The Next Best Thing

by Jennifer Weiner

  Pocket nuzzled at my wrist, lifting my hand. I imagined Carter and Polly and Allison hearing their phones ring, listening to the polite phrases I’d heard Maya recite a thousand times: You’re gorgeous. You were great, it’s just that the network (or the studio, or the producers) decided to go in a different direction. I remembered Allison crying in the bathroom, how Carter’s face had glowed when she’d finished that last speech, and how brutally Lanny had dismissed her . . . and now here I was, supposedly their ally, their sister, dismissing all of them, like they’d never meant anything to me. Was I turning into a terrible person? Had Hollywood done this to me? Or had there been a heartless person inside all along, just waiting for a chance to crawl out into the light and start hurting other women the way I’d been hurt?

  My cell phone trilled in my purse. Shelly, my agent, was on the line.

  “Hey, Ruth Saunders. You okay with the Cady of it all? Good,” she said before I could answer. “I’ve got another request from the network. They’re wondering if we could call Daphne something maybe a little less . . .”

  “Jewish?” I guessed.

  “She can still be Jewish,” Shelly assured me. “Just, you know . . .”

  “Assimilated. You know what? We don’t need to give her a last name for the pilot. We can just call her Daphne. I never heard back from legal about whether ‘Daphne Danhauser’ cleared or not.” That struck me as a reasonable compromise to make for the time being. If we got picked up, I could go back and make her a true Jewess again, after I’d found some way to explain Cady’s distinctly non-Semitic appearance. Maybe I could say she’d been adopted.

  The office door swung open. Pocket, who’d been dozing, lifted her head from Dave’s thigh and gave a brief yip as Shazia came striding into the room. “Hi, baby,” she said, and bent down to kiss Dave. I turned away, but not before I saw their lips meet as she scooped Pocket off his lap and into her arms. “And how was your day, sweetheart?” she asked, snuggling the dog against her. I would have given anything for Pocket to growl, or to jump out of Shazia’s arms and into mine, but the dog wriggled happily as Shazia scratched her chest. Traitor.

  “You guys still working?” Shazia asked, setting Pocket down gently.

  By then I was on my feet, collecting my purse and my notebook. “Just wrapping up. I should head home. More auditions in the morning.” It seemed unreal, but in less than twelve hours I’d be back in the casting office in Larchmont, holding auditions for the part of Nana Trudy. Maya had already lined up a parade of where-are-they-nows, sitcom and movie stars of the 1970s who were willing to read for the part.

  Shazia turned to me, brushing her hair back over her shoulders. “Why don’t you come out with us? We were just going to grab sushi.”

  “Oh, no. Thanks, but I bet my grandmother’s got dinner waiting for me.” I almost groaned out loud. Could I have sounded any more like a ten-year-old?

  “Are you sure?” Dave asked. “I think we could both use a drink.”

  “Thanks, but you two go ahead.” Dave whistled for Pocket, who jumped into his lap, and rolled out the door with Shazia behind him, one hand resting lightly on his shoulder.

  I waited until his car was gone and the office lights, on an energy-conserving timer, had gone out, and I was sitting in the darkness. Yes? No?

  Yes. I slipped off my shoes and, in my bare feet, crept down the hallway and eased open Dave’s office door.

  The space was sophisticated and comfortable, a version of his home, only with a few more WASP-at-work touches. There were hardwood floors, with a single gorgeous Oriental rug in front of his desk, where two clubby leather chairs sat, a wooden table between them. His desk was a massive slab of teak, and on it was a computer, a wood-and-leather in-box that sat empty, a painted tin mug full of pens, and two photographs in frames made of driftwood that I’d caught only glances of as I’d come in and out to deliver him a sandwich or a coffee, to drop off scripts or usher people in for meetings. There was a Bunk Eight poster on the wall, a framed shot of the cast signed by all the actors next to it, and a vintage poster of the Boston MTA hanging on the wall behind his desk, and beside it, a framed poster reading VISIT BEAUTIFUL CAPE COD, with a painting of a cottage colony at sunset, the blue-gray waves dissolving in curls of foam.

  One corner of the room belonged to Pocket—there was an organic cotton dog bed, slipcovered in chocolate brown with jaunty pink accents, and metal bowls for food and water, and a basket of rawhide bones and rubber chew toys. There was a couch for guests, a brass-and-wood bar cart with crystal pitchers for water and Scotch and vodka and brandy, a monogrammed silver ice bucket, cut-crystal glasses and cloth napkins, white linen embroidered with blue sailboats. Next to Pocket’s bed, probably so she could practice playing executive, sat stacks of scripts.

  I crossed the room, gliding on my tiptoes, settled my hip on the edge of the desk (there was, of course, no chair), and picked up the first picture. It was a family shot: a younger Dave, with more hair, on a beach with his arms around a young man and a young woman who, judging from the similar cast of their features, the color of their eyes and hair, were his brother and sister. There was a boat in the background, resting on its side, its yellow-and-white sail pooled on the sand, and the young woman’s hair was blowing in her eyes and mouth. All of them were smiling. Dave wore a Harvard T-shirt and khaki shorts, and I could see his calves, his knees, tanned and strong with the waves frothing around them. His feet were submerged by the water. The girl had a metal pail in her hand, and I bet it was full of steamers or oysters, something they’d gathered for dinner. I imagined that later, they’d have a bonfire on the beach, and all the summer kids, the lifeguards and camp counselors, the ice-cream scoopers and lobster-roll sellers, would come. Someone would play a guitar, someone else would pass around a bottle of booze, and as the flames died down, couples would slip away into the dunes, carrying blankets or towels. I’d been to a dozen bonfires like that the summer I’d worked as a lifeguard, although, of course, no one had ever taken my hand and walked with me across the cooling sand into a secluded nook carved out by the wind.

  I traced the edge of the picture with my thumb and wondered if that was the sailboat Dave had been on during the accident. Would you want a picture of that hanging around, confronting you every day? I couldn’t imagine.

  I set the picture down and picked up the one beside it . . . and there were Dave and Shazia, at some black-tie gala. Dave was in a tuxedo. Shazia, poured into a red dress with a plunging neckline, sat on his knee. Her head was flung back, eyes shut, mouth open, and she was laughing hard. One of Dave’s hands rested on her thigh, the other was on the small of her back, and he was looking up at her like she was Venus, the goddess of love herself, come down from Mount Olympus and landed on his lap.

  I put the picture back fast and, in doing so, brushed the computer’s mouse. The thundering notes of the Close Encounters theme filled the office, and I leapt off the desk, stifling a scream, as the screen blossomed to life. There was a space to type in a password, same as on my computer . . . and before I could stop myself, I reached out and took my best guess, typing the letters that spelled POCKET.

  Welcome, said the screen. The desktop opened . . . and there was Dave’s in-box, just begging for my tap.

  In for a penny, in for a pound, I thought, and tapped, and saw what I expected to see: emails from Big Dave about the current Bunk Eight script. Notes from the studio, notes from the network, notes from me about setting up a lunch with potential line producers next week. I scrolled halfway down the first page, through eighty emails, before I found one from Shazia . . . and because it had been opened, I figured I was safe. I clicked and saw that he’d written, “Nine o’clock?” And she’d written back, “I’ll be there.” Then she’d typed, “I adore you.” And Dave had written back, “You’re my girl.”

  I adore you. You’re my girl. I closed the in-box, put the computer back to sleep, and sat cross-legged in the chair opposite his desk. Somehow, those endearments w
ere more intimate, more specific, than I love you. Anyone could say I love you . . . but not everyone could make Shazia laugh the way Dave did. Beautiful Shazia.

  I’d thought it before I’d walked into this room, but now I believed it, beyond any doubt. They were in love. I didn’t have a chance. I turned off the lights, put on my shoes, locked the doors behind me, and drove home along the empty freeway, past the billboards for a half-dozen TV shows that would probably be off the air, canceled, before The Next Best Thing even debuted.

  * * *

  I got home just after eleven o’clock. Normally, Grandma would have been asleep. She’d leave dinner warming in the oven or wrapped in foil on the counter, with a note as to how it should be reheated and stored, and details of how she’d spent her day and what she planned to do tomorrow. But that night, she was sitting in the kitchen, in her dressing gown and the fur-trimmed mules that I’d bought her as a joke and that she’d decided that she loved and wore almost constantly when she was at home. There was beef-and-barley soup on the stove, fresh-baked challah on the counter, and Maurice’s soft, somehow upper-class snores issuing from behind her closed bedroom door. The kitchen windows were cracked open. I could hear the low thrum of traffic and could smell Los Angeles at night, car exhaust and sun-baked pavement, citrus and salt from the sea.

  “Nu?” Grandma asked. “Did they pick a winner?”

  I slumped at the dining-room table, my spoon in my hand, my chin a few perilous inches from my bowl of beef-and-barley, so tired I could barely keep my eyes open. “They didn’t want any of them. They’re giving us Cady Stratton.”

  “Cady who?”

  “Stratton. She was on . . .” I paused, yawning enormously. “A soap opera. Some Lifetime movies. She’s funny. She has a good look.”

  Grandma frowned. “Did she audition? I don’t remember her name.”

  I shook my head. “The network had a holding deal with her. They’re giving her to us.” When Grandma didn’t answer, I told her, “This is how it works. It’s collaborative. I bring something to the table, they bring something to the table.” Even as I was reciting my lines, I was remembering what Dave had told me at our kickoff dinner, how I should enjoy the moment before the show became adulterated, before everyone else started imposing their visions on the world I had imagined.

  Grandma carried two plates from the kitchen cabinet to the claw-footed table for six that she’d had shipped out from our house in Framingham. She sliced off a chunk of challah and covered it with butter and marmalade, taking her time, spreading jam right to the edge of the crust.

  “She’ll be great!” I said, trying to sound excited about a star I’d never met.

  Grandma nibbled at her bread and said nothing.

  “I mean, I’m sure the studio wouldn’t have picked her if they didn’t think she’d be amazing.”

  Wordlessly, my grandmother re-capped the jar.

  “Maybe I’ll get a better sense after I meet her.” When I bent to kiss her, she took my hand.

  “Ruthie,” she said. “I have some news.”

  My skin bristled with goose bumps as I sat back down at the table, in the seat closest to the door, the one that had always been mine. Was she sick? Was that why she’d waited up, to tell me?

  “What?” I said in a voice that was strangled and small.

  She sat up straight, her hands folded in her lap, neck erect, face elegant in profile with her hair drawn tightly back. “Maurice has asked me to marry him.”

  At first I thought I’d misheard her. I was so tired, and the day had been so crazy, that maybe she actually had said something about breast cancer or heart disease and I’d missed it. I made my brain replay each word, one at a time, and I forced myself to smile, even though I felt as alarmed as if she’d told me that she actually was sick. It felt as if someone had pulled a plug and I was watching everything I’d counted on, everything I’d believed in—my grandmother, my boyfriend, the house and town I’d known—spiraling away until they were gone. This was not part of the plan . . . and in all the ways I’d imagined my life proceeding as I went through shooting the pilot and waited for the pickup, my grandma’s tying the knot and, presumably, moving out, leaving me alone, had never been part of the picture.

  “Congratulations!” I said in a kind of beauty-queen squeal, too high and too loud, patently false. I got up and hugged her with arms that felt frozen, all the while keeping a smile pinned to my face. Grandma hugged me back.

  “We’re going to move into his place,” she said, and then took my face in her hands and looked at me. “You’ll be fine,” she said.

  “What? Of course I’ll be fine! I’m so happy for you!” I turned away, taking my seat again, certain that I looked as if I’d been slapped. No, I will not be fine. I could barely stand to think about it. I would be alone, completely alone. My parents had died, Rob had married someone else, Gary had dumped me, Dave loved Shazia and didn’t think of me as anything more than a friend, and now my grandmother was ditching me, too?

  Oh, grow up, I thought. Here I was, twenty-eight years old, with a great apartment and a more-than-decent paycheck and, of course, a pilot I’d be shooting, all the standard trappings of grown-up life, and I was freaking out because my grandmother had announced that it was time for me to live on my own. This could not possibly be normal. I forced myself to look pleased, tried to manage delighted, then pulled back to merely not miserable. “When is all of this happening?” I made myself ask.

  “Maybe in the fall,” she said. “I’ve got some work to do on that house, but once I get rid of the pictures of his late wife and throw out some of the potpourri, it’ll be fine.” She dropped her voice to a stage whisper that could have been heard on stages miles away. “You know that bathroom they added to the guest house is illegal.”

  “I knew he looked shifty,” I said, half to myself.

  “And upstairs, there’s all of those bedrooms . . .” Her voice trailed off. I wondered whether she and Maurice had ever considered offering me one of those empty rooms, rooms formerly inhabited by Maurice and his late wife’s children. But that was crazy. I wasn’t a child. I’d lived in a single in a dorm for my last two years of college. I was a grown-up, with responsibilities. A job. A show. I’d be fine by myself. Still, I couldn’t imagine this apartment without her: eating meals by myself, coming home at night without greeting anyone who cared about how my day had gone, waiting to ask who I’d seen, what I’d done.

  “I hope you’ll be happy,” I said stiffly. “What kind of wedding are you planning?”

  “At our age?” She widened her eyes to indicate the ridiculousness of my question. “Something small. Maybe here, in the lobby. Just a few friends.” She then launched into a discussion about Maurice’s sons, who, it emerged, had not been thrilled to learn that their father was taking a bride. “Worried about their inheritance,” Grandma scoffed. She stood up and began loading the dishwasher as I sat, immobilized, at the table. Driving home, I’d been planning on having a glass of wine while I went through the Friday mail, which usually included my copies of Us and People and Entertainment Weekly. The stack was on the little table by the door and the wine was in the refrigerator, but I found I lacked the energy to stand, to sort, to pour. “Like I’m some kind of gold-digging floozy.” Maurice, I knew, still fondly referred to his two sons as “the boys,” even though one of them, a lawyer, was retired and the other was a podiatrist in Orange County, and both of them were married, with children and, in the podiatrist’s case, grandchildren of their own.

  “They’re not happy for him?” For a moment I imagined calling them up, rallying them to my team, finding a way for the three of us to stop this marriage from happening. They’d keep the house they’d grown up in just the way they remembered it, complete with pictures of their mother on the mantel and dusty potpourri in the powder room, and I’d keep my grandma with me.

  I shook my head at my own folly. “Well, I’m thrilled,” I made myself say. I should have been thrilled. Maur
ice was a gentleman, considerate and generous and kind, and he worshipped my grandmother. It was evident in the way he looked at her, held doors for her, tucked a shawl over her shoulders when they watched TV, and sent back her soup and her coffee when he thought they weren’t hot enough for her liking. “Maurice is great.”

  For a moment, Grandma didn’t answer, and when she spoke her voice was low and thoughtful, with its usual merry, teasing quality absent. “I wonder sometimes whether I did the right thing, staying with you for all this time,” she said. When I didn’t say anything, she continued, “I wanted what every parent wants. The thing you never get: for your children to never be hurt. And you’d been hurt so badly . . .”

  I noticed with alarm that she was crying—my grandma, who I couldn’t remember crying since that long-ago night in the hospital. She raised her chin, brushing tears off her cheeks but not trying to hide them. “Hey,” I said, reaching for her hand, handing her a napkin. “Hey, everything’s okay.”

  She pulled away, turning so her back was to me and she was facing the open window and the dark sky. “It’s not,” she said. “It’s not!” She took a deep breath, one hand on her chest, over the turquoise silk robe embroidered with red poppies. “I wanted you never to be hurt again,” she said. “But everyone gets hurt.”