Me vs. Me (6 page)

“You'll be working here,” Curtis mouths, pointing to one of the desks, which a tall, lanky man now occupies.

She motions me back toward the door.

When we're back outside, Curtis continues growling orders. “Ron's ratings are highest when he gets a good debate going, so don't book any wimps. Make sure the guest can stand his ground.”

“No problem,” I say.

“And make sure to know who else the guest is talking to. If he appeared on Larry King last night, we don't want him tonight. Ron won't be happy with you. He won't be happy at all.”

“Got it.” Butterflies are anxiously flying around my stomach. If I was intimidated by Ron before, I'm scared shitless now. What if Ron doesn't like me? What if he thinks I'm some sort of hack? What if he thinks I'm illiterate?

“And remember,” Curtis says as we step back into the elevator, “he's very happily married. And we want him to stay that way.”

I try to keep the shock from my face. What exactly does she mean by that? Does she think I'm going to try to sleep my way to the top? Or is it my responsibility to keep guests from hitting on him? He's not exactly a rock star. I can't exactly imagine screaming teen girls pressed against the tinted windows flashing him their panties. “I understand,” I say.

“Good.” With a glance at her watch she adds, “It's time for the morning meeting.”

 

My hands are shaking. I've moved them under the conference-room table so nobody notices, but there doesn't seem to be anything I can do to make them stop.

Curtis, the reporters and the associate producers are all chatting among themselves. Ron is expected any minute and I can't get my hands to stay still. Ron will probably think I'm some sort of crack junkie. Just as I'm about to try putting them on the table again, so I can use the right one to take notes, he enters the room.

“Good morning, you guys!” he sings.

“Hey, Ron,” everyone chants back.

Ron looks exactly like he does on television, only taller. He comes across as the ideal dad: smart, trustworthy, handsome and in control. His hair is short, dark gray and parted to the side. He's wearing beige pleated trousers and a navy collared sweater. He places his steaming mug of coffee at the head of the oval table and sits down.

“Everyone excited for today's show?” he asks, scanning the table. His gaze rests on me. “You must be Gabby. Welcome to the team.”

My cheeks flush when he says my name. I'm not surprised he knows who I am, but the familiarity of my nickname catches me by surprise. “Thanks, Ronald,” I say, trying to sound smooth and praying I don't stutter. “It's a pleasure to be working for you.”

He smiles, and I'm surprised to see that he has two dimples. “How do you feel about the cold, Arizona? No dry heat here, is there?”

He's so sweet. And what a cute new nickname. “It's a bit of a shock to my system.”

“Wait till January. You'll be wanting to get on the first plane back to Phoenix.”

I don't need a plane for that. I just have to fall asleep. “I doubt that,” I say, smiling. I am bantering with Ronald Grighton!

“Wow, what a great smile,” he says.

My smile gets even bigger.

Curtis rustles through her portfolio. “Welcome to
Ron's Report
, Gabrielle. Now let's get started on today's show. Since we can't get the kidnapped girl—I just heard she's talking to Paula Zahn—”

Groans from the table.

“—I think we should stick to our program. We'll do the segment about the elections first. Then the hurricane in the Bahamas. We have the director of the National Hurricane Center and the governor-general scheduled. Then we're supposed to go to—”

Suddenly my bag begins to vibrate. What the hell?

In a split second, everyone at the table whips out his or her BlackBerry, apparently the cause of said vibrating.

“They lost the Cookie Cutter,” Curtis says.

Murmurs around the table. The Cookie Cutter is Jon Adams, heir to Cookie Creams, the chocolate-chip dynasty, who was arrested for raping and fatally stabbing three women in Spanish Harlem. “How did that happen?” asks Michael, an associate producer. “He was in custody.”

“He jumped bail,” she reads. “We have to run a story on this today.”

Ron sips his coffee. “Who can we get to talk?”

“The district attorney is doing a press conference at noon,” Curtis says. “We'll need to cover that. Let's speak to someone from the defense team. Do you think the Adams' parents will talk to us?”

This all happens so fast, I barely have time to think. I need to add something. What can I say? “What about interviewing the victims' families?”

Ron grins and taps his mug on the conference table. “Definitely.”

Wahoo!

Curtis continues flicking through her BlackBerry. “The mothers are Puerto Rican and Dominican. Who speaks Spanish?”

“I do,” I say quickly. You don't live in Arizona without learning the lingo. Some of it, anyway.

“Good,” says Curtis, nodding. “Go to it.”

My hands stop shaking. I'm going to do fine. No, I'm going to do great.

 

“The chicken pad thai,” I order at the Thai restaurant counter. “To go.” I'm starving. All I had for lunch was coffee, coffee and more coffee.

What a day. What an amazing, incredible, exhausting, overwhelming day.

The show went smoothly. My segment went perfectly. I called the mothers and convinced them (in Spanish) to come on the show, where I got them a proper translator. Both Curtis and Ron praised me for a job well done.

When my meal is ready, I return to my apartment. My doorman informs me that my mattress and frame are waiting for me. Micha, the porter, helps me carry them up to my apartment. I give him a twenty and then sink into the couch, turn on the news and dig into my chicken.

Heather is in her room, chatting on the phone, and doesn't come out to say hello. If I weren't so damn tired, I'd be insulted.

A picture of the kidnapped kid flashes across CNN and I feel a pang that she went to Paula Zahn and not us. My BlackBerry buzzes a few times, but it's only sports scores. When I'm done eating, I strip off my clothes, wash off my makeup, replace the couch pillows, make my bed and then climb underneath the sheets. Tired and happy, I think about potential stories for tomorrow. Maybe the defense attorney will be willing to speak to us. Maybe someone will find the Cookie Cutter. What will happen with the hurricane? I cannot wait to chase these stories.

Crap. Tomorrow—maybe I should call it re-today?—I won't be doing any chasing. More likely, I'm going to be getting chased. By my future mother-in-law.

My Mothers, Myself

C
onsidering how abnormal my life is, the next few days (actually several for me, a few for the rest of the world) pass by in a relatively normal way. Note
relatively.

First, on Monday in Arizona, my mother calls at eight (yes, eight) to tell me that she's still mad at me. I grovel until she's satiated, and then just when I fall back to sleep, Alice calls. Groan. Both mothers on my first official day of being unemployed. Fate can be cruel.

Though, my mother, I can handle. My mother, I can tell off. But the Number One rule in any book of practical etiquette is “Don't piss off your future mother-in-law.” In other words, wait until after the wedding to tell her, for instance, you will not be hanging that lovely portrait of her on your bedroom wall. Otherwise an argument might ensue, and what if your fiancé sides with Mommie Dearest? You get to be the queen only after you ascend to the throne. So when Alice calls me on Monday morning at nine (yes, nine), demanding that my mother and I come by that afternoon so we can all “get our heads together,” I remain composed.

My mother does not do the let's-get-our-heads-together thing. At least, not well. “My mom doesn't get back until tomorrow morning,” I explain, trying to keep the exasperation out of my voice.

Alice sighs. Loudly. “All right, Gabrielle, but don't blame me if we can't get everything done on time and your wedding is a huge disaster.”

“Why don't we just meet tomorrow.” I pull the comforter over my head in the hopes that she'll go away.

She sighs again. “Fine.”

“Let's meet at night so Cam can come, too.”

She laughs. Shrilly. “No. We don't need Cam.”

“Really? I think we kind of do.”

“Trust me, he's not going to care. He doesn't want to be bothered with the small details. Let him worry about work, and we'll worry about the wedding. I'll see you at four tomorrow.” She hangs up.

I call back my mother and ask if she'll come with me to Alice's.

She groans. “Do I have to?”

“Mom! It's my wedding.”

“I know, but I don't want to go to Alice's. She sounded so…Martha Stewart. But without the good taste and prison stories. She made me want to throw up a little.”

“Hey, you're talking about my future mother-in-law.”

“I'm sorry, I'm sorry. But she does.”

“Mom.”

“Fine, I'll come. My plane lands at eleven. Should I meet you there?”

“Yes. At four.” I tell her the address and wait as she types it into her planner.

“Done,” she says. “Wait. I don't have to bring anything, do I? Like freshly baked cookies?”

This whole situation is making me want to throw up a little, too. “No. Just come.”

Once I'm up, I call the person who bought my car and ask him if there's any way, if it's at all possible, if I renege on the sale. “I'm really sorry, but I'm not moving now and I really need my car—”

“No,” he says flatly through the phone.

“Oh. Um. Pretty please?”

“No. Sorry. But have a nice day,” he says and then hangs up.

Fantastic. I decide to wait until after I've had my coffee before calling both Heather and my old boss (to beg for my job back). When I'm fairly well caffeinated and thus prepared to face another phone call, I get Heather's voice mail (“I'm really sorry but—”) and then reach Bernie. He tells me he's already hired my replacement.

That was fast. So much for being indispensable.

“I'm sorry,” he says, “but let me know if you're interested in freelancing.”

Nothing is worse than going from a full-time producing gig to freelance producing. It's like going from teaching to substituting, or full-time girlfriend to 2:00 a.m. sex buddy.

Guess I'll try to find myself a new car.

 

Nothing says early November like postelection coverage and, with a full day of airtime to fill each day, TRSN has been doing it to death. Without a major federal election this year, Tuesday's brainstorming session becomes a contest to see who can come up with the strangest story angle. There's the standard surprise winners and losers, the perennial favorites being tracked as possible presidential candidates and of course those oddball stories from the “flyover states” (I visibly grimaced when Curtis used that expression) like the dead guy elected mayor.

I send out some e-mails, and by the afternoon meeting I know I have a winner.

“Listen to this,” I say after the room gets quiet. “Apparently in a small six-hundred-person Colorado town south of Denver, a group of college students got a mayoral candidate on the ballot from a new, unknown party called the Progressive Democratic Party. They won by campaigning on a premise of promising to reduce the smell and noise from cow herds—I'm guessing a hot-button issue in town. But I have it on good authority that the party's real goal is to legalize marijuana.”

Many of the people around the table groan. TRSN is even more old-school than CBS, and I suppose the politics of the newsroom might not be that progressive, either.

“Can you get the story for tomorrow's show, Arizona?” Ron asks.

“Already on it,” I answer. I really don't know what I was so worried about.

 

On Tuesday night, I go shopping. My heels just aren't going to work at the station. I need a pair of cute flats like everyone else's. Even as a producer, I am not above running tapes from room to room, and appropriate footwear is definitely needed.

I also need to lose ten pounds. Everyone here is absurdly skinny. The reporters. The cameramen. The doormen. The lunch lady.

Heather retreats from her room to flip through my purchases. I voice my weight concerns and she recommends I try the Pilates studio down the street from our apartment. I think she might be onto something and book an appointment for tomorrow night. She also recommends a therapist, but I'll hold off on that one for a while. At the moment, I'm preferring denial to certain institutionalization, thanks.

 

On Tuesday morning in Arizona, I drop off Cam at work and head over to the Barnes & Noble in the truck. I hate driving the truck. But thank goodness Cam spent eighteen hours last summer teaching me to drive stick or I'd really be stranded this week. Until I find a new car, anyway. I buy Ron's autobiography,
My Report: The Lessons I've Learned by Ron Grighton
, and my first bridal mag. Since I don't want to let Alice bulldoze me into getting everything she wants, I feel I should arm myself with some info before I get to her place. Then I order myself an iced mocha something, find an empty seat and flip through the glossy pages.

By page ten, I am exhausted. It seems that there are many, many things one has to do to have a wedding.

Set a date!
Alice wants May. May is fine. I have nothing against May. See? I can be conciliatory.

Create your budget!
Who's paying for this circus, anyway?

Decide if you want premarital counseling.
Maybe we can use Heather's therapist.

Decide if you need a prenup.
Don't even joke about it.

Have you thought about your Bridal Lingerie?
No. I have not. Flip.

Dream dresses to die for!
If the preparations don't kill me first.

Get into shape!
If my Pilates class in New York whips me into shape, will I be thin in Arizona?

Pick the perfect bridal bouquet!
What do I know about flowers?

The ultimate wedding registries!
That I can do. Shopping. What do I need? New sheets…for my New York apartment. Boo. This is going to suck. I hardly need anything in Arizona, yet I need everything there. If only Pottery Barn shipped to alternate universes.

Choose the lucky members of your wedding party!
Do I really need a wedding party? Maybe we can skip the bridesmaid/groomsman thing. It's kind of degrading. You are my handmaiden. Now look fat and ugly so I look even more beautiful.

I call Cam from my cell. “Do we have to have groomsmen and bridesmaids?” If I had a sister, maybe I'd feel differently.

“Very funny,” Cam says. “I'm planning on asking Dan, Joshua, Matt of course, and Jer and Rick.”

Dan and Joshua are his friends. Jer and Rick are his cousins. Matt is his brother-in-law. That sounds like an awful lot of people. “Five? Does that mean I need five bridesmaids?”

“If you want even numbers.”

I nibble on my thumbnail, and then my index finger, and make my way right through both hands. All this wedding talk has turned me back into a nail biter. “Does it matter?”

“Probably.”

“Who am I going to ask? I don't even know five people.”

“You're crazy. My sister, Lila…you can ask Jessica and Leslie. I'm sure they'd love to march for you.”

He thinks I'm asking his cousins' wives to be my bridesmaids? “I barely even know them.”

“They're going to be your family.”

I notice that I somehow managed to acquire a two-inch coffee stain on the sleeve of my white shirt. Fantastic. “If I'm going to include cousins, they should probably be mine.”

“You have cousins?”

“Cam! You know my mother's brother has three kids. And my father's sister has two.”

“I forgot.”

True, he's never met them. And I haven't seen them in five years. I just recently skipped the bar mitzvah of one of my cousin's whiny offspring. What was the name again? Darryl? Jacob? Still…why does Cam assume that his family is more important than mine? “Maybe you'll meet them all at the wedding,” I tell him. Maybe
I'll
meet them all at the wedding.

 

My mom is a half hour late.

By the time she arrives, Alice has already tsk-tsked, and glanced at the clock above her two matching ovens seventeen times.

When the bell finally rings, I leap to the door.

“Hello, Ms. Engaged,” my mother says, enveloping me in a hug.

“Alice is waiting in the kitchen,” I whisper. “She has binders. And clippings. Lots of clippings. I'm afraid.”

My mother raises her perfectly arched eyebrows and follows me into the house. She's looking extra thin in straight-legged gray linen pants, a crisp white shirt and black leather sling backs. In the past ten years, my mom has become slightly obsessed with her weight. She took up jogging and actively limits her carb intake.

I grimace. “You have to take off your shoes.”

She scowls in protest, but I give her a pleading look and she sighs and slips them off. “You owe me,” she hisses. “And what's up with all the photos on the wall?”

“Just be polite,” I murmur.

“Hello, hello,” Alice says, some sort of banana loaf in hand. “It's wonderful to finally meet you, Sherri.”

“Same here,” my mom says, eyes popping at the platters of homemade chocolate-oatmeal cookies, sun-dried tomato feta dip and freshly baked pita piled on the table and counter.

I probably should have mentioned my mom's carb phobia to Alice.

“I hope you didn't go to too much trouble,” my mom says, automatically patting her hips.

Alice places the banana bread beside the cookies and dismisses the comment with a wave. “Oh, it's my pleasure. Would you ladies like some homemade lemon-strawberry iced tea?”

How does one make homemade lemon-strawberry iced tea, exactly? “Sounds great,” I say, sitting down on a hard plastic chair.

“Thank you,” my mom says in her oh-so-polite voice. Before she sits, I catch her frowning first at the carb-fest and then at her bare feet. I can deal with a frown. She can't throw a frown.

“Plate?” Alice asks.

A plate she can throw.

My mom hesitates. “Sure. Thank you.”

“You'll have to try the cookies,” Alice says, passing the platter over the table. “They're my special recipe. Delicious.”

“I'm sure they are,” my mom says, ignoring the platter and turning to me. “Let's get started. Gabby, you're not going to make a big fuss about this, are you? Of all my own weddings, my favorite was at the Four Seasons in Nevis. You should do something like that. Small, intimate.”

Alice's knuckles, which are still holding up the platter, are now white. “Don't even joke about something like that, Sherri! That would be awful! Now
take
a cookie!” She shoves the plate closer to my mother's face.

Oh, boy.

My mother whips her chair back and a scraping sound echoes through the kitchen. “I don't
want
a cookie. Thank you.”

Alice frowns, then shoves the plate toward me. “Gabrielle wants one. She
loves
my cookies.”

After I take two cookies to keep the peace, Alice whips the platter away and hands us each white binders. “I've made us wedding binders. It helped us stay on top of Blair's wedding, and I know it will work for us.”

I cannot believe what I am holding in my hand. On the cover, in calligraphy, it says The Wedding of Cameron & Gabrielle, May Sixth. I'm too shocked to speak. I said okay to May, but when did I agree to the sixth? Did I agree to the sixth?

“You're getting married on May sixth?” my mom asks.

“Apparently,” I say, flipping open the binder to discover orange plastic dividers. With labels: Ceremony, Favors, Flowers, Invitations, Music, Notes, Tables. All in alphabetical order.

My mom gingerly touches the binder as though she's afraid it's contagious. With her free hand, she picks up her glass of iced tea. Probably to quench her annoyance.

“Oh yes,” Alice says. “Gabrielle thought it was best to have a May wedding. And I've already booked St. George's—”

The glass of tea comes crashing back to the table. “Excuse me?”

“St. George's. The church on—”