Reality Jane (30 page)

When I first heard the sound of crying, it was pitch black out. The LCD said 2:15.

“Toni?”

The door handle creaked. My bedroom door pushed forward and I suddenly sat up. “I have a knife!” I shouted.

“Jane, it’s me. Jane?”

“Christ! Toni, you scared the hell out of me,” I said.

She burst into tears, sniffling and sobbing. Clumsily, she plopped down on the edge of my bed, blowing her nose.

“What’s wrong? You okay?”

“No.”

“What happened?” I said, feeling protective. “Did somebody hurt you?”

“No. Sort of. I. . . I. . . was out on a date with Mike, that guy I’ve been seeing. I thought he really liked me. I made him dinner, and when we got to the bar, I don’t know what happened. He just started talking to some chick. Like I didn’t exist. She had gigantic fake boobs. He pointed at me and they started laughing.”

“That’s horrible,” I said, shifting so I could hug her. “But are you sure you’re not reading something into this? How much did you drink?”

“Shut up! I had two glasses of wine,” she said. Her breath told me otherwise. “Anyway, I had to get him back. So I grabbed this guy. Super hot. I started kissing him, total stranger. Next thing you know, we’re making out. It was crazy.”

“Jeez. Then what?” I asked, thinking only Toni could arrive with one guy and leave with another. Most of us would have tossed a drink on Mike, or simply left, thinking him not worth the breath, but not my little Toni. She needed serious revenge,
such as another boy-trophy, immediately, no matter how humiliating her actions.

“He asked me to come to his place.”

“And?”

“Well?”

“Well what?”

“He got really aggressive,” Toni said.

“Does he know where we live?”

“He just left. It was horrible.”

“What did he do?”

“He jumped me!”

“I’ll kick his ass!”

“I said no. At first I didn’t. . . I didn’t want to embarrass him, but he kept pushing. So I kicked him. He called me a slut—white trash. ‘Not worth the gas to get you here!’ He looked psycho.” Tears rolled down Toni’s cheeks as she gasped rhythmically.

Part of me felt bad, and part of me wanted to shake her. It didn’t take a genius to see she’d made her bed. And normally she was quite comfortable sleeping in it. Little Miss Tough Girl, miles-ahead-of-her-years, handled her shame as if it was an Olympic medal: “Yup, did him summer of ‘06. Oops, don’t remember his name or his face.” Or “back of a truck with my shoes on—s’all good.” Anything for a laugh, even at the expense of her self-respect.

I didn’t know what to say, except, “I’m so sorry.”

“And Amanda, my friend from the show, was there at the bar,” Toni continued.

“Uh-huh.”
I cuddled her.

“She totally bailed on me! Like she’s better than me.” Toni’s sobs became louder. “I have no one. I’m alone. The guys here—they’re all assholes. I just want to meet a nice guy. A
nice
guy!” she yelled, tilting her chin to the ceiling. “Like Grant.” She turned her head toward me and sobbed. “You’re so lucky, Jane. You don’t even know. Your life’s practically perfect. . . I want to go home. Now.”

“Perfect?” I shook my head. “Anyway, don’t say that. You don’t want to go back to Chicago—it’s cold there.”

“It’s cold
here
!” she spat. “I’m all alone.”

“Toni, no one said it would be easy. They say this city makes you soft, but I never believed it. It’s hard. It’s tough. It’s an island—it’s like
Lost
, the TV show, only bigger and crazier! And the men here? Aliens. All of them.”

I wanted to make it all better for her, the way a mom promises her child. But I couldn’t guarantee her she would meet a good man, especially in LA. And it wasn’t about finding a good man, anyway. It was about finding the
right
man, as I’d learned today.

“Come here.” I pulled her hair from her wet cheek. “Why don’t you sleep here tonight, with me? It’ll be okay. You’ll find the right guy. He’s right around the corner.”

Toni fell asleep beside me, clothes still on, on top of the covers. She didn’t move a hair when I staggered out of bed three hours later for work.

B
renda Wambetti was a single mother. She was also a mess.

She worked long days, often six days a week, as a secretary for an investment firm in the midst of lay-offs. She had a 9-year-old son, Oliver, and a 14-year-old daughter, Susan, each with different fathers, both long since gone. She and the kids shared a small apartment in a rent-controlled neighborhood. Brenda and Susan slept in the big bedroom, Oliver in the second one.

Recently, Barbara, Brenda’s sister, had come to live with them. She was broke, with nowhere else to go, so she set up shop in their 8’ x 6’ dining room, a twin bed shoved into the corner, a night table with a faux Tiffany lamp overlooking the living room, and a chest of drawers full of clothes and all her worldly possessions facing out to the kitchen.

They fought, all of them, like cats and dogs. They loved to yell and they loved to hit, especially Brenda, a smack on the wrist here, a smack on the rump there, even a smack upside the head, but never too hard. It was mayhem. But who could blame her? She and her little family were crowded into 550 square feet, unhappy, and unsure of what had happened to their slice of the American dream.

In a nutshell, my marching orders from Corinne were:

• Get Brenda smacking the kids, inside and outside the house, and in the car
  
• Get Brenda and her sister arguing, yelling, and hitting
  
• Brenda’s got to hit for real—make sure it’s real
  
• Show Oliver in bed, sick. If he’s not sick, he needs to pretend he is
  

Note: Call us if she doesn’t play ball!

Note 2: Be careful not to reveal the real story-line to Brenda.

From a story perspective, Brenda was the perfect basket case for our show, as well as the perfect audience provoker. Mothers throughout TV Land would be appalled. And she played along like a pro. I had her recreate a morning in her household, getting the kids, and herself, off to school and work. Oliver got a hit for dilly-dallying over breakfast—just a little smack, but it made me jump because of how readily she administered it. She struck Susan on the leg for leaving towels on the floor. Then she yelled at them both for not getting out the door quick enough, and hit the wall. She also yelled at Oliver for forgetting his backpack. After yelling at Susan for not locking the door, she threw her the keys. The woman should have gotten an Oscar. It was the performance of a lifetime. And we got it all on tape.

Then, during the interview, which was all we could have wanted, she ran the full spectrum: starting as self-effacing and depressed, beating up on herself, hating herself, begging to be someone else; morphing into an angry, vilified woman with nowhere to turn, unable to help herself, and looking to see who she could blame; and finishing off at pathetic and helpless, like a child herself, crying out for understanding and guidance. “Help me, please, Ricky Dean. Help me!”

Beneath it all was a woman in pain, an ultimately kind woman and, as far as I could tell, a good mother. She loved her kids. She paid the bills, made the lunches, took the kids to movies, bought them what she could. She cared. But she liked to smack and yell. Her mother used to smack her, and her mother’s mother smacked
her
mother, and so on, back to the old country and the beginning of the smacking clan.

Despite the fact she had some anger issues, I didn’t think she was evil or a “horrible mother,” as Meg’s notes suggested. I struggled with the idea that she might be presented as a mother who was making her children sick. Mostly because it wasn’t true. Also because the theme of the show—as presented to
her—was “Overworked Moms Who Need Help.” There had to be a more honest approach. Why couldn’t we just help her?

I left Brenda ten hours after our introduction. She was nothing more nor less than a fundamentally decent person enduring a really tough life, reaching out for help, hoping for a little guidance from the man who promised to “fix your life.” She was about to become a pawn: her story, her life, and her troubles, exploited for entertainment purposes. I felt numb.

“Gib, go home. You’re not looking good. I’m worried about you,” I said. I really meant it.

It was nine o’clock at night and we were two of a handful of staff members still toiling away in the Ricky Dean production office.

“Can’t. Got to get this story done.” He looked at me with wilted eyes. As my supervising producer, he’d aged ten years in the few months since I’d met him. “Besides, I have to go to Vegas tomorrow to direct the Fat Forum shoot. I think I might just sleep here.”

“Oh yeah,
that
. Well, at least let me finish the story, then. I’m the one who shot it,” I pushed. “Just go get some rest!”

Our production area was looking less like an office and more like Hotel Wayward. On any given day, anytime from sunset to sunrise, frazzled producers dressed in designer jackets and funky heels, crashed on couches and cots or fell asleep on the rug, desperately grabbing a few minutes to recharge. Gib had become a permanent fixture. His hair was greasy and matted and his complexion was gray. He’d worked eighteen-hour days for ten straight days, with one day off prior to that, and before this last run, nearly a month of all-nighters. Half of those nights he hadn’t gone home at all. He slept on the community cot that one of the AP’s had brought into the office and put near the edit bays for any of us to snatch a nap. An editor brought in old pillows and blankets from home. I couldn’t stand the thought of either of us spending another night on the cot.

“Yeah,” he said, “but you’ve been on a plane for almost three months. You’ve had less sleep than me. And we’ve got you off to Massachusetts late tomorrow.”

“Massachusetts? As in east-coast-time-change/seven-hour-flight Massachusetts?”

“Yeah. Sorry. Should have told you earlier.”

“Whoa,” I said. “Maybe I’ll just pitch a tent at the airport.”

Gib laughed.

“Seriously,” I said, “I can handle it. I don’t have a family like you do. Besides, Gib, you really do look worse for wear. These people are killing you. What’s going on, anyway?”

“Ah, it’s nothing.”

“Tell me.”

He shook his head, reluctant to speak out.

“Really, you can trust me.”

“Just endless meetings,” Gib began. “Things are getting messed up. Some of the tapes weren’t ready this morning when they went to do the run-through. I don’t know what happened.”

“Well, that’s not your fault.”

“Apparently it is. They gave us a 9:30 deadline. What they say goes. But what they don’t realize is that when they come in at 7:30 in the morning after a good night’s sleep and make a bunch of last minute changes in the edit bay, that screws things up. Even if we could make Ricky Dean’s changes that quickly, we could never get it up-res’d and dubbed in time to be sent to VTR to air at ten. It’s bullshit.”

“Hey, Gib,” we heard from outside the door, “if you don’t like it here, there are other places to work.”

Meg walked in with long fingers spread firmly across bony hips, her porcelain skin and thin pink lips expressionless. She was terrifying. Gib’s face contorted as if he’d seen a ghost. Neither of us could have imagined she would still be in the office at this hour.

“Jane, Mr. Dean would like to see you,” Meg said, now ignoring Gib.

I got up quickly and followed her out the door, replaying the conversation with Gib in my head.
THE Ricky Dean wants to see me? Now? Crap! Did I dish on the show too? Was I “un-excellent”?

“Hello, Jane.” Mr. Dean shook my hand. He was sitting at the head of the table in the conference room. “Heard you’re a bit of a star in the field.”

“Thank you, Mr. Dean,” I said, wholly intimidated.

“We need you to head up our Fat Forum shoot,” Meg said in her commando voice. “It’s going to be in Vegas. We’ve got couples in their 20’s and 30’s going to fat camp to see who can reach their weight goal first. Ashley Allan will host the forum and Mr. Dean will oversee.”

“Think you can handle it?” Mr. Dean asked with a serious face.