Danielle Steel - Sisters

“Our audience doesn't want serious. They have enough pain in their own lives. They want to see people slugging it out, verbally of course, not physically, the way they wish they could do with their mate, if they dared. We are their alter ego, and we have the guts they don't.” It was one way to see it, although Tammy didn't quite see it that way. But they weren't hiring her to revamp the show, or improve it, just to keep it on the air, and drive their ratings up if she could. That was always the issue for any show on TV. How do we get the ratings higher? What they wanted was more of the same. “What brought you to New York, by the way? That's some terrific show you walked out on.” She thought she heard a reproach in the way he said it, and shook her head.

“I didn't walk out,” she corrected him. “I gave notice and left. There was a tragedy in my family this summer, and I wanted to be here,” she said with quiet dignity, and he nodded.

“I'm sorry to hear it. Is it resolved now?” he asked with some concern.

“It's getting better. But I want to stay here now, to keep an eye on things.”

“Do you have time to work on the show?”

“Yes, I do,” she said confidently, and he looked relieved. She was a professional to the core, and he knew she wouldn't be talking to him if she wasn't interested in the job. He was hoping she was. He already knew he wanted her. He wasn't interviewing anyone else, and he said as much to her. He gave her several tapes of the show, and asked her to think about it and get back to him. They didn't want to mess with something that worked. And he wanted her to respect that too.

“I'll get back to you in a couple of days,” she promised. She wanted to see the tapes of the show. She met the psychologist on the way out. She couldn't believe what she looked like. Flamboyant was far too tame a word. She was wearing rhinestone glasses and a skintight dress over an enormous bosom that poured out of her dress. She looked like a madam in a bad bordello, but he claimed the audiences and the couples loved her. Her name was Désirée Lafayette, which couldn't possibly have been her real name. She looked like a transsexual to Tammy, and she wondered if she was. Nothing would have surprised her on this show. Least of all a female psychologist who had once been a guy.

She went back to the house, and put the first tape on TV. She was watching it intently when Annie came back from school. She stood in the den for a minute and listened to what Tammy had on, and broke into a broad smile.

“What the hell is that ?”

“A show I'm checking out,” she said, still concentrating on the couple on screen. They were beyond belief, and had just called each other every name in the book.

“You're not serious, I hope.”

“I think I am. For comic relief, if nothing else. How was school?”

“Good.” She never said “Great,” but at least she didn't say it was awful, and her sisters suspected that she liked it. Tammy glanced at her watch. She had to get her to her shrink, and reminded her of it, in case she wanted something to eat before she went.

“I'm twenty-six, not two. I can go by cab if you want to keep watching that crap.”

“I can watch it later,” Tammy said, as she turned it off. But she had already made her decision. It was awful, but what the hell, why not? Désirée Lafayette was too ridiculous for words. But the show had something, a kind of down-and-dirty misery to it, and yet behind all the window dressing was a thread of hope. Tammy liked that. They rarely seemed to tell people to give up on their relationships, and Désirée tried to give them ideas of how to improve them, even if they were slightly absurd, and the people on the show incredibly vulgar. There was nothing dignified about it.

“You must be desperate for work,” Annie commented when they went out.

“I think I am,” Tammy admitted. She thought about it while she waited for Annie in Dr. Steinberg's office. Annie's meetings with the psychiatrist seemed to be doing her some good. She appeared more accepting of her situation than she had been at first, and was noticeably less angry. And Tammy liked to think that being surrounded by her sisters, who loved her so passionately, was doing her good too.

She watched the rest of the tapes alone in her room that night. Some were better, others worse. She had a good sense of the show now. It would look odd on her résumé, particularly after the other shows she'd worked on, which were of high quality. But it was the only available job in town. She had called everyone she knew, and no one else needed a producer at the moment. And she had nothing else to do.

She called Irving Solomon the next morning, and told him she was interested. He named some figures, and she said her agent would call him. She had to call her in L.A., and her attorney. She was going to have a hell of a time explaining to them why she was doing this show. She had a “no compete” clause in her last contract, for another year, but nothing about this crazy show competed with her old one. She was clear on that. The salary he had offered her was healthy. And it was honest work, even if it was a sleazy show. And work was work. She wasn't someone who wanted to stay idle, and spend her life going shopping, or having lunch with friends. She had no friends in New York, and her sisters were all working. She wanted to be too. Irving said that if they could come to an agreement quickly, he wanted her to come in the following week. She said she would do what she could to get her agent moving.

She announced it at dinner that night, and her sisters looked at her and stared. Annie already knew, and Sabrina said she thought she was crazy. Candy said she had seen the show, and it was pretty raunchy.

“Are you sure?” Sabrina asked her, looking worried. “Will it hurt you later?”

“I hope not,” Tammy said honestly. “I don't think so. It may seem a little strange, but it doesn't hurt to try reality TV again. I did it years ago, and it didn't hurt my career then. As long as I don't make a lifetime career of it.”

It made Sabrina feel mildly guilty to think of what Tammy had given up to come there, and she had done it to help her. But to be with Annie too, which was the whole point. But Tammy didn't seem to regret leaving L.A. She had closed the door on her old show and never looked back. And now she was opening a new door. With angry couples and a psychologist named Désirée Lafayette waiting to greet her. The thought of it horrified Sabrina, and it made Tammy laugh.

Chapter 20

Once Tammy was working, life at the house on East Eighty-fourth Street seemed to speed up considerably. Sabrina was having a busy fall season, half the couples in New York seemed to want a divorce, and were calling her. After the summer, and once the kids went back to school, people called their lawyers and said “Get me out of here!” They usually did it after Christmas too.

Candy was on shoots every day once she got back from Europe. The intervention over her eating disorder had helped a little. She had never been bulimic, she just didn't eat, and was anorexic. But she was doing better, and was on weekly weigh-ins that Sabrina monitored diligently, and called the doctor to check on. They weren't allowed to tell Sabrina what Candy's weight was, but they could say if she had come in to be weighed. And when she skipped it, Tammy and Sabrina raised hell with her. They were keeping a close eye on the problem, and she looked as though she had gained a few pounds, although she was still grossly underweight, which was the nature of her business. She got paid a fortune to look that way. It was a tough battle to win, but at least they weren't losing ground. Her shrink had referred to it as “fashion anorexia” to Sabrina, when they talked about it. She didn't have deep-seated psychological problems about her childhood or womanhood. She just loved the way she looked when she was rail thin, and so did millions of women who read fashion magazines, and the people who put them together. It was cultural, visual, and financial, not psychiatric, which the shrink said was an important factor. But her sisters worried about her health. They had no desire to lose another member of the family, even if she died looking gorgeous, was rich, and was on the cover of Vogue. As Tammy said bluntly, “Fuck that.”