by Susan Isaacs
“And Gary Clifford’s…”
Fortunately, she did not have to finish her sentence. Barbara pointed a finger at her and said, “Exactly.”
“I see,” Jane murmured. She did not.
“Too sexy, not authoritative enough. And not smart. You see, it’s all changing. Audiences are getting bored with the same old format: another cookbook author dragging in her pots and making linguine with clam sauce; another novelist who wrote a bestseller while she was nursing triplets. Talk—the show—needs good talk.”
“So Gary’s two-week vacation—”
“You’ve got it.” Jane wondered what it was she had gotten. “It may be two weeks, it may be forever. He has five more months on his contract, so we can easily buy him out.”
She understood. She thought about Gary Clifford. Barbara was right. He wasn’t smart. But he was nice. Jane felt sorry for him. She wondered if he knew NBC was planning his execution. “Are you using me as a female acid test or—”
“Jane, you’re tough. You’re pinning me to the wall.” Barbara smiled. Jane smiled back. She still wasn’t sure what Barbara was talking about, and whether she was being condescending or admiring: one savvy lady to another. “We’re using you, yes. But first we’re testing you for you. Obviously we’re impressed. Every time you’re on—well, you know. You’re warm, you’re sincere, you’re vulnerable. And bright. Educated. Articulate.”
“Thank you.” She hoped she could remember all the adjectives so she could repeat them to Cecily. Vulnerable. Educated.
“You’re welcome.”
Bright. She had to sound bright. Incisive. “How much does this offer have to do with my husband?” Jane took another piece of fish and for the first time actually tasted it. It was underdone in the trendy, nouvelle cuisine manner; she didn’t like it. It felt slimy in her mouth, as if it weren’t completely dead. She swallowed it whole and anticipated Barbara’s answer: Your husband? He has nothing at all to do with it.
“It has a lot to do with your husband,” Barbara said. “There’s a certain glamour, class, what-have-you, attached to the name Cobleigh. There’s the built-in recognition factor. The automatic curiosity about what you’re like, or, more precisely, about what sort of a woman Nicholas Cobleigh likes.”
“I see.”
“But surely, Jane, you also know there are hundreds of wives of famous men running around town. Do you see them on Talk? Of course not. Your husband may be the springboard, but you’re the one who’s going to be doing the dive.”
“Or taking the dive.”
“If we thought that would happen, I wouldn’t have asked you. But from our point of view, even if it doesn’t work out…” Barbara let her voice get lost in another bite of toast and salmon.
“You can still get some idea if audiences will accept a woman as host.”
“Exactly.”
“Do you want more about my agoraphobia?”
“Oh, no. Phobias are finished, overdone.” Jane watched Barbara’s face. She didn’t show any sign she was discussing anything but a question of programming. “We want you because you can talk about a broad range of subjects. And because you ask the questions that every woman sitting home wants to ask. You’re not afraid of putting yourself on the line, of looking foolish in front of the experts. We saw that when you were on with that professor of women’s studies. You plunged right in and got the answers and showed her for what she was.”
“A pretentious pain in the neck who looked down on housewives.”
“That’s right,” Barbara said. “Well, what’s your reaction? Are you interested?”
“I’m flattered. And of course I’m interested, but…” She couldn’t think of how to say she really wasn’t up to the job. It was a fluke. She’d been a guest. Not host of a network talk show. Look at her now, at a complete loss for words.
Barbara Hayes leaned forward. For a flickering instant, she looked unsure of herself. “But what?” she inquired. She set her fork in the middle of her plate. She was actually concerned. “Please, if you have any questions at all, ask them.”
Jane rested her elbow on the arm of her chair. They liked her. Barbara Hayes and NBC thought she was warm and sincere. Articulate. Her entire body relaxed so quickly her elbow nearly slipped off the chair. She sat straight and smiled at Barbara. “No. No questions at all. The only ‘but’ is you’ll have to talk with Murray King about the details. He’s my agent.”
Barbara gave Jane an even wider smile, bright with pleasure and relief. “Jane, of course,” she said. “That goes without saying.”
NBC gave Jane a five-year contract, cancellable after each thirteen-week segment. She was to be paid $2,500 a week. At the end of four weeks, Murray King called Barbara Hayes, and two days later NBC agreed to pay Jane $3,000 a week for the second thirteen-week segment.
“Hi.” She spoke to Camera One. “This is Jane Cobleigh on Talk. Let me ask you a question. Have you gone out recently and spent eleven or twelve dollars on a hardcover book, or two ninety-five for a paperback, something that looked like it was going to be terrific? You know, with all these wonderful quotes on the back: ‘Wise and witty, warm and wonderful.’ ‘A breath-taking, gut-grabbing, page-turner of a thriller.’ ‘An exquisite evocation of time past, rich and resonant.’ And then you started reading this rich and resonant book and it was”—she placed her hand on a foot-high stack of books on the table before her—“boring. This brilliant, highly acclaimed, widely touted book was badly written, shoddily edited, and the binding came apart so fell out. Today on Talk we’re going to try to find out what’s happened to publishing, and why so many good books”—she shrugged and gave a small, sad smile—“are so bad. We’ll be back after three scintillating commercials.”
Sometime after his third film, Nicholas had told her, “When you become famous, when you’re a highly marketable commodity, people expect you to behave so outrageously that if you’re just ordinarily decent they’re stunned. They’re so stunned that you end up getting as much as if you made all sorts of outrageous demands, just so long as you’re low-key and polite and ask how their children are.”
After five weeks, NBC told Jane they wanted to redecorate her office. How would she like it? She had gray and peach in mind, and Deco furniture, but she stayed low-key. Something nice and feminine, she’d said. Easy on the eye.
Instead of Deco, she got Louis XVI, with pale pink walls, chairs covered in rose silk, and soft green silk drapes tied back with huge silk bows. It even had a chaise. With all its ormolu, the office looked like the sitting room of the king’s new favorite at Versailles.
“Wonderful show,” Barbara Hayes said. “And you saw the latest ratings?” Jane nodded. “Now they think I’m a genius because I suggested you. They’re giving me a new office.”
“Didn’t you just get a new one around the time I came on as a guest?” Jane asked.
“Yes, but that had windows only on one wall.”
“And this? Two?”
“Windows on two walls and five flights higher. It’s like being assumed bodily into heaven. And they asked how I felt about sea green.”
“I hope you laughed at them, Barbara.”
“No. I’d never make a joke about something as serious as this. Decoration is an expression of power. I told them I’d like something spare and off-white. Isn’t that a good word? Spare. A very cool, ascetic, chief-executive-officer word.”
“You may wind up with a rug, a telephone, and no desk.”
“Probably. And I can’t wait to see how they interpret off-white for me.” Barbara took a marking pen from the inside breast pocket of her jacket and lifted the clipboard. “All right. Tomorrow and Friday we’re doing the prejudices and antagonisms of housewives and career women toward each other. I hope it’s good, because it cost us a fortune to airlift and put up four members of your Woodward High School Class of ’57 in New York.”
“It will be good.”
“We could have done Abraham Lincoln High School in B
rooklyn for cab fare and lunch.”
“But to anyone out of town, they’re still New Yorkers. These women are going to be a hundred times more effective because they’re not fast-talking and funny. For these kinds of things, I want to stay away from New Yorkers. And Californians. I don’t want anyone saying, ‘Jane, I have something I want to share with you.’ Okay?”
“It’s your show.”
“It’s your show.”
“It’s both our shows, and we can airlift Ohio if the ratings stay at this level.” Barbara lifted some papers from her clipboard. “Here are summaries of the interviews with these four. And here’s next week’s schedule. We switched weight obsession with why only three hundred people in the country really care about foreign policy because we wanted that stiff from the State Department and he could only make it Tuesday.” Barbara put the papers on Jane’s desk. “Anything else?” she asked.
“No. That’s it.”
“Going back to Connecticut tonight?”
“No. I’m really tired. I’ll stay in the city.”
“See you tomorrow,” Barbara said. “Get a good night’s rest.”
Jane put her elbows on her desk and buried her face in her upturned palms. She wasn’t going to get a good rest. It was Wednesday, her night to be at Judson’s apartment.
Five shows a week. Lunches, dinners, dictating memos, having meetings, giving interviews. A photographer sent by TV Guide taking two hours of pictures in her office. She was exhausted. Her legs and arms ached and she felt she might burst into tears any minute, like an overstimulated child. For the first time, she didn’t ache for Judson. It was fatigue, she thought. Total and complete fatigue. She just wanted to go back to the apartment, have a bowl of corn flakes, and go to sleep.
Her intercom buzzed. “Dr. Fullerton on the line,” her secretary said. Her secretary.
“Thanks,” Jane said, and lifted the phone. “Hi.”
“You’re late.”
“I had a meeting with my producer.”
“Okay. Get over here now.”
“Judson—”
“Come on, Jane.”
Nicholas looked as tired as Jane felt, so perhaps that was why, the following morning, too exhausted to preserve the territorial integrity of their own halves of the mattress, they awakened in the center of the bed in each other’s arms. Her cheek lay on the warm ledge made by his shoulder and neck, and when she opened her eyes, the first thing she saw was a cross, her black hair falling across a lock of his gold.
In that moment of wakening before consciousness, Nicholas breathed deeply and pulled her closer to him and Jane eased her arm farther around him and tucked her hand under his back.
Then, like a photograph being ripped in half, they tore away from each other. Jane cleared her throat, sat up, and stretched. Nicholas put the crook of his arm over his eyes as if to shield them from the light.
Still, without even seeing his eyes, she could tell he was tired. Despite his days walking the Long Island beaches with his cinematographer, preparing for his film, which was to begin shooting in two weeks, he was uncommonly pale. Not merely his usual fair color, but white with the gray cast of extraordinary weariness. His lips were almost the color of his face.
“What time did you get in last night?” she asked. Fortunately she’d been at the apartment; it was her closest call yet. She’d left Judson’s after one, too drained and too stiff to spend the night in his narrow bed, and he hadn’t tried to dissuade her. She’d thought Nicholas was spending the night on Long Island; his secretary had left the message with her secretary. But sometime after she’d fallen asleep, he’d slid under the blanket, murmuring, It’s me. After an hour, still drenched with the panic sweat of near-calamity, she’d put herself back to sleep with a double brandy. What if she had stayed at Judson’s?
“I don’t know. One or two. I was at Ken’s working on the screenplay.”
“I thought you were staying out on the Island.”
He drew back his arm from over his eyes and put it behind his head, on the pillow. There were gray shadows under his eyes. “No. I had to get back.”
“You look tired.” He nodded. He was looking up at the ceiling, not at her. “Is there a problem with the screenplay?”
“The dialogue was stilted in a couple of scenes.”
“Do you want me to have a look at it?”
“What?” His what jumped from him, too loud.
“I said, do you want me to look at the screenplay? I don’t have to be in the office until ten thirty.”
“That’s all right.”
“You worked it out last night?” He stared at her. “You and Ken. Did you fix it up last night?”
“Jane,” Nicholas said. He edged up the bed and put his back against the headboard. He reached behind him, drew out the pillow, and put it over his stomach. With both arms, he held it against him like a giant hot-water bottle. “Jane,” he said, “we have to stop this charade.”
“What?” she asked. But her voice barely worked. He knew. Somehow he’d found out. He wasn’t even angry; his words were quiet and pained and came from a distance. She might have overheard someone else’s sad conversation in a corner at a cocktail party. “What charade?” Oh, God, she didn’t want any part of what was coming. It was going to be so awful. She could see in him how awful it would be. He was strangling the pillow, squeezing it so tightly to his body that the entire border of the case, the part with their monogram, was crumpled in his hand.
“The charade of the marriage. Jane, I can’t take it any more.” She knew it was too soon to cry. Tears should be held in reserve. They flooded out anyway. “Please don’t cry,” he pleaded. “Jane, I’m so sorry it’s turned out like this.”
“Nick.” What was she going to say? It was just sex. Just sex. I’ll give him up. A thunderclap of a sob broke from her, a shattering burst of protest: I don’t know if I can give him up. Through her tears she saw his fright at her noise. He was pale, terribly pale.
“Please listen to me,” he said. “This is the hardest thing I’ve ever had to say.” She drew up her legs and hugged them to her, hiding her face against her knees. “Jane, you know what’s been going on. You know about all the lies.” Another sob, this one coming out like an inverted scream. “I’m sorry. The last thing I want to do is hurt you like this, but I can’t go on living this way. Jane, it’s killing me, lying and lying and lying to you.”
“Lying to me,” she breathed. She lifted her head. His eyes were on her, red, ready too for tears. “Oh, God, Nick.”
“Jane—”
“You weren’t with Ken last night.”
“You know I wasn’t. I haven’t been anyplace where I said I was. You know that. Deep in your heart, you’ve known all along. Night after night, months and months. Jesus Christ, going through this charade. Both of us, like a couple of two-bit—”
“You have someone?”
“Jane, don’t do this. You’ve known—”
“No!”
“We haven’t slept together in a year, Jane. A year. I haven’t been in Connecticut in months. Most of the time—”
“You were out in Montauk.”
“I was in the city. We have an apartment.”
“Who? What apartment?” Her eyes darted back and forth around their apartment bedroom.
“Pamela and I.”
“Pamela.” Her heart hurt. Her head hurt. This wasn’t an attack. This was worse. This had a reason. “Who is she?”
“Someone I met last summer when I was teaching at NYU.”
Jane threw aside the blanket and scrambled out of bed. She ran to her closet and tore a robe from a hook. The sleeve was inside out and she couldn’t get into it. She kept punching at the fabric, trying to fit in her arm. Nicholas came and took it from her. He put it back on the hook. “Give it to me!” she shouted. “I’m going to get some coffee. I have to get to the office.” He put his hands on her bare shoulders; they felt clammy and hot. “Get your hands off me!”
“Stop that!”
“Listen to me. But I love her too. If it had just been a fling…but she’s brought something into my life.”
“I don’t want to hear this!”
“I want to be with her. I have to be. I can’t spend a couple of nights with her and then have to say goodbye, so I can sneak home at three in the morning. It’s not fair to her. And it’s not fair to you. Jane, I have to tell you this. I’m going to move in with her.”
“Oh, no!”
“Jane, you have the apartment. And the house. You think now it will be hard, but really, it won’t be that big a difference.”
She stared at him. The whites of his eyes were entirely red. “You just said you’re going to live with her.”
“But you and I haven’t really been living together. And it will only be for a while.”
“For a while? Two weeks? A year? Should I block it off on my calendar?”
“I need time to make sure.”
“Make sure of what? Of whether you love her more than me? Of whether she’s suitable to be the second Mrs. Nicholas Cobleigh? Or whether it’s still better for your image to be half of the Golden Couple?” She turned, walked away from him, and sat on the edge of the bed. She was panting. Her mouth was dry and coated with last night’s brandy. Her breath must smell foul. She tried to remember what he’d told her, but she could not. “Where did you meet her?” She began to breathe a little more slowly.
Nicholas came and sat, leaving a foot of space between them. “At NYU. Last July.”
“Who is she?”
“She was in my class. She’s a doctoral candidate. History of the cinema.”
“The cinema.” It took her a minute before she could speak again. “The cinema. Of course. All the better to know how exalted Nicholas Cobleigh’s position will be. How perfect. Has she compared you with Eisenstein yet?” She glanced at him. His neck was starting to flush. “How old is she?”