“Now, now,” Alexandra said, “I’m sure that’s not true.”
“Oh, it’s true,” Jessica assured her. “Skating, skiing, tennis, golf, sailing, even bike riding—I don’t even know how to ride a bike anymore. Talk about the youngest has—been.”
“But now you can start again,” Alexandra said gently, smiling.
Pause. “I guess I can, can’t I?”
“Sure. My bike’s in the basement,” Alexandra said. “Ask the doorman and he’ll get them to bring it up for you whenever you want. And listen, on the refrigerator is the number of my tennis club. Why don’t you ask Cassy if she’d like to take a couple lessons with you? She keeps saying how she’d like to start again. And the club’s right—”
“Forget it,” Jessica told her. “Cassy’s up to her kazoo in work with the new affiliates. Besides, it’s you she’d want to play with. She misses you a lot, you know.”
“I miss all of you,” Alexandra said.
“And I gotta ask you something, Waring,” Jessica said. “How is it everybody thinks you’re their best friend? Cassy, Kyle, little Alexandra, Jr.—all of those guys have been moping around ever since you left. And they all talk about you and they all look at me, like, ‘Scat, you’re a mess, get out of here—you’re no substitute for our best friend.’ “
“That’s not true,” Alexandra told her. “They’re all just nervous about the board meeting this weekend. Oh, hey, before I forget—Jackson’s sister, Cordelia, she called me this morning to see how I was.”
“The guiding light of the family, I hear, the Divine Miss Cordie Lou,” Jessica said. “I told Jackson if he insists on me serving corn bread to his kooky family—and did you hear that? We’re having a cookout in the square Saturday night? A kooky cookout?”
“Yes, I heard.”
“And that Jackson and Langley want me to kiss up to his family? How you got out of this, Waring—”
“I didn’t get out of it,” she said. “I went to the Darenbrooks’ house, didn’t I?”
“And now Cordelia thinks you’re her best friend too, right?” Jessica asked her.
“Listen,” Alexandra said, “let me give you a word of advice about Saturday, okay?”
“I mean, why else would she call you?” Jessica continued. “But then, why not? Everybody likes Alexandra Eyes. Everybody calls you—even Cordelia Paine, who hates everybody in secular TV. Alexandra, are you a mere mortal or what?”
“Would you listen for one second, please?”
A sigh. “Okay. What is it?”
“Wear something jazzy, but don’t show a lot of your—your—”
“My bust?” Jessica asked her.
“Yes, your bust,” Alexandra said. “I’d wear that black dress of yours, the one with the gray. It’s very pretty and you look wonderful, and it’s still sexy in a way but doesn’t…,”
“Strut my stuff?” Jessica asked her.
Alexandra laughed softly. “Exactly. Because I’ll tell you, Cordelia Paine is one tough cookie—and she’s not real high on some of the topics on your show, although she did seem encouraged when I told her you changed your cocktail party shows to a coffee hour. She’s not as different from you and me as you’d think. She’s very bright, has lots of energy, is a mover and a shaker—”
“That’s what we are?” Jessica said. “And here all these years I thought I was a hopeless wretch.”
“Only she’s very, very conservative,” Alexandra continued. “But if you keep that in mind you’ll do fine with her.”
“Jackie says she’s so right-wing her plane only flies in circles,” Jessica said.
“Jessica?” Alexandra said.
“Yes?”
“Just pay a lot of attention to her, okay? She’s a very important member of the board. And be yourself—but please, don’t drop any four-letter words.”
“I’m much better about that,” Jessica told her.
“Right,” Alexandra said. “Didn’t you just tell me you haven’t fucked for years with anyone you liked?”
“Made love with,” Jessica said. “That’s what I said.”
“Okay, so you understand me,” Alexandra said.
“Operation Beguile Cordie Lou,” Jessica said. “Got it.”
Alexandra sat up in bed and turned on the light. 2:06 A.M, the clock said.
She reached for the phone, listened for a dial tone, pushed a button for a long-distance line and then punched in a number. She sighed, closing her eyes, bringing the phone to her ear.
Her eyes opened. “Is this the answering service?” She frowned slightly. “Um…” She looked at the clock again. “I guess she doesn’t want to be disturbed.
Well… I was going to leave a message for Cassy Cochran, but I changed my mind. Thanks. Bye.”
She reached over and hung up the phone. She turned off the light and lay back down on the bed, looking up at the ceiling. After a while she Sighed, murmuring, “Oh, God, what am I doing?” rolled over on her side and curled up around a pillow.
MORNING CHICAGO
Transcript p. 12
7-22-88 Guest: Alexandra Waring Host: Martin Hailer
HAILER:
Before you leave, Alexandra, I’d like to ask you your opinion about the recent biography of anchorwoman Jessica Savitch. Have you read it?
WARING:
Yes. I found it very painful.
HAILER:
And the allegations of drug use? Bisexuality? How do you feel about that?
WARING:
About the allegations?
HAILER:
Yes.
WARING:
Um… I feel—I feel sick at heart, really. Because Jessica Savitch will always be a hero to me and hearing these kind of things—well—hurts. Because, you see, she was the one I watched, the one who made me think, gosh, maybe I could anchor the news someday.… No—no doubt about it, watching Jessica Savitch anchor the news changed my life. And so to hear these things about her is painful—because my admiration for her runs very deep.
HAILER:
Pardon my astonishment, but you, who pride yourself on being a journalist, openly admire a woman who people say merely cashed in on her looks—
WARING:
Did you ever see her in person?
HAILER:
No.
WARING:
I didn’t think so.
HAILER:
Um—well, as I was saying, people said she cashed in on her looks—
WARING:
I really don’t understand how you feel free to make a statement like that. You make it sound as though she just fell out of the sky into NBC, that she didn’t do any work to get there. She did not just bounce in from a Miss America pageant. This was a woman from very modest means who worked her way up from scratch. There was no head start for her in this life. She started way back there, worked her way up to here, and then—granted—she got lucky and was thrown to the top—if you can call it lucky, considering what happened to her.
HAILER:
But how can you admire somebody who was under-qualified, supposedly a monster to people she worked with, who was taking drugs, had innumerable affairs, some with—
WARING:
Because she was there! Don’t you understand? Jessica Savitch was there for me. She was there anchoring the news for NBC on Saturday night and I wanted to be just like her. I don’t do drugs, I’ve never done drugs in my life, and I would never wish for anyone to feel compelled to experiment with them or even try them once. And yet Jessica Savitch was my idol—and it is because of her that I’m here today. And thousands and thousands of other women my age raised their sights in life because of her too—because of seeing Jessica Savitch on television, seeing that the world was possible for women in a different way than ever before.
HAILER:
Yes, but—
WARING:
So how do you explain that? How do you explain it that a person with so many problems could be such an unfailing role model to me
and thousands and thousands of women like me? Jessica Savitch never let me down, me the viewer.
HAILER:
But she went on the air once—
WARING:
And stumbled over some of the words in one of the “News Updates.” Yes, I know.
HAILER:
And?
WARING:
And so imagine what you’d be saying about her if she had stormed off the set and forced the network to go to black for six minutes!
HAILER:
But they say she was on drugs.
WARING:
Yes, that’s what they say—that there was a reason for her behavior. What’s not clear is the reason why it was allowed to go on. She was certainly not the first newsperson to have a problem. But she may have been the first newswoman to, and that probably had a lot to do with it. The flip side, the nice side, is that it need never happen again.
HAILER:
Do you think Dan Rather should have been fired when he walked off the set and CBS went black?
WARING:
No, I don’t. I think people who anchor the news are human beings and are vulnerable to the traits of being human too. I think people who anchor the news are allowed to make one mistake—and not repeat it. And let me be perfectly clear on this, Dan Rather is one of the finest journalists the world has today, and I used that incident only to point out that women and men tend to be judged differently in the first place in this industry. Had it been a woman who had walked off, I’m sure she would have been fired—demoted, certainly.
HAILER:
And you think that Jessica Savitch—
WARING:
I think I’m tired of hearing people tear Savitch apart as if she made no contribution to anyone or anything. She was one of the few to come down out of the ivory tower to meet with young people, for example. She traveled all over the country to talk with us, teach us—she answered our letters, wrote a book. I mean, do you understand the significance of her relationship with viewers? That, regardless of what anyone says, regardless of anything she might have done, Jessica Savitch changed young women’s lives across America for the better? Whether you like it or not?
HAILER:
Yes, but the point is, a woman who was a role model—
WARING:
Is dead.
HAILER:
Yes, well, of course, she’s dead.
WARING:
And that’s not paying a high enough price for you?
HAILER:
I didn’t—
WARING:
And you know, something else—I still hear people trashing her autobiography. But you know what? That book, Anchorwoman, contains the single most important insight about public life in America.
HAILER:
Which is?
WARING:
Jessica Savitch wrote, and I quote, “We don’t just shoot our heroes; we often destroy them by setting up unrealistic expectations.”
“Kyle says the publisher wants to send you flowers,” Will yelled to Alexandra across the Chicago affiliate newsroom, covering the phone with his hand. “Every copy of that Savitch biography was sold out in Chicago by lunchtime.”
Alexandra groaned, hiding her head under the papers in her hand.
“And he asks that you try and refrain from making any further editorials on the state of network television news.”
“Yeah yeah,” Alexandra said, swatting the air with her papers.
“Psst,” a woman said, standing nearby at the editor’s desk.
Alexandra looked over.
“I’m glad you said what you did,” she said. “I’m here because of Jessica Savitch, too.”
The Friday night DBS newscast from Chicago went very well. At the end of it, as a conclusion to this rather wild week of the tour, Alexandra looked straight into the camera (her eyes spectacular), and said, “Reporting from WCO in Chicago for the DBS television news network, I’m Alexandra Waring,” adding, under her breath, with a mischievous smile, “who is very happy to be here, believe me,” and then finished with, in her regular voice, “Good night, everybody. Have a wonderful weekend—we’ll see you Monday in Kansas City.”
At one—thirty in the morning, Central Standard Time, a set of car lights swung over the side of a gray clapboard—and—stone house. A dog started to bark. The car lights turned off, the engine stopped. The car door opened and closed. It was dark.
There was the sound of a low whistle and the dog stopped barking.
It was still.
The silhouette of a person moved along the side of the house and stopped at the steps of a small porch. Shoes were taken off and left there. A pair of stockings next. A blazer.
The figure moved on, floating across the backyard, through the split—rail fence, down through a field, through another fence, disappearing into a row of corn. There was the sound of movement, of the rustling of cornstalks, but it was a quiet sound, hushed with the night. The moon came out from behind a cloud and the field turned blue-gray, bright, under the light. The rustle, the movement of corn, continued down the row. At the far end of the field the figure emerged, slipped through another fence and ran alongside it to a grove of trees. The figure walked through the trees, hesitated for a moment, turned, and then continued on, picking up the pace, moving out of the grove and up onto a grassy rise to another fence. The figure climbed up and over to sit on the top rail.
“Hi Gran, hi Granddad, I’m home,” Alexandra said to the sky.
43
Alexandra’s Visit with Her Parents
Saturday morning Mrs. Waring said she was sorry but Alexandra couldn’t sleep in because April was going to be here before they knew it and Alexandra had to start in on the wedding books. And if Alexandra wanted a wedding dress made by the same seamstress who had made her grandmother’s wedding dress she was going to have to hurry because Mrs. Huddlesmith was ninety-four and, while she wished Mrs. Huddlesmith only good health and happiness, one never knew how long people that age would be around, did one?
As her mother sent the shades and windows flying up, flooding the corner bedroom with light and fresh air, Alexandra—from under the covers of the four—poster bed—murmured something about nearly being shot that week. Mrs. Waring said mothers couldn’t relate to guns and shootings nearly as well as they could relate to weddings, and she was sure that when Alexandra was in her old age she would much rather think back on how lovely her wedding had been than on how much nicer it would have been had she gotten out of bed that morning instead of giving in to those twisted, tormented, sick creatures of God who were determined to spread fear through the world.
Alexandra said only her mother could make sleeping in sound like letting the whole world down.
“And about this nonsense of having the wedding in New York, young lady,” Mrs. Waring said, coming to stand next to the bed, hands on her hips, her own blue—gray eyes flashing.
Alexandra groaned, squirming further down under the covers.
“Your father had to drive into Topeka this morning and left instructions that, if the wedding hasn’t moved backed to Kansas by the time he comes home, he’s only going to have four children. Lexy darling,” Mrs. Waring said, easing herself down on the bed, “you must think of your father—how it would look for him to have his very own daughter be married out of state.”
“But I don’t want a political caucus for a wedding,” came the muffled reply from under the covers,.
Mrs. Waring gave a well—placed spank to the body beneath the covers. “No, you want a New York wedding so we can all be written up in a police report instead of the social section after we all get murdered in the streets.”
Alexandra threw the covers back and sat up. “I thought you just said we couldn’t give in to twisted, tormented, sick creatures of God.”
“That doesn’t include drug dealers,” her mother told her, standing up.
“You’ve got them in Kansas City now, you know,” Alexandra said. “Two gangs, crack.”
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“I’m not asking you to get married in Kansas City,” her mother said. “I’m asking you to get married in Haven Wells.”
There were several reasons why Alexandra had to be married in Kansas, according to Mrs. Waring, and she made sure Alexandra heard them all. Even when Alexandra jumped out of bed, threw on a pair of gym shorts, a T-shirt and running shoes, went downstairs, down the front porch and literally ran away from her mother—jogging—Mrs.
Waring slipped behind the wheel of the Land Rover in the driveway and followed her down the dirt access road to the fields.
Besides the fact that her father might run for office again in 1990, her mother told her (as Alexandra jogged and Mrs. Waring drove right alongside her) that, after this awful year of drought and Bob Dole not getting the party nomination for President, the state of Kansas needed her wedding to cheer everybody up. And if Alexandra’s grandparents were alive, it would kill them if Alexandra didn’t get married in Haven Wells.
“Not fair, Mom,” Alexandra said, jogging along, perspiring in the morning sun.
“But it’s true,” Mrs. Waring said, easing the clutch a little to rev the motor and accentuate her point. ( Vroommm. ) (Despite Mrs. Waring’s otherwise thoroughly lady—like demeanor and appearance, she was quite at home in four-wheel drive.)
“Granddad never thought I’d get married in the first place,” Alexandra said. “He always said that.”
“Well, your granddad had a rather cockeyed view of life to begin with, you know that, Lexy.”
And Alexandra knew it would break Dr. Bates’s heart if he didn’t perform the ceremony. He had baptized her when she was a baby, given her a Bible at ten, accepted her into the church at fourteen and had those wonderful talks with Alexandra after her grandparents died. (“And before you even suggest it,” Mrs. Waring said, “I’m quite positive Dr. Bates hates to travel. I don’t think he’s left town in forty years.”) And Alexandra’s brothers and sister hated New York. Mrs. Waring hated New York. Her father hated New York. All of their family and friends hated New York, and so how was Alexandra going to feel when she came down the aisle and saw how much everybody hated being there? (“Mother!” Alexandra said, laughing, breaking stride.)
Alexandra Waring Page 56