Secrets of a Soap Opera Diva (11 page)

“
Your
wedding dress?” I asked incredulously.

“Yes, the first time I wore the dress was in 1976 when my character, Rory, married Vidal, that was the year of the bicentennial,” she marveled. “Then after our divorce in 1980 we remarried in 1984, me symbolically wearing the same dress. We went on location to Tortola. Now
those
were soap opera weddings to
remember.
You wouldn’t know anything about that, though, would you, Calysta, since
supporting
actors don’t get to go on location shoots?”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, Penelope, you were going to put me in the same dress Alison wore when Nancy Reagan was running the country?”

“I was going to have it dyed peony pink, Calysta. Jeesh, we’re not going for a virginal bride here.”

“Are you crazy?” Alison demanded. “No one else is wearing my dress!”

“All right, calm down,” Penelope said, gathering more of the taffeta. “
Of course
I was going to ask for your permission first.”

“Which you most certainly would
not
have gotten,” Alison snapped, pulling more of the fabric toward her. “This dress is sacred. How do you think my legions of fans would react seeing
her
in it?”

“They’d probably wonder why the hell my size four figure was in your tent.”

“You miserable—”

“Alison, please let go,” the Pattern Cutter begged, pulling in the opposite direction.

“I will not! I’m taking my dress with me for safekeeping!”

“It’s property of Barringer Dramatic Series. Be reasonable.”

“
No
, you goddamn traitor!”

“Alison!”

I stepped back and stared in bug-eyed bewilderment at the bizarre fiasco unraveling.

As the two tussled over the taffeta, Alison’s turban and robe came undone, revealing her wet, overbleached tresses and saggy ass.

Maybe I’ve been too hard on Randall. Nah, they deserve each other.

After a loud rip signaling the dress was torn, Alison squealed, “Oh my gawd. Look what you did!” as she pulled her robe shut.

“Me?” the Pattern Cutter exclaimed in shock.

“Penelope, you’re in
so
much trouble. You’ve ruined a masterpiece! Wait until I tell my husband. And as for you, Calysta, I can hardly wait until you’re finally off
R&R
. Randall and I are planning one
helluva
party the day you fall off that goddamn boat.”

Alison flung the remains of the ripped dress in Penelope’s face before storming out, leaving the Pattern Cutter convulsing in tears.

Wow,
I thought as I slipped out to prepare for my scenes,
these wack-a-doodles are crazier than I thought.

T
he Rich and the Ruthless
had never hired an African American writer in its thirty-seven-year run. I was forever rewriting my scenes for the production, and they loved it. Who wouldn’t? It was free! Randall and Edith knew I was passionate about my work, all of it. They got me on the cheap and looked the other way while someone else got credit for it. My scripts were always covered with penciled-in rewrites and personal notes.

Fans always wrote in asking, “Calysta, who writes those feisty lines for you?”

“
Me
do it,” I’d write back.

“
Cut
!” boomed Randall, sitting in the control booth next to Julius, who was eating popcorn, one of three rotating directors. “Calysta, I can see the outline of your nipples through your sweater. I told you to wear those Nipples-No-More,” he shouted over the loudspeaker. With a live feed throughout the WBC studios, anyone could watch and listen to us taping and they always were.

“The glue from those patches gives my silver dollars a rash.”

“What?”

“My areolas? Maybe if you didn’t keep the set so damn cold it wouldn’t be a problem.”

The set was kept at what felt like two degrees above freezing at all times, supposedly to keep us all alert and perky. It felt like a meat locker. On second thought, that’s what it was.

“Since you’re on a Nipplegate bender again, Randall, why is it that you don’t make any of the guys wear the Nipples-No-More? Ethan’s are twice the size of mine and have piercings,” I retorted. I’d bet Derrick and his costar were laughing hysterically back in his custom double-banger trailer, the duplex of actor housing, across the lot.

“Very funny,” Randall said stiffly as he dialed.

“Hello, wardrobe,” Penelope warily answered.

“Get those nipple busters down here stat!”

“Sorry, Randall, we ran out. You said we didn’t have it in the bud—”

He hung up.

I said, “Can we get back to work? We have eighty-two pages to tape, and that doesn’t include the scenes we have to do because of Maeve’s bronchitis.”

A reluctant Randall nodded in agreement.

“Okay, let’s pick it up from your line, Calysta,” the director said.

I took my place, nipples and all.

Will Edith Norman finally hire a new writing team and get rid of that hack Felicia Silverstein? I’ve got a great idea! How ’bout the cutting-edge number one daytime soap opera hiring a few top-drawer minority writers? I hate that word “minority,” it sounds so, er, racist and condescending. But you know, black, Hispanic, Indian, Asian, oh you get it, actual “color” television. To my knowledge, there’s like three black scribes in all of soap operaland. It’s just my opinion but isn’t it time for CHANGE?

The Diva

F
rom the bed in his private hospital suite, Augustus Barringer yelled, “Sonofabitch, who’s writing this crap! And what happened to the lighting?” He was watching an episode of
The Rich and the Ruthless
.

“Daddy, you have to stay calm,” Veronica Barringer, his debutante daughter, warned. “You can’t risk your blood pressure going up.”

“How the hell do you expect me to stay calm when someone’s writing b.s. like that on one of my shows? I want you to get Felicia on the phone now!”

Veronica sighed. She knew allowing her father to watch episodes of his struggling flagship show was a bad idea, but her mother had insisted, “Television is a defining aspect of your father’s life.” Katherine
Barringer reasoned, “If we take that away from him, we might as well start digging his grave now.”

“Daddy, I’ll speak to Felicia as soon as I get back to L.A.,” Veronica promised. “Right now I’m focused on you getting better.”

“Never mind that. I’ve got a team of overpriced doctors and your mother to worry about that. I need you to jet back to Los Angeles and head up writer duties on
R&R
and oversee
The Daring and the Damned
until I get out of this damn bed and back on my feet. Should’ve hired you out of college, Ronnie, and fired Felicia the day she suggested we stop using real fur on the show after she came back from that goddamned PETA fund-raiser.”

“Daddy, you’ve gotta be kidding, I’ve only dabbled in writing. A few articles a year in
Artforum
, that’s it.”

“Look, I didn’t donate all that money to Syracuse and get you into the Newhouse School for nothing.”

“But there’s no way I can manage writing scripts
and
oversee story content for both shows! Besides, I’m not going anywhere until we figure out what’s been causing these strokes. The shows will survive.”

“You’ll do what I tell you to do. And whaddya mean there’s no way you can manage both shows? Hell, I wrote both soaps for years and the only vacation I ever had was open heart surgery. You kids today have no ambition.”

Any other time, Veronica would have launched into a heated discussion with her father about how the soap world had changed, but instead she decided to let him have the last word.

“God knows your brother isn’t capable.”

Veronica’s older brother, Auggie Jr., who had been blessed with more than most in the hunk department, oversaw the business aspects of
The Rich and the Ruthless
and
The Daring and the Damned,
acting as co-executive producer alongside Randall Roberts during Augustus’s absence. That is, when his golf game and partying allowed him the spare time.

“How’s your father doing?” an elegant Katherine asked in her trademark brahmin voice, walking in chicly dressed in Escada.

“Everything’s fine, Mother,” Veronica said with uncertainty in her tone.

“The hell it is,” Augustus bellowed. “
R&R
is disintegrating into an
Obsessions
circus, thanks to Felicia’s barbaric writing, and our son and Randall are just sitting by letting it happen! Next thing you know,
The Rich and the Ruthless
will be
The Lost and the Forgotten
. And what’s this business about Randall wanting a pay increase? That bum’s already overpaid. Is he out of his mind?!”

“Augustus, dear,” Katherine said soothingly. “There will be plenty of time to worry about everything once we get you well.”

She leaned over to kiss her husband on the forehead.

“I suppose you’re right,” he replied, his wife’s relaxed tone calming him down. “So when can I go home anyway?”