Talk to Me

by John Kenney

  Franny. Overdose.

  Those were the words Claire heard before her mind started doing multiple things as she half listened to Amy, who, to Claire’s mind, wasn’t adding to the words “Franny” and “overdose,” except to add, infirmary, unconscious but stable, road conditions, lucky doctors stayed here, snow.

  Claire heard the words but she was also calculating the time. If it was 5:32 in the afternoon in Hawaii, that would make it 11:32 at night on the East Coast. Could she get a flight this evening to Los Angeles and then a red-eye . . . no . . . wait . . . with the time difference it was 8:32 in Los Angeles and by the time she got there . . . five hours from Honolulu and she had to get to Honolulu . . . fuck, why did she come here . . . Jesus fuck . . . she’d sleep at LAX and get the first flight out to Boston and then rent a car . . . three hours’ difference between Los Angeles and Boston so a 6:00 a.m. flight from LAX, five hours, had her landing at Logan at 2:00 p.m. tomorrow and a two-hour drive. Twenty-four hours. Wait. Was that right? She hated math. What about the time difference? And assuming there was a 6:00 a.m. flight out of LAX that she could get on. She sat at a table and opened her laptop. There was a 7:00 a.m. on JetBlue but it was sold out. Shit. There was a 9:45 on American. But it didn’t get in until almost 6:00 p.m. Which meant getting there at 8:00. If the roads were clear.

  Claire did a thing with her tongue, bounced it back and forth, edge to edge, in her mouth. Nancy watched her do it now, holding the panic back.

  “When can you get here?” the woman on the phone was saying.

  The body under severe stress. What happens to it. What is released. Pure adrenaline. Her heart rate increased. Run. Run. She had to go. She had to move. But she was trapped on this goddamned island off a larger island in the middle of the ocean. She couldn’t get to her child. Try that on sometime.

  * * *

  • • •

  It was 5:30 a.m. in London and Ted and a small crew had just gotten off an overnight flight from New York. In a few hours they would board another plane to Sarajevo, then drive several more hours to the outskirts of Kosovo.

  He was drinking a bad cup of coffee in a Heathrow café when he heard the same words from Claire through his little Nokia phone. “Franny” and “overdose.” He heard “stable.” But he also heard Claire’s tone. It was a tone he’d not heard in a long time. He was looking at his watch. He was doing the math. He was bad at so much in life that was important. Empathy and kindness. He didn’t know why. He didn’t really care to know why. He was a grown man and he wasn’t going to change, didn’t believe people really changed. He thought it better to accept others for who they were instead of trying to change them. This, perhaps, the crucial worldview difference between Claire and Ted.

  But there were a few things Ted Grayson was very good at and one of them was the ability, under pressure, to maintain calm. Because of course it wasn’t calm. He felt what any normal human being felt. He just put it in a small box, off to the side. Because if he thought about it, if he really thought about his daughter, alone, overdosed, well . . .

  “Claire.” And for a moment he thought the line had gone dead. “Claire?”

  “I’m here.”

  “Honey. Listen to me. I’m on my way.”

  It was the “honey.”

  “Ted,” she said, an involuntary intake of air, a gasp, his name coming out in barely a whisper. A whole world in a name. A lifetime and a family and this girl who desperately needed them.

  “I know,” he said.

  * * *

  • • •

  Two and a half hours later he was on a flight to Boston. The winter storm made landing there impossible so they were rerouted to Providence. Most of the car rental companies were closed but he tracked down a rent-a-wreck place; the guy behind the counter, greasy shirt, Lucky Strike hanging from his lips, a tubercular cough, just shook his head as Ted filled out the paperwork.

  The drive should have taken two hours. It took five and a half.

  * * *

  • • •

  When she first came into the infirmary she had been vomiting. Later, in a semiconscious rage, she tried to leave the infirmary, swinging at the doctors and two nurses. They sedated her and she had been unconscious for several hours.

  “How long has she been using drugs, Mr. Grayson?” the doctor asked Ted.

  “I don’t know.”

  The doctor stared at Ted, not the first time he’d heard a parent say these words, feel this emptiness as they looked down on their child in a hospital bed.

  “Her mother will be here this evening,” Ted said.

  The doctor seemed to understand. He nodded.

  “I’ll check in later. I enjoy your newscast, by the way.”

  * * *

  • • •

  He sat in the room throughout the afternoon and evening, staring at her. Should he put a hand to her forehead, like they do in movies? Should he hold her hand? Should he give a touching speech. That would be the movie version. Real life is harder. Real life was his worry that she would wake and explode upon seeing him there.

  There was a cafeteria and he bought himself a coffee and a stale muffin and brought it back to the room. She was pale. Her lips were dry and cracked. Her hair matted. She spoke in her drug-haze sleep. Mostly unintelligible sounds, head moving one side to another.

  A nurse came in and wiped her head with a damp cloth, put a salve on her lips, gently wiped back her hair, a care and intimacy that Ted found moving.

  “It happens everywhere now.”

  She looked up at Ted.

  “The drugs,” she added. “We see it all the time.”

  They’d done a five-part series about it. About the Massachusetts city of New Bedford. They’d spoken to families whose teenage children had died from heroin overdoses. It was just a story, though, to Ted. Overdose segue to war segue to corporate corruption segue to political scandal segue to global warming segue segue segue. It never ended. How was he supposed to do his job if he didn’t have some veneer, if he wasn’t able to distance himself from the horror of it?

  Ted turned to see someone at the door.

  “Hi, Mr. Grayson. I’m Lauren. Franny’s roommate.”

  * * *

  • • •

  Claire arrived, breathing hard. She sat on the edge of the bed, felt Franny’s forehead, her cheeks. It was as if she had to make sure she was real, that she was here.

  Only then did she turn to Ted, her coat still on.

  “She’s going to be fine. A detox, which won’t be pleasant. But she’s lucky.”

  Claire nodded.

  “I want to bring her home. I don’t want her here anymore.”

  “Whatever you think.”

  “You look tired,” she said.

  He managed a half smile.

  “Do you have to get back?” she asked.

  To Claire, it was an invitation to stay. Please stay. Please make the right decision.

  To Ted, it was a suggestion to leave. What good am I doing here anyway. She hates me.

  “I should,” he said. “We’re reporting from Kosovo all week. Unless you want me to stay.”

  Of course I want you to stay, she thought. But I want you to want to stay.

  * * *

  • • •

  The lawyers left them alone in the thirty-second-floor conference room. Polly had gone. Just the three of them.

  Claire now owned their home, possessions, automobiles, art, and retirement savings. And $14 million in cash. Franny now co-owned the Sag Harbor home and had $3 million, via a payout Ted was owed from the network.

  Ted had $275,000 and a MetroCard worth $27. But he didn’t care. The video, Franny’s story, the firing. Claire’s lawyers had everything they needed to demolish him. He put up no defense, told Polly not to say a word. He sat there and took it all. In an old
New England, puritanical way, it felt good. A penance. He had been stripped of everything.

  He stood at the windows with his hands in his pockets, jingling change. He was his father, he thought, almost smiling. Except not a fraction of the man.

  He turned and saw them both looking at him. He suddenly felt very awkward.

  “Okay, then.” He forced a smile.

  “Dad.” Franny’s voice. Higher than normal. Urgent. “I’m sorry.”

  “Never apologize for reporting the truth, Frances.”

  She wanted to say more. She wanted to explain what happened. She was rubbing her tongue against the back of her lower teeth. She wanted him to prove how much he loved her. She wanted to make him prove it. Because she never believed it. Because she needed it so much it terrified her. Because it couldn’t be real. So push him away. Make him prove it. And then he stopped trying. And that was the worst thing in the world.

  Frances. Please don’t call me Frances, she thought.

  Ted walked around the table and put a hand on Claire’s shoulder, light as a bird landing. It caused Claire’s head to fall forward.

  “I’m the one who’s sorry.”

  * * *

  • • •

  Tracking her down was easy, of course. Through her Facebook page. Her Twitter account. LinkedIn.

  My name is Henke Tessmer, he’d written. I run a website in New York City. Scheisse. Perhaps you have heard of it? I would love to talk to you about your old roommate. Might you have time to talk on the phone?

  Henke called her. And listened. She talked. Without interruption. Henke knew what he had in her, this troubled, lonely soul who only wanted to be listened to. Henke listened and typed, recorded the call, would use it on the site over images Lauren was more than happy to send of her time at NMH.

  “We were friends once. I think. I mean . . . we were. That story was just so . . . mean . . . about her father. Her mother is sooo beautiful. I met her once. And her father. During the snowstorm, the time Franny OD’ed.”

  “Sorry, what’s that you said?”

  “Oh yeah. You don’t know that story? Do you want to hear more? I feel like I’ve been talking a lot. Have I?”

  “No,” Henke said. “Not at all. Tell me more Lauren.”

  This is Cassini, over and out.

  Ted was watching himself die. How many people get that chance?

  He was watching it, right there on his MacBook Pro, in a wildly expensive apartment high above Central Park West. It was late now and he’d put a good dent in a bottle of Ketel One and, for some reason, he was not wearing pants.

  He’d watched the video several times, which may have accounted for the fact that he was crying. Ted found this partially amusing, the pathetic image of himself, and laughed between sobs in a way that would have made an onlooker think, That fellow is unwell.

  Maybe it was the music that was affecting him. Raymond had used Elton John’s “Rocket Man.” He’d met him, for Chrissakes. Ted had. Interviewed Elton. Sir Elton. He’d met everyone. Robert De Niro. Idi Amin. Prince Charles. The Dalai Lama. Bono. The Pope. The Pope bummed a smoke off him. Beat that.

  High above Columbus Circle, cocooned in warmth and wealth, pantless, Ted watched himself, a milk glass of vodka, tears streaming down his face once again. Who among us wouldn’t react that way, watching what was almost our own death?

  * * *

  • • •

  It was almost 3:00 a.m. The worst time for Ted. Deeply tired but unable to sleep, lying on the couch in the dark, lying in his bed. But sleep wouldn’t come.

  So he clicked through YouTube. He was looking for his life, for the moments that were gone but that, for him, in his memory, were still alive. Once hopeful things. Bobby Orr and Carl Yastrzemski and the moon landing. My God, what a thing. Neil Armstrong and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin walking on the moon. The iPhone? The iPad? The Pentium processor? Fuck you. Try putting a man on the moon. He said this out loud. His own voice surprised him.

  Ted sat on the floor of the living room, his back against the couch, the lights off, his laptop on the coffee table. He pulled on a sweater. He had a chill that wouldn’t quite leave him.

  He watched a clip of Walter Cronkite reporting that man had landed on the moon. It was a clip he had seen before so many times. Vague memories as a boy. His father and mother and little sister. The part where Cronkite took his glasses off, tried to suppress his joy but simply couldn’t, the mind-bending idea that human beings had somehow figured out how to travel to the moon. He watched it again and Cronkite’s expression, the childlike innocence of it, the purity, brought a lump to Ted’s throat. The nation was watching him. Watching his dignity and grace, his humanity.

  * * *

  • • •

  Here’s a question. Have you ever listened to Vince Guaraldi’s version of “Moon River” when your drunk has worn off and you’ve watched the sky begin to change, from dark to blue-black light, softly turning gray, another day in the world, a kind of pause button in New York, the streets almost silent, no people, just a play of light and time and all those plans that came to nothing, that no one cared about now? And the panicked need to run back to a place in time, a moment, a person, long gone. Have you ever done that? Ted wouldn’t recommend it.

  He stood now at the tall windows, looking out. And the memory came so sharp and so fast. She was almost five and she sat on Ted’s lap on the porch of the cottage, looking out at Barnstable Harbor. Late August, dusk. Ted had given her a bath and washed her hair. He’d put her pajamas on and later he’d showered and shaved and put on a clean shirt, Claire looking over at him as she stood at the stove boiling steamers, handing him a drink, Ted carrying his bundle of girl out onto the porch. They sat on a wooden deck chair, the cloth sun-faded, and now a gentle breeze, the colors in the sky as the sun set, the sound of water against the beach, against the smooth stones, over and over and over. She was tired from a day of swimming, a day in the sun.

  “Dad,” she whispered, her head against his chest, damp hair against the side of his face. “Is wind the softest thing?”

  Now, watching the colors of the sky change over Manhattan, he smiled as he stood with his forehead against the cool glass of the window, the heart-stopping beauty of the light in the eastern sky. The memory of her. That it could still give him such joy. He had that. Maybe that was what hope felt like.

  * * *

  • • •

  Ted arrived early, the newsroom empty. He stopped at Dunkin’ Donuts for a coffee and decided to buy a dozen donuts. Something about walking down the hall now carrying a dozen donuts made him feel foolish. He walked past the writers’ room and found Murray already at his desk, reading the newspaper. Ted watched him, Murray unaware for a few seconds that Ted was at the door.

  Murray looked up. “Jesus. Ted. You scared me.”

  “Sorry.”

  “You’re in early.”

  Murray regretted saying it, but Ted smiled.

  “Always get in early on your last day,” Ted said. “You know who said that?”

  “No. Who?”

  “No one, ever.”

  Murray snorted. Ted put the box of donuts down on Murray’s desk.

  “Donuts,” Ted said.

  “Oh. Wow. Thanks.”

  “What’s in the news?” Ted asked, motioning toward the paper with his head.

  “Oh. Well. The usual heartwarming fare. War in Syria. Staggering degradation of the polar ice shelf. Tax cuts for the rich.”

  “Sounds reasonable.”

  “My personal favorite, though. A new study says that paper towels may cause cancer.”

  “Perfect.”

  Ted stood by the door. “I’d like to close with Cassini.”

  Murray nodded. “I’ve been working on something. Send it to you in a bit?”

  “Thanks.”

 
Ted turned to go.

  “Ted,” Murray said, too urgently.

  Ted turned back.

  “I’m sorry. About all this.” Murray had stood.

  Ted managed a small smile. “Me, too. But thank you.”

  He left but from down the hallway Murray heard, “The donuts aren’t just for you.”

  * * *

  • • •

  Murray had his headphones on. He was listening to Brian Eno’s “Thursday Afternoon,” a sixty-one-minute song. He had found footage of Ted’s first broadcast. He was so young, Murray thought. He was a kid. Murray wasn’t sure whether he remembered the broadcast or if the video was giving him the false sense that he remembered it.

  He then listened to their first report on the launch of Cassini. But he stopped it halfway through, found himself with a lump in his throat. He clicked over to NASA’s live feed, a blip of light 746 million miles from Earth. He watched as it flew, at 186,000 miles per hour, exactly as planned, around Saturn, certain death. It overwhelmed him. Made him profoundly sad. This thing, out there in space. A life’s work. Dying. Murray had nothing else. This was it. This was what he looked forward to each morning. He wanted desperately to feel sorry for himself, but he didn’t have time. He needed to write. He ate a third donut.

  * * *

  • • •

  Grace and Jagdish finished their stories, went out for coffee, bringing one back for Murray. It was almost 5:00 and they needed to lock the show.

  Murray hit print. Grace heard it, stood, and walked to the printer.

  “May I?” she asked.

  Murray nodded. Grace read. She looked up at Murray, who refused to look back at her. She kept reading. She read part of it out loud.