Hot Mic!

by Jamie Collins

  They walked farther along the worn carpet to a set of double glass doors. The smell of glue and curdled milk hit Marney hard when they stepped inside. A Hispanic woman was holding an infant in her arms, and a toddler was drooling happily on all fours. Hannah shook her head. “Brings back memories, all right.”

  “So, you would bring Olivia along with you to work?” Marney said, trying to picture Hannah juggling responsibilities just to help others.

  “Some days I would bring her; other times, leave her with a sitter. I remember, in particular, when I realized how much of a refuge this place was for so many people. It was that one day, no one will forget. It started like any other Tuesday. I had headed in here to sign some paperwork before making my nine fifteen a.m. yoga class. I had the Lennar girl sitting for Olivia just until noon so I could knock out a few errands following the class just before heading home for my one o’clock client. When I entered the office at eight fifty-five, the waiting room here was abuzz with the news of a plane crash into the North Tower of the World Trade Center in New York.”

  Marney nodded. Who didn’t remember where they were standing at that exact minute? It was etched in every person’s brain with acuity.

  “Something very bad had just happened, the center’s director said, gathering the staff into the kitchenette for an emergency meeting. ‘I’m going to need all hands on deck. This is going to cause a lot of anxiety and confusion—people are going to need us; to talk to someone.’ She turned to me directly and said, ‘Can you stay?’ Of course I said that I could stay up until noon, and that I would then make arrangements to come back—for as long as they would need me. Little did anyone know what would follow.

  “I worked all morning on the phone lines in my yoga tights and leotard, and then the next two weeks straight was a blur of double shifts, extra private counseling sessions, and evenings watching 24/7 coverage of the news that changed history before everyone’s eyes. People wondered: Was the world coming to an end? Had the worst come? These were the questions that everyone was asking. It was so tense.”

  “That must have been rough. I mean, who knew those answers, right?” Marney said as they turned and headed toward the break room.

  “‘Why did they do this to us?’ Broderick had asked me one evening at dinner. It was just he, Olivia, and me at the kitchen table. Peter was pulling all-nighters in the ER and was talking about going to Ground Zero to offer medical assistance where needed. The house was otherwise empty except for the constant glow of the television permanently broadcasting the events sans the sound. I said that I didn’t know, but that it had a lot of people worried,” Hannah said in a serious tone. “What killed me the most was that did little to cull his fourteen-year-old fears. ‘I don’t want Dad to go there!’ he had said, slamming his fork onto the plate and storming out of the room. I thought, If I can’t comfort my own son, how in the world can I ever hope to help others? It really rattled me, back then.”

  Marney nodded knowingly. “But how could you have blamed him? How could you have blamed anyone for feeling so afraid and confused at that time?”

  “That’s the thing with this gig. You never really know if you have helped. Not always.

  “I just vowed then and there that I would need to do better in making my children feel safe—

  no matter what. That my family would come first. That’s all that anyone really wants, I think, in life—to take care of the of the ones they love.”

  “How did you manage to take all that on, plus this?” Marney asked as they settled onto two plastic chairs at a rickety table near a noisy vending machine in the far end of the break room.

  Hannah smiled. “I don’t know. Sometimes it was rough. I guess I just didn’t think about it, I just did what I had to do to be there for those people who needed someone to talk to. Many nights it was just me and a few other volunteers on the crisis line, answering calls for hours.”

  “How was that experience?” Marney asked, tearing into a bag of Bugles scored for four quarters, two dimes, and a nickel from the vending machine. “I mean, were you really able to talk someone down from ending it all?”

  “Sometimes. Yes—pretty often. It might have been a long conversation, but eventually, we could usually talk them down. I remember one young man who was so distraught about losing his job that he agreed to meet with me after I promised that I would work with him in our database to find him some temporary employment for the short term. I had to bribe him to come in to the office. He was waffling, and I feared that he would not show up the next day.”

  “So, what did you do?”

  “I offered to bring him lunch. I asked, ‘So, what do you like on your sandwich? Mustard, or mayo?’ I remember going over the details of this lunch with him so that he would feel obligated to show up. So that I could keep him from contemplating suicide for another twenty-four hours. Hoping that the urge would pass until I could talk with him face-to-face.”

  “Did it work?” Marney said expectantly.

  “It did. For him, but it didn’t always work. That was the sad part.” Hannah’s voice trailed as she glanced around the room, suddenly feeling strangely detached, it seemed, from the world that taught her to be Dr. Hannah. In so many ways, the moment felt surreal. “Once, we lost a young man who was just seventeen. He had his whole life ahead of him, and he threw it all away over a broken heart. Some, you just have to accept that you can’t save,” Hannah said.

  “What was the weirdest client experience you ever had as a therapist?” Marney asked, hoping to change the mood. “Anything funny ever go down?”

  Hannah thought and then chuckled. “It was years later, in my clinical practice when I was working here on weekends and I counseled a family where the father had be incarcerated and the mother had recently passed away. A foster family was raising the young boy. He was really sweet and smart, but he had just stopped speaking. They came in with this issue, and the foster mother was desperate for services. We placed the boy with a speech therapist, and I worked with him intensively to help him through the abandonment issues. Eventually, he gained back his self-esteem and began opening up. He started communicating and showed great promise that delighted him and his foster family. He returned to thank me one day. I’ll never forget how he gave me a shoe box wrapped with a piece of string. It felt like it had a tiny rock or stone in it when I shook it. He told me that it was something that he had made for me.”

  “How sweet” Marney smiled.

  “No—wait. When I opened it right there in front of him, do you know what I found in that box as his gift that he made?”

  “Oh no—” Marney winced as she read Hannah’s face.

  “It was a piece of feces. It was what he had ‘made’ for me, wrapped up in that box!”

  “Oh shit!” Marney howled.

  “Exactly!” Hannah said, shaking her head at the memory. “It doesn’t get more real than that!”

  Next, they headed to the radio station at WLCK, where Hannah proudly gave Marney the grand tour of the fishbowl glass lobby, sales offices, and the two recording studios glowing with blinking lights. It was still early in the day, and Kip and Sidney had just signed off. Hannah high-fived Sidney as they passed by a line of neatly arranged cubicles just off the executive offices to her own little corner of the world—a tiny back office about the size of a broom closet, but with a stunning view of the city through a large double-pane window displaying the city skyline.

  “Wow! Not too shabby,” Marney said, fondling the goods like a grabby pop-up-sale shopper. Hannah had a pricey leather chair, a narrow vintage bookcase, and bronze-plated awards tacked to the boring gray walls. In the corner, there was a single potted plant.

  “It’s home away from home” Hannah smiled. “I’m happy here.”

  “Are you?” Marney broached, ever the sales person and eager agent keen on pushing the envelope. “I say that we can do better than this.”<
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  Hannah shook her head pensively, her eyes sweeping across the corner of her desk, where her life was displayed in a myriad of framed photos, mementos, and crayon drawings. And then she smiled. “That’s why I hired you!”

  The next several months were a blur of activity. Marney was relentless with requests for show tapings, publicity photos, and pushes for Hannah to do more promotions than ever. She booked her for every woman’s interest and mental health trade show, grand opening, and product endorsement opportunity that even remotely worked to get her name and brand out into the world front and center. She revamped Hannah’s website and sharpened her media kit to include public speaking engagements, seminars, and even an online advice blog that eventually became the basis for three self-help books to follow. No stone was left unturned as Marney made it her life and passion to bring Hannah’s unique style and star-power into the limelight—and ultimately, to a bigger audience.

  Chapter 29

  It wasn’t long before life began to change in ways that Hannah had never imagined. Once large billboards with her smiling face appeared on interstate roadsides, park benches, and bus sides, touting her radio show on WCLK’s “big 89-AM” mid-mornings from 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m., she became a mainstay for commuters and listeners looking for hard-and-fast advice. It was Marney’s idea to promote the “real woman” behind the credentials. One catchy slogan read: This Mom Wears Jeans and Has the Answers! Making Hannah personable also had the unintended effect of causing the public to feel like they knew her. This made living her daily life nothing short of impossible some days.

  It was nothing for Hannah to be recognized in public, which, flattering as it was, sometimes caused distress when a dinner out with her kids got interrupted by a gushing fan, or a nail appointment turned into a free advice-fest as she was made to field questions from manicurists and patrons of every new salon she tried to slip away to. Anonymity was a right that she had forfeited in exchange for more listeners, more clicks on her website, and more brand reach.

  “People are staring,” Broderick said one pizza night at the mall. “Those women over there are pointing and freaking out.”

  “Try to ignore them. I do,” Hannah said, dabbing Olivia’s face with a wet wipe. “It comes with the territory, right?” Then she laughed. “Don’t complain when it’s helping to send you to college.”

  He smirked. “You got a point there.”

  Ever since Broderick could remember, his mother was there for someone. That’s what he loved about her most. Seeing her image on a billboard meant nothing new, because he had always had the real thing, and the woman up there was just a cardboard face in the clouds. Still, though, it was pretty cool sometimes when being the child of Dr. Hannah scored them free access to events, and sometimes even righteous swag from stores and restaurants. As far as Broderick was concerned, celebrity had its perks. That’s why he was dead-set on attending Arizona State University in the fall on a golf scholarship and minoring in sports management. If he could not be a pro himself in the game, he would definitely like to manage a string of great careers in the sport.

  “What is happening with prom?” Hannah asked casually. Getting a straight answer out of her loving son was like pulling teeth sometimes. “Have you asked Penny Swist yet? She really is a sweet girl. Her mother and I work the fundraiser every year for the school. Her parents are lovely.”

  “Yeah, I asked her.”

  “Well? Did she say yes?” Hannah pressed.

  “She said yes.” He reddened at bit, downplaying the whole thing. Much like Peter, he was not one to gush about anything.

  “Of course she said yes!” Hannah smiled.

  “I did a promposal that was pretty low-key, but she loved it. I had the Starbucks girl write, Will You Go To Prom With Me? with the Sharpie on Penny’s latte and waited for her to catch on. She squealed and starting posting photos of it everywhere. I think she dug it.”

  “Great!” Hannah said. “We will have two events to celebrate that night—your prom and Olivia’s spring pageant. Your father and I are going to divide and conquer. I will be seeing you and Penny off for the evening around six p.m., after I attend a quick station appearance, while your father will be attending Olivia’s debut as one of the three princesses in The Frog and the Princess at her preschool earlier at five thirty p.m.”

  It was not uncommon for many of the milestones in the Murphy family to be split between the thirteen-year time span between Broderick and Olivia’s ages. It was never boring, that was for sure.

  However, when the big day came for each of them, Peter was once again called out of town, leaving Hannah with a quandary. How would she be able to pull off both events? It simply was not possible for her to attend both at the same time. Much to her delight and relief, Broderick stepped up in a way that left even his loquacious mother speechless. He and Penny talked it over and decided to forego their dinner date before the actual prom and accompany Olivia themselves.

  “We’ve got this, Mom,” Broderick had said, opting instead, to use the limo he had rented for the evening to transport his lovely date, Penny, and his adorable princess little sister to the pageant. They must have been a sight, Hannah had thought to herself, her handsome, kind, loving son escorting a five-year-old on one arm and his beautiful teen prom date on the other, sitting in formal attire, with boutonniere and corsage in the tiny plastic chairs of Olivia’s kinder-care classroom.

  Broderick and Penny arrived back to the house at eight o’clock to return Olivia, who was carrying a small bouquet of pink roses after having the adventure of her life.

  “Look, Mommy—everyone took our picture!”

  The shots of the night went viral, taken from parents and attendees of the pageant, and then later, when Dr. Hannah Courtland-Murphy’s son and his date rolled up to the prom late, making a grand entrance. Everyone who had seen the pictures on social media applauded and cheered when they walked into the banquet hall.

  Hannah held her daughter a bit closer that night when she tucked her in. “You have quite the big brother there, don’t you?” she had said to her sleepy-eyed daughter, who yawned and smiled. She still had the diamond tiara next to her on the pillow.

  “Did I ever tell you about your Grandma Charlotte and your Grandpa Robert and the way they met in a fairy tale many years ago?”

  Olivia nodded, but asked her to tell it again. It was the perfect ending to the perfect of days.

  Chapter 30

  2006

  Thanks to Marney’s tenacity and the public’s voracious appetite for Hannah’s addictive appeal, the first business day of the New Year, Hannah signed a five-year syndication deal with WCLK’s parent company, Venture Media Network in New York. The company had investments in several major market radio stations, a twenty-four-hour all-talk radio behemoth franchise; a cable sports network, and over two hundred fifty Internet and satellite radio channels. Arrangements were made for her to commute four days a week on a six a.m. commercial airline to JFK Airport, where a car would be waiting to take her to the Manhattan studio.

  Hannah had made the initial trip to meet with the network solo, as Peter was too swamped at the hospital to steal away for even two days to accompany his wife in New York City for the formal interview. No surprise. So Hannah went alone. She treated herself to a new little black dress from Bloomingdale’s, a symphony, and ultimately, a career move that would, hopefully, solidify her place in broadcasting history.

  The offices of Venture Media had been much bigger, and certainly more intimidating than Hannah had imagined, filled with busy, dedicated professionals, mostly young, single types with high-end cars, expensive coffee drinks, and upper east-side walk-up co-ops, she’d supposed.

  A feeling of “high expectation” hung in the air, causing a prominent elevation to the task for which Hannah was once quite comfortable with. This was serious business, and for the first time ever, as she stood in the mammoth g
lass showcase corner office of the station’s general manager, Allison Michaels, awaiting her interview, she secretly questioned her right to be there.

  “Remember,” Marney had coached just twelve weeks earlier as she spun Hannah around in the stylist’s chair, “you want to look as bad-ass and fierce as your advice, so we’re going blonder—bolder.” Then, turning to the colorist, “Don’t be afraid to up the wattage here. I want Gwen Stefani meets Hillary Clinton.”

  The haircut and color were just the beginning of Marney’s master makeover plan. She promptly placed Hannah on a plant-based diet and a punishing five-day-a-week workout regimen, proselytizing, “You can’t be beautiful if you don’t feel beautiful, so let’s get to it!”

  She had hired a personal trainer and soon interval weight training, Pilates, and kickboxing were added to Hannah’s overbooked schedule. Marney even put a stationary bicycle in her home office, commanding her to “log as many miles as you can in between clients.”

  The pace was grueling, but after just five weeks, Hannah had never felt better or looked more ready for prime time. It was mind over matter, and having someone with Marney’s determination and gusto was just the kick in the behind that Hannah, and her career, needed. She was only a psychotherapist from Ohio with a successful local radio show, with two children still living at home. She had a four-bedroom mid-century brick home, a Chevy Caravan, a couple of dogs, a mortgage, and a garden of begonias badly in need of pruning, but she had a persona and a set of gams that could turn heads. She was ready to tackle the world. When it was all said and done, and thanks to Marney’s shrewd negotiations with the network, Dr. Hannah Courtland-Murphy agreed to sign on and join the Venture Media family with her afternoon radio show that would be blasted on over thirty-five stations nationwide.