by Emily Beyda
“It’s so nice to have you on the show again,” she says, her voice warm but distant, glossily professional. I can feel the pressure of her gaze on me like a weight. “I’m looking forward to our little chat.”
Before I can respond, she is sitting down beside me, her face smoothed into pleasant neutrality, straightening the hem of her skirt with a sharp gesture of her hand, the cameras rolling. I don’t have time for reflection, nerves. It is beginning. It has begun. I look at the woman across from me. Redemption, I think. I smile my slight sad smile.
“I’m sitting down today with Rosanna Feld, a woman who has been in the public eye since the moment she was born. We’ll be talking about her passion for design, her life in the limelight, and her decision to take some time alone to rediscover her truth. What was she looking for? What did she find? Stay tuned to find out.”
Her voice is totally different now that the cameras are rolling. Before, there was something compressed about her, critical, pinched. Now she sounds warm, her voice modulated, sharp tones sanded down to amiable smoothness, like your best friend giving you advice.
“Rosanna, welcome to our show,” she says. “We are all so pleased to have you.”
“Thank you, Susan,” I say. “I am so, so pleased to be here. This is so nerdy, but honestly I’m really excited to get a chance to talk about my new handbag line. I’ve been working so hard on it, and I’m really pleased to get the chance to share it with you guys.”
“That’s good to hear,” she says. “I’m glad to hear it. We are so excited you have something you’re interested in working on. I know your work has always been important in difficult times.”
Here, she gives me a simperingly sympathetic look of concern. I remember what the assistant said, female empowerment and entrepreneurship. I can sell that. I nod.
“I think it’s so important,” I say. “Work. Having work you care about, as a woman. You can’t practice good self-care if you’re not spending your life doing work you care about!”
I am boring myself. Rosanna never talks so explicitly about the things she makes, never tries to sell to you. She is just so effervescent, so full of life that you want to get close to her any way you can, to buy anything that might remind you of her.
“So was it hard,” the interviewer asks, “not working all that time you were gone?” She leans forward slightly in her chair, as if by bringing herself closer to me she will trick me into believing in her illusion of privacy, that it is just the two of us here, two friends sitting down for a chat.
“Not really,” I say. “It was what I needed to do. I have such a wonderful team, the wheels were always in motion, even when I wasn’t healthy enough to make the choices I needed to make. I knew I could trust them. And that’s what’s so great about running your own business. I love being empowered to make the decisions that are right for me without having to ask anyone’s permission. I think giving yourself permission to be a little selfish sometimes is so important.”
“Selfish,” she says. “That’s an interesting word. Do you feel you’ve been selfish, Rosanna?”
“Not selfish,” I say. “No, just prioritizing my own needs. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that, do you?”
My hands are starting to sweat.
“So you feel you’ve placed your own needs first before the needs of the people around you? How has that impacted your personal life? Your relationships?”
“Well, of course I’ve had to make compromises,” I say. “Of course there are things I would change. But I don’t believe regret is a productive emotion.”
“So you don’t regret anything you’ve done?”
“Of course I feel awful for having caused pain to the people around me. For worrying my fans by staying away so long. But I can’t take that back. I can’t take any of it back.”
“Don’t you wish you could? If those people were here with us now, wouldn’t you want to apologize for the pain you’ve caused?”
“I would,” I say. “Of course I would. And I have privately made my amends.”
My voice sounds like Rosanna’s, the words that I am saying might plausibly flow from her lips. It is almost right. Almost. But I’m too self-conscious, too aware of forming my tone to match Rosanna’s, of how intentional the process is. This should be natural. I should just be talking naturally. But I’m in it now, there’s no looking back. What choice do I have but to keep talking and hope something good comes out?
“There’s only so much work apologies can do,” I say. “What really matters is change. We have to live the lives we are given. We have to learn from our mistakes. There’s no starting over. There’s just going on, carrying forward the lessons we’ve learned.”
She furrows her brow. That same phony concerned look. “And what have you learned?” she asks. “Why are you here, Rosanna?”
I had been to so many social workers over the years. I had believed them at first, when I was young, when they said that talking about my life would change it. But it only seemed to change it for the worse. Whatever I told them would be echoed back to me later, painfully, my words stripped of their context, my honesty nothing more than evidence. I learned to tell things the right way, mirror back the world to them the way they wanted to see it. This woman is the same. She wants the same thing from Rosanna they had wanted from me. Redemption, neatly packaged, just like Max said. Gratitude, grace. A cry break a third of the way through.
“Well,” I say.
I pause. I sigh. I look past her, past the camera for a long moment, long enough to make her nervous, make her think that I might stop talking. I can see by her face that she’s thinking, unsure whether it is time for her to interrupt, try to force me to dig deeper for those high ratings.
Just when it seems she is about to speak, I continue, “It was time, I suppose. I needed to be alone for a while. For longer than I expected. I think some of your viewers know this already, but I’ve been in treatment. And it took some time and it was really hard, but I did the work on myself I needed to do. So I’m back. I’m back to thank my fans for standing by me. I can’t tell you how much it meant to me knowing I had their love and support during that difficult time. Thank you. Thank you all. I could not have gotten well again without you.”
I look straight at the camera, through it, through to the monitor, to the viewers, each of them, casting my voice into the future, to wherever Max is watching. So he will see. So they will all see. So they will know that I am here, really here, to stay. I reach across the small white table and take the interviewer’s hand in mine.
“I know I’ve had your support, too,” I say. “That’s why I chose your show for my first interview. I can’t thank you enough for how kind you’ve been. For having me come here to tell my own story. You do such good, important work, and I’m honored to be part of that.”
My words float in the air, a black cloud, filling up the empty space above us, all around. I am slipping further and further into Max’s version of Rosanna, all false sweetness, delay, an image mouthing along silently behind a speeding audio track. I pause, look down at my hands, contemplative, calm, up again, a quick, self-effacing smile. My face twitches unnaturally on the monitor’s screen.
“Thank you, Rosanna,” says the interviewer. “I appreciate it. But we’re not here to talk about me. We’re here to talk about you. With as much honesty and integrity as we can.”
And that’s it. Something catches inside me. I have reached the limit of what I’ve been trained to do. I need to go deeper. I think of my game, nights when I’m falling asleep, writing Rosanna’s memories over my own. Shadows through a tracing paper, two images transformed into one. My memories of being here and my body’s presence are overlaid like that now. Two universes are intersecting, a parrot dipping down to drink from the mirrored surface of my courtyard fountain, its body joined between air and water, meeting itself at th
e tender barrier of the liquid’s skin. I look into the interviewer’s eyes, remembering Rosanna’s experience of this space. I let myself grow heavy, her flesh mapped over my own, the combined weight of our two bodies sinking deeper into the couch. I focus on remembering the physical sensations, the weight of material on my skin, the smell of her, of me, the herb sweetness of our shampoo, our old sweat sunk into the fabric of our clothes, the two of us sitting on all these couches, answering the same questions over and over and over, playing a role we have long since grown bored of, each time remembering all the other times, all the questions that have come before, the same answers over and over and over, the same gestures, our arms tired, the same sagging feeling of being scrutinized, observed, exhausted. I am sitting here, where she was. I am wearing her clothes. I am exhausted, too. I close my eyes just for a second, feeling her come into me, fill me up with light. The doubled warmth of two fast-beating hearts. I open them again. Here I am. I am here. The skin of my new body feels creamy tight, like the soft drape of a sheet mask. Not entirely natural. But comfortable enough, for now.
“Of course,” I say. “And I want to be honest with you. Nothing is more important to me than sharing my truth with you all. My supporters. My fans. You. You all deserve to know whatever it is that will help you heal the way I have.”
“Well then,” my interviewer says. She leans even farther forward in her chair, her body at such an acute angle that I am almost afraid she will topple. “Let me ask you something, Rosanna. I know it’s a difficult question. But I think we have to be present for each other, as fellow seekers of the truth.”
As if there is any such thing as honesty. Honestly, I am so bored of the phoniness of it all, the fake concern. Could there be anything less original than all this? All she wants is for me to tell her something they can turn into a clip, break in half to sell more ad space. Her question the cliffhanger, my answer the drop into the abyss.
“Of course,” I say. “Anything.” I make sure to smile sweetly.
“Are you an addict, Rosanna?”
It’s such a stupid question. These people, they’ll ask anything, they have no shame. It’s just like the photographers, that same base impulse, that same deep mining of other people’s pain, only here it’s all dressed up like we’re friends. I remember last time, when she talked about her ex-husband and then I talked about mine, and then she cut out the part of the interview where she was talking so only my confession was left. Thinking about it makes my chest tight. I had tried to be honest with her. She hadn’t wanted it. No one did. I’m so sick of sitting on all these couches. I’m so sick of being asked—no, being forced—to lie. So this time I won’t lie. I let my eyes go soft with the false promise of tears. But it’s not time. Not yet.
“Honestly,” I say, “yes. Yes, I am.”
She gets this sly little look on her face, like she’s caught me. “And what are you addicted to?” she asks.
I shift in my chair, drawing it out. I remember the last time. She looks older than I remember, her skin dull beneath thick layers of concealer. You want your ratings, lady? Fine. So do I.
“Love,” I say. I draw the word out with a soft little sigh. “I’m addicted to love.”
Saying it, I know it’s true. She has the truth she wanted, in a way. Max, the boys on my phone, my father, my fans, my best friend— all I want is to be loved, to be loved so well, so strongly, that the weight of it will pin me to the earth. Make me real. My interviewer, watching, seems to glow. I can feel her want, her longing, floating toward me through the air like the tendrils of a climbing vine.
“Is it fair to say you’ve suffered from sex addiction?” she says.
She is trying to sound concerned, neutral, but her excitement is impossible to conceal. This is too easy. I shake my head.
“No,” I say. “I know you’ve had problems with promiscuity in the past, and I sympathize, but for me it was always more about my heart than my body. I needed so much from the people around me. I asked for so much. Too much. I was like a vampire, draining all the energy and love I could from my friends, my fans, everyone. Trying to love me was like trying to fill a black hole. I destroyed everyone who came too close. I don’t do that anymore. I know better now. I am better. I am better than I ever was before.”
I look out again to the audience, all those rows of darkened seats, each seat standing in for a hundred women, a thousand, cloaked in the blue light of a hundred thousand screens, all of them beautiful, all of them loving, all of them watching me. I am not looking for Max, but I am sure I see his face smiling back at me from the crowd. Tenderness. I remember the things that I would ask him to do, how I spoke unkindly to him, made him wait for me for hours. Things will be different now.
“So substances weren’t a problem?” she asks. “Drugs?”
She has kept that soft tone, kind, but I can tell she’s annoyed.
“It wasn’t ever about one particular substance or another. It was about the lack I was trying to fill. I needed so much. Everything I did, I was always just trying to replace whatever it was I was missing, to be overwhelmed by small pleasures. I used meaningless joy to distract myself from the lack of meaning in my life. Because true meaning comes from self-love. And I didn’t like myself very much back then. I didn’t know anyone who did. Do you?”
I already know the answer. To be fair, I don’t like her very much, either. Finally she leans back. I have shocked her, slightly, out of her single-minded pursuit of dirt.
“I don’t know,” she says. “I suppose so. I try to practice good self-care.”
“That’s not what I asked,” I say. “I asked if you hate yourself as much as I hated myself. And I really hated myself. I hated myself so much.”
“I try,” she says, and I cut her off, without seeming to, speaking in the pause she takes to consider.
“But isn’t it hard?” I say. “It’s so hard, feeling like everyone’s always too busy for you. Like you’re not important. In some ways, I think I’ve been fighting against that feeling my whole life. Not now. I know about your loneliness. I’ve read your books. I know things haven’t always been easy for you.”
She leans back, silent, until she is melting into the back of the chair, attempting to regain her lost momentum. “That’s true,” she says. “But I’ve come so far.”
Her eyes are getting skittish, shifting away from me, up toward the rafters, the camera, anywhere but my face. I keep staring at her. I will make her look at me, no matter how hard she tries to avoid it. I will make her see me as I am.
“Before Mark left you for that PA, you must have known, must have sensed even then that you were alone in your relationship. Even when it looked so good to the outside world. That there was no one listening to you. And didn’t that remind you of all those old fears? That you’re useless? That no one will ever love you, because on some deep, fundamental level, you are not good enough to be loved?”
Still, she does not respond. We sit for a few moments in silence. Now I am the one to soften, move toward her, my voice even tenderer than her own.
“Tell me how you survived.” I say.
I watch the tears streak her foundation—one, two—and then her face is striped with fading makeup, eyeliner dripping black from her eyes. My cry break, as promised. My redemption. I feel the studio lights burning hot on my neck. I feel heavy with power. Reborn.
* * *
—
Max is waiting in the car, idling outside the door to the studio.
“Maxie,” I say, “that was a fiasco. You have to work harder on prepping me next time. That woman was totally unorganized, I practically had to do her job for her. From now on, we’re prepping a list of anecdotes and laugh lines in advance, and I’m doing the pre-show interviews on my own. I obviously can’t trust you to handle it.”
I remember what I had said on the show earlier, and I feel bad for a mom
ent. I do need to be kinder to him. I will be kinder to him. The poor boy works so hard.
“Still,” I say, “it could have been worse. I’d better text Bruce.”
I go to take my phone out of my purse, text my agent, like I normally do after these things. But there’s something wrong. It’s not the phone I remember, sleek and new. It’s a battered thing with a cracked screen—my old phone, maybe, from years ago. Max is holding something in his hands. I look. It’s my phone, the phone I remember, new, unblemished, that rose-gold back. I take it out of his hands. “Whoops,” I say, “looks like we accidentally switched.”
I type in the passcode, my father’s birthday, once, twice. Nothing. On a whim, I try my own birthday, and the phone unlocks, opening on an unfamiliar screen.
“Did you change my password?” I say. “Honestly, Max, what’s wrong with you?”
I can see his face, how white it is, how stiff. Good. He knows he’s made a mistake. He pauses for a moment, his eyes darting back and forth between me and the driver. I can tell that there’s something he wants to say to me that he can’t say in front of this man.