“What kind of problems?”
“With your publisher. They expect a certain kind of image. You sold them your image as much as your stories.”
“Bullshit! There’s no image clause in any of my contracts!” But even as she said that, she knew it was untrue. She’d created an image for herself, just as all public personalities do. Jesus Christ, would it have been better in any way had she not attempted to be refined, classy? It was no different than taking the curlers out of your hair before going to the grocery store! She simply wanted to look her best!
“The fact is, if you have some sordid past that’s now coming out, it’s going to matter to your publisher. It could hurt book sales. If there’s anything they might say on that program that’s unsavory but true, I’d like to hear about it now. For both our sakes.”
Book sales! My life is falling apart and our first concern is book sales! Not, Are you in pain, Sable? Does this hurt, Sable? How can I help, Sable?
“Don’t worry, Arnie,” she said tiredly. “There isn’t anything sordid in my past. My past is simply pathetic, that’s all. If they actually tell the truth tonight, my books should sell like hotcakes.”
“What is the truth, Sable?”
“I’m sorry, Arnie. I’m simply not ready to talk about it.” She didn’t say goodbye. She hung up the phone and walked across the hall to Virginia’s office. “Virginia, I’m only taking calls from Jeff Petross, Elly Fulton or…” God, she almost said Gabby. That had happened to her so many times! Something would happen and she’d begin to think, Gabby would get a kick out of this! or Gabby would have been so much nicer about that. Then she’d realize, with a stab of pain, that Gabby was gone forever. “Just Jeff or Elly. And Jeff should be here momentarily.”
She would call her lawyer when Jeff arrived, when she began to assimilate what she was dealing with. First, the police came. As she should have expected, she was the bad guy. Not only were they responding to her call, but also to a call from reporters that they’d been run off her property with gunfire. “Did you shoot at those men, Ms. Tennet?”
“Absolutely not.”
“But you did fire a gun?”
“Sort of.”
“How do you ‘sort of’ fire a gun?”
“Well, they had me very frightened and upset and it did go off a couple of times, but I was being very careful with it—I know how dangerous firearms can be—and it wasn’t pointed toward anyone when it accidentally went off. I think the whole problem was their trespassing and peeping in my windows at the crack of dawn. I wasn’t sure who they were. They could have been a gang of murderers!”
“But you asked this gang of murderers to leave their cameras and recorders behind?”
“Is that what they told you? I think they simply got scared when the gun went off and dropped their things. Honestly, I would have apologized, but they just ran! If I’d known they were just a bunch of idiot reporters, I never would have found it necessary to get my gun!”
She briefly told Jeff what she was up against, without telling him the details. Jeff, practiced in the art of pandering to the privacy of celebrities and politicians, didn’t push her in any way to bare her soul. He went about the business of making sure that no one set foot on Sable’s property. Sable’s lawyer said he’d try to get some kind of injunction to stop the airing of the television show, but he warned her that the prospects were doubtful. And Arnie called. Again and again, begging for some information or at least a chance to talk about it. Then her editor began calling, then her publisher, her publicist and various other people who had been seeing promos for the 6:30 p.m. Twilight Truth show that would reveal and unveil the real Sable Tennet. But Elly, Barbara Ann and Beth did not call. Elly wasn’t involved in a good gossip tree, but Barbara Ann would surely have been notified by someone, somewhere, who had seen the promos. They must all be at Gabby’s, sorting and reading.
Can my life really go down the tubes like this? she kept asking herself. I didn’t mean anyone any harm by creating a new persona. I meant only to spare poor Helen the humiliation of reliving, over and over, the painful horrors of her short, pitiful life.
“Is there anything I can do for you, personally, Sable?” Jeff asked.
Sable felt a giant pang of doubt. Perhaps it had been too good to be true—a decent, honest and caring man, all hers. When he found out the truth about her, he would know, unequivocally, that she was not worthy of his affection. Jeff was pure; Sable was tarnished. She placed her small hand against his firm, square jaw. “I think you’ve gotten yourself in over your head, Jeff.”
“How so?”
“I think maybe you’ve fallen for me.”
“Don’t hold that against me, okay?”
“Yeah, but I’m a bad bet. Trouble.”
“More like you got trouble, the way I see it. Sometimes when trouble comes, it helps to know there is someone who cares about the real you. The you inside.”
We’ll see about that, she thought. “The program is on at six-thirty. Watch it with me?”
“Sure.”
Virginia quit her job at 3:00 p.m. She couldn’t take it. She was in tears, feeling guilty about running out on Sable with no notice in her hour of need, but the pressure of fearing her boss had some seedy past that was going to go public frightened her. She was afraid they were going to start hounding her for information.
Finally, out of survival, they unplugged the phones. She dismissed Dorothy without any further explanation. Jeff had three guys wandering around the property, keeping any reporters away from the house. But they could not be kept away from the end of the drive. Food was out of the question, but Sable quite needed a vodka for the viewing.
When one thinks of the books most loved by American women, there is a name that tops the list as the writer who has best captured the trials and triumphs of women as they struggle with their lovers, their families, their careers…Sable Tennet. She has millions and millions of books in print and has, through her very emotional, very melodramatic fiction, moved her readers to tears, given them hope and helped them dream. But is there a deeper reason why this extraordinary woman has been able to achieve such heartfelt empathy for her heroines who have overcome the very worst that life has to offer?
I think there was a compliment in there somewhere, Sable thought.
There was very little time to brace herself for what followed because the film segued to a photo of Sable, née Helen Gobrich, at the age of about twelve. She was already teasing her hair and wearing way too much eye makeup, her jeans fit like skin and her pubescent breasts strained against a low-cut knit top. She looked like a slut. An unattractive slut, with her crooked teeth, her bent, hook nose, her shaggy brows. The narrator gave her name—God, they had it down—the condition of her (now-deceased!) alcoholic mother. She was in and out of foster care, a promiscuous teenager who dropped out of school at the age of fifteen and liked to party. She was a boozer and an addict. (Sable stared into her vodka. She had not touched alcohol until the age of about twenty-five and had never been drunk a day in her life.) She married a local short-order cook, Butch Parker, and they had a volatile, dangerous marriage, filled with binges, fights and poverty. There were photos. One of her and Butch sitting on the hood of a car. One of Butch wearing a dirty, torn sweatshirt and tipping back a beer. Where the hell did they get the photos?
She could not look at Jeff.
They brought into this impoverished, disastrous life of drink, illicit sex and days-long parties (they had a photo of her mother’s house—a recent one—it was not improved with age) a child. Thomas Adam. A beautiful, bright, healthy baby. And tragedy struck one night during a typical gathering of neighborhood partyers when someone, presumably Butch, lost his temper and beat his two-year-old son to death. He confessed to the crime and served four months. (Four months!!) And Helen Gobrich disappeared forever.
So how does a woman living in tragedy so poignant drag herself out of such a life-style? Not unlike the heroines in her novels, she?
??
That was when Sable stopped listening. Not on purpose. A kind of sensory overload had clogged up her brain and she’d heard all she could for the time being. She felt Jeff’s hand massaging the back of her neck in sympathy and she turned to look at him. Amazingly, she didn’t see pity in his eyes. She wasn’t sure what she saw.
“It didn’t happen like that,” she said. “Oh, Butch beat Thomas Adam to death, that’s true. But we weren’t having a party. We didn’t have parties. I was working. At the hair spray factory. The three-to-eleven shift. I had to leave Tommy with my mother and Butch. I didn’t very often. When I came home from work—” She stopped because she couldn’t describe that. She could barely watch as that reel of memory film ran through her mind. “I didn’t drink,” she said.
“Let’s turn it off,” he said.
“Some of it’s true. My mother was a drunk. Dead now, so I hear. I married Butch…don’t ask me why. My name was Helen Gobrich. My nose was big and my teeth were crooked and I wasn’t very attractive…but I sure tried. I was always thin. I wore the tight jeans. Well, you saw….”
“Sable…”
“I wasn’t really ever bad,” she said sadly. “But I was very stupid.”
“You were only very young.”
“I can’t believe the timing of this. They’re doing public vivisection on me…and I never hurt anyone. Who did I hurt? And all this just a couple of months after my best friend dies. My God. My God. It simply horrifies me that anyone would ever do anything like this to another human being.”
“It makes a person want to cry,” he said.
“I don’t cry anymore,” she replied, her wide, clear eyes looking at him. “I almost died from crying over Thomas Adam. I only weighed about eighty-five pounds when someone—probably a neighbor—called the ambulance for me. So I don’t cry anymore.” She did not even realize that was the most personal information she’d ever shared about herself with anyone. Especially a man. “Will you take me somewhere?” she asked him.
“Anywhere. Anytime.”
“Let me pack a few things. I’d like to go out of here in your trunk, if you don’t mind.”
“We have the van…”
“No, no, that’s too obvious. You could be hiding someone in the van. I want to go in the trunk. Will you drop off some luggage for me tomorrow? I don’t want to hide in the trunk and have those assholes at the end of the road see your backseat full of suitcases.”
He made a small smile. “You have a knack for this, Sable.”
“Yeah. When this is over, I’ll run for public office. You can be my bodyguard.”
She filled several suitcases and left them in her room. With her she took only an overnight bag and change of clothes. Jeff offered to take her to his own house or a hotel, but only one place came to mind where she would feel completely safe. It had never occurred to her to phone ahead. When she arrived at Gabby’s house, she asked that Jeff stay in the car and leave once she went inside. She did give him a kiss on the cheek and promised to talk to him more when he brought the rest of her luggage. There was a car she didn’t recognize parked in the drive, but that didn’t intimidate her. It was probably one of Barbara Ann’s sons’ cars. They could still be sorting and reading; Barbara Ann may as well hear the story from her. She’d have to tell it now. To her friends, at least. All three of them. So they could sift through the garbage of it and decide whether they could stomach knowing her.
She had to ring and ring. Elly wasn’t answering. Finally, she saw a shadow cross over the peephole and the door came cautiously open. She waved off Jeff and entered. Elly was in her robe.
“Oh, Elly, you were asleep? I’m sorry! I should have called. I wasn’t thinking.”
“Sable? Isn’t it a little late?”
“Elly, they know. Actually, that’s the least of it. They embellished horribly. You can’t imagine what they’re saying about me! It’s simply unbelievable.”
“They who?”
“The tabloids. I was the subject of a television tabloid show tonight. You didn’t hear about it? I’m surprised someone hasn’t called…”
“Elly?” a strange voice called from the bedroom. There was a shuffling sound. “Is everything—”
A squat, bald man appeared in the foyer. He wore hastily drawn-up brown pants with an untucked fuchsia shirt. His feet were bare. His belt was open. Little wisps of hair stood out around his ears. Sable looked between Elly, who wore a robe, and the man. “Oh my God,” she said in a breath. And then, idiotically, “Elly, do you know this man?”
NINE
“All this time you’ve hidden him!” Sable exclaimed to Elly when Ben had finally gone.
They were putting fresh sheets on the guest-room bed for Sable. “It’s nothing to what you’ve hidden, so don’t get started on me.”
“But why, Elly? He’s so wonderful!”
“You’re hysterical,” Elly accused. Had Sable met Ben under any other circumstances, she might not have noticed his finer qualities. But Sable had been in trouble; her life was unraveling in the most grotesque manner. Once everyone was clumsily introduced—and dressed—Sable had asked, “Can I talk in front of him? Will he take my story to the press or something?” Ben had offered to leave, but it was Elly who insisted he stay, vouching for his integrity. And then Ben wound his charm around her, as only Ben could do. It broke his heart to think what was happening to Sable; it wounded him personally to witness the cheap voyeurs we’d all become. “My daughter watches that program,” he had said. “I’m going to insist that she stop!” There was not an ounce of recrimination from Ben for the young girl who’d lived shabbily and married stupidly and suffered unimaginably. Just his straightforward kindness. “Some people can be so cruel. How do they sleep, do you s’pose?”
“I’m not hysterical about him,” Sable assured Elly. “Are you sure it’s okay if I stay here?”
No one had spent the night with Elly in over three decades. She was already feeling claustrophobic. “You have to stay somewhere,” she said.
“Do you think I brought this on myself, Elly?” Sable asked.
Eleanor was struck by the childlike quality of Sable’s voice. She sat down on her side of the guest bed. She thought for a minute. “Your story, the true version,” she said, “is not very different from what is often used as the inspirational fodder of political speeches and religious reformers. You grew up under the oppression of every social disadvantage and you somehow saved yourself. You overcame. The only problem I see with the image you created for yourself is that it consistently hid your strength. But I sympathize. Those things that are personally humiliating to us rarely have the expected effect of shock and disgust on others. People are remarkably sympathetic and forgiving. When we open up, we become more human. We’re easier to relate to. Opening up about the secrets frees us from our false pretensions and people usually respond.”
“That hasn’t been my experience,” Sable said. “I feel like there’s an army of people out there who will be thrilled to find out I’m not such a class act after all.”
“Well, I’ve been to a lot of AA meetings. My dear, you can’t even compete.”
“I’ve never heard any of your revealing, human stories, Eleanor.”
Elly stood. “Well, that’s the most dangerous part of my disease, Sable. My personal shame. I seem to run into it every time I turn a corner.” She thought about Ben, of whom she had been ashamed, though she loved him and knew that he was inherently so good. She gave Sable a pat on the head. “I didn’t change my name, that’s all.”
Sable wasn’t her usual chic self. Her clothes were wrinkled, for one thing, because they’d been hastily packed. And the water in Gabby’s house was slightly harder, which caused her hair to fall differently, and her makeup didn’t go on as smoothly. Then she had to eat Eleanor’s bran cereal for breakfast, which was a lot like eating a cardboard box. She’d find a way to get the right food in this place, if she was going to stay.
Although Barbara
Ann and Beth had not phoned Elly, both arrived at the house early, bursting with the news. Neither had seen the program. Barbara Ann was called by several of her cronies after it aired; they were filled with questions, ripe with curiosity. Barbara Ann had called Beth, but Beth knew nothing about it. She rarely turned on her television before 8:00 p.m. They had both tried to call Sable, but of course she didn’t answer. And both were astonished, but greatly relieved, to find her at the house. Of course, they wanted the factual details.
“I think in a heinous sort of way, I owe that program a debt of gratitude. They might have ruined my career and cost me millions, but they made me out to be so much worse than I really was, that the truth isn’t as terrifying anymore. Not that I’m blameless. Not that many people will be interested in my version.”
“You had a catastrophic childhood,” Eleanor said. “There’s no blame in that.”
“I was twenty-two when Tommy was killed,” Sable reminded her.
“As I said,” she insisted.
It was almost like old times, though Gabby was missing. The sky was clear and the morning cool, so they positioned themselves on the deck with steaming coffee cups in their hands. Sable didn’t realize that she’d practiced a bit of this telling exercise with Jeff and then with Elly and Ben. But this was the first time she was willingly going over all the grim details with an honest desire to unburden herself of the load.
“I have vague memories of my mother dressing me in little tennies that matched my outfit. I remember her singing to me while I was in the bathtub. I think that when I was small, she wasn’t as far down the bottle. I think maybe she loved me. I think she had some self-esteem then.
“Of course, I also remember the men. Oddly, my mother was never a prostitute. I say oddly because she was very critical of hookers—that women would take money for it! But my mother used to pick up men in bars and bring them home for the night. When I was little, she would take me with her. When I was older—four or five—she would tuck me in, warn me not to get out of bed or open the door for any reason, and leave me for several hours. Sometimes I’d be so scared, I’d lie there and just tremble. And then when I heard her come stumbling in, giggling and knocking things over, I could finally relax. Once, one of her men came careening into my room. I’m amazed it was only once. And my mother went crazy. At the time I couldn’t imagine what had caused her to lose her mind like that—screaming, throwing things, hitting him, shoving him. Later I understood. That was when our life together changed, and she started leaving me alone too much, probably to avoid bringing men home so often. Shortly thereafter, when I was six, I was put in my first foster home.”