After the Reunion (33 page)

Peter showed her the sales reports and told her the publicity was having an effect. They had started renovation on what was to be their Beverly Hills store, and it was important that when it opened they do well because the rent was so expensive.

“I want to do television too,” Emily told Freddie Glick. “You insisted I make myself over—well, I didn’t do it for radio where they can’t see me.”

“I’m trying,” he said. A week later he called her up triumphantly to tell her he had booked her on a local TV interview show. She watched it beforehand to see what was expected of her. Like most of those shows they had nonstop guests, each for about five to ten minutes, and none of them looked nervous. Why weren’t they nervous? She was.

As always, she went to the interview with Pat, the young girl from Freddie’s office. Freddie never came along in person unless it was a major show. The producers always made Pat sit outside anyway, because there wasn’t enough room, so it was just like being all alone and deserted except for having someone to drive her there and back and tell her she hadn’t been terrible.

Emily and Pat sat on chairs in the hall outside the studio and watched the show on a television set next to the ever-present coffee machine. Emily never drank anything before a show because she was afraid she would have to go to the ladies’ room right in the middle of it, and what would she do? The guest who was on right before her was a man who hypnotized himself and then thrust a long skewer through one cheek and out the other without losing a drop of blood or feeling any pain. His performance seemed endless, and Emily started to feel queasy. How could she talk about cookies after this? She wanted to run away.

“And you wanted to be in show business?” Pat said.

It was her turn. As she entered the studio she passed the skewer man, recovered from his trance, who was wiping a small drop of blood off his face. She looked away. She sat down primly next to the host, who looked pale under his television makeup, and they smiled at each other.

“That was
disgusting
,” Emily said.

“How would you have liked to be sitting right next to him? I don’t know if I can do this next segment—I feel too sick.”

“Oh, don’t be sick!” Emily said, suddenly so concerned for the poor man that she forgot how frightened she was. “We’ll just talk … I’ll tell you about necking at college … I won’t even mention Emily’s Cookies.”

“Ah, yes, necking,” he said. “I went to college in the late Sixties; we didn’t do that anymore.”

Emily laughed, and somewhere in the darkness in front of her she heard the staff laughing too. “When do I go on?” she asked.

“You
are
on. See that little red light?” He pointed to the camera, which of course she couldn’t see there in the dark with all those bright lights shining down on her, and there was its heartlessly recording little red eye.

“Oh, my … gosh.” She had almost said Oh My God, but she caught herself in time. You probably weren’t allowed to on television; you might offend somebody. She pulled herself together, feeling like the world’s biggest fool. She couldn’t even remember this man’s name—it had gone right out of her head. But he was looking at her with such friendly ease that she thought if she just kept looking back at him that she might be able to survive. “This is my first television appearance,” she said.

“Yes, all this success has happened very fast for you,” he said kindly. “Tell us about it.”

That, at least, she knew how to do. She had done it before. She did it again. When the red light went out and the commercial went on she wiped her perspiring hands on her skirt, because they had taken her handbag with her handkerchief in it away before she went on the set, for some reason she couldn’t understand, and then she shook the host’s hand. “Thank you,” she said. “I’m sorry I was so bad.”

“You were charming,” he said. “And I thank
you.
”

She went back to Pat, who was holding her vanished handbag, and they left. “I stunk,” Emily said, mortified. “Freddie Glick is going to kill me.”

“I thought you were cute,” Pat said. “They liked you. You were a real person.”

“That’s just what Freddie doesn’t want, a real person.”

“Well, fuck Freddie,” Pat said.

Apparently she hadn’t disgraced herself too much after all, because the next week Freddie booked her on two cable shows which were syndicated nationally, and the week after that he put her on
A.M. Los Angeles
. That one really frightened her, because she knew how important it was, but she had planned what she was going to say and everyone was very kind. Five minutes wasn’t long, but when you were on the air it seemed endless. And she still had the same feeling that she was going to do something unforgivable, and that it would be irrevocable. She wondered whether that had something to do with her upbringing, all the guilt for things she hadn’t even done, or whether everyone who went on TV felt that way.

Freddie came to this one, because it was a big show. He spent all the time he was there trying to sell another one of his clients for a future show and didn’t pay any attention to her. Still, after her segment was over, Emily waited for him to tell her if she had been all right. When he didn’t say anything she asked him.

“Sure,” he said, looking surprised that she had doubted it. “You were fine. Terry held up the cookie tin twice, that’s the main thing.”

“And how did I look?”

“You looked beautiful. You’re very photogenic.”

“Thanks,” she said. “I guess.” She wondered when she would ever be able to know if she had been good or not without having to ask people. Or maybe it didn’t matter, as long as they held up the cookie tin twice. But she couldn’t really believe that, no matter what he said.

She was so busy with her life and her new career that the divorce from Ken, when it became final, seemed only another event and not the trauma she had thought it might be. Their marriage had ended long ago; this was only a formality. When he saw her in court he looked surprised at her changed appearance.

“You’re looking very well,” he said mildly. “I guess getting away from me has done you good.”

“I guess so,” she answered lightly, and smiled. He hadn’t even realized she’d had anything done, and he was a
doctor!
But maybe he was too upset about the financial settlement to pay attention.

She had a lot of money now. Ken wanted to keep the house, so he had to give her half of what it was worth, plus half of whatever he’d saved since they’d lived in California. He didn’t have to support Kate and Peter, because they were both over eighteen, but neither of them really needed help anymore. Kate was working regularly, and Peter had a good salary from the business. Now that she could move, and live anywhere, suddenly Emily didn’t know what she wanted. She did know that she didn’t want another house; she wanted to be free.

She rented a two-bedroom apartment near the one where she had been living, this one unfurnished; had it painted, and bought a few things—just the essentials, but nice things that she would want to keep. She thought of it gleefully as a selfish apartment, meant for an adult living alone, everything clean and white and neatly in its place. She had not taken any objects from their marriage, and it delighted her that Ken was stuck with those hideous gold-painted dishes his mother had forced on them when they were first married. They hadn’t used them, and now he wouldn’t. But she really didn’t bear him any ill will anymore: he was the past. They had both been victims of The Rules.

Freddie Glick called her up triumphantly. “Okay, kiddo,” he said, “I’ve got a big one for you. I’ve got you booked on
The Merv Griffin Show.
”

“Oh my God,” Emily gasped. “Why me?”

“They’re doing a segment on the cookie craze, and they’re having some people who started their own cookie business and made it.”

“But I’m not famous … I mean, Merv Griffin, oh my God.” She was both excited and totally terrified.

“Yeah, but you do a good interview. I haven’t been having any trouble getting things for you lately.”

“Who else is on? What am I supposed to talk about?”

“Stop babbling,” he said. “Somebody from the show will call you before for a pre-interview.”

“I’m going to faint,” Emily said.

“You don’t want to do it?”

“Of course I want to do it,” she said.

So here she was, a week later, sitting in the Green Room backstage at the studio, waiting to go on a nationally syndicated television show she had been watching for years; Freddie Glick beside her, actually wearing a suit for the occasion. Somebody had told her it was called the Green Room because the performers who waited there turned green with anxiety, and Emily knew just what they meant. She watched the show on the monitor.

“And here is Wally Amos, whose company, Famous Amos, makes nearly five tons of chocolate chip cookies a day …”

Five tons … I hope nobody asks me how many
I
make. Look how happy and self-possessed and perky that man looks.… I would too if I made five tons of cookies a day
.

“And here’s Debbi Fields, who is only twenty-seven years old and has a hundred and fifty Mrs. Fields cookie outlets, and a new baby. That’s three children now, right?”

At twenty-seven I was having a nervous breakdown
, Emily thought.
God, she’s gorgeous; she looks like a model.…

“David Leiderman of David’s Cookies nationwide, who just opened a new outlet in
Tokyo!
”

And Emily, who hopes to open her new outlet in Beverly Hills …

Emily peered at the monitor to see if the audience looked friendly. Maybe they would like her because she had started so late, sort of a role model or something for the women who had never done anything. She didn’t like the idea of real people sitting there looking at her, expecting her to be interesting. She had never done a show in front of a live audience before … she had never done
anything
in front of an audience. She had been too petrified even to try out for the school play. Peter had wanted to come to the taping but she wouldn’t let him. It was the same dynamic that made her afraid to have her friends watch her when she was performing. And that was what it was, really, a performance. If she just kept telling herself that, and remembering her lines, she would be all right.

But she couldn’t remember a thing she had ever said.

Her mind was a total blank, and now someone was leading her out onto the stage, where the hot, bright lights hit her, and she was on the set that looked like a living room, or perhaps an office, with Merv Griffin at his desk, and all those cameras, and
the audience sitting there looking at her
. She sat down and crossed her legs and smiled, wondering if the microphone would pick up the sound of her thumping heart.

“This is Emily Buchman of Emily’s Cookies,” Merv Griffin said. “A newcomer on the cookie scene. She opened her first factory last summer, in Westwood Village in California, and it was an overnight success. Now she’s going to open another one in Beverly Hills, with plans for several more this year. Prior to this she was a homemaker with no business experience at all. When you were back at Radcliffe, Emily, did you ever think that this would happen?”

“No,” Emily said. “I wanted to be a doctor. But my career advisor told me that if I wanted so badly to be a doctor I should marry one instead, so I married the first doctor who asked me.”

There were some chuckles from the audience; the laughter of recognition, and a few gasps of disbelief. “Well, actually,” she said, “he was in premed.” More chuckles. They were liking her! She allowed herself to look back at the audience for the first time, and fastened on an attractive woman of about her own age, sitting in the first row, who was smiling at her and nodding encouragement. “In those days,” Emily said, “back in the Fifties, we married what we wanted to be. I guess it was supposed to rub off or something.”

More laughter—she had apparently said something mildly risqué. The woman in the front row gave her an ironic grin. “Then I guess it wouldn’t have helped if you’d married a baker,” Merv Griffin said, smiling.

“Well, he might have let me work in his store.” She smiled so they wouldn’t think she was too much of a feminist … just kidding, folks. “Incidently,
my
cookies are butterscotch chip, not chocolate chip, and I also make butterscotch marshmallow chip.” That was for Freddie, the plug so he wouldn’t yell at her afterward. Her mind was beginning to work again and she felt as if the whole thing was happening in slow motion. She thought of telling how Adeline wouldn’t let her into her own kitchen and she had to bake cookies on Adeline’s day off, and then decided it wouldn’t go over well. Better to stick to what she did best. Merv was asking her how she got started, and she was telling him, making her success story sound like
Rocky
. Now she told how her son and his friend from college had helped her; making it sound like a nice family story. She said she’d thought of her slogan “Cookies Are Love” because she always felt that way when she made her cookies for her children at home. Merv mentioned how nice it was that she still sent her cookies over to the children at the hospital. Then he asked if anyone in the audience had any questions for any of his guests.

A woman who seemed in her early fifties stood up. “I have a question for Emily,” she said; almost timidly, even respectfully. “I always wanted a career of some kind. I had talent in various directions. But like you, I was told to forget about it. Tell me, do you think it’s too late to do something different with my life?”

“It’s never too late,” Emily said firmly.

“Do you mind if I ask how old you are?”

Some rustling from the audience; apparently some of them thought it was a forbidden question. “I’m forty-six,” Emily said, taking off a year to conform with the lie Freddie had insisted on putting in the press release. Now there were some gasps, since she obviously looked a lot younger, and some approving murmurs and nods for her honesty.

“Thank you,” the woman said, and sat down.

Another woman stood up. “My question is for Emily too,” she said. “Was your husband supportive when you started your own business?”