Alexandra Waring

by Laura Van Wormer

  Alexandra needed to know that there was a very real system of checks and balances in this news operation that applied to her too, even though that ridiculous contract Darenbrook had given her literally gave her power over everything—including the hiring and firing of Cassy herself. And so, while it was tricky, it was essential that Cassy and some of the others provide some limitations and structure for Alexandra to work within, because otherwise—with her temperament—she ran the very real risk of burning herself out by trying to do everything and be everything to everybody.

  Hurry up and get married, Alexandra, please, Cassy thought, watching her down there. This Darenbrook nonsense has got to stop. You don’t have the emotional energy to spare to baby-sit him.

  At moments like these, when Cassy wished she could manage Alexandra’s personal life, it always hit her like some sort of startling revelation to remember that she had once made love with Alexandra herself. Cassy would sit there—stunned, really—her mind saying, Really? Really? Then why can’t I remember? and then something would flicker and she would feel a surge of adrenalin with the scene that invariably came to mind.

  Oh, yes, I do remember… very well I remember.

  It was a very peculiar sensation for a forty-three-year-old woman who had been married for twenty-two years to think that she had ever done anything as dramatic as that. Alexandra was the only really dramatic thing she had ever done, basically because Michael had always provided more than enough drama for the entire family. And ironically, had it not been for her affair with Alexandra, Cassy never would have had the strength to take a stand with Michael—the stand that had helped him to finally stop drinking.

  It had started in friendship. Alexandra had been right there for Michael after he had been fired from WWKK, and then she had been right there for Cassy when Michael ran out on her and was drinking himself to death and tearing the family apart in the process. Alexandra had understood Michael and Cassy and even their son Henry, too, and Cassy had been able to talk to her in a way she had never talked to anyone. And Alexandra hadn’t known anyone in New York and had been working so hard at WWKK, and so Cassy had felt comfortable holding up her end of the friendship by understanding Alexandra’s own woes and headaches at WWKK. And so, despite the difference in their ages, the friendship had seemed meant to be—

  Despite the fact that Cassy had known from the beginning that Alexandra was attracted to her. Alexandra had once even gone so far as to confess that she was, but then they had talked it through and the matter had been dismissed.

  Only Cassy had not forgotten about it. Not for a second. Looking back on it, although she had not been fully conscious of it at the time, Cassy realized that she had not only played on Alexandra’s attraction to her but had encouraged it from the start. And who would have blamed her? To be so emotionally battered and confused and lonely as she had been, and to have such a lovely, warm and wonderful young person as Alexandra so near? The one person Cassy knew who would never hurt her? The one person she knew who would never threaten her family, and who would never demand commitment, since to do so would only threaten the most important thing in Alexandra’s own life—her work? And too (and it had been no small thing), Alexandra was the first person who had ever seemed to care more about being close to the Cassy on the inside than about making passes at the Cassy on the outside—at the face, the body, the package that had only prompted passes with empty mutterings of love at Cassy all of her life.

  She had been the one to ask Alexandra to make love to her. And Alexandra had. And it had been wonderful. And that part, learning to feel again, to feel lovable again, Cassy had never regretted—would never regret.

  No.

  It ended as soon as Michael agreed to go into a rehab, and while Michael often saw Alexandra after that, Cassy did not, not until August of 1987. In the meantime, however, faithfully, the women had written to each other once a week, long, newsy letters that did much to put them on a new footing—a stronger footing, actually, because it became very clear that theirs could, and would, be a most wonderful friendship.

  And it was. As soon as Gordon reentered Alexandra’s life, Cassy had too, and she and Alexandra had been very close ever since. And now they were colleagues as well, and Cassy was extremely grateful for how everything had worked out.

  Only, Cassy thought to herself, sighing, pressing the bridge of her nose and closing her eyes, my whole home life has collapsed. Michael was interviewing for a job in Los Angeles and Cassy had told him she wanted him to leave by the end of the month regardless of whether he got it or not—pretty strong hints on both sides that, although neither could utter the word “divorce”, the marriage was truly over. But this was not the first time this year Michael was supposed to have left, and so Cassy thought she would spare herself the embarrassment of telling people until he actually did. But with this new endeavor at DBS for her to pour her all into, and with Michael’s twenty-nine-year-old in L.A. to pour his all into, Cassy thought it might really happen this time. And she hoped it would. Even Henry said he thought his parents would be better off apart (before they strangled each other—that was the part Henry always tactfully left out).

  But Cassy smiled then, looking down at the studio, thinking how lucky she was to have DBS to help her get through, to help her start over in her life. However—and Cassy’s smile faded somewhat—sometimes she couldn’t help it, but she felt a twinge or two around Alexandra, of jealousy, and of feeling more than a little over the hill. Alexandra was so young and had so much ahead of her. And about Gordon—ah! Now why couldn’t she have fallen for someone like Gordon way back at Northwestern? A man’s man kind of man, but without all the hooting and hollering and rock and roll insanity of the man she had chosen for herself?

  And if this worked out at DBS, after Alexandra had been married a little while, Alexandra could have a baby. The one thing about being an anchor that Alexandra did not like—being tied to a desk—was the very thing that would enable her to have a child and be around to raise it. And then, with the child-care facilities in Darenbrook I, Alexandra could just bring the baby in with her—

  Stop it! Cassy told herself.

  She had to stop herself because she had a very bad habit of wanting to try and make Alexandra Waring live Cassy Cochran’s life over again, but make it come out the way it was supposed to. Alexandra hadn’t had a neurotic mother who screamed at her night and day that her beauty was a curse and that if she ever used it instead of her brain she’d be dead by forty—and so Alexandra just went out in front of the cameras, a place Cassy had looked at longingly but had refused to go, certain that the camera would become to her what the mirror had become to the witch in Snow White—or worse, what it had become to her mother. Alexandra had not gotten married right out of school because she was too scared to be alone and too uptight to live with a man without being married to him. Alexandra had not had a baby because she needed something, someone she could trust to love her. Alexandra had not—

  There was a quiet knock on the door and then it opened. It was Chi Chi. “Sorry,” she whispered, “but Langley just called. He says Jessica Wright’s turned up and he thinks she’s brought something important.”

  Cassy was on her feet in an instant and instantly she felt better. Because this was the arena in which she had always known how to live, where she had always been able to think clearly, make decisions and effortlessly move to carry them out. This was work. This was where she had always been okay.

  10

  Jessica Wright

  Until that fateful St. Patrick’s Day night in 1981, Jessica Wright had figured that her life would proceed like a lot of Eastern girls’ lives did who fled their upbringings to schools like the University of Arizona: she’d have a suntan for four straight years, return home with a bachelor’s degree, jazz up her resume, polish up her suburban savoir faire , let her mother buy her some interview outfits, let her father buy her a commuter ticket and land an entry-level job somewhere “with it,” like Condé Nas
t, Random House or CBS.

  She’d marry some boring banker type (the kind that tended to be wildly attracted to Eastern girls who fled their upbringings to schools like the University of Arizona), because she would need a nice place to live in Manhattan and somewhere near the ocean to go to on summer weekends, and unless there was going to be some sort of untimely death in the family, somebody was going to have to support her tennis, skiing, traveling and clothes habit if she were to take such a low-paying job in the interest of remaining interesting and interested.

  Or, she had thought, she might be able to only live with the boring banker until she found someone she really wanted to marry (the kind that tended not to be wildly attracted to Eastern girls who fled their upbringings to schools like the University of Arizona because they themselves had fled their upbringings to schools like the University of Colorado, and who wanted to be interesting and interested too, and therefore needed a boring banker type of their own or, better yet, some young thing who had had an untimely death in the family).

  Well, after all this serious contemplation, Jessica never even got out of Tucson.

  On that fateful St. Patrick’s Day evening in 1981, Jessica—the twenty-one-year-old junior majoring in journalism that she had been—was in the Blue Flamingo Bar near campus, dancing a jig in her green kilt for the benefit of a photographer from the Daily Wildcat, when a fellow she knew from one of her classes, Denny Ladler, came in. Denny had come to pick up the host of “Our Town Tucson,” a public affairs TV talk show Denny worked on, but was told that the host had already been picked up by the Tucson police, busted by a narc for snorting cocaine and Mexican heroin in the men’s room.

  Thinking fast, Denny pulled Jessica off the dance floor (“Listen, you’re the best bullshitter I know,”) and asked her if she could come with him—right now—and be the substitute host on “Our Town Tucson.” Jessica said sure she could. Jessica thought she could do anything that night, which was very often the case when she was in the Blue Flamingo Bar.)

  “Okay, everybody,” Jessica said to the camera that night on “Our Town Tucson,” then delivering the line for which she would later become famous: “No snoozing out there while I’m on the air!” And then she flung her hand across the small stage at the man sitting in the other deck chair. “Our guest tonight is Mr. Pipo Remodoza, the city superintendent who wishes to tell us all about the Wet Garbage/Dry Trash project.”

  “Thank you, hello,” Mr. Remodoza said enthusiastically, smiling and nodding into the wrong camera.

  Jessica actually played the interview pretty straight—until Mr. Remodoza started droning on and on about how viewers could tell the difference between wet garbage and dry trash. “If it looks damp…” he was saying.

  “Pipo Remodoza,” Jessica said, interrupting him. “Why does that name sound so familiar to me? Did you used to know President Nixon?”

  “I don’t think so,” Mr. Remodoza said.

  “Oh,” Jessica said, recrossing her legs and hiking her kilt (prompting a whistle from somebody, which the microphone picked up). After she finished winking (at whoever that somebody was), she turned back to her guest and asked, “So where are you really from, anyway?”

  “From?” Mr. Remodoza said.

  “From,” Jessica repeated. “¿Donde estaban?”

  Mr. Remodoza shook his head.

  “Where—are—you—from?” Jessica said a little impatiently, hitting the arm of her chair with her fist.

  Mr. Remodoza’s eyes widened a little in alarm. “I’m from Queens, I’m originally from Queens,” he said quickly.

  “How originally?”

  “Jessica!” Denny hissed, which her mike picked up.

  “What?” Mr. Remodoza said, leaning over to look at Denny under the camera.

  “I mean, Mr. Remodoza,” Jessica said, now sounding very nice indeed, “how long have you lived here in Tucson?”

  “Almost two years,” he said, settling back in his chair.

  “Oh, I see, another longtime resident,” Jessica said, leaning back in her chair (making the entire crew strain in the opposite direction, holding their breath as she teetered on the brink of disaster, one chair leg right on the edge of the stage). “I’m from Essex Fells, New Jersey, myself,” she added, thumping her chair back down (and prompting a collective sigh of relief). “So what did you do in good old Queens?”

  Before Mr. Remodoza had a chance to answer, Jessica leaned forward to stick her hand in front of his face and said to the camera, “For viewers who don’t know, Queens is the borough of New York City where Forest Hills is—the place where the U. S. Open used to be held and still should be held today but isn’t.” She lowered her hand and said to Mr. Remodoza, “The racket where the Open is now is beyond belief.”

  “Ha-ha, that’s very funny,” Mr. Remodoza said.

  “What is?”

  “The racket—”

  “Oh, right,” Jessica said, smiling, “if you’re from Queens, then you must know all about rackets. So what was yours?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Job,” Jessica said. “Did you have a job there? In Queens?”

  “Yes,” Mr. Remodoza said. “I was a government official.”

  “Golly,” Jessica said, snapping her fingers, “now how did I know you were going to say that? So does anyone know you moved to Arizona, or do they just forward your paychecks?”

  “What?”

  “Jessica!” Denny was heard to hiss again.

  “Oh, all right!” she yelled at Denny. “But don’t you think it’s a little weird that a Queens government official was appointed a city superintendent in Tucson? I do.”

  She was a hit from the beginning. Because of the havoc the mountains and desert around Tucson played on broadcast signals, the city had been wired for cable for years and so even UHF Channel 62 that “Our Town Tucson” was on came into most homes clear as a bell. All over town, in bars and college dorms in particular, groups of people turned to “Our Town Tucson” at eleven o’clock to see Jessica interview everyone from a doctor about sexually transmitted diseases to some lady who collected cacti that she saw faces in. (“See, if you look at it this way, you can see—” “Curly of the Three Stooges!” “No, dear, this is Senator Joe McCarthy.”)

  In six months Group K Productions offered to take her commercial, and Jessica gleefully quit school, took Denny as her producer and jumped from Channel 62 to 6 with “The Jessica Wright Show.” She didn’t then—nor would she ever—have a set format for the show, choosing instead to let each topic or guest lineup dictate it. Some nights the shows were oddly affecting, like the night Jessica had on three people over seventy whose brilliant careers—as an actress, a teacher and an attorney—had been utterly destroyed by scandal when they were young. Some nights Jessica was straight-faced outrageous, like the night she interviewed the dorm mothers of the all-women university halls about what constituted ladylike behavior. Some nights they had music, featuring local bands. Sometimes they had studio audiences and sometimes they had closed sets. There were serious shows—like the teenage gang show (when Jessica got knocked right out of her chair as a fight broke out)—and there were some very risqué shows, like the time Jessica interviewed four truckers (with bags over their heads) about their best truck-stop sex experiences on Route 10.

  Group K offered a syndication package on “The Jessica Wright Show” and, as the scope of her guests and subject matter expanded, so did her markets. In the hustle and bustle Jessica acquired a husband, Gary, a marriage which did not add much stability to her already tumultuous and chaotic life as the talk show hostess in ascension, particularly when Gary was fired from his advertising job and he announced he would be her full-time business manager. By 1985 she was seen in twenty-one markets and, after David Bowie did a show with her that fall, L.A. and New York publicists began to call. Her demographics were fabulous—capturing that elusive eighteen-to-thirty-four market but good—and her fame in the region continued to spread and, as it did,
even the critics started to like her. As the Albuquerque Times wrote:

  Miss Wright’s greatest appeal lies in her ability to change her personality at the drop of a hat. She readily admits that she does and explains, “It’s my job to give each guest whatever he or she needs to open up. Maybe my bookers have an agenda in mind with each guest, but I don’t. I merely want to get at whatever it is that makes that guest special, that makes them stand out from our neighbors. And if one stands out because she raised more for the March of Dimes than anyone else and the other blasted her husband through the head with his shotgun, I can hardly behave the same way with both. Some need a strong personality to react to, while others need for me to stay quiet and out of their way. And, you know, some people need kindness and”—Miss Wright laughs a low, wicked laugh—”some need a little drama onstage to reveal themselves.”

  Jessica’s personal life, at this point, had taken a very bad turn for the worse, but, ironically, the more suicidal she felt off the air, the more her on—air work seemed to improve. The Tulsa Sentinel called her show, “The best chronicle of our times,” and the Dallas Telegram wrote:

  Ms. Wright embodies the confusion of an entire generation that learned its morality from television. Why is it, Ms. Wright is apt to wonder, that families are “so weird” instead of like the Andersons on “Father Knows Best”? Why is it we see thugs gracing the society pages instead of being put away by Elliot Ness? Why do real people seem so ridiculous to us and people putting on an act seem so real? Or, as Ms. Wright so appropriately wailed to a panel of social psychologists the other night, “Somebody, please, just tell me why we are all so lonely in America?”

  But then the problems and insanity of her life began to creep onto the show with her. Her mood swings sometimes shocked even herself; her behavior off screen had been shocking to herself for over a year; and Jessica sobbed, alone, when the San Diego Star wrote: