Thank You and Good Night

by Ray Succre

  Joe Collery would be returning full-time to his stomping grounds with the Orange Grove group, working over his new novel under Banry’s tutelage. Now that the show was cancelled, Joe would merge back into his fellows and seek work. Joe’s respect for Banry was professional, not personal, and he admired the ground-breaking stories Orson Banry had penned over the years, not the author’s cry-wolf behavior or ego. Emery supposed there was still some respect to be had for Orson Banry, despite all the trouble the man had caused him. Within the swell-headed, loudmouthed, sue-happy man, there was still a great writer, and one doing far better than Emery, of late.

  It had been nearly eight years since Emery’s highly successful and multi-cancelled show had gone off the air, and about ten since he was well-regarded. His career was now radioactive and no one would want near it after this. He had been somewhat killed off, like a character in a teleplay, and had likely aided this much. He was no longer alive in his art. He was like Maury Aaron, like Sol Jamison, and like Larry Belmont. They were remembered by their friends, like Emery was, but to the world, they were dead. At rest. Nobodies. Emery was the same now, but with the luxury of still breathing. He was no longer offered work, and the mail was sparse. Even the commercial world had stopped asking him to endorse their products. His last endorsement, for Ostrich, in which he was to peddle their new line of snapshot cameras, had been rescinded upon the cancellation of The After Hours. No one was knocking on the door. The phone seldom rang unless it was someone calling for Vivian.

  There were actions he could take, approaches he might foster in order to get his career back and provide for his family, even in a minute sense, but these seemed cumbersome and doomed to setbacks within fallbacks, and most certainly the sort of campaign only a younger Emery could have waged.

  His nerves were muck and his reason for writing had been slashed open too many times to see it for what it had been at the start. There were things attached to him, weighing him down. Television was a creature that saw him as an old horse that was needed at the glue factory. He was forty-eight, finished with the breakneck schedules, the constant revisions to his income, the incessant work-arounds, and those all-too-common monetary patches over every sudden wound. Emery was exhausted with the meddling of others and the constant intrusions on his family life. He was fatigued with his career, his days, and even his writing. He was done.

  The writer smoked and he drank and he strained his eyes on the white page. His wrists hurt and his wife now looked at him in a sort of pity. Beth believed in him, yes, and her support was always present, but she had no love for the workings of television. She felt sorry for her husband having to put up with such a haggard and convoluted occupation. Emery could detect this unspoken pity from his wife and he wanted to punch himself. He thought of Chayefsky, of Vidal... they had vacated the television world long ago. Emery had once thought these writers had abandoned television due to a particular weakness, an inability to stomach those troubles inherent to reaching a true bounty. He understood now. They had seen what he could not. There was no bounty. There was no weakness. They were not deserters, but men who had undertaken a few decent lays before moving on to higher ground; nothing stayed exciting for long and television was a petty, judgemental sort of trull. She kept her pets with a choke-chain, as no leash was short enough to please her.

  “Beth, hon, let’s have a talk. I have something to say and I need to know what you think.”

  “Oh?”

  Emery had no plan of action and no prospect, which was a panicky affair to a man in his middle age. Vivian was on the verge of starting high school now, and Rebecca was going off to college near the end of Summer. Beth watched her husband sit idle, unsure of what she could do to help him. He was somewhat lost. Emery’s view of his family was more pressured, however: he saw in his wife’s watching not the compassion she held for him, but rather a never-ending contemplation of “what now?” She had begun to elude him. He felt he did not know her as well as he had only five years ago. He had managed to redeem his vows to her, and they were the better for it, but so little was certain anymore. Rebecca was all but silent to him. Vivian was next, beginning to go the route of her sister, replacing the advice of her parents somewhat with the advice of her friends. This was supposedly the normal dynamic of parenting, but it frightened him. He had placed his wits and time on yet another cancelled show. The year was all struggle, but at least there would be some double-edged relief in not having to do The After Hours anymore. The scab of his career was prolonged and deep and would not heal over so long as he continued to disturb it. Why had he shoved back his family so much in the past?

  “My goose is cooked. I’m finished, I think.”

  “That’s not true, Emery. You’re just feeling sorry for yourself.”

  He couldn’t sit still. Something had to happen. Uncertainty felt like waste and waste felt like death. Emery had thought to create a clean break in his profession, in that he might start with a new mission or occupation. This was the way to do things, wasn’t it? The manner of the blank slate? He had done this several times in the past, and now realized how dirty those clean breaks had been. How those slates had not been remotely blank, and that his mission was the same, year in and year out: Try to succeed in a business that did not, at the end of the day, want him, but that still begrudgingly accepted him, for he might stoke a few coals with his matchstick name and gold trophies. He had hooked his big fish and it had dragged him across the sea. The fish had been picked at to, a nip here and bite there, having now dwindled to flecks. The world laughed at the old man.

  “I’m not happy. You’re not happy. Rebecca is in college and Vivian will be leaving this Summer for the same.”

  “Emery, you’re scaring me.”

  “I want to leave this place. This goddamn desert by the water. These people. Television. I want out.”

  “Honey, we can’t just-”

  “I love you so much. I love you so much. Do you understand me?”

  “I- yes, fine. But moving away isn’t something we can simply-”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “I don’t think you’ve thought this through.”

  “I have, and there’s no reason to stay. Think about that for a moment. Really think about it: There is no reason to stay here.”

  “Are you really sure this is what you want?”

  “Yes, but I’m asking if it’s what you want. Do you want to leave this place? Do you want us to be rid of it and do something else?”

  He was two years from entering his fifties and he was a father to two excellent daughters that had spent their childhoods watching him work away from them. He was somehow married to a woman who still loved him after all the absence and stress, and in spite of his short stint as philanderer. He knew now that he was wholeheartedly needed elsewhere. He had already said his goodbyes to most of those people he had cared about, seeing them into the ground in the years past. He would call Calvin and Bernie and Joe soon, give them the news. It was time for a truly clean break, a new profession, and a better life for himself and his family. No more movies, no more endorsing, no more monologues and dusty awards and bad reviews and flop productions. No more writing.

  “Oh Emery... I’ve wanted to get out this place from the start,” she said.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Crowded. Diverse. Unplayful. Overwhelming. New York was a bit of everything and quite divorced from the general feel life had in Los Angeles. Emery had been offered the chance to sit in on scriptwriting courses before, and though he had taught here and there, for short stints more often connected to lecture than true classes, an offer to teach full-time at Ithaca College was a new endeavor and hearty change in career for him. He had accepted the job, and the Ashers had relocated to the other side of the nation. Vivian’s preparation for college occurred in the absence of friends, a predicament the relocation had caused her, but Rebecca was largely unaffected by the move, having chosen to stay out the year and remain in Los Angeles, where she had
been living in a dorm for some time.

  Beth found herself somewhat consumed with learning about their neighborhood and the many areas of New York, and spent a great amount of time trying to settle the new house. The transition had been manic for all concerned, but they had made it and they were no longer Californians. The amount of time Emery and Beth could spend together was greatened, and she found that leaving the strain of his television career had made Emery a different sort of man. He was more charming and personable and doubtless. He had found the young man she had married, here and there, and this young man was present again, manifesting at times in the middle-aged body.

  After the dissolution of The Other Side, Emery had made it a point to grant occasional lecture requests and temporary teaching positions when they came along. These teaching positions were workshop oriented and only ever lasted a week, at the longest. His new position was a true job, and Emery was quite pleased with the rational, secure nature of it. A man went to work and came home and there was a paycheck and no one haggled with him over the day’s work. He enjoyed this work and was enamored with some of his students. What good was notoriety, especially past notoriety no longer so potent, if one could not pass on his lessons to that next wave reaching the shore on which he had once splashed so well?

  The students in his two classes seemed nonchalant, generally disinterested beyond what they felt they were getting out of the lectures and assignments, which had much to do with the climax of a grade. There were one or two students who seemed occupied with him and who were, at times, a little knowledgeable about the past of television, though this knowledge seemed to hold a cut-off date of about two years.

  Two years after something aired, that thing became the distant past, and not worth knowing intimately. Two years gone and a show was but the work of people who had moved on with stronger résumés. Two years turned The Deserter into a footnote. Eight years made The Other Side cretaceous in age. And fifteen years had made All the System, his prize-winning roman candle of a career-igniter, all but dead nutrient for the lowliest decomposers, creatures that had passed, themselves, and been eaten by another generation of decomposers, and they, another. Those early stories simply did not exist anymore but for reference.

  The ducky-dearies sat in their desks and absently scribbled notes, a few doing so with more urgency. There were women present, which was by no means a new matter for the university, but it was the first time he found more than one of them present in a scriptwriting workshop or class. This was a good arrangement. Television’s male machinery needed a counterpart, but would likely fight it much. The blacks were free, and their civil rights had been fought hard for, but anyone with a set of eyes could see that this was still not quite definitive. There were layers within layers to freedom, equality, and civility, and some of these had not been exposed to light on both sides. There was still much work to do on these roadsides, and the roads were quite long and always interconnected.

  More women entering the television business was a hopeful and needed endeavor that pleased Emery. Technically, they had been present in television from the start, but this was mostly in the realm of acting or assistance. There were a great many ignorant people in the world, and it was a sad affair that women were still somewhat thought of as potential makeup artists or actresses, and not writers or directors. This would change in time, it seemed obvious, and certainly, the youth were trying to effect change, but their movement had been struck mute by the shenanigans of the many, and the manner by which things had altered was difficult to pinpoint. Somewhere between grand idealism and “Kilroy was here”, things had farted away into the dwindles of history’s newest, great shrug. The well-meaning was there, but more in an abstract sense. Sensibilities had been transmogrified, but to what depth this reached was impossible to graph with any sort of truth. People were trying to do things. This was the most noticeable ramification of the past ten years: People were trying to do lots of things.

  The difference between what he had done, giving the occasional lecture to a class, workshop, or a full-fledged tour of speaking engagements, and what he was now doing was the difference between flings and a marriage. His tours and past lectures had been affairs, but he was now going to marry lecture. He had become an instructor. With his college background, he could never be a professor, but he could still instruct. The students that sat before him were not a professor’s students, for a class in which Emery had been invited to speak, and they were not to be another short break between his own television shows. These were Mr. Asher’s students. The time for which he would teach was indefinite. This was his career now. His students were young New Yorkers with a penchant for words and a thirst to know how they might write better and push scripts onto those screens that lit almost every home in the nation.

  In an odd predicament he could not have foreseen, the first day had gone quite badly. Public speaking was both teaching and performance, roles in which he should have had much skill. He had been on television extensively and performed lectures all over the world. He had accepted five Emmies and interacted with numerous students and professors in workshops. Strangely, having his own students was a much more intimate and ominous setting, and his nerves had played interference. He had stammered and forgotten much of his prepared lecture, falling instead to awkward improvisation. He had not done well.

  The second day of class was much better, because he came up with a trick to comfort himself, as silly as it made him feel: He pretended the students were cameras. He began each day in the same state of mind he had once used to give his monologues. This would fade after a minute or two and he was able to coast into a more functional teaching mode. The process calmed him and would keep him talking until he could adjust to having the same group of live people before him day after day. This did not take long.

  The end of this first term coincided with the arrival of Summer, and he had a bit of time off until the fall term. He was becoming more relaxed with New York, and with the idea of his new job. He had to keep remembering that he knew his subject, and knew it very well. There were days however, in which he found himself having to outwit certain doubts he held. When the Fall term came, he was better prepared, and tried to take on his classes with a sort of venerable sincerity.

  “Well, just about every major developed country has its television broadcasts,” he responded, “Because when a country begins using television, they almost always begin with the one-shot sports and news shows, the current events, and then what we see is that they gradually break into the more multicellular arts… but these are drama, comedy, and things like speculation. The Australians, the Brazilians, the Japanese, the Germans… all of them are working with the medium just like the U.S., only differing largely in when they started. It takes time for television networks and that system to mature, and the U.S. had television earlier than the rest of the world, and of course, we absolutely loved it, and still do, so we’ve naturally been developing it longer. Now, the marriage between television and the viewing public is an arranged marriage, and the in-laws are in charge, but the product is, beyond a reasonable hypothesis made from ratings or even critical analysis, a good product. It can please us. It can inform. It can also make us think. On the best nights, it can do all three once. Everyone will catch up with us soon, I’m sure, because they’re taking notes, I think. We’re also a bit star-struck, if you haven’t noticed. We tend to throw more money into our broadcasts, for the shows, yes, but also for the sponsors. Big business needs big advertising, and big advertising needs big television. This makes big writers and big directors, just as much as it makes big actors. And for big money, mind you. You might notice the word ‘big’ just came out of my mouth about a hundred times. That’s television. This is true no matter what antenna in what country is picking up the latest signal. It may look different, and evolve differently, and sometimes it actually feels quite small, but it’s the same four-chambered heart across the board: If you’ve got advertisers, you’re getting into a massive sor
t of business.”

  “But do you think it will get to the point that another country’s television shows become more popular than ours?” a student asked.

  “Sure. All empires fall. But actually, in a sense, this is already happening. Certainly the Spaniards watch more of their own television than ours, so in Spain, their television is more popular. To them. I think we will certainly see, and likely soon, that each country will have its hugely successful shows, and some of them may cross borders in time, when our broadcasting specialists find a method to cheaply send a television broadcast signal across the Atlantic. And I mean regularly. But we’ll see that in our lifetime, definitely. Or at least, in your lifetimes. Canada is en route, and England is has a great variety of television shows. Numerous countries are initializing a sense of television, some of it gleaned from us, and some of it culturally their own. Just wait; you’ll one day find yourself being able to choose from British shows put up right beside American shows.”

  “So it’ll bring the world together, huh? You sure you’re not a hippy, Mr. Asher?” Laughter in class was so welcome.

  “I prefer genius and visionary,” Emery said.

  “Having done The After Hours?”

  More laughter. This could have been considered a cutting remark, but Emery had started the habit of deprecating his recent past and addressing his history in class each term. He had set himself up for a bit of teasing, here and there, and he looked forward to it. Emery did this with definite humility, and had no trouble accepting The After Hours as having been somewhat of a career killer.

  Emery Asher, television writer, was no more. Mr. Asher, university instructor, was the new man, and he fostered early in his classes the fact that the industry was full of pitfalls that would expertly uncover one’s foibles. He had used his experience with The After Hours as somewhat of a cautionary tale, and the atmosphere of his class, while on-topic, was one that had accustomed itself to poking fun at ability and history. He would rather promote a bit of teasing regarding those various levels of writerly Hell through which that show had taken him, than risk his students one day falling into the same catastrophe. As a teacher, Emery had decided to place himself on the chopping block as a case study, which benefitted not only his students, but his sense of life. It was easier to laugh at one’s mistakes when others laughed at your side, and the students were learning something quite real.