Chapter 31
2009
Peter’s life had become a web of lies, a carefully planned balancing act between work, home, and his alternative life with Anthony, stowed away in Philadelphia along with a second set of clothes, an additional bank account, and a new group of friends. Although he walked a fine line between two worlds, it was his family back in Cuyahoga Falls from which he withheld the truth and caused the most consternation. It was not uncommon for him to miss a big event, such as a prom, graduation, or engagement party, or a move to a new home for his eldest, as a result of commitments he had made to Anthony, which more often than not, took precedence, especially once Anthony’s diagnosis was made clear and every minute spent with him would prove to be precious and unretractable.
It was not easy for Peter to bounce between two worlds and to conceal the parts of him that felt the most real, the most authentic. Peter never really reveled in Hannah’s newfound success, or even in his own. He felt so fragmented that he often wondered if he ever really was giving his “all” to any of his loved ones. In many ways he was a fraud, and the thought haunted and tormented him when he stood still long enough to feel the guilt creep into his mind or take a hold of his anxieties and manifest in full-blown panic attacks and searing blows to his gut whenever he considered too deeply the situation he had created for himself. Rather than continually berate himself mercilessly, he instead began to turn his anger onto Hannah—his loving and faithful wife, who never deserved to be deceived in such a brutal and hurtful way. But what was he to do? How else could he get up from their bed each time and head out for another flight to Philly and the waiting arms of his best friend and lover? He had once thought that it was Hannah who had all the answers for everyone—for him. But not anymore. The damage had been done.
He even went so far as to seek counseling of his own, confiding in a colleague at the hospital there in Ohio when he was in the throes of his deceptive, duo life.
“Tell me. What brings you here, today?”
“I have hurt a lot of people with my actions,” Peter said, instantly regretting his choice of going with a therapist who might recognize him or his high-profile wife. “This is confidential, right?”
“Of course, Dr. Murphy. May I call you, Peter?” she asked, opening her legal pad and untwisting the top of an expensive pen. “Completely confidential.”
Peter shifted a bit on the uncomfortable leather couch, pushing a decorative pillow into his lower back nervously. The room smelled like lavender and vanilla, not unlike Hannah’s side of the bathroom sink.
“Why don’t you tell me what you mean by, ‘hurt a lot of people’?” she said.
He thought that she looked no older than Marc, his second eldest, who had just started a job on the West Coast with a start-up tech company. What could she know about this sort of thing? Would it be any less absurd than calling in anonymously to a radio shrink like Hannah? Then he checked his errant thoughts quickly—thinking himself to be insensitive. See? he thought disgustedly. He couldn’t help himself.
“I am married to a wonderful woman. I have three grown sons and a nine-year-old daughter. And I’m gay.”
If this startled the junior-league therapist, she didn’t show it, except for a slightly raised eyebrow above her Gucci frames.
“I see,” she said. And then faced him squarely. “Is your family aware of this?”
He lowered his head and began to cry. “I am betraying them in every way . . . every day.”
“It’s all right to talk here. This is a safe place,” she said, handing him a box of tissues. “What are you hoping for here?”
“I don’t know.”
Silence as he wiped his eyes.
Finally, she volleyed a barrage of questions. “Are you sleeping?”
“Yes.”
“Are you eating?”
“Yes.”
“Are you thinking of hurting yourself?”
“No, I-I just want to know what to do!” he exploded. “I am seeing someone, another man in another city, and I have a wife and family here. I’m conflicted. I don’t know who I am half the time.”
“Do you want to end the relationship?”
“Which one?”
“Either one? With him, or your marriage? Peter, do you think that you can have both?”
“I-I don’t know. I suppose I can’t, or shouldn’t. I just don’t have it all figured out yet.”
“Do you want to? Figure it out, I mean?” she asked plainly and without judgment.
He looked at her striking eyes and cascading dark hair that fell past her shoulders just above her full breasts. She was a beautiful woman. An attractive, sensual, heterosexual woman, yet he didn’t desire her in any way. He was completely and irrevocable homosexual. He was in love with Anthony.
And with that realization, he had his answer. “I don’t need to figure out who I am, or what I want. I just have to find the strength to own it. The truth is, I can’t. Not now, at least.”
“Why don’t we make an appointment for you to come see me once a week to help you sort out these feelings?” she said, scribbling the date five days from then on a business card. He took the offering and nodded. Then he grabbed his jacket and sidled out the door into the hall.
When the elevator descended to the lobby and the doors popped open, he pitched the appointment card into a trash receptacle and strode out of the revolving door, back to his duplicitous life.
Chapter 32
2006
The week after sealing the deal, Hannah and Marney met with the network executives for lunch at The Palm to celebrate the signing on of Hannah with Venture Media Network. Allison brought along Jon Novotny, who would be Hannah’s producer—if he met with her approval. He was a twenty-something hot shot from Lansing, Michigan, who had done wonders for his career by sleeping with Allison back in 1996, when she was still bedding boys whose careers she could advance in exchange for sexual favors. She was then-station manager of WDTR in Detroit, and he was a hopeful graduate looking for a break. He got one, all right. Allison hired him on the board and as an assistant to the producer of the Gregg & Gary Romus Show, and within two years’ time, was solely producing Gregg and Gary’s irreverent garbage hate-fest on Detroit’s “Big Thirty-Nine.”
When the show went syndicate, Novotny was sent out west to Phoenix with the incorrigible Gregg and Gary team, whose propensity for trash talk and wild stunt-radio antics took the industry by storm. They were overnight sensations among males twenty-five to fifty-four years old, eventually fouling the airwaves on twenty-seven stations from Hollywood to Hometown USA with their special brand of “blue humor.” As it turned out, the Romuses were not actually brothers at all—far from it. They were fraternity brothers from the out East who maintained the farce of their being siblings into their act.
Contractual legalities and, eventually a bad cocaine habit shared by both resulted in a quick and devastating decline of the show’s popularity, which was ultimately dropped in its second year in syndication.
Novotny then returned to the Midwest with resume in hand, a little older, far more experienced, and looking for an entirely different kind of show to produce. A few well-placed references brought him, once again, across the desk from Allison Michaels, who was then program director of WRCK, a classic rock format in Cincinnati. She had a morning show badly in need of creative witch doctoring. Jon saw the challenge for what it was—a job no one else wanted to take—but hungry and determined, he agreed to produce the segments.
The host was a twenty-two-year-old former rock musician, turned disc jockey who called himself Spit. Further, and more pointedly, he was the son of none other than veteran shock-jock and Howard Stern clone, Jesse J. James out of L.A.
Jon was desperate. Spit actually had a knack for the medium and managed to turn out some very brilliant content every now and then, which could eventually contribute
to the rising success of the ailing station. Allison had since become a self-proclaimed lesbian with a pretense for wearing men’s boxers underneath her power suits. She had gained a good thirty pounds, ditched make-up altogether, and wore a men’s wristwatch. It was a look that worked well for her and often garnered respect from a staff that both feared and loved to hate her.
But what did he care? He didn’t need to pork ugly women anymore to score a decent job. Those days are over, Jon had decreed. Under his brilliant handiwork producing WRCK’s morning show, remarkably, the ratings did grow substantially for the next eighteen months.
Allison was still hell on wheels. She had bigger balls than all of the swinging dicks in the company, and she knew it. She took heat behind her back for being a dyke, but the numbers did not lie. Allison Michaels could deliver the winners in all four day-parts.
Spit-in-the-Morning, along with the brilliant assistance of Jon Novotny, was the golden combination of high-watt wit and wonder, eventually bringing the radio station mainstay positioning as a noted industry leader for eighteen months running.
Eventually, Jon left WRCK in the spring of 2003 to pursue his own company. It was a sound recording business in Akron that failed in two quick years. He had been working odd jobs ever since and was just about to consider going back to producing when he got the call.
Allison was now general manager of radio powerhouse Venture Media Network in New York and was, it would seem, about to influence his life in yet another strange and wonderful way, by calling him out of the blue not eight weeks ago.
“How are things, Jon? Business ever take off?”
“Not exactly.”
It was music to her ears. “Still dreaming of getting to the coast someday? I hear that Leo Stecker is looking for a tape-runner. He’s looking for someone to produce his DJ-Rapper, a two-ton wonder boy named Enrique, on the midday drive mix in Burbank.”
“Are you tossin’ me a load of crap, Allison?” Jon had become cynical, to say the least, about the radio business.
“Maybe.”
“Well, maybe I really ain’t interested in whatever it is you’re sellin’. And besides, I love the goddamn winters here too much to even think of ever leaving.”
“Mmmm . . . is that so? Guess K-Country in Tulsa is definitely not an option either, then? Cowboy boots included!”
“What are you, high? I’d starve before I’d do Country. Hey, isn’t it about time you start firing someone’s ass over there by now? It’s nearly noon, or are you losing your touch?”
“Fire? Hell no! Bro, I’m adding bodies, baby. Got a new show that’s going to be big. It’s already causing a buzz.”
“Yeah? Who’s the guy?”
“He’s a she.”
“What? Another New-Age diva? No, don’t tell me. A food critic? A cooking queen?”
“Nope. She’s a shrink, and you should hear her. She’s a stitch. I swear to God, Jonny, you gotta hear her to believe it. I’m sending you some tape. Listen and see what you think.”
“Why?”
“Because, my friend, if you’re interested, I might be inclined to hire your ass to produce her show. What do you say to that?”
“Seriously? A talk format? I don’t know.”
“You’re the best guy for the job, Jon, hands down.” Her voice unsoftened. “I need you, goddammit! Now listen to the tapes I’m sending you, and then say no—all right?”
“Okay. I’ll listen, but I’m not promising anything.” She always has to win. He chuckled to himself. Dykes.
When Allison hung up the phone, she was already commending herself on her victory, thinking the same thing of him. Producers.
Jon approached the table five minutes early, as was typical. He was slender and a tad bit older around the eyes than Allison had remembered. Not at all what she had pictured from the phone conversation. He was only nineteen when she had first met him. That was ten years ago. A lot had changed since then, all right.
Now, his once-long hair had receded and was neatly trimmed close at the neck. He looked centered and confident in his indigo blue shirt; oddly settled, in his maturity, wearing starched chinos and comic strip tie. He had come a long way from denim jackets and torn blue jeans, but still had his own style. Jon Novotny was all grown up.
Allison smiled, remembering the early days. What was she thinking back then? She had been with Lisa now for going on six years, and making love with her made more sense than anything Allison had ever known. Even taming the unbridled passions of young virgin innocents like him. She cringed at the thought.
At least she knew her stuff when it came to pairing talent. She was dead certain that seated at the table, that very moment, was a winning combination that she could take to the bank.
“Hannah, this is Jon Novotny. Jon, meet Dr. Hannah Courtland-Murphy.”
The two sized each other up in a hot instant. Jon saw a fairly attractive housewife-type, from suburbia no doubt, with a nervous edge tightening around a forced smile. She appeared to be indifferent, but pleased with the young man she would need to trust with the trajectory of her career. Hannah smiled after looking him squarely in the eye, indicating that he would do.
They shook on it. The moment their hands joined, a synergy seemed to flow from one into the other. Later, they would say it was an “instant connection.” Allison would say that it was ratings destiny. Either way, no greater team ever existed in a studio before, or ever since. No other professional relationship depended more on trust, chemistry, and talent than that which was about to change the direction of radio—and their lives. Times were changing, and destiny was waiting.
Chapter 33
2006
Back home, Olivia was only six, and Hannah hated like hell leaving her so often, but there was little choice.
“I’m a big gurl now!” Olivia would sternly tell Hannah. “It’s okay if you have to woirk in New Yoirk, Mommy. I’ll be all right.”
Hannah would smile and hug her daughter—the most significant miracle of her life, who was fast becoming the most well-adjusted of them all. Her boys were fast embracing young adulthood, and so, holding on to Olivia’s childhood was more precious to her than gold. They all wanted their mother to be “Dr. Hannah” for the world, as long as she remained special to them. That was the deal she had made. And the promise she would keep. It did not matter how many tens of thousands of people they shared her with, she would always be their mom, and they knew that they were the light of her life.
Hannah kept dozens of framed photos of her loving family at the New York studio adorning her cubicle, along with promotional shots, vacation post cards, and Olivia’s handmade artwork. While everyone often teased her for being a “toughie” with callers, intolerant of sniveling naysayers and indecisive self-pleasers, there was a sentimental and truly tender side to Hannah that few colleagues ever saw. For the most part, she kept her private life separate from her work.
One of Hannah’s favorite photos was that of her wedding day. It was February 1977, just two days before Valentine’s Day. Even though she and Peter had a simple ceremony without family and friends present, it meant no less, as they were two sweethearts ready to take on the world and all life had to bring. Hannah marveled at the many ways that she had changed since those early years. The young woman in the photo wearing a long, gauzy white dress embroidered with daisies matching the flowers in her hair. Her small waist was encircled with bands of ribbon matching the ones flowing from her bell sleeves. She was carefree and hopeful, but in so many ways, naïve. Jumping into marriage and family right away was old-fashioned. It was the safe thing to do. Hannah had always thought of herself, even then, as being independent and somewhat of a pioneer spirit. Still, she had no regrets about the choices she had made. And if she had learned anything in the time that she had been on this earth, it was to be resilient. The best answers came with time, and a good life was made
so by experiencing the good with the bad.
Hannah held on to her values, fully knowing that it was one of the only things in life one could count on—that and change.
Chapter 34
2007
The tragic news in the way of a single phone call that came in the night informing Hannah that her father, Robert, had suffered a heart attack and died in his sleep, ripped the breath from her lungs. It was the height of her professional career unexpectedly crossing paths with the most profound personal loss she could ever imagine. The only blessing being that Charlotte would have no comprehension of the event. The family held a quiet and private service graveside with a color guard send-off befitting of a national hero.
Hannah leaned on Peter, who stood stoic and emotionless, only adding to her enormous grief. The boys, hardy young men, huddled around Olivia, wiping their tears and trying to remain strong through muffled sobs.
“Do you really need to keep checking your phone?” Hannah said as her heels sank into the wet grass, where they all stood graveside in the cool spring breeze. The wind lifted the organza ribbon on her Derby sun hat. Beneath the brim, she concealed her red, swollen eyes with an oversize pair of dark Borghese sunglasses. She looked every bit like a widow instead of the grieving daughter she was, and the irony of it was not in the least lost on her.
“I have to get back to Philly,” Peter whispered, ever conscious that the timing of his travel plans was, once again, at the most inopportune time.
“We are having people to the house following the service. At what point are you planning on making your escape?” Hannah let the harsh words bite, knowing full well that he was trapped in her grip and could do little but stand there and take it. What did it matter, anyway? Her father—whom she loved with all her heart and with full belief that he loved her too, unconditionally—was gone.
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