Once in a Lifetime (17 page)

"Miss Fields?" A production assistant stuck his head in the door. "You're on first."

"Oh, Christ."

"Mr. Conroy didn't want to keep you waiting."

That was always the hardest spot, she didn't have time to relax about the show, and watch how the others handled themselves, but she also knew that tonight she had star billing. "I wish he wouldn't do me such a big favor," Daphne whispered to Barbara, feeling her palms begin to sweat, but Barbara whispered something reassuring.

"You'll be fine."

"How long will I be on?" It was like setting an internal time clock for having a tooth filled at the dentist ... twenty minutes ... I can stand twenty minutes of pain ... or can I? And at least at the dentist they gave her Novacain so she wouldn't feel the pain. This was cold turkey.

"They didn't tell me. I asked yesterday. The girl said he just wants to 'let it flow.' But I don't imagine it'll be more than fifteen minutes." Daphne nodded, gearing herself up, and a moment later the production assistant reappeared and signaled for her to come with him.

"So long, kid." She glanced over her shoulder at Barbara, thinking of the old saw "We who are about to die salute you."

"You'll be great."

She rolled her eyes and disappeared and Barbara settled down with a glass of wine to watch her on the monitor.

The production assistant led Daphne to the set, indicated which chair, and clipped a microphone to the neck of her dress, as a makeup artist ran up and dusted her face with powder. Her hair was perfectly in place, and the rest of her makeup was fine. The woman nodded and disappeared and the production assistant nodded and adjusted his headphones before whispering to Daphne. "Mr. Conroy is coming out now. He'll sit there." He indicated a chair. "He'll do the first ninety seconds alone, then he'll introduce you." She nodded, noticing her last two books on the low table. Usually she was given some indication of what they'd talk about, but Conroy didn't work that way. It was precisely because of that that she was worried. "Do you want a glass of water on the set?"

"Thank you." Her eyes felt too large in her face, her mouth felt dry, and she could feel little rivers of perspiration rolling slowly down her sides as Bob Conroy appeared in a dark suit and a pale blue shirt and red tie. He was in his late forties and undeniably handsome. But there was something very cold and sharp in his eyes, something too glib and terribly plastic about him.

"Daphne?" No. Mata Hari.

"Yes." She smiled, trying not to feel dizzy.

"Nice to have you on the show. How was the weather in New York?"

"Fine."

He sat down and glanced out to see the angles on the camera. But before he could say anything more, the assistant producer began counting, a'red light went on, and a camera moved in on Conroy's face as he smiled the sexy smile that turned American womanhood on, and told his viewers who they could expect on the show that evening. It was exactly like all of the other shows Daphne had been on. One was brought out like a dancing dog, asked to do one's act, and sent off the set with scarcely a thank you, while the host did his egocentric pirouettes to enchant his viewers.

"And our first guest this evening is a woman whose books most of you have read, certainly you ladies"--he stopped to smile into the camera, and then picked a book up off the coffee table and then looked back into the camera--"but I suspect that most of you have read very little about her. From all reports, Daphne Fields is a very private person." He smiled again and turned slowly to Daphne as the camera included her and a second camera moved in slowly on casters. "It's nice to have you here with us in Chicago."

"It's nice to be here with you, Bob." She smiled shyly at him, knowing the camera would cover her full front without her having to turn toward it. That was always the case except on shows in backwater towns where the only angle they ever shot was the host. She had spent an entire hour on a show in Santa Fe once, without realizing that all the viewers saw was the back of her hairdo.

"You live in New York, don't you?" It was a typically innocuous question.

"I do." She smiled.

"Are you working on a book now?"

"Yes, I am. It's called Lovers."

"Now there's a title for you." He looked deep into the eyes of his female viewers. "Your readers will love that. How's the research going?" He gave a suggestive little laugh and Daphne blushed softly beneath her makeup.

"My work is generally fiction." Her voice and smile were soft, and there was something wonderfully delicate about her, which made him look brash and sound harsh with his question. But he would get her for that, they always did. It was his show, and he planned to be on for a long time. Daphne was just a one-night stand. It was his ass on the line, not hers, and he never forgot it.

"Come, come, a pretty lady like you ... you must have an army of lovers."

"Not lately." This time there was mischief in her eyes and she didn't blush. She was beginning to think she might survive it.

But the humor faded from Conroy's voice as he turned toward her. "I understand, Daphne, that you're a widow." It was a line she didn't expect, and for a moment she almost gasped. He had done his research well, and she nodded. "That's a great pity. But"--his voice oozed sympathy and compassion-- "perhaps that's why you write so well. You write a great deal about surviving loss, and you certainly have. I'm told you lost a little girl, too." Her eyes filled with tears at the shock of hearing him discuss Jeff and Aimee, and she sat there, with her guts on his cocktail table.

"I don't generally discuss my private life in association with my work, Bob." She was struggling to regain her composure.

"Maybe you should." The face was earnest, the voice helpful. "It would make you more real to your readers." Zap. He had gotten her.

"As long as my books are real--"

He cut her off. "But how can they be, if they don't know who you are?" Before she could answer, he went on, "Am I right in saying that your husband and daughter died in a fire?"

"Yes, you are." She took a deep breath, and as Barbara watched on the monitor, tears filled her eyes. What a stinking thing to do. The son of a bitch ... Daphne had been right to be afraid to come here.

"Was your husband the man you talked about in Apache?" She shook her head. It had been John. And with a sudden wave of panic she wondered if he knew about him, too, but there was no way he could have. "What a striking character that was. I think every woman in America fell in love with him. You know, the book would make a marvelous movie."

She began to recover then, praying for the interview to end. "I'm awfully glad you think so."

"Any prospects on the horizon?"

"Not yet, but my agent thinks they will come."

"Daphne, tell us, how old are you?" Shit. There was no way around him, but she laughed softly.

"Do I have to tell the truth?" But she made no secret of her age. "I'm working my way toward thirty-three."

"Good Lord"--he looked her over appraisingly-- "you don't look it. I would easily guess you for twenty." It was the charm that so delighted his female viewers. But as Daphne smiled he moved in on her again with that same sympathetic look she had come to distrust, and she was right again. "And you've never remarried. How long have you been a widow?"

"Seven years."

"It must have been a terrible blow." With a look of innocence now, "Is there a man currently in your life?" She wanted to scream or reach out and slap him. They never asked questions like that of male writers, but women were fair game, somehow it was assumed that a female writer's personal life was part of her work, and hence public property. A man would have told him to go to hell, but he would never have asked the question.

"Not at the moment, Bob," with a gentle smile.

He smiled sweetly. "I'm not sure I believe that. You're much too pretty to be alone. And then there's that book you're working on now ... what was it, Lovers?" She nodded. "When will that be out? I'm sure all your readers are waiting breathlessly for it."

"Not too breathlessly, I hope. The book won't be out until next year."

"We'll be waiting." They exchanged another plastic smile as Daphne waited for her reprieve, she knew it would come soon, and she could hardly wait to get off the set, and away from his questions. "You know, there's something else I've been wanting to ask you." She waited, almost expecting him to ask her bra size. "Our next guest is also a writer, but not in your field. His book is nonfiction. He's written a marvelous book about autistic children." Daphne felt herself grow pale as she saw him coming ... but surely he couldn't ... "A good friend of mine in New York, at Collins where you used to work, tells me that you have an autistic child. Maybe, from a parent's point of view, you could shed some light on this subject, for us." She eyed him with open hatred, but she was thinking of Allie ... how could she have told him a thing like that? How could she?

"My son is not autistic, Bob."

"I see ... perhaps I misunderstood ..." She could almost envision his viewers panting. In ten short minutes they had learned that she had lost her husband and daughter in a fire, had worked at Collins, had no man in her life at the moment, and now they thought her only surviving child was autistic. "Is he retarded?"

"No, he is not." Her voice rose and her eyes blazed. Just how much did this man think he had a right to? "My son is hard of hearing, he is in a school for the deaf, but other than his hearing impairment, he is a perfectly marvelous, normal child."

"I'm glad for you, Daphne." Son of a bitch. Daphne was seething inside. She felt as though she had been stripped naked. But worse than that, much worse, he had stripped Andrew. "And I'm delighted to hear about Lovers, and I'm afraid that our time together is over. But we hope to see you again the next time you're in Chicago."

"I'd like that very much." She smiled through clenched teeth, smiled then for the benefit of the viewers, and they took a break for a collection of commercials. And with a look of barely veiled fury, she unclipped the microphone from her dress and handed it to him during the break. "You know, I don't know how you can make excuses for yourself."

"Why? Because I have a passion for the truth?" He wasn't smiling now. He didn't give a damn about her. He cared only about himself, his viewers, and his sponsors.

"What difference can any of that possibly make? What right do you have to ask anyone those kinds of questions?"

"Those are the things people want to know."

"Those are the things people have no right to know. Aren't there things in your life that you don't want exposed? Is there nothing sacred to you?"

"I'm not at your end of the interview, Daphne." He said it coolly as the next guest arrived to take her seat. She stood there for a moment looking down at him and she didn't extend her hand.

"Then you're very lucky." And with that she turned on her heel and left the stage, walking quickly into the waiting room and signaling to Barbara to follow her.

They were on a plane bound for New York two hours later. It was the last flight out, and they reached La Guardia at two o'clock in the morning. At two thirty she was back in her apartment. Barbara had gone on in the cab. And on Sixty-ninth Street, Daphne closed her front door behind her, and walked straight to her bedroom without turning on the lights, threw herself on the bed, and broke into sobs as she lay there. She felt as though her whole life had been exposed that night, all her pain and her sorrow. The only thing he hadn't known about was John. It was a good thing she had never told Allie ... and tell us, Miss Fields, is it true you shacked up with a logger in New Hampshire? ... She turned over and lay staring at the ceiling in the dark, thinking of Andrew. Maybe it was just as well he was at the school. Maybe if he were at home with her in New York, his life would turn into a sideshow. People like Allie would treat him like a freak ... autistic ... retarded ... she cringed at the words, and lay there until she fell asleep on her bed, in the beige dress she had worn, with tearstains on her face, and her heart feeling like it had been beaten with rocks. She dreamed that night of Jeffrey and John, and she awoke the next morning, at the sound of the phone, feeling a wave of terror wash over her ... terrified that something had happened to Andrew.

"Daphne, are you all right?" It was Iris. She had seen the show.

"I'll live. But I won't do it again. You can tell Murdock that for me, or I will. Take your choice, but that's it. My publicity life is over."

"I don't think you should feel that way, Daff. It was just one bad show."

"Maybe to you. But I'm not going to go through that again, and I don't have to. My books sell just fine without my prostituting myself for assholes who want to hang my underwear on their clothesline." But most of all, what still smarted was what they had done to Andrew. She tried to keep him so protected from that world, and in one brief moment they had torn away all her protection and exposed him as "autistic." She still shuddered' at what they had said. And every time she thought of it, she wanted to kill Allie. She had to force her mind back to what Iris was saying. She was insisting they have lunch at the Four Seasons, but Daphne really didn't want to.

"Something wrong?"

"No. A very interesting offer, but I want to talk to you about it, hash it out for a while. Do you want to come to the office?"

"Why don't you come here? I don't feel like going out." In truth, she wanted to go into hiding. Or go back to the school, to put her arms around Andrew.

"Fine. I'll be there at noon. All right with you?"

"Perfect. And don't forget to call Murdock." But Iris planned to wait awhile on that. Publicity on Daphne's books was just too important to take a hasty stand, and it was possible that Daphne would back down. Although knowing Daphne, it was more likely that she wouldn't. She had a stubborn streak in her a mile wide, and the one thing that mattered to her most was her privacy. Having that violated on national TV had to have been a shattering experience for her.

"I'll see you in a little while." It was already ten o'clock, and Daphne heard Barbara's key in the door as she walked into the kitchen in her stocking feet and the dress she had worn the night before. She looked as though she had been to a very drunken party.