Talk to Me

by John Kenney

  “No.”

  “She was going to call.”

  And say what? he wondered.

  “Ted, I’m so sorry,” she said. She felt it had happened to her, too. To the both of them. She was apologizing for the failure of their marriage, for their failure, perhaps, as parents. Ted drove largely unaware he was driving. He drove and listened to his own heavy breathing.

  “I didn’t clear out my stuff,” he said.

  “What?” she asked.

  “From the house. I forgot. I just . . . left. This morning. I’m sorry.”

  Claire’s face contorted. The pain of it for him. He sounded odd.

  “Don’t worry about it,” she said.

  Neither knew what to say now.

  “Claire?”

  “Yes.”

  He couldn’t quite get it out. He decided against asking it.

  “Was I that bad?” he asked.

  She was standing at the sink. She was looking out the window at the garden. At the pack-a-lunch-sandwich. That’s what he called the pachysandra. He’d never learn. She had a lump in her throat. She closed her eyes. She looked up. She said nothing.

  * * *

  • • •

  Franny sat on the edge of her bed and stared at her phone. She had eleven voicemail messages, twenty-three texts, and thirty-one emails. The story, on the scheisse website. It made no sense. It wasn’t possible. She texted Henke.

  WTF!!!

  She stared at her phone, waiting for his reply. It came quickly.

  Isn’t it wonderful?!

  * * *

  • • •

  He missed the exit from Route 27. He missed the exit to connect to the Long Island Expressway, the highway back to the city. So he drove down 27, half watching the road, half in a daze. He felt he should get to the network. When things happened like this in his life that’s where he went. But he had nowhere to be.

  He slowed the car, as he was driving too fast. He wanted to stop, to pull over to the side of the road for a bit. He saw the sign a few miles outside of the town of Shirley, just past Center Moriches. A billboard with a woman’s face. She was wearing goggles, her eyes wide with joy, her mouth open, gleaming teeth. She looked so happy and alive. He’s happy.

  JUMP-START YOUR LIFE! the headline read. LONG ISLAND SKYDIVING CENTER. EXIT 58N. DON’T BE AFRAID TO FLY!

  The day was so beautiful. The sky so blue. The photographers would be waiting for him at the apartment. The phone wasn’t going to stop ringing. The stories were going to keep coming. It wasn’t going to end.

  He got off at exit 58N and pulled the car to the side of the road. He sat for a while and listened to the engine cooling, ticking. Thermal expansion. Static clicking. Murray had written a piece about car engines. He saw a sign. Same one as on the highway. Parachuting. The idea came to him so clearly. Here was the answer. Yes. Maybe it was a good day to jump-start his life.

  * * *

  • • •

  You needed a reservation to jump out of a plane. He didn’t just sit around waiting for people to drop in. That’s what Raymond had said to Ted when he walked into what looked like an old garage. It had the pleasant smell of old wood and motor oil. It reminded Ted of so many garages in Pawtucket. An American flag hung on one wall. Above a cluttered desk, on which sat a rotary-dial phone, photos of previous jumpers. Dozens of them, along with letters and printed emails saying what a great time they’d had. Near them, an aged photo of a young, fit man in an army uniform, a young Raymond, Ted guessed.

  “Have a seat,” Raymond said, his back to Ted. Raymond was rooting around in the filing cabinets, taking out forms like he was mad at them.

  “Wasn’t even supposed to come in today,” he muttered to himself. “Forgot a present I bought for my wife’s birthday. Big dinner at the house later.”

  He slammed a filing cabinet drawer closed.

  “Have to charge you a supplement,” Raymond said, Ted finding the word choice curious. “Got to call my pilot. Lives in Greenport. Going to take him a bit to get here.”

  “No problem,” Ted had said.

  “Ever jumped before?” Raymond asked.

  “No.”

  “Any special occasion? Birthday? Anniversary?”

  “No. I just saw your sign.”

  Raymond turned and looked at Ted.

  “Have we met? You look familiar.”

  “I just have one of those faces.”

  It was only after Ted had filled out the extensive paperwork, signed the waivers, and handed over his license that Raymond realized who Ted was.

  “Sonuvabitch!” he said, smiling. “I sure as hell knew you looked familiar. I’ve watched you a million times. Real nice to meet you.”

  They shook hands. “Christ. Wait till I tell my wife. She’s been watching you for an age.”

  Ted forced a smile.

  “You doing a story or something?” Raymond asked, still shaking Ted’s hand.

  “No. Just . . . you know . . . saw the sign.”

  “How do you like that? Ted Grayson at my place.”

  * * *

  • • •

  They practiced on the ground, falling, rolling. Raymond set up two sawhorses and put a sheet of plywood over them. They practiced jumping from this.

  “You hit the ground hard. A lot harder than you think. The jumping isn’t the dangerous part. Any dodo can fall out of a plane. Can you land without breaking a bone?”

  He told Ted about his time in the army, his experience at jump school, the jumps he’d made, how much he loved the military, how it taught him how to be a man. Should be compulsory, Raymond said.

  “These kids today. Christ, I don’t want to sound like an old man, but they’re like babies, Ted. Hell, if these so-called millenniums or whatever the hell they’re called stormed the beach at Normandy they’d have complained about the sand and where were the artisanal muffins.”

  * * *

  • • •

  The pilot arrived, a grumpy fortyish man with a dense beard named Alvin. As he readied the plane, Raymond led Ted back into the garage and gave him a flight suit, Ted needing a toilet before putting it on, a body-shaking fear suddenly coming over him. Raymond fitted Ted with a helmet, explained how each had a GoPro on top, how Raymond would send Ted a video.

  “Hell, you’ll have it by the time you’re back in Manhattan. With music and everything. I edit the goddamned thing myself, Ted. On an Apple Mac. How do you like that?”

  The three of them boarded the small plane, a 1982 Cessna T303 Crusader, according to Raymond. Miracle it still flew, he said, cackling, as Alvin pulled the stick back and launched them up over the airstrip. The smell inside the plane of metal and motor oil and old leather. They banked left, out over the ocean, the empty beaches of eastern Long Island, climbing, higher, the noise of the engine drowning out Raymond’s incessant talking, a distant boat below, Ted remembering Franny’s words from the story.

  It’s not self-pity. That’s not what drives a person to do this. It’s pain. Too much pain. The absence of any hope that this feeling will change.

  An unfamiliar calm came over him. Everything seemed to slow down. The sound seemed to go away, the engine noise and wind muted. He felt drowsy. He wanted to give in to it.

  In the book, Harold only draws one-half of the mountain. He gets to the top and there isn’t any other side of the mountain. He was falling, in thin air. He smiled at the memory. He smiled at the view of the water below. At the blue, blue sky. At the sight of Raymond chewing a Slim Jim.

  Raymond opened the door and looked at Ted. Ted shimmied over, the edge of the plane, the wind furious. He looked over at Raymond. A last look. He smiled. Raymond grinning and motioning with his head to go. And to Ted’s mind it was a kind of affirmation. See, even Raymond agrees. But he couldn’t quite move his body. He sudde
nly felt quite leaden. It was just . . . and that’s when Raymond pushed him out of the plane.

  He fell. And he had no intention of opening his chute.

  * * *

  • • •

  The camera panned down, Raymond’s point of view following Ted. At 5:16:12, like a scene in a movie, our hero surely dead, no way to save him. One one-thousand, two one-thousand. Not three seconds after Ted failed to pull his own chute, Raymond, a cartoon character, this squat, broad-shouldered man who looked like he could pick Ted up, throw him over his shoulder, and run a mile, became a human bullet, a rocket, reaching Ted, grabbing hold, pulling Ted toward him with one hand, and finding Ted’s rip cord with the other. Who are the people who can do that?

  Raymond’s head fell back as he pulled Ted’s chute and Ted rocketed up, away from Raymond at a hundred million miles per hour. Or so it seemed. Raymond falling like a shot, a radar blip, a goddamned supernova. And Ted thought . . . just for a second but Ted thought, Oh Jesus Christ Raymond’s chute isn’t opening. But it did, so fast, silver-white explosion, old-Kodak-time-lapse film sped up of a flower opening, plumes of white billowing out of his back, ripping him up near Ted.

  And here Ted looked over at Raymond. Ted looked almost directly into the camera, a thing he had done his whole life, the camera not three inches above Raymond’s eye line, and began to sob.

  * * *

  • • •

  Ted remembered almost nothing of the drive back to the city. Apparently, he managed to park his car in the garage and make his way to his apartment, where he stood, without pants, looking out the window, high above the city.

  * * *

  • • •

  This was a bad idea and Franny knew it. But she couldn’t stop.

  She entered the office and felt the eyes on her. Or was that her imagination? She walked to her desk but the screen was gone. Her books in a box on the floor, and a woman who looked to be about twenty-two sitting at her desk.

  The woman removed her headphones and smiled. “Can I help you?”

  “Who the fuck are you?”

  The young woman’s face contorted in disgust. Franny didn’t wait for a response. She marched to Henke’s office. He was with Toland.

  Franny entered and shouted, “How fucking dare you!”

  Her hands shook. They were perspiring and they shook. Inside she felt thin and breakable. Henke and Toland looked up at her, German cool, Who is this crazy Fräulein? Toland left and closed the door.

  Henke smiled a condescending smile and said, “Would you care to sit?”

  “No.”

  Henke sat, took his time, very pleased with himself.

  “I’m sorry, Frances. How dare I what, exactly?”

  “Run the goddamned piece! Steal my goddamned—”

  His voice was thunderous. “Because I don’t work for you!” he screamed, his face a contorted image of rage. “How dare I!? You pompous child. Because I felt like it. Because I can. Because what you write I own. Read your contract. If it’s on my cloud it’s mine!”

  She had no comeback. Except rage. “Fuck you,” she said.

  He snorted and nodded slowly. “Fuck me. Really. That’s the best you have? And you call yourself a writer? Perhaps that’s the real reason you’re here and not someplace with real writers.”

  She had no comeback because he was right. Her throat began to tighten. Her eyes tingled. The old fear and anxiety welled. Her whole life, this feeling.

  “Do you want to know the real reason I ran it? Do you?”

  She waited.

  “Because,” he shouted, “you never would have accepted the assignment if you didn’t want me to put it up. What daughter does that?”

  It was as if he’d slapped her.

  “You’re fired, by the way,” he said. “Now get out.”

  * * *

  • • •

  The car service made its way through Midtown traffic. The driver had the radio tuned to 1010-WINS. You give us twenty minutes, we’ll give you the world. Ted would have preferred quiet and was about to ask the driver to turn the radio off but decided against it. The driver would surely tell a reporter that Ted had rudely asked him to turn the radio down. That’s how it would be reported. No. It would be worse, using only a hint of truth. He screamed at the driver to turn the radio down. No. He threatened to have the man fired if he didn’t turn the radio down. No. He was a madman, this guy. He pulled a machete and threatened to cut my penis off. It would be on TMZ. Gawker. On scheisse. CNN. It would be everywhere, even though it wasn’t true. It would seem true. Wasn’t that enough?

  His palms tingled. The knots in his stomach wouldn’t subside. He was fidgety and decided to get out and walk. He was about to ask the driver to stop. He started to say it. It was four o’clock. He would remember that forever. The beep for the top of the hour. “WINS news time at the tone . . . beeeep . . . four p.m. Disgraced anchorman Ted Grayson has been forced out by his network. Sources say a leaked memo confirms the firing, effective immediately. Grayson was caught on tape screaming at a hairstylist, a Polish immigrant, calling the young woman a Russian whore. A network spokesperson declined to comment. Apple computers announced its first-quarter earnings today, topping expectations largely due to its new . . .”

  The driver looked in the rearview mirror at Ted. The car was moving slowly. Ted opened the door. The driver hit the brakes, said, “What the hell?”

  “Sorry,” Ted said, closing the door.

  He was walking fast and breathing faster and for a moment he wasn’t sure he was heading in the right direction. It was the feeling of a story breaking, of a thing happening that only a few knew about, that he would report on. He wanted to sit in that chair. He wanted to tell the story himself and hand it over to a reporter standing by in the field. Then back to Ted in the studio to sum up. Then dinner out and a stiff drink to soothe the adrenaline rush. Then home to bed, only to wake and find all of this never, ever happened.

  He wanted to call someone but couldn’t think of anyone. Claire. He wanted to call Claire.

  The traffic was dense and car horns blared and somewhere close by a fire truck siren wailed relentlessly and Ted was finding it hard to concentrate, the bad flow starting, the edge of out of control. He cut across Forty-Ninth and started jogging for no reason, then slowed when he reached the corner of Forty-Ninth and Sixth because he had to wait for the light to change. He looked at his shoes and noticed his breath, short bursts coming fast, wiped at his brow and felt the beads of sweat at his hairline. It will be fine, he lied to himself. There’s been a mistake. This isn’t real. He looked up, turned, and saw, two blocks down Sixth Avenue, the liquid crystal display banner on the Fox News headquarters, these words scrolling by: “Woman-hating anchor Ted Grayson canned by network . . .”

  Ted looked down to see two women in their late fifties staring at him, wide-eyed, mouths agape.

  “Ohmigod!” one of them squealed. “Are you him?” Her friend was giggling, reaching for her phone.

  Ted looked back to the Fox News crawl but his name wasn’t there anymore. Had he dreamed it? Now the crawl said something about a new climate change report.

  “You’re him, aren’t you?” the woman said again.

  “Jesus?” Ted said to the women. “Am I Jesus? Am I a prophet about to be crucified? Yes. Yes I am.”

  The light had changed. So had the women’s faces. It can’t be him, they thought. No, no. It’s just a crazy person.

  * * *

  • • •

  Simon and Polly were waiting for Ted outside of Tamara’s office. When Ted had walked through the lobby he’d felt people staring at him. Not like most days. Not like, “Hey, there’s Ted.” It felt different. It felt whispered and dangerous. An assistant showed them in.

  Tamara, Max, and two men who introduced themselves as the network’s lawyers. All standing. N
ot good, Ted thought. It’s over. They’re standing. It’s real and I’m about to be fired.

  They sat around a table.

  “Firstly, thank you for coming in, Ted,” Tamara said. “I know this is a very difficult time. Can I offer anyone water, coffee, something stronger?”

  No one said a thing. Tamara smoothed her skirt without looking at it.

  “Right. Ted. After careful thought, we believe it would be in the best interest of the network if you resign.”

  “I heard on the radio.”

  Tamara’s poker face faltered here. “Yes . . . well . . . I’m sorry for that. Bit of a miscommunication with our crack PR team. We’re amending so it will be reported as a resignation.”

  “Good luck with that,” he said.

  He wanted to scream. He wanted to beg forgiveness. He wanted another chance. He wanted to be made clean. He wanted to rip the drapes off her windows and throw one of the lawyers to the ground, punching him repeatedly in the face, a hockey fight, blood everywhere. But that was deep, deep down, in places he’d learned to hide from the world. Unless that world was your wife and daughter, who had a front-row seat to your anger and distance and emotional wasteland.

  Ted said nothing. Emoted nothing. To the point where even Tamara was unsettled. Secretly she’d hoped for an explosion, a meltdown, a good story to share at the dinner party she was attending that evening. You’ll never guess what happened at the office today.

  “Why?” he said finally.

  And here it was Tamara who blinked, whose face gave away confusion and annoyance.

  “Why? Are you joking?”

  “No. I’m the furthest thing from joking. After almost twenty years of consistently superb ratings, hundreds of millions of dollars in advertising revenue generated, dozens of Emmy awards, I’d like to know on what grounds you’re firing me.”

  She wasn’t ready for a fight. She assumed he’d go quietly, the wounded animal in the woods left to die.