Cover Girl Confidential

by Beverly Bartlett

  Chapter 37

  Baxter stepped into the doorway and stopped, not taking a step closer to me than strictly necessary.

  “Hey, Ada,” he said.

  “Hey, Baxter,” I replied.

  We just stood there like that. Baxter was carrying himself in a guarded way, not unfriendly or cold exactly. But distant, careful.

  “Hughes said you wanted to see me,” he said finally.

  I cleared my throat and said, “Yes.” Then, “Thank you for coming.”

  Baxter pulled up a chair, sitting down closer to me than I expected. But then he backed up. His eyes darted around the visiting room but didn’t linger on anything. Not even me.

  He took off his bow tie, stuffed it in his pocket. Crossed his legs a little awkwardly and ran his hand through his hair.

  “Did you want something?” Baxter asked. I cringed, and he seemed to realize how cold that sounded. He tried to soften it, too late. “In particular, I mean.”

  “Well,” I stammered a bit. “I didn’t really want anything. I just . . .” I cleared my throat again. “I just wanted to tell you . . .”

  What did I want to tell him?

  He looked at me, not unkindly, and waited.

  “I wanted to tell you how sorry I am, how much I regret everything—I regret . . .” I opened my mouth a couple of times, but the words stopped in my throat. I didn’t know exactly what to say. I regret not kissing you sooner? I regret marrying someone else?

  I decided to go with the safest. “I regret being such a bore during your visits. You were so kind and I—” My voice broke. “I’ve been so selfish.”

  He nodded, smiled a little. “No, no,” he said, in the way people do when they mean yes, yes. “You’ve had a lot going on. You’d naturally be a little preoccupied.”

  “But it’s not just that,” I said. “I regret the way I was before, too. I was always preoccupied. I was a . . .”

  I struggled for the right word, but every one that I thought of made me feel like crying. Finally, I just did cry.

  “It’s okay, Ada,” he said. “I’m sorry, too. I’ve been a jerk. You’re getting deported and I’m thinking I’m going to teach you a lesson by giving you the silent treatment. How stupid is that? You talked a lot about your problems. But, you know, you did have a lot of problems.”

  I chuckled, even while still crying.

  “Besides,” he said, “there is something I need to tell you.”

  It was at that moment that I realized that much of my adult life had been a lie.

  Baxter’s little confession, right on the heels of Hughes’s—it just threw me for a loop. Did I even know what was going on around me, at all?

  When Baxter told me he had something to say, I finally found my voice and blurted out, “You’re Weatherjunkie.”

  For one terrible moment, I thought he was going to deny it and think that I was insane. But he just laughed and said that he was, though that hadn’t been what he was going to tell me.

  “How did you know?” he said.

  “I’m ObjectiveObserver,” I said. “Hughes told me the other day that he’s just about everyone else on the boards. I remembered how the producers were always complaining that we didn’t publicize the boards enough. So I thought it would make sense. We were practically the only three people who knew about them, after all.”

  “ObjectiveObserver,” Baxter said, giving me an appraising look. “I always liked ObjectiveObserver.”

  “But that’s not it?” I said. “That’s not what you had to tell me?”

  I felt something like hope surge in my chest. I can’t imagine, looking back, what possible thing he could have said that I could be hoping for. Unless he knew the royal family of my father’s homeland or had a country house there . . . What could he possibly say to improve anything at that moment? He used to have a crush on me? I mean, I already knew that. At least, I thought he had.

  “Don’t you remember me, Ada?” he said.

  I looked into his eyes, the ones that always seemed so familiar. And some realization began to dawn on me, but slowly. I couldn’t quite make it out yet.

  “I only lived in Slater County for a year or two, and you were dating that guy the whole time, but I sort of thought we had a bond.”

  Kevin? I thought. But no, that wasn’t right. I looked at him quizzically. There always had been something familiar about him.

  “My real name is Ray Ford,” he said. “You used to play basketball with my brother.”

  “Ah,” I said. The nice one! Then, “Yes, yes.”

  Epilogue

  I licked my lips slowly, provocatively. My husband looked at me curiously. “Is something wrong?” he asked.

  “I’m just hot,” I said.

  “You’re hot all right,” he said, and he cocked his head in that devilish way he cocks it.

  I reached down to unbutton the top button of my blouse. As I did so, I imagined my mother, back in the States and still wearing the veil, gasping in horror and disgust. Then I unbuttoned another.

  My husband wiped the sweat from his brow. It was an exaggerated gesture. It wasn’t really that hot. It’s not the desert, after all. “It’s all that blood you’re hauling around,” he said, gesturing toward my large belly. And I laughed and said that indeed it probably was. The midwife had warned me that I’d be feeling warmer as the pregnancy wore on.

  He had no tie. But I grabbed his shirt and pulled him toward me.

  “Don’t we need to get this gardening done?” he asked.

  “Not right now,” I said. “Not at this very moment.”

  “But Candice will be here next week,” he said.

  “Next week,” I said, “is a week away.”

  My husband laughed and kissed me.

  It’s almost funny to think about how much I feared being deported. But here I am now, happily digging in the hard dirt of a different country, joyous in my marriage, grateful for a healthy pregnancy, and secure, for the first time, really, in my career.

  I will be forever thankful to the judge, who it turns out was a bit of a fan of mine and who had a copy of my Vanity Fair cover framed in his office (supposedly because of a “cameras in the courtroom” article that ran toward the back of the magazine). Just before I was scheduled to be flown to my father’s homeland on a military cargo jet, the judge called the attorneys into his office and began to explain to the ICE lawyer—rather emphatically, according to Cassie—that no matter how things played in the short term, in the long term the president, the junior senator from Ohio, the head of Homeland Security, and the prosecutor who handled my original case would all come to regret, in a deep electoral way, any action that ended up with Addison McGhee getting herself killed in the desert while the lying sleazebag she’d had the misfortune to fall in love with was hamming it up, so to speak, with Mia on morning television every day.

  The ICE attorney, who had political ambitions of his own, sighed. “I suppose we could send her to her mother’s homeland. That whole Turkish system of picking a homeland was haphazard anyway.”

  The judge snorted. “Her mother’s homeland? Like that’s an improvement?”

  The ICE attorney looked shocked. He hesitated, but then said he supposed any African or Middle Eastern country would be fine. “Americans don’t know the difference between Tajikistan and Tanzania,” he said, with another sigh. “I’m sure I can fudge it.” He glanced at his organizer. “I’ve got some spots on a plane to Eritrea,” he said. “They’ll take almost anyone there. We could probably work something out. An entertainment visa, maybe?”

  The judge stared at him for a moment and said: “I was thinking, maybe, Europe.”

  “Europe!” The attorney sputtered his coffee all over the judge’s desk and then desperately tried to tidy up with the only available absorbent material, namely his own tie.

  The judge shooed him away and added, “Say, maybe, Paris.”

  “Paris!” the ICE attorney said. “The first lady will never agree to that!
Here she is constantly harping on the French about their lax immigration standards and then she’s going to ship them a known criminal?”

  “I don’t give a hoot what the first lady wants,” the judge said. “I think France would take her.” He smiled. “Maybe some sort of entertainment visa?” The judge stared at the Vanity Fair cover, hanging on his wall, and added, “She’s certainly entertaining.”

  The judge and the ICE attorney went back and forth, called each other names, and accused each of perversions both legal and not. Cassie sat silently, stifling a smug smile and waiting for the right moment. Finally, when the tension grew to the point that both men had risen from their chairs and were shaking fists in each other’s face, Cassie raised her hand and said: “I would like to suggest a compromise.”

  The ICE attorney, the judge—they were in their way reasonable men. They did not want to fight. They did not want this to drag into the public arena. They wanted it to be over. And so all they heard really was compromise. They had dug in their heels with each other and they had already regretted it, I think. So when Cassie piped up as a third party, they were relieved to have a face-saving way out. They would have agreed to almost anything.

  And so when Cassie wearily named her country, slumping her shoulders in a way to suggest that it was a great sacrifice for her client to offer this sort of middle ground, both men agreed instantly.

  And that is how Montreal became my city. It is the Paris of North America. That’s what I said in one of those “Visit Canada!” commercials I made. (I was required to make those commercials by the terms of my agreement with Canada, but I ended up being sincerely enthusiastic about them.) It’s a lovely country, Canada. My street has cobblestones. And Candice Olson is always bouncing around fixing everyone’s house. Well, I suppose not everyone’s, but she’s got a divine design for our family room that’s going to show off a great view of our courtyard. (Hence, the frantic gardening.)

  Anyway, the prime minister tells me that tourism is up 10 percent since they started airing those commercials in the States. I, single-handedly, have brought thousands of vacationing Americans to Canada.

  And I made the cover of Vanity Fair again. The month after I emigrated, they featured me wearing nothing but the Canadian flag, jubilant. The headline was: ADA GIRL!

  I’m staying very busy. Russell Crowe, who narrowly escaped being barred from the United States himself after tossing a phone, starred with me in a campy comedy called Tossed Salad. Oliver and I are talking. Francis sent me a script the other day, but I said: “Francis? I’d much rather work with Sofia.”

  Baxter was appalled at my reaction. “The man made The Godfather,” he said. And I said: “Exactly.” (I would prefer to make a movie that women liked.)

  But it doesn’t matter, Sofia and Francis will both have to wait awhile. Baxter and I married a year ago, and our baby is due in three months. After I finished the movie with Russell, I decided to give up acting until after the baby is born. For one thing, I’m writing a book: Miss Maple Leaf’s Guide to Impeccable Assimilation. For another, it’s a full-time job just trying to fend off the hand-me-downs. Katie Holmes, Jennifer Garner, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Julia Roberts are all constantly calling. Britney e-mailed the other day and said she was up to her eyeballs in “plastic Fisher-Price crap.” If I could take any of it off her hands, she said, she’d come to my next five movie premieres.

  Truth be told, I do not miss the United States that much. I would like to be able to visit Nebraska again someday, and New York—well, of course I miss New York. But Montreal is quite the up-and-coming place. Reese Witherspoon told Letterman that she’s going to be buying a home here. And Russell was, I happen to know, doing a bit of a real estate hunt himself while we were making that movie.

  Still, I don’t want too many celebrities to come. It would ruin the city and my standing in it. They love me here. I am a cause célèbre, which is not quite the same as being a tour de force, but once Sofia and I team up I’m sure I’ll be both.

  Besides, Montreal merchants really appreciate my efforts to speak Mandarin. (They get all irritated if you speak English, but if you offer up a language they don’t actually know, they pity you and use elaborate gestures to get their point across.)

  I am learning French and studying to become a Canadian citizen.

  My husband thought I should wait until after the baby is here. But I said no, no. I will take the test as soon as possible. It’s important. That surprised him, given my history of procrastination on these matters. And he had also been surprised that I wanted to marry so quickly after we started dating. He thought I might want to take things slowly.

  But it was because of my history that I wanted to make things official quickly.

  If you are of a certain age, you may remember when it was fashionable to say that a marriage is just a piece of paper and that all that matters is what’s in your heart. But I have come to see that pieces of paper—marriage records and citizenship documents—those are, in their own way, as important as what is in your heart—or your gut.

  Baxter, meanwhile, is doing weather on CBC’s morning program. He loves it. Canada has a lot of weather. (I’m ready for it with my own James Smith & Son umbrella, a gift from Hughes. It delighted me, but I did not send him a thank-you note. I’m sure Miss Liberty is rolling in her grave.)

  Plus, It’s Morning Now is in a major downward spiral. Mia and Hughes don’t get along at all, from what I understand. She thinks he’s a pompous blowhard. We were sitting up in bed reading last night when Baxter came across that tidbit in a gossip column. “Mia Hamm thinks Hughes Sinclair is a pompous blowhard,” he read aloud.

  “Yeah,” I said. “But of course!”

  I dropped what I was reading—Sofia’s latest proposed script for a film biography about me—and flipped on the television. Baxter hates it when I do that. No watching television in bed, he says. But hey, I’m a television girl at heart.

  I was surprised to see my old friend, the redhead from Hollywood Squares—ol’ Fannie Flagg–Charo herself. I didn’t catch the question, but whatever it was, she apparently got it right. The contestant agreed, and X got the square. Then she called on the “Former First Couple,” and there, before my unbelieving eyes, sat Margaret Clemons-Briarwood and Samson Briarwood, crammed into a single square. His arm draped around her shoulders in a casually affectionate way. They had both lost their reelection bids by spectacularly high margins, I knew that. But I had vaguely assumed they were teaching somewhere, or writing their memoirs or something. To see such powerful world figures filling up space and time on syndicated television was sobering—in a delightful, giggle-yourself-to-sleep sort of way. I wondered if they had a bum water heater.

  I turned to Baxter, who had glanced up from his paper and was staring at the television with his mouth hanging open. “Well, I’ll be,” he said.

  “I know,” I replied, using my disinterested voice. “What are they thinking? Have they no standards?”

  “Apparently not,” he said, still slack-jawed.

  I shook the remote at the television in an angry gesture. “I mean, come on. The former first couple never even worked in Hollywood! Where’s Kermit and Miss Piggy when you need them?”

  Baxter laughed.

  I flipped off the TV, and Baxter turned off the light.

  About the Author

  I have a lot in common with cover girls. First, I am female. Second, I have occasionally been photographed. And third—well, um, uh—I sometimes go many, many hours without eating? Once in a while? At night?

  Okay, so I don’t have that much in common with cover girls. But I do have a few things in common with my particular cover girl, Addison McGhee. Like Addison, I grew up on corn-filled plains where the landscape meant that you could always see storms coming and where farming felt like a way of life, even if you weren’t a farmer. I share her admiration of George Clooney. Also, like Addison, I eventually came to the conclusion that a fine umbrella is a worthwhile investment.
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  In addition, I ended up making a living in news, though mine was generally a more serious brand of news. I worked in daily newspaper journalism for the better part of 15 years, mostly at the (Louisville, Kentucky) Courier-Journal, where I covered sordid crimes, terrible accidents, occasional political scandals, women’s issues, parenting trends, and, most memorably, Fabio’s perfume promotional tour.

  I was better prepared than Addison for a life in news, having had a top-notch journalism education at the University of Missouri—Columbia, which fancies itself one of the best journalism schools in the country. But despite my excellent preparation, I did, like Addison, sometimes struggle to understand the journalism culture, which generally promotes a slightly more cynical and self-important attitude than I could faithfully muster. (This is not a criticism of journalism, which does its best work when cynical and self-important. It’s a criticism of me, who often secretly wanted to sneak off to read People magazine, or maybe to watch American Idol. Or do both. At the same time.)

  Still, I did enjoy doing a serious story well. The highlight of my career was in 2001 when I had the opportunity to document an influx of African refugees to Louisville. These were the so-called “Lost Boys of Sudan” and I spent more than a year getting to know these young men and their remarkable stories. They are the inspiration for Addison’s parents.

  As for me, I now make my living freelance writing in Louisville, where I live with my husband and two sons.

  Beverly Bartlett’s

  Top Five Favorite Celebrity Scandals

  Despite being a hard-edged journalist by training, I’m a little soft when it comes to celebrity scandals. I prefer scandals that are utterly devoid of actual catastrophe and entirely frivolous. In other words, I prefer that no one dies, lives with bite scars on their back, has their marriage ruined, or ends up denying an engagement to Vince Vaughn.

  So here are my top five favorite celebrity scandals—scandals that are more likely to make you laugh than cry.