John Kenney - Talk to Me

“I don’t know,” she said.

They said nothing, backs to each other. They stared and didn’t hear the clock ticking.

“Can you walk me through the evening of the broadcast?” Franny said.

He suddenly felt very tired. He was done with this. It was a bad idea and he felt foolish. Let her write what she wanted.

“Which one? I’ve done four thousand, one hundred ninety-seven. I added it up the other night. Not to mention special reports.”

She heard the shift in tone in his voice. She knew his voice and his smell and the softness of his shirts and his face but she didn’t know him at all. Life and friendship and family are composed of terribly small things, ridiculous conversations. Calls to your mother about a chicken you made, the sea salt you used, how one deals with an ingrown toenail, the trip to the dentist, the old friend from high school you saw, the argument you got into with a brother or father or sibling over where to have Thanksgiving dinner. Small things, day after day, year after year. A visit to a cousin’s game, birthday, graduation. You stay close. You make it matter.

But what if you don’t? What if you let it slip away? Well, then you sit, back-to-back, interviewing your father.

“I had a bad night. It happens once in a while after nearly twenty years on live TV.”

“Did something precipitate the outburst?”

Well, yeah, as a matter of fact, it did. Your mother told me two days before that she wanted a divorce and was in love with someone else. And it was my birthday and no one in history has ever enjoyed turning fifty-nine, with the possible exception of the terminal cancer patient who was supposed to be dead at forty-five. The questions, coming from her—from anyone, revisiting that evening—but from her, after all this time, the history… he felt the anger building.

Also, you couldn’t find three seconds to type happy birthday in a text?

The thing was—and he couldn’t really get his head around this—he didn’t fully trust her.

“It was my birthday,” he said, unaware that he was going to say it.

She’d remembered. Of course, she’d remembered. She’d just chosen to ignore it.

“Oh. Happy birthday.”

“Thanks.”

He’d listened to a radio program recently, late at night. Online. About religion and philosophy. A writer and poet who used to be a Catholic priest. He said he used to have to give last rites and that was a wonderful gift sometimes because you could feel the people who’d lived full lives. But the saddest were those who, he said, had a look on their face as if to say, That was it?

Ted thought of his mother for some reason and the image of the sink in the house he lived in growing up, a chip of porcelain the size of a nickel in the right corner, of walking in after football practice to her peeling potatoes. He’d watch her, tell her about his day. She was so proud of her broad-shouldered, popular boy. So handsome. She peeled and scratched her nose with her wrist, the clinking, rasping sound of the peeler on the potato, the earth smell. He would give all the money and all the fame and everything he had to stand in that kitchen in that moment talking with his mother.

“What’s your story about?” he asked. He asked it in the same tone he used with young reporters who had taken three minutes to explain a story idea they wanted to do.

Franny looked up. “You, obviously.”

“Yes, but what about me? That I called this woman a bad name?”

“It wasn’t a bad name. You called her a whore. You screamed at her.”

He hated the word, hated hearing it out loud. Vulgar, guttural, shameful.

“I’m aware of that,” he barked back. “But that story’s been told, don’t you think? A few hundred times.”

“Yes, but…”

“So then what are you writing about?”

She felt herself getting angry. Felt herself getting ready to react. She tried mightily to rein it in.

“I don’t love the tone of your voice,” she said. “I don’t work for you.”

“I’m aware of that. I just want to understand what we’re doing. Is this a profile piece? Because there are a fair number of those out there already. What’s your angle? What’s the story?”

She snorted, annoyed. “My angle?”

“Yeah, because…”

“My angle,” she said in a voice a little louder than her normal register, “my idea , my story , is about the end of network news as personified by Ted Grayson. It’s about pulling back the curtain on a tired, archaic offering that dies a little every day. One that if Edward R. Murrow watched he’d throw up in his mouth. And mostly, it’s about the face of the offering. And how he is one giant lie . That’s what I’m writing about. Okay?”

She was breathing heavily. Her hands were shaking. She thought she might cry.

He wasn’t surprised. He knew from the moment she emailed him. How could he not? Yet why did he also welcome it? Why did he want it?

“Sounds like a helluva story,” he said.

She might have asked a few more questions. Ted wasn’t sure. These exchanges with her left him depleted, unable to focus. They lingered, an emotional hangover. It had been so long since they had done this but it was so familiar.

She asked to use the bathroom. When she came back she gathered her things and he walked her to the door, held it open.

“Okay then,” she said.

She made no move to embrace her father. It wounded him. He was surprised how much. He wasn’t angry. Just sad. Empty and sad. He wanted her to go.

“You know what they want you to write, yes?” he asked.

She nodded.

“You should write what you need to write.”

She stared at him. Then turned and left.

As the days passed, as the story continued to grow, new groups jumping on to say how outraged they were—the National Organization for Women, the Komen foundation, the Girl Scouts of the USA, the LGBT community—Ted began to wrap his head around the thought that he would be fired. That he would need a plan for life after. He had assumed that he was simply too valuable, too important to be replaced. He was stunned to learn how fast it could happen, how fast everything could be taken from him.

Polly had called to check in. She left messages. She sent a gift box from Zabar’s containing chicken soup, smoked salmon, and rugelach.

He finally picked up.

“I talked to Simon,” she said.

“And?”

“Bryce Ringling’s numbers are good, Ted.”

“What does that mean?”

“I don’t know. They want to meet us Monday. Tamara’s office. Me, you, Simon.”

There was silence on the line for a time, neither quite sure where to go.

Ted said, “Polly, are we going to get through this?”

“I don’t know, Ted. I don’t know anything at this point.”

They had urged him to stay in his apartment. The PR people. It was going to get worse. Stay home, they said. Stay hidden.

The press, maybe eight of them, had gathered in front of his building, waiting for him. A reporter from TMZ slipped a note in Ted’s Chinese food delivery saying that they would “pay you $50,000 for an exclusive interview/tell-all.”

So he sat in the apartment alone. He couldn’t bear to watch the news programs. And yet he couldn’t stop watching them. At first it was a dream-like quality, the reaction, the words coming out of colleagues’ mouths. People he knew well saying things on national broadcasts about his character and temperament, looking into his childhood, showing photos (where did they find these?) of Ted and Claire, years ago, on vacation, with Franny, talking about him in the most intimate ways while enormous photos scrolled slowly behind the panel of talking heads. One network had brought in an expert on xenophobic profanity. On the etymology of the word “whore.” Middle English. Old English. Dutch. Latin. For “dear.” If only he had used the word “dear.” Russian dear. Dear Russian.