“But I love this city, too.”
“You mean you love your fucking voters? You don’t even know them!”
“Not all of them. Not yet.”
“Are you kidding?”
“I don’t think so, no.”
Matthew sighed into the wall.
“You’re going to get taken down, you know,” I told him. “I mean, I hope you know that, right?”
“I’m not saying something couldn’t happen.” He sounded like he was talking to a constituent, or a child. “I’m saying it’s not a good use of anyone’s time.”
“You might be right it’s not a good use of time,” I said. “But I don’t think you realize the sorts of things people these days do for fun.”
* * *
—
Now, of course, my concerns about exposure seem almost quaint. Times flurry aside, by modern standards there’d been vanishingly little media interest in what Matthew then regarded as his “private life.” It was pre–Gary Hart: a much subtler time.
I almost say this to the journalist the second time he calls.
I’ve been back from the hospital fifteen minutes and am already a little drunk; I answered the phone somewhat by accident. The journalist wants to know how I’d known Matthew Miller. I tell him Matthew Miller was my state assemblyman.
“But he wasn’t only your assemblyman,” says the journalist—whose name, he has made an elaborate show of revealing, is Scott. I suppose he thinks this puts us on some equal footing.
“That’s right, Scott,” I say. “He was also my lawyer. So if you have any questions for me, you should really be talking to him.”
I hang up.
On the sofa, I straddle my wine bottle and begin flipping through the channels. It isn’t a coincidence that Matthew’s show is on—statistically it seems to always be on—and I usually make a whole big point of not watching it. But I’d spent the better part of the evening watching Brookie get de-intubated: perhaps I am beyond the point of making points.
The episode concerns a brother and a sister who—one assumes—are fucking. And sure enough, before you know it they are clutching hands, speaking of their love with an earnestness one never hears from people whose earnestness in love is presumed. Matthew leans forward with an expression of mild, nearly tender bemusement; the tableau puts one in mind of supplicants before an especially lenient confessor. An engaged couple who’ve strayed from the sexual guidelines of a reasonably progressive church. I’ve seen glimpses of the show before, of course—enough to note that Matthew appears to be aging well, though I attribute this mostly to stage makeup. That dogged realism of his appears intact—he’s unfazed by the incest, at any rate—and I can see how a more sympathetic viewer could see this as a salutary attitude, in this age of the terminally self-righteous. But I am not a sympathetic viewer, and I don’t tell myself stories about Matthew Miller anymore.
I turn off the TV. Its dying starburst sears electric shapes into my eyelids; I watch these for a while instead.
THIRTEEN
cel
At 5 A.M. on Monday, Cel is sitting next to Mattie Miller in a town car, skimming its silent way along Eighth Avenue. Even at this hour, he’d refused to go up Sixth.
Cel rubs her eyes. She spent most of the night churning; she found herself inexplicably vexed by the matter of where her ears should go. Where did other people put them? At three, she gave up and took a shower. She’d tried to be quiet leaving, but as she tiptoed out the door Nikki had called “Break a leg!” in a voice that sounded very wide awake.
“Sir?” Cel says, when they are almost halfway to the studio.
“Sir.” This time, he turns. There’s an uninvolved expression on his face; Cel stifles the impulse to reintroduce herself.
“If you don’t mind, there are a few things I’d like us to go over before we arrive.”
“Okay,” says Mattie. “Shoot.”
Cel can’t tell if this is a joke. She sends out a silent plea that the universe not let him say anything like this on television.
“So as we discussed, where things may get tricky is when they try to posit some cultural basis for this incident.” One of the downsides of trying to do this in the car is that Cel can’t see her notes; one of the upsides is that Mattie M can’t see that her hands are shaking. “And that’s where they might try to draw the show into that. ‘We’re losing our way,’ you know—”
“I know,” says Mattie quietly.
“ ‘And the show is a symptom.’ That sort of thing.” Cel detects the slightest bulge beneath Mattie’s lower lip—this is, presumably, his tongue. What such a gesture might indicate, she couldn’t say. Luke would know, most likely. “I mean, okay—maybe it’s all right to grant that we’re losing our way generally? Or that we’re all losing our way together? I mean, overarchingly. But what you really want to challenge is any suggestion that the show has some key role in this.”
Mattie remains silent, which Cel takes as dissent.
“This is where you’re really going to want to play up the show’s—well, playfulness, I guess. It’s, you know. It’s tongue-in-cheek.”
Mattie’s head snaps toward her. “It’s what?”
In her mind’s eye, Cel can see herself physically backpedaling, as on a bicycle.
“Well, I mean—clearly, the show isn’t completely, um, serious.” She isn’t sure what made the phrase “tongue-in-cheek” come to mind, unless it was the fact that Mattie’s tongue was, at the time, literally in his cheek. “There’s a degree of the, ah, parodic under way. There’s a degree of satire afoot.”
“Ah.” Mattie’s eyes are unmoving, yet there is a feeling of some faint, subvisible shifting beneath them; Cel has the sense that she is staring at ice about to buckle. “And who, precisely, do you imagine this show to be satirizing?”
For all the many times Cel has described the show as “satire,” she has never directly been asked this question. She shuffles her notes.
“Well.” Cel feels sweat breaking out on her back, and only then does she become aware of the chill from her previous sweating. “Well. You’d put it in your own words, of course.”
“I don’t envy you, you know,” says Mattie.
I don’t envy you: this is simultaneously ruder and, somehow, much kinder than Cel expects. It is also, surely, some kind of trap. Cel is shivering: should she ask the driver to turn down the AC? But she won’t, of course she won’t.
“I mean it,” says Mattie. “It’s a tough gig, telling people things they don’t want to hear and already know. Usually it’s one or the other.”
The car is slowing down; they are arriving, somehow, already.
“Did you know that in Roman times, if they were dramatizing a myth with a murder in it, they would actually kill the gladiator during the performance?”
“I—no, I didn’t know that.”
“Now that’s reality programming.”
“I think that might just be reality,” says Cel—but they are stopped, and Mattie is halfway out of the car, and Cel is gathering up her papers and following him into the studio.
* * *
—
Lee and Lisa is staffed by a cast of Mattie M analogs: a white, much friendlier Luke; an older Joel in a V-neck; a woman about Cel’s age, with more expensive clothes and a significantly better handle on her professional duties.
Inside, a guest-greeter ushers them into the makeup room. Luke is already there, hovering near a cornucopia of enormous pastries. Cel is sure that the Mattie M pastries are not remotely so large—though Mattie M guests are notoriously easy to please. They are all already so thrilled to be in New York City, and the ones who are supposed to present as sympathetic get a free outfit from Old Navy, too.
Lee stops by at a quarter past six. On-screen, he and Lisa are both peppy and anodyne and dumb-seeming—Cel
is almost certain Lisa is being paid to seem slightly dumber. In real life, Lee is a sleek bulldog of a man, professionally slick and notoriously pugilistic. Lisa is still in makeup, Lee explains to Mattie. He laughs like You know how women are! and Mattie laughs like Yes, yes, certainly, of course I do! This is all so fake and gross that Cel actually begins to feel better. Because really, what’s the worst that can happen?
At six forty-five, the sound guy comes in. Cel watches as he unbuttons Mattie’s shirt—he is wearing an undershirt, thank God—and mics him out.
“Love the show, by the way,” he says as he adjusts Mattie’s earpiece. “So good to meet you. Big fan.”
A buzzy silence fills the room, or maybe just Cel’s ears.
“Don’t be nervous,” Mattie tells her.
“I’m not.” Though she is. “You don’t be nervous!” Though certainly, he should be. “Do you want a scone or something, Mattie?” She gestures at the pastry pile. “There’s enough for the whole Russian army.”
“The whole—Russian—army?” says Luke. The sound guy looks a little alarmed.
“Oh, ha,” says Cel. “Sorry. It was an expression of my grandfather’s. It just meant that we had, you know, a lot of food? As you might gather from context.”
This seems to concern the sound guy even further. Now, of all times, good God. When Cel was a kid, these used to pop out all the time—“Pass the salt, will ya?” she’d say, like a 1920s newsboy; “Pride goeth before a fall,” she’d intone, like a minister from the Second Great Awakening. These archaisms had contributed to Cel’s image as not only odd, but somehow haunted: a child who’d been left in a closet for a half century, never aging, acquiring strange superstitions and an outdated wardrobe and a faint mothball smell.
“I guess he thought the Russian army was really well fed? Or just big, or…” Cel can’t fathom why she’s still speaking.
“It’s from the World’s Fair,” says Mattie. “Chicago. Eighteen-ninety-whatever-it-was.”
A producer appears in the doorway.
“Mattie, hi? It’s time to plug in. So good to meet you, by the way. Love the show. Big fan.”
Mattie nods and stands. Cel can hear his knees crack. If the producer knows the first thing about Mattie, she’d know he isn’t a fan of his fans, and Cel wonders if she’s actually trying to piss him off—wrong-footing him by making him feel irked before he even gets onstage. But no, she tells herself: she is being paranoid. This show is extremely simple. Lee and Lisa are here to look like they’re having a great time. Mattie is here to be seen making a humanizing effort at tolerating this. Cel is here to speak like a contemporary human, or else not at all. She takes another bite of her scone.
“The World’s Fair?” says Luke. “How do you even know that?”
“I used to know a lot of things,” says Mattie. “Believe it or not.” He studies himself in the mirror, but doesn’t make any adjustments. Then he shrugs.
“Or maybe it’s just that Cel and I are both ghosts.” He makes a spooky woo-woo gesture with his hands. “Good thing Lee and Lisa haven’t got wind of that.”
* * *
—
They play him out to the opening chords of “Sympathy for the Devil.” Mattie laughs when he understands what song it is; he even tries to dance, a little, as he makes his way across the stage.
“Thanks for having me,” he says, sitting down.
“Thanks for being on the show,” says Lee, in a tone that says Don’t thank me yet.
“It’s my pleasure,” says Mattie. “And may you never be on mine.”
“First of all, Mattie,” says Lisa, “I have got to say—I am such a fan of yours. I know the Leebster here has a whole big list of questions”—Lisa rolls her eyes affectionately—“but I just have to ask you something first.”
“Shoot,” says Mattie. Cel winces, but no one else seems to notice.
“The question is this—” Lisa leans forward again: the skin of her décolletage is brown and speckled like an egg. “Do you like to watch your own show?”
“Do I watch my own show?” says Mattie. “I mean, do you watch yours?”
“No! I just can’t stand to!” Lisa swats him on the arm and giggles. She has a laugh like a toy piano—what were those things called? It’s something like Cel’s own name, which must be why she remembers it. “Would you believe me if I said I’ve never seen it? The Leebster makes so much fun of me.”
“Never?” says Mattie politely.
“Never!”
“Well, I can’t say I’ve never seen my show,” says Mattie. “I am an occasional viewer. But I don’t need to watch regularly. For one thing, I already know what happens.”
Lisa laughs like this is a remark of real comic genius—a celesta: that was what those little pianos were called—and Cel realizes she’s throwing to Lee.
“You may not watch your show, Mattie, but you’re certainly one of the only ones who doesn’t,” says Lee. “And this week, we did learn of two people who weren’t only occasional viewers. I’m talking, of course, about Ryan Muller and Troy Wilson, the shooters in this week’s horrific attack that left twelve high school students and one teacher dead.”
Behind him, the screen begins a slow-fade montage of already-familiar photos: boy on fishing trip, girl in karate suit, corsaged couple at prom—Cel can’t remember which one of them was killed. Mattie is nodding somberly. Beside her, Cel can feel Luke torquing himself into indignation.
“And the question on everyone’s minds is: Who were the shooters? What could have motivated them? Because when something so heinous happens, I think we all feel a little bit guilty.”
The background shifts to pictures of the shooters: Troy Wilson is vampirically pale, with elegant, sharply canted eyebrows; Ryan Muller is gray-faced and bloated, like a beached, possibly decaying porpoise. Mattie, Cel notices, has stopped nodding.
“Last week, reports surfaced that Ryan Muller and Troy Wilson were fans of your show, Mattie,” says Lee. “As a host myself, I have to ask: what did you feel when you heard that?”
“Well, it doesn’t surprise me too much,” says Mattie. “A lot of people are fans of the show.” Millions and millions of people, Cel chants in her mind. “Even sweet Lisa here, if what she says is true.”
“Oh, it’s true!”
Lee laughs good-naturedly. “Well, nobody is going to argue about your popularity, Mattie. I’ve seen your ratings and I’m jealous. But what I think a lot of people are wondering is—what kind of effect is your show having on viewers? Young viewers, especially—young viewers like the killers. Is The Mattie M Show really good for them?”
“Well, that’s tricky,” says Mattie. He takes a sip of water: Cel has never before realized what a fatal show of weakness this is. “Is the show good for people? Well, relative to what? Is it better than reading Tolstoy? Running a marathon? Volunteering at one’s place of worship?”
Mattie is on thin ice, but the mention of religion means that he at least wants to grope back toward solid ground.
“No. It isn’t. So if you’re watching my show instead of doing those things, or voting, or spending time with your kids, or flossing”—he turns to camera, Final Thought–style—“then I will be the first to tell you: turn it off!”
Cel is light-headed with gratitude.
“But if, like most of us mortals, you’re watching for entertainment, or to unwind after a long day—well, then, is my show worse than watching sports? Than watching wrestling? Is it worse than having a few beers or a couple of cigarettes? Probably not. The Mattie M Show is a pleasure, sure—you might even call it a vice. But as vices go, you could do a whole lot worse. If you don’t believe me, you should check out my show. Weekdays at two on Channel 6.”
Lee laughs, then cuts it with the artificial precision of an END APPLAUSE sign. “Well, fair enough, Mattie. But what do you sa
y to the wider argument—the idea that exposure to TV violence can be damaging? Should we be concerned about that as citizens? As parents?”
“You know the first person to call television a quote vast wasteland unquote?” Mattie mimes the quotes as well as quoting them. “The first head of the FCC.”
Lee’s eyebrows pop upward with jack-in-the-box springiness. “Okay,” he says. “Well, that’s certainly some interesting trivia, but I don’t see—”
“The last time people weren’t concerned about TV was before it was invented,” says Mattie. “And then? They were concerned about radio.” He sounds slightly exasperated, a little bit pedantic. The schism between Mattie’s on- and offscreen personae runs along a different axis than most celebrities’: people always expect Mattie to be dumber than he is, and their surprise at his forceful intelligence makes it seem like a negative—as though it’s a sinister secret he’s been keeping all along. Which, in a way, it is.
“Is television a good thing?” says Mattie. He is speaking a bit too loudly, considering the diligence of his microphone. “I don’t know—is gravity? Is consciousness? Is capitalism?”
WHAT THE SHIT, Cel thinks. Did he just besmirch capitalism on live TV? What’s next—a defection to the Soviets? She has to suppress the impulse to chew on her knuckles. She thinks of her Lee and Lisa counterpart, poker-faced and polished. Would she chew on her knuckles at work? No. Probably not on her own time, either.
“So you’re saying it doesn’t matter whether your show is doing something dangerous because it’s—inevitable?” Lee shakes his head. “Mattie, I think that might strike even your viewers as cynical.”
“I’m saying my show is fulfilling the legacy of television. Of human entertainment, generally,” says Mattie. “I’m saying there’s nothing new under the sun.”
“So you see no connection between the shooters being followers of your show and your being here today?”
Cel squirms at “followers”; it makes Mattie sound like David Koresh.
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