by Tony Parsons
***
“Our guest next tonight no needs introduction,” Marty said for the third time in a row. “Fuck…fuck…fuck…what is wrong with this bloody teleprompter?”
There was nothing wrong with the teleprompter and he knew it.
Up in the gallery, the director murmured soothing words into his earpiece about going for the rehearsal again when he was ready. But Marty tore off his microphone and walked off the floor.
When we were live, Marty had always been fearless in front of a teleprompter. If he made a mistake, if he stumbled over the words rolling before him, he just grinned and kept going. Because he knew that he had to.
Recording was different. You know you can always stop and start again if you are taping. This should make things easier, of course. But it can paralyze you. It can do things to your breathing. It can make you start to sweat. And when the camera catches you sweating, you’re dead.
I caught up with him in the green room where he was ripping open a beer. This worried me more than the tantrum on set. Marty was a screamer but he wasn’t a drinker. A few beers and his nerves would be so steady that he wouldn’t be able to move.
“Recording a show is a different rhythm,” I told him. “When you’re live, the energy level is so high that you just zip through it from beginning to end. When you’re recording, the adrenaline has to be more controlled. But you can do it.”
“What the fuck do you know about it?” he asked me. “How many shows have you presented?”
“I know that you don’t make it easier by ranting about the teleprompter girl.”
“She’s moving that thing too fast!”
“Yes, to keep up with you,” I said. “If you slow down, so will she. Marty, it’s the same girl we’ve been using for a year.”
“You didn’t even try to keep the show live,” he sulked.
“As soon as you smacked Tarzan, all this was inevitable. The station can’t take a chance on that happening again. So we do it live on tape.”
“Live on fucking tape. That says it all. Whose side are you on, Harry?”
I was about to tell him when Siobhan stuck her head around the door of the green room.
“I’ve managed to find a replacement for the teleprompter girl,” she said. “Shall we try again?”
***
“We’re watching telly-vision,” Pat told me when I arrived at Glenn’s place.
I picked him up and kissed him. He wrapped his arms and legs around me like a little monkey as I carried him into the flat.
“You’re watching TV with Mommy?”
“No.”
“With Granddad Glenn?”
“No. With Sally and Steve.”
In the little living room there was a boy and girl in their midteens wrapped around each other on the sofa. They were wearing the kind of clothes that don’t look quite right without a snowboard.
The girl—thin, languid, blank—looked up at me as I came into the room. The boy—scornful and pockmarked—tapped the TV’s remote control against his lower teeth and didn’t take his eyes from a video of an angry man with no shirt on, a singer who looked like he should be helping police with their inquiries. Glenn would know who he was. Glenn would have all his records. But he made me wonder if music was getting crap or I was getting old. Or both.
“Hi,” the girl said.
“Hi. I’m Harry—Pat’s dad. Is Gina around?”
“Nah—she went to the airport.”
“The airport?”
“Yeah—she had to, you know, what do you call it? Catch a plane.”
I put Pat down. He settled himself among the Star Wars figures that were scattered over the floor, shooting admiring glances at the spotty youth watching MTV on the sofa. Pat really loved big boys. Even dumb, ugly big boys.
“Where did she go?”
The girl—Sally—frowned with concentration.
“To China. I think.”
“China? Really? Or Japan? It’s very important.”
Her face brightened.
“Yeah—maybe Japan.”
“There’s a big difference between China and Japan,” I said.
The boy—Steve—looked up for the first time.
“Not to me,” he said.
The girl laughed. So did Pat. He was only little. He didn’t know what he was laughing about. I realized that his face was dirty. Without a bit of encouragement, Pat had a very cavalier attitude to personal hygiene.
Steve turned back to the TV with a satisfied smirk, still tapping the remote control against his lower teeth. I could have cheerfully stuffed it down his throat.
“Do you know how long she’ll be gone?”
She grunted a negative, absentmindedly squeezing Steve’s beefy leg.
“Glenn not around?” I said.
“Nah—my dad’s at work,” said Sally.
So that was it. The girl was one of Glenn’s abandoned kids, from a marriage or two after Gina’s mother.
“You visiting?” I asked.
“Staying here for a while,” she said. “Been getting a lot of hassle from my mom. Whining about my friends, my clothes, the time I come home, the time I don’t come home.”
“Is that right?”
“‘You’re treating this place like a hotel,’” Sally screeched. “‘You’re too young to smoke that stuff.’ Blah blah blah.” She sighed with the weariness of the very young. “The usual. It’s not as though she didn’t do it all herself back in the dark ages, the hypocritical old bitch.”
“Bitch,” said Steve.
“She’s a bitch,” smiled Pat, a Star Wars figure in each tiny fist, and Steve and Sally laughed at him.
This is how it works, I thought. You break up and your child becomes a kind of castaway, set adrift in a sea of daytime television and ducked responsibilities. Welcome to the lousy modern world where the parent you live with is a distant, contemptible figure and the parent you don’t live with feels guilty enough to grant you asylum any time things get too tense at home.
But not my boy.
Not my Pat.
“Get your coat and your toys,” I told him.
His dirty little face brightened.
“Are we going to the park?”
“Darling,” I said, “we’re going home.”
ten
We were meant to be celebrating.
Barry Twist had come up with the idea of a fifteen-minute delay system for the show, meaning we would go back to doing the thing live but with a short time lag before transmission as insurance against either the host or the guests going bananas.
The station was happy because it meant they still had time to edit out anything that was really going to give the advertisers the running squirts, and Marty was happy because it meant he no longer got paralysis of the lower teleprompter.
So Marty took me to lunch at his favorite restaurant, a fashionably spartan basement where well-fed people in television put authentic Italian peasant food on their expense accounts.
Like most of the places we went to, its bare floorboards and white walls made it look more like a gym than a restaurant, possibly to make us feel that we were doing ourselves some good in there. When we arrived just after two—I was running late after delivering Pat to my parents—the place was already crowded but the reception desk was empty.
A waitress approached us. She was clearly not having a good day. She was hot and flustered and there was a red wine stain on her white uniform. And she kept doing this thing with her hair, which was shiny and black and cut in one of those old-fashioned bell shapes that you imagine on women in an F. Scott Fitzgerald novel or on Hong Kong girls in the fifties. A bob. That’s what you call it. Her bangs kept flying up as she stuck out her bottom lip and blew some air through them.
“Can I help you?” she said.
“Sure,” she said, picking up the book of reservations. “Name?”
“Marty Mann,” he said with that special little emphasis that indicated he expected her to recognize him now and practically faint with excitement. But Marty didn’t mean a thing to her. She was an American.
“Sorry,” she said, consulting her list of reservations. “Can’t see your name on the list, sir.”
Then she gave us a smile. She had a good smile—wide, white, and open. One of those smiles that just shines.
“Believe me,” Marty said, “we do have a table.”
“Not here, you don’t.”
She slammed the book shut and moved to walk away.
Marty blocked her path. She looked pissed off. She stuck out her bottom lip and blew some air through her bangs.
“Excuse me,” she said.
She was tall and thin with dancer’s legs and wide-set brown eyes. Good-looking but not a kid. Maybe a couple of years older than me. Most of the people working in this restaurant that looked like a gym were cool young things who clearly thought they were on their way to somewhere better. She wasn’t like that at all.
She looked at Marty and massaged the base of her spine as if it had been aching for a long time.
“Do you know how important I am?” Marty said.
“Do you know how busy I am?” she said.
“We might not be on the list,” Marty said very slowly, as if he were talking to someone who had just had part of their brain removed. “But one of my people called Paul—the manager? You do know Paul?”
“Sure,” she said evenly. “I know Paul.”
“Paul said it would be okay. It’s always okay.”
“I’m real glad that you and Paul have got such an understanding relationship. But if I don’t have a spare table, I can’t give you one, can I? Sorry again.”
This time she left us.
“This is fucking stupid,” Marty said.
But Paul had spotted us and quickly crossed the crowded restaurant to greet his celebrity client.
“Mr. Mann,” he said, “so good to see you. Is there a problem?”
“Apparently there’s no table.”
“Ah, we always have a table for you, Mr. Mann.” Paul’s Mediterranean smile flashed in his tanned face. He had a good smile too. But it was a completely different smile to the one she had. “This way, please.”
We walked into the restaurant and got the usual stares and murmurs and goofy grins that Marty’s entrance always provoked. Paul snapped his fingers, and a table was brought from the kitchen. It was quickly covered with a tablecloth, cutlery, a wedge of rough-hewn peasant bread, and a silver bowl of olive oil. A waitress appeared by our side. It was her.
“Hello again,” she said.
“Tell me this,” said Marty. “Whatever happened to the good old stereotype of the American waitress? The one who serves you with a smile?”
“It’s her day off,” the waitress said. “I’ll get you the menu.”
“I don’t need the menu,” Marty said. “Because I already know what I want.”
“I’ll get it anyway. For your friend here. We have some interesting specials today.”
“Shall we have this conversation again once you’ve turned on your hearing aid?” Marty said. “Read my lips—we eat here all the time. We don’t need the menu.”
“Give her a break, Marty,” I said.
“Yeah,” she said, looking at me for the first time. “Give me a break, Marty.”
“I’ll have the twirly sort of pasta with the red stuff on top and he’ll have the same,” Marty said.
“Twirly pasta,” she said, writing on her little pad. “Red stuff. Got it.”
“And bring us a bottle of champagne,” Marty said, patting the waitress on her bum. “There’s a good girl.”
“Get your sweaty hand off my butt before I break your arm,” she said. “There’s a good boy.”
“Just bring us a drink, will you?” Marty said, quickly removing his hand.
The waitress left us.
“Christ, we should have ordered a take away,” Marty said. “Or got here a bit earlier.”
“Sorry about the delay,” I said. “The traffic—”
“Doesn’t matter,” he said, raising a hand.
“I’m glad you agreed to the fifteen-minute delay system,” I told him. “I promise you that it’s not going to harm the show.”
“Well, that’s just one of the changes we’re making,” Marty said. That’s why I wanted to talk to you.”
I waited, at last registering that Marty was nervous. He had a set of breathing exercises that were meant to disguise when he had the shakes but they weren’t working now. And we weren’t celebrating after all.
“I also want Siobhan more involved with the booking of guests,” Marty said. “And I want her up in the gallery every week. And I want her to keep the station off my back.”
I let it sink in for a moment. The waitress brought our champagne. She poured two glasses. Marty took a long slug and stared at his glass, his lips parting as he released an inaudible little belch. “Pardon me,” he said.
I let my glass stand on the table.
“But all those things—that’s the producer’s job,” I said, trying on a smile. “That’s my job.”
“Well, those are the changes I want to make.”
“Wait a minute. I’m not getting a new contract?”
Marty spread his hands as if to say—what can I do? It’s a crazy world!
“Listen, Harry. You don’t want me to move you sideways into some little nothing job that you could do with your eyes closed. That would look terrible, wouldn’t it?”
“Marty,” I said. “Marty. Hold on. Hold on just a minute. I really need this job. Now more than ever. There’s the thing with Gina—I’ve got Pat living with me—and I don’t know what’s going to happen. You know all that. And I can’t lose my job. Not now.”
“I’m sorry, Harry. We need to make some changes.”
“What is this? Punishment for not being available twenty-four hours a day when my marriage is breaking up? I’m sorry I wasn’t in the office this morning, okay? I can’t leave my son alone. I had to—”
“Harry, there’s no need to raise your voice. We can do this in a civilized fashion.”
“Come on, Marty. You’re Mister Fucking Controversy. You’re not worried about a little scene, are you?”
“I’m sorry, Harry. Siobhan’s in. You’re out. And you’ll thank me for it one day. This could be the best thing that’s ever happened to you. No hard feelings?”
The little shit actually held out his hand. I ignored it, getting up as quickly as I could and smacking my thighs against the side of the table. He shook his head, all disappointed in me, and I left him alone at the table.
I walked out of the restaurant, my legs aching and my cheeks burning, only turning back when I heard Marty shriek with pain.
Somehow the waitress had spilled an entire plate of pasta in his lap.
“Boy, I’m sorry,” she said. “Would you like a little Parmesan on that?”
***
My parents drove Pat home. My mother went around turning on all the lights while my father asked me how work was going. I told him that it was going great.
They stayed with Pat while I did our shopping at the local supermarket. It was only a five-minute drive away, but I was gone for quite a while because I was secretly watching all the women I took to be single mothers. I had never even thought about them before, but now I saw that these women were heroes. Real heroes.
They were doing it all by themselves. Shopping, cooking, entertaining, everything. They were bringing up their children alone.
And I couldn’t even wash Pat’s hair.
I knew that already. But Pat didn’t want me to wash his hair. He had told me that when I had casually dropped hair-washing into the conversation after we came back from Glenn’s. Pat wanted his mother to wash his hair. The way she always did.
Yet we couldn’t put it off any longer. And soon he was standing in the middle of the soaking wet bathroom floor wearing just a pair of pants, his dirty blond hair hanging down over eyes that were red from tears and the baby shampoo that Gina still used on him.
It wasn’t working. I was doing something wrong.
I knelt by his side. He wouldn’t look at me.
“What’s wrong, Pat?” I asked him.
“Nothing.”
We both knew what was wrong.
“Mommy’s gone away for a little while. Would you like Daddy to wash your hair?”
Stupid question. He shook his head.
“What would a Jedi Knight do at a time like this?” I asked him.
He didn’t reply. Sometimes a four-year-old doesn’t bother to reply.
“Listen,” I said, fighting back the urge to scream. “Do you think that Luke Skywalker cries when he has his hair washed?”
“Don’t know, don’t care.”
I had tried to wash his hair with him leaning into the bath, but that hadn’t worked. So now I helped him out of his pants, scooped him up and placed him sitting down in the tub. He wiped snot from his little nose while I ran the water until it was the right temperature.
“This is fun, isn’t it?” I said. “We should do this together more often.”
He scowled at me. But he leaned forward and allowed me to run the water over his head. Then he felt my hands applying the shampoo and something snapped. He stood up, throwing one of his legs over the side of the bath in a pitiful attempt to escape.
“Pat!” I said. “Sit down, please.”
“I want Mommy to do it!”
“Mommy’s not here! Sit down!”
“Where is she? Where is she?”
“I don’t know!”
He blindly tried to climb out of the bath, howling as the suds dripped into his eyes. I pushed him back down and held him there, quickly hosing off the shampoo and trying to ignore his screams.
