John Kenney - Talk to Me

My father’s cold emptiness as a human being.

He is a disappointment to my mother and me.

A model for everything I don’t want in a man.

My mother’s weakness at not leaving him.

In a phone call after the Westport fund-raiser, Claire had told Franny about the scene Ted had made with Dodge. It was a slip, something she’d not wanted to mention but found herself telling her. Franny used it in the story.

And this. During Ted’s apology, he spoke of his wife, his only child, a daughter, the women in his life. At no point, according to Franny’s story, did he tell the truth, that his wife had asked for a divorce and that he and his daughter were largely estranged.

Claire and Franny sat at the other end of the table from Ted and Polly, on the opposite side. Franny had to be there because the Sag Harbor house was being put in her name. She’d slept little in the past few days, given the fallout from the story. Initially there was a measure of support from women who saw further proof of Ted’s misogyny. But a steady drumbeat of anger at Franny began to build. Who does that to their father? people asked. Spoiled brat , they said.

And then Lauren’s tweets.

Franny Grayson is a liar!!! I was her roommate at NMH and was THERE that winter break. I was THERE in the hospital room when TED GRAYSON visited.

It was sent and resent, aired and replayed, commented on and parsed, ridiculed. It was featured in scheisse . It was inflamed by scheisse .

And this from Lauren.

She OD’d!!! Did drugs all the time! Where’s that mentioned in her little story?!!

The weight of the thing. The shame of it. Things said in print and online that can never be taken back or taken down.

The lawyers were talking and Franny’s head was down and her phone was off because the texts and emails kept coming, from friends and network and cable TV producers wanting to interview her. She toggled between anger and depression, fear and rage. She wanted to sue Henke. She wanted it to have never happened. She couldn’t bring herself to look at her father.

Claire could and did look at her soon-to-be-ex-husband. She knew him and she knew he was not listening as the lawyers spoke their gibberish. “Relinquish all ownership and claims in perpetuity…”

She watched as he stared at a healthy Ficus benjamina plant, though she was sure he wouldn’t remember the name.

The song the summer they met. She listened to it over and over back then. On a turntable. She’d long forgotten the name of the album but the song was called “No One Is to Blame.” Side A, track three. She would play it after a shower in the morning as she dressed for work. She’d play it after a run in the evening, before going to meet him. She would place the needle down, listen to the scratch of the vinyl, and every time she heard it, she thought of him. Howard Jones. Claire hadn’t realized that she was still staring at Ted.

He must have felt her because he turned and looked at her while the lawyers were still talking. Her eyes were wide, caught in her memory of the song, unguarded, a face he had looked at a hundred million times. He looked at her now, at her face, so lovely and open, those kind eyes that still had the power to stop him, and in looking at her, his own expression changed. The smallest smile, made broader by trying to hide it. And perhaps something in him fell away, revealing his true self. He couldn’t help it. That face. That girl on the bench by the Charles River that first evening talking about her life and her future as the fireflies danced. Claire saw it and began blinking, felt the corners of her mouth rise, found that it was suddenly hard to swallow. The lawyers finalized their divorce and spoke of numbers and properties and codicils while they, across the table from each other, saw each other for a moment, for just a moment, as they once had. My God , she thought, as if looking at an old photo, there he is. There’s Ted. My Ted.

March 2005. Claire was on the Hawaiian island of Kauai, known for its snorkeling, beaches, and volcanoes. She was there with Nancy, whose divorce had just come through and who had decided to stop crying and drinking a bottle of white wine every evening, and instead try to feel alive again. They were staying at an exclusive resort called Paradise Lost. Due to the divorce settlement and Nancy’s lawyer, Nancy said she would pay for two first-class tickets, a five-star hotel, and pretty much anything else Claire wanted for the next few days. Thus, a six-hour flight from JFK to LAX. A three-hour layover. Then another six hours to Honolulu. Then a puddle-jumper to Kauai. They had been there for three days when the call came.

On the other end of the line was a woman from Northfield Mount Hermon. A woman named Amy who was one of the few people on campus, as it was winter break and there had been a blizzard in western Massachusetts recently, which Claire already knew, as Claire the good mother always checked the weather where her daughter was.

Franny. Overdose .

Those were the words Claire heard before her mind started doing multiple things as she half listened to Amy, who, to Claire’s mind, wasn’t adding to the words “Franny” and “overdose,” except to add, infirmary, unconscious but stable , road conditions , lucky doctors stayed here , snow .

Claire heard the words but she was also calculating the time. If it was 5:32 in the afternoon in Hawaii, that would make it 11:32 at night on the East Coast. Could she get a flight this evening to Los Angeles and then a red-eye… no… wait… with the time difference it was 8:32 in Los Angeles and by the time she got there… five hours from Honolulu and she had to get to Honolulu… fuck, why did she come here… Jesus fuck… she’d sleep at LAX and get the first flight out to Boston and then rent a car… three hours’ difference between Los Angeles and Boston so a 6:00 a.m. flight from LAX, five hours, had her landing at Logan at 2:00 p.m. tomorrow and a two-hour drive. Twenty-four hours. Wait. Was that right? She hated math. What about the time difference? And assuming there was a 6:00 a.m. flight out of LAX that she could get on. She sat at a table and opened her laptop. There was a 7:00 a.m. on JetBlue but it was sold out. Shit. There was a 9:45 on American. But it didn’t get in until almost 6:00 p.m. Which meant getting there at 8:00. If the roads were clear.

Claire did a thing with her tongue, bounced it back and forth, edge to edge, in her mouth. Nancy watched her do it now, holding the panic back.

“When can you get here?” the woman on the phone was saying.

The body under severe stress. What happens to it. What is released. Pure adrenaline. Her heart rate increased. Run. Run. She had to go. She had to move. But she was trapped on this goddamned island off a larger island in the middle of the ocean. She couldn’t get to her child. Try that on sometime.

It was 5:30 a.m. in London and Ted and a small crew had just gotten off an overnight flight from New York. In a few hours they would board another plane to Sarajevo, then drive several more hours to the outskirts of Kosovo.

He was drinking a bad cup of coffee in a Heathrow café when he heard the same words from Claire through his little Nokia phone. “Franny” and “overdose.” He heard “stable.” But he also heard Claire’s tone. It was a tone he’d not heard in a long time. He was looking at his watch. He was doing the math. He was bad at so much in life that was important. Empathy and kindness. He didn’t know why. He didn’t really care to know why. He was a grown man and he wasn’t going to change, didn’t believe people really changed. He thought it better to accept others for who they were instead of trying to change them. This, perhaps, the crucial worldview difference between Claire and Ted.