“I should’ve asked, right? Guess I was just too caught up in the moment.” Except he was a newsman. Getting the story was his life.
The antenna began voguing, Madonna-style.
I took a bite of my sesame noodles. “It’s funny. Sometimes it seems like you only remember the best details after you’ve had a couple hours.” I didn’t look at him as I spoke, and I kept my tone careful.
This was my boss. He made sixteen million dollars a year. He’d given me an incredible career, and I wasn’t exactly awash in life skills.
Ryan didn’t answer. Just looked at me and took another bite of his Reuben.
“I just want to be sure the story is...clean,” I said.
“Of course it is, Ainsley,” he said with that crooked grin America loved. “Sometimes it takes a little while for everything to filter through. The adrenaline, you know? Well.” There was a significant pause. “Maybe you don’t. Since you don’t go on scene.”
In other words, don’t push it.
Every news show probably did the same thing, right? I mean, it didn’t simply rain anymore—we had rain events. Fog warnings. Anchors were sent to stand in front of empty buildings in the middle of the night to create a sense of drama. “Earlier today, a shocking story...”
Really, what did I know? I wasn’t there. My antenna knew nothing.
Then came the point of no return.
It shouldn’t have been such a big deal. Really, of all of Ryan’s exaggerations to cause a frenzy, this one was the most harmless. But the frenzy happened just the same.
Ryan was doing a story on the cuts Congress had just made to veteran benefits. He was interviewing a vet who’d lost both her legs and part of her face to an IED. They all sat in the humble living room, the husband’s voice gruff as he spoke about his wife’s courage and determination, the American flag in its triangle box on a shelf behind them.
Ryan looked so gentle and concerned that I myself teared up. He asked about what the benefit cuts would mean to the family, how much her physical therapy (no longer covered) had helped, and what her prosthetics and additional plastic surgery would cost.
Then the kicker. The couple’s three-year-old wandered into the shot and climbed right on Ryan’s lap. “Hello, there, sweetheart,” he said, and he carried on the interview just like that. She fell asleep with her head on his shoulder.
You could feel America sigh with love.
I mean, talk about good TV! The noble warrior, her hardworking husband, their adorable toddler and America’s most trusted face. You couldn’t script that stuff.
Except apparently, you could.
Two weeks later, the New York Post ran the headline: Ryan Roberts Bribes Military Family for America’s Tears. An email had been leaked—the veteran’s husband wrote to thank Ryan for doing the story and apologized that it took so long for Callie to warm up to you. Hope your ears don’t still hurt from her crying!
Crying? There’d been no crying!
The email went on. The extra money sure will help. We really appreciate it.
Ryan could not be reached for comment.
Turned out, he’d offered the couple a thousand dollars to have their kid come sit on his lap, coached into the shot by the grandmother. It had taken quite a few tries before little Callie trusted Ryan.
Bill, the retirement-age cameraman, had leaked it. Though he’d been in on Ryan’s exaggerations all along (for a few extra thousand each time), this story was the straw that broke his back. He was a veteran himself. The couple admitted they simply needed the money for better prosthetics, due to the Congressional funding cuts.
Long story short, Congress got off their asses as if they were on fire.
A GoFundMe page was set up for the family, and more than $1.4 million was raised in the first day.
Ryan’s other stories came to light. The tornado. The bullets. The drowning woman in the subway. He was fired, and after a six-month period of head-hanging and sheepish apologies, he was rehired at another network for a paltry half of his sixteen-million-dollar salary.
I was fired, too. I was not rehired. It was my job to make sure the news was clean, to know if Ryan was stretching the truth, to keep an eye on these things, goddamn it! as the head of NBC screeched.
So I joined the ranks of the unemployed, as appealing to other networks as an Ebola-riddled leper holding an open jar of typhus.
After my one hundred and fiftieth job rejection in four weeks (Starbucks wouldn’t have me), I lay on the couch, ten pounds heavier than I’d been a month ago. It was okay, I told myself between bouts of sobbing and Ben & Jerry’s. I never wanted to be a producer in the first place. At least I had Eric. And Ben. And Jerry.
Eric sighed as he came in; I was in the “pajama” phase of grief. “Babe, come on. You were gonna leave anyway once we had kids.”
“It’s just... I didn’t do anything wrong. Technically.”
“I know. We’ve been over this.”
Oh, God. If Eric didn’t want to talk about it—Eric my rock, my love, my best friend—I was really, really pathetic.
Then he threw me the best bone ever. “Listen, with my salary, you don’t need to work. Take your time, find something you really love, something that will work in the next phase of our lives. Besides...” He paused and stroked my unclean hair. “Don’t you think it’s time we bought a house?”
Hell’s to the yes! It was exactly what I needed. I’d figure out what the next phase was (marriage and children, thank you very much). First step, a home for all of us.
We found a house in Cambry-on-Hudson, where I’d spent my teenage years, where Candy and Dad still lived, forty-five minutes from Judy and Aaron in Greenwich. An easy commute for Eric via the train, close enough to the city that we could still pop in for a show or to see friends, far enough away that it felt like the country. The posh little town was filled with interesting shops, some great restaurants, a couple of little galleries and a bakery that could be compared only with paradise. A marina jutted out into the Hudson, and high on a hill sat a huge white country club that we nicknamed Downton Abbey (which would be perfect for our wedding).
“Wait till we have kids,” Eric warned me when we found the house. “Don’t be surprised if my parents buy the house next door.” That would be great with me.
Our house was a little soulless from the outside, but fabulous on the inside. Huge bedrooms, a sunken living room, a kitchen with granite countertops and a nice front porch. It was in a development, which I hadn’t wanted, but the yard was landscaped and pretty.
We went to the animal shelter and picked out Ollie, then a skinny little bag of bones who’d been found tied to a phone pole. Still, when we reached out to pet him, he wagged so hard he fell down.
“Our family has begun,” Eric said, kissing the dog on the head.
When it came time to sign the papers, I had a little shock.
“Um...my name isn’t on here,” I told the real estate agent.
“Oh, no! Did I make a mistake?” he asked. “I can draw up new papers. I just... I’m sorry, it must’ve been a misunderstanding.”
“No, let’s do this,” Eric said. “We can fix it later, babe.” He signed with a flourish, grinning at me, and when the Realtor left, we made love in the empty living room. His parents came over that night, and even though we drank champagne and laughed, I kept thinking about that. Eric Fisher. Not Eric Fisher and Ainsley O’Leary.
“I wonder if we’ll ever have grandchildren, Aaron,” Judy said, subtle as a charging lion. She held