“I’m not,” I fire back, glancing down to read other notes, many of which have to do with the “tone” of a particular scene or dialogue.
“What are these tonal notes about?” I say. “What’s wrong with our tone?”
“Nothing. It just needs to be toned down,” he says, crossing his legs, man-style, and chuckling to himself.
I don’t crack a smile.
“Sorry,” he says, uncrossing his legs. “No time for jokes.”
“No. It’s really not,” I say. “Just give it to me straight.”
“All right. It’s too gritty. Too much sex, drinking, language, violence…”
“This isn’t ABC Family. You do know that, right?”
“Yes, I’m aware—”
“And it’s the same tone we’ve always had.”
“Not exactly. It’s a slippery slope, and you’re getting too … out there.”
“But it’s what people like about us. We’re not generic and vanilla.”
“Look, Marian,” he says, all of his hard edges beginning to emerge. “You need to be aware of some facts. Being on Thursdays at nine carries a heavy burden. You’re up against the big boys, and we expect to draw more eyeballs to justify what we’re charging.”
“So we’re not a cash cow—”
He makes a snorting noise, then reaches into his file and tosses me another document. “Far from it.”
I glance at the paper of figures and demographics then look back at him, shaking my head. “You’re not giving us a chance to succeed. And with these notes—we’ll never make it. You can’t water us down like this.”
“Look, Marian. You know what Vicky wants to do?” he asks. “She wants to put you in the Friday-night death slot. I saved your ass.”
“Why?” I shout back at him, deciding I will skip the part about thinking Vicky is an insipid fool. He already knows my opinion of her.
“What do you mean ‘why’?”
“Why’d you save my ass? Because we’re having sex?” I say, intentionally mischaracterizing our relationship. “Or because you believe in the show that I created?”
“Honestly?” he says. “Both.”
“Well, do me a favor—forget about the former when you’re in your little meetings. I don’t need that leg up,” I say, my voice shaking, realizing I can’t win. If the show does well as is, it’s because he did me favors. If he waters us down, we lose our following and get canceled. I reach over and angrily clean out a few messages from my in-box, just to have something to do with my hands.
He sighs and says, “Look, Marian. I’m doing my best to keep you on Thursday, but we have to change you to eight o’clock. You don’t have the numbers to compete in the nine slot, and the advertisers are complaining about your content in the eight. So you gotta tone some of it down. I’m sorry. I know it’s not what you want to hear, but that’s the way it is. We have to be profitable.”
“This is bullshit,” I say under my breath, skimming over the notes.
“It doesn’t matter if millions watch your show if the content is scaring all the advertisers off and getting parents into a tizzy.”
I glare at him. “Thank you for that lesson in television.”
He ignores me and says, “The last thing I want is for you to get canceled because you didn’t want to tweak your content, and we had to put you in a time slot where your audience couldn’t find you.”
I ignore his condescending question and tell him I’m fully aware that it all comes down to money. “But you can’t ask me not to balk when you take away all my creative integrity.”
“We didn’t take it all away. We just took some of it away,” he says with another small smile that would be charming if he were talking about someone else’s project. “Just do a little retooling. Make it a little more … wholesome. A little less gritty.”
“So basically, change the whole show,” I mutter. “God. Why do we have to cater to the schlubs out there? Smart people watch TV, too. Isn’t that why you came to this network?”
“Marian. Calm down and read the notes. Your show will still be smart—just not quite as … edgy … We’ll talk tomorrow,” he says with infuriating control. “Okay?”
“Fine,” I say, knowing that I will make all his changes—as I always do—that I don’t have any other choice.
He starts to get up, then sits back down and looks at me.
“What?” I say.
“Is there anything else you want to talk about?”
“Not really,” I say, desperate for him to stay a little longer although I know a sarcastic, counterproductive comment is about to escape my lips. “Except that I’m terribly sorry you don’t agree with the choices I made when I was eighteen.”
He crosses his arms and nods, then lowers his voice and says, “Well. To be fair—they are choices you’ve continued to make—every day, every year since then … but it’s your life.”
“And it’s your network,” I say before he shakes his head, stands up, and takes his turn to walk out the door.
* * *
We don’t talk the next day, or the one after that, our Friday-night plans with friends looming on the calendar. He calls about thirty minutes before our reservation when I’m home, changing out of my work clothes.
“Let me guess. You’re canceling?” I say.
“I just wanted to get the ground rules for tonight,” he says, speaking in his best passive-aggressive voice.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means do your friends know about Kirby?”
“So now they’re only my friends?”
“Okay. Our friends.”
“No,” I say, hurriedly glancing around my dressing table for the right jewelry and accessories. “They don’t. I’ve been a little busy rewriting my show.”
“Are you going to tell them?” he asks.
“I don’t know,” I say. “If it comes up.”
“Well, I don’t think it’s going to just come up on its own.”
“Well, I guess you have your answer then,” I say.
“So you’re just going to pretend?”
“Pretend what, exactly?” I say, thinking, Pretend that we are happy?
He clears his throat. “Pretend that we aren’t in the middle of a major happening in our lives.”
Although I like that he said “we” and “our,” and used “happening” rather than “crisis,” I still feel a knot of resentment in my chest that he won’t just let me move on with my life. Even Kirby has granted me that much. Other than a few texts back and forth, I haven’t heard from her, and to my relief, there has been no further mention of Conrad. My feelings about this remain ambivalent, but I’ve decided that the path we’re on is the best for both of us. She has a family, and I want my own. With someone who understands why I did what I did.
“Okay. Look. You want me to tell them? I’ll tell them. Over dessert maybe. ‘Oh, by the way, guys … I had a baby eighteen years ago. Have I mentioned that?’”
“Don’t be glib, Marian,” he says.
“Glib? Is that what you call giving a baby up for adoption?” I say, freezing, staring down my reflection in the mirror. I look old, or at least tired—and glance away quickly. “Is that the vibe you’ve gotten from me these days? A glib vibe?”
He is silent.
“Actually, you can’t be getting any kind of vibe,” I say. “We’ve spent almost no time together since I met Kirby.”
“I know,” he says. “That’s the point. I’ve given you space—and you used that space to keep your usual distance.”
“This coming from a man who won’t talk about marriage,” I say, mentally tallying the number of times I’ve brought it up. Undoubtedly crossing the line from wondering about our future to pressuring him about it.
“We are in no position to talk about marriage,” he says.
“How convenient for you,” I say. “How tidy.”
“You want to talk about tidy? Let’s talk about your decisi
on, Marian. The perfect decision. Have the baby, give it up for adoption, don’t tell a soul. Bam. Neat and tidy.”
I feel my cheeks burn, my hands beginning to shake. “There is nothing about childbirth that is neat and tidy. Abortion is neat and tidy. You have no idea what I went through. How hard that was.”
“Okay. You’re right. I’m sorry. I know that sounded harsh. I just think…” He sighs and finishes his sentence. “I think you haven’t dealt with this.”
“I have dealt with this.”
“You haven’t. Just because you had a little ‘bring your daughter to work’ day? A field trip to a museum?”
“And I’m glib?” I say, even though I know, in some ways, he’s right. “Wow, Peter. What did you want me to do with her?”
“Bond, maybe?”
“She wasn’t here to get a new mother. She has one.”
“Well, I’m quite sure that she came here for more than sightseeing and shopping. She obviously needs you.”
“So what should I have done? Cry a river about how sad I am that I didn’t keep her?” As soon as the words are out, I realize what I’ve said, and more important, that maybe, despite years of trying to convince myself otherwise, I do have remorse for my choices. I could have kept her. I could have opted for an open adoption. At the very least, I could have told the truth about her.
Peter hears it, too, of course, and makes a sound to say that I’ve just proven his point.
“Okay,” I say. “You win.”
His voice softens like a therapist who just got the breakthrough he’s been probing for. “I’m not saying you did the wrong thing by giving her up for adoption. You’ve had a wonderful life. I’m sure she has, too.”
Tears sting at my eyes as I grab my coat and keys, “I’m thirty-six years old, Peter. I want to be a mother. My boyfriend doesn’t want another child…”
“I never said that.”
“Well? Do you? Or don’t you?”
Silence.
“So that’s a no?”
“It’s an ‘I don’t know.’”
“Okay. Well, my boyfriend of two years doesn’t know if he wants another child,” I say. “So therefore, assuming I stay with my boyfriend, I don’t know if I will have a child. And assuming I break up with my boyfriend, it’s anyone’s guess whether I will find someone else in the quickly shrinking window of my fertility.”
“I’m assuming you’re staying with your boyfriend,” Peter says.
“Well, that makes one of us … So maybe you should just skip dinner tonight,” I say.
“Yeah. Maybe so,” he says, finally as riled as I am.
“Fine. Later,” I say, then hang up the phone before he can do it first.
* * *
Fifteen minutes later, I arrive at Campagnola, a classic Upper East Side Italian restaurant with a rustic décor and a well-heeled clientele. It is one of Peter’s favorites. As I walk inside, I immediately spot Claudia and Jess, two of my closest friends in the city, sitting at the bar. Jess is holding court with three men, typical for her.
“Hello!” I say over the cheerful din and Sinatra tunes being played by the house pianist. My heart is heavy, but I’m breezy, smiling, and I find myself wondering if my whole life really is a façade.
“Hey, girl! Want a T.L.C.?” Jess asks, raising her glass.
“What’s in a T.L.C.?” I say.
“Whiskey, Cointreau, pastis, vermouth, bitters. Even Claudia likes it,” she proclaims, turning to signal our bartender that we’ll have another.
“Even Claudia?” Claudia says. She knows she’s the most conservative in our trio—uptight, according to Jess—but she still resists the label.
Jess flashes a smug smile and turns back to her audience of suits. “Proves what I’ve always contended. Everyone likes whiskey; it’s just a matter of how, when, and where.”
The men laugh a little too heartily, clearly titillated by a whiskey-loving woman, especially one who looks like a model. What makes Jess even more appealing is that she’s a hard-core investment banker who survived the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy and landed on her feet to become the head of health care banking at Goldman. I have often joked to Peter that the two of them would make a perfect couple, that she is a funnier, prettier, smarter version of me. And they both have commitment issues.
As we catch up with surface updates about work and life, Claudia and I do our best to exclude the random men from our conversation—which is easier to do once we are joined by Ben, Claudia’s husband.
“Where’s Petey boy?” Ben asks after we exchange another round of hellos and hugs.
“Working. He can’t make it tonight,” I say, which everyone takes at face value because it’s hardly unusual. But as Jess leads us over to the hostess stand, and we are promptly ushered to a large round table in the center of the oil-painting-adorned dining room, I confess to Claudia that we’re in a fight.
“Do you want to talk about it?” she asks as we’re seated.
“Talk about what?” Jess demands.
“Nothing, really. I was just saying that Peter and I are in a little spat,” I say, grateful for the whiskey that I’m now gulping. “Actually, I think we might be on the verge of breaking up.”
“Shut up!” Jess says. “What happened? Oh, shit—did he cheat on you? Tell me he didn’t cheat on you.”
“No,” I say, thinking of all the salacious married-men stories from her past and that I’m not surprised that this is her first theory of a split. “It’s nothing like that. It’s … a much longer story.”
“Spill it,” Jess says. “You’ll feel better.”
I smile, marveling at how different we are, the idea of a secret among friends inconceivable to her. “Is it that bitch ex-wife of his?” she guesses. “Causing trouble again?”
“Not exactly,” I say.
“A problem with Aidan?” she speculates.
“Are you going to keep guessing or let her speak?” Claudia says.
“We’ve … just had some issues come up,” I say, thinking of Kirby, a dull ache in my chest. “And I think he’s using those discussions to justify his inability to take the next step.”
“Christ. Wait. Back up and stop speaking in code,” Jess says. “What’s going on?”
“I don’t think he wants to have another child,” I say.
“But you’re not sure he doesn’t, right?” Claudia asks, an expert on the topic, having nearly broken up with Ben years ago, before they reunited months later. Ironically, their split was the reverse of my situation—he wanted a baby and she did not. It was a deal-breaker until they realized it wasn’t. They now have a three-year-old daughter named Frances and I have never seen such a doting mother.
“You’ll work it out,” Ben says. I study his face, feeling comforted. He has that effect. He is the sort of husband and father you imagine marrying when you’re eight years old and believe in happily ever after. All-American and handsome but not too handsome. Funny but not full of himself. Smart and ambitious but with strong family values. In fact, when Frances was born, he took a two-year leave of absence from his architectural firm to care for her full-time. “Look at Claudia and me. Sometimes it just takes time.”
“Maybe,” I say. “But I’m sort of running out of that.”
Claudia rolls her eyes and tells me not to be ridiculous, but I shut her down with a reminder that she was pregnant at my age.
“I’m two years older than you,” Jess says, motioning around the table. “And I’m not at all panicked.”
I carefully avoid the sore subject of Michael, her most recent ex, their breakup still raw, and simply remind her that she has a stash of frozen eggs and plans to use a surrogate anyway.
Claudia looks thoughtful and then says, “So that’s why he’s not here tonight? Because you want a baby and he’s not sure?” It is clear by her tone that she knows I’ve left an important part of the story out—and it is one of the reasons I like her so much. She’s astute, hearing what you’re not say
ing as much as what you are.
I hesitate, feeling my defenses crumble as I think of Kirby. Her teenage-girl, cheap-perfume scent and unskilled eye-shadow application. Her big ears and her sweet, shy smile. Her surprising rap performance in the writers’ room and wide-eyed wonder in the Guggenheim. I think of our final hug before I put her in the cab and how much I suddenly miss her and, most of all, what I missed out on by not being her mother. Aware that my friends are watching me, waiting for me to reply, I put my glass down and say, “Okay. In part, this disagreement with Peter … is about marriage. I want to have a baby. I want to be a mother…”
Claudia reaches out and touches my hand as I take a breath and find a way to continue, wondering if I’m doing this more for myself or to make a point to Peter. “And I want that especially because … well … I had a baby once. A long time ago.”
“What? When?” Jess shouts.
I stare down at the table, but stay the course. “I was eighteen. Before college. I had the baby, and then … and then gave her away.”
“For adoption?” Jess asks.
I smile and say, “Well, I didn’t put her in a basket on a church doorstep.”
“God, Marian,” Claudia says, as I think of her own sister, who adopted a baby in an open agreement, while Ben just stares at me, his face full of compassion.
“Damn,” Jess says, reaching across the empty seat for my hand.
“Heavy stuff, huh?” I say, trying to smile and lighten the mood just as the waitress arrives to give her spiel. We listen and then Jess orders two bottles of a Tuscan red and a sampling of our usual, favorite appetizers.
A few seconds later, Jess resumes the questioning. “Why didn’t you tell us?” she asks, mystified, unable to grasp holding back a juicy bit of information from so much as her cabdriver.
“I never told anyone,” I say. “I kept the secret for eighteen years. From everyone but my mother. I didn’t tell my own father. I didn’t tell the baby’s father. Nobody knew. Until last Saturday … when she knocked on my door. When she found me.”
I wait for someone to speak, but when no one does—not even Jess—I keep talking, telling them about Kirby, realizing, with some panic, that I don’t know all that much about her. I think of Peter’s remarks about sightseeing and feel a wave of prickly shame.