Sisters (30 page)

Tammy made the shrink appointment, and took her to the first meeting. She didn't go in with her, but called and spoke to the doctor first. Candy was furious when she came out, but she gave them a shopping list, which Tammy bought immediately, and at least they saw her eat now, and they weren't just ignoring the problem. This was what they were there for. Allegedly for Annie, but Candy obviously needed their support too. It was so much easier dealing with it while they were all living under one roof.

“Do you ever get the feeling that we gave birth to two grown kids this summer?” Sabrina asked Tammy, as she lay on the couch after a long, hard day at work. She had had three appearances in court.

“Yes, I do.” Tammy grinned. “I have more respect than ever for Mom now. I don't know how she stood us when we were kids.”

They were still worried about their father and hadn't had time to see him for several weekends. They were all too busy at home. Except for Tammy, who now spent her time directing Mrs. Shibata with kabuki faces, and dropping Candy and Annie off at their respective shrinks. She felt more than ever like the suburban mother of two teenage girls, which led her to project number three, finding work. She knew she wasn't going to find a job anything like the one she had in California, she had no delusions about that. But she needed more to do than what she was doing, otherwise Candy would be right, and all she'd do would be sit around and eat. She needed more than that in her life. Candy and Sabrina were working, and Annie was going to school. She was the only one of the sisters who had nothing important to do, except be there at night when they all came home. She felt like a housewife, and as though she was losing her identity.

Project number three took a lot more time than projects one and two. It was well into the middle of October before she had lined up some interviews. She talked to several soaps, and hated the way they were structured. They were so second rate compared to what she had done before. And she finally talked to a show that she had heard of but never seen. It was pure, outrageous, utterly cheesy reality TV. The show focused on couples who were having trouble in their relationships, and basically allowed them to fight with each other on TV. Fisticuffs were not allowed, but other than that, anything went. A psychologist followed them on the show, who turned out to be an outrageous woman who looked like a drag queen. The show was called
Can This Relationship Be Saved? It's Up to You!
It sounded so awful that in spite of herself, Tammy was intrigued. Professionally, it would be embarrassing to be associated with the show, but the ratings were good, and they were desperate for a producer. The one they'd started with had just quit for a prime-time show on network TV. They couldn't believe that someone with Tammy's credentials was actually willing to talk to them. And she couldn't believe it either.

She didn't tell any of her sisters that she was going to talk to them about a job. She was sure they would be horrified, and she was herself. But she was bored out of her mind, sitting around the house with nothing to do until the others came home at night. And Annie was doing remarkably well at the Parker School after five weeks. Tammy was the only one now with no purpose in her life, although she was still glad that she had moved, to spend the year with them. She felt as though they all needed it, and were benefiting from it, she as much as the others, after losing their mother three and a half months before.

Tammy went to the appointment on a Thursday afternoon. She had already sent them her résumé, and they knew all about her creating the show in L.A. She was a major pro. And if she came to work with them, they wanted some fresh ideas to keep the show alive. It had started to slide a little, although much to Tammy's amazement, their ratings were still strong, and the concept mesmerized their viewers. The show seemed to represent or even mirror the problems people had in their relationships, from cheating to impotence, emotional abuse, or intrusive mothers-in-law. Substance abuse and delinquent children also seemed to be high on the list of what caused people problems and brought them to the show. It was a slice of life, and everything you didn't want to know about other people's relationships and lives. Except the audience apparently did. The Nielsen ratings said so.

Tammy went to the meeting with some trepidation, and met the executive producer in his office. Much to her surprise, he seemed like a normal human being. He had a psychology degree himself, from Columbia, and had preferred to keep the show based in New York when he set it up. He had been married for thirty years and had six kids of his own. He had been a marriage counselor for several years before getting into TV. He had entered TV in sports, and then finally got to put his concept on TV with the advent of reality shows. This was his dream come true, just as her show had been for her. It was just a very different breed of show. And like most reality TV, it catered to the lowest common denominator. But some of the couples they had filmed sounded reasonable, even to her. Although most of them were badly behaved, which the audience preferred.

They had an excellent conversation, and she had to admit she liked him, although the associate producer was a jerk and had an attitude about her. He was defending his turf, wanted the senior job himself, and was not being considered for it.

“So what do you think?” Irving Solomon, the executive producer, asked her, as their meeting drew to a close.

“I think it's an interesting show,” she said, somewhat honestly. She didn't say she loved it, which wouldn't have been true. And in a lot of ways, it wasn't highbrow enough for her. She had never been inclined to exploit people's problems, nor to sink to that kind of sleaze. But on the other hand, she wanted to work. And this seemed to be all that was around. The pickings in New York were slim. “Have you ever thought of making it a little more serious?” she asked thoughtfully. She wasn't quite sure how to do it, but she was willing to ponder the idea.

“Our audience doesn't want serious. They have enough pain in their own lives. They want to see people slugging it out, verbally of course, not physically, the way they wish they could do with their mate, if they dared. We are their alter ego, and we have the guts they don't.” It was one way to see it, although Tammy didn't quite see it that way. But they weren't hiring her to revamp the show, or improve it, just to keep it on the air, and drive their ratings up if she could. That was always the issue for any show on TV. How do we get the ratings higher? What they wanted was more of the same. “What brought you to New York, by the way? That's some terrific show you walked out on.” She thought she heard a reproach in the way he said it, and shook her head.

“I didn't walk out,” she corrected him. “I gave notice and left. There was a tragedy in my family this summer, and I wanted to be here,” she said with quiet dignity, and he nodded.

“I'm sorry to hear it. Is it resolved now?” he asked with some concern.

“It's getting better. But I want to stay here now, to keep an eye on things.”

“Do you have time to work on the show?”

“Yes, I do,” she said confidently, and he looked relieved. She was a professional to the core, and he knew she wouldn't be talking to him if she wasn't interested in the job. He was hoping she was. He already knew he wanted her. He wasn't interviewing anyone else, and he said as much to her. He gave her several tapes of the show, and asked her to think about it and get back to him. They didn't want to mess with something that worked. And he wanted her to respect that too.

“I'll get back to you in a couple of days,” she promised. She wanted to see the tapes of the show. She met the psychologist on the way out. She couldn't believe what she looked like. Flamboyant was far too tame a word. She was wearing rhinestone glasses and a skintight dress over an enormous bosom that poured out of her dress. She looked like a madam in a bad bordello, but he claimed the audiences and the couples loved her. Her name was Désirée Lafayette, which couldn't possibly have been her real name. She looked like a transsexual to Tammy, and she wondered if she was. Nothing would have surprised her on this show. Least of all a female psychologist who had once been a guy.

She went back to the house, and put the first tape on TV. She was watching it intently when Annie came back from school. She stood in the den for a minute and listened to what Tammy had on, and broke into a broad smile.

“What the hell is
that
?”

“A show I'm checking out,” she said, still concentrating on the couple on screen. They were beyond belief, and had just called each other every name in the book.

“You're not serious, I hope.”

“I think I am. For comic relief, if nothing else. How was school?”

“Good.” She never said “Great,” but at least she didn't say it was awful, and her sisters suspected that she liked it. Tammy glanced at her watch. She had to get her to her shrink, and reminded her of it, in case she wanted something to eat before she went.

“I'm twenty-six, not two. I can go by cab if you want to keep watching that crap.”

“I can watch it later,” Tammy said, as she turned it off. But she had already made her decision. It was awful, but what the hell, why not? Désirée Lafayette was too ridiculous for words. But the show had something, a kind of down-and-dirty misery to it, and yet behind all the window dressing was a thread of hope. Tammy liked that. They rarely seemed to tell people to give up on their relationships, and Désirée tried to give them ideas of how to improve them, even if they were slightly absurd, and the people on the show incredibly vulgar. There was nothing dignified about it.

“You must be desperate for work,” Annie commented when they went out.

“I think I am,” Tammy admitted. She thought about it while she waited for Annie in Dr. Steinberg's office. Annie's meetings with the psychiatrist seemed to be doing her some good. She appeared more accepting of her situation than she had been at first, and was noticeably less angry. And Tammy liked to think that being surrounded by her sisters, who loved her so passionately, was doing her good too.

She watched the rest of the tapes alone in her room that night. Some were better, others worse. She had a good sense of the show now. It would look odd on her résumé, particularly after the other shows she'd worked on, which were of high quality. But it was the only available job in town. She had called everyone she knew, and no one else needed a producer at the moment. And she had nothing else to do.

She called Irving Solomon the next morning, and told him she was interested. He named some figures, and she said her agent would call him. She had to call her in L.A., and her attorney. She was going to have a hell of a time explaining to them why she was doing this show. She had a “no compete” clause in her last contract, for another year, but nothing about this crazy show competed with her old one. She was clear on that. The salary he had offered her was healthy. And it was honest work, even if it was a sleazy show. And work was work. She wasn't someone who wanted to stay idle, and spend her life going shopping, or having lunch with friends. She had no friends in New York, and her sisters were all working. She wanted to be too. Irving said that if they could come to an agreement quickly, he wanted her to come in the following week. She said she would do what she could to get her agent moving.

She announced it at dinner that night, and her sisters looked at her and stared. Annie already knew, and Sabrina said she thought she was crazy. Candy said she had seen the show, and it was pretty raunchy.

“Are you sure?” Sabrina asked her, looking worried. “Will it hurt you later?”

“I hope not,” Tammy said honestly. “I don't think so. It may seem a little strange, but it doesn't hurt to try reality TV again. I did it years ago, and it didn't hurt my career then. As long as I don't make a lifetime career of it.”

It made Sabrina feel mildly guilty to think of what Tammy had given up to come there, and she had done it to help her. But to be with Annie too, which was the whole point. But Tammy didn't seem to regret leaving L.A. She had closed the door on her old show and never looked back. And now she was opening a new door. With angry couples and a psychologist named Désirée Lafayette waiting to greet her. The thought of it horrified Sabrina, and it made Tammy laugh.

Chapter 20

Once Tammy was working, life at the house on East
Eighty-fourth Street seemed to speed up considerably. Sabrina was having a busy fall season, half the couples in New York seemed to want a divorce, and were calling her. After the summer, and once the kids went back to school, people called their lawyers and said “Get me out of here!” They usually did it after Christmas too.

Candy was on shoots every day once she got back from Europe. The intervention over her eating disorder had helped a little. She had never been bulimic, she just didn't eat, and was anorexic. But she was doing better, and was on weekly weigh-ins that Sabrina monitored diligently, and called the doctor to check on. They weren't allowed to tell Sabrina what Candy's weight was, but they could say if she had come in to be weighed. And when she skipped it, Tammy and Sabrina raised hell with her. They were keeping a close eye on the problem, and she looked as though she had gained a few pounds, although she was still grossly underweight, which was the nature of her business. She got paid a fortune to look that way. It was a tough battle to win, but at least they weren't losing ground. Her shrink had referred to it as “fashion anorexia” to Sabrina, when they talked about it. She didn't have deep-seated psychological problems about her childhood or womanhood. She just loved the way she looked when she was rail thin, and so did millions of women who read fashion magazines, and the people who put them together. It was cultural, visual, and financial, not psychiatric, which the shrink said was an important factor. But her sisters worried about her health. They had no desire to lose another member of the family, even if she died looking gorgeous, was rich, and was on the cover of
Vogue.
As Tammy said bluntly, “Fuck that.”