by John Kenney
“I guess. Why?”
“‘I guess,’ he says. I guess. You’re a queer one, Teddy. A little birdie told me there was a bit of drama on the set a few nights ago. The night you canceled, in fact.”
“How do you know about that?”
“Boychik. I know about everything. That’s my job.”
“It was nothing. Lost my temper.”
“Not what I heard.” Polly looked at him, a mother’s look of concern. “Tell me you’re okay.”
“I’m okay.”
“Let’s try that again and maybe this time mean it.”
Ted grinned. “I’m okay, Pol. I hate birthdays.”
“Who doesn’t after the age of twenty-nine?” She sipped her drink. “Listen. Okay. Who’s your first call when something like that happens? Who’s your first call when anything like that happens? Aunt Polly. This is a person we’re talking about. I fix things. So nothing blows up. Are they fixing this?”
“It’s fine.”
The food arrived. Ted ordered another drink.
“Another martini?” the waiter asked her.
“Sonny. I’m a Jew,” she said through a mouthful of steak. “Which means I don’t drink like my handsome friend here. But I will be having dessert so stay close.”
* * *
• • •
That same evening, in Long Island City, a land far, far away from Ted’s Manhattan, two women walked home from a liquor store, lugging a case of Pabst Blue Ribbon. They walked past the end of the Dutch Kills, the cold and wind keeping the stench and whatever else haunted those toxic waters heading in another direction. Along Forty-Seventh Avenue, past the Taxi & Limousine Commission, past the Extreme Sports Paintball & Laser Tag place where the bankers and ad agency people held retreats—team building, slumming it in Queens for a night.
Natalia walked with her sister, Laura. Her best friend. Laura was younger by two years but acted older. Alpha tough. They walked past the City Ice Pavilion, where sometimes, on a weekday, when she hadn’t booked a hair and makeup job, Natalia would go by herself and skate for an hour or two. It always felt like being back in Zakopane, a resort town about two hours south of Kraków, in the Tatra Mountains of southern Poland. Her parents worked in the swank hotels in the winter and on farms in the summer. She’d grown up skiing, skating, snowshoeing with her father on his days off.
Natalia told her sister the story.
The network’s human resources department had called and asked that she come in. Natalia assumed they would apologize, that perhaps she’d meet with Ted. Mostly she hoped to be brought on full-time, instead of her permalance position, which had no benefits.
She waited more than an hour before being ushered into the office of a woman named Donna. Donna was fiftyish, unsmiling, a person uniquely unsuited to be in human resources due to an unnatural lack of compassion, hardened, most recently, by an ugly divorce. Without making eye contact, Donna motioned for Natalia to sit.
Natalia sat silent, stone-faced, embarrassed. She wanted to cry but wouldn’t let herself, her father’s daughter.
Donna said nothing at first. She continued filling out the paperwork, checking it against something on her large, antiquated computer screen. The longer she was ignored, the angrier Natalia got.
“We’re letting you go, of course,” Donna finally said to her desk. She managed to look up, a grin crossing her overly made-up face.
Natalia hadn’t been expecting this. She thought she might be reassigned. A morning show. Something. But not this. It came out fast. “Are you firing him, too?”
Donna’s grin disappeared.
“Do you have any idea who you’re talking about?”
“Yes. A man who called me a Russian whore. I’m neither.”
“What?”
“He did.”
“That is a very serious charge you’re making.”
“It’s not a charge. It’s the truth.”
Donna was a born bully and sensed a weakling.
“Well, this is the first I’m hearing of it,” Donna lied.
“Ask the people who were on the set.”
“I did. And—”
“I thought this was the first you were hearing of it,” Natalia snapped.
“I asked them, young lady, to describe what had transpired,” Donna lied again, raising her voice. “And what I was told was that you had the audacity to give Mr. Grayson the middle finger, which people in this country think is a major offense.”
Donna stared at Natalia, challenging her. Natalia felt her throat tighten, her eyes tingle. She’d never been fired from a job in her life. She wanted to pull her phone out, show the video. But Donna was picking up her phone, calling security. A panic-fear came over Natalia. She prided herself on her work ethic. Her father’s work ethic. She had done nothing wrong. Fine, she had given the old man the finger. It had been a reaction, in the moment, because he’d screamed at her. Because he’d frightened her. Because she felt threatened. Her parents wanted her to come home, to find work in Warsaw, meet a nice Polish boy. But she was desperate to make it here.
A large security guard escorted her out of the building. He gently laid his hand on Natalia’s shoulder. “It’ll be okay,” he said. Which was when she started to cry.
So that night, Laura’s boyfriend, Filip, and his friend came over. They drank beer and rolled cigarettes from a pack of Drum and listened to Laura’s iPad playing A Tribe Called Quest. When she wasn’t working at Polish-owned coffee shops, Laura picked up work as a DJ. She knew hip-hop better than any white girl from Poland should.
Natalia could tell Filip’s friend was hitting on her, but she had no interest and her sister would throw him off the roof if he made a move. She had her iPhone out and was showing pictures from Poland when she scrolled past the video she had taken of Ted. She played it for them and they laughed. She laughed. She played it again and they laughed again. Filip said they should play a drinking game. Play it and every time Ted said “Russian whore” they had to drink. Which they did three or four times. Her battery started to die. They moved on to something else. There was talk of going to a bar but Natalia wanted to find her bed. The others left and Laura and Natalia were alone.
Laura was the only one who hadn’t laughed at the video of Ted. She said, “That guy’s a dick. You should post that to your Facebook page. What are they going to do, fire you?”
* * *
• • •
Across the East River, in the wide-open spaces of scheisse, Franny and two of her colleagues watched Ted’s new promo. It wasn’t set to launch until Friday but someone had leaked it. They clicked on it and watched. One of them was writing a critique (175 words or less).
He was so young, Franny thought, as they watched. The shot at the end surprised her. She’d remembered that day. Her father and mother had just gotten in a huge fight about whether Franny should return to Northfield Mount Hermon, which Franny had not wanted to do, or move back home, go to school in the city. Ted was against the idea of quitting. Claire said he was being his own pigheaded Irish father. Ted said not everyone had had it as easy as Claire. Franny had watched the toxic verbal ping-pong, hating every second of it.
Now, watching, Franny found herself holding her shoulders high, felt an unpleasant tingling in her belly, a low-grade malaise creeping over her day, the blandness of the night to come, the weeks to come, her life in general. It seemed empty and hopeless. In fact, a few days ago she had received an unwanted email from a former roommate at Northfield Mount Hermon—Lauren—inviting her and her classmates to a reunion. Of course it would be Lauren planning the reunion. The invite, like so much about life these days, annoyed her. She responded no, saying she would be unable to attend, and then went to the class Facebook page, looked at some comments, saw some old classmates, and wrote what Lauren would feel was a mean, snarky, typically Franny Grayson comm
ent. Franny thought she was being funny. Lauren thought she was being a bitch.
“He was hot, your dad,” one of her coworkers said.
“Shut up,” Franny had said. “I want your story in thirty minutes.”
* * *
• • •
Here was the essence of news. A thing was happening right now, real time, and there were those who knew it and those who didn’t. Most didn’t. It was too new, too small. Those moments, before you know a thing—the spot on the X-ray, the middle-of-the-night phone call, the affair your spouse is having that you are still unaware of—these moments of blissful ignorance. This is where Ted and Claire and Franny lived.
* * *
• • •
Claire was in the city. She had gone to a SoulCycle class in Union Square, where she felt she more than held her own against the skinny twenty-five-year-olds with their perfect bodies and tight skin. They looked so young. How did they see her?
She left the class and walked through Union Square, past the farmer’s market stalls, the smells of lavender and apples and pretzels and fish. She continued south to University Place, heading like a tourist to the spot Franny had suggested she go for a coffee. Franny had said she would try to meet her mother but that work might get in the way.
What is a mother to make of this? Here she was, in the city, so close to both her husband and her daughter, and she would see neither. A life shared and now this. The time Franny, age four, needed an MRI, Claire lying on her back, holding Franny, covering her ears with her hands for twenty-five minutes, Franny falling asleep. The car trip to Maine, Franny eighteen months old, a nose full of snot, unable to blow. No drugstore nearby. Claire put her own mouth to the child’s nose and sucked, spit the snot out, Ted wide-eyed. Adapt and overcome, as the marines said. And what was a mother if not a marine. What wouldn’t she have done for this girl?
And now, happy for Franny in her new life, her career, Claire still smarted at the selfishness of not meeting for a coffee.
She went in and waited in line. Reclaimed lumber on the floors and halfway up the walls. Exposed brick. Vintage light fixtures. A low techno-beat playing from unseen speakers. Tattooed baristas who looked like people from a photo shoot of people who work in coffee shops tended to high-end Italian espresso machines, calling out people’s names as if it were physically painful to do so, their boredom at Sandra’s and Oshi’s and Brock’s coffee order almost too much for them.
In front of her were two girls, early twenties. Both wore yoga pants. There was, about both of them, an open sexuality so foreign to Claire’s life experience. Their bodies on display. The two girls were talking, almost at the same time, when one of them pulled off a sweatshirt to reveal a formfitting tank top. Claire looked at the girl’s bare shoulder. A purple workout bra just visible under her shirt. Claire watched as the girl listened closely to her friend talk about work, hair falling out of a bun, gold and brown strands creating a veil at her neck. A man will worship your body someday, Claire thought. You will lie in bed one rainy Sunday afternoon in late fall, the day quiet, after an hour of lovemaking. Mostly it will be lust then. A false love. An oxytocin-release love. A hormonal love. Not twenty-plus-years-of-marriage love. Not hold-their-hand-at-their-mother’s-funeral love. But rather lust disguised as love. Youthful lust. Zero body fat lust. Remarkably rigid penis lust. Bright light lust. Not shades down lust. Not hope for barely any light lust. You’ll want to see it all.
But know this, my round-bottomed friend, Claire wanted to say aloud. Know that he will worship your gift-of-a-body more than you, the person, the soul. He will conflate you and your body. It is what men do. He will partially listen to you. When you think that he’s being sensitive and engaged, chances are what he will really be thinking about will be turkey sausage. Or a pair of big boobs in a tight sweater he saw on the subway. Or a female colleague who bent over a desk to reach for a sheaf of papers. He will fight his Neanderthal instincts to respond in a way that makes you think you have one of the few good men. The early days of your relationship will be the wonder days, where you can’t believe it’s happened, that you’ve met someone like this, when you sleep late on a weekend and eat meals at odd hours and wander the city and talk in bed until the sky gets light, your energy and craving for each other, for life itself, seemingly boundless.
But it will change. Slowly at first. Then powerfully. Children. He will see you differently and you will see it in his eyes. The way he doesn’t look at you. The way he looks at younger women at parties you attend. How work and money and position will hold tremendous sway. How he will come home and talk only about himself, if he talks at all. How you will long for him to ask about your day. How your confidence and self-esteem, once so strong, will ebb. Is it me? you’ll wonder. Am I doing something wrong? No, you’re not. Which makes it all the worse. After the arguments, the fights, the ones that seem to happen more frequently as the years progress, notice how he comes up behind you at the sink, when you are doing the dishes, after the baby is down, you thinking about the laundry that has to be done, the shopping, feeling about as sexual as a lug wrench, when he, having caught sight of your ass, a distracted woodland animal, presses up against you, and reaches around to hold your breasts, when all you wanted was a “sorry,” a hug that did not involve his hands on your ass. Is that so hard?
She wanted to tell the girl. Tell both of them. Be careful, she wanted to say. There’s an accident up ahead. Avoid it. But they wouldn’t listen. She also wanted to tell them that, if you were lucky, you might even meet a man like Dodge, who, you hoped, could save your life.
* * *
• • •
They walked through the Frick, Dodge occasionally brushing against her shoulder. He smelled like sandalwood. They looked at the paintings, an exhibit of Van Dyck. Claire stared, unable to comprehend that someone had moved his hand in such a way as to create what appeared to be alive. They walked slowly in the quiet, peeling off to look at pictures in their own time, Dodge ahead of her, assuming the stance of a regular museumgoer, hands intertwined behind his back, leaning forward at the waist. He loved art but was eager to get to dinner, to a glass of wine, to his apartment, where he could remove Claire’s clothes.
Claire was staring at a particular picture, a portrait of two children. Elizabeth and Anne. The write-up on the wall next to the drawing told the history, how Van Dyck had become the favorite painter of King Charles the First of England and his wife, Queen Henrietta Maria. At the time of Van Dyck’s painting, the royal couple had five children, Charles, Mary, James, Elizabeth, and Anne. Henrietta gave birth to nine children, two of whom were stillborn.
Claire read this and then read it again. She leaned closer. It hit her, the feeling, so fast, so suddenly, that her eyes welled. She blinked and leaned even closer. A docent startled her when he gently asked if she could not lean so close.
She was embarrassed, mostly because she had tears on her cheeks. Dodge turned to look at her but Claire quickly made her way to the ladies’ room, where she sat in a stall with the lid of the toilet down, staring at her shoes, trying to muffle sobs with a wad of toilet tissue. So strange, she thought, observing herself. She’s not a crier. Stoic. Strong. A New England Ford. Don’t whine. Keep moving. And yet something about the painting, those two children.
After Franny, who was so hard to conceive, they had tried again. So many tests, so much disappointment. And then, the little miracle. A boy. Walt. An emergency C-section at thirty-six weeks. Stillborn.
The effect this has on a person. On a mother. The sadness of it. Do you compensate, perhaps, by loving your only child too much? Can you love a child too much? Can you give in too easily? Overlook traits and behavior that to someone perhaps a bit less wounded would be obvious? Do you, perhaps, spoil them? Act as a mother bear when the child’s father raises his voice, even when warranted?
She stood and stepped out of the stall, washed her hands and splashed a l
ittle cold water on her face. She rarely wore makeup, the good fortune of high coloring and fine skin. She blinked several times, reapplied her lipstick, let her hair out of the bun she’d had it in and reset it.
When she walked out Dodge put a hand gently upon her shoulder, his face contorted with confusion and pain. “Are you okay?”
Claire touched his cheek, smooth from a recent shave. She was happy to see his face. She wanted to feel good. She wanted desperately to be happy.
They had dinner at a small Italian place between Madison and Fifth, a place where they knew Dodge. The food was very good. They drank wine and, later, espresso. They split a tiramisu. A short walk back to Dodge’s five-thousand-square-foot apartment, where they slowly undressed each other. And then Claire lay down with a man other than Ted for the first time in over thirty years (fine, it was their seventh time). She was blissfully unaware of the calls from Franny, the texts. Or the texts from Nancy. Or from Ted. Or from her own lawyers, giddy with excitement at the potential ruin they could inflict on Ted. She hadn’t remembered that she’d turned the ringer of her phone off at the museum, that the battery had drained to nothing. Dodge was whispering in her ear in the quiet and the dark.
* * *
• • •
It started as a barely palpable heartbeat. A minuscule speck of data among the two billion users of Facebook. A microscopic dot among the more than two hundred billion emails sent every day, the more than five hundred billion text messages sent every day, the more than three billion Google searches every day.
But it was alive.
A few friends of Natalia’s saw it. A leaf going over a waterfall. It was nothing. Except then a friend of a friend emailed it to another friend, who happened to be a reporter at TMZ. Some famous newscaster dude losing his shit. It was funny. The reporter had it posted seventeen minutes later with a three-line story absent of facts except for Ted’s name, a story that, owing to an alert, a reporter at scheisse emailed to his editor, who emailed it to Henke, who posted it. A colleague of Franny’s texted her the Facebook link.