“Fuck this shit,” I say.
Then I curl my finger around the trigger. And squeeze.
Eight
Phil gripped Sarah-Jane’s loose ponytail while she continued to pant and sigh and spit into the toilet bowl.
She had yet to vomit, but that wasn’t from a lack of trying. She was desperate to relieve her stomach of the knot it had been entangling itself in. It was unusual for Sarah-Jane to feel such strong pre-broadcast nerves mere minutes from airing live. But, it was also unusual for her to be mere minutes from airing live to thirty million Americans. She had been super proud when she heard the first ever live broadcast she did for PBS had been watched by three hundred households. Tonight she would quite literally be appearing in front of an audience one hundred thousand times that size.
She slapped her hand to her mouth and then swiped at it, before eventually standing back upright, and leaning into her lap dog.
“Sorry,” she whispered.
Phil circled his hand around her back before he reached both arms around her waist so he could squeeze her tightly against his double-breasted jacket. When she had remained unmoving, her cheek resting on his shoulder, for what he considered a worryingly long time without her saying a word, he hooked the left cuff of his sleeve and then tipped his head to the side so he could see past the loosest strands of Sarah-Jane’s ponytail.
“Eighteen minutes,” he whispered.
She immediately leaned away from him and held the tips of her index fingers to the inner corners of each eye, before eventually blowing her frustrations out through her lips.
“I’m not nervous because of the audience figures… this is just such a big story for us, y’know?” she said. “Me ’n’ you, this one’s personal, right?”
Phil nodded. Then he squeezed her to his double-breasted jacket again. “You’ve got this,” he whispered. “I believe in everything you do.”
She leaned away from Phil again and stared into his narrow, dark brown eyes, then she pressed a palm on either side of his face so she could bring their noses close enough to touch. It was unusual for Phil to say something so frank and so deep. But as Sarah-Jane knew better than anybody else; when Philip Meredith spoke, it was because something needed to be said.
So, Sarah-Jane sucked down the tears that were threatening to spill from her eyes, then grabbed at his chunky fingers.
When they both swung open the toilet door and found themselves back in the maze of narrow hallways, Howie happened to be striding by, pinching the hooked microphone of the headset he now had on as close to his lips as he possibly could. He immediately stopped, then sneered back over his shoulder at the two of them.
“I’ve been looking for you all over the place!” Neither of them said a word. They both just stood still, staring at the executive producer while gripping each other’s fingers. “What were you in the restrooms for? Throwing up?”
“No,” Sarah-Jane said, tilting her head to one side. “I was having a shit!”
Howie looked her up and down, then flicked his eyes to Phil.
“What does he do in there with you… wipe your ass?”
“No,” Sarah-Jane said, shaking her ponytail, “no wiping necessary. He licks me clean.”
Phil scratched at his patchy beard while Howie shifted his feet awkwardly, a snarl hinting on the edge of his top lip. Then he flamboyantly flicked the cuff of his left sleeve to one side and tutted.
“Only sixteen minutes till we go live. Make your way to the set.”
“S’where we were going before you stopped us,” Sarah-Jane said. She gripped Phil’s fingers tighter then dragged him around Howie and toward the curtain that led them into the bright lights of the studio.
When they both stepped into the shadows of those lights, the faces of the guests she was about to interview immediately looked up at her again, some of them pursing their lips, some of them half-smiling, one of them offering a nod and a stiff wave. Her stomach began to roll itself over again, threatening another race to the restroom. But she pressed a palm gently to her navel and then closed her eyes so that she could run through her meditative breathing techniques again. Standing next to interviewees in the wings had never made her feel nauseous before. And she realized there and then, as she was sucking in one of her meditative breaths, that she won’t even feel close to this level of nauseousness when she has to interview George Clooney in two weeks’ time. She’ll be excited. Yes. She’ll be excited and likely a little horny. But she won’t feel sick. Not like she does right this minute.
She swiped her clammy hands down the sides of her little black dress, and when the guest who stiffly waved at her tried to approach, she spun away and stepped to the side, pretending not to notice him. Phil had to hold a hand to the man’s chest to stop him following through with his intended greeting.
“Sarah-Jane doesn’t speak with interviewees until the camera’s rolling,” Phil whispered.
It was Patrick Klay’s chest Phil’s hand was pressed against. The man who had tried to call by hair and makeup earlier to meet with the host.
“But we’ve met before,” Klay said. “It’s not as if we’re meeting for the first time.”
Sarah-Jane overheard the whispered conversation, but pretended not to as she took a step onto her stage, where she stood with her back to the shadows, the lights beaming at her ponytail while she pressed a hand to her stomach and continued to suck in deep, lungfuls of breaths before releasing them ever so slowly.
“Okay,” Howie screamed as he stepped into the studio through the gap in the curtains, still pinching the end of the hooked microphone hanging from his head set. “Fifteen minutes until we go live. Can all floor staff and control room staff take their positions? The interviewees… if you can remain standing where you are, behind camera number one, we will sit you around the desk when we are only five minutes from going live.”
Bodies instantly began to shuffle behind the cameras of the deathly quiet studio before those cameras began to wheel forward, toward the edge of the stage Sarah-Jane now was stood on with her back to everybody, staring at the neon blue light displaying her family name. She knew all of her family were proud of her. She certainly hadn’t been starved of congratulatory phone calls in that regard. Even aunts and uncles she hadn’t met had called her up from Krakow to anoint her as the family jewel—the one who had made a name for herself. Both of Sarah-Jane’s parents were Polish immigrants; who met and fell in love on the boat they traveled to America on in search of loftier ambitions back in the spring of 1966. Her brother, Dean, was born two years after the Zdanskis had arrived and married in Massachusetts, but by the time Sarah-Jane came to be — in June of 1972 — they had already moved and settled in Kansas, after her father had landed his own franchise with the car showroom brand he had gotten his first job with in America. She grew up meeting every stereotype a beautiful girl is supposed to meet if Hollywood movies reflect real life. She was courted by every guy at school; she won, by a landslide, the valedictorian; she refused every advance of second dates through college simply because she genuinely thought herself more beautiful than anyone who approached her; and she ended up becoming somewhat a local celebrity—reporting for PBS. And that was all, of course, before she landed a big job and an eighteen-story tall billboard in the heart of Times Square.
She pursed her lips at her family name lit in neon blue as the knot in her stomach began to unwind itself.
Then she felt Howie step up on to the stage behind her, and when she glanced over her shoulder, she saw that he was fiddling with his fingers. He offered her a nod of his head before gently poking a flesh-colored oval nugget of plastic into her ear. Then he held both of her biceps lightly and stooped his neck so he could eyeball her at her own level.
“You got your own show on merit,” he said. “You got this show for being you. So just be you.”
As a smile began to form on her lips, she heard a light cough in her ear, then Mikey’s Chicago accent.
“Y’all
set SJ?” he said.
It irked Sarah-Jane to be called SJ, though she understood Mikey would be keen to short-cut his direction into her ear in as little detail as possible. And so instead of correcting him like she usually does when someone shortens her name to just her initials, she nodded her head once, while fingering her ear. Then she stepped back and perched her ass onto the edge of the sausage-shaped desk.
“The mic above your head will pick you up, SJ,” the voice in her ear said, “so can you confirm, audibly, that you are all set, so we can pick your volume levels up in here?”
“Yes!” she shouted.
Everybody who had been shuffling around in the shadows of the studio to get into their positions stopped what they were doing and stared up at her.
“Sorry,” she said, showing them all the palm of her hand. Then she lowered her voice to normal decibels. “Yes, Mikey,” she said. “I’m all set.”
“You sure you’re not worried about anything?” he asked.
She fingered her ear again.
“You mean aside from those opening two lines?”
Mikey snickered into her ear, a noise that made Sarah-Jane’s stomach threaten to knot again. But she didn’t say anything, because she knew it was way too late to bring up the argument of the opening two lines once again. Not when there was only minutes left until she went live to the nation. Besides, she had already raised the issue multiple times and was shot down on each occasion; shot down by Howie; shot down by Mikey; shot down by Walter.
“How are all the guests doing?” she whispered to Howie as he rested his ass on the sausage-shaped desk next to her and folded his arms.
“Good. Mostly. Well… we’ve got researchers and producers talking to Abigail backstage now, calming her down. They think she may have taken some valium in her dressing room. She’s showing signs of anxiety, but is still adamant she wants to appear on air. Don’t worry about it. We’ll address it as we go. If we need to, we can extend Patrick Klay’s interview in the final part. We have lots of continuity questions for him… Listen,” Howie shifted his feet and held Sarah-Jane’s biceps lightly again. “Mikey is in your ear at all times. And I’m going to be standing right there at all times.” He pointed just off stage, to the right of camera number four. “I’ll have a full script in my hands. You literally can’t go wrong. We produce this show as a team. Your role in that team is to just be you.”
Her face broke into a wide smile then she held up an open palm for Howie to high-five. He winked at her, then stepped off the stage to stand in his position, just as everybody else, aside from the guests, had.
Knowing everybody was now staring at her from the shadows of the studio, Sarah-Jane held her arms wide and produced a subtle bow. Then her stomach began to instantly knot again, because she suddenly realized that bowing was a totally inappropriate thing to do. So, she held a flat palm above her brow, to block out the glare of the lights shining too brightly from above the stage, and peered into the shadows in search of a bullish-looking face with scruffy hair and a patchy beard. When she noticed he hadn’t moved from where she left him, she waved Phil up to the stage, and as he was thudding himself up the step in the deathly quiet of the studio, gripping his boss’s purse to his chest, Howie shouted out.
“Makeup!”
Mollie ran from the side of the stage, an open compact of foundation balancing on her flat palm, a thick makeup brush in the other hand. She stopped in between Sarah-Jane and Phil and lightly brushed around the host’s cheeks before dabbing across her brow.
“Thank you for today,” Sarah-Jane whispered.
“Just doing my job.”
“You’re doing more than your job. And I, for one, won’t forget it.”
Mollie was smirking when her brow suddenly dropped and she squinted closer toward the host’s face.
“You smudge all that lipstick already?”
“Oh,” Sarah-Jane said. “Might have. I wiped across my mouth.”
Mollie plucked a lipstick tube from one of the many pockets of the apron hanging around her waist then subtly filled in the scarlet glow on the host’s lips while Phil remained standing behind her, scratching at his beard and staring up his boss’s name in neon blue splashed across the back wall of the set.
“There you go. I’ll be back for touch up just before you go live. Break a leg.”
Sarah-Jane winked at the only new confidante she had found since becoming a CSN employee, and when Mollie had tucked herself into a corner at the side of the stage, the host stared at her ex-producer slash cameraman, now full-time purse carrier.
“Not long now,” he whispered.
She smiled nervously, then rubbed her moist palms together.
Do I need to stand here with everybody staring at me until we go live?”
Phil shrugged then shook his head, before pointing his hand toward the gap in the curtain.
“Where you going, SJ?” Mikey squealed into her ear as she stepped off the stage.
“We’re gonna wait in the wings,” she said without moving her lips as she passed by the guests. Then she ducked under the curtain to get back out to the quiet of the dimly-lit hallway.
Phil didn’t say a word to her while they both rested their backs against the wall, because he had, by now, said all that needed to be said. He had no fears, no concerns at all, that Sarah-Jane was about to nail these interviews.
“I think it’s just my moral pendulum swinging in my stomach. That’s why I feel a little nauseous,” she whispered.
Phil held a hand to her belly, and pressed it gently.
Then the last of the peace and the last of the quiet they were sharing got disrupted by a disgusting sound of somebody audibly clearing their throat. They both leaned off the wall and stared up the dimly-lit hallway to see Walter Fellowes shuffling his short legs toward them while slurping his tongue across his dry lips.
LUCY DECKER
It never feels right to place your hand between your legs while you’re peeing. But, despite the horrible feeling of disgust as light mists of urine spray my fingertips, I’ve got a huge wave of optimism swishing around inside me today.
It’s been four days since I had my IVF treatment. I could literally be pregnant right now. Chances are I am pregnant right now. Nurse said Friday morning is the earliest I can take a test, though she said it may be too early to detect. I had to get a special test to gauge this one so early in a possible pregnancy that cost two hundred and fifty dollars. But if it gives the result I am desperate for it to give me, the cost won’t matter one little bit. I really can’t wait much longer. If I’m pregnant right now than I wanna know right now. I really, really wanna know. Not just for my sake, but for Zachary and Mia, too. They paid for this wave of excitement that’s rolling around inside me right now.
This pregnancy test is a lot bulkier and heavier than the ones I normally buy at the pharmacy. It looks more like a chunky TV remote control than a tiny electric toothbrush like the others do.
When I’m finished peeing, I shake the test into the toilet bowl while pulling up my pants and my panties with the other hand at the same time.
“Please. Please,” I whisper to myself as I stare at the small screen on the front of the test.
I place it down onto a prepared sheet of toilet paper while I wash my hands.
After drying them, I stand in the middle of my tiny bathroom and stare down at the screen on the test again. If a blue plus sign shows, that’s it—my dream has come true. If only a blue straight line shows, well then that means Zachary wasted all of his savings on my aging eggs. And perhaps he should have bought a Vespa instead.
“C’mon,” I say to the test, as if it can somehow hear me. “Show me a blue cross.”
In my impatience, I pick up the box the test came in and read the instructions again.
“Wait. What? Two hours? Hours? Why would it take two hours?”
Then I remember that the pharmacist had said that to me as she was taking my money. But it didn’t register,
because I was too excited. I assumed she said it would take two minutes for the results to show—just like every other pregnancy test I’ve tried over the years.
“Damn it,” I say, slapping a palm to my bathroom wall tiles. Then I take a look at my watch. Eight forty-five. I gotta get going. I gotta get to class. I stare at the blank screen of the test again, then sigh. I’m wondering whether or not I should bring it with me to school. No… perhaps I should just leave it here. That way it’d be a surprise waiting for me when I get home. I don’t wanna find out the result in school, do I? Seems a bit unromantic to me. Though I guess the whole process of trying to get pregnant has been as unromantic as getting pregnant can possibly get.
I decide to turn around, leaving the test lying face up on the sheet of toilet paper, and begin to stroll down my hallway, pulling on my coat and snatching at my bag before I open up the front door and leave; hoping that when I get back at around four p.m., there’ll be a blue cross waiting for me on that screen.
BRODY EDWARDS
“Mom,” I call out, rapping my knuckles against her bedroom door.
“What is it Brody?” she shouts back.
“I uh…” I scratch my hair. “You uh... you have to go to the school this morning. Miss Decker wants to meet with you.”
“Who?”
“Miss Decker. My American History teacher.”
“To meet? With me? For what?”
I hear her sweep the covers off of herself before she groans as loudly as she can.
“I’m not sure... I think... well, I think―”
“I can’t do it. Not this morning. I got an appointment. You’re gonna have to call your Dad. Let him do some parenting for once, huh?”
“Shit,” I whisper to myself. “Okay, Mom,” I shout.
I walk into our kitchen and pull at the receiver of the phone that hangs on our wall.
“Can you put me through to Johnny Edwards’s room please?” I say to old Mrs. Ferguson.
In The Middle of Middle America Page 24
