Up & Out
Authors: Ariella Papa
Up & Out
To Mr. Rogers for encouraging make-believe and Mr. G. for encouraging me
Oh my goodness! I want to thank everybody that read and supported
On the Verge
and gave me the opportunity to do this again. I have the best bunch of friends and family ever and I am always in and down with them. So I would like to rethank all my last book’s thank-yous for still being a part of my life and making sure all the people in your life knew about
On the Verge.
You rock.
I would like to thank Anthony and Daryl for opening up their apartment to workshops and laughter. Thanks to Joel and Kelly for tarts and faces.
Grazie
to Katie, my ceci princess. Thanks to Jason Hackermann for pulp in his juice and choosing a wife who is good with book titles. Thanks to the Greaney and Hackett families. To Jim for always making me sound good and learning my fave ukelele songs. Thanks to Alan for learning about makeup with me. Thanks to Appalachia, the best monkey ever. Thanks to Amy Lyn for working so hard and reading into characters the right way. Thanks to Meredith for sticking signing stickers like nobody’s business. Thanks to Kim Leebowee for coffee breaks. Thanks to Kathy for shypoke stealing of sweet potato fries. Thanks to Lauryn for setting her alarm early and lite fm concerts. Thanks to Robin for providing North America with OTV. Thanks to Asabi, Erin, Jessica, Kelly, Rebecca and Roxy for closing the door and talking to me when I needed it. Thanks to Margaret Marbury for introducing me to the best part of having an editor: the lunches. Thanks to Irene Goodman for future endeavors.
I would really like to thank my caribou photographer for going to all Boston signings and doing the photo shoot. And
merci
to my prenatal editor for always helping me get where I need to be and knowing the best thing to do when you get fired,
franchement,
is go to France.
Mo’ Money, Mo’ Problems
I
like to think of money in terms of the rock shrimp tempura at Nobu Next Door. When I take a cab, I think
that’s about a third of a plate of tempura.
So I prefer the subway. Sometimes, I don’t buy clothes because that’s usually two to four plates’ worth. I try not to think about my rent in those terms. That might make a girl lose her appetite.
New York City is filled with food. Everything from the beef-cheek ravioli at Babbo to the handmade hand-glazed all natural doughnuts at Doughnut Plant. Don’t even get me started on the loads of possibilities opening up to me every week in the “Dining In/Dining Out” section of the
New York Times.
It’s almost too overwhelming for this foodie to bear.
So every two weeks I invite a friend out for rock shrimp tempura, always with the spicy, creamy sauce. It just sort of keeps things in perspective. In a city full of savory, tempting substances, there’s got to be one thing that’s familiar.
But let me back up a bit. I was your typical working girl struggling to make ends meet and pay off my credit card and student loans. Next thing I knew,
On the Verge
magazine named
Esme, the character I had created and animated, a feminist icon for the tween generation.
Esme’s Enlightenments
was just a bunch of “interstitials,” which were like short films that advertised Explore! Family, the channel where I worked. It is an upstart channel trying to make its way in the tough world of kids’ TV. Unfortunately, the channel had no animated series at the time, but as soon as Esme got on the radar (and who would think anyone even read
On the Verge
magazine?), Hackett, the head of Programming, called me into his office and set unbelievable deadlines for me to get a legit episode produced. He wanted me to turn my sixty-second shorts into an actual TV show!
I loved my character, Esme. She may have been a bespectacled smart-aleck twelve-year-old, a glorified imaginary friend, but she was my baby. She was comfortable with herself and her smarts.
So, while I adored her, I couldn’t believe other people liked Esme so much. And then I began to like her for more than what she represented. I liked her for fast-forwarding my career. Overnight I got a staff, a promotion, a fat raise and a haircut. I busted my ass to get the first twenty-two-minute episode of
Esme’s Enlightenments
ready for the Upfront, where all the advertisers gathered for a presentation in the ballroom of the Waldorf Astoria. It was pomp and circumstance thinly disguising sales pitches. This is where the ad execs would lay their money down for the following season.
And boy did they lay their money down! Esme was a huge success. The network ordered a full season. The licensing department worked up all these plush Esme dolls and created an Esme board game and the advertisers spent their money as if there was no tomorrow. Hackett gave an inspiring speech about how Esme was going to help shape the future of the network. Even though she was a girl, she had tested well with boys, who thought she was a techhead. I felt tears coming to my contacts when he talked about how Esme had tons of possibilities, and it was all thanks to one young woman who believed. Me.
I stood up at my front table when Hackett pointed to me.
The spotlight shone on me and the camera plastered my smiling face on all the screens for even the back tables to see. I prayed I didn’t have spinach in my teeth from the so-so chicken Florentine they had served at the luncheon. I got a huge round of applause. If my life were the movie I often wish it were, the credits could have rolled right then. Well, maybe after Tommy, my recently exed boyfriend (whom I still find time to have stress-relieving fantastic sex with), would have run down the aisle through the balloons and lifted me up into a freeze-frame, just like in
Dirty Dancing.
Then my movie audience could have left with the feel-good smiles that commercial blockbusters aim for. (Like many people who work in TV, I’m obsessed with movies.)
But Tommy didn’t come and the credits didn’t roll…even though it was a really great feeling. I still had to produce thirteen episodes of
Esme’s Enlightenments
in a matter of months and I barely had time to breathe, much less properly blow out my new haircut.
The first few episodes of the series got exceptional ratings and press, but my work wasn’t done. Another season was ordered. Now we are constantly rolling out new episodes, and that means late nights and ignoring some of the people I care about the most. And believe me, all the delivery food I can order in to my office doesn’t exactly satisfy this food addict’s jones.
But I am an adult and these are adult responsibilities and I have to deal, right?
So, I’m out for an every-other-week dinner at Nobu with my roommate, Lauryn. I barely see Lauryn with the hours I keep. When I arrive, she has already ordered a mango martini for me. We kiss hello and I take a bite of the dried piece of mango that comes with the drink.
“You seem very happy,” I say. Since Lauryn realized her marriage to Jordan was really only a starter marriage and his ideas about commitment involved spending her money and sleeping with other women, she had become very bitter. It was nice
to see her smile and not mention that I was twenty-five minutes late.
“Well, Rebecca, it’s finally over.”
“What?”
“My D-I-V-O-R-C-E became final today,” she sings.
“Wow! That’s great,” I say. I’m not sure I really think so. I mean, we’re barely twenty-seven and she is divorced, but I guess it’s cool because she is happy and Jordan is a dick. I hold up my martini glass and clink it into hers and a little bit of our drinks spills.
We order our meals—we each get shiitake mushroom salads, and I order my usual rock shrimp tempura and she gets yellowtail sashimi with jalapeño. I approve, knowing I will be able to sneak a bite. I try not to associate with anyone who doesn’t believe in sharing foods.
We get more drinks. I’m exhausted, but kind of enjoying just listening to Lauryn chatter about her day after going to her lawyer. She is telling me about all the birds in Central Park and how she had always been a closet birder.
Suddenly, I realize that Lauryn is telling me something big.
“Wait a second! What?”
“I’m quitting my job and going to study the feeding habits of piping plovers on Martha’s Vineyard this summer. I’m also applying to get a Ph.D. in ecology in Boston.”
“But, what about our apartment? Your apartment?”
“You can have it, if you want. I just figured you’re never there and the lease is up in June, and you’re probably moving back in with Tommy soon, anyway.”
“Why? I’m not dating him anymore.”
“But you’re still sleeping with him.”
“Three times!” I say, holding up my fingers. “Three times in five months. And they were all after extremely stressful days!”
“This city is full of stress,” Lauryn says suddenly, strangely seeming at complete peace with herself. “That’s why I’m moving out. Anyway, I think you’re forgetting a few drunk dials.”
“They were stressed-out drunk dials.” She smiles at me. She has been more cheerful since starting therapy.
“You can keep it if you want. I bet you can afford it now with your promotion.” The waitress sets my tempura down in front of me. For the first time ever, I’m not hungry for it. There is no way I can afford $2,100 a month and ever expect to see this plate in front of me again.
The next sip of my drink tastes more like vodka than mango and only one thought occurs to me: What if this were my last plate of rock shrimp tempura ever?
Debaser
L
auryn refused to say much more about what she planned to do. Back home, I questioned her about it as we were brushing our teeth in the bathroom, but she shook her head and said, “Listen, Rebecca. I know what you’re going to say. I talked about it all with my therapist. We knew you’d have issues with me doing what’s healthiest.”
“What?”
“I don’t want to have a conflict after we’ve both been drinking. I’ve come to a resolution that I feel is healthy and we can dialogue about it at a later date. Good night.” She kissed me on the forehead and left the bathroom.
I liked her much better before she had started seeing her therapist. It was easier to deal with the bitter Lauryn than the Lauryn who started every sentence with “My therapist says…”
Lauryn’s therapist lets her get away with a lot. She did seem happier tonight, though. Weird and slightly off the deep end, but happier.
She and I have known each other since first grade. We went to college within an hour of each other in Massachusetts. Jordan went to my college and was Tommy’s best friend.
I had introduced the now ex Mr. and Mrs. at a kegger. At their wedding, I reminded everyone of that in a drunken toast. Of course, when things went sour, I hoped Lauryn would forget that I was responsible.
Lauryn used to be this incredibly funny girl before the marriage. She is tall and extremely thin. She could be a graceful Audrey Hepburn type, yet she has a way of scrunching up her face and using her body in hysterical ways. I haven’t seen that side of her in a long time. Throughout her whole separation from Jordan, I never could tell what mood Lauryn was going to be in, but it was rarely a good mood. I missed her. I missed laughing so hard that my stomach hurt hours later.
It’s midnight. I want to call Kathy or Beth to tell them Lauryn’s moving out, but I’m exhausted from the week. It’s only Wednesday. Kathy’s probably already in bed with her fiancé, Ron. They’ve had five-minute sex and conked out. Beth is most likely with some of her music-industry friends dancing at a spot I haven’t even heard of yet. She’s got her cell phone on vibrate, so she won’t miss the call from other VIPs. I’m not sure if I rank as a person she would answer a call for.
On the other hand, if I reach everyone, I’ll be on the phone for hours. I need sleep. I decide to leave them what we like to call “a caffeine greeting” on their work voice mails: “You are not going to believe what the shrink has Lauryn doing this time. Call me in the a.m. and I’ll give you the dirt.”
I get into bed and try to imagine tomorrow. With all this production going on, I am starting to lose touch with Esme. I created her, but now my staff has had to take over. Janice and John are animating her and Jen has asked if she could write a couple of scripts. Tomorrow, I want to spend the day coming up with the concepts for the last five episodes of the season.
I think teen girls rule the world. When you think about it, they create all the trends. When you’re a teenage girl, you’re just forming, mentally and physically, and
everything
makes you who you are. I really want Esme to be the kind of girl you’d want to have for a best friend. The kind who’s tough enough
not to give a shit about the dumb things guys say and the kind you can trust with anything.
I wish I were more like Esme and not desperate to bust on Lauryn with my pals. I just need to get their take on it. I won’t psychoanalyze too much.
Tomorrow I will spend some time with you, Esme. I will strive to be like you, I promise.
Two hours later I wish I had called the girls. Insomnia is something that started right around the time
Esme’s Enlightenments
was made into a show. Now I spend my nights wondering about Esme’s ratings and how to keep her plots interesting. I also rehash what the critics have to say when they pick apart my program. I don’t get a lot of beauty sleep.
This whole year (since I found out last April that I had to produce episodes for the show) has flown by. I barely got a chance to lift my head up from my computer terminal.
When I finally pulled my nose up from the grindstone, there was the slightest change in my relationship with my friends. Sometimes everything was normal and I couldn’t feel it, but other times it seemed we were all moving in different directions. When we moved to New York after college, we spent all this time together. We didn’t really have any family around. The fact that we wound up in our group was one of those things that was either fate or an amazing and fortunate coincidence. I think friendship works like that—people just get pulled in.
Beth was my roommate in college. Thanks to Beth, I met Tommy, her brother and my ex-boyfriend. I introduced Beth to Lauryn. Kathy was Beth’s cousin’s roommate who looked up Lauryn when she moved to the city. We all just clicked and felt like we discovered this city together after college.
We each brought something to the group. Lauryn brought her funny physicality, Beth motivated the group to try new things—to go forth into the city as if we owned it—and Kathy was the practical one, the stylish one and the one who seemed to believe all of us were going somewhere.
I can’t pinpoint the exact moment things changed and I can’t say it was all because of how much time I spent at work. Maybe it was Lauryn, who had held us together all along. When she started spending days in her pajamas, crying over Jordan, we started hanging out less. Or maybe it was Kathy, going completely crazy over her fiancé, Ron. She kind of settled in with him, moved to the suburbs and decided her reason for being was to be the most beautiful bride in the tri-state area. None of us could have predicted that the girl who got all the best clothes at sample sales would be asking us to try on pewter bridesmaid dresses. But maybe we stopped hanging out as much when we stopped being able to keep up with Beth.
Beth didn’t have to worry about insomnia. Most nights she passed out drunk, unless she had taken something to keep her up and partying all night. She had plenty of people to go with her to the hottest clubs now that she worked at the music studio. I found her new friends wild and intimidating. Although I think the changes in my relationship with Beth had a lot to do with Tommy and me breaking up.
We should have broken up a lot sooner. Part of the reason we stayed together so long was that we lived together. It’s a sick joke that couples stay together in New York a lot longer than they should because of apartments. It sucks to find an apartment here. You overpay for spaces the size of closets.
The other part of the reason I stayed with Tommy so long was that I loved him. And I still kind of do. As hard as it is to find an apartment in New York, for me it’s even harder to find a guy who gets me. Tommy got me. All my quirks and all my food addictions he enjoyed. He even managed to indulge me and talk about Esme like she was a real twelve-year-old.
But Tommy is also very immature. Dating an overgrown boy can be fun when you want to brainstorm about kids’ TV but difficult when you want him to stop planning his life around sporting events and video games and start spending quality time with you.
In the end Tommy and I agreed to be friends and I moved
in with Lauryn, and now I was going to have to either find a new roommate or start the search again. Part of me can’t quite give up on Tommy and me getting back together. And as soon as we agreed to be just friends we started having the sex we had stopped having in our relationship. Something about not really being together made it better. Is that sick? We always said each time would be the last time, but did it again anyway. It’s as if neither of us can truly cut the cord. I still rely on him so much. I wish that moving back in with him wasn’t one of the first things that came to mind when Lauryn said she was moving to Massachusetts.
I also wish Beth could be as okay about our breakup as Tommy and I pretend to be. I know she is protective of her brother, but I care about him, too, and she would never understand that.
Ugh. I hate insomnia. It forces you to think about all the things you try to avoid during the day. I don’t want to put work into my relationships; I just want them to be normal.
I can’t do this. It’s almost 4:00 a.m. I need sleep. I will count sheep backward until it comes.
The radio is on. My favorite way to get up—listening to 1010 WINS. I can rely on them for weather and news and a slight (very slight) cynicism. No matter how loud I turn it up I always sleep right through it. It’s 9:35. Not too bad. Most people in the business roll in way after ten. But, I am trying to go in early and set an example for my team. I don’t want them to think that we can slack off now that the ratings are high. But at this rate, there is no way I am going to make it in early, much less take a shower.
I brush my teeth really quick, put my hair in a clip and pull on a comfy pair of jeans and a thin black sweater. There are dark circles under my eyes as usual, but I don’t have time to do anything about it.
On the way to the subway, I stop at a quilted truck (the stainless steel panels are quilted). I always make time for coffee. The guy in the cart has my coffee and change ready when I get up to him. I come here every day for a cup of coffee with
lots of milk and sugar, which will usually sustain me for a good two hours (depending on whether or not I went out the night before).
People always complain about how expensive things are in this city, but coffee off the street proves it all wrong. Does any other city have coffee this good for a mere fifty cents? And, if it’s a really bad morning, I can throw in a buttered roll for fifty more cents. A steal.
I don’t get a seat on the subway. There is a bit of humidity in the air. The city is about to cross the line from the crisp coolness of spring to the smelly oppression of summer. In a matter of weeks everyone on this train can count on being stinky and disgusting and we’ll all just have to hold our noses and accept that it is summertime.
I stare up at an ad for the New York City Teaching Fellows. That’s the program where they pay for your master’s in education if you become a teacher in a tough inner-city school. The campaign is tight. Someone is obviously getting paid well to come up with these great inspiring slogans. This ad says,
“You remember your first-grade teacher’s name. Who will remember yours?”
Mrs. Gordon was my first-grade teacher. I think she was the first person to appreciate the essays I wrote on small pieces of yellow lined paper. I remember how she smelled like Fig Newtons and perfume when she leaned over my desk and said, “Rebecca, you’re very creative.”
I should give Esme more scenes at school. I’m always trying to think of ways of making her more real to kids. Maybe she can figure out who stole the class hamster. No, I’ve got to come up with something better.
Luckily, I don’t have a long trip. The subway brings me a block from the Explore! offices in Midtown East. I hate this neighborhood. ARCADE, my last job—the first one I had out of college—was over on the far west side. I felt more comfortable around the truckers and transsexuals there than I do around the finance suits, who are ubiquitous in this neighborhood.
I go through a lengthy but halfhearted security check from one of the guards in the lobby. Once he’s assured that I’m not carrying any explosives in my knockoff purse, I head up to our floor. I pass the giant poster of a spacecraft in the lobby. As I pass the kitchen, I realize I forgot to bring lunch, leftovers from two nights ago. Damn! Coffee may be cheap in this city, but lunch in Midtown is another story.
As I expected, Jen was in early. She is Hackett’s niece and also the production coordinator for my team, the group that works on Esme. Jen is going places in this business and I’m not sure I’m the right person to be managing her.
“Good morning, Rebecca.”
“What’s up, Jen?” I expected (hoped) to hear “nothing,” but Jen is a woman on top of things.
“Well, we have to go over the title test for episode seven with my un-Hackett at eleven. We’ve got a script meeting at twelve. There’s a programming waste of time at one. Before you get any ideas we are required to be there. We really have to figure out the second segment of episode nine this afternoon. Oh yeah, a budget thing at four-thirty. And Janice has a dentist appointment she forgot about and John is running late because his electricity is out.”
We smirk at each other. We strongly believe that our two animators, Janice and John, are an item. In a group of four it creates an interesting dynamic.
“Well, with any luck their morning will put them in an agreeable mood.” Jen and I keep tabs on their relationship by observing how well they are able to work together. There were times it got downright ugly. “Did they say how late they would be?”
“They were both curiously evasive.”
“Well, I’d like to have them around for the title test. Shit!” Already my day was sounding crappy.
“I’ll call Meg and try and push it back.” Meg is Hackett’s assistant and I swear she runs the company.
“Thanks, Jen. I mean, I could do that if you want.”
“No, it’s fine. I think you should take a look at the scripts.”
“Okay.” I go to my office and shut the door.
I’m not really comfortable being in charge of a team. I have a hard enough time being responsible for myself, and now I control the livelihood of three people under me. I always feel strange when Jen does stuff for me. She keeps offering to fax things for me and do my expense reports, but I just can’t handle that. It makes me feel helpless and worse, it makes me feel like a boss, which I guess I am.
I take a deep breath and stretch. I can do that because of my door. I always worked in a cube—and it was fine with me—but now I have an office, which means I have a door. A door is a very big deal. If I close it, I have my own little space. I can surf the Net for porn, listen to loud music, sniff my armpits or scratch my ass. I can do anything—if I can just find the time.
I also have a window. Granted, it’s small and it looks right out at a brick wall, but it is a window. It’s silly, but I’m proud of it. My mom cut hair in Pennsylvania and my dad worked in a factory. All their lives, they worked at the same place. They never seemed to believe that I made a living at what they thought was drawing. It seemed like no matter what I did, they didn’t get it. And they still don’t, even with Esme on TV. But, I bet if they saw my office, they would be proud.
