Scott Free (19 page)

S
HERRY PEEKED THROUGH
the curtain at the gathering crowd.

“It's huge!” Larry exclaimed, his voice an excited whisper. “My God, there must be nine hundred people out there. Standing room only.”

“Half of them are media,” Sherry observed.

“And this is a problem?”

“They're not here to listen to my seminar. They're here to watch me fall apart in front of everybody. They're waiting to see the lady with the reputation for strength come unzipped when the pressure is on.”

“This lady would be you?” Larry asked, scowling. “Since when did you start referring to yourself in the third person?”

“Not now, okay, Larry?”

“It's an opportunity to shine like you've never shone before. If you step out there and give your message of strength and independence, in spite of the week's hardships, my God, you'll be the poster child for grieving mothers everywhere.”

Sherry nodded because it was the easiest way to get him to shut up. He wasn't the one with it all on the line out there. He wasn't the one who'd absorb the criticism, the public battery. He got to sit safely backstage while she was forced into performing despite the aching in her heart.

To people on the outside—to her critics and her fans—it all looked so easy, so glamorous. They had no idea how hard she'd worked and how much pain she'd endured to become who she was. And now the bill had come due. She'd talked the talk all the way to fame and fortune. Now it was time to walk the walk and the pathway seemed impossibly narrow. And unspeakably lonely.

Sherry was in a box. If she demurred from the stage in deference to Scotty's missing status, she'd be pilloried for violating her own message of strength through all adversity. On the other hand, if she went ahead on the adage that the show must always go on, then she'd be crucified as a coldhearted bitch. No matter what she did, the press and her fans would be watching every twitch of her mouth, every movement of her hands for some sign of her underlying motivations.

God forbid that she cry. To cry was to show weakness. According to her own teachings, tears were the one frailty that no woman could afford. Something had happened over the course of the past generation; the roles had reversed. Nowadays, it seemed that men of power sought out opportunities to shed tears in the media, to show their softer, more human side. When a presidential candidate showed up on an afternoon talk show, for example—an audience of women—you could pretty much guarantee that his eyes would well up during some reference to his family. The tears would show that he was strong enough to show his feelings. For a woman to do the same thing merely perpetuated the stereotype of the weepy female.

Such was the collateral damage of the women's movement, she supposed.

“Look at it this way,” Larry said, confusing her silence for indecision. “Canceling the engagement won't do anything to find Scott sooner. Going ahead might even take your mind off your worry for a while.”

“I'm not canceling anything, Larry,” Sherry said, not bothering to look at him. Let them think what they like. She had a job to do. “Go on out there and introduce me.”

 

B
RANDON HAD CHOSEN
a seat that no one else wanted, in the back of the room, his view of the stage partially obstructed by a pillar. He'd paid full price to be here, but he still felt oddly like an intruder. Truth be told, he'd heard so much about his ex-wife's seminars over the years that he was kind of curious what she had to say that was so inspiring. Maybe if he'd read one of her books he'd have a clearer understanding, but hell would freeze over first.

The public address system popped and Brandon looked up to see Larry Chinn on the stage. “Good morning, ladies and gentlemen,” he said. He waited for people to settle into their chairs and quiet down. “Welcome to Your Hour of Towering Power, with Dr. Sherry Carrigan O'Toole.” The room erupted in applause, which Larry accepted with a blush and a little wave of his hand. “I'm Larry Chinn, Dr. Sherry's personal assistant, and before we begin, I'd like to remind you of some of the ground rules, especially those of you in the back with the media.”

As one, the room turned to gape at the television cameras, as if they'd somehow missed them before.

“Dr. Sherry doesn't like to be interrupted with flash photography, and we'll ask you to honor her wishes along those lines,” Larry said. “I know many of you have questions regarding your personal circumstances, but I'm going to ask everyone to keep their questions to themselves until the very end of the presentation, at which point she'll answer as many of them as she can in the remaining time available. At the end of the presentation, Dr. Sherry will be signing books in the back of the room. Stand up and wave, Jocelyn.”

A freckled twenty-something stood amid a forest of hardcover books and gave a shy little wave.

“That's Jocelyn,” Larry explained. “She's our bookseller today, and she'll be happy to give you as many copies of Sherry's books as you can afford. I know some of you brought books from home to be signed, but because of the size of the crowd, I'm afraid we'll have to limit signatures to books that are purchased here today…”

Brandon rolled his eyes as he listened. Did people really value Sherry's handwriting so much that they would pay out real money for a copy of a book they already owned?

“With those logistics out of the way, now it's the moment you've been waiting for. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Doctor Sherry Carrigan O'Toole!” He announced her name in a manner that reminded Brandon of boxing matches, the syllables overpronounced and building to a crescendo with, “O'Tooooole!”

Only Brandon remained in his seat as the crowd leaped to a standing ovation. Larry stepped to the side and ushered Sherry on with a grand sweep of his arm. When she appeared from the wings, she glided across the stage, accepted a kiss on the cheek from Larry, then stood there, her hands at her sides, absorbing the love of the crowd.

“Thank you,” Sherry said. “Thank you very much.” But the applause rolled on and on. “Please, be seated. Thank you so much.”

Jesus,
Brandon thought,
she's a rock star.

The clapping and the whistles continued for the better part of a minute before it all finally died out and people settled back into their seats.

“You're very kind,” Sherry said, her voice amplified by a tiny microphone clipped to the collar of her suit. Her smile looked tired, Brandon noticed, but it was beautiful, nonetheless. More beautiful than the day they'd met. “It's always wonderful to see smiling faces,” she said. “But on a day like today, after a week like this one, it's particularly heartwarming to know that I have the love and support of so many wonderful people.”

That triggered another standing O, which Sherry acknowledged with pained nods and blown kisses. When they were seated again, it was time for the show.

“Life doesn't always deal you the hand you want,” she said. “I know this through my practice, of course, but this week has given me a close-up taste of my own medicine….”

Up there, on the stage, Sherry was an entirely different person than the one Brandon knew. Up there, she was polished and professional. He understood, finally, how people could assume that she had all the answers. How was it, he wondered, that someone fraught with so many insecurities and so much anger could come off in a crowd as something so entirely different?

She was playing a role up there, just as assuredly as any actress in a play. On the stage, reading from the script that she had written herself, she was a sage giver of advice because that was what she had declared herself to be. Up there, she was cool and collected, every argument logically constructed, every controversial point delivered as the natural, inevitable conclusion to its antecedent.

“Cue up your television cameras, gentlemen,” she said, twenty minutes into her talk. She'd already covered the way that men oppress women, touching on all the hot-button clichés of the male-female competition for space on the planet. “Make sure I'm in focus, because I'm coming to the part that you most like to misquote.

“According to the male population of this country, our role as women is to sacrifice. We're supposed to sacrifice our bodies to our husbands, our careers to our children and our equality to the world.”

Some in the audience clapped, but others stirred uncomfortably.

“They don't just come out and say it, of course. It's not in-your face quite like that, but it's part of the common Zeitgeist. Watch television on Mother's Day, and you'll get a glimpse of just how expendable we women really are. ‘Good mothers'”—she said this with finger quotes in the air—“sacrifice themselves so that their families can thrive. I want to know why we can't thrive right along with them. Think of the maternal archetype in the war-torn ruins who gives up her share of meager rations so that her children might have more.” She paused for a moment for the audience to see the image. “She essentially kills herself so that her kids can be left to fend for themselves. Why am I supposed to find this inspirational? Why can't we both have half-rations, go to bed a little hungry and then wake up alive together?”

The crowd chuckled.

“When was the last time you saw a scene where Daddy is cowering in the basement starving himself? Oh, that's right, he's out on the front lines, because he's
strong.
He's
smart.
He's the
warrior.
Have you ever heard such bullshit in all your lives?”

The chuckles turned to laughter.

“That's the technical, psycho-medical term for it, too.
Shitticus bullicus,
in Latin. I see it every day, people. Every single day. Only here in America, it's not about bread in wartime. It's about work in prosperous times. Mommy guilt. That hole we burn through our guts every single day when we swing through day care for our kids. You know what I'm talking about, don't you?”

Oh, yeah, they certainly did.

“Think about the abuse we have to endure from the old men on Capitol Hill and the windbags on AM radio. God forbid we remove unwanted pregnancies from our own wombs, but once we deliver the little darlings to the world, we're supposed to abdicate everything smart or exciting or challenging to the warrior spouse. And we're supposed to pretend that this makes sense.”

Brandon noted how thoroughly she owned the crowd right now.

Sherry raised her voice louder and louder, just to be heard. “Do you remember what the technical, psych-med term is?”

The audience answered as one: “Bullshit.”

“Ah, yes.
Shitticus bullicus.
Listen to me closely now, because I'm going to commit social heresy. Are you ready? Here it is: selflessness and self-actualization are mutually exclusive.” That line seemed to settle the audience down some. “What's wrong? You seem shocked. There's nothing new here, men have known it for years. Self-actualizing is about achieving goals, and I can think of precious few intelligent human beings whose lifetime goals extend no further than fruit juice and Band-Aids.

“And before the hypersensitive among you start seizing on the floor, I am not bad-mouthing motherhood. Did you hear that? Motherhood is good. So is childhood. I'm just sick and tired of having to counsel brilliant, wealthy, successful women who continue to buy into the
shitticus bullicus.
Success is a cause for celebration; it should not require the use of antidepressants because darling little Charlie ate a nutritionally balanced meal in day care while his friends with stay-at-home moms got to rot their teeth on handmade peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. I mean, my God, can we possibly build a stronger emotional cage for ourselves?

“Soccer games and school Halloween parties are delightful diversions, folks, but so is closing a multimillion-dollar business deal. You can have both.”

Brandon watched the performance, his belly boiling. Yes, you could indeed have both, he thought, but how the hell would she know? It all sounded so terribly
reasonable
when he heard it coming from the stage, so carefully balanced for dramatic effect, but the fact of the matter was, Sherry was never interested in both; she was interested in Sherry. When a publisher dangled a pile of money where she could see it, her beloved husband and son transformed into mere roadblocks.

Brandon stood and stepped out from behind his pillar, and just like that, Sherry broke character. Her recognition was instant, and her discomfort shined like a beacon from her face. The audience locked in on her line of sight and soon they were all staring at him. This was his chance. Finally, he had the opportunity to expose the
real
Sherry Carrigan O'Toole; not the one on the poster or the book jacket or the stage, but the vindictive bitch who not only wanted it all, but felt compelled to take it from him. He wanted to tell the entire room, the entire
world
, how her evil little prank had inflicted so much pain on so many people.