“What’s your favorite subject in school?” I ask, trying to brainstorm an idea.
She gives me a blank look.
“Um. Can you whistle?”
She shakes her head.
“Can you carry a tune?”
She nods modestly, and I translate this to mean she has a beautiful voice. I think of Conrad, my heart racing, remembering.
“So sing something,” I say. “Hum a few lines of the national anthem or your favorite song. Whatever. Trust me, this really isn’t a big deal—don’t stress about it.”
She nods, her eyes wide and darting, as we step off the elevator and head up the hall, buzzing with Monday morning activity. When we arrive at my small, corner office, I tell Kirby to have a seat on one of the leather chairs opposite my desk as I take a few minutes to get organized, powering up my computer, reviewing a few messages from my assistant, and checking my voice mail and e-mails.
“It’s going to be a long day,” I say, more to myself than her.
She nods seriously. “Let me know if I can help. I’m good at filing and stuff,” she says.
I look at her, wondering if she has any real ambition—and if there’s anything I can do to help get her on the right path. Or at least get her to go to college so she can do something more than file. “Well, right now we’re gearing up for preproduction and preparing for upfronts,” I say. “Last year we were on Thursdays, but we still need to see who we’re up against.”
“So you’re not shooting and stuff yet?” she asks, looking disappointed.
I shake my head. “No. We’re just going through story lines, coming up with outlines and drafts of scripts for the studio and network so they can give us their notes. Then there’s the business of guest casting, managing the cast and crew, approval of blueprints of new sets, dealing with the lighting and camera departments, hair and makeup, grip and electric, and sound. Plus staying on top of how the show is being marketed by the network.”
“Wow,” she says. “That’s a lot.”
“Yeah. You could say that,” I say, grabbing a few very sharpened yellow pencils, a spiral notebook, and my iPad from my desk. “But it’s worth it when you see your show come to life … You ready?”
She nods, and I stand and lead her down the hall to the long, narrow, windowless conference room otherwise known as the writers’ room or, sometimes, the torture chamber. Inside sits our core team of six writers (more will join next month once we really start rolling and shooting episodes), bantering about their weekends, topics from the tabloids, possible story ideas. We’ve already turned in extensive outlines for the first three episodes, and I’ve assigned scripts for the first two episodes so we’re just picking up where we left off last week, brainstorming more story lines and working on various characters’ arcs.
“Hey there! Sorry I’m late,” I say as half the room quiets down and gives Kirby a once-over, while the other continues their sardonic, irreverent chatter.
“All right, everyone. This is Kirby,” I say as she stands frozen in the doorway. “She’s here from St. Louis and is going to be helping me out today.”
I glance around the room, hoping that everyone will forget about my rule, but right away Kate McQuillan, straight from film school with no prior show experience, and apparently no prior experience on the hula hoop, her trick of choice, demands, “What’s she going to do for us?”
“I think we’re putting a moratorium on that today,” I say as I glance at Kirby, who looks positively pale and petrified.
“Hell, nah,” says Alexandre José, my go-to guy for male humor. Alexandre got his start in improv, coming to television from a long stint doing Boom Chicago in Amsterdam, and although he has less tenure than other writers, I consider him my copilot on the show. I can also count on him to bridge bruised egos and keep the mood light when occasional arguments break out, invaluable traits in any writers’ room. He stares Kirby down, then says to me, “I didn’t river dance for nothin’. Let’s see what she’s got.”
Kirby glances at me, and I raise my hands in surrender, knowing I’m not going to be able to budge Alexandre. Sorry, kid. Showtime.
After a painful thirty seconds, Kirby takes a few small steps into the room and says, “Um. I’m gonna sing.”
“All right! A vocalist!” says Emily Grace Fuller, a young Southern writer with a debutante background. You’d never know it to look at her, but she’s a real workhorse, nothing fragile about her, and has delivered some of the more clever lines of the show. She’s especially good with Elsa, our naïve character who moved from Mississippi to Philly to follow her boyfriend, a law student at Temple.
“It’s about time we’ve had one of those,” Emily Grace says, glancing at another junior writer who sang an off-note Brady Bunch theme song her first time in the room.
I take my usual seat at the head of the table, as Kirby takes a few more baby steps forward, right to the edge of the opposite head, then clears her throat and begins the unlikeliest rap complete with elaborate drumming on the table, using both her hands. Her voice is very quiet but pretty, her rhythm shockingly good, both hands working separate beats. I said a hip hop a hippie to the hippie to the hip hip hop, a you don’t stop a rock it to the bang bang boogie say up jumped the boogie to the rhythm of the boogie …
To the rapt amusement of everyone in the room, she continues through the next few verses, not missing a beat or syllable, the drumming becoming more rapid and complex, until she gets to the end and takes a little bow. It is the most understated performance I’ve seen in a long time, yet one of the best. I grin with relief and satisfaction as Carla Ewers, an edgy writer from Queens, leads a round of applause and says, “Damn. Way to go, white girl.”
“Thanks,” Kirby mumbles, still standing but now looking down at her feet.
“Aren’t you about twenty years too young to know the Sugarhill Gang?” Alexandre asks. “Even the Def Squad version had to be before you were born?”
“‘Rapper’s Delight’ is a classic,” Kirby says to her toes. “The granddaddy of hip hop.”
Alexandre nods, impressed and intrigued. “Right on.”
I feel a burst of pride, wondering how a real parent must feel when their child overcomes an obstacle or achieves something big, as I point to the empty chair beside me. She shuffles over and sits, without looking at me or smiling, and I notice that her hands are shaking, her breathing irregular.
She’s just a little girl, I think. My age when I had her. For a moment, I lose my train of thought, Conrad materializing again. I force him from my mind. Again.
“Okay,” I say, putting on my game face as I point to the whiteboard story wall covered with a diagram of ideas, characters, and plot lines. “We only have two hours for this notes meeting—so let’s make it count. Let’s pick up with Damien and Carrie. Sorry. Roger and Evvie,” I say, switching to their character names. “End of our first episode—Roger’s finally confessed his feelings to Evvie.”
“Heard he did that in real life, too,” Carla says, the only writer on staff who has any sort of rapport with the cast. She takes a sip of her coffee, looking out over her cup for a reaction.
“No shit?” Alexandre says, drawing a big “Roger + Evvie” on our board with a red dry-erase marker. “I thought Damien was scoobin’ Angela?”
“He was,” Carla says. “No longer.”
I glance at Kirby—her eyes huge, relishing every second—and, for her sake, allow the room to indulge in a few minutes of idle gossip, specifically how pissed Angela will be if she finds out.
“Tell them what else you heard,” Emily Grace says to Carla, laughing.
“Oh, yeah. I heard he’s well endowed.”
Alexandre shakes his head and feigns a very homosexual accent. “You know what? This is making me uncomfortable,” he says, grinning at the mostly female staff. “I think I’m gonna sue the showrunner and the network for fostering an uncomfortable environment.”
“And that offends me,” Benjie Carr, the on
ly other man in the room, who happens to actually be gay. He’s kidding, of course, as nothing offends Benjie. He then points to a box of pastries on the table and says to Alexandre, “See those? Don’t let me near them. I’m on a cleanse.”
“Okay, okay!” I say, glancing at my watch. “Let’s go. Off your phones. No more surfing. Let’s go! Ideas, people!”
Alexandre resumes his job as stenographer as the brainstorming commences, Kirby’s eyes darting around the room, taking everything in. For the most part, there is minimal conflict—other than a rather extensive debate about a character named Max, a buttoned-up Penn grad student who spends a lot of time in the bar, drinking Jameson, criticizing everyone’s jukebox selections, and generally pontificating while doing a poor job of hitting on our girl from Mississippi.
“He’s getting way too much face time. He’s a total Wesley,” Carla says, referring to the phenomenon coined after the hated Wesley Crusher in Star Trek: The Next Generation. In other words, the fans hate him—and we, the writers, don’t realize they hate him. In fact, they hate him for the very transparent fact that we’re trying to make them like the character. Force him down their throats. Sure enough, she says, “He’s annoying and boring—and the fact that he keeps telling us how smart and interesting he is … is annoying and boring.”
“I totally disagree,” Emily Grace says.
“Um. Would that have anything to do with the fact that you created him?” Carla asks. “Or wrote the script where he won’t shut up about how swell he is?”
Alexandre makes a sizzling sound, touches the table, and pulls his finger away. “Damn. That burned.”
I smile and say, “I think he’s interesting. And very well drawn.”
“Thanks,” Emily Grace says, shooting me a small, injured smile.
“Still. Dude’s a tool,” Alexandre says, doodling a large rifle. “Let’s kill him. I’m thinking a racially motivated mugging. Or maybe a murder suicide so we can take out that little slimy attorney while we’re at it.”
“Or at least we can put him on a bus,” Carla says, employing another expression, this one used for temporarily writing off a character whom we might want to resurrect at a later date. “A Greyhound to nowhere, perhaps?”
Kirby and I exchange a knowing glance as she raises her eyebrows and sips orange juice through her straw, making a gurgling sound.
Or he can get on a Greyhound to go find his birth mother and then find out that she never told his birth father the truth about him. Yeah, that’s a good one.
9
kirby
“Where did you learn to sing … rap like that? And play the drums? That was amazing,” Marian asks me later that night as we sit in her office eating Chinese delivery. It has been a completely crazy day—I had no idea that people worked so hard or so long—and this has been the first real chance we’ve had to talk alone.
“Thanks,” I say. Then I tell her the story about how my elementary school music teacher said that the drums and the French horn were the two hardest instruments to play, and my dad said it was cheaper to bang on the table than buy a horn so I went with that.
Marian pushes aside her plate of shrimp fried rice that she’s barely touched (I’ve begun to notice she barely eats much of anything) and says, “Well, you were incredible. Very impressive.”
I thank her again, then stare her down for a long beat before I say, “So I guess I’m leaving tomorrow.”
“Oh. Yeah. Right,” Marian says, pretending to be disappointed. “Are you sure you can’t stay longer?”
“I guess I could,” I say, wanting her to want me to stay—or at least actually talk to me. “I have school on Wednesday, but I could blow it off … But I should probably get back.”
She nods, and says she understands, folding easily. My heart drops but I tell myself not to be so soft and give a little shrug.
She continues, talking nervously. “This week is pretty hectic anyway. We’re back in the writers’ room tomorrow—and then I have a bunch of meetings with marketing and finance and interviews with new DPs … I wouldn’t want you to be bored. So tell me more about the drums?”
I stare at her a beat, then shake my head and tell her there’s not much more to say. I mean—how ridiculous is it to start talking about drumming when she’s yet to say a single word about my birth father? I don’t know if she’s trying to hide stuff from me—or if she just doesn’t want to talk about him—but after nearly forty-eight hours, it is clear that she’s not going to bring him up on her own.
So later that night, after we’re back in her apartment and she starts yawning and talking about bed, I tell myself it’s now or never. My heart is pounding in my ears as I hear myself say, “So. Can you please tell me about my father?”
She looks at me, confused, then surprised, as if it never occurred to her that I would ask such a question, then takes a deep breath and looks so stone-faced and anxious that I’m sure a long story is forthcoming. Instead, she simply says, “His name is Conrad. Conrad Knight.”
“Night?” I ask. “As in day and night?”
“As in the Round Table.”
For one second, I am stupidly enchanted by the romantic image of the Round Table, until I catch her frowning, and instantly start to worry about all the things I’ve always worried about. That there will be a story that I don’t want to hear, one of the scenarios I overheard my parents discussing: date rape, jail, drugs. Or simply what I always assumed, a notion that never bothered me until now: a loveless one-night stand that meant absolutely nothing to either of them. I mean, it seems pretty clear that I was an accident, but it would be nice, at least, to be an accident that came from genuine feelings as opposed to lust of the Belinda variety.
“How did you meet him?” I ask, my heart starting to race.
“We went to school together,” she says. Then she tells me she had known him since the fourth grade but that she didn’t really know him until the summer after they graduated. “I was exactly your age,” she says. “We both were. We ran into each other at a party…”
Marian draws a long breath. I can see in her frozen expression that her mind is racing, and I am determined to wait for her to speak. But when several more seconds of silence elapse, I lose my resolve and fire off another question. “So … what was he like?”
She takes a deep breath, then continues, carefully calibrating her words. “He was smart. Street-smart—although he could have done well in school if he had cared.”
I nod, feeling connected to my birth father for the first time, ever, in my life.
She continues, lost in thought. “He wasn’t exactly a rebel, but he did his own thing. He didn’t care what other people thought—and it wasn’t just an act. He really and truly didn’t care. Which wasn’t something I could relate to, but boy, did I admire it. We all did.”
“Was he a loner?” I ask.
“Yeah. Kind of. At least at school. He didn’t really have much use for anyone there. But he had friends outside of school—in his band. So I wouldn’t say he was a total loner … More just … independent.”
“He was in a band?” I say, both thrilled by this revelation and relieved that he wasn’t some dumb jock. Somehow, a football player looking to get laid seems more offensive than a musician doing the same.
“Yes,” she says. “He was a talented musician. He could play the guitar, the piano, and a little saxophone. He had a beautiful voice. Like yours.”
I can’t help giving her the smallest of smiles. “What did he look like?” I ask her.
She doesn’t hesitate. “He was gorgeous. Dark hair. Beautiful eyes. You have his eyes.”
“I do?” I say, my heart pounding even harder.
“Yes. The same exact blue-gray color, the same darker rim. The same shape and size.” She stares at the wall behind me as if trying to remember more details.
“Do you have any pictures of him?” I say, feeling dizzy.
“I have one,” she says, then stands and tells me she’l
l be right back. Several minutes later, she returns with a dingy, once-white envelope. Inside there is a sheet of notebook paper, folded in thirds, covered with wild script. As she unfolds it, I crane to make out some of the words, burning with curiosity. She reads a few lines silently to herself, then refolds it, and returns it to the envelope before pulling out the photo. Biting her lower lip, she examines it, breathing fast. She finally hands it to me. “That’s him,” she says, looking as nervous as I feel, “and me.”
I look down at the photo of my biological parents, feeling stunned, although I’m not sure why. It is a close-up shot, off center, more of him than her—the kind that you snap with an outstretched arm. They are on their backs on a blanket, both of them wincing as if the sun is too bright. I can’t see the sky but I imagine that it is cobalt and cloudless, almost as if I can see it reflected in their eyes—at least his. Their cheeks are pressed together, and hers are flushed. His arm is around her, his fingers buried in a swirl of her long hair, bleached by the sun. The photo is grainy, a shadow across his face, but I can see clearly that he is dreamy in an artist-musician sort of way. Dark hair, fair skin, full lips, and large, domed eyelids, half closed over his eyes, exactly my shade, just as she said. Although he looks relaxed in this shot, there is an intensity in his eyes and face, something that tells me that he feels things deeply, loves completely. Or maybe I just want to see this. Maybe I just want to believe I have that in me, too, and so far I don’t really see it in Marian. I start to hand the photo back to her, but can’t stop looking at it, hoping she will give it to me.
“Were you in love?” I ask, feeling all my muscles tense, wanting her to say yes, although I have no idea why this is so important to me, what real difference it makes at this point.
She hesitates, and then says, “I don’t know. It feels like a million years ago … And it was a strange summer, Kirby. A really strange, complicated time.”