Talk to Me

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by John Kenney


  Ted had shaved and showered but had yet to dress. What he was able to achieve was making a pot of coffee, though the basic movements took time and he was aware of all of them. Now he stood at the window and looked out over the park.

  He thought life would wait for him. While he was in the bubble, in the anchor chair, the most trusted name in network news. He thought life would wait and that there would be time to fix everything. Claire and Franny. He thought there would be time. But people had failed to wait for him. They had gone on living.

  Paris. He thought maybe he and Claire would go back to Paris. They’d been, before Franny was born. They had stayed at a small hotel in the Sixth and gone to the same café each morning for coffee and omelets. It overlooked the church at Saint-Sulpice. There was a fountain and they would sit for a long time after eating, Ted leafing through the International Herald Tribune and Claire staring at the fountain between writing postcards to friends.

  “I want to come here with kids,” Claire had said back then. “Wouldn’t that be fun?”

  Ted had looked at her and smiled. He loved her voice and her face and her hope for the future, for what life could be. So he thought they’d travel when he was done with the job. He thought it was just all on hold, that it was all just waiting. He thought the distance and the arguments and the years of empty evenings and lost weekends would somehow not matter and that they could travel, first-class. Do Greece. Do India. The South of France. They’d have plenty of money. They’d have time. Christ, maybe Franny would have come out of whatever funk she was in and come with them. They would have a lifetime of stories and memories. He thought the things that happened to other people wouldn’t happen to him.

  Ted realized he was blinking rapidly, standing at the window, not seeing anything. He thought they’d been following him. Claire and Franny. He thought they’d been waiting for him, only to turn around and find them gone.

  * * *

  • • •

  He’d missed her graduation from high school. By then they were so far estranged he thought it wouldn’t matter. He was on assignment in Kosovo and there was a Pulitzer Prize–winning photo of Ted from that time, after a shelling had taken place, holding a four-year-old girl who was covered in dust, cut on her face, bleeding. Ted and Lou had been on the outskirts of town, on their way in, when the bombs went off. If they’d been ten minutes earlier they would likely have been killed. The screaming of the survivors, the screaming of those who were trapped and would die. The lack of infrastructure, of emergency medical workers. From out of buildings came neighbors, digging through rubble by hand. Lou wanted Ted to record. And he did. But in the middle of it someone handed him the girl. Lou got it. A photographer from Reuters snapped a few pictures. One of them—the one that won the Pulitzer—was on a credenza in Ted’s living room. One of dozens of photos chronicling the remarkable career of Ted Grayson. Here was Ted on the set, in the anchor chair, with the twin towers behind him in flames. Here was Ted in Zaire, Cambodia, Afghanistan, Iraq. Ted at G8 summits in Berlin, London, Oslo. Ted with George H. W. Bush. Ted with Bill and Hillary Clinton. Ted with George W. Bush. Ted with Tony Blair. Ted with former Chinese president Hu Jintao. Ted with King Bhumibol Adulyadej of Thailand. Ted with Bono. Ted with the Pope.

  * * *

  • • •

  Claire had called the evening before. Ted assumed it was something to do with the upcoming meeting to go over the divorce agreement. He was tired. He didn’t feel well. The tweets and comments never ceased, and yet he couldn’t seem to not look.

  “How are you holding up?” she asked.

  “Well, according to the latest tweet from Gloria Steinem, I’m everything that’s wrong with the twentieth-century male.”

  “Yes. She was on Good Morning America. What’s the network saying?”

  “Not much.”

  “You’ve heard about the petition.”

  “Yes.”

  Claire could see him, knew his furrowed expression. He didn’t understand. He didn’t see what everyone else did. Dodge had said to Claire, “You know he’s going to be fired, yes?”

  She hadn’t. She never imagined it could come to that. She and Dodge had gotten in a small argument over this, actually, Claire surprised and hurt by the words, surprising herself by saying that Ted was a good man.

  “Ted,” she said now.

  He wasn’t sure what to say. He wanted to get off the phone. He felt he needed to get to the office. He had to talk with Simon. With Tamara. They could fix this.

  “Yeah.”

  “This thing with Franny. Is it a good idea?”

  “It wasn’t my idea.”

  “Just please be . . . careful.”

  “With what?”

  “With her feelings, Ted.”

  “Her feelings? Claire, I don’t know if you’ve seen the news lately but I’m the anti-Christ. I think there’s a better-than-average chance they’ll fire me. And I’m supposed to worry about a reporter’s feelings?”

  “No, Ted. You’re supposed to worry about Franny’s feelings.”

  “You know what I meant.”

  “Do you want me to be there tomorrow?”

  “I’ve been interviewed before, Claire.”

  “Not by your daughter you haven’t.”

  * * *

  • • •

  She arrived on time and looked around the apartment like it was an open house, like she was considering buying the place. Ted tried to think when she was last there. He wasn’t sure. But it had been a long time. She looked out the window as Ted hung up her coat. Ted poured coffee and brought it to her. He didn’t know how she took it.

  “Nice view.”

  Ted said nothing. He sipped his coffee. Had it started? My God, how strange, he thought. What were other fathers doing with their grown daughters right now? Holding a grandchild? Going for a walk? Catching up over lunch?

  Franny turned her attention to a lacquered credenza set against one wall, a faded silver mirror above it. Both items looked expensive, surely the work of an interior designer. A large bowl with hand-painted Mandarin lettering sat in the middle of the credenza. It was filled with books of matches, souvenirs from hotel bars around the world. Ted had been to eighty-seven countries at last count, a number he was proud of. Though more often than not his experience of a country, a city, was that of a banker in for a meeting. He saw the airport, the inside of a high-end hotel. He was driven places. He never wandered the streets. Never got lost and had to ask directions. Never stumbled upon a quaint restaurant. He’d gone to these places not in search of real stories but confirmation of a narrative they believed to be true. They rarely looked beyond the obvious. Poverty in Africa. War in Sudan. Corruption in Bucharest.

  Sitting atop the credenza in a row, the framed photos of Ted Grayson, famous person. Franny leaned forward, examining them. And there, toward one end, in an elegant, tarnished old silver frame with Claire’s initials etched at the bottom, was a photo of Claire and Franny at Claire’s parents’ place on Cape Cod. A place called Sandy Neck on Barnstable Harbor. The old lighthouse and the house next to it had been in Claire’s mother’s family since it was built, as part of a girls’ summer camp in the early 1900s. Claire had gone every summer, spending days at a small boat club learning how to swim and sail and play tennis. It looked like an Edward Hopper painting.

  In the photo, Franny must have been around four. They were on the beach, Claire sitting, Franny standing, showing Claire a shell. Late afternoon light. Claire had one tanned arm around Franny’s waist. Their heads close together. Franny’s chubby thighs. Ted took it with an old Nikon he’d had for years.

  Franny leaned closer. “Sandy Neck?”

  “Do you remember it?” Ted asked.

  “The water was cold.”

  “Always.”

  “And there was no electricity. Buckets of water to flus
h the toilet.”

  “Yup.”

  She turned and looked at Ted. Her phone buzzed. She took it out and looked at it instantly.

  “Gaston Fouquet called you a great man,” Franny said to her phone.

  “What?”

  “The leader of the far-right-wing party in France.”

  “I know who Gaston Fouquet is.”

  “He tweeted that you’re a great man. You stood up to political correctness and called a whore a whore.”

  “She wasn’t a . . .” Ted shook his head.

  “I’m just quoting Gaston Fouquet, who was quoting a story on Breitbart that claims they have evidence that Natalia was a prostitute. Except they won’t release the evidence because there is no evidence. We reached out to her. She wouldn’t talk.”

  “That’s insane.”

  “Which part?”

  “A story that they know is a lie?”

  “My boss says there are no lies. Just what people are willing to read and accept as the truth.”

  “Well, that’s about the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.”

  “He says we’re not responsible for the truth. That that’s the individual’s responsibility.”

  “Let me rephrase my earlier comment. That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.”

  “Henke’s a billionaire.”

  “Henke’s an asshole. I’ve heard him speak. What are you doing at that place?”

  He’d not meant to say this last sentence out loud. But he couldn’t help it.

  The reaction was swift and angry. “What are you doing at your place?”

  Ted walked to the kitchen, both composing themselves. Nothing changes in a family.

  He poured himself more coffee. His fourth cup of the morning. From a bag on the counter he took an Entenmann’s Pecan Ring that he’d had delivered. Franny had liked them a long time ago. He brought it into the living room and put it on the coffee table.

  Franny looked at it like it was something she might see at the Museum of Natural History.

  “What is that?” she asked.

  “A pecan ring. You used to like it.”

  Ted cut a hearty wedge and stuffed it in his mouth. It wasn’t nearly as good as he’d remembered. Stale. Flaky. Cheap sugar taste that hurt his fillings. Maybe two pecans.

  Franny took her iPhone out and opened the voice record app. She held it up, showing it to Ted. “Okay if I record our conversation?”

  “Sure.”

  Something about the question, the phone sitting there between them, caused a little flood of sadness in his head, his stomach. Franny had reached into her giant bag and pulled out a yellow legal pad on which she had scrawled what appeared to be many questions.

  “What I like to do is write the questions out and then forget them,” Ted said. “Just . . . have a conversation.”

  Ted had conducted thousands of interviews. So to him this just seemed like a mentor’s guidance. To Franny, it was what large swaths of Brooklyn and Scarsdale and Silver Lake and West Hollywood and talk show hosts like Dr. Phil called a “trigger.” She closed her eyes with all the subtlety of a daytime soap star. The reaction, one Ted had seen half a million times from Franny, caused him to roll his eyes.

  Franny sighed. “Can we . . . I like to do it with notes. If that’s okay with you.”

  “Fine.”

  Every word, every step forward, seemed misconstrued, a slight, an offense, a land mine.

  “Do you think you’re going to be fired?”

  It was a right cross that landed.

  But Ted was good at this. Good at poker face, at answers where the words don’t really say much.

  “That’s not my decision,” Ted said.

  “I understand that but that wasn’t my question,” Franny said. She was looking at the notes. Had she scripted it? Did she know what he would say?

  “That’s the network’s decision.”

  “But what do you think will happen? If you were Tamara Fine, what would you do?”

  Ted had, of course, considered this many times. He didn’t know Tamara well. A lunch, two dinners, maybe. She was clearly smart. For that reason, Ted felt the smart move would be to put him back in the chair. Advertisers liked Ted.

  “I’d try very hard to make the right decision for the network.”

  Franny nodded and let it go. She looked at her legal pad.

  “Why should a sixty-year-old white male impose his worldview on a nation of such diversity?”

  “I’m fifty-nine.”

  “Sorry. Why should a fifty-nine-year-old white male—”

  “I remember the other part. I’m not hard of hearing yet. Is that a serious question?”

  “Of course. Why?”

  “Well, it seems a little like ‘Have you stopped beating your wife?’ Seems to me like a statement.”

  “And I would say that that is part of your problem. The problem of older, rich men. The sense of entitlement.”

  “You went to private school most of your life. Am I missing something here?” Ted was trying to sound light but the question, and her tone, annoyed him.

  “That’s not the point. The point is that you impose your opinions on others.”

  “I don’t believe I impose my opinions on anyone. We report the news.”

  “Yes,” she said, ramping up. “And every time you decide what to report on, or what not to report on, you impose an opinion.”

  “You mean like suggesting that Tom Brady’s wife is having an affair.”

  He hadn’t mean to say it like he did. He wanted it to sound light, funny, to break the tension. But it came out too hard. He saw her react, saw her face contort. She took a moment.

  “I don’t equate what our website does with the nightly news. We’re not the problem.”

  “Who’s the problem?”

  “You. Your kind.”

  “My kind?” Ted asked.

  “White men. You’ve had, what, like two thousand years in power? Now we have global warming, epic poverty, and race riots. How’s that working out for you guys.”

  “I apologize for being white and male. It was not my choice. When the network wants to replace me they will. That’s not my call.”

  Franny was smirking, slowly shaking her head.

  “Well this is fun,” Ted said.

  * * *

  • • •

  She was home from college, spring of her freshman year. A long weekend. She treated the house like a hotel, coming and going at odd hours, saying little, taking the spare car. Claire had asked if they could have dinner together, the three of them. She would make Franny’s favorite meal, a spicy shrimp pasta. The Sunday evening before she had to head back.

  Claire had taken a bath, gotten dressed, had put music on. Ted had opened a bottle of wine. He was reading briefing papers on the G8 summit meeting in Italy that he was flying to the next day. Franny had said she would be home by 6:00. She texted at 6:30 to say she was running late. It was just after 7:00 now.

  It’s fine, Claire had said. She’s nineteen.

  He watched Claire go about making the meal. Peeling the shrimp, pressing the garlic, chopping the parsley. She did it with such care and attention to detail. Children never saw that. You got no credit for the invisible work of parenting. The late nights. The 3:00 a.m. pee when you checked on them, made sure they hadn’t fallen out of bed, that their blanket was still on, that the temperature of the room was just right. Crusts cut off sandwiches.

  He watched her and looked at his watch and sipped his wine and found himself getting angry. Angry at Claire for trying so hard. Angry at himself for not trying hard enough.

  At 7:30, Claire called Franny’s cell. It went straight to voicemail. She tried again twenty minutes later. Same thing. Claire put her phone down and moved the saucepan with the
shrimp sauce in it, slamming the pan. Her back was to Ted and she stood looking out the kitchen window, a pose Ted had seen a hundred times.

  “It’s ruined,” she said.

  She turned and walked to the door, grabbing a fleece. She needed to walk in the garden. She needed the cool air. She needed to see her plants, to whom she gave so much care and attention, who flourished, who seemed, in their quiet way, to appreciate it.

  Franny walked in a little before 9:00.

  Claire and Ted were in the kitchen.

  It was Claire who reacted first. Ted remembered that.

  “Where have you been?” she shouted.

  “I lost track of time, I’m sorry.”

  Claire looked at Franny’s bloodshot eyes. “Are you stoned? Is that why you’re late?”

  Ted took a few steps to get a closer look. Franny put her hands up, pulled a mock-surprise face. “Whoa, Ted. Calm down.” She smirked. Or maybe she was smiling. It seemed like a smirk. Like she was taunting him.

  It happened so fast. He didn’t plan it. He’d never done anything like it before. He slapped her, hard, across the face. The sound. A rifle crack. Ted wasn’t sure which happened first but he thought it was Claire screaming.

  “Ted!”

  Franny’s mouth, falling open, the pain of it, tears popping out, rolling down her cheeks. Her expression like a child, the surprise of it. The how-could-you of it. The instant regret on Ted’s part.

  And then the explosion from Franny.

  “Fuck you!”

  And she was gone.

  * * *

  • • •

  Ted sipped his coffee. Franny looked at her notes. She checked her phone.

 

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