Talk to Me

by John Kenney

  And here Elena Wolff, seasoned speaker, paused and looked out over her audience. “Twenty-seven. That’s less than five percent.”

  Huge, sustained boos. The tweets coming in so fast they were tough to read.

  “We need women telling our stories. We need gay men telling our stories. We need transgender people telling our stories. We need people of color telling our stories. Not just male reporters. Not blonde bombshells on Fox playing nice and sweet and showing off their legs, playing the cock tease. We need real women who have balls—yes, balls! For too long the world’s alt-history has been told to us by a single faction.”

  Laughing and cheering.

  Women with balls! Love it!

  #WomenWithBalls

  “Real women and men who are in touch with their female goddess to redefine how we tell our stories. War and violence and crime and poverty and inequality. That is what they have made. That is what they did with their turn at power. Destroy and demean. Double D. Precisely the bra size most men prefer.”

  Laughs and hoots and cheers.

  “In a moment, I’m going to introduce . . .” The boos built, the chairs slammed.

  And here Elena Wolff held up her hands, barely suppressing a smile, magnanimous in her condescension.

  “Please . . . everyone . . . please. We are defenders of free speech here. As long as it’s correct free speech.”

  A roar of approval.

  “I’m joking, of course,” she said.

  She sipped from a glass of water.

  “Freedom of speech is a myth. We are under the impression that we can say most anything we want in this country. Print most anything we want. But we can’t. Nor should we be able to. And in this new world, this constant geyser of words, commentary, counterpoint, scream, anger, vitriol, threat, sexual aggression, misogynistic cruelty, we must stand up, not to free speech, but to despicable speech. Hateful speech. Dangerous speech. Just as Oliver Wendell Holmes did. Oh. But wait, says the ACLU. Who are the arbiters of this so-called taste? We are.”

  Applause, hoots.

  #FUCKYEAH

  #ELENAGENIUS

  “We are the arbiters. We are the people who stand on that wall of words saying not on my watch. Not on my watch will you savage a young gay man and tease and humiliate him to his own suicide, as happened last year here at Columbia. Not on my watch will you body shame an author simply because she is clinically obese, as happened in California three months ago. Not on my watch will you post Nazi images on the Twitter page of a Jewish writer who reported on the rise of anti-Semitism in France, as happened two weeks ago. Not on my watch will you call a young, poor immigrant a whore.”

  They began chanting. They stood on their seats. Some hammered their seats. Some had brought thunder sticks, the inflated plastic bats used at football games. It was the Colosseum. It was a war cry before battle.

  * * *

  • • •

  Ted stood in the wings, brow furrowed, confused at what was happening. He looked out over the sea of faces, these young people, so sure of their own rightness and moral superiority. Perhaps this was the nature of being a college student, a belief that all who’d come before you simply didn’t understand the world now.

  Ted didn’t recognize himself in the faces. Didn’t recognize any semblance of the world he had experienced to date. Theirs was a worldview that seemed to lack even basic rules. Dating, sex, religion, government, work. Rules, they believed, were created by straight white men and hence the root of all evil. They believed only in technology and identity. Who needs God when you have Google? Who needs community when you have FaceTime?

  Ted’s experience was different. Ted was reared on Froot Loops and Frosted Flakes and Yodels and Ring Dings and Chips Ahoy! and liters of Coca-Cola. Cheeseburgers from Howdy’s and corn in cans and blade steak and instant mashed potatoes. Food was, during much of Ted’s youth, something made quickly from boxes that one simply added water and heat to while watching Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C. or McHale’s Navy or F Troop or Hogan’s Heroes or Rat Patrol, programs created by traumatized World War II vets who didn’t know what trauma was because the word hadn’t really been invented yet so they self-medicated with brown booze and cigarettes and jokes about pain and long evenings on a screened-in porch looking out at the neighborhood’s quiet darkness, cicadas going, wondering what all of this meant, what it was for, before going to bed in pajamas and waking to do it all over again.

  How to explain to these little know-it-alls that Ted’s mother, like so many other mothers in greater Providence, thought it was a good idea, when Ted was three and four years old, to put him in a harness and tie the harness to a tree in the yard, near shade, and a small sandbox, and Ted’s mother, holding Ted’s younger sister, leaning out a screened window to toss little Teddy a baggie with a cut-up orange in it. Today Ted’s mother would be front-page news, shamed and ruined. Back then, what harm?

  * * *

  • • •

  The Twitter feed scrolled. One caught Ted’s eye.

  Ted Grayson is how Hitler got to power.

  Ted couldn’t believe it. He turned to a young man with a headset and a clipboard who appeared to be the stage manager. “Did that say . . .”

  “Hitler? Yup.”

  Ted and the boy exchanged a look.

  “Godwin’s Law, dude,” the boy said.

  “What’s that?”

  “Godwin’s Law. I think he was some lawyer guy. He said that if an online discussion goes long enough, at some point, no matter what the topic, someone will compare someone else to Hitler.”

  “That’s insane.”

  “We had a woman in here last week who’d written a controversial book about gardening and race. Same thing happened.” The kid shrugged. “It’s just what happens now.”

  * * *

  • • •

  Elena Wolff began introducing him.

  “Ted Grayson is a twenty-nine-time Emmy Award nominee and twelve-time Emmy winner. He is the anchor and managing editor of Continental News Corporation’s nightly broadcast and has been for twenty years this fall. He has reported from every continent and most every major war, hurricane, flood, and tragedy in the last two decades . . .” But the noise grew, Elena becoming a silent movie star, her lips moving but no sound.

  Ted thought of his parents. How glad he was that they weren’t alive to see their son, their good boy, flayed like this. How hard his father had worked his whole life. How he never visited foreign capitals, except with the army. How he never complained. How he looked around when he was in line at the grocery store to see if the person behind him had fewer items, letting them go first. How he pointed out to Ted, as they drove past bus stops, that some people weren’t quite so lucky as the Graysons, to have a car, waiting in the cold and the rain for a bus to take them to a job, a second job, home late at night. How he looked out for the older couple down the street. Shoveled their walkway. How Ted’s mom brought them soups and lasagnas. How they knew everyone in the neighborhood. How his father hummed in the car in the summer, one hand on the steering wheel, one bent arm out the window, stopping at Fisher Dairy for an ice cream cone for Ted and a coffee frappe for Dad. “I don’t see why not,” his father saying with a smile and a wink. And that’s all Ted needed to know he had a place in the world, that he was loved.

  What had happened to kindness? Maybe Ted should Google that.

  * * *

  • • •

  Elena had to shout above the noise, the boos, the “You suck, man,” as she said, “Please welcome Ted Grayson.”

  Elena waited for Ted at the two chairs by the two microphones. She made no effort to meet him halfway. No effort to take a few steps toward him. Ted would have done it, had he been the host. A small gesture, a few steps toward a guest, to make someone feel welcome. Elena waited, looking at Ted with a smile that felt more like a smirk. Ted walk
ed out onstage as scores of people in the crowd turned their backs to him.

  It felt like a long walk, his legs heavy. More and more students turned their backs, the noise deafening now. Ted reached his hand out to shake Elena’s but she seemed to decide, at the last minute, to not shake his hand, to put her head down and sit. Ted was left with his arm extended, looking like a presidential candidate on Saturday Night Live.

  He heard someone laugh and yell “You douche!”

  Ted sat and adjusted the microphone.

  Elena said, “People . . . please. Could we please have some quiet.”

  They listened to her.

  “Ted. Do you believe that a fifty-nine-year-old white man with misogynist tendencies is the best person for millions of people to trust?”

  The crowd exploded, laughing, cheering.

  Ted stared at Elena, who held his look. She was not intimidated. She was a bully and she wanted to bury him. To embarrass him. She wanted revenge for the Russian whore.

  * * *

  • • •

  He was running his tongue against the back of his lower teeth. He hands tingled. He tried to speak. He was saying words. “I don’t know if that’s a serious question . . .”

  But no one could hear him. Elena raised her hands, halfheartedly spoke to the crowd, “Please. People . . .”

  But they were too far gone now.

  “If I might . . .” Ted tried. But they weren’t going to let him speak.

  Elena turned to him, leaned in, put her hand over her mic. “Network news. Where we’ve been. That sounds like a punch line to me, Ted.”

  “Are you going to do anything about this?”

  “Ted, there’s no camera here. There’s no diarrhea medication sponsors. You have no power here. And if you think I control this you’re dumber than I thought.”

  He shouldn’t have, but he stood. He was so angry. So sick of this Twilight Zone existence. He stood and he took a step toward the front of the stage. He was squinting at the roar, at the chairs being slammed in a kind of rhythmic primal war cry. For God’s sake, he’d given a hundred speeches. Commencements and panel talks and interviews. He was a man used to being listened to. Just listen to me. You invited me! He held his arms out in front, trying to implore them. “Please . . . please,” he shouted through the storm. But no one heard him, a small cry in a tornado. It would be the photo on the tabloids and websites, Ted, wide-eyed, arms out, “like Christ on the cross,” said one website. “Except no one was hoping for his resurrection.”

  And that’s when Ted saw Franny.

  * * *

  • • •

  Franny had a seat on the aisle, ten rows back from the stage. Most everyone was standing now, many with their backs to Ted. Those who did face him chanted wildly, shouted obscenities, raised their signs in protest. Several Columbia police officers entered the back of the hall and hustled to the front of the stage. The crowd booed. Franny stepped in the aisle to leave. She wanted to leave. She needed to get away from this. And it was here that Ted saw her. They looked at each other for a time. And what surprised her, what confused her, was the desire to run to him, to get him off the stage. But she did nothing. She stood frozen.

  A woman standing next to her turned and smiled. She had been cheering loudly at everything Elena was saying.

  “Guy’s a dick, right?” the woman shouted above the crowd.

  Franny just looked at her.

  The woman noticed Franny’s small notebook, her scribbles.

  “You writing a story or something?”

  Franny nodded.

  “Make sure you screw him over. He can’t treat women this way, right?”

  “What way?” Franny said, annoyed at the woman, at her know-it-all expression and condescension, at the fact that Franny completely agreed with her, was her.

  “He called her a whore.”

  Franny nodded. It came out fast, hard, adrenaline-angry. “What the fuck do you know about anything?”

  The woman’s expression changed as she backed off into the crowd.

  Franny watched her father turn and confer with Margo Litt, who had come onto the stage. Watched as Margo spoke to the crowd, who were delirious with their sound and fury. Watched as Margo and Elena and Ted walked offstage, the women—and here Franny wasn’t sure of her own memory of it but it felt this way—walked away from Ted, ahead of him, leaving Ted alone, a final look over his shoulder at the mob.

  * * *

  • • •

  In Midtown, Tamara was following the event on Twitter. Maxwell, her PR head, was messaging her. “This is getting out of hand.”

  Tamara texted back. “You think?”

  Talk to me.

  Murray.” It was Grace.

  Murray looked up from his screen, mid-sentence, still in the story he was writing. He looked at Grace, saw that Jagdish was looking at him, too.

  “We wanted to say something,” Grace said. She looked over at Jagdish, and Jagdish nodded. They had gone out for a coffee after work the day before. They’d talked for an hour and a half. They felt it was the right decision.

  “I’m resigning,” Grace said.

  “I am also,” Jagdish said. “Respectfully, Murray.”

  Murray nodded.

  Grace had stayed up the previous evening and written her thoughts out.

  “There is a part of me that loves Ted,” she said. “Truly. But what he said, the word he used, the way he used it. He demeaned that woman. That’s not okay. Ever. It’s 2016, Murray. If we condone this, then we are part of it. I . . . we . . . want to make a stand. We want to be on the right side of history.”

  She looked at Jagdish. “What she said,” Jagdish added. “I cannot say it better.”

  Murray scratched his scalp and sniffed his fingertips.

  “Okay, then,” he said finally, nodding. “Ahh, just . . . send me an email, make it official. I’ll forward it to HR. We’ll do an ice-cream cake or something for your last day.”

  He put his head back down, stared at the keyboard, and began typing. Grace and Jagdish looked at each other, confused and a bit hurt that Murray was being so cavalier.

  Perhaps it was the pressure of watching Ted annihilated in the media, this man who had been so good to Murray. Perhaps, too, it was the sense of foreboding, that his job, his industry, certainly the evening news, was coming to an end, changing in ways he simply didn’t recognize or understand.

  “That’s it?” Grace said.

  Murray nodded, typing, staring at his screen.

  Grace and Jagdish gathered their coats.

  Jagdish said, “Murray. We’re going for soup. Can we get you anything?”

  “If you do this, they win. Okay?” Murray said too loud.

  “If we get soup?” Jagdish said.

  Murray stood. “Not soup! They! They win if you do this. If you quit. Don’t you see? They win!”

  “Who wins?” It was Grace. “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about everything that is wrong with America, the world, us, today. Mark Fucking Zuckershit. Sergey fucking Brin douche!”

  “Elegant,” Grace said.

  “Just listen, please!”

  “No, Murray!” Grace found her voice, her footing. “I’m done listening to men tell me—”

  “You sanctimonious shits!” Murray shouted.

  Their mouths opened involuntarily, Grace and Jagdish.

  “I see. I see. Ted is bad and you are both good. Both so right. So you’ll walk. Simple. I get it. You’re news writers, for God’s sake. When is a story ever simple? How old are you two, ten?”

  “You’re rude. I’m not listening to this.” Grace again, heading for the door.

  “You’re so afraid to live.” He was talking to Grace now.

  “No I’m not!”

 
“You have your band. You know them. But only so you don’t have to do the real work of knowing an actual person, trusting a person. Why do that when you can pretend?”

  She was wide-eyed now and wounded.

  “I know you because I am you, Grace. I’m just like you. And just as afraid. And I died when I saw that video of him. Because I love him. Because I believe in him. And I want to quit, too. I want to walk out that door and have cameras turned on and take a big crap on him. Because he doesn’t get to do that. But he did. So what now? I owe him this. The hardest thing about a relationship isn’t the I do part. It’s the I do when you don’t want to. Walk away now and the forces that won’t let us make a mistake win. The sanctimonious assholes who criticize him like they’ve never made a mistake win. You are so much better than that. You make him better. Your work and writing and passion. You are amazing. And without you, without both of you, this newscast is the lesser. I’m the lesser. He’s not going to survive this. It’s over soon. To walk out now is . . .”

  And here the energy seemed to leave Murray completely. He exhaled and sat down.

  “I’m sorry I raised my voice,” he said, staring at his keyboard.

  Grace and Jagdish looked at Murray, waiting.

  Jagdish said, “Murray.”

  “What?” Murray stared at his desk.

  “Would you like some soup?”

  He looked at them. “Are you coming back?”

  Jagdish looked at Grace. She didn’t answer right away.

  “How about a mulligatawny?” she said to the floor.

  “Okay,” Murray said. “And some oyster crackers, please.”

  He began typing.

  * * *

  • • •

  Ted woke early, after another night of not sleeping well, and had, around dawn, fallen into a deep and wonderful sleep for about an hour. He lay in bed for a time, unable to find the energy to get up, the regret and shame taking a foothold the moment he opened his eyes. He considered going to the gym in the building and riding the stationary bike for forty-five minutes and then doing light weights, rolling his fascia on the foam roller, then taking a relaxing steam, all of the things a high-priced personal trainer he had hired a year ago—two years ago?—had urged him to do but which he almost never did.