Talk to Me

by John Kenney

  “Because,” she said, “there is currently an iPhone-captured video of you on YouTube trending at”—and here Tamara tapped at her MacBook Air, fingers dancing over the keyboard—“8,743,981 views. And your daughter’s story isn’t helping much.”

  “I’m fully aware of that. But I’ll ask again, why are you firing me?”

  Tamara turned to Max, an expression that suggested she was smelling something particularly repugnant.

  One of the lawyers started to jump in.

  “Ted, no one is firing you. We’re asking you to resign . . .”

  “Excuse me,” Tamara said, the anger in her voice palpable. “What part of this aren’t you understanding, Ted?”

  Ted stayed cool, though he did lean his broad frame over the table. “I made a mistake. I apologized. I’ll do that again if you want. I’ll have the girl on the air. I’ll do a series on men who don’t understand anger or the power of outdated words. But I don’t understand how a single mistake outweighs a twenty-year career. I lost my temper. I had a bad day. I didn’t kill anyone. How?!”

  And here Tamara sat back, anger gone, because she felt genuinely sorry for Ted. He had no idea how the world had changed. He thought it could go away. He didn’t understand that the internet was the first creature in the history of the world that could live forever. It never died.

  Tamara folded her arms across her chest, looked down at the table in front of her. She sighed and looked out the window.

  “You’re right,” she finally said. “You didn’t kill anyone. And you have served this network with honor and distinction for twenty years. And for that we owe you an enormous debt of gratitude. And I wish you could have continued to sit in that chair for a few more years, go out on your own terms, a special final evening where we review your finest moments, create a banner with its own typeface and theme song, run a full-page ad in the Times. But what’s happened, what you did, while not murder, was, in the year 2016, a kind of murder. You killed yourself. You killed your brand. You might as well have killed someone. Ted, we might have a better chance of putting you back on the air if you had committed vehicular manslaughter. If, in other words, it had been an accident, something that the angry masses could understand. But you . . . you screamed at an innocent young girl, a hardworking immigrant, someone’s daughter, and you called her a Russian whore. The internet . . . the world today . . . and the world is nothing if not the internet, Ted . . . it never, ever forgets. Or forgives. There is no mercy anymore, Ted. Because we can see it again and again and again, as it happened. Not a story in a newspaper but that actual event. And it makes us angry. And we want you to pay. Not the we in this room. We want you in that chair, wooing viewers, bringing in pharma marketing dollars. We want steady as she goes. But they . . . the foaming-at-the-mouth anonymous commentators . . . they want you to pay. Deep down they’re excited because it’s not them. They know it could be any one of us. They know. But it’s you today. And you have to die.”

  Tamara found that she was leaning forward on the table, that the eyes of those around her were wide. She sat back, breathed deeply, smoothed her skirt again.

  “The world changed, Ted. Everything changed. Letters to the editor? Picketers? Boycotts on the sidewalk? Coups d’état? Please. Do you know what the most powerful force in the land is? It’s not Congress, those useless, spineless wankers. It’s not the soulless hedge fund boys in Greenwich or the pond scum on Wall Street or the C-suite who will do anything for a profit. It’s the comments section on any story, any tweet, any video. It’s comments, Ted. Comments rule the world. Do you think I control this company? Or the board? Because we don’t. Not really. There is a new power. This company, though it would never admit it, is controlled by anonymous posters. Grimy, possibly nude, portly men sitting in dark rooms, posting comments late at night after a long evening of vigorous masturbation to exceedingly filthy online pornography. They comment and comment and incite other comments and foment the anger. Do you know how angry these people are? They have a petition with . . . wait for it . . . almost four million signatures. Do you know what kind of comments we’re getting? I don’t know, either, because it was so astronomical that our website crashed. Nuance is dead. In its place, we have judgment. Instant judgment. That’s the world we’re living in. There’s no truth. There’s no fact. There’s only what you can get to trend. And it’s only getting worse.”

  Tamara took a folder with Ted’s resignation, noncompete, nondisclosure, and radically reduced pension due to a breach of a morality clause, and slid them to Polly.

  “Please review, sign, and return these within twenty-four hours. At twenty-four hours and one second, they are null and void and you get nothing. Is that understood by your counsel?”

  Polly nodded.

  “Odd question, I know,” Tamara began, “but might I ask if you recently went skydiving, by any chance?”

  Ted looked up at her, startled. “I . . . yes. Why?”

  “Oh. No reason. Except someone named “ArmymanRayRay” has posted a video that appears to show you either having an accident or trying to kill yourself. Quite a popular post.”

  Ted closed his eyes for a few seconds. More shame. There was no privacy anymore.

  “I . . . yes . . . I just . . . lost control.”

  “So it would seem.”

  They practiced a two-minute drill. In college. On the football team. They practiced being down, late in the game, eighty yards from the end zone. A last gasp, no time-outs left. He always felt like there was a chance.

  “I have one request,” Ted said.

  “What is it?” Tamara asked.

  “I’d like one final broadcast.” He surprised himself with this. Hadn’t seen it coming. Feared she’d say no. But he could almost see her calculating the ratings bump if they announced it beforehand. Ted Grayson. The Final Report Before His Death.

  “Scripted,” she said finally.

  “Yes,” he said. “But I want sixty seconds at the end.”

  Tamara hesitated. Ted saw it on her face.

  He said, “Almost twenty years. I just want sixty seconds to say goodbye.”

  Tamara sighed. She felt unsettled. She stood and walked to the window.

  “Anyone familiar with the short story ‘The Lottery’?” she asked, her back to the room. No response, which annoyed her.

  “About a town that once a year has everyone draw a slip of paper. The loser is stoned to death by the town. The girl, Tessie, I think is her name. The one who draws the bad slip of paper, do you know what she says at the end. ‘It’s so unfair.’ And it is. But that’s who we are now. No one is willing to stand up. Should I? Maybe. But I’m afraid to get stoned to death.”

  She turned and faced Ted.

  “You have your sixty seconds. And I’m sorry, Ted. I hope you believe that. I’m actually sorry for all of us.”

  * * *

  • • •

  Claire had just finished playing squash when she got the call. A regular game with her friend Julie.

  “I assume you’ve seen the wonderful news?” her lawyer asked.

  “No,” Claire said. “What?”

  “Your husband has just been fired. And there’s a video of him jumping out of a plane. Might be trying to kill himself. Hard to tell. I just sent it to you. The timing couldn’t be better for us. Goes to character. And with Franny’s story, it’s gold. I’d like to suggest we up our ask. I think we can take him for everything.”

  Her lawyer’s tone repulsed her.

  “I’m going to have to call you another time,” Claire said, hanging up without waiting for a response.

  * * *

  • • •

  The calls were coming in to scheisse, asking for Franny, asking for interviews. People, Us Weekly, the morning shows, the afternoon shows, and several urgent calls from a producer on Dr. Phil. But Henke wanted more. He needed more.
It was no longer enough to run a story. You had to keep it alive. Update it. Find new ways to retell it.

  * * *

  • • •

  Claire urged Franny to come to Bedford and stay for a while, until it blew over. But Franny said no, that she wouldn’t be bullied.

  A few colleagues from scheisse had texted her.

  So sorry.

  Shit storm.

  But a few others had been less kind, tweeting;

  Sort of feel bad for her. But she’s also kind of a bitch sometimes.

  It surprised her how much these hurt, how much it felt like grade school again. They were saying her name on TV. On cable news. On late-night talk shows. They were making fun of her and people in the audience were laughing.

  * * *

  • • •

  Life is timing. It’s timing and moods and chance. It’s one-too-many cruelties experienced. One-too-many unkind words heard. It’s the unfairness of not being loved. It’s spring coming too late to western Massachusetts and the raw, damp cold making a person long for warmth, for human touch.

  Lauren Loeb sat in the office of the director of the Greenfield, Massachusetts Social Services, listening to absurd and frankly cruel charges against her. Sexual harassment of female coworkers, stalking, calling them in the night. She herself would not use these words to describe the events that had transpired. Yes, there had been contact. But it was welcomed by both parties. Phone calls. Sure. She didn’t know they’d been made that late. And why can’t a person wait for a colleague in front of their home even though that person might not want that to happen?

  She was being fired. For trying to be nice to others!

  She cleaned out her things. Found a box and piled in her books and stuffed animals, her posters with sayings on them about being positive, her Northfield Mount Hermon diploma. She was under pressure. She was planning the reunion. She felt foolish. People were watching her. How could she have misjudged these people. Was it so wrong to want to be loved?

  * * *

  • • •

  Lauren opened a bottle of wine when she got home. She felt shaky and she drank the wine and felt an anger rise. She thought it might feel nice to throw a plate at the wall so she did that. And she was right, it did feel good. So she threw another. And another. And another. Until there was a banging on the door and her landlord asked what in holy hell was going on.

  “I was moving some dishes and they fell,” Lauren said, smiling, keeping the door largely closed to the sight of her apartment.

  That seemed strange to the landlord, but Lauren had always been a lovely girl, easygoing if a bit weird. Come to think of it, she did look like she might have been crying.

  “Okay . . . well . . . be careful. And maybe keep the noise down, please.”

  * * *

  • • •

  She didn’t feel like cleaning up the broken dishes. She didn’t feel like doing anything. She sat on the couch, holding her wine, thinking that it might be time to start again. Leave western Mass. She checked her phone. Scanned the news. Checked her alerts.

  Imagine Lauren Loeb’s surprise to see Franny Grayson’s story about her famous father. That awful misogynist. Except. Wait. She read it again, to make sure. Franny Grayson was writing that her father wasn’t there, that he never even bothered to come when his daughter was in the hospital with a sudden illness. No. That’s not true. Lauren was there. That terrible night. In the hospital. And it wasn’t an illness. Unless you call a drug overdose an illness. Lauren poured more wine. She was tempted to throw another plate. Franny Grayson was a liar. And Lauren Loeb was going to tell the world.

  Paradise lost.

  Kuh, Feinman, & Steuben, LLP, occupied the top three floors of the Bank of America Tower, just off Bryant Park. The building was LEED Certified Platinum. Solar panels powered all of the building’s heating. Rainwater captured from the roof was used to cool the internal systems. Automatic blinds gauged the sun’s position in the sky throughout the day, rising and lowering to conserve the energy.

  In a small conference room on the thirty-second floor, overlooking Sixth Avenue and Forty-Second Street, Ted stood and stared out the window. The windows must have been very thick, perhaps double-paned or treated somehow, because Ted couldn’t hear any noise from the street below. He looked down at his shoes. The carpet was unusually thick, a deep blue with gold trim around the outer edge. He wondered how much it cost.

  Polly sat at one end of a long polished table and texted. They waited. Polly occasionally sniffled. It had always annoyed him. The door opened and even with his back to the door, even without turning, he knew it wasn’t an assistant bringing coffee or water. He knew it wasn’t just the lawyers. He knew in a purely animal sense, a deep primal sense, that it was his family. He couldn’t bring himself to turn around. He no longer had the energy.

  The lawyers followed. Everyone sat. It began.

  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.

&nb
sp; 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.