remember it in detail. June of 2008, less than a week before Marah’s
high school graduation and twenty months after the funeral, I …
am in the waiting room of KCPO, the small local TV station in Seattle where I first
worked for Johnny, all those years ago.
The offices have moved—the station has grown—but it is still a little shabby and second-rate.
Two years ago I would have considered local news beneath me.
I am not the woman I was before. I am like a leaf in the deep midwinter, curling up,
turning black, becoming transparent and dry, afraid of a strong wind.
I am literally back where I began. I have begged for an interview with Fred Rorback,
whom I’ve known for years. He is the station manager here now.
“Ms. Hart? Mr. Rorback will see you now.”
I get to my feet, smiling with more confidence than I feel.
Today I am starting over. This is what I tell myself as I walk into Fred’s office.
It is small and ugly, paneled in fake wood with a gunmetal-gray desk and two computers
on the desk. Fred looks smaller than I remember, and—surprisingly—younger. When I
first interviewed with him—in the summer before my senior year of high school—I thought
he was older than dirt. I see now that he’s probably only twenty years older than
I am. He is bald now, and smiling at me in a way I don’t like. There is sympathy in
his eyes as he stands to greet me.
“Hi, Fred,” I say, shaking his hand. “It’s good of you to see me.”
“Of course,” he says, sitting back down. On his desk is a stack of paper. He points
to it. “Do you know what those are?”
“No.”
“The letters you wrote me in 1977. One hundred and twelve letters from a seventeen-year-old
girl, asking for a job at the ABC affiliate station. I knew you’d be someone.”
“Maybe I wouldn’t have been if you hadn’t given me that break in ’85.”
“You didn’t need me. You were destined for greatness. Everyone saw it. Whenever I
saw you on the networks, I was proud.”
I feel a strange sadness at this. I never really thought about Fred after I left KLUE
for New York. How hard would it have been to look back just once, instead of forward?
“I was sorry to hear about your show,” he says.
And there we are; facing why I am here. “I guess I screwed up,” I say quietly.
He stares at me, waiting.
“I need a job, Fred,” I say. “I’ll do anything.”
“I don’t have any anchor spots open, Tully, and even if I did, you wouldn’t be happy—”
“Anything,” I say again, fisting my hands. Shame burns my cheeks.
“I can’t pay—”
“Money isn’t my priority. I need a chance, Fred. I need to prove that I’m a team player.”
He smiles sadly. “You’ve never been a team player, Tully. That’s why you are a superstar.
Do you remember how much notice you gave me when you got the network job in New York?
None, that’s how much. You came to my office, thanked me for the opportunity, and
said goodbye. This is the first time I’ve seen you since.”
I feel hopelessness well up. I refuse to let him see how deeply his words affect me,
though. Pride is all I have left.
He leans forward, rests his elbows on his desk, and steeples his fingers. Through
the vee, he stares at me. “I have a show.”
I straighten.
“It’s called
Teen Beat with Kendra
. It’s thirty minutes of nothing much, really. But Kendra’s a mover and shaker like
you were. She’s a senior at Blanchet and her father owns the station, which is how
she got a show for teens. Because of her school schedule, it tapes in the early morning.”
He pauses. “Kendra needs a cohost, kind of a straight man to keep her from overemoting.
Can you play second banana to a nobody on a fourth-rate show?”
Can I?
I want to be grateful for this offer—and I
am
grateful, honestly—but I am also hurt and offended. I should say no. In the great
reformation of my image quest, this will do almost nothing for me.
I should say no and wait for something more worthy of me.
But it has been so long. Being out of work, being
nothing,
is killing me. I can’t live this un-life anymore. And it can’t hurt to do a favor
for this station’s owner.
And maybe I can mentor Kendra the way Edna Guber mentored me all those years ago.
“I’ll take it,” I say, and as I agree, I feel this huge weight sliding off my shoulders.
A genuine smile tugs at my mouth. “Thank you, Fred.”
“You’re better than this, Tully.”
I sigh. “I used to think so, too, Fred. I guess that’s part of my problem. I’ll succeed
here. You’ll see. Thank you.”
Thirteen
That night, I stay up late, surfing the Internet, finding out all that I can about
my new cohost, Kendra Ladd. There is precious little. She is eighteen years old, a
reasonably good athlete with stellar grades and a full-ride scholarship to the UW
in the fall. She apparently came up with her show idea because kids are disenfranchised
and confused these days. Her goal is to “bring teens together.” At least this was
her answer in the Miss Seafair competition last year, in which she was first runner-up.
A “disappointing finish,” apparently, which she wouldn’t let “derail” her.
At that, I roll my eyes and think:
Listen to this, Katie.
Hours later, when I go to bed, I am exhausted but I can’t sleep. The night sweats
are so unbearable I get up at two and take a sleeping pill, which knocks me out; the
next thing I know, my alarm is bleating.
I am so wrung out and medicated, it takes me a second to figure out why my alarm is
ringing.
Then I remember. I throw the covers back and stumble out of bed, bleary-eyed. It is
five o’clock and I look like something a gillnetter has dragged in with the day’s
catch. I don’t suppose a show like
Teen Beat
has a makeup person, so I ready myself as best I can. I put on a black suit that
is too tight, with a white blouse, and leave my condo. In no time, I am pulling up
to the studio.
It is a nice Seattle predawn morning. I check in at the desk (security since 9/11
has changed everything about my profession—even on a nothing show like this) and go
to the studio. A producer, who is young enough to be my son, greets me, mumbles something
that might be recognition, and leads me to the set.
“Kendra is pretty green,” he says as we stand behind the camera. “And challenging.
Maybe you can help her.” He sounds doubtful.
The moment I see the set, I know I am in trouble. It looks like a stuck-up teenage
girl’s bedroom, complete with enough sports trophies to sink a small yacht.
And then there is Kendra herself. She is tall, and Q-tip-thin, wearing tiny denim
shorts, a plaid shirt with ruffles around the collar, a fedora with a gold lamé hatband,
and what we used to call come-fuck-me pumps in the old days. Her hair is long and
curly and makeup enhances her spectacular natural beauty.
She is leaning back against her dresser, talking to the camera as if it is her closest
confidant. “… Time to talk about texting rules. Some of the kids I know are, like,
making Herculean mistakes. In the old days, there were, like, books to tell you what
to say and how to act, but we, like, don’t have time for old school now, do we? Teens
today are on the go-go-go. So Kendra is going to step in to the rescue.” She smiles
and moves away from the dresser, walking casually toward the bed. There is a blue
X on the floor—her mark—which she misses. “I’ve come up with a list of five things
that should never be texted.” She moves across the room, misses her mark again. Tully
hears the cameraman curse under his breath. “Let’s start with sexting. Face it, girls,
boob shots to your guy are a no-no—”
“Cut,” the director says, and the cameraman breathes a sigh of relief.
“Kendra,” the director says. “Can you stay on script?”
Kendra rolls her eyes and starts playing with her phone.
“Go on,” the producer says, giving me a shoulder pat that might have been meant to
be reassuring but feels more like a shove.
I square my shoulders and walk onto the set, smiling.
Kendra frowns at me. “Who are you?” she says to me. Into her mic, she says, “I have
a stalker.”
“I am hardly a stalker,” I say, fighting the urge to roll my eyes.
She pops her gum. “You look like a waiter in that suit.” She frowns. “No. Wait. You
look kinda like someone.”
“Tully Hart,” I say.
“Yeah! You look like her, only fatter.”
I clench my jaw. Unfortunately, my body picks this exact moment to overheat. A hot
flash tingles uncomfortably across my flesh. Pins and needles. My face turns beet-red,
I’m sure. I can feel myself sweating.
“Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” I snap. “I’m Tully Hart, your new cohost. There’s nothing for me to do
on today’s script, but we can talk about tomorrow. In the meantime, you need to hit
your mark. It’s the sign of a professional.”
Kendra stares at me as if I have just sprouted a beard and begun braying. “I don’t
have a cohost.
Carl!
”
The young producer is beside me in an instant, pulling me back into the shadows.
“And Carl is?” I ask.
“The director,” the producer sighs. “But it really means she’s going to call daddy.
Did they tell you she’s already had four cohosts fired?”
“No,” I say quietly.
“We call her Veruca Salt.”
I look at him blankly.
“The spoiled brat in
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
.”
“You’re fired,” Kendra yells at me.
Beside me, the cameraman takes his place. The red light comes on and Kendra smiles
brightly. “We were talking about sexting before the break. If you don’t know what
that is, I don’t think you need to worry about it, but if you do…”
I back out of the studio. My hot flash is abating somewhat. I can feel the drizzle
of sweat on my forehead drying up and my cheeks are cooling down, but my shame is
not so easily retracted; neither is my anger. As I leave the studio and step back
out onto the Seattle sidewalk, I am consumed by a sense of failure.
This
is what I have fallen to? Getting called fat and being fired by a talentless teen?
More than anything I want to call my best friend and have her tell me it will get
better.
I can’t breathe.
I can’t
breathe.
Calm down,
I tell myself, but I feel sick to my stomach and feverishly hot and I can’t catch
my breath. Pain squeezes my chest.
My legs give out from underneath me and I fall to the sidewalk hard.
I get up, stumble forward, flag down a cab, and get in. “Sacred Heart,” I gasp, fumbling
through my purse for a baby aspirin, which I chew and swallow, just in case.
At the hospital, I throw a twenty-dollar bill at the cabbie and stagger into the emergency
room. “Heart attack!” I scream at the woman at the front desk.
It gets her attention.
* * *
Dr. Grant peers down at me. He is wearing the kind of cheater glasses Costco sells
in a multipack. Behind him, a lackluster blue and white curtain gives us what little
privacy exists in a big-city ER. “You know, Tully, you don’t have to go to such lengths
to see me. I gave you my number. You could have just called.”
I am in no mood for humor. I flop back into the pillows behind me. “Are you the only
doctor in this hospital?”
He moves toward the bed. “All kidding aside, Tully, panic attacks are a common experience
during perimenopause and menopause. It’s the hormonal imbalance.”
And just like that, it gets worse. I’m unemployed, apparently unemployable; I am fat.
I have no real family, and my best friend is gone, and Dr. Granola here can take one
look at me and know I’m drying up from the inside.
“I’d like to test your thyroid.”
“I’d like to host
The Today Show.
”
“What?”
I throw the flimsy sheet back and climb out of bed, not realizing that my hospital
gown has flashed the doctor a shot of my middle-aged ass. I turn quickly, but it’s
too late. He has seen. “There’s no proof I’m in menopause,” I say.
“There are tests—”
“Exactly. I don’t want them.” I smile grimly. “Some people see a glass as half empty;
some see it as half full. I put the glass in a cupboard and forget it’s there. You
get my point?”
He puts down my chart. “Ignoring bad news. I get it.” He comes toward me. “And how’s
that working for you?”
God, I hate feeling stupid or pathetic, and something about this man and the way he
looks at me makes me feel both. “I need Xanax. And Ambien. They helped before.” I
look up at him. “My prescription ran out a long time ago.” This is a lie. I know I
should tell him that in the past year, I’ve gotten these prescriptions from several
doctors and that I am taking higher dosages, but I don’t.