ALLISON
“So how did it go?” Annie asked, her voice too chipper for so early in the morning. “Did you have fun?”
“Yeah,” I said carefully. “Yeah, I did.”
“You must’ve. You were out late enough.”
I’d texted Annie when I’d gotten home from Tammy’s apartment. I’d had a hard time sleeping, though it had been so late. The caffeine, for one, but also everything Tammy had told me. Carnivals. Small town secrets. Murder. In the early morning light, with the distant soothing sound of the waves coming through the walls of the house, it all felt like some weird nightmare. But the purple stamp with the inexplicable word XTRAMP was smudged in the middle of my left hand, my proof of purchase at the Roller Derby bout, and my hair smelled of the wood smoke from Tammy’s fire.
“I wasn’t out all that time. We went back to her house to chat.”
“On the first date? You slut.”
I laughed, rolling over in bed, appreciating the luxury of having nowhere to go, nothing to do. “I feel bad for her, Annie. She seems sad. She started telling me this story—”
“Oh no,” Annie interrupted. “No, no, no. You have no time for sad right now, Mongoose. You need to think positive. Prep for your big interview this week.”
“I know—it’s just—”
“You’ve got this, sis. Trust me. You just have to focus. Remember, this is your chance. I can feel it.”
So I did focus, as best I could. Over the next few days, I researched Vaughn’s station, wrote down some potential questions and practiced my answers. I prepped forecasts in case he asked, taking care to check current Philly conditions against the models. As I worked, my brain fell back into that mode. It was like doing a cartwheel, jumping rope, driving a stick shift—once you learned, your brain never forgot, it settled back into that comfortable groove, the satisfying buzz of working, executing. I went to Tammy’s shop when I needed a good connection, tapping into whatever models I could—the ECMWF, the Global Forecast System, the NAM. I didn’t have access to all the models that WDLT had, but I could find enough data on my own to feel confident that if Vaughn asked, I’d be able to hand him a forecast I could stand behind.
Tammy didn’t bother me much, except to refill my coffee, but I could sense her hovering, waiting, could see the way her mouth parted slightly when I looked up, like she was about to say something but stopped herself. Or the way her sneakers would squeak on the freshly mopped floor as she passed by my table, the stop and stutter, but then she’d continue on to wipe down a table or straighten the pile of brochures of Opal Bay attractions stacked near the window.
I was wrapped up in low-pressure system changes, precipitation levels, downdrafts. I’d forgotten how much I loved studying the more primitive satellite models, the way they reminded me of a child’s color-by-number book, splotches of dark green, light green, small swaths of blue, dots of red and yellow. It was my jigsaw puzzle—a pattern to fit together, to figure out, and the more precise you were, the better your results. It was amazing how messed up a winter forecast could get just by forgetting a surface northerly wind in a valley.
The morning of the interview, I took half a Xanax to calm my nerves and gave Catarina some catnip so she wouldn’t start howling in the middle of my call. Then I settled in the sunroom, dragging a chair as close to the window as I could afford. It was the place in the house that seemed to get the best reception, if the wind was blowing in the right direction.
Vaughn Winters had that producer voice. Even over the phone it was big, booming, confident. It immediately took me back to my news days, the early morning caffeine hits, the yelling, the rushing—the bustle of a newsroom where everything was always on fire.
“So tell me about yourself,” he said by way of opening, and already I was fumbling for words. Well, sir, what would you like to know about? My husband’s affair? My on-air rant that was both unprofessional and insane? Or maybe you want to hear about the way the basement in this house I’m staying in smells like mold?
“I was the morning meteorologist for WDLT in Annapolis for five years,” I told him instead.
“Oh yeah. Wonderful,” Vaughn said.
“Yes. I really enjoyed it. I love being able to translate science to the general public, you know? It’s nice to be that face on the television that’s useful.”
“Well, about that,” he said, and for the first time I sensed hesitation in his voice. “I have to be up-front with you. I’m not looking for an on-camera person. This would be more behind-the-scenes. Research, forecasts, the like.”
“Oh.” My immediate reaction was disappointment. Part of me had imagined getting back on-air, proving to everyone (Duke and his family) that I wasn’t ruined. That I was back and better than ever. But I tried to swallow it. Give him a chance, Allison. Besides, there were pros to being off camera, too, weren’t there? Easier to stay under the radar. And I could focus on the job, not the performance.
“That’s actually perfect,” I said, hoping I seemed upbeat. “I’ve been doing some forecasting this week, getting back into it, you know? And it’s been—well, at the risk of sounding like a geek—really fun.”
“Great. I’ll have you send those to our meteorologists if you don’t mind. So tell me more about yourself. How has this beach vacation been treating you?”
I paused. The word vacation tripped me up. Was that what Annie had told him I was doing? The word vacation felt trivial, light. Was he trying to be polite by calling it that? Or did he not know I’d been fired from my last job? I’d been going back and forth for days about what to tell him about my past. If to tell him at all. Breathe, Allison. “It’s nice. Feels good to be here. To recharge,” I said.
“I can imagine.”
Did his voice have a hint of sarcasm to it? Or was I overthinking it? I was tired of hiding, exhausted from worrying about who knew what about everything that had happened and what they thought of me. I might ruin everything, but it was time to face it.
“Look, I need to be up-front with you, too, Mr. Winters,” I said, drawing in a breath. “There’s a—well, I should let you know why I’m no longer working at WDLT.”
“Okay?”
“I—well, it was a poor decision on my part. I take full responsibility for it. I was going through a tough time personally and I said some things on-air that I shouldn’t have.”
Down here in South Annapolis, you’ll be seeing some rain this weekend. So if my husband, Duke, is watching, you should know, honey, to bring your umbrella this weekend when you and your little girlfriend go off to your beach house weekend getaway.
My face was getting red, and I was grateful this was a phone call. I fully expected Vaughn to hang up on me at any moment.
Instead, I heard him chuckle. “Disposable umbrellas?”
And a tip to all you adulterers out there—If you like treating your umbrellas like you treat women, then you can toss out your old one and head over to Macy’s this weekend where they’re having a sale.
“It wasn’t my finest moment,” I said, remembering my final closing line before the cameras had cut off and they’d gone to commercial break.
Women aren’t disposable, Duke.
I let my breath out in a rush. So Vaughn knew. And he still called.
“I do my homework, Ms. Simpson. Plus, there’s not much else to do in this depressing rehab place.”
“Oh,” I said. Then realization flooded over me. “Oh! Right, I understand now why you emphasized the off-camera part of this.”
“No, not at all. I’m telling you that because you were a damn fine on-air forecaster and I didn’t want you to be disappointed.”
I didn’t believe him, but I was so unused to hearing any sort of compliment that I thought I was going to cry. I bit the inside of my lip. “Well, tha-thank you. I mean that.”
Vaughn started going into more detail about the station, about how many news anchors they had, how many on-air weather forecasters they rotated. The research position he wanted me for was a new role. I tried to focus on his words, to think about what questions I should ask to sound smart. It had been so long since I’d had a job interview. And like when Annie had first told me about the Worthington house, I felt a glimmer of light opening up inside of me. The promise of hope.
Vaughn’s voice was getting a little crackly, so I stood up and shifted even closer to the window, praying the connection wouldn’t break. He was talking about the demographics of the station’s audience, but his words kept fading in and out. “Cable news station...need people for that...early mornings.”
“We had a sister cable channel in Annapolis.” My own voice echoed strangely back at me. I moved across the room, trying to get back a good connection.
“...so if you’re interested, I was thinking maybe we could set up a time for you to come into the station, maybe in a few weeks when I’m discharged...”
Vaughn’s voice cut out completely then. There was an odd metallic buzzing sound, and then I heard faint music. An old ’80s pop tune. Girls just wanna have fu-un.
“—meet the crew, talk more about your qualifications—”
“Hello, Vaughn? Can you hear me?”
A woman’s voice cut in, low, confessional. Lobster, she said.
I tensed up.
Then the buzzing again, and the woman, breezier this time. Yeah, I got the recipe from a Southern Living issue.
“Vaughn? Are you there?”
Vaughn came back faintly. “—Annie speaks very highly of you—” But then he cut out again.
The woman’s voice. It was stranger, louder than before. I never left. The call disconnected.
“Goddammit,” I said aloud, dropping the phone on the couch and rubbing my sweaty palms on my pants. I took a few deep breaths and then picked up the phone to try to call him back. When the phone rang again in my hands, I jumped, startled.
“Allison? You okay over there?” There was concern in Vaughn’s voice.
“Yes, why? I think we just got cut off?”
“I thought something happened,” he said, hesitantly. “It’s just—it sounded there for a minute like you were screaming.”
After I hung up with Vaughn, I dragged one of Patty’s crocheted blankets out onto the deck and curled up in it, listening to the ocean. It had been strange talking to him about what had happened and not having him hang up on me. For so long, I’d been worried, hiding from it all. Or at least trying to.
The day my video had gone viral on social media, I hadn’t been able to sleep. In fact, I’d believed I might never be able to sleep again. There had been thousands of emails from people who’d seen what I’d done. Many from scorned women. To them, I was a hero. Men are scum, some of them wrote, sending me pages and pages on their own exes, torrid stories about dirty motels, secret cameras, stuffed animal fetishes, online hookers. Some of them were armchair therapists, offering up unsolicited advice on what I should’ve done, what I should do now. You had it all, said another. Don’t throw it away because of a man. Still others were my greatest cheerleaders: You’ll get back on your feet! We so loved you on the morning news. It’s just not the same without you!
They were feminists, housewives, reporters, academics, other television news weathercasters. My lawyer told me to delete them without reading them, that I was just upsetting myself, but it was fascinating. Fascinating to see myself go viral. For a while—maybe two or three days—it was even kind of fun, therapeutic, the delight of so many people agreeing that my husband was little more than pond scum.
And then it hadn’t been fun anymore. Somewhere between that initial weird high and the days, months, following, I’d changed. Become anxious, unsure of myself, unsure of others.
But now? Now maybe my confidence was coming back. Maybe it could be okay after all. Maybe this wasn’t the end of my career. Of my life.
I could feel a warmth growing inside me. I just had a job interview—something I’d thought would never happen after my old producer had locked the studio door behind me for the last time. I was making new friends. Sure, I hadn’t yet made it to page two of the Google search results, but it was going to be okay. I could feel it. This wasn’t my forever, but it was my for now. And I was going to make it work.