Cover Girl Confidential

by Beverly Bartlett

  You know what I wore. It became, for a while, the defining photo of me, and it was as wrongheaded as it could be. How much I wished, afterward, that I had asked Hughes’s advice. But it had seemed cruel, somehow, to pester him for insight and help. So I called Ryan Seacrest, who was sleep-deprived as always and in a bit of a funk about a recent bad review. He was not at his best. He offered as his advice two little words. Two words that he would regret and I would regret and that a nation of women would regret.

  Ryan said: “Parachute pants.”

  Chapter 9

  I do not blame Ryan. He’s a dear. He’s every bit as golden as his reputation and he’s the only one who, during this ordeal, has never turned his back on me. He sent hair care products to me here in prison. And he has written me several times, just sweet little short notes, acting as if nothing was going on in my life at all. “Darling,” he might write. “Did you see my show last night? Did I handle that tearful contestant well enough? No one understands how hard it is for me.”

  Needless to say, I didn’t see the show, as it was not played on Lifetime. But it was still nice of him to ask. It is times like this when you realize who your friends are.

  And anyway, really, the parachute thing wasn’t that bad, I don’t suppose. Setting off goofy trends is a celebrity’s job. Ryan had read an article about a New York store that specialized in retro fashions and had argued that parachute pants, while obviously casual, would be casual in a way that made a statement, as opposed to just showing up in jeans. I thought this made sense. I repeated it to Baxter several times. I remembered that the girl who lived next door to me in Slater County, decades earlier, often wore a particularly impressive sea-blue pair. When I saw a pair like them at the retro store, I thought, That’s it.

  And, you know, maybe it would have been fine. Baxter did say I looked nice, didn’t he? And the whole thing did prompt a frenzy, didn’t it? Yes, I’m quite sure the pants would have been fine if the president hadn’t been drinking.

  Baxter and I flew to DC on Cal’s jet. We were very impressed. It had a little kitchenette, including a coffeemaker. Everyone who works on morning television drinks a lot of coffee and we were delighted to see it, though the coffee wasn’t frankly all that good. Neither of us acknowledged that, though. We were just so impressed to be on a jet with a coffeemaker. I was momentarily relieved that I was with Baxter. Hughes would have certainly sneered about the quality of the coffee or the decor of the jet. (It did seem a tad 2002 to me, but 2002 was a good year, all in all. I personally thought it was fine. I was just surprised because Cal usually does not like for things to become dated.) Baxter allowed himself to be amazed. “Look,” he said, after opening a small nondescript door. “There’s a dining room in here!” We both clapped with glee, though we were not going to actually eat on the plane.

  A limo picked us up at the airport and took us to the White House, where there were some drawn-out security precautions. But the White House is quite accustomed to carrying off security clearances with style and panache. There was a short consultation about my status as a permanent resident. They looked over my green card carefully and I gathered that I was the only noncitizen invited to this particular White House occasion. But they did so with enough discreet grace that even Baxter did not notice.

  (They were not as discreet, I’m afraid, about my pants, which I saw a few Secret Service agents eyeing with raised brows.)

  But once all that was over, we were ushered into one of the ballrooms, which had been decked out like a summer garden. “This is what the White House does on short notice?” I whispered to Baxter as he escorted me into the room of powerful party-goers. And he said he supposed it was.

  Hillary Clinton looked overly pressed and hot (not in a good way) in a black pantsuit. Bob Dole was wearing wrinkled khaki shorts and a T-shirt that said I’M RETIRED—THIS IS AS DRESSED UP AS I GET. Elizabeth Dole stood next to him wearing, I kid you not, an evening gown. She looked exceedingly uncomfortable as she talked to Jenna Bush, who was wearing flip-flops and jeans with several artfully ripped holes in them. Jenna picked at one of the holes in what I thought was a self-conscious manner.

  Tipper Gore wore a simple sundress that seemed as appropriate as anything, and she was the first to approach us. “Addison!” she said. “Baxter!” She shook our hands enthusiastically. “I heard you were coming.”

  She glanced at my clothes and leaned forward. “Excellent choice,” she whispered. “It’s casual, but it makes a statement.”

  Baxter grunted, allowed the corners of his mouth to twitch upward. “That,” he said, “is exactly what she was going for.”

  Tipper smiled at him, then leaned toward me again. “I hear the president is quite a fan of yours.”

  “Oh,” I said, making one of my standard dismissive waves of the hand. “I’m sure that’s exaggerated.”

  She leaned even closer, lowered her voice still more. Baxter was standing right there and he couldn’t hear her. “Watch out,” she said. “That man is a pig.”

  “The president?” I said.

  She closed her eyes and nodded.

  I have often thought of her warning words. “That man is a pig.” How differently things might have turned out if I had taken them literally. Because my fateful encounter with the president occurred just about an hour later during my attempt to avoid being photographed with the large hog hanging over a fake barbecue pit. My parents would die if that photo got out, I thought, and so—when the White House photographer had started shooting around the pit—I quickly extracted myself from a conversation with Clarence Thomas (denim shorts, Polo shirt) and pretended to be making a dash for a glass of water. “Something stuck in my throat,” I (fakely) choked out.

  If I had taken Tipper’s comment literally, if I’d thought of the president as a pig, I would have taken the long way around, avoiding him as well as the actual farm animal. But instead I dashed from the pit to the bar, going straight by the bench where the president was sitting. Three or four empty beer bottles sat at his feet.

  President Samson Briarwood glanced up at me and smiled. I smiled back politely, but then I noticed that his smile had sort of a leering quality. He appeared to think I was shimmying toward him in tight parachute pants, rather than running from a dead hog as fast as discretion would allow. Before I knew what was happening, the president had grabbed me, pulled me into his lap, and planted a kiss on my lips just as the White House photographer snapped his fateful shot. (The photo was really supposed to be of the hog, which was in the foreground. But you probably didn’t even realize that because all the papers cropped the picture and zoomed in as tightly as they could on the president and me.)

  It must have lasted only seconds. I cannot imagine that a full minute passed. But it seemed to happen in slow motion. First, I felt his hand yank my arm. I fell back into his lap, my legs shooting upward in an unladylike way. My blouse gaped open as the president slipped his arm around my waist. He reeked of cheap beer, bad cologne, and something else. (Barbecued pork, perhaps?) His lips were badly chapped. My thoughts came fast and incoherently. I remember thinking No! and But my parents! and, simply, Yuck!

  I gasped, and then squirmed away and made a dash for the ladies’ room. David Souter (dark suit) stepped aside, nodding in a solemn and knowing way. Christine Todd Whitman (little black dress) crossed her arms and put her hands over her eyes, as if trying to erase what she had seen. Ted Kennedy (horrible Panama shirt and unflattering cream-colored trousers) looked at me with an expression that was, well, hard to read.

  I got to the ladies’ room door, grabbed the handle, and glanced backward. I saw Baxter standing in the beer line and looking at me with a mix of sympathy and shared outrage. I was surprised. I had expected him, I guess, to be bemused. I think Hughes would have been bemused.

  Perhaps that is unfair to Hughes. It’s not that Hughes would have approved of what the president did. I’m not saying that. But I don’t think, coming from the world he comes from, he would have u
nderstood my reaction to it. My deep-seated revulsion and horror.

  I think Baxter did. Somehow. In some way that was hard to put my finger on, Baxter and I were from the same place, relative to Hughes. Baxter realized that I could not, at that moment, imagine a worse development for my life and career.

  And then an arm reached out from the ladies’ room and pulled me inside. It was the first lady. Or should I call her the junior senator from Ohio?

  Chapter 10

  Do I hate Senator Margaret Clemons-Briarwood, the junior senator from Ohio and the first lady of these United States?

  Many people have asked me that. Susan Sarandon, Katie Couric, Michael Moore, to name a few. Although really, Katie was the only one who said, “Do you hate?”; the rest said, “Don’t you hate?”—a critical difference of tone.

  But honestly, I try not to hate anyone. Least of all, an inspirational woman like Senator Clemons-Briarwood. For one thing, Miss Liberty did not like strong emotions, and I’m pretty sure “hate” would qualify.

  Besides, I try to maintain some perspective. It is true that Senator Clemons-Briarwood has very nearly ruined my life. But I think she would say that I very nearly ruined hers. I try to remain dignified. Living well is the best revenge and all that. Living well is, unfortunately, a bit difficult to pull off in a prison cell. But as Hughes pointed out, I have never looked better. And judging by one of those Lifetime biographies I saw about the good senator the other day, the same cannot be said for her.

  I do not hate her. But I am not going to sugarcoat the truth. So I will reveal now for the first time what the first lady said to me on the night of the infamous barbecue where everything started to go wrong.

  Senator Clemons-Briarwood (floral Capri pants and shiny pink wrap top) pulled me into the bathroom and told me that what she was about to say was off the record and if I told anyone about it, she would send my “skinny ass” back to “wherever it was” that I came from.

  Skinny? I thought excitedly, distracted by the unintentional compliment. I glanced back over my shoulder and thought the parachute pants must be flattering indeed.

  The senator/first lady ignored that. She lowered her voice in an apparently conciliatory way. She confessed that her husband had a drinking problem. “A bit of a bad habit” is the way she put it. At least I assumed she was talking about the drinking; maybe he habitually dragged unsuspecting women into his lap and planted unwelcome kisses on their lips. Or maybe it was the combination of the drinking and the dragging that was the habit she referred to.

  At any rate, the nice tone did not last long. She went on to say I’d better not tell anyone about what happened or I’d be “using those pants to parachute into the desert with a footprint” on my behind. (No flattering adjective that time.)

  “I think,” I said, “there was a photo taken.”

  “Are you threatening me?” the first lady said, veins bulging from her forehead.

  “No.” I began to feel truly rattled by now. “I’m just saying that I don’t know what to do if the photo comes out.”

  “I’ll take care of the photo,” the first lady hissed. And then said: “You just take care of those big lips of yours.”

  Big lips? Was that a racial slur? I’m sure I don’t know.

  At any rate, I told the first lady she need not worry about me, my big lips, or my skinny ass.

  She started crying then and grabbed a tissue to dry her eyes. “I always cry when I get really angry,” she said. I nodded and said that I did as well. She blew her nose, then took her eyeliner pencil out of her purse and started to work on the emergency touch-ups. She didn’t look at me, but straight into the mirror. She said, “I really do love him, you know.”

  I said nothing.

  “Sure, I started dating him for the political benefit. Why not? Everyone thought I was such a wacko radical. What could soften up my image more than hooking up with a radical from the other side? We both had to be more moderate than we let on, that’s what people would figure. Our poll numbers went through the roof.”

  “I remember,” I said.

  “But then I went and fell in love with the big lug.” She dropped her eyeliner pencil into her purse and snapped it closed. “Don’t get me wrong. His fiscal policies are a nightmare. His tax plan is insane. But he’s so sweetly sincere about it. I just love a sincere man.”

  “Ah,” I said. That did explain it. The president always did come across as sincere, you know, in a badly dressed way. And women do tend to be suckers for some attribute or another. Sincerity is as good as any. “For me,” I said, “it’s laugh lines around the eyes. I can’t resist a guy whose eyes crinkle when he smiles.”

  The senator/first lady stared at me and then continued as if I had not spoken.

  “I violated my mom’s first rule of relationships,” she said. “Never fall in love with the guy you marry.”

  She washed her hands, then said: “Love is nothing but trouble, you know.”

  I nodded, made some vague sound of agreement, then excused myself and beat a hasty path out of the restroom and back to Baxter. He asked in a puzzled and polite tone if everything was okay. I waved my hand in a dismissive way and said: “Fine, fine.”

  He gracefully looked away and did not argue when I suggested leaving early. He even patted me on the back as we left. We did not say much on the plane ride home.

  That night, I couldn’t sleep in my luxury hotel bed. (I kept thinking Cal would ask why I was still living in the hotel room he’d booked for me back when I was only in town for a one-week show. But keeping a handle on expenses was never Cal’s strength.) I tried to lull myself to sleep by spending even more time than usual “checking my e-mail”—a private code for reading the boards. Getting online at night to see what people were saying about you on message boards sounds kind of pathetic and needy, even when admitted only to yourself. Checking your e-mail, though? That sounds so professional and efficient. Why let an important message wait until tomorrow when you can reply today!

  Sadly, no one had posted anything about Hughes or me on the boards since before Baxter and I had left for Washington—hours ago. I was disappointed, but it was a Friday night. I guess people had other things to do.

  I considered going to bed, but then I found myself logging onto Baxter’s discussion groups.

  When I looked over the discussion, I felt bad for him. There were hardly any comments at all, and what was there was so harsh. I suppose all the boards had snarky comments. Mine certainly did. So did Hughes’s. But the harsh comments were diluted, in our case, by over-the-top praise. There wasn’t much of that on Baxter’s boards.

  The poster Baxterbasher called Baxter mean and ugly and bitter and, most inexplicably, “old.” B-basher said that Baxter pronounced his t’s like d’s and dropped some of his n’s in a way that made him sound slightly drunk. “Sunny in Mahadden today.” And B-basher further added that the talk of Baxter being mysterious was especially laughable as the only mystery was why Addison and Hughes didn’t boo him off the set.

  Moved by pity, I broke—for the first time—my rule about not posting on the boards. I had always thought that if I actually started writing on the boards, it would be a sign that I had completely lost control of my online life. I could justify reading the boards. That was just viewer research. I needed to keep in touch with what the fans thought. But joining the discussion by posting my own comments? That would be going too far.

  I told myself that this was different. I was just sticking up for old Baxter, who had patted my back supportively as we hightailed it out of the White House and who had not acted bemused at my obvious discomfort. I logged on, giving myself the name ObjectiveObserver, a nod to how I always tried to watch the tapes later in a detached, objective way.

  “I’m afraid,” I wrote, “that I don’t see where you’re coming from, B-basher. Baxter’s a sweet man. He’s kind and patient. You can tell that . . .”

  I paused there because I was not sure where, exactly, a viewer w
ould see it, what with his brooding on-air persona. But after a moment’s thought, the examples poured forth.

  “You can see it in the way he lightens the mood whenever Hughes is being a little too hard on Addison. You know, the way Baxter chuckles wearily at the Irish jokes, so wearily that it takes the sting out of the moment. Haven’t you noticed the way he talks about tornadoes and floods and the passion he brings to the subject?”

  I sensed that I was edging into ridiculousness when I started explaining how Baxter’s lack of fashion sense worked as a much-needed counterpoint to Hughes’s obsession with being chic and that Baxter’s clothes “served as a postmodern commentary on the nature of television as a visual medium.” But I didn’t care about being ridiculous. It was liberating to post observations in this anonymous way. I had never felt so authoritative as when I was analyzing my own show.

  That simple post about Baxter was the start of things, I suppose. I was thrilled to receive a reply to my first message almost immediately. A poster known as Weatherjunkie wrote: “Well said and welcome to you ObjectiveObserver. Hope to see you posting on the boards again soon.”

  Sad to say, Weatherjunkie did. In fact, I replied immediately and we exchanged four or five friendly posts that very night. I casually admitted feeling a little depressed after a “disastrous social encounter” and Weatherjunkie replied, saying 80 percent of social encounters left him depressed.

  I was enjoying our “conversation” so much that I nearly forgot my embarrassment about the turn of events at the barbecue—until I briefly returned to the Addison McGhee board to find this post from someone called MorningFan.