Bloom

Bloom

By

Elizabeth O’Roark

“Disaster strikes when you least expect it.”

Someone said this to me, when it happened. I thought it was the stupidest expression I’d ever heard. 

If you
did
expect a disaster, it wouldn’t be a disaster. If you’d known in advance that you were going to be hit by lightning or run off the road or that your trailer would be in a tornado’s direct path, you’d probably have taken steps to avoid it, right? It’s the unexpectedness that makes it a disaster in the first place.

But one wise person said this: “Sometimes a disaster is just what you need.” It irritated me at the time, but it turns out he was right. Because sometimes you need the slate wiped clean. Sometimes you need your life uprooted, splintered into a million jagged pieces.

All so something beautiful can grow in its place.

Chapter 1

June 12th

I wake a
little late. There won’t be time today for the three papers (
Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post
) sitting outside my door. I’m late enough that I’m forced to do one of those skittering walk-runs to the subway, as fast as you can get, really, in heels and a pencil skirt.

In truth the running is a little unnecessary. Edward, my boss, told me to sleep in. Yes, he actually
ordered
me to sleep in, because Edward is the kind of boss who finds out you’ve got a late night planned and is more concerned with your well-being than your productivity. An internship at “The Evening News with Edward Ferris” may be the work-equivalent of winning the lottery. But having a boss like Edward? It’s like winning it twice.

By the time I’ve gotten off the subway, I’m back on schedule and can simply walk the two blocks to my office. It’s in moments like this, when I emerge from the gloom of the subway into the bright sun, that I want to squeal at my own good luck. The streets of Manhattan swim with life in the mornings, moving in sync like some kind of slightly disorganized flash mob. And it’s all mine for the next three months.

There is, of course, a tiny downside to all this good fortune and it’s that downside that has me running this morning. Only the best and brightest get internships like mine. Well, the best, the brightest, and those with a famous dad. I fall into the third category, and despite the fact that I’ve spent the past four summers pulling 60-hour weeks on my father’s talk show, everyone assumes my father made it happen. And despite my hard work and my 3.8 at Cornell, they’re probably right.

So they resented me right off the bat, but now, thanks to Edward, they loathe me. I mentioned that Edward is an amazing boss. The problem is that he’s not an amazing boss to
everyone
. I honestly wish this were not the case – I don’t want to be the only one who gets to write copy. I don’t want to be the only one promised air time. The other interns look at me like I should fix this, but what the hell am I supposed to do? He’s my
boss
. That’s what has me running. That’s what has me working late. That’s what means I can’t mess up: because they are all watching, and they really hope I fail.

I don’t deserve to be Edward’s pet. I’d be lying if I said otherwise. I’m not the smartest intern on staff, or the most prepared. I’m not even the hardest worker. I can only assume that he still has a soft spot for the little girl who used to spin on his chair when my father worked here.

There are photographers outside the building, not an unusual occurrence. The morning show usually has a few celebrities running in or running out. A camera flash goes off and I raise a brow. The paparazzi is usually better at telling the difference between the worker bees and the queens, and an intern is the lowest of the worker bees.

I push through the revolving doors and head toward security, but my steps falter halfway there. That dream you have that you’ve walked into class and discovered you’re naked? I’m living it. People are staring. At me. Some are surreptitious, but they are looking all the same. I actually glance down to make sure I’m fully clothed.

There’s a strange hum of tension and excitement, people watching a car crash in action. And I am the car. Through security, in the elevator. My first thought is that it’s about my father — that he’s sick or he’s been fired or he got into a fist fight with one of his conservative guests — but I rule it out. Not enough people know who I am to warrant this much attention.

Heads turn as I step off the elevator, a chain reaction I begin to predict and dread. I haven’t even gotten to my cubicle before Stacy - the producer I most hate - is literally pushing me toward a conference room. She hasn’t liked me from my first day. It’s not just interns who resent Edward’s partiality.

“
What
is going on?” I ask. To be honest, I’m a little irritated, accustomed to a certain amount of deference being Andrew Grayson’s daughter and all.

She shuts the door behind me and motions for me to sit. “You apparently haven’t read today’s paper?” she asks. The words sound like an insult. I suppose they are. I begin to think of ways to defend myself, but the fact that I stayed out late to watch my ex-boyfriend’s band play doesn’t sound particularly admirable.

“No,” I reply. “Not yet.”

“Well, you’re in there,” she snaps. “You and Edward, leaving a restaurant together.”

I look at her blankly. “Yeah?”

“Lead anchors don’t take interns to dinner for no reason,” she says.

“What are you trying to imply?” I breathe.

“I’m not
implying
anything. The fact that you’re sleeping with him is hardly a well-kept secret.”

“But … ” I stammer. “That’s ridiculous!”

I wait for her to retreat but she doesn’t. “Give me a break, Eleanor. Are you seriously going to pretend that nothing has gone on?” she asks, and her tone reeks of disbelief.

“I’m
19
. He’s my father’s age,” I retort. “Of course nothing has gone on.”

She rolls her eyes. “As if that stops anyone. The two of you have been seen in public at least five times in two weeks.”

“He’s just looking out for me,” I explain. “You know he’s friends with my dad.”

“Doesn’t taking you out five times strike you as excessive?” she asks. It’s actually been more than that, if you include coffee, but that doesn’t seem like a helpful addition to our discussion.

“No,” I argue. “It just seemed unusually thoughtful.”

She rolls her eyes again, and I’m beginning to see why mothers so loathe this habit in their teenage daughters. “I’ve worked with Edward Ferris for ten years. And he’s a lot of things, but ‘unusually thoughtful’ isn’t one of them.”

I want to argue. I want to tell her about the time he and my dad covered the Democratic primary, and how each night Edward would save the chocolates they put on his pillows and bring them to me. How, by the end of the week, I had 42 pieces, and he sat in the hotel lobby and helped me count. But only guilty people offer elaborate defenses, and I am definitely not guilty. “I’ve known him since I was
two
. Nothing happened.”

“Nothing? Nothing at all?”

“No,” I say adamantly. “This is crazy. It just wasn’t like that.”

“Didn’t he invite you to the Hamptons?” she says. “Even people in the office heard that.”

“Yes,” I shrug. “I didn’t
go
. He said something about how I’d like his son — I think he wanted to set me up.”

“Eleanor,” she sighs. “His son is five. And he’s with Edward’s wife in France all summer.”

Oh.

I stare at her blankly, trying to come up with an alternative explanation. He was telling me how fun the Hamptons was in the summer, especially for ‘kids’ my age. And then he said, ‘I’d like you to meet my son. I think you’d really hit it off.’

Nope. Not seeing any implication there that his son was
five
.

Which turns this into the moment when I start looking at my two weeks with Edward through a new lens. When I look back on a few things he’s done that made me somewhat uncomfortable, things I told myself were no big deal as they occurred. When he hugged me good night, it went on for slightly too long. (
Maybe he misses his kids, I’d thought
). He’d said some things — that I “wore the hell out of a skirt” and had “a mouth that men dream about”. I thought maybe he didn’t realize how inappropriate they were. The last time we’d been at dinner, he’d suggested that his apartment was right around the corner and I should just stay there. I’d thanked him and I’d
laughed
, telling him my Dad’s place was nearby and he didn’t need to worry about me so much.

This is the moment I realize that everyone outside of this conference room, maybe everyone in the country, thinks I’m sleeping with my very famous, very married boss. I can’t imagine walking back out. I can’t imagine continuing to work with these people. But I also can’t imagine giving up my internship. “So what now?” I ask quietly.

“Well, you can’t be here anymore for starters,” she says.

“But … ” I begin. Already I know it’s fruitless. I’ve heard enough of my father’s stories. The guy who pulls in viewers matters more to the network than some stupid teenage girl he wanted to screw. “Can you help place me at another show?” I ask. “I need to intern
somewhere
.”

“I’m sorry,” she says, her words undermined somewhat by the vicious glee in her tone. “We won’t be able to help you. We need you to stay out of the spotlight.”

That shocks me, perhaps, more than anything else. And angers me too: they’re going to fire me without cause and give me nothing to fall back on. My shoulders sag. “Well, I guess there’s always my father’s show.”

And that’s when she lowers the other boom. That’s when she tells me my father’s days are over too.

Chapter 2

The first person
I call is my mother, who confirms that yes, my father has a pending sexual harassment suit and also knocked up a 24-year-old production assistant. That he was fired, and oh, by the way, she and my father have filed for divorce.

And then I call Ginny. Ginny Campbell has been my best friend since our first day of preschool, when we were the only girls in the class who didn’t want to play this completely pointless game called “Unicorn Fairy” that involved a lot of running around and neighing. Instead, we took over the small playhouse and I interviewed her while she pretended she was a judge, yelling “You’re out of order!” at 20-second intervals. I think maybe her nanny was letting her watch a lot more “Judge Judy” than her parents realized.

And even though my parents moved from Connecticut when I was 14, our friendship survived. It didn’t even occur to me to call anyone but her.

“I saw the paper.” Those are the first words out of her mouth. Before I’ve said anything at all.

I groan, burying my face in my hands. I guess I’d hoped the damage would be more minimal, the sort of thing only media types would pay attention to. But somewhere down in a sleepy town on the Delaware coast, my best friend has seen it too.

“They didn’t mention you by name,” she soothes. “I can’t believe you were sleeping with Edward Ferris and never even told me.”

“God, Ginny,” I cry. “Of course I wasn’t sleeping with him! He’s my freaking dad’s age.”

“Well, he’s still mega-hot,” she counters. “As is your dad.” Ample payback for all the years I’d spent lusting after her brother were all the years she spent lusting after my dad.

“I’m done,” I cry. “My whole career is shot before I’ve even begun.”

“This will blow over,” she says. “Your dad will get you something else.”

And then I tell her the rest of it — all the other things that would have been devastating on their own, but now almost seem mundane compared to my own spectacular implosion.

She is completely silent for a second, the most un-Ginny moment of the call. “Wow,” she finally says. “Well you did always want a sibling.”

“Yeah, when I was five!” I cry. “Not
now
!”

She’s silent again. I can almost see her there, brow furrowed, eyes focused. Ginny is never without a plan for long. “The way I see it, you’ve only got one option: you need to come spend the summer with me at the beach. You’ve never once had a normal teenage summer. You’ve spent every break since you were 14 wearing a suit and working your ass off. If it’s really all ruined anyway, then fuck it. Come out here and act like a normal teenager for once in your life.”

“What will I do for a job?” I ask.

“You can work at the bar with me,” she says. Ginny, ever industrious, is temping at a law firm by day and waitressing by night.

“The bar you said made the Hooters uniform look ‘professorial’?” I ask, with a tearful laugh.

“Come on. It’ll be fun. My brother and his friends are here too. You’ll forget all about Ryan and this current disaster.”

Ryan is my ex-boyfriend, and the truth is that I’d already sort of forgotten him. But she had me at the mention of her brother.

“Why is James even there?” I ask. “I thought he had an internship.” James is brilliant and every bit as ambitious as Ginny. When he graduates next year, he’ll have both a law degree and a master’s in international finance. During the summers he’s been interning at some law firm in Boston that pays him insane amounts of money.

“Long story,” she sighs. “Tell me you’ll come and we’ll have all summer to bemoan my brother’s terrible judgment.”

**

I’m not sure when I first fell in love with James. All I know is that it came long before I should have been thinking about boys. It came before my first sleepover (memorable solely because James was —
OMG!— in
the very next room
). It came before my First Communion (memorable solely because I wanted James to see my new white dress). Almost every memory I hold is like a pendulum with James as its axis. He came before everything else.

We are only six years apart, but it was always a significant six years. In even my earliest memories of him, he’s so far out of my league he’s almost like a different species. And each year he just got better: better looking and bigger and more assured.

“I’m going to marry Bobby Sanchez,” Ginny would whisper to me during recess.

“I’m going to marry your brother,” I’d whisper back.

“Ewwww,” she’d groan.

Her side of the conversation varied over the years. Bobby became Ryan Wesling, who turned into Adam Goldfarb and then other boys, a new one each month. But my side of the conversation? It always stayed the same.

James Campbell. James Campbell. James Campbell.

Though Ginny and I have seen each other every summer since I moved, James was already off at college and working at the beach during breaks. I don’t even mention him to Ginny anymore, though I wait for her small references to him like a panting dog waiting for a treat. But sometimes at night I have this moment when I’m dozing off and it’s his face I see. Sometimes, as I’m falling asleep, my brain seems to chant his name, as if insisting that I not forget.

I should say no when Ginny suggests the beach. I should be calling my father’s friends, people in different markets, smaller affiliates, and begging for work. But the part of my brain that still dreams about him is the part that says “maybe”. Ready to abandon every last whisper of ambition for a boy I haven’t laid eyes on since I was 14.