The Next Best Thing

by Jennifer Weiner

  “Hmm.” It was the perfect noncommittal noise, a sound that said, I’m listening, but not necessarily I agree. I’d learned it from the Daves.

  “Right now, her world feels a little small,” Joan said. “There’s Nana, and Brad, and the restaurant crew, but they’re more frenemies. We’re thinking she could use an ally.”

  We’re thinking the show could use more eye candy, I translated, and gave another one of the Daves’ famous Hmms.

  “We’ve got someone in mind,” Lloyd boomed.

  “Who’s that?” I asked.

  Marcia pushed a button. A familiar face flashed on the big screen. I jolted upright, rising halfway out of my chair, my toes curling in my shoes. “No.” The word burst out of my mouth before I had a chance to think about it.

  “You have a problem with Taryn Montaine?” Joan asked.

  My hands had flown off the table and were waving around in the air like spastic birds. I made myself fold them in my lap and forced myself to sit. “No, it’s . . . it’s not that, exactly, it’s just . . . I mean, I’m not sure . . .” Deep breath. Calm down. Focus. Speak their language. “Given Cady’s appearance,” I said carefully, “I’m not sure we want another pretty, skinny blonde.”

  “Taryn Montaine is not just another blonde,” said Tariq. He looked indignant, like I’d insulted his country of origin or his mom. “She’s hilarious.”

  She’s an idiot, I thought. “You know I worked with her on The Girls’ Room.” Joan nodded. Tariq nodded. Alice, my lumpy friend, favored us with another yawn. “She was . . . well. I hope I’m not telling tales out of school here, but she could be difficult.”

  “Difficult in what way?” asked Tariq, who probably thought I was just jealous, and was not entirely wrong.

  “She had trouble with pronunciation. She couldn’t say nuclear.”

  “Neither could two of our presidents,” said Tariq.

  “We had to rewrite the scripts so all the stage directions said either ‘sexy’ or ‘angry.’ Those were the two adjectives she knew.”

  “Think of her as seasoning,” said Joan. “A little goes a long way.”

  “People love her,” said Tariq. “We’re lucky she agreed to this.”

  “Wait. She already agreed?”

  Down at the other end of the table, I saw Lisa and Joan exchange a guilty look. “We’d talked about adding a best friend,” Joan reminded me . . . and it was true that, weeks ago, we’d had a five-minute, extremely general conversation about the possibility, at some point, down the road, of adding a confidante for Daphne, a Shirley to her Laverne.

  “I thought it was weird that Daphne didn’t have friends.” This was Yawning Alice’s contribution. Another country heard from. “I mean, what kind of girl has no friends?” She gave me what would have been a pointed look had her mushy features, her double chins and lopsided eyes, been capable of doing pointed.

  “According to our research,” Marcia said, hitting another button, putting another graph on the screen, “fifty-two percent of women under forty-five said they’d be ‘very likely’ or ‘somewhat likely’ to tune in to a show where Taryn Montaine had a role.”

  I wanted to groan out loud, to throw things, to bang my head against the table like Don Music on Sesame Street bashing his skull against his piano keys . . . but why bother? Again, the decision had been made without me . . . now I’d just have to figure out how to fit yet another character I’d never imagined or wanted into the pilot.

  “I’ll let you all hash this out once I’m gone,” said Marcia. “Meanwhile, we need to have a conversation about the speech.”

  I sat up straight. The speech. The big grandmother-to-granddaughter speech that came at Minute Fourteen. The speech that was the heart and soul of that first episode and, really, the entire show: the speech told you everything you needed to know about the two characters, the obstacles the two of them would face and, hopefully, conquer.

  “We got the highest number of tune-outs during those thirty-eight seconds,” Marcia reported, using a laser pointer to indicate the problem area.

  I didn’t answer. I’d never been good at hiding my emotions, and at that moment what I was feeling was that any asshole who’d tune out during that part of the show wasn’t someone I wanted as a viewer in the first place. Of course I knew better than to say that. I’d take viewers wherever I could find them: teens, tweens, bored housewives, single moms, hermits, pyramid schemers under house arrest, even prisoners with viewing privileges, especially if they were between the demographically desirable ages of eighteen to thirty-four and there were Nielsen boxes in jail.

  “We can take a look at it,” Tariq said in a placating tone. “I’m sure there are places we can trim.”

  “Look,” I said, trying to backtrack. “Nobody had a problem with the speech in the script. We’ve all read it, what? At least a dozen times? I realize that it’s one of the quieter moments in the story, but I don’t think we should change it. We’re going to tell stories that have quiet moments every week. That’s the nature of the show.”

  Tariq was rubbing his head like he was trying to massage an idea into being. Lisa squirmed in her seat, looking as if she would have given a kidney to be someplace else. Joan tapped calmly at her phone. There was my answer, in the silence. My beloved scene was history.

  I breathed in, remembering again how I’d paced my bedroom floor, waiting for the call, praying to be green-lit, how I’d thought, I will do anything to make this happen. Here I was at my Rubicon. This was my anything. Time to step up, put on my big-girl panties, time to play ball. Besides, what was left to fight for? My real-girl leading lady, the “me” character, was about as real as a pinup poster, and practically as thin. The grandmother character was a sex-crazed caricature, like Blanche on The Golden Girls if she’d been mainlining Spanish fly. My dreams of love were in pieces; my personal life was a mess. Did any of it matter? “Okay,” I said. My voice was so soft that nobody heard. I cleared my throat, raised my shoulders, and tried again. “Okay.”

  SEVENTEEN

  I’m not comfortable with this,” said Grandma. She smoothed her skirt, crossed her hands in her lap, and looked straight ahead as we sat in the drive in front of our apartment building.

  “Believe me, I’m not thrilled, either,” I said, putting the car in gear and flicking on the turn signal. “But you don’t have to do anything. Just sit in the car and wait for me.” Ten days had passed since the screening results meeting, and I was on my way to tell Annie Tait that, in spite of my best efforts, how I’d fought hard to get the network to change its plans, she was going to be replaced. After I’d delivered the news, I was going to do what I should have done weeks ago and spend the day with my grandmother, helping her with her wedding preparations. We’d made appointments for her to try on dresses, and then we’d be going to Sweet Lady Jane for lunch and a cake tasting. Fire an actress, eat dessert. Just another average day in Hollywood.

  Even though I hadn’t said anything specific about why I wanted to see her when I’d called, I suspected that Annie knew what was up. Yes, she said, she’d be home all morning. “Got nowhere else to be,” she’d said lightly before giving me her address, which was on a little street off Mulholland. As we followed the twisting roads, higher and higher up into the hills, Grandma sighed.

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  I didn’t want to push. Ever since the night I’d shown her the pilot, we’d been treating each other with exaggerated care, so I asked, “How’s the guest list coming?”

  She brightened. “Just fine. Frieda Yoloff’s coming up from Coral Gables, and Martin McGuire—remember him from the store? He’s flying in from Framingham.” She talked, first slowly and then faster, about who else had RSVPed, what they’d serve and where they’d seat people, until I pulled into the driveway that my GPS assured me belonged to Annie. The house was a ranch, one story, white with green shutters, with orange trees in the narrow front yard and a gravel path that led to the door.


  “Wait here.”

  “Hold on.” Grandma reached into the tote bag at her feet and pulled out something round and wrapped in foil.

  “You baked a cake?”

  “It’s never polite to show up empty-handed,” she said without looking at me.

  “I really don’t think coffee cake is going to fix this,” I muttered, without bothering to tell her whether I was talking about fixing things with her or fixing things with Annie. The parallels were hard to miss—here I was, in spite of my best intentions, selling out another old lady because that was what the network wanted, and I didn’t have the guts or the power to tell them no.

  I took the cake, got out of the car, and rang the doorbell. Annie answered, dressed in jeans, a button-down plaid shirt, and worn-looking cowboy boots. “I’m sorry to interrupt your weekend,” I began after I’d handed her the cake.

  “Come on in,” she said in a tone that made it clear she knew this wasn’t just a social call. “Want anything to drink?”

  “Oh, no thanks.” This was going to be awkward enough. There was no need to compound things by having to navigate returning a coffee mug or a water glass after I’d delivered the bad news.

  Annie’s house continued the Western theme of her clothes. I spotted Georgia O’Keeffe prints on the wall, Navajo rugs on the floors, and a feathered dream catcher hanging in front of a window. The house smelled strongly of coffee and cat—I spied a litter box in the corner in front of a door leading to the garage. It seemed to be empty except for Annie. I didn’t know, had never found out, whether she was married or had kids, and now seemed like the wrong time to ask.

  She led me to the living room, where large windows overlooked the steep verge of a cliff, sat down on a brown cowhide-covered couch, and indicated that I should take the bentwood rocking chair. “I’m so sorry to have to tell you this,” I began. Before I could continue, she raised one hand to stop me.

  “Was it my performance?”

  “No!” I was shocked that she’d even have to ask, and relieved that she’d already figured out what I’d driven up here to tell her. “Absolutely not. Your performance was great. Everyone thought so. You were fantastic. I couldn’t have asked for better.” I was gushing, I realized, and made myself stop, knowing that praise, however deserved, would not make her feel any better. “Honestly, it’s just that the network wanted someone with a little more of a name, I guess.” I hadn’t meant to append that qualifier—I didn’t guess; I knew—but you’re just not famous enough seemed like such a bald and heartless thing to say.

  Annie’s forehead furrowed. She leaned forward, picking a bit of cat hair off one denim-covered thigh, and muttered something into her lap.

  “I’m so sorry,” I said, without asking her to repeat herself. “Really. From the bottom of my heart. I loved you from your very first audition, and you were a pleasure to work with, but . . .”

  She lifted her head and repeated what I hadn’t heard. “I thought you were different.”

  I didn’t answer. Yeah, I thought. So did I.

  “You’re a bright girl, so maybe you can tell me this. The networks only want you if you’re famous already, and the only way to get famous is to star in a show. But you can’t be the star unless you’re famous already. So what am I supposed to do?” Her voice was level, her face calm, but I could hear the anguish underlining each word, and I knew that I didn’t have an answer.

  “Oh, never mind,” she sighed before I could come up with something to say. “It’s not your fault.”

  But it is, I thought, getting to my feet. It’s my show. It’s my fault.

  “I think you can find the door.”

  I nodded. I wanted to tell her again that I was sorry, that I’d done all I could. When Joan had asked for a list, I’d deliberately picked six actresses I thought would never have been interested in the part. I had no way of knowing that Penelope Weaver, the fifth of our sixth potentials, had lost all her savings in the stock market’s most recent crash and was so desperate for work, any work, that she’d chosen our show over doing a voiceover gig on a straight-to-video Disney fairy movie. I could tell Annie that the whole thing made me feel lousy and small. I could tell her that I was ashamed of myself. But I didn’t say anything. Words were just words, and what good would they do her?

  “I think you’re great,” I said, with my hand on the doorknob. “I know that doesn’t mean much, coming from me, but it’s true. I hope that someday you’ll get to work with people who deserve you.”

  She’d been walking a few yards behind me. “Don’t be so hard on yourself,” she said. “It happens.”

  “Yeah,” I said, “but it shouldn’t be happening to you.” My eyes filled with tears. I blinked hard, looking away, and then opened the door. Annie stepped outside with me and squinted, shadowing her eyes with her hand. “Is that your grandma?” Of course, she’d met my grandmother, at the table read and the pilot taping. They’d posed for pictures together, which I’d snapped with my grandmother’s cell phone and tweeted from the show’s account.

  “I cracked the windows, and she’s got plenty of water,” I said. Annie didn’t smile. Instead, she quoted the Rolling Stones. “‘What a drag it is, getting old.’”

  “I’m sorry,” I said one last time. She gave me a thin-lipped smile, stepped back inside, and shut the door.

  “Well,” said Grandma once I was back in the car. She’d pulled out her crochet hook and a bundle of thread. “That looked like it went well.” I imagined what she was thinking: Another old lady, thrown under the bus. Nice work, Ruthie. Didn’t I raise you well.

  With my hands on the wheel, I bent my head. Maybe it’s a rite of passage, I thought. Your first green-light, your first read-through, your first day of photography, and the first time you had to fire someone you didn’t want to fire for a stupid reason, because the network made you do it.

  “I feel like a monster,” I said, steering the car down the hill.

  Grandma kept her eyes on her wool. “You know what they say. It’s not show friends, it’s show business.”

  I waited until we were at a red light before turning to her. “What did you say?”

  “You’ve never heard that?”

  “Oh, I’ve heard it. Just, you know, not from you.”

  “It’s true,” she said as the driver behind me, a guy in mirrored sunglasses and a convertible, leaned on his horn. I waved at him to calm down, yanked at my hat, and started to drive again. “Show friends,” I muttered, and then kept my mouth shut all the way to Beverly Hills.

  * * *

  “Hello!” caroled the saleslady, swooping toward us, quickly smoothing away her expression of concern at my scars and my grandmother’s age and putting a welcoming smile in place. She had that Los Angeles agelessness that could have put her anywhere between thirty-five and fifty, skin tanned the color of Tang, body toned in the gym and improved in an operating room. Her ribbed sweater showed off the jut of her breasts and her narrow waist. The sweater was tucked into a short, fitted skirt, tight at her hips and knees, that turned her walk into a quickstep hobble. Glossy beige pumps with needle-sharp heels and elaborate eye makeup completed the look. Her hair was dyed a fashionable ombré, dark at the roots, shading to auburn at the ends. Her name tag, perched on top of her right breast, said FELICIA.

  It was almost funny, watching her gaze dart from me to my grandma and back again as she tried to figure out which of us would be worse to deal with—the disfigured girl or the old woman. She finally made up her mind, and took both my hands in hers. “So when’s the big day?”

  “She’s the bride,” I said, nodding toward my grandmother, who lifted her left hand and waggled her engagement ring. “And it’s in late September.”

  Felicia clutched both manicured hands to her chest and gasped as if she’d been shot. “Sep-tember? Oh, dear. That doesn’t leave us much time at all.”

  “I don’t want a wedding gown,” my grandmother said. “I’m looking for something off the rack
. Elegant but appropriate.” That could have described her attire that day, a Diane von Furstenberg wrap dress in a dark-blue jersey with a pattern of silver and green, navy-blue ballet flats, and a matte gold clutch. The clutch, I knew, would hold her credit cards, her cell phone, a single Estée Lauder lipstick in its heavy gold case, and a tiny spritzer of the L’Occitane lemon verbena scent she wore in the summer. There would be a compact full of pressed powder, sheets of rice paper for blotting, tissues, and a comb. When I was little, investigating what I called Grandma’s Magic Bag had been one of my favorite waiting-room pastimes. I knew each photograph she kept in her wallet, the specific scent of each bag’s interior, and how there was usually a Hershey’s Kiss or a square of Ghirardelli if I looked hard enough.

  “Celebratory but subdued,” I told Felicia, who’d started gnawing on one glossy lip.

  “I’ll know it when I see it,” said my grandmother, gliding past Felicia to the racks, which she considered with an educated eye.

  “She will,” I said. “She’s got exquisite taste.”

  “So, is this a second wedding?” Felicia asked faintly.

  “Second wedding,” I confirmed. My grandmother plucked a short, shimmering white dress made of crisscrossing Lycra straps off the rack and held it up against her.

  “That’s an Hervé Léger,” said Felicia, pronouncing the French with great flair. “The bandage dress.”

  “It’s a little racy,” Grandma decreed, returning the hanger to the rack.

  “I’m not sure—” Felicia began. My grandmother fixed her with a withering gaze. I turned to hide my smile as Felicia snatched something else off the rack.

  “There’s this!”

  We looked. The dress was a bright orange-red, with a feathered slit that went almost up to the crotch and, hanging from an attached hanger, there was a limp fistful of fabric and feathers.

  “Is that a cape?” I asked.

  “A cape-lette,” said Felicia.

  “It’s red,” Grandma observed.