The Next Best Thing

by Jennifer Weiner

  “We did.”

  “I’m feeling lucky,” he said, hugging me. I wasn’t, but I hugged him right back.

  * * *

  I waited, watching the time, as people drank and filled their plates. Just before eight-thirty, Dave came up behind me. He touched my hand, and I turned to him, beaming. I should have been nervous, my belly knotted, palms sweaty, on edge, counting the hours until the ratings came in, but all I could do was think about how desperately I wanted this all to be over so I could go back home with him, back to bed. “You ready?” he asked.

  I nodded. “Ready as I’ll ever be.”

  “Then go get ’em,” he told me as Reilly the line producer hurried over with the microphone in his hand.

  “Ruthie? It’s time.”

  I took the microphone and stepped to the front of the room, next to one of the television sets that was broadcasting the show’s title card.

  “Hi. Welcome, everyone. Thank you all for being here.” I waited until the room quieted down and then said, “I’m Ruth Saunders, your executive producer, and I want to start with the good news. We’re airing the premiere episode of The Next Best Thing tonight, as you all know, so I’m happy to announce that there will be no more pilot reshoots.”

  Laughter and a few good-natured groans filled the room.

  “But seriously. This was my first show, and I couldn’t have asked for a better experience.” Or a worse one. But never mind. I thanked my stars, thanked the crew, the writers, the executives, the studio that had given the show its first shot, the network that had put us on the air. I let my eyes wander, catching a glimpse of my grandma, Maurice’s proud nod, Big Dave’s grin. “So, before I embarrass myself or forget someone important, thank you all. Thank you all so much. And now . . .” Just like I’d practiced, I waved my remote at the first of the flat-screen TVs and watched them flare to life as the theme music swelled to fill the night.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  The Next Best Thing premiered on a Wednesday night. Ten days later, on a perfect Los Angeles afternoon, with a breeze that smelled of eucalyptus and salt blowing in from the ocean, and the sun shining and the sky a brilliant blue, my grandmother and her beloved were married. They stood in front of the fountain in the lobby of our apartment building, which had been decorated with tiny twinkling lights. Grandma wore an ivory silk sheath, a double strand of pearls, and peau de soie heels. Her hair had been drawn back into a sleek chignon, ornamented with a single calla lily tucked behind her right ear. A canopy of flowers, more creamy lilies and pale-violet orchids, stood in the center of the tiled floor, and fifty of the happy couple’s friends and relations sat in ribbon-draped white wooden chairs in front of it.

  Before the service began, Maurice pulled me aside. For a moment, I thought he was going to ask my permission for my grandmother’s hand. Instead, he put both big hands on my shoulders, looked me in the eye, and said, “Your grandmother is so proud of you.”

  “Really? Even after everything?”

  He smiled up at me, dentures gleaming in the sun. “It’s Hollywood. She’s been on enough shows to know how it goes. You did the best you could by her. Because of you, she’ll live forever!”

  More like three episodes, I thought, but I let him hug me, embracing me in his scent of Chanel for Men and soap and starch and the white rose pinned to his lapel.

  Maurice’s sons held two corners of the chuppah. The lawyer had a stony expression on his heavy features; the podiatrist looked amused. I held the third corner, and Maurice’s greatgrandchildren, two boys and a curly-haired girl in a white dress with a violet sash, giggled as they clutched the fourth. The rabbi, who moonlighted as an extra, was a friend of my grandmother’s. His voice boomed theatrically through the lobby as he led the couple through the vows.

  Do you, Maurice, promise to love this woman, to honor and cherish her, to always smoke your cigars on the balcony and never complain when she spends your money on organic produce? Do you, Rachel, promise to love this man, to honor and cherish him, to make sure he takes his Prilosec before you eat at El Coyote? Smiling into each other’s eyes, hands clasped, they said I do and I will. After the rabbi pronounced them husband and wife, Grandma wrapped her hands around the back of Maurice’s golf-tanned neck and pulled him close to kiss her. The audience clapped. The great-grandchildren whooped. Maurice stomped on a lightbulb wrapped in a napkin, crunching it resoundingly, and the cheers were so loud you would have thought we were a crowd of hundreds.

  Maurice clasped Grandma’s hand and started to lead her back down the aisle, but on the way Grandma stopped to give me a hug. I kissed her cheek, and she started to cry.

  “Oh, don’t,” I said, even though I felt close to crying myself. “You’ll ruin your makeup.”

  “I just want you to be happy!” Grandma said.

  “I am,” I told her. “Really.” It wasn’t a lie. I was wearing my pink dress, the one I’d worn to the premiere party, and, last week after work, I’d gone to the Hermès store in Beverly Hills and bought Dave a tie to match. He hadn’t walked me up the aisle—he wasn’t a groomsman, and it wasn’t the kind of wedding that even had groomsmen—but he was sitting in the front row, in a navy-blue suit and the tie, and he’d given my hand a squeeze when the vows were done, then put a glass of Champagne in my hand. “I believe a toast is appropriate,” he said.

  I smiled and got to my feet.

  “Ladies. Gentlemen. Actors,” I began. A ripple of laughter made its way through the crowd. Dave looked up at me, pleased and proud, and I felt my heart melt, wondering whether I’d ever dreamed or imagined that I could be so happy. “Please leave your gifts on the table and your head shots with me.” More laughter. I adjusted the glass in my hand. “As most of you know, my grandmother has taken care of me since I was three years old. She nurtured my dreams. She made me believe in myself. She moved across the country with me, away from everything she knew, because she believed in me, and she made me believe that I could write. But more than that, she made me believe . . .” My throat was closing. Dave gave my hand a reassuring squeeze, and I made myself go on. “That I was smart, and funny, and worthy, and beautiful.” Across the room, I saw Maurice hand my grandmother a handkerchief, and I saw her wipe her eyes. I lifted my glass. “She gave me what every woman—every person—deserves. I’ve been so lucky to have her in my life, and Maurice, I know that you know how lucky you are to have her in yours, and how happy you make her.” I lifted my glass high. “A toast to my grandmother, Rachel Scheft, the best and bravest woman I know, who deserves every happiness.”

  “And a speaking role in a major motion picture!” someone called, and everyone laughed. I took a sip of my Champagne, and the mariachi band struck up what sounded suspiciously like “La Macarena” as Dave and I found a quiet place at the side of the fountain.

  “Did I do okay?”

  “Perfect. Are you hungry?”

  There was a taco truck parked outside, with servers handing out carnitas dusted with cilantro and wedges of grilled pineapple, and chicken enchiladas, and sugared, cinnamon-dusted churros. On the tables were pitchers of white sangria, with chunks of peaches and sliced sugared grapes. An open bar was set up in one corner, and the band in another. Children raced around the fountain barefoot, waving sparklers, and couples danced. Even Maurice’s sons didn’t look miserable. “Awesome party,” said Sam, who ambled by with a burrito in one hand and a bottle of Dos Equis in the other.

  “Congratulations,” said Nancy, trailing happily after Sam. She’d made my grandmother a lei out of purple-and-white blossoms, and Grandma had slipped it over her head after the vows.

  Dave and I filled our plates, and then I took a seat on the edge of the fountain. Tonight my grandmother and Maurice would sleep at the Regent Beverly Wilshire in the same room my grandmother and I had shared our first night out here, when Hollywood was all bright lights and possibilities. Maurice knew about the honeymoon, and I’d had the tickets and itinerary delivered to their room, along with Champagne an
d chocolate-dipped strawberries. Tomorrow they’d be flying to Hawaii. From now on, I was on my own, a single lady . . . a single lady with a boyfriend who loved her. I bent down to dip my fingertips in the fountain water, smiling. If things wrapped up before the sun went down, Dave and I could take a swim before dinner.

  “Did you see Variety?” he asked.

  When I shook my head, Dave reached into his breast pocket and unfolded the page he’d clipped. Sure enough, there it was. “Maurice Goldsman, a retired financial adviser, and Rachel Scheft, an actress who has appeared in shows from ER to Cougar Town, are to be married on Saturday afternoon . . .”

  “Good God,” I said, and shook my head, laughing.

  “You’re in there, too,” Dave said. I kept reading. “Scheft is the grandmother of Ruth Saunders, creator, executive producer, and showrunner of the recently debuted ABS sitcom The Next Best Thing.”

  I shook my head again, impressed by a woman wily enough to turn her own wedding announcement into a commercial for her granddaughter’s show.

  Dave took my hand. “Are you doing all right?”

  I nodded. “I’m good. I’ll miss her . . .” I didn’t want to say more, didn’t want to tell him how empty my apartment and my life would feel without her. It was a first-world problem if ever there was one.

  “So tell me this,” said Dave. “Is it everything you thought it would be?”

  I knew what he was asking about and considered my answer. “It’s different,” I finally said. I’d thought about it a lot since Rob had asked the same question, trying to digest the reviews and the network’s notes and what I was seeing every day, onstage and in the writers’ room. After all of that thinking, I had slowly arrived at the conclusion that there was no real way to change the show’s direction. Not this season, not at the four-shows-in-five-weeks pace the network demanded, where there was barely time to grab a shower and a few hours’ sleep after one episode wrapped before we’d have to be back on set to get started on the next one.

  The stars weren’t going to be replaced. Cady was much more valuable than I was, and if it came down to it, the network would rather make The Next Best Thing without me than without her. Pete wasn’t going to get any more consistent about his line readings—if the acting coach we’d finally hired hadn’t gotten him up to speed by now, it was probably never going to happen. Taryn would do her Taryn thing, blond and gorgeous and funny enough of the time, no more, no less. The best shows, the ones I’d grown up loving, the ones I admired as an adult, took a whole season, sometimes more than one, to come into their own, to find their tone and rhythm, their own particular language and look. We would not have that luxury. It was counterintuitive—if great television needed time to happen, why not give all shows that time? But the truth was, in this cutthroat climate, with cable channels and on-demand playback and entertainment available on every iPad and cell phone, no network was willing to wait. Either you were a hit right out of the gate, or you demonstrated the strong potential to be a hit, sooner rather than later. If neither of these things was true, then you were done.

  Dave nodded toward the center of the room as the band swung into a bouncy version of “Wonderful Tonight.” The dance floor cleared. Maurice led my grandma to the center of the room. In front of the fountain, they posed, facing each other, hand in hand. Then, to claps from the grown-ups and cheers from the children, they began to dance. They shimmied and twisted, Maurice’s hands in her hands and then on her waist as she twirled, flushed and laughing, with her pinned hair coming loose and blossoms raining down onto the tiles. “Christ,” Maurice’s son the lawyer muttered, “Dad’s hip can’t take this.” His brother clapped him on the back. “Lighten up, Howie. Let him have some fun.”

  Grandma and her husband stood, facing each other, kicking left, kicking right. Then Grandma started laughing, and Maurice opened his arms. He pulled her into a bear hug and they rocked back and forth, holding each other tight. Be happy, I thought. All that she wanted for me was all that I wanted for her.

  “Ruthie!” Grandma called. She was laughing, beckoning, stretching out her hand toward me. “Dave! Come dance!”

  I looked down at Dave, who shrugged and gave me his tucked-in smile. He wheeled himself forward and then faced me gravely. Setting his hands on the wheels, he moved precisely, just as Maurice had: first left, then right. Grandma and Maurice stepped back, and the rest of the crowd followed them, forming a circle. Dave wheeled around me and then tilted on his back wheels. “Spin!” he called, and twirled himself in a circle. I spun, laughing until we were facing each other again, left and right and left again. Then he grabbed my hands and pulled me until I landed in his lap. When he kissed me, my grandmother was the first to start clapping. Then Maurice joined her, then Maurice’s podiatrist son and his wife, and then the whole room was applauding.

  “Come here,” said Dave, and kissed me again, and I thought at that moment I had everything I’d ever wanted: a show on the air, a man who loved me. Maybe none of it would last—in the back of my mind, I could hear Dave saying drily, You don’t get perfect—but I was going to grab this happiness and hold it as tightly as I could. I was going to enjoy it for as long as it lasted.

  * * *

  “If it’s good news, there will be a lot of people on the call,” said Dave. “If it’s bad news, you might not hear anything.”

  “What do you mean?” I’d asked, paddling through the shallow end and curling myself into his arms. It was three weeks after my grandmother’s wedding. That night, the fourth episode of The Next Best Thing would air.

  Dave had traced my cheek and then my shoulder, and he’d said, “I mean, you might end up reading it online.”

  I’d shaken my head, not believing it. It wasn’t until later, when I was in the shower, that I thought about what he’d said. Could it be true? Even in the hard, cold, impersonal world of Hollywood, the idea that you’d learn the fate of your show on the Internet, before any of the executives in charge had the good manners to call you, seemed unbelievable, completely outside the realm of basic human decency.

  The Next Best Thing had premiered to solid ratings, numbers that were good, not great. The network’s bean counters and publicity people had tried to put the best possible spin on things, slicing the demographic pie into slivers so they could claim that we’d won the night with women between eighteen and twenty-four, that we’d attracted a significant number of men between eighteen and forty (most of them, I thought, had tuned in to get a look at the slimmed-down Cady), and that we had improved significantly, if not tremendously, on the ratings of the show in the same time slot the previous fall. For that first week, hope had filled the air.

  Then our ratings had dipped during the second week and had fallen even lower during Week Three. Not even the most ambitious spin could make things sound better. By then most of the websites that tracked such things had us on their death watches, and I could feel the blade hovering above our neck.

  The writers and the actors were home, waiting for the word. They would remain under contract for another three weeks, during which time we were supposed to get the news about whether we’d be making more episodes or not. Still, when Sam, my writer-slash-toilet-paper-tweeter, had called and asked, diffidently, whether it was okay for him to interview for another possible staffing job, I’d told him to go for it. Better a bird in hand, I’d said, and he’d said, “Just so you know, I really had a good time working for you.”

  I told myself that I knew what was coming. I’d thought that I was ready for it. Part of me had been bracing for cancellation since Cady had come sashaying toward me at The Alcove, or maybe even since the Loud Lloyd had leaned on me to replace the Nana Trudy scene I’d written with his own work. Still, I felt my skin bristle with goose bumps when my telephone buzzed as I was strolling down Ventura Boulevard. My plan had been to take a walk, do some window-shopping, treat myself to an hour browsing in Bookstar, an iced coffee and a pedicure. When I looked at the screen, I saw that Sam and Nancy had bo
th texted me. Deadline sez we’re canceled, Sam had written. U hear?

  I hadn’t heard, but I clicked the link to the link he’d included, which took me to a Web site claiming that The Next Best Thing was one of three new underperforming sitcoms that ABS had axed that morning. My heart clenched, and I slumped down onto a bench beneath a bus shelter, staring at the story, trying to make the words say something different. When they refused, I dialed Dave.

  “Deadline says we’re canceled, but nobody’s called me.”

  “Oh, Ruth. I’m sorry,” he said.

  “But maybe it’s not true! I mean, they’d call me, right? Someone from the studio? Lloyd or Lisa or Shelly would call. Someone. They wouldn’t just let me find out like this, would they?” I heard the answer in his silence, the same one Shakespeare’s Prince Hal had given when his friend said, “Banish Fat Jack, and banish all the world.” “I do. I will.”

  They did. They would. My call waiting beeped. I looked at the screen and saw Shelly’s name flashing. That was when I knew for sure.

  I had expected, when the moment came, to feel any number of things: terror, sorrow, anger that things hadn’t gone my way. Instead I found myself numb and ashamed, as if I’d left the house naked and every passerby could look at me and know exactly what was happening: Girl, Getting Fired. “It’s Shelly. I have to take this,” I said.

  “Hang in there,” Dave said, and paused. “I love you.”

  Warmth suffused my body, flowing from the crown of my head down to my toes. “Love you, too.” I swallowed hard, a girl clinging to a trapeze with sweaty hands, swinging between exultation and despair.

  “Ruth? Hold for Shelly, please,” chirped Shelly’s assistant. Then Shelly herself came on the line.

  “Ruth Saunders,” she said sadly. “Oh, cookie. I’m so sorry. I wish I didn’t have to make this call.”