On the Edge

by Parker Hudson

  Tommy thought, as he ran a few steps to catch a throw from Brent, about how he had decided that Sunday morning—it was almost as if a voice told him—for once not to say anything to his father, but rather to test him to see whether he would remember on his own. Unfortunately, his father had failed miserably. And what had really made him mad was that Susan had asked him to play tennis on Sunday afternoon, and he had actually done it!

  “I guess it hasn't changed since we were little,” said a voice inside Tommy. “Dad just always has more time for Susan than he does for me.” And he threw the ball back to Brent with an unusually high arc, from all of the frustrated energy released with that thought.

  But at least, Tommy had to admit, his father had not yelled at his mother in the past ten days or so. There almost seemed to be some sort of truce or peace between them, for the moment. Nothing really specific had happened. It just seemed that his mother was happier and that his father did not yell as much. So maybe he should just be thankful for small blessings.

  The coach blew the whistle and the two boys ran in together toward the group gathered around home plate. “Hey, Zane told me to tell you that Roger is coming over again to spend the night on Saturday night,” Brent said to Tommy as they trotted in together. “He says he's got some new videos, and he wants to be sure you're invited. So, do you want to ask your folks if you can spend Saturday night with us?”

  “Fantastic. Sure, I'll ask, and I think it'll probably be OK.” Then Tommy joked, “But you know, after that sex education class we had yesterday, who needs those films?” And the boys laughed together as they took their places for batting practice.

  At the television station, the meeting Janet had tried to set up the week before finally began that afternoon.

  “Come in, come in.” Bill Shaw motioned to the three of them. “Please have a seat there while I get my note pad,” he said, motioning them toward the comfortable chairs around a small conference table on the side of his large office. “I'm sorry I couldn't meet last week, but as you know we had a Network Affiliates Conference in Phoenix. Anyway, I'm glad we can get together today.”

  Besides Janet and Tom Spence, the fourth person at their meeting was Connie Wright, one of the station's younger camerapersons. It was not usual for her to be at a meeting of management personnel, but Tom had requested her presence, presumably, Janet thought, because she shared both his fundamentalist Christian beliefs and his opposition to “911 Live.”

  “Now, Janet, you called this meeting,” said Bill, who always seemed to be in a hurry and never suffered any time for small talk at station meetings. “I understand that this is about ‘911 Live,’ but nothing else. What can I do for you?”

  “Bill, Tom and I had lunch a couple of weeks ago, and he shared his concerns about this program with me. I must say that in the beginning I hadn't thought very much about it, but as I reviewed the information Tom shared with me after our lunch, I couldn't help but agree with him.” Bill's eyebrows rose slightly to signal his surprise that Janet had joined forces with the folks who never tired of reminding everyone about how they were going to hell. So boring a thought! “At any rate, I thought we should revisit this one, and so I've asked Tom to review his concerns with you again, and he invited Connie to join us.” Bill nodded in Connie's direction.

  “OK, I'm all ears. Shoot,” said Bill, leaning back in his chair and folding his arms across his chest.

  Tom carefully built much the same case he had done with Janet at lunch two weeks before. Then Connie added that two years before she had lost her younger sister in a tragic apartment fire, and she would not have wanted that awful scene broadcast live and unedited into all of the homes in their city.

  Tom concluded by saying, “We feel so strongly—and there are a few others besides Connie and me—that this show should not be broadcast that we will consider resigning from the station if we air it.”

  Bill, who had been sitting quietly in a frozen position during their presentation, suddenly rocked forward in his chair, put his hands on the table, and looked at Tom and Connie. “Are you crazy? You would resign over one show that might once or twice show something a little squeamish, when the airwaves are full of much worse already?…Janet,” he said, turning to face her, “I hope you're not that crazy.”

  She looked down and shook her head in embarrassment, indicating that Tom and Connie were on their own with that notion.

  Bill turned back to the other two and warmed to his subject. “This really is a bit too much. I do appreciate your sincerity, but you are way off base on this one. Why, ‘911 Live’ was one of the two or three new fall shows everyone was talking about in Phoenix. It could singlehandedly recapture the Friday night ratings for us. And, remember, all we're showing is what is actually happening. It's not that we are making anything up. It's just live action. What's wrong with that? How can we be criticized for showing what is actually happening? Don't you think the people of this city, and everywhere else in America, have the right to know what is really going on?”

  “Yes and no,” answered Tom. “They do have the right to know, but we have the responsibility to present the information in a nonoffensive, nonhysterical, balanced way—particularly at an hour in the evening when a large part of the audience will be children. The fact that Connie's sister died in an apartment fire, for example, was of course in one sense news, and that particular fire was reported on our newscast. But here we are talking about families gathering around their televisions in the early evening for what we are portraying as entertainment, when it will actually be one personal tragedy after another, without having any way to know either about whom we are reporting or what the consequences might be. What if Connie had been sitting at her dinner table and first learned of her sister's death by seeing her body dragged out of the apartment?”

  Connie squirmed in her seat and looked away. “I'm sorry, Connie,” said Tom.

  “No, that's all right. You had to say it. You're right.”

  Bill was not finished. “Responsibilities. Editing. That's all I ever hear about from people like you. If you ran the television industry, we'd still be in the Dark Ages. And, hey, you want to talk about responsibilities, let's don't stop with television. Have you been to the movies lately? Have you tried to listen to what teenage kids are listening to today on tapes and CDs? Hey, and while you're on your soapbox, let's go further. Every few months there seems to be a major exposé about how someone in our government has lied to us. And the church, which I presume you two support…last week one priest was arrested for child abuse, and another one made headlines when he figured out that over half of the verses in the Bible can't be right. And the schools. Have you seen what they're teaching in sexual education classes these days? In fact, go down after this meeting and look at the shots we're using tonight from the sex-ed classes in our own public schools. You probably won't believe them. But are you going to resign over that too? Come on. The whole world is different from the simple life you wish we still had. And, besides, the people of this city have a right to know and to see exactly what is going on. And ‘911 Live’ will show it to them.”

  Caught off guard by the wide range of examples which Bill had used to defend “911 Live,” Tom took a moment to reflect, while Connie looked at him, and Janet looked at the floor. “I know, Bill. You're right, the world is a more complex, and, in our opinion, a less inviting place than it was only a few years ago. And you're right about the examples you used. But I guess our point is that thirty years ago each of those examples would have been an isolated case. Today they all seem to be somehow connected together. And what is it that connects them in most cases? It is us, the media. We can make it all seem as bleak as you have painted it, and soon it all is, because everyone believes us and acts accordingly. We can create our own self-fulfilling prophecies, because we have the power to mold what people learn and what they think. Our point is that with that kind of power comes responsibility, whether you think so or not.

  “Have you th
ought beyond this show?” Tom added. “The effect it will have on the situations which you have just described? Won't we be creating a stage at 7:30 on Friday nights for every hoodlum, arsonist, and gang in our city to parade their activities? Aren't we saying, in effect, ‘Come on guys, give us some action!’? It seems to me that we in the media too often take the position of ‘report first and think later.’ There are simply bound to be disastrous effects from a show like this, both in individual lives and in our community, which we cannot begin to foresee today.”

  Bill started to speak, but Tom raised his hand. “One last thing. I appreciate that you think we're crazy. And you are probably right about the movies and the records, the government and the churches and the schools. But we don't work at those places. We work here. While we wish that those other things were not true, we can't do anything about them. Maybe if there were other people like us in those organizations, we wouldn't be where we are today. I just don't know, Bill. I don't want to make too big a thing out of our stand. But we are serious, and we again ask that you try to stop this show at the network…or at least preempt it here locally.”

  Bill thought for a moment before answering. “Look. I think you're spitting in the wind, if you'll pardon the expression. And I can't imagine bucking Network over this show, particularly when I think you're wrong. Frankly, the concept kind of excites me. But I tell you what I'll do. As I think you know, Network is going to run a test of the concept in a few weeks here in our city. The show will not actually be broadcast, but they will practice with the command and control links, the cameras, etcetera. I think I can arrange for the four of us to go along, either on the equipment itself or in a separate car. For your families’ sakes and our station's sake, I hate to see any of you resign over something you haven't really seen firsthand. So I'm willing to keep an open mind, if you are. And we'll all agree to withhold a final judgment until we see how the test goes. Is that OK?”

  Tom and Connie looked at each other and shrugged their shoulders. Connie nodded. “I guess so, Bill,” Tom volunteered for both of them. “We doubt we'll change our minds, either. But I suppose we could be missing something. So I guess we'll go along. How about you, Janet?”

  She smiled, trying to help defuse the tension in the room. “Sure, I'm game. I never told anybody, but as a little girl I always wanted to be a firefighter. And I guess now I will be.” She had just finished speaking when she thought about Connie's sister and suddenly wished she had chosen a different example. She glanced quickly at Connie, who seemed not to mind and was returning her smile.

  “OK, then. I'll set it up with Network and let you all know the details. I guess that's it,” Bill said, standing up to signal that the meeting was over.

  “So, the Bolsheviks really didn't overthrow the czar like they wanted everyone to believe,” said Amy, sitting on one side of Susan's queen-sized bed, which Susan had “inherited” from her grandparents when they moved to a smaller home in the previous year.

  “That's right,” confirmed Bobbie, sitting in a chair, her feet propped up on the end of the bed. “The Bolsheviks actually overthrew Kerensky's government, which had been in power since that spring.”

  “Susan,” her mother called up from downstairs, “supper will be ready in about twenty minutes. Do Amy and Bobbie want to stay?”

  Susan, also sitting on the bed, turned to her friends. Amy closed her history book, “No, thanks. I've got to get home and hit this stuff one more time before our test tomorrow.”

  “Me, too,” added Bobbie, putting her feet down and standing to get her book bag.

  “Thanks, Mom,” Susan raised her voice towards the open door of her bedroom. “They say they've got to get home. We'll all be down in a few minutes.”

  As Bobbie collected her things, Amy ran her finger along the pattern of Susan's bedspread. “Listen, guys,” she said. “I don't exactly know how to say this, but I'm five days late, and I'm worried, and I don't know what to do. If I'm pregnant, I'm going to really need your help.”

  Susan, of course, knew what Amy was talking about, yet this news still sent a strong chill down her spine. But Bobbie, who knew nothing about their dates at the fraternity house, simply could not believe her ears. “What?…”

  “Listen, Bobbie, I've been meaning to tell you about this, but there really hasn't been quite the time or place until now.” said Amy. And then she, with some help from Susan, gave Bobbie an edited version of what had happened ten days before, leaving out the details of their homecoming, but making it very clear that she was no longer a virgin.

  Three waves hit Bobbie in immediate succession, each stronger than the other. First, there was simple shock that all of this had happened to her good friend. Then she felt extreme disappointment with Amy for choosing to take this step. Finally, she experienced an overpowering sympathy and concern for Amy, who, now that she noticed, really looked quite terrible. Although Bobbie had a strong faith, this was new ground for her. She instantly knew that it would do no good to dwell on what had already happened. Amy might really be pregnant, and she was obviously reaching out to her two best friends.

  “It wasn't all that it's cracked up to be,” said Amy, first looking at Bobbie and then lowering her eyes. “I guess I don't really remember a whole lot about it. But I did it. I wish I could take the days back and not do it, but I did. And now I'm really worried that I might be pregnant.”

  Susan shifted on the bed, drawing her knees up under her and putting her hand over Amy's. “Look, I know you're worried, but it has just been five days. That happens all the time. Let's give it a while longer before we really start worrying,” Susan said, with as much optimism as she could muster.

  “OK, I'll try. But if I am pregnant, I just know that I'm going to need you guys. I really don't want to have a baby. Can you imagine me as a mother? I think it would cut into my dating. What do you think?” Amy managed a small smile.

  “Well, I've never had to deal with anything like this before,” said Bobbie, moving around the bed next to Amy, “but I know that with my parents we pray about big things together, and I think this certainly fits that category. Would you two mind if we prayed together?”

  Neither Amy nor Susan had ever prayed out loud before. But Amy was ready to try anything, and Susan wanted only the best for her friend, so she nodded as well.

  “Then let's hold hands right here, and I'll pray.” They stood together in the center of the bedroom. Bobbie bowed her head, holding her friends’ hands, and the other two girls followed her lead.

  “Dear heavenly Father, uh, we're praying today for our friend, Amy. There are…um…maybe some things which she will want to talk to You about herself later, but for now we, uh, are praying for Your perfect will in her life and that she will not be pregnant. We pray that each of us…um…will learn from this experience and will always try to seek You in all that we do. Please bless and protect Amy…Take away her worry and her doubt. Be with her and guard her and protect her, this night and always. Amen.”

  The girls raised their heads, and Bobbie and Susan both squeezed Amy's hands. “Thanks, Bobbie,” Amy said. “I'm not sure exactly what good a prayer will do at this point, but I appreciate it, and I need all the help I can get.”

  “I'll add this particular prayer to my prayer list,” said Bobbie, “and Susan and I will do everything we can to help you. But like Susan said, try not to worry too much right now.”

  The three girls collected their things and headed downstairs.

  As they descended the staircase, Richard came in through the door from the garage with his briefcase, pecked Janet on the cheek as she stood over the stove, and smiled when he saw the “Three Musketeers” as he had called Susan and her friends for years now, coming through the breakfast room.

  “Hi, ladies. How goes it?” he asked. They seemed a little subdued, which Richard assumed was from the studying they had been doing. But each greeted him with a smile.

  “Fine, Dad,” Susan spoke first. “But we've got a big h
istory test tomorrow and all of the facts are spinning in our minds.” Richard nodded back knowingly.

  “My father told me that you're going with him to the prayer breakfast in the morning, Mr. Sullivan,” Bobbie added to her usual greeting. Both Susan and Janet turned toward Richard, neither having heard this news before.

  “Yes, well, I am…and I'm really looking forward to it, although I've never been to a prayer breakfast before. The speaker, Ben Fuller, is quite a well-known attorney, and I'm particularly looking forward to hearing him talk.”

  “Well, I know it's early tomorrow morning, but I hope you enjoy it,” said Bobbie, as she took out the keys to her family's station wagon.

  “See you tomorrow in school,” Susan said to her friends as they went through the breakfast room door and out to the turnaround. “And be careful walking home, Amy,” Susan said, realizing that she was already more worried about Amy than she had let on. The three friends waved, Bobbie got into the station wagon, and Susan closed the breakfast room door. Simultaneously, the front door opened and Tommy came in from baseball practice. “I'm starved,” he called, as he vaulted up the stairs to clean up.

  Their dinner that night fit the quiet pattern of the last two weeks. Both children had noticed a change, a slight improvement in their parents’ relationship. Their father had not put their mother down during this period. Neither parent had yelled at the other. There was still some stiffness in their relationship—it wasn't warm and loving. But it was at least civil, and that was so rare that it was noticeable, and it was received happily by the two teenagers.

  But Tommy had a hard time looking at his father. He just felt unconnected to him. He didn't think about it that much, but when he did, he could not remember the last time the two of them had ever done anything together. Pride's voice, just gaining a foothold in Tommy's fourteen-year-old mind, had convinced him that he should stop asking and suggesting. And though it hurt, with a pain in his throat when he thought about it, he was not going to push himself on his father. When the voice really got going, which it did more regularly, Tommy could convince himself that his father did not love him like his friends’ fathers loved them. But the immediate result was that he simply had trouble looking at his father. And Richard sat only four feet away, at the head of the breakfast room table, thinking that Tommy was fine and not realizing any of the turmoil which was churning in his son. Or in his daughter, for that matter.