Deborah Shapiro - The Sun in Your Eyes

It was time to stop procrastinating and head to my boss’s office to discuss Samantha Trudeau, who had come to Mill River, a fictional town located somewhere between Manhattan and Philadelphia, as a conniving call girl and blackmailed her way to becoming a cosmetics executive at Blythe Beauty. We were in the process of revealing that she was the long-lost daughter of district attorney Saul Rappaport. The news would not only rock the town, it would start Samantha on a path of transformation, which would involve her discovering her Jewish heritage.

“If you are now or have ever been a whore, do you have to go through a special cleansing ritual?” Frank asked as I came in and took the chrome-and-leather chair facing his desk.

“I’ll have to check my handbook and get back to you.”

“I didn’t know they still made handbooks. That’s why I count on you, young person. You keep me up to date.”

Frank Sussman: mid-fifties, tailored khakis, V-neck sweaters, and the driest delivery of anyone I have ever known. His first day, he’d gathered us around and said, without breaking stride: “I’m not into posturing, but we do need to pump some virility into the shriveled men of Mill River. I think the last time Rick Howard’s dick saw the light of day, or even the crepuscular half-light, was 1985. I know we love us some divas around here but—” He sighed then plaintively sang the words “vagina dentata” to the tune of “Hakuna Matata.”

“Special cleansing ritual. You mean like a mikvah?”

“Yes. Do we need to go there?” Frank shifted his chin in rumination. “How about we wait a few months, back-burner it for the summer, then have her atone on Yom Kippur and apologize to all the people she’s hurt clawing her way to the top. We could do for Yom Kippur what we do for Christmas.” Christmas on the soaps was an expertly sentimentalized snowy time of hearth and home. Frank stopped himself. “On second thought, no. We’d have to keep this somber. Have Samantha really struggle with who she is. For a day or two.”

“What if we gave her a friend? A woman she could talk to, confide in?”

“Humanize her in a realistic way? It’s worth exploring.” He jotted down a note, or pretended to, and then handed me a sheaf of marked-up pages. “Moving on. Let’s talk about these Jastine scenes, shall we? I can tell you’ve been doing some research. Reading up on Latin American juntas.”

“I have, actually.”

“That’s the problem. Jason and Justine get schooled in rural poverty and state-sanctioned violence by Miguel, the hotel proprietor? His daughter relates the secret history of CIA involvement over a plate of arroz con pollo ? Admirable, but we’re not trying to be NPR here. Look, it’s like in Anna Karenina . Levin starts going on about farming and peasants and you’re like, dear Lord, can we please get back to Anna and the Vron? You need to think of this coup not as a sociopolitical event but as an obstacle for Jason and Justine — how are they going to make it through? It’s also an excuse for Justine to interact with a few hot, if sinister, men in uniform. You can do better.”

“I can?”

“You’re going to have to. Don’t be so conscientious. Think hammocks and coconuts, colonial shutters and crumbling stucco, Jastine cavorting on a beach, sitting in a hotel lounge with a Graham Greene vibe or however Graham Greene — y we can get within budget. Maybe they’re at the bar, talking to Miguel.

“Jason: ‘Miguel, I used to think love was the greatest con of all. But if it is, I want to go right on being a sucker.’

“Justine: ‘Ahem?!’

“Miguel: ‘I’ll drink to that, my friend.’

“Something like that. End of the day, okay, Pro?”

I could never quite tell if Frank was being ironic when he called me Pro, since it sounded like something he’d gleaned from a manual on effective team leadership. But I was heartened to hear it. In the six years I had reported to Frank, he had always seen potential in me. It made me want to never let him down.

“I’m on it. But, Frank, then I need to take a few days off.”

“What? No. Not now you don’t. What you need to do is this rewrite and then you need to get started on the Romola Dougherty custody case. Did sweeps suddenly slip your mind?”

“I’ll check in as often as I can. I’m really sorry, but you know I wouldn’t do this if it weren’t important.”

“What is it?”

“It’s personal.” He looked a little offended.

“Vivian, this is just such terrible timing.”

Vivian. Like a parent.

“I know. I know.”

Frank’s anger resided in his jaw. The arteries in his neck thickened into tree roots.

“Do what you have to do.” No Pro. He just raised his hands, as if surrendering to my free will as a human being while questioning my longevity as his protégé. But Frank’s disappointment couldn’t suppress the wave of freedom and escape that carried me down the hall.

“I WAS LISTENINGto some Jesse songs on my way home,” said Andy. Standing in the doorway of our bedroom after we’d eaten dinner in front of the TV and I had started to pack my bag. “I realized I hadn’t, in a long time. And it was weird. I felt like I was inside a giant brain scan or something, walking through a gray area I lost use of and now it was all lit up again.”

“Sounds psychedelic.”

“Kind of, yeah. It was this really physical sensation.”

I wanted him to keep talking about Jesse Parrish as I packed. To feel his anger yielding to something closer to interest in what I had decided to do. He was no longer in the mood for a fight, which was a relief. And yet, it made me sad to think that he had given in. Given up.

You are being impossible, I thought. What more do you want from him?

“I’m gonna sound like I’m high if I try to explain it more.”

“I don’t mind.”

“It just brings up so many associations that used to hold everything together, in a way, and all of those associations are still there, but they don’t have the same meaning for me anymore. I think there are things you have to come to at exactly the right age to really fall in love with them. If you’re too young, you don’t quite get it. And if you’re too old, you get it, you appreciate it, but it doesn’t necessarily move you so much. You don’t identify in the same way.”

“You don’t think the music changes with you? That you can experience it differently over time?”

The look on his face: I didn’t mean to make this a metaphor for our relationship.

I held his look, long enough to feel that something between us would crack wide open if neither of us averted our eyes. But he did. I pulled more things from drawers. If he’d noticed that I was reaching for the best versions I had — my most flattering jeans, the T-shirt that hangs just so, my “good” underwear, as opposed to the tattered yet still functional pairs I wore around the house all the time, around him — he didn’t say anything. And whatever might have combusted between us under slightly more pressure merely dissipated. The rest of the night passed like so many other recent ones, ending with the two of us in bed, reading. Andy turning off the lamp on his side and rolling over. Me turning off my lamp and doing the same.

THE NEXT DAYwas Saturday and I realized I should have chosen a spot to meet Lee instead of having her pick me up at my apartment. Leaving Andy would have been tense but not nearly as complicated as it was now. Because now he was home with nowhere in particular to be. If he’d come up with something to do, it would have been a signal: I must take my strong feelings elsewhere. I still have strong feelings when it comes to Lee. No, he would have to stay and be here when she arrived. They would have to interact, I would have to watch them interact, and then he would watch me go with her. I was the one who had put us all in this position. I didn’t want to ask myself why.