Belonging

by Nancy Thayer

  “Your show will make the audience envious. They love that. Can’t get enough of it.” It was Carter Amberson speaking. “I want the show. I’ll do it.”

  Joanna’s eyes met his across the table and she felt an electric jolt zap between them so that her heart thumped loudly. Her knees went weak. It took all her determination not to collapse at the table. That was it? It was done? She was going to have her show? She could have rushed across the room and smothered Carter Amberson with kisses of gratitude if he hadn’t been so forbiddingly aloof.

  So at once, in a tumbling, exhilarating, breathtaking rush of activity, an entire new phase of her life began. Joanna was busier than she’d ever been, and happier. The pilot went off beautifully and Fabulous Homes premiered its first three shows that spring. The network committed to a contract that summer, and the series began in late September. Within months Fabulous Homes was high in the ratings, written up in trade rags and popular magazines.

  Joanna was so good at what she did she seemed to have been born exactly for Fabulous Homes. She could quickly spot the warm true center of any house; she could draw out the most laconic family member; she had a gift for knowing how long to linger on any subject or furnishing or architectural detail. On camera she discovered she was a natural, relaxed and efficient and quick and slightly humorous. The more shows she produced, the better she got. The fan mail began piling in. Celebrities approached her, wanting their homes to be spotlighted. The network asked her to sign a five-year contract. She found an agent to represent her both to the network and to the magazines who wanted to profile her, the charities who wanted her to donate her name or time, the talk shows on other networks who asked her for an interview. She was given her own office at the CVN building and her own secretary.

  At first Joanna was concerned about collaborating with Carter, but immediately they discovered that their minds worked with the same speed: in brilliant, dense, rapid flashes that often left others behind. It was not merely that they thought the same way, agreeing on what was important; their minds ran in similar channels, arriving at point D from point A while everyone else was stumbling over point B. They had similar energies: on the way to one location they could spend an entire plane ride arranging the details for the next show; when problems arose, they didn’t panic or waste time tearing their hair but simply grabbed hold and twisted the situation to their advantage. They loved their profession with a passion and recognized that in the other.

  Her status and Carter’s were clearly spelled out in the myriad and complicated contracts they had signed with the network and with each other, but each show required hundreds of decisions. Joanna had heard that Carter was used to getting his own way. She knew the time would come when she would have to confront Carter, to fight him, and as she worked with him, she studied him in preparation. Carter Amberson was cool and contained, hard to read.

  Early in their first year, the occasion she’d been expecting arose. Vern Cook, a young, capable, reliable assistant lighting technician, presented himself humbly in Joanna’s office one day. In spite of the constant praise and encouragement Mitch, the head lighting tech, showered on Vern, the young man was still painfully timid. Joanna knew it was something crucial that had forced him to come to her office by himself.

  “Hi, Vern, what’s up?” Joanna asked, continuing to sort through her correspondence in order not to seem to be staring at the guy.

  His voice trembled. “Mr. Amberson fired me.”

  “What?” Joanna dropped her stack of mail. “Why?”

  Vern’s pitifully pockmarked face burned red with embarrassment. “I, uh, Mr. Amberson got a letter, uh, I, uh, you know … with Mr. Bently’s daughter.”

  Joanna gaped, dumbfounded. FH had just taped a show at the estate of a Texas oil magnate who entertained himself with a ranch of exotic wildlife. He was a big, pie-faced man with a brood of big, pie-faced, loud-voiced, ambling, gun-toting sons, and a big, pie-faced, loud-voiced, ambling, gun-toting daughter who had just been kicked out of her eastern boarding school two months before graduation for drunkenness and improper conduct. Clearly bored with the entire majestic sprawl of land and animals and with her fabulously furnished home, as vast and ornate and beautiful as an air-conditioned Taj Mahal, Sapphire had trailed around sulkily with the FH crew during every second of the shoot; the only time Joanna had caught the young woman smiling was when she was being interviewed.

  “Wait.” Joanna stood up. Leaning on her desk, she stared at Vern. “You did exactly what with Mr. Bently’s daughter?”

  Vern’s teeth were nearly chattering with fear. “You know. I … did it with her.”

  “You went to bed with Sapphire Bently?”

  Vern nodded so hard he nearly went into spasms.

  It was all Joanna could do to keep from laughing. A more unlikely love match was inconceivable.

  “All right,” she sighed. “Let’s go see Carter and straighten this out.”

  As they made their way along the hall and into the elevator to Carter’s corner office on the twentieth floor, they didn’t speak, and Vern seemed to regain some equanimity, but after Joanna announced to Carter’s secretary that she wanted to see him immediately and the two of them were shown into Carter’s posh inner sanctum, Vern’s anxiety level shot up again. She could nearly smell the fear steaming off him.

  “Carter,” Joanna explained pleasantly, “it seems we’ve got a little problem here.” She gestured to some chairs. “May we sit down?” Without waiting for him to assent, she sat, and Vern gratefully followed suit. “Vern says you’ve fired him.”

  In reply, Carter winged a sheet of paper across the desk toward Joanna. “I think this explains everything.”

  Quickly Joanna scanned the page, a letter from Beau Bently castigating the entire CVN network because for the week that they were on the Bently ranch, their employee Vern Cook had taken advantage of his daughter, Sapphire Bently.

  “He’s threatening to sue us,” Carter pointed out.

  “Actually he’s not,” Joanna retorted. “He’s only blowing hot air around. If a man like Beau Bently were going to sue, he’d have done it by now. Instead of this overwrought letter, we’d have a kick-ass legal document.”

  “I hope you’re right. At any rate, Vern has been informed of our policies before. Messing around with any of our guests or their relatives is verboten, and—”

  Ignoring Carter, Joanna looked at the assistant lighting technician, who had gone gray. “Vern,” she prompted kindly, “what can you tell us about all this? Is it true?”

  Vern nodded, looking as if he were about to be ill. “But … she came after me,” he confided. “I swear. She followed me around. She invited me to her room.” He turned red again. “She begged me.”

  “Oh, well, that makes all the difference,” Carter cut in, his voice as sharp and chilly as ice. “Vern’s not responsible, since she went after him. I’ll simply draft a letter to Beau Bently and explain it. Still, since Vern’s such a hunk, he’s a danger to the show. The only thing to do is to fire him.”

  Joanna could feel the heat of anger burning in her own cheeks now.

  Staring at Carter, her voice as cold as his, she overruled him. “I’ll write the letter to Beau. I have no doubt that I’ll be able to smooth this all over. As for Vern, I’m certain he won’t do anything like this ever again, no matter how tempting the circumstances.” Looking at the pathetic young man, she softened her voice. “You’re not fired, Vern. Don’t worry. We’ll work it out. You can go now.”

  Vern rose on shaky legs and made his escape.

  Joanna glared at Carter. “Why were you so unkind?”

  “Unkind? Hell, Joanna, if Beau Bently had sued—”

  “You know he’s not going to sue. That daughter of his must be twice Vern’s size and eighty times as experienced. Carter, I really object to your language and your style. My crew—”

  “—will take advantage of you at every turn if limits aren’t set.”

  “What is yo
ur problem! That poor young man—”

  Carter interrupted her again. “That ‘poor young man’ can’t keep his fly zipped. He pulled a stunt just like this on one of the shows I was producing last year. This year he got Linda Rosenbloom over in Legal pregnant.”

  Joanna’s jaw dropped. “Vern Cook?”

  “Vern Cook.” Carter paused to let this sink in, then continued, “It’s a mystery to me, but some women go wild for him. After Linda had the abortion, I called him in and told him in no uncertain terms that if anything like this ever happened again, he was out of CVN for good.”

  Quickly the implications of what had just happened raced through Joanna’s mind.

  “Carter, I apologize for countermanding you in front of an employee. I acted hastily.”

  “That’s right,” Carter said.

  “On the other hand, all this wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t made a unilateral decision to fire Vern without consulting with me,” Joanna pointed out. “If you’d told me about Vern’s background, and asked my opinion, I probably would have agreed with you.”

  “Look, I’m trying to save you some time and trouble. You shouldn’t have to attend to every detail.”

  “I consider our crew more than a detail,” Joanna retorted. “Look, let’s agree not to make major decisions without consulting the other first. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  After the first confrontation, the others were easier to navigate and Joanna found that to Carter’s credit, once a decision was made, even one Carter didn’t like, he did not try to subvert her, and he did not carry any kind of grudge. Carter wanted the show to be a success; that was his first priority, and he didn’t let petty disagreements distract him.

  Even better and completely unexpected was the elegant balance their personal styles provided. Joanna’s vision was soft, warm, diffuse, forgiving; Carter’s electric, cold, swift, critical. At first this difference was an irritant. Eventually they were able to discuss their managerial styles, to analyze and anticipate and even to use them in a kind of good cop/bad cop way with their staff. Joanna was so reasonable and personable that she was often inefficient, and people took liberties with her they’d never think of in dealing with Carter, who managed with clear-cut and unflinching authority.

  Their alliance was especially helpful in dealing with Dhon Rodriguez, the lovable, theatrical, adorably witty and easily wounded young man who took care of Joanna’s makeup and hair for the show, working the miracles that kept her looking gorgeous on camera in spite of heat, humidity, or cold. He entertained the FH crew while they traveled, cheering them through the most cataclysmic shoots with wickedly realistic imitations of celebrities and network dignitaries, singing Ethel Merman songs when the rest of the crew was exhausted and depressed. Dhon was priceless. Everyone loved him, and Joanna didn’t want to face a camera without him. But Dhon had never learned to appreciate solitude or even to accept those few seconds of silence that helped people regain their equanimity. He didn’t know when to stop and there seemed to be no subtle way to get through to him. Once when a rainstorm persisting over an entire week ruined their plans for a shoot in a house on the Vineyard, Joanna snapped at Dhon, “For God’s sake, will you close your mouth a moment so the rest of us can think?” Dhon had instantly gone into a major sulk, which didn’t end until Joanna sent him red roses. She and Carter had a private discussion about Dhon after that, and from then on if Dhon needed subduing, it was Carter who did it, in his cool, indifferent way. Dhon accepted it from Carter; Carter was known for his heartlessness and Dhon didn’t take it personally, as he did with Joanna.

  As Carter and Joanna smoothed out the rough spots in their affiliation, they brought each show to its ultimate pace and look. Fabulous Homes entered its second season, and Joanna and Carter began to reap rewards: great leaps in salary, network bonuses, industry awards, a fine fat share of fame and fortune. But that wasn’t why they worked so relentlessly. The truth for both of them was that they loved their work, loved working more than anything else in the world. No matter how they muttered and cursed about the endless hours they put in, producing FH together was a pleasure so intensely rich it was almost sexual.

  But not overtly sexual. That was never Carter’s style. Joanna observed time and again how his startling good looks drew stares and smiles from women he passed on the street and in offices and restaurants and airport terminals, while Carter never responded or even seemed to notice. He didn’t flirt with or even react to the most seductive invitations from various women who worked at the network.

  Still, because they spent so much time alone with each other traveling across the country in planes and limos and in vans with camera crews, they gradually developed a comfortable alliance that was nearly a friendship. When Joanna told Carter a little about her lonely, nomadic childhood, Carter confided in return what few others knew about him: he had been dirt-poor and had struggled to get his education at a state college in the Midwest. He did not work as hard as he did only for the money, but money was terribly important to him; it meant security.

  During the first year of her show, Joanna didn’t really have a private life. She spent every minute working, or sleeping until she went back to work. She was completely happy, and then one morning she boarded a 727 to Jackson Hole and discovered Carter’s assistant, Hank Cunningham, on the plane instead of Carter. A network emergency had kept Carter in New York. Hank was personable, pleasant, and efficient, and the production went along smoothly enough, but something was lacking. As they flew home after their week’s work, Joanna closed her eyes and leaned against the seat back and realized that without Carter around, much of the excitement and zest—the electric deliciousness—was missing.

  She realized she was in love with Carter.

  But wait, she told herself. Was it really love, or something more complicated, mixed of admiration and gratitude?

  Earlier that month CVN had held its annual banquet in a ballroom at the Waldorf-Astoria. There had been a feast and speeches, and there had been awards, presented at the head table. Silver-haired, whiskey-voiced, sequin-drenched Bea Blake, the doyenne of cable TV and one of CVN’s CEOs, read out the name of the producer of that year’s best new show: Carter Amberson for Fabulous Homes. The room filled with applause as Carter was pecked on his cheek by his serene wife and as he made his way to Bea Blake’s side. He wore a tux with diamond studs which glittered when he reached the podium, where the light glinted off his blond hair like the sun off a suit of armor, and there was something medieval about him in his lean aristocratic fineness and in his bearing.

  And in his courtliness, too, for instead of reaching for the silver award shaped like a globe with a garland around it, Carter leaned to the microphone and said, “I cannot accept this award. It belongs to Joanna Jones. She conceived the show, did the first research on it, wrote it, structured it, hosted it, and she is the one who has been its artistic guide. I have been only her coproducer, her assistant.”

  Bea Blake stood with the trophy in her hand and her mouth open in shock. No one had ever refused an award before or challenged the judgment of the executives who decided who would receive them.

  “I would like to see this award given to Joanna Jones,” Carter declared, turning his powerful gaze on Bea Blake, who was pretty powerful herself.

  “Here, here!” Jake called from the audience, and then a multitude of other resounding cries rang out.

  Bea Blake quickly regained her composure. “In that case,” she announced, “I will be delighted to present this award for best new CVN show to Joanna Jones for—”

  Carter leaned into the microphone. “—for Joanna Jones’ Fabulous Homes.”

  Joanna was amazed. She was accustomed to the steady eye of the television camera on her and the hot beat of lights, but the quick cold flick of flashbulbs against her vision was unsettling as she rose from the table where she sat with Gloria, her assistant, and Dhon, her makeup man, and Bill Shorter, the director, and their escorts. Jake and Emil
y were at the head table, and Carter and Blair were seated at a table at the front of the room, and as she dazedly approached the dais, she passed Blair, who was not smiling. Well, why should she; a network award was a major achievement, not to be easily passed up.

  “I just want to say,” Bea Blake was speaking, “that this is the first time a woman has won this award.” She kissed Joanna’s cheek.

  Later, Joanna was told how dignified she’d been as she accepted the award, how almost regal she had looked, and how elegant had been her very few words of acceptance. In fact, she had been nearly stupefied with surprise and nervousness.

  Later, too, she had tried to thank Carter for his generosity, but he had been impatient with her gratitude, each time changing the subject, turning their talk toward the next show.

  Few men had given Joanna her just due as Carter had, and no one else had done it quite so spectacularly. But during her career there had been other men, and women, too, who had given her a significant boost up the ladder of success. She had felt gratitude and affection for them, but what she felt now for Carter Amberson was galaxies more complex than that. What she felt for Carter Amberson overwhelmed her body as well as her mind and emotions.

  That would never do. Over the years she’d had a series of love affairs of varying intensity with more or less appropriate men—some too old, some far too young—but never had she slept with another woman’s husband, and she’d vowed she never would. She’d grown up hearing women crying over men: her mother over unfaithful lovers, and all the pretty women her father, a compulsive Don Juan, had romanced, and moved in with, and left … No, she would not be the cause of another woman’s tears.

  Cold rain, as bleak and pitiless as her memories, slashed at the plane’s windows. The plane landed. Joanna walked down the long ramp into the terminal, automatically calling out goodbyes and thanks to Hank and the other members of the crew, already mentally making a list of single men she should start seeing immediately, must start sleeping with, so she could exorcise herself of her desire for Carter Amberson.