Alexandra Waring

by Laura Van Wormer

And they did—for about fifteen seconds, before Alexandra pointed to the screen and said, “Look, Kate. Look at CBS, look at Faith Daniels up there—how long do you think it will take people to get past the Marilyn Monroe of TV news to see all that’s really right-Faith, Leslie Stahl, Diane Sawyer, Susan Spencer? The system stinks and everybody knows it, but you have to look at the individuals and see what each woman is doing, because each is different and is going about it a little differently—and every accomplishment every woman makes in this industry changes the system a little for the better.” She stopped suddenly and cocked her head. “How old are you? Twenty—?”

  “Three.”

  “Twenty-three. So you weren’t even born yet when Marlene Sanders filled in as an anchor in 1964,” Alexandra said, adding under her breath, “not that anyone seems to remember that. Course they do remember calling ABC All Broads and Canadians, in honor of her and Peter Jennings.” Alexandra was frowning. But then she smiled. “But you were eleven when Barbara Walters coanchored at ABC—you must remember that.”

  Kate nodded, smiling. “My mother took pictures of the TV set that first night.”

  “Of course she did,” Alexandra said. “It was a very big night. And if television’s supposed to mirror our society, imagine how your mother must have felt after all those years of seeing that she didn’t exist.” And then she shook her head. “And God bless wonderful Barbara Walters. Not just for achieving all that she did and does—but for going on. For holding her head up and just doing her job, pushing on when any less a human being would have been destroyed by the kind of unbelievable”—she searched for a word, finally deciding on, “crap she had to go through about that newscast.”

  “She’s done very well,” Kate said. “Everybody loves her.”

  “Oh, but now we’ve got the Marilyn Monroe of TV news to obsess about,” Alexandra said. She threw her hands up. “Who cares that Barbara Walters and Marlene Sanders and people like Linda Ellerbee, Leslie Stahl, Judy Woodruff—that these women raised children on top of everything else? Who cares that regenerating life results in life and that destroying life results in death and that one is infinitely harder than the other?” She pointed to the TV screen. “Faith has a child—but what are brains and energy and regeneration compared to the slow self-destruction of the Marilyn Monroe of TV news?”

  “Well, I think—” Kate started to say.

  “The Marilyn Monroe of TV news!” Alexandra cried, slapping the couch. “This is all we have to talk about? Mary Alice Williams is a knock-out—she built the New York bureau for CNN, runs it, anchors over two hours of news a day, is the only woman, still, to sit in a network anchor booth at the political conventions—but do we talk about her? Forget it—not when we have the Marilyn Monroe of TV news. I mean—are brains and talent and drive and a sense of purpose and ethics and well-being so completely passé? After everything that Diane Sawyer has achieved, am I really somehow supposed to believe that her most noteworthy accomplishment has been a photo session in Vanity Fair? I mean, what is this?”

  She stopped herself, touching her forehead. “I’m sorry, Kate. I didn’t mean to get started on this.” She dropped her hand, sighing and shaking her head. “It’s just that when I see how hard the world makes it for them—the women who are so very much what America wants as role models, then sometimes I have to wonder what’s going to happen to me. These women are what America respects, they are what society rewards—but still the search goes on, the probe continues. And so now they finally get the goods on one woman in network news. They found an exception to the rule.”

  Kate’s mouth had parted in astonishment, but Alexandra’s eyes had fallen to the coffee table and so she did not notice.

  “See,” Alexandra said, “none of my peers—none of those in the national spotlight—have had the kind of confusion I’ve had in my life.” She paused, laughing to herself. “You would have to take drugs to think you could climb this high and still be free to…”

  She paused again, biting her lip. “And if you’re confused about how well you can fulfill the fundamental expectations the public has for you as the role model it says it wants, then God knows that’s no time to be climbing onto a higher pedestal for greater public scrutiny—is it?” She smiled to herself, still staring down at the table, adding, “Funny how I never seem to remember until someone shouts at me that I need to look at my peers and change myself before it’s too late.”

  “But, Alexandra,” Kate sputtered, “you’re so wonderful. Everyone loves you, thinks you’re the best. And I’ve never seen you confused about anything!”

  Alexandra looked up and seemed to snap back from wherever she had been. She smiled at Kate. “Thank you.” And then she cleared the air with her hand. “Enough from me.” Then she leaned forward slightly. “You never told me how you are.”

  “I’m fine,” Kate said. “And I love listening to you talk.”

  Alexandra smiled. “Well then, listen to this—I mean it when I say I hope you’ll tell me if you’re ever not all right. Or if you are, and just feel like talking about something. Or just feel like talking, period. We can talk about something other than”—she blinked twice—”what we gotta-gotta-gotta do—once in a while, anyway.”

  Kate looked down at her clipboard and said, “I really love working for you.”

  “With me,” Alexandra corrected her, picking up the remote control, zapping off the TV console and then scooping up the garbage from the table. “Now,” she said, standing up, “what do I gotta do with you before I can go downstairs?”

  “Uhhh,” Kate said, standing up; “I’ve got some messages and invitations and stuff I need your answer on.”

  They walked outside together to Kate’s desk, where she handed a spiral notebook to Alexandra. Alexandra sat her down in the chair, put the notebook down on the desk in front of her and read over Kate’s shoulder, stopping to tell her what to do in response to each entry.

  “See if we can set up an interview for him with Cassy.

  “Make sure we keep this phone number safe somewhere.

  “I’d like to send them some flowers.

  “This should go on Herbie’s card on the Rolodex. He’s living with her now—so if we ever need to find him at night. Oh, and you better give Kyle that number too.

  “Tell her we’d love to see it.

  “Please send my regrets.

  “You better call them back and warn them that Langley’s got the feds riding with the Darenbrook trucks, so unless some Network executives want to go to prison for stealing my fan mail, they better have that warehouse open Tuesday morning.

  “I’m already going to that with Jackson—so thank him and tell him no.

  “Please send my regrets.

  “Please tell them over my dead body.” Laughter.

  “Hmmm. Call Betty and see if Gordon will be in town that week. If he is, accept. If not, regrets.

  “Tell them I can’t do any outside things until next March, but I’d be happy to after that.

  “I’ll call her back this afternoon.”

  And then she squinted, leaning closer. “What’s this? Michael Cochran’s address in L.A.?” She looked at Kate. “I don’t understand.”

  Kate shrugged. “Neither did I, but he sounded like you knew all about it.”

  Alexandra frowned. “That he was moving to L.A.?”

  Kate nodded.

  “No, no, I certainly did not,” Alexandra murmured, turning to look at Cassy’s office next door. Chi Chi was sitting outside, typing something.

  “Do you want me to ask Chi Chi about it?” Kate whispered.

  “No,” Alexandra said, turning back toward Kate. “No,” she repeated, absently resting her hand on her shoulder, pausing to think a moment. Then she looked at Kate. “I don’t think we should say anything to anybody until Cassy says something about it herself. Okay?”

  “Okay,” Kate said, nodding.

  “In the meantime,” Alexandra said quietly, patting her back, “be sure to
make a new card for him on the Rolodex, okay?”

  16

  Jessica at Work

  When Jessica’s limousine rolled into the West End carport at ten thirty on Friday morning, she caught sight of an interesting-looking guy climbing out of a cab. “Honk the horn,” she told her driver as the guy walked toward the doors leading into West End.

  “What?” the driver said, turning around. “What for?”

  “Honk the horn!” she yelled at him.

  So the driver honked the horn (which, for a Lincoln, sounded not terribly unlike the Queen Mary coming to port) as he brought the car to a stop. The guy stopped also and turned around as the guard opened Jessica’s door. She got out, very happily aware that the guy was not only watching her but was a lot better-looking than she had thought. “What a crazy driver,” Jessica declared. “All of a sudden he starts honking the horn. Must be some kind of Detroit religious ritual.”

  “Eye-yie-yie,” the driver was saying as Jessica slammed the door closed behind her. She turned and beamed at the security guard, and then up at the guy.

  Great, the guy was checking her out.

  He met her eyes. “You’re Jessica Wright,” he said, walking over and holding out his hand. “Hi, I’m Gordon Strenn—I’m producing the miniseries. I think we were supposed to meet earlier this week, but I had to go out to L.A.”

  “Nice to meet you, Gordon,” Jessica said, taking his hand. “I’ve heard an awful lot of nice things about you,” she added, though she didn’t remember anyone at West End ever mentioning him.

  “Well, I’ve seen an awful lot of nice things about you,” he said, shaking her hand. “I’ve watched a couple of your shows. You’re terrific—and we’re all very glad you’re here.”

  His handshake was nice, but his brown eyes were nicest of all. He wasn’t very tall, though. With the heels she had on today, she was almost as tall as he was. Nice eyes, though. Nice face, though. Nice light brown hair, though. Nice hand, too. She released his hand, bringing both of hers up to run them back through her hair (the purpose of which was really meant to part her shawl). It worked. (God bless Grandmother Hollingstown. She had been an absolute bitch, but she had gotten these breasts from somewhere and passed them on so that some of her granddaughters could enjoy an occasional shortcut to becoming compelling personalities without scarcely having to be persons at all.)

  While he was looking at her chest, she looked at his hand to see that there wasn’t any wedding band. Of course, that could just mean he didn’t wear one. But this was New York, where men almost always wore their wedding bands to the office (though, after five, some Manhattanites wore their wedding bands in the loose change in their pockets; some commuters wore their wedding bands on the same hook in their key cases as the keys to their cars or the front doors of their houses; and some out-of-towners wore their wedding bands on wads of tissue in their shaving kits).

  But it had been Jessica’s experience that TV producers could be a tricky lot. The producer she had gone out with last night, for example, had not been wearing a wedding band either when he introduced himself to her at Café des Artistes last week at lunch, and had he not gotten so drunk last night she never would have known he was married.

  (“Are you married?” she had asked him point-blank over drinks. “No,” he had said. “Are you sure you’re not married?” she had asked him, sipping a glass of champagne during the intermission of the play they had seen. “I’m sure,” he had said. “Are you really not married?” she had asked him over dinner. “No, I’m not married,” he had said. “You sure seem married to me,” she had said, sitting on the couch in the hotel suite owned by the company the producer worked for. “How’s that?” he had said. “Because—of that,” she said, nodding at the erection that had been in plain view more than once that night. “I’m not that much of a turn-on—not unless you think you’re doing something wrong.” “You are a very strange girl,” he had said, bringing out a bottle of brandy. [Brandy, oh boy, after starting in on brandy, who cared about anything?]

  (After a rather dreadful and disappointing grappling on the bed and after several more brandies, that was when he had said, with his head resting between her breasts, “I am married,” and had started to cry. And then Jessica had started to cry. And then she had poured the rest of her brandy in his ear, threw him off of her, got dressed, went home to the Plaza, drew a bath and fell asleep until the bath water grew quite frigid, at which time she put on her huge terry-cloth robe, dragged herself into her bedroom, collapsed on the bed, awakened at nine-ten with a splitting headache and funny stomach and decided that she really needed to get her divorce finalized and find a nice man, a nice, single straight guy, if there was such a thing in New York, and she had to find him very soon, and so she had gotten dressed in her Sort-of-Katharine-Hepburn-as-the-Countess-disguised-as-the-gypsy-in-The-Little-Minister outfit, complete with shawl and gold hoop earrings, and here she was, hoping against hope that this very nice guy here in the carport could be…)

  And then it clicked. Click, click, whirl, whirl, even hung over this mind couldn’t stop. Gordon Strenn. “Excuse me if I’m being too personal—and stop me if I am,” Jessica said, “but weren’t you once married to Julie Stantree?”

  “Yes,” Gordon said, nodding, stepping back and gesturing to the doors. “I’ll walk you to your office, if that’s where you’re going.”

  “Thank you,” she said, smiling. Jessica started in-the double doors slid open—and then she stopped dead and cried, “Oh, no!”

  “What’s the matter?” he asked her.

  She whirled around. “You’re not that boyfriend of Alexandra’s, are you? Oh, damn,” she said, turning around, “of course you are.”

  He laughed, touching her back, guiding her inside, saying under his breath into her ear, “We don’t talk about that around here.”

  “Oh,” she said, “so Jackie does have a thing for her.” Oops. Hit a nerve on that one, she could see. “I mean,” she added, “in terms of publicity for the show.”

  “Newscast,” Gordon said, steering her past reception, waving to the receptionist. “Don’t ever let Lexy hear you call it a show, that’s my advice.”

  Lexy? Jessica thought. Lexy sounded like the name of a Yorkshire terrier. Hmmm. She didn’t think there could be many people in the world who called Alexandra Lexy. Certainly Lisa Connors didn’t she usually called her darling Alexandra.

  Well, darling Alexandra the Yorkshire terrier or whatever was a strange one, all right. Even though Jessica begrudgingly had to admit that she really liked Alexandra Eyes, Queen of the Daisy Chain, she didn’t have to pretend she could get a handle on her. Professionally oh, yes, Jessica could see what she was in that regard. She was one of those burning overachievers who had taken the seat in the front row of the classroom instead of the back, who had opted for good health and vitality and good clean pep, instead of good highs and danger and cynical, depresso-head wit. Alexandra was the A student who showed up; Jessica was the A student who showed up only for exams and got B’s, or forged doctors’ notes from the infirmary to get an I for Incomplete so she could finish the required work later, which of course she never got around to because there was so much else to do because the floodwaters were always rising around Jessica and it was only when the water started spilling over the sandbags that she ever did anything anyway and so present emergencies always superseded any demands as subtle as the completion of course assignments.

  Anyway…

  There was something about old Alexandra Eyes that was not quite in step with that bright-eyed Goody Two-shoes in the front row. First of all, Jessica knew that Alexandra liked her (it was not that she knew it but she could feel it, which to Jessica made her know it was real) and since most all Goody Two-shoes were generally alarmed by Jessica in real life, she knew Alexandra had to be pretty savvy. And she was friends with Lisa Connors, for Pete’s sake, which meant that Alexandra had a side of her that understood the—the what? What did one call it? Artistic
temperament? (“Artistic temperament my foot!” Jessica had once heard her mother say to her father. “A spiteful little brat without an ounce of gratitude in her is more like it. We should have given her to the maid when we had the chance.”)

  That whole story of Lisa living in Kansas City for a year was the weirdest thing. Jessica was dying to know what Lisa had really been up to there (to imagine Lisa quietly painting in Kansas City was like trying to imagine Sarah Bernhardt doing puppet shows in Parisian parks) and Jessica wondered if Alexandra hadn’t somehow bailed her out of trouble. It sort of sounded like that. Like maybe Lisa had run away from someone or something, had fled to the unlikely place of Kansas City for a while and met Alexandra, who helped get her life back on track again. Because that sounded like Alexandra Eyes. She was one of those, for sure, Jessica had spotted right away, one of those who liked being in control of relationships. And helping people when they were down was a sure way of gaining the upper hand with them, of maintaining control over the terms of the relationship, just as Alexandra’s help on Jessica’s special was surely an attempt to win Jessica over as an ally she could control. And Jessica didn’t blame her for doing it. It was very smart. She would do the same thing in Alexandra’s place because, regardless of how different their programs were, it was no secret that DBS was selling them together because “The Jessica Wright Show” had the pull.

  But then, in a kinder moment, Jessica would think that maybe Alexandra was simply a very nice person who genuinely liked her. But that thought didn’t last very long because then Jessica would see all the advantages for Alexandra if she won her over. And then, what was it that Langley had said the other day? That if she liked walking into spiderwebs, then she would positively adore knowing Alexandra? And then Jessica would think about how crazy Lisa was about Alexandra, so then Jessica would think that Alexandra liked crazy people because she herself was so sane and serious and controlled, but then Jessica would remember how Alexandra had practically denied knowing Lisa and then Jessica would think, Aha!, a woman whose heart grows fond only when it serves her immediate interests. Lisa is not here, cannot help with DBS, so Lisa no longer exists. Jessica is here, Jessica can help her at DBS, so Jessica is a friend worth cultivating.