Reality Jane (37 page)

Alex flung his coat onto his shoulder and reached for the door. “And you, my dear, better not embarrass me,” he said, as he sneered through his nostrils and slammed the door.

“Or what?” I grabbed the nearest object and, with all the strength I could muster, threw it at his silhouette. Paint chipped near the doorknob as I heard the sound of glass and metal cracking into pieces. I stared at the door long after he had gone, my breath slowing to a rhythmic pant. Finally, my glance fell to the floor.

There was my lifeline—my iPhone—shattered into a pile of discombobulated electronic pieces.

Toni woke me up at 8:00 am. My body, still wearing yesterday’s clothes, was curled into the cushions of the couch. I’d barely moved since the night before.

“Hey, you better get up. You’re going to be late,” she said in a motherly tone, on her way to work on a new reality show.

My eyes were glued together.
Where am I?
It was one of those awakenings that left me wondering if it was all a bad dream.

“Thanks,” I said, clearing my throat. “But I’m not going in today.”

“You calling in sick?” She sounded concerned.

“No, I’m not calling in anything. I’m just not going,” I said defiantly.

“Well, um,” she hesitated, unsure how to handle me. “Good for you, then. I wouldn’t go either. Are you planning some
changes for that hellhole?”

“No. Nothing so lofty.”

“What about last night?” she asked uncertainly. “Never mind. Let’s talk about it later. I want to hear everything. I’ll be home around seven.” She reached for the door. “Jane, are you going to be okay? Can I get you something?”

“Fine. I’m fine. Let’s talk later.”

My head fell back onto the cushions. The wine glasses on the table were spotted with fingerprints and streaks of red wine, highlighted by a sun slowly inching its ghostly white fingers onto our balcony. A pair of play handcuffs sat on the floor beside the chair in an unopened package. Alex must have brought them over.

Last night’s conversation replayed in my head, like the reel on a player piano, the word “idiot” echoing over and over. I hated Alex for a moment. Then I felt sorry for him. He clung tightly to his superficial world, and he was lost.

I pried myself off the couch to run a bath and shuffled to my closet in search of the coziest article of clothing I could find. My blue flannel pajamas with the fluffy cloud pattern called out to me. I hadn’t worn them since France. As I pulled them from the shelf, high above my head, a photograph fell to the floor.

It was a slightly crumpled, four-by-six of me in front of the castle in France, smiling with my walkie-talkie in hand and headset on my head. The moment seemed light years away. I propped some pillows against the headboard and sat down for a closer look. There was a note on the back. It read:

Here she is with that smile, the way she stands, the way she rests her hands in her pockets and leans from one leg to the next. Can’t wait to hang with HER in LA.

—Your “Surfer Boy” Grant

Hazy memories of the last few days in France surfaced like the morning mist: Grant and I on a moonlit walk through a medieval village, cuddling in our hotel room next to a blazing fire, reading aloud from a cheesy book of love poetry. . .

Whatever happened to us?
I thought, unconsciously
clenching the photo. I thought of his sincerity, his kindness, his passion— his love.

His love!
Only now was it obvious. He gave himself to me, consistently and honestly. And I
was
indeed an idiot—a blind idiot! The one thing every human being desperately seeks and needs—true love—had once been sitting in my living room.

In return, I’d flung aside that love for something less real, less human, less gratifying. In the process of becoming Miss Hollywood Producer, I’d lost myself, and I’d lost him too.

Thoughts of all the lives I’d recently come across sprinted through my mind. They all meant well. The problem was me. I’d become what I’d feared and, ironically, longed to be.

I wanted to throw up.

“L
ooks like the Monster Mom piece was a winner after all,” Corinne said, stopping from her 40-mile-an-hour office sprint. “Mr. Dean thinks I’m a rock star—and you, too.”

I took my first long, hard look at Corinne in some time. Her clean, smooth brow looked plastic. She’d pulled her straight, copper-colored hair into a bun—a corporate looking power style—which drew added attention to her snubby little nose. I couldn’t decide if she was pretty or just tough and skeletal. Then, for the first time, I noticed three forehead wrinkles, apparently desperate to surface somewhere, despite her poisonous cosmetic attempts to quash them. It made me think,
HA! You can’t escape your age!

“I swear to God,” she continued, “we’ll just keep taking these pathetic women down one by one. We should create a show where women have to get a license to have babies. We’ll put them through the ‘Ricky Dean Good Mother Test’! Great idea, huh?”

“Sure. Because you, of all people, know what it takes to be a good mother,” I said, shaking my head.

“What did you say?” She looked more than a little surprised.

“How the hell do you know what these women have been through? My best friend in Canada raised two kids by herself while putting herself through college and law school. Mother is the hardest job any human being can do, and it’s so easy to screw up. You don’t have a clue.”

Corinne glared at me. “Talk about ungrateful!” she said with a snarl, dashing toward the edit bays in her self-important way.

It was my first day back after what had seemed like an
eternity—three days of not returning calls, of loafing around the beach house in my pajamas, of polishing off large quantities of mac and cheese, and whole boxes of chocolate Teddy Grahams. I also watched sophisticated nostalgia like
Pink Panther
movies, and listened to
Sublime
, which I played as loud as I liked.

It mattered not to me that the office “needed me.” They told me I had stories to edit and that I was supposed to be on a plane to Ohio on Wednesday, to which I countered, “I’m sick. Send someone else.” The thought of coercing another woman into divulging her deepest secrets for the sake of our show made me want to wretch.

By yesterday, I had garnered the strength to begin the resignation process, all hopes of bringing reform to
Fix Your Life
washed down the drain—not because of what Alex had said, but because I realized I didn’t want to work there anymore. I simply wanted
me
back: healthy, honest, and complete.

Resigning was not going to be easy, though. My signature on their iron-clad contract meant they could probably force me to stay. The only person I could initially turn to for insight was Gib, hoping that, given his recent fallen status, he might understand and offer me some sage advice. I sent him a private e-mail. Despite my anger at the system, I wanted him to hear it from me first. Plus, he was still technically my boss—at least no one had told me otherwise.

Dear Gib,

Please have a look at my issues below, for which I want to leave the show. Your thoughts would be appreciated before I talk to Meg.

1. Airplanes every day for 3 mos, 90-hour weeks, all-nighters. Is that legal?
   
2. No meal breaks! Say
   what
   ? Humans must EAT—and sleep would be nice.
   
3. 5 or 6G’s in hotel/cab/food expenses racking up interest. Not
   The Donald
   here!
   
4. No creative latitude. Drone girl, forced to execute orders, don’t defy script, don’t think! Say
   what
   ? I’m a professionally
   trained and highly experienced journalist!
   
5. Being forced to make someone cry (interview or not) is journalistically unethical. And in my book immoral!
   
6. On a separate note: our guests. Who’s getting
   fixed
   ? This isn’t help. It’s torture TV! Mr. Dean needs to spend time with these people—help them! I have some ideas on this if anyone cares. . .
   

It was already noon, I still hadn’t seen any of the senior staff, and Gib was noticeably MIA. I was hoping he would find me or at least offer some feedback on the e-mail. I couldn’t bear the thought of another week on the show. Suddenly, Meg’s assistant paged me over the intercom. Immediately, I called back. Meg answered, her voice surprisingly pleasant and forthright.

“Hi, can you come see me?”

I was expecting a different tone.

“Sure, I’ll be right there,” I said, a patch of nerves rumbling through my belly.
What does she want? She doesn’t know I’m leaving. Maybe she’s calling to reprimand me for taking these sick days. Maybe it’s another Fat Forum shoot.

“Hello,” I said, shutting the door, fear swelling in my body.

Her finger pointed at the chair in front of her desk as she motioned for me to sit. My fingers began to tremble.

“So?” She looked at me as if she had just swallowed her morning kill. “Janey want a cracker?”

“Pardon me?” It wasn’t like her to be funny.

“I understand you’re starving. Never get time for lunch, or a sit-down dinner. I just thought you might want a cracker.”

“It’s true,” I said, a hint of defiance in my voice.
Did Gib tell Meg about my e-mail?

Meg quickly launched into her act. “How could this happen?. . . How could you be flying five or six days a week?. . . How could you not get a per diem for lunches or petty cash to pay for your taxis?”

“Don’t know,” I said, cowering.

“Whose fault is this?!” she bellowed.

“Meg, I don’t know. I’ve just been doing my job like everyone else.”

“Get me Gib on the phone,” she buzzed to her assistant. “Try him at home! He’s responsible for this.”

“Please don’t,” I said. “He’s just doing his job too.”

“Look, Jane, you might as well know. I saw the e-mail. I’ve had someone checking Gib’s work emails ever since he was put on leave.”

“
Leave
?” I asked, bewildered. “I thought he was still in the office.”

“No, he’s on leave,” Meg spat. “That’s all you need to know.”

“With all due respect,” I said, “what right does someone have to forward you a personal e-mail of mine?” Corinne flashed through my mind briefly.
Would she? Could she?

“Jane, as I’m sure you know, your office e-mails, written on our computers, and sent through our network, are our property. Read your contract!” Now fully annoyed, she again buzzed her assistant, “Get me Gib on the phone!” Clearly, whatever was most wrong with the system was of little concern to Meg.

“This is about me. Not Gib. Just me,” I said with regret. “I’m the one with the problem. And it’s not just the hours or the airplanes. That’s only the half of it.”

“What’s the other half? You feel, as you put it, like a
drone
? You’re a robot now?”

“Sort of.”

“What else, Ms. Hot Shot?”

“Well, I. . .” I said, hesitating.

“Go on.” Her eyeballs bulged.

“Per the e-mail,” I said, trying to maintain my composure, “I don’t think this show is helping—”

“Oh, right,” she said flippantly. “So, Jane, what do you want to do here, journalism or philanthropy? Because you can’t do both!”

Her phone buzzed. “Still haven’t reached Gib,” her assistant said over the intercom, “and Mr. Barlow’s on the line.”

“I’ll take it.” She looked at me with one of her forced smiles. “Two minutes. I’ve got to take this.”

Her walls were an off-putting peach color, with a single painting of a Mediterranean landscape housed in a cheery gold frame. A shot of two young boys on a sailboat sat on her desk.
They were laughing. I stared at it, feeling unprepared for this meeting. I sounded dumb, inarticulate.

Her red fingernails clanked along her keyboard as she checked e-mails and said the occasional “uh-huh” to the man on the other end of the phone. I noticed a large, chunky diamond on her ring finger, which looked out of place on her bony hand. She looked up at me, phone attached to her ear, apparently on hold.

“Listen,” she said, directing her voice toward me in her most business-like manner, “I’m not upset with you. In fact, I want you to wait a week. I can’t give you details now, but I promise you, a promotion is in the works. Things are about to become really good for you.”